Supers Games: Prescriptive, Narrative or Framework
I wrote and designed Simple Superheroes #0 in reaction to the two major categories of superhero games I saw at the time.
(There's a free mechanics overview called the Heart of Simple Superheroes at that link. It's a pretty robust system, there are certainly simpler supers games that I am aware of now.)
Broadly speaking supers RPGs tend to fall into two camps; prescriptive or narrative. There's a third that is less common, a framework approach.
In the second the powers don't matter much, they are colour that inform the story that is being told -- perhaps more focused on interpersonal drama. Examples of this are Masks (a pbta game) and Smallville RPG. I'd probably put the 2012 Cortex system Marvel Heroic Roleplaying here too.
In "prescriptive" systems, every power is detailed, with a build point cost, capabilities, modifications, limits you can take to have the power cost less, or cost more to have additional benefits.
Examples of these are Champion/Hero, Mutants & Masterminds, with newer ones like Ascendant, or the BRP powered Destined by the Design Mechanism (it's the Mythras engine).
Prescriptive games take quite a bit of work to make characters, and I usually feel they are too restrictive (if it's not in the book what do you do?). But they really work for some types of players.
I like a good narrative with superpower flavour, but the second category lacks the "what you can do matters to the game" element that I usually crave.
I went with a framework approach, in Simple Superheroes: here are the rules, build your own powers. You name talents yourself, give it a rank (the number of dice you roll), give it an intent, and give it a (ability) category. If you are someone for whom a particular power is very important you'll have multiple talents for a "single" power allowing it to do a lot more things. Think X-men's Cyclops: he'd have a "might" based eye-blast, and "accuracy" base eye-blast. One of those would have a offensive intent, one could be functional and he'd probably need another defensive eye-blast (to knock down incoming projectiles.)
Almost all supers game have some kind of metacurrency "points" that players can spend for their heroes to get special bonuses, avoid horrible consequences, do stunts and maybe even influence the narrative. Simple Superheroes uses Strainpoints, which are also a de-facto mental control defense. These are earned by a characters Relations & Values.
There are other games that use a define your own power approach. Typically these are fairly simple and less structured: Longshot City for Troika fits here, arguably the Cortex Marvel Heroic Roleplaying does too.
I've always wanted to take a closer look at Truth & Justice (which is PDQ based), as well as SUPERS!
Truth & Justice is definitely in the Framework camp.
I wrote most of the above in response to a question on reddit, and felt it deserved to be slightly expanded and shared here.
Comments
Ah, man, I forgot to include Pandora Total Destruction.
I'd put this on the narrative side. You can make your own core power, and your hero starts with a horrible, poorly controlled power and that is it. Later you get "manifestations" which are slightly more controlled specifics or variant powers.
It's more narrative in that the game talks about scenes a lot. It's also vary focused verging on the kind of story it wants to tell verging on a Scenario Game, though still a lot more open then some I would put in that category.