From Silver ENNIES to a SUPERS Smackdown: How Outgunned is Revolutionizing Superhero TTRPGs
Simone Formicola reveals the secrets behind the award-winning system that's bringing cinematic superhero action to your table
1. Simone, hi! First of all, congratulations on your team winning two big silver ENNIE Awards for Outgunned at GenCon in 2024. I was there in the front row and was very happy for you. Can you tell us about Outgunned?
Hi and thank you, that was certainly a magical night for us! We did not expect to win such a big event.
About Outgunned: it is an original cinematic action TTRPG, designed to recreate the thrill of action movies and give players an immersive cinematic experience.
To do this, we needed a fast-paced and snappy system, so we created the Director’s Cut. The DC uses small pools of six-sided dice to determine the outcome of the Heroes’ actions. When rolling dice, your goal is not to score the highest or lowest possible number, but to roll two-, three-, and four-of-a-kind.
Outgunned Superheroes
2. What is Outgunned Superheroes?
Outgunned Superheroes is a genre book for Outgunned focused on superhero movies.
A genre book is a big expansion that can also be used as a stand-alone game. This means that in Outgunned Superheroes you will find everything you need to play as a powerful superhero fighting against a Villain to protect your city, the World or the entire Universe.
3. Your approach of making some of these Outgunned supplements standalone is pretty consumer friendly. What motivated the decision to make Outgunned Adventure and now Outgunned Superheroes a complete game rather than requiring the core rulebook? And what extras do you get by picking up the core book?
The Outgunned line is growing bigger and bigger each year, and we really want to keep creating new content for the existing players, without forgetting about all the new players that join our community along the way. Thanks to genre books, players can simply choose their favorite genres and dive straight into the Outgunned action.
The corebook and genre books all include the basic rules for the game, but each of them comes with unique character options — that is Roles, Tropes, and Feats — as well as targeted tools to recreate the most emblematic scenes of a specific genre.
For example, in the Corebook, you have the Need for Speed mechanic to play full-throttle Chases; in Adventure, you have rules for Traps and Supernatural Enemies; and Superheroes obviously features fantastic superpowers.
The good news is that you can mix and match these tools as you wish, creating the perfect experience for each Cinematic Campaign.
4. The Action Flicks supplements have already touched on superpowers and supernatural abilities. How does Outgunned Superheroes expand upon or differ from these previous implementations?
Needless to say, Outgunned Superheroes will have plenty of space to expand on the concept and a ton of dedicated mechanics that we just could not include in a 20-page mini expansion. For example, you will find many dedicated Roles and Superpowers for your superheroes, and special rules to handle enemies with superpowers.
5. The original Outgunned embraces tropes from multiple action sub-genres. Will Outgunned Superheroes similarly acknowledge the diverse sub-genres within superhero fiction (cosmic, street-level, supernatural, etc.)?
Of course, the genre book will encompass many possibilities.
To give you a couple of examples, every superhero as an Origin, to describe where their superpowers came from. A player can decide to be an alien, to be scientifically enhanced or even to be some sort of supernatural creature from folklore.
And we have introduced the concept of Power Tiers, to allow players to choose whether their Campaign will focus on street-level, world-level and cosmic-level threats. The chosen Power Tier will drastically change what the story is about and how powerful the heroes and the enemies are.
6. When building a character in Outgunned Superheroes, you can choose from a combination of any of 10 Roles and 15 Tropes. Do you think that pretty much covers all cinematic comic book character hero archetypes?
We tried to offer a vast array of possible combinations by creating multi-faceted Roles and Tropes, to give players a ton of options. Superpowers can be approached in many different ways to make each hero feel very unique.
On top of that, we also hope that the campaign will go well and give us a chance to add even more options as Stretch goals!
7. In the Quickstart for the game, it states the premise as playing as the good guys. Was there ever a time in the development of this expansion where you also considered allowing players to play as villains?
Outgunned is all about the heroes fighting a villain and being on the side of good, even with different means.
But since sometimes it’s also fun to see the tables turned, we have developed V for Villain. This Action Flick included in Action Flicks Vol 3, will give the players everything they need to play the bad guys!
8. The "Do whatever you want" Spotlight mechanic is intriguing but potentially challenging to balance. What advice could you give to help GMs manage this particular meta-ability?
We always encourage communication at the table, so that Directors and Players can use every tool, especially the Spotlight, to add something to the story, and make it even more epic.
The biggest recommendation I can give to GMs and Directors is to talk openly with the players, trying to understand where they the story is going according to them, and to use the tools at their disposal to keep things entertaining and climatic for all.
If everybody at the table feels that the villain was defeated too easily, maybe that was not their final form!
9. Outgunned's 12-box Grit system works well for action heroes who get beaten up but keep going. How does this translate to superheroes who might be super tough and resistant to all kinds of damage?
