More on Look! Up In The Sky!

Look! Up In The Sky! - or L!UITS! - is a supers game designed by Klaxon Bowley, my son. It is built under the StarCluster 3 system license, but the system has been extensively reworked. It uses the StarPool D20 dice pool resolution mechanic exclusively, though it probably could be adapted fairly easily to any of the other SC 3 mechanics. Skill numbers have been cut to 24 skills by broadening each until it subsumed the other skills. Skills are still defined from center and overlapping. The skills have a definite comics slant, like Wierdscience, Blow Shit Up, and Shoot.

L!UITS! is an effects-based game. Only the effect of the super power is described. Anything else is description. For example, an Archer character could use a powerful exploding bolt, a Wierdscience guy could use a pressor ray, and a demon could use hellfire; but all of these are functionally the same thing, Energy Projection.

Chargen is pretty simple - you are given a number of points to spend on Attributes, a choice of Backgrounds, and hero points to spend on Powers. Everything is a power in L!UITS!, even skills. If you don't buy skills with your hero points, you are limited to the three skills - one at +3, one at +2, and one at +1 - you get from your background. The amount of hero points you get is determined by the level of the game, which ranges from Pulp and Street Levels to Cosmic and Unlimited.

Powers are divided into Paths. You have to spend at least half your hero points in one Path, but may spend the rest as you like. The Paths are Tank Path, Skill Path, Nuke Path, Healer Path, Buffer Path, and Strange Path. Tank Path is protection, Skill Path is access to skills, Nuke Path is offensive powers, Healer Path is healing, Buffer Path affects others, and Strange Path is odd powers.

All your powers must be tied into your backstory - the backstory must explain why you have these powers, how they are to be described, and why you are using them this way - and to a particular skill in order to use it. Each Super has a Motivation - which gains him a die to his pools while following it - an Anti-Motivation - which looses a die from his pools while following it - and a Vulnerability, which gains you a hero point whenever it is used against you. A Vulnerability can be very personal - like Love or Trust - or it can be external - like Kryptonite. Up to the group how you choose to use it.

I'll post up an example character or two later on.

-clash