I love a game that lets you cram a bunch of favourite characters into one big self-indulgent crossover and games that are about Defeating the Narrative, so I think I'm very much the target audience for this. I'd really like to play this game with friends and lean into the joy of tormenting favourite characters until they break reality about it! 

It's appealing and feels fitting for a Havoc Engine game that this game's approach is to immediately 'vastly oversimplify [your] Characters', and I like the guidance for making those simplification choices. The visual design also made me laugh in delight. 

I can see the plot of the Alternate Universe dissolving and crumpling in on itself in weird ways as the game progresses and characters get closer to their canon selves - I feel like this could be extremely cool, but could also feel disjointed and strangely paced. I'll echo other comments and say that in an ideal world it could be helpful to have some further advice or guidance for helping the game hang together as the story splits apart - for example, more clearly marking the key Plot Points that you might plot your session around in the examples list.

- Jim

This is a super interesting concept. I feel like I see people who try to build their favorite characters into their favorite RPG's all the time and it sometimes causes friction between the world-building and the character concept. I like that this throws all that out the window in favor of telling exactly the kinds of stories that you can find when you don't worry about dissonance in the genre. The movie Pleasantville demonstrates similar examples where the character's actions are in constant friction with the genre of the TV show they're in.

I find the canon events and in-character meter particularly interesting, though I don't love the GM taking control over the player's actions as the result of falling out of character. I think I'd find it a little bit more interesting if the player still narrated the character's actions, but the GM specified that the results didn't match those actions, almost as if the universe corrected itself to stay in-genre. 

For Example: A superhero with eye lazers stuck in a pulpy noir might narrate that track down the villian using xray vision and then they blast them with their eye lazers. However, if their in-character meter is at zero, the GM may intercede and say something like, "After following your hunch to the villian's location, you see them shaking down the dame who came to you for help a few days ago. The revolver is still clutched in your  hand after firing off a warning shot. You watch as he grabs the woman and runs through the closest door in the alley."

Effectively, the end result is the same as narrating the character's actions for them, but I think this way offers more agency. I think players would enjoy watching the GM try to twist their actions to suit the GM's purpose more than having to skip a turn entirely while the GM plays their character for them. It feels like when a GM offers a character a monkey-paw style wish. Watching the wish get twisted is the fun part. 

Just some thoughts. Thanks for the interesting read!

This is a really neat toolkit that I think could be used to set up a bunch of cool, cross-genre stories.  I'll echo the comments below on wishing there were more tools for scenario creation, and even one or two examples would be fantastic.  But you've added some fun stuff to the base engine and I think the game has legs!  Nicely done.

One of the challenges with Havoc is that the mechanics are very tied to the theme of the game. The stats aren’t like regular RPGs where they decide what you are good at so much as determine what kind of scene you are trying to make and the consumable equipment gives you cues on where to guide things without leaning on the same thing every time. Building the dice pools is more important to the fun of the system than the results.