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There will never be a game like City of Heroes that allowed you such a level of creativity in bringing the inner superhero to life. I played for 8 years. It will be missed.

While there may never be a computer game that allows you that much freedom, there are plenty of pencil-and-paper games that allow everything CoH did and more. My personal favorite is Champions, published by Hero Games. While it and the system core rules are somewhat limited in availability right now, a condensed version (Champions Complete) is scheduled for publication this fall.

As a side note, the Hero System is as close to an open-source game as you're ever likely to see. If you're sick of trying to house-rule d20 or WoD to fit your campaign vision, you should check it out.

When GURPS did their 4th edition, one of the things that they took great pains at was to maintain a strong degree of backward compatibility (given a free PDF of conversion notes) so that the stacks of GURPS 3e books out there would not become useless. Hero System did much the same with 5th edition. When 3rd edition of D&D came out, none of the books really fit into the new game except for purposes of back-story, but 3.5 did work fairly well with 3.0 with some work.

Is Wizards of the Coast planning on maintaining enough backwards compatibility so that all of the dozens of 3.0 and 3.5 books out there can be used with 4e, or will we be faced with the daunting expenditure of re-buying our entire libraries?

There is also HERO system http://www.herogames.com/.

I am surprised it doesn't hit this board more often. I think computer geeks are really drawn to the game system myself.

I like Hero Games. Champions is just on of the best point based RPGs out today and the have 1/2 price book sales monthly.

Superpowers roleplaying game, actually.

http://www.herogames.com/Champions/

However, they still use the term superhero.
I wish someone would take this to court. There is use of the word superhero well before 1967.

• Ars Magica 5th ed. winner of the Best Role-Playing Game for 2004 Origins award.
  
• Vampire, Mage another White Wolf "World of Darkness" games.
  
• GURPS, the generic role playing system, now in its 4th editon.
  
• Hero System, originally designed for superhero-oriented gaming, it is now a generic system with special focus on supers, fantasy, SF and martial arts.
  

Why didn't you just say it like this:

"Go to my website http://herogames.com/Products/TE.htm

It has a galaxy in it, so that makes this sort of on-topic."

Well, dammit, I guess I'm going to have to rethink my entire Star Hero Terran Empires roleplaying campaign.

What are they going to do next. Sue the makers of Champions(tm) because the system allows you to create any character you want, including popular superheroes?

this, this, this, this, this, this, or many others.

Some people haven't thought through this "roleplaying" thing enough to realize that it's not just about them. People who try to play the absolute bestest of the bestest need to realize that what they're doing is not just aggrandizing themselves, but putting great effort into upstaging others with their wishfully wondrous accomplishments.

On the Bartle scale, I'd have to qualify someone like that either as a KS- or a SK-. They couldn't care less about the world, all they want to deal with is the people, and the preferred form of dealing-with is "oohing and ahhing."

These people need a dose of balance, and not necessarily administered orally either. There are no shortage of point-based systems (like Hero or GURPS) which will enforce power level restrictions through scarcity. They will try to build their ubercharacter, fail, and then say that this is a stupid game, of course. (Sour grapes make the best whine.) Coerce them however you can to build something that fits in with everyone else, and then remind them repeatedly that it's an ensamble game, and that everyone else has a part in it too.

Yes, I know, those aren't MU* systems. But there are places that run them. As I run one of them, I won't publish any links; I don't want to slashdot myself!

Personally I think that the Hero System is a far better "universal" RPGs, in fact it's one of the better rule sets I've seen around. I truly haven't been able to think of a character I couldn't recreate through the rules.

It does cost a bit, but there's a cutdown crossover version with R Talsorian, called Fuzion which you can download for free IIRC.

PLEASE MODERATE THIS UP. IT IS IMPORTANT

The article had it all wrong. There is already an essentially open-sourced game out there called FUZION, which is a Fuzion of the R Talsorian Games (Cyberpunk 2020) and Hero (Champions) games.

While you cannot distribute the 'kernel' of the RPG for commericial use, there are SEVERAL rules sets out there (called plugins in the game, it is a cool concept, and very computer-like) that come from teh core rules.

So it is very much like the GPL, except with the restriction that you can't sell the product, but you can add on or modify and post to your hearts content.

The thing is, from what I have seen of d20 and the new generation of TSR products, they are still junk. FUZION is a very streamlined, extensible system designed to be added to and PLAYED: the game play of it is fantastic.

Another Links page:
http://www.herogames.com/index2.html