About FASERIP and how to get started!

Starting FASERIP

FASERIP games, whatever rules you use, are comic book worlds. Superheroes, supervillains, and when they are at their best, stories about unbelievable exciting fantastic things happening in an otherwise realistic world.

The FASERIP rules revolve around the results chart, and whatever version of the rules you use is going to have this chart in some form, or in one case abstract the target numbers from the chart for you.

Next, the person running the game, the storyteller, gamemaster, referee or "Judge", needs to come up with the basic story, the objectives for the players playing characters, the setting - even if it's just a small part of a much bigger world not yet fleshed out - and the ENEMIES. Because in every comic book story, good is opposed by evil, order is opposed by chaos, and heroes are met with the evil of supervillains!

Although the original game was firmly tied to a trademarked specific comic book universe, FASERIP has been used for an almost unimaginable number of other settings, including saturday morning cartoon worlds, giant fighting robots, sword and sorcery, World War 2, cyberpunk, space federation type space opera and many more. So when you are developing your own games, don't feel limited in any way. And one of the most fun things of all in FASERIP is doing a writeup of a new character or adapting one from your favorite show or book!

With the release of several more recent "FASERIP" games it seems that aspects of the game including Powers, Karma and even names for the statistics are subject to modification or classification in different ways. The personal philosophy behind this site about creating a character is to keep it descriptive and as simple as possible. A short summary of a Power that may not be clear to anyone else is preferable to getting hung up over the Source / Origin / Control families of Powers from FASERIP RPG, the exhaustive lists from the fan edited netbooks using material from the original 1980s game or the different Powers created for the 4C, Foresee and other iterations of the public domain version of the rules.

Power descriptions should be detailed enough to explain what a Power does, and short enough to write out on a character sheet if necessary. "Super Strength" in this author's opinion is an infinitely better writeup than something like "Body Control - Musculature - Biodynamic Boost (Permanent) - applied to Strength". The second one formalizes a power too far. Elephants are very strong and in some games people might argue they and all other really strong Animals might be said to have Super Strength. But they certainly don't have Body Control. They aren't exerting Control over anything. And neither are most comic book characters who have Super Strength. Comic books are the realm of the inexplicable and fantastic. Trying to pigeon hole it all is a bad mistake to make.

The same basic principle of power descriptions also apply to Limitations, a feature of FASERIPopedia not always present in other FASERIP iterations. Limitations apply to a character or a specific power of a character. Many have been provided to use, but don't get confused or feel obligated by existing Limitations. If your vision of a character is that the character has a certain weakness or Limitation then simply describe it in the terms you feel comfortable with. It still counts as a Limitation if the gamemaster rules that it does.

In the end it has to and will always come down to accurately describing what a character can do in the game. Some game designers and writers get really hung up on having internal explanations in the game world for how different Powers work or where different Powers come from. Possibly the best approach is not to choose one single explanation from a single rulebook as your "canon" to follow, but instead always begin with what works for the individual superhero character.

It can be fun to suggest that a solar powered alien god-man is in fact a member of the same species as a race of false gods from another company's eclectic 12 issue series about "space gods." But in doing so it removes some of the mystery, and therefore the sense of wonder, from the game world. It also runs the risk of providing answers to questions no one asked.

If it naturally arises in play about whether two characters or alien races or items might have a common origin, that's entirely different. Finding answers then becomes part of how a successful game world feeds on the imaginations and creative expressions of the people playing it. That is very different from oppressively declaring as if god on high that This Is How It Is.

Superhero games, like any other sort of roleplaying game, can be very cooperative. The gamemaster does NOT have to be some sort of tabletop little tin god except insofar as they referee matters that should be out of the hands of any one player. There is no reason why a player should not, if everyone else agrees, play the villains, or monsters, at times when they don't have a hero to play, or just for the fun of it. Likewise when new house rules or even new characters need to be developed, it's important to let everyone have a voice. Not a bullying or hectoring voice, or the voice of a smart ass or cynic; the helpful voice of another human being whose creativity is also being stimulated.

Almost uniquely, FASERIP character creation has evolved to be an activity on its own. Writeups as they are called are so much fun some people have spent years doing them to great success and popularity, HAVING NEVER EVEN PLAYED THE ACTUAL GAME. Because FASERIP character creation is so Amazing and so much fun, linger on it. Savor it. Make it the best it can be! Unlike many games your character is very likely to survive for a long time, so make it as good as you can!

CREATING CHARACTERS

Existing Heroes
There are many comic books being published, not just by the "big two" (now mere subsidiaries of media giants) but by a plethora of small publishers, in webcomics and as crowdfunded projects. The heroes from the "big two" have in many cases already been turned into FASERIP characters, and often with multiple versions! For younger people playing or obsessed fans of a certain character, using an existing FASERIP hero, whether from the old "official" sources or from the current fan created but excellent unofficial sources, is a very easy way to get characters quickly! The Contacts page of this website lists as many sources for existing characters as possible to help you get a FASERIP game going FAST!
Writeups
Perhaps a player disagrees with the existing FASERIP versions of a character. Perhaps he or she wants to create a character based on a new book, streaming series, movie or otherwise unknown comic book character! That is one of the most FUN things of all in the FASERIP system! Instead of a random character, the player and the Judge work together to assign statistics and powers to the character, based on exactly who the character is, what powers or other amazing abilities the character possesses, and their general outlook, appearance and flavor. Writeups are an incredibly important part of FASERIP fandom, and there is an amazing and deep collection of these resources!
Let Chaos Reign! (Random Characters)
FASERIP itself, like the game from which it was cloned, also has charts to allow a random character to be created. This sort of character sometimes has one or more random powers that the players doesn't like, or sometimes has statistics that don't seem to make sense. However, quite often it is the random characters that trigger the greatest inspiration in the mind of a truly creative player, leading to some of the best superhero stories of all! Click HERE to go to the FASERIP random character generator page!
Legacy and Inheritance
Comic books have had their prehistory - from the invention of the modern cartoon strip by Benjamin Franklin, through the silent movie tie-ins, the Pulp hero magazines - to its Golden Age during and immediately after World War 2; its Silver Age from 1959 to 1975 or so; its Bronze Age from 1975 to 1986; its Plastic Age in the 1990s which inflated then collapsed the whole comicbook industry; and through to today, where Japanese comicbooks dominate a huge slice of what was once an entirely American market.
With such a long and literally storied history, and the first appearance of some characters back in the 1920s, a character can be the inheritor or descendant of an earlier hero. In effect, a modernized contemporary version of the "same" character.
To generate a Legacy character or a member of a Fantastic Family, click HERE!
CHARACTER SHEETS
Now it's time to get started! Choose the type of character sheet to use from those provided, and begin the character generation process! We have several character sheets, adapted from those created by Graphite Prime, with his kind permission!
- CAMELOT style FASERIP character sheet
- Male toon style FASERIP character sheet
- Female toon style FASERIP character sheet
- Male realistic FASERIP character sheet
- Female realistic FASERIP character sheet
- Kid FASERIP character sheet
- FASERIP character sheet with completely BLANK portrait box - for the comic book artists among us!

CREATING CHARACTERS

Existing Heroes

Writeups

Let Chaos Reign! (Random Characters)

Legacy and Inheritance

CHARACTER SHEETS