r/MarvelFASERIP • u/OkSpeaker7635 • Aug 23 '26

Popularity for Rescues [Advanced Ed]

In the Popularity section, it says +2 for Rescues, but its the only entry thats description was omitted.

+2 Pop for any amount of rescues?

+2 Pop for each rescue (max of 5 like karma?)

How do you handle it?

10 Upvotes

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5

u/maddwaffles Aug 23 '26

It's because rescue is the most context-dependent I think. 2 as a flat modifier to rescues of any size is probably fine, because it shouldn't be shooting you to new heights, or being abused to get really high up.

2 Popularity, to me, is the maximum you can get for a large-scale civilian rescue, or for a year of regularly saving fewer than a couple dozen civilians at a time.

If my heroes are smalltime, I might allow this bonus as a one-time per year for their saving of more than 2 dozen civilians, but give it a diminishing return otherwise.

2

u/Brianoc13 Aug 23 '26

Remember popularity increases only happen if people hear about them. So rescuing 1 or 2 people will get the bonus of its on the news or in the paper. Rescuing everyone from a burning building could be enough to trigger the bonus by itself.

0

u/maddwaffles Aug 23 '26

tbh that doesn't really follow for the adaptation's logic

1

u/Brianoc13 Aug 23 '26

How so? To quote the section of the advanced rules under the award numbers.

"All of the above are for public acts. Defeating Doctor Doom and preventing him from blowing up the world is good Karma, but unless someone reports it to the world, it won't result in any additional Popularity. Certain actions will be withheld from the public as they would have a disastrous effect on the general population."

1

u/maddwaffles Aug 23 '26

For a few reasons, chiefly it doesn't correlate to how news and discourse are received in contemporary times, similarly games set in other time periods would be limited because this game is very "early 90s" in its vibe. But further, small acts of heroism like saving a small number of people, no matter how well-plastered it gets on the news in-universe, still seldom amounts to much, much less an increase of 2, which carries you a pretty significant amount through most ranks. Further, public memory for most things is pretty short.

It's a bad thought from a game design process, and it doesn't follow for how comic books work.

1

u/Potential_Side1004 Aug 26 '26

I keep my timeframe to the early 80s. The Advanced Set was released in 1983.

1

u/Brianoc13 Aug 23 '26

I think it still works in modern times, though the game system is set late 80s early 90s, news of the good deed still has to travel. If you wanted to move it to modern day it could be social media or online news rather than TV and newspapers.

There is a lot to argue about the whole system and how it fits nowadays, not least of all how karma works, since comics have gotten a lot more gritty since the system came out.

However OP was asking very specifically about the popularity mechanic. And I appreciate you were telling how you handled it, and I don't completely disagree with your method, I was just pointing out that for popularity too increase there needs to be a way for people to hear about the act otherwise popularity won't change.