I’ve always wanted to play in a One-Trick Pony Campaign.
By one Trick Pony, I’m referring to characters with only one rigidly defined power. While a creative player may find multiple uses for the said ability, the power itself must remain constrained to a single phenomenon.
A good example of this would be the Super-Strong archetype. He’s limited only to those powers, but how he uses them becomes the name of the game. Creative players can find all sorts of brick tricks to pull off, from creating a stunning area of effect attack by clapping his hands together really hard (like The Hulk does) or detaining a villain by wrapping a lamp post around them.
Of course there are ways for people to get pretty cheesy even with the single trick limitation (Gravity and Electromagnetic control come to mind) but it doesn’t mean that it can’t be fun. I’m all for big supers campaigns, but sometimes a tightly controlled range of possible powers held by the characters and villains alike is more interesting to me.
By splitting up power “sets” into individual powers and restricting them, you end up with interesting situations such as:
- Energy projectors that can’t fly. So no Human Torch types that fly around.
- Flyers that don’t do much else, so they have to rely on other means to remain competitive.
- Super-strong characters without the super toughness, and super-tough characters that don’t have any super-strength.
- Telekinetics that aren’t telepathic.
- Mind Readers that can’t Mind Control and vice-versa.
By having a more tightly defined singular power, the players become more focused in getting the most bang for their buck, and thinking of neat, useful ways to make the most of their limited powers.
Have any of you had experience with this sort of campaign setup, and if so, how did it turn out?
Life and Times of a Philippine Gamer 
The only one on the list I’ve not seen people do is Super Strong but not Super Tough. I’ve seen the inverse, but with Super Strength it almost seems unnatural and wrong to not have some level of increased toughness, if only as the body would otherwise be its own worst enemy. The super strong muscles alone would offer /some/ protection from impacts and the like.
Other than that though, the limitations are a lot of fun to do at times, and force people to be creative. I like a chance to be creative, and it wasn’t until I played a Super Strong/Invulnerable character that I realized just how much I liked it. A bit of creativity, and the character was a lot of fun in combat, and other situations.
But those are still damn deep ponies.
An very good example of an amazing OTP campaign would be:
Avatar: the Last Airbender
– A society of One-Trick Ponies.
We’ve joked many times about doing a “Mystery Men” (as in the movie) type of campaign, but never have yet.
I’ve done a few characters who have had one big main schtick, but have had minor other abilities tacked on and secondary uses. True one-trick ponies are hard to do unless the campaign is set up for it. In a “regular” super game if you don’t have some kind of defenses you’re in pretty big trouble pretty fast I’d think. If the game is set up as more detective type or soap opera vs. facing down the Sinister Six you can more easily get away with doing Captain Turns-oatmeal-into-ice cream.
The early X-Men were pretty close to this sort of thing. Eye-blast guy, guy who makes ice, guy with wings, tk girl, and the most varied one, the guy with strength, toughness, agility, various move enhancements and science skills. I actually like the basic premise of early Marvel mutant stuff, where people basically have one power and use it various ways. None of this secondary mutation stuff or piles of Kryptonian powers.
Invisible Girl was a pretty cool version of this too, with her basic invisibility on/off switch before she got more heavy into the force fields too.
I’ve recently become much more interested in the “one-trick pony” style of supers. Especially when every super in the world is a one-trick pony. It adds a different feel.
I’ve been toying with adding such supers to a fantasy setting. You can read a relevant blog post here. In particular, I included there a list of the powers available. I find that taking combinations of those and adding gadgeteer and meta-powers covers probably 90% of what you see in comics. (You will also see that I was taking inspiration from the movies Jumper and Push.)
Incidentally, there is one classic example of “strong but not tough.” Sunspot, originally of the New Mutants, was in that category. It actually caused some of the writers fits, trying to work out which bits of damage strength let him shrug off, and which bits would take him down. Personally, I’d just let a brick be a brick, and not try to split it up.
Reminds me of Brave New World. The RPG, not the novel. Unrelated.
It has tightly defined powers like you mention and while it’s possible to do tricks with them, no one is going to develop completely new abilities without changing the rules.