[Supers Chess] preliminary idea

[FetusCommander]

So I've been kicking around the idea of a superhero themed game for a while, and was previously stumped on any sort of resolution that "felt" like the source material and had the right balance of RPG acquisition and comic book no-holds-barred action.

Most recently, I've had an idea to use chess pieces for the primary resolution mechanic. 

Basically, everyone starts out with a pool of chess pieces that they use to represent aspects of their characters.  So Batman might have a queen tied to a trait like "Wealth and Connection," and a Bond villain may use pawns to represent expendable henchmen.  Your king represents "you," and receives special movement that you define through a pre-game auction that uses points.

I'm thinking that a lot of the game's action will be painted with freeform roleplay, but when a suitably important scenario affecting a Super needs resolving, you go to the board.  One player sets up their pieces as a challenge for the others (the player doing this would vary, depending on in-game events), and then the challenged individuals place their kings on the board.  Players being challenged start with one additional piece- so Batman might start with his Batmobile- and can "summon" one additional one to the board each turn.

There isn't any set objective per say once board action begins.  You essentially move your power pieces and your Super king around and narrate events pertaining to what's happening with your chess pieces.  Possibly, tighter challenges could be tweaked a little bit by posing some chess problem, like "checkmate black king in 8 moves" (which might be used to play out a series of sensitive actions in game: disabling a bomb in your stronghold, talking down a disgruntled lunatic, etc). 

Let's take an example where the Joker is in the center of Gotham on a crime spree:

Here, the white king is the Joker, the pawns are some of his miscreants, and the rook is an explosive device he's wired to a baby carriage.  Batman, the black king has arrived on the scene, placing his pieces after the Joker's player set the board up.  He's sped to the fray in his Batmobile, the black knight.

Say the Joker moves his rook to G7- a move that places Batman's king in check.  The player might narrate that the Joker, disguised as an elderly woman, wheels the baby-carriage-bomb closer to Batman, intending to set it off. 

The rules of chess require that Batman's player maneuver his king out of check, so he slides his knight to G4, jumping the king, and declares that the armor-plated Batmobile gives Batman some cover. 

The next turn, the Joker captures the knight with his rook, "detonating the baby carriage in a blaze of fiery death", and placing the king in check once again.  Batman's player declares that he survives the blast, but his vehicle is ruined.


If you lose pieces, they go to your opponent, and they can use them in the game.  You can't "lose" your king, but when you have no more to lose besides the king, and you are mated, the group narrates some major change to the character.  Maybe he suffered a major defeat that changed his powers, or maybe he lost a loved one and had a twist in his moral outlook.  It would be situational based on the things that have happened to him, and the final action that mated him.

An in-play example that I tested with my friends yesterday portrayed a similar situation: a crazed former Wayne Industries employee ambushing Bats with a rifle.  It also involved a third player, who was playing Weapon X from X-Men, that was in-league with said madman and acted to aid him for most of the board resolution.  Both seemingly wanted Batman taken out at first, but the scenario ended in a twist (albeit a checkmate for me- I was playing Batman) in which Weapon teleported him to his lair for some nefarious purpose, thus ending the resolution.

It mostly worked like I wanted in play, creating what I'd describe as the "futile, but temporally strategic" feeling that I get when watching a lot of superpowered characters resolving their disputes.  I haven't introduced it in a live game, and am unsure how it would go with my target number of players: 4.  Total handling time for the play scenario was about 15-20 minutes, but a lot happened, and it was a pretty decent time with some laughs.


My main questions: Does the chess mechanic seem reasonable and/or fun to any of you?  What parts interest/turn you off?  What do you think about the idea of ad-libbed, spontaneous roleplay tied to the mechanic? 

I want this to be a "casual" system that has some mechanical depth of strategy, but also allows people to have fun narrating the various conflicts that take place with their supers; I want it to feel somewhat accessible to people who've never roleplayed, but may have read some comics or watched some movies and want to imitate.  The form of competition I want it to foster is something akin to Scattergories, or another game where pulling-it-out-of-your-ass creativity is the competitive aspect, if any is present at all.  Do you think it accomplishes these goals?

