In this post I’ll briefly outline a hack for Cortex Prime. This one’s best described as:

A streamlined take on four color comic book action in Cortex Prime that remains largely compatible with Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.

These hacks are prone to change, so you’ll want to check out the Google Doc for the latest version. That said, it’s kind of neat to see how these hacks develop, so what you’ll get here is a very brief overview; only the bits needed to play, and none of the commentary. Compare and see what changed!

Without further ado, let’s check out the Super Simple Superhero Hack.

Characters

Prime Sets

  1. Affiliations: Solo, Buddy, Team
  2. Approaches: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky
  3. Distinctions: 3 of them, each with the Hinder SFX

Other Trait Sets

Power Sets: 1 or 2 w/ SFX and Limits

Specialties: d6, d8, or d10. Here’s the list:

  • Acrobatics: moving around with grace, speed, and control
  • Covert Ops: doing things that are stealthy, tactical
  • Criminal Activities: doing things that are sneaky, underhanded
  • Empathy: understanding others
  • Martial Arts: hand-to-hand combat
  • Medicine: fixing living things
  • Melee Weapons: close-quarters weapon fighting
  • Mystical Lore: knowledge of the occult
  • Ranged Weapons: aiming, throwing or firing long-range attacks
  • Savvy: navigating political, business, or cultural landscapes
  • Science: understanding the mechanics of the universe
  • Superscience: understanding the mechanics beneath, behind, and outside of the universe
  • Tech: understanding and using technological devices
  • Vehicle Operation: maintaining, piloting or driving vehicles
  • Willpower: exerting your will on others or calling upon your reserves of focus and determination

Session Advancement: Each session is one Issue. List each issue’s title on your sheet and spend sessions for advancement.

Stress, Trauma, Shaken & Stricken

This hack uses the Shaken/Stricken mod for Stress and Trauma with some additional modifications, outlined below.

  • Stress is a minimum of d6; there is no d4 Stress, so simply turn any d4 to d6. (Same as Tales of Xadia.)
  • Stress is applied to your Approaches, as per the Shaken/Stricken mod.
  • When you have Stress higher than your Approach, that Approach is shut down. You cannot use that approach in any dice pools until it is recovered.
  • When two or more Approaches are shut down, you’re Shaken: you can only keep one die for your total on your rolls unless you spend Ⓟ.
  • When three or more are shut down, you’re Stricken: you are taken out of the scene until you can recover.
  • A character also becomes Stricken if any of their stress is stepped up beyond d12.
  • Any time stress is stepped up beyond d12, you gain Trauma D6 of a type determined by your opponent: Physical or Emotional. If either of these are stepped up beyond d12, you are lost, dead, retired, unstable, or otherwise out of the action, likely for good.

Both Stress and Complications are used. Stress represents your individual, internal factors: injuries, anxieties, focus, determination, emotional state, and so on. Complications represent external factors (which may often be more transient or temporary): being tied up, needing to reload, dropping or entangling a weapon or tool, having your reputation called into question, having your bank account temporarily frozen, etc.

Shaken Modifications

You’ll note a character is Shaken only when two of their Approaches are shut down, not just one. This makes superpowered characters pretty durable, and makes it wise for enemies to target their weakest Approaches to get rid of them fast, or one of their highest Approaches early on to hobble their ability to use their biggest dice.

The “shut down an Approach” and the “two Approaches shut down before you’re Shaken” modifications have not been playtested. That said, having superpowered characters Shaken too easily seems a little too gritty and death-spiral-y for a supers game. So try out a few versions and let me know how it works in your games!

Headquarters

These provide Resources that have specializations, and are shared by all of the PCs (and any GMC teammates). Here are the types of resources, as well as examples of what their specializations might be. Starting resources have two specializations.

  • Extras: contacts, rumors, therapy, socialize, thievery, connected, forensics, research, resources, science, technology, medicine, investigation, hacking, gearhead, law, red tape, mystical lore, inspiration, training, weapons, intimidation
  • Tech: retrieval, information security, threat detection, information
  • Access: location, privacy, public, crowded, loud, quiet, friendly, shady, dark
  • Armory: vehicles, guns, training, heavy weapons, non-lethal weapons

As with normal Resources, all PCs can pull from them, but dice that get committed are spent. They refresh at the beginning of the next game session (or after an appropriate amount of downtime, as determined by the GM).

GMCs

The standard GMC rules are all applicable.

The Doom Pool & Scene Traits

This hack uses the Doom Pool, and conflict resolution is based on the scene type:

  • Use action/reaction and action order initiative for conflict with other characters or GMCs.
  • Use tests against the Doom Pool for everything else, such as recovery, unopposed feats of ability, creating assets, and so on.

Scene Traits

Scene traits apply any time the GM creates them for a scene: this could be every scene, or only ones that dramatically benefit from environmental considerations. They provide a strategic consideration for all characters in the scene, and are rated d6 to d12.

Usually, there will be between zero and three scene traits in any given scene; typically, you want one or two to represent fun objects in a combat scene, or interesting circumstances in more social or intellectual scenes. In scenes where the focus is very clearly on the interaction or relationships of just a few characters, it’s a good idea to leave scene traits out as a way to focus the story on the characters involved; not every scene needs scene traits! They are external factors that people can take advantage of or be hampered by equally.

Scene traits are added to the Doom Pool when that is rolled. Scene traits can also be targeted by PC’s actions to step down or remove them: if their effect die is equal to or less than the trait’s rating, step it down, and if it’s larger, remove the scene trait. Likewise, GMCs can use their action to step one up when it makes sense: their effect die replaces its original rating when larger, or steps it up if equal or less.

A PC may use a scene trait as an asset by spending a Ⓟ; it’s an asset on a single roll, unless they spend a second Ⓟ to make use of it for the rest of a scene. GMCs can use them for free, when it makes sense.

Scene traits can also come with SFX, though this is rare, and probably should only be used in cases where there are fewer of them, and where they have a fairly large scope or variety of effects. You can assume that GMCs can use the Hinder SFX with scene traits, to show how they might work against the GMC.

Some scene trait examples, based on the scene type, are listed below.

Combat Scenes

  • Overloaded Power Generators D8
  • Security Alarms D6
  • Large Shipping Containers D8
  • Automated Defense Lasers D10

Social Scenes

  • Breach of Protocol D8
  • Drop-Dead Date Looms! D10
  • Agitated Protesters D6

Recovery Scenes

  • Cobbled Together Supplies D6
  • Outbreak-Crowded Waiting Room D10

Exploration Scenes

  • Twisting Turning Tunnels D8
  • The Walls Have Eyes D6
  • Bio-Organic Manipulation D6

Investigative Scenes

  • “Clearly, They Know Forensic Procedures” D8
  • Obscuring Mist D6
  • Whiteout Conditions D12

What Do You Think?

Let me know in the comments below if you’d like to use this hack, or if you’d like to see more about it!

If you’ve used it, how did it go? What worked and what didn’t?