Obviously, superheroes will have to deal with enemies that are powerful enough to keep them in check. Even if some heroes can be physically bulletproof, there will always be goons with laser rifles or super strong creatures ready to give them the fight of their lives.
10. Outgunned Adventure introduced specific scene structures like "Run!" to capture pulp action sequences. Does Outgunned Superheroes introduce similar mechanical frameworks for iconic superhero moments?
Yes, we have a new mechanic called Assemble, designed to capture scenes that see the group of heroes work together. During an Assemble, the heroes will need to rely on their teamwork to overcome a seemingly impossible task, like stopping a huge spaceship from crashing or saving the crew of a flying fortress before it explodes.
11. Comic book universes often feature crossovers and multiversal events. Does the Outgunned product line have anything that offers mechanics to facilitate these kinds of narrative structures?
Yes! In the first Action Flicks book, there is a very cool action flick called Everything at Once, which delves into the possibilities of mutiversal heroes. On top of that, we also have something in store for the upcoming campaign, but I don’t want to spoil too much!
Unrevealed Mechanics
12. There is so much that is teased in the quickstart, but which I really want to know more about. For example, could you explain in maybe the most general terms how the three Power Tiers are going to work? What’s the underlying mechanical lever to control the overall power level of the game? How does Outgunned Superheroes handle the power escalation common in superhero narratives without creating gameplay imbalances?
Growing threats and looming dangers are a core aspect of Superhero stories, which is why we have Power Tier, designed to help Players manage the various levels of power.
The Power Tier set for the campaign determines the level of the threat that the Heroes will have to face, so when creating a sequel, you can easily opt to crank up the Power Tier.
The good news is that, at higher Tiers, Heroes are much more powerful too, so they have the tools they need to deal with planet-wide or sometimes galaxy-wide disasters.
We usually recommend that all heroes share the same tier, however, a group can choose to have one or some Heroes from a different Tier. This exception should mainly be considered when you want to bring into play an extraordinary superhero from a Tier above the others, rather than below.
The Power Tiers simply change the meaning of each Success in order to better represent what a Hero at that tier can do.
For example, a Street Level Hero can use a Basic Success to easily punch through a plasterboard wall, or to jump from a window to the next. With the same success, a World Level Hero will punch through a reinforced wall, or jump from a building to the next. And as for Cosmic Level Heroes, to them, the actions I just listed are all so trivial, that they rarely even require dice to roll.
14. Team-up mechanics are essential to superhero fight scenes. Can you elaborate on how these will work in comparison to the more individualistic focus of the original Outgunned?
Working as a team is indeed crucial for superheroes, which is why in Outgunned Superheroes, we have a new mechanic called Assemble. During an Assemble scene, the entire team of superheroes must come together to overcome a seemingly impossible task.
This new mechanic is designed to handle complex scenes in an intuitive and iconic way, where each hero has the chance to shine, as long as they manage to work well with the others. Every contribution counts, but if one hero gets in the way of the others, they can make things very difficult for everyone!
15. How do super gadgets and vehicles work in Outgunned Superheroes? Are there substantial differences from how gear functions in the core Outgunned system?
Yes, gadgets and super vehicles are more than simple gear and rides, they are not the kind of thing you can find walking through the city. Which is why they will have a dedicated section in Outgunned Superheroes.
Gadgets require a Feat to be used correctly, but can allow a hero to do incredible things, and even grant a hero without superpowers the ability to go toe-to-toe with super-powered enemies.
16. The Achievements, Scars, Reputations, and Bonds system mentioned in the quickstart seems to suggest character development over time. Does Outgunned Superheroes put more emphasis on campaign play than previous Outgunned games?
Yes, we will try to give heroes more ways to advance throughout the game, and even suggest a different approach for those who enjoy longer campaigns than your standard Outgunned.
Final Thoughts
17. The artwork by Daniela Guibellini is, as always, quite extraordinary. How long does it take her to create a full body portrait, start to finish?
It depends on the character, of course, because some are clearer and others need more time to be thought-through and developed.
Daniela always works together with Rico, our Art Director, in the early stages of each image, discussing what the character is about, the story behind them, and the best way to convey these aspects. Once that is done, it’s a matter of days before the art is 100% complete.
18. What lessons from developing previous Outgunned titles most influenced your approach to Outgunned Superheroes?
Well, Outgunned Adventure was our first genre book, our first attempt at creating a book that is both an expansion and a standalone game.
Working on it and listening to player feedback taught us much about how to approach this new book.
For starters, we learned just how flexible the Director’s Cut is, and how we can use the mechanics to recreate a vast array of Scenes, as long as we have a clear idea of what needs to happen. We also learned what parts of the game are truly necessary to run any type of Outgunned game, and what is more appropriately part of the corebook alone.
Hopefully, everything we have learned will come through in the final outgunned Superheroes!
Back Outgunned: Superheroes on BackerKit here!