Any initial thoughts that jump out at you?

[Kyle Cates]

I really think this is an interesting mechanic, and I have a couple of questions.

1. What is each player doing when nobody is playing chess?

2. I think you vaguely hinted at special moves for the king. Is this related to character advancement and are other pieces subject to special treatment?

[FetusCommander]

Thanks for responding Kyle.

#1 is a good question, as I haven't really worked out what, if any mechanics there are for scenes being set up in the game.  What I was thinking is that the action kind of alternates between the board and straight freeform roleplay, basically no stats, just character interactions.

One mechanic I had in mind for coming up with where the scenes occur (and to help with world creation) is the World Map Auction.  Basically, this is a time at the beginning of each session where people go around the table and pose ideas for "spaces" on a World Map, which is sort of like a board game board.  These spaces are things like The Bank, City Hall, The Sewers.  They start at the "city" level and then expand upwards into other parts of the world as the "comic book universe" of play becomes larger. 

Players get to move a certain number of spaces on the world map, and may land on a space they "own"- one they've purchased and defined in the World Map Auction- or one owned by someone else.  I was thinking that in a case where you land on someone else's space, they act in a GM role and frame the scene, and the Chess challenges for your Super.  I figure the narration can go around the table from space to space, cutting in and out after short periods of time to give it the feel of actual frames in a comic strip ("Meanwhile...").  If more than one Super is present on a space, they get to involve themselves with the other one, and the space owner might frame a conflict, meeting or some other intrigue.

Having only played 1 Narrative game (Jason Morningstar's "Grey Ranks"), I'm unsure what kind of technique would be best to spread the spotlight and make sure scenes don't become too bogged.  Does any of that stuff above sound interesting?  Anyone have any suggestions for a narrative mechanic that would help keep the game flowing while simulating comic structure?

To answer the second question, the King's special movement is auctioned for in the beginning of the game as well.  Essentially, it has to be some form of limited movement that involves a range of 4 consecutive spaces.  So you could make him into a more powerful knight, make him able to move in one direction for four spaces, or even use something similar to the default king movement (1 space in 4 directions).  This movement isn't related to character advancement.

Pawns also get special movement, in that they can move in any direction, but only capture diagonally.  You can also use pawns to retrieve your lost pieces if you move across the board from the opposite side (you have to start all the way on the end though).  I guess as an example, think of something like a Super's squeeze helping out his or her cape in a time when they're weakened by the baddy, and some conventional solution becomes necessary to get them back on their feet.

[FetusCommander]

To pose some questions that might be a little bit more accessible than the couple walls I posted:

How do you guys associate the mechanics of the superhero-themed games you've played with the actual conflicts going on?  Do they ever "feel" like what's going on in the game?

For me, I've really only dealt with "freeform" (no mechanical conflicts) play in the superhero genre, because the types of conflicts, which always seem to border on the outlandish, just don't feel right when put to most resolution systems like dice.  It seems disappointing and without situational tension.  I think for me it's something about the quantification of powers, as that's sort of why I designed this system. 

I don't really like the idea of resolutions being objectively lost/won when they involve what I traditionally think of as a "super" (basically, someone who is the star of their own show, and who's interactions are mainly to entertain).  My main goal with a lot of Super's Chess is to accomplish resolutions that feel meaningful and defining in the character sense, feel tense and maneuverable in the mechanical sense, but don't feel "final" or roleplay-limiting.

To connect that to some tangible play example, I guess what I want is for people to be able to say "My king has been locked into checkmate, but all this other stuff happened/is happening on the board, and that's cool."

[Mobius]

It is an interesting idea.  How do you decide what powers equal what pieces?

[FetusCommander]

Essentially, that's for the players the pick.  In the mini-playtest I ran, most people assigned powers that were half strategic, half thematic.  I used my knight for my vehicle, one guy used a rook for rifle, another used his strong, mobile pieces (queen and rooks, if I remember) to represent powers like regeneration that he wanted to keep in play.