Talking About Paragons

Hello heroes!

Thought I'd just talk about this game for a minute, especially since it kind of came out of nowhere!

As said in the description, Paragons is a game derived from Ben Milton's Knave, as well as some aspects of Maze Rats. It's based on the 1st edition, and though I have seen previews of the second edition, most of it is not overly relevant to the game.

I made Paragons because I actually LOVE superheroes, despite what I say on Twitter sometimes. I love the kitchen sink stories, the explosive characters, and the brain candy of it all. I used to be a huge fan of Bruce Timm's DC cartoons as a kid, I spent hours of time on Freedom Force/Marvel Ultimate Alliance/City of Heroes, and I've read my share of Watchmen, Invincible and Astro City (though not much of the Big Two).

I wanted to make a game that you can pick up easily that allows a lot of flexibility of powers but without the complicated mechanics-building of powers in some superhero games like Mutants and Masterminds 3e. In addition to Knave, Paragons owes a lot of its DNA to ICONS (which itself owes its DNA to FASERIP and FATE). I also have to shout out Cynthia Celeste Miller and her game 4C, which was the predecessor to Capes, Cowls and Villains Foul. She detailed a great, freeform powers section I cribbed from heavily.

The visual style is more taking queues from comics of the 50s and 60s, with the color scheme being based on the classic 64 CMYK colors. At least for the time being, I will be making most of the art of public domain superheroes

I'm not sure of the ultimate goal of Paragons yet. My goal is to get it basically complete by the end of the month, which aside from some tweaking it's all mechanically there. It requires more work, layout and illustration, but maybe if there is enough demand it can get a print run - who knows!

I'll be updating the document periodically, but let me know what you think about it and if you've given it a whirl!

That's all for now! Keep it sleazy!