The currency of "Fame" in a competitive superhero game

[anubis9]

OK, so after sitting on the fence, and lurking for awhile, I've decided to stick my head out. You see, I heard about this really cool contest called "game chef," I just heard about it way too late. But it was enough to motivate me to get started on my game.

BASIS:
I've always been into comic books, and I've always been drawn more to the dark side Frank Miller, Rick Veitch, the Martial Law stuff). Then I read the more recent X-Force and X-Statix by Peter Milligan. And then I said, that's the superhero game I want to play!

PREMISE:
Crazy, broken heroes fighting on a corporate sponsored team where all their missions become "reality shows." The public is told that they fight "against terror" and "for Freedom" while they are really fighting battles against rival coprporation's teans as well as a secret war amongst themselves for the spotlight to increase their popularity and thus boost the price and demand for their action figures, comics and T-shirts.

In short, it's all about gaining fame and converting it into what I'm right now calling Icon status. Why? Cause it's better to burn out than to fade away. The drug that activates the latent E-gene (and grants you super powers) also slowly kills you, so you want to become the stuff of legend so your T-shirt sales continue long after you're gone.

FYI, I want the action to be fast and cinematic, so I'm basing combat off of Wushu Open, but with some pretty sizeable tweaks.

RULES QUESTIONS:
So obviously, I want to build in a spotlight mechanic, where successes in the game give you spotlight tokens. I envision keeping track of all the spotlight you earn in a mission in a general tally (so you can reward the person who earned the most after all is said and done), but I also want characters to have a pool of spotlight tokens they can spend in-game to give them temporary help (re-roll dice, etc.) or after game help (trade in a bunch to increase their Icon status).

My question comes with the in-game usage. Given that characters are trying to gain as much spotlight as possible, does it make sense to turn Spotlight into a currency? In other words, if one character spends spotlight, should it be paid to the other players?

For example, your character doesn't want another "teammate A" to deliver the finishing blow to the Big Bad (she wants that glory for herself), so you spend some of your spotlight tokens to make the task more difficult for "teammate A." Does it make sense to then implement something like if "teammate A" can still pull it off, even at the more difficult level, then all the spotlight spent goes into their pool? Or some of it? Or none of it?

I like the idea of currency, and how something that helps a character at one point can later come back to hurt them.

I think the concept works beautifully in Fred Hicks' Don't Rest Your Head with the despair and hope tokens, but since I want this game to be more competitive among the players, I'd like to apply the principle to inter-character currency, not just GM-to-Player currency.

I've also thought that it may work to establish that instead of their being an indeterminate amount of spotlight in each mission (there's as much as you guys earn no matter how much/little that is), there is a set amount for the mission (this is a 20 Spotlight mission), and the spotlight just moves from one character to another.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[Mike Sugarbaker]

First, hello and welcome to the Forge; second, damn you for getting to this game before I did! :-) It's all about callow super-youth getting WWF on each other. Badass.

The notion of Spotlight as a spendable resource makes total sense. One (dangerous) idea it gives me is to actually express this as spotlight time for the players - that is, if you win fame in the game, you get more real-world attention (another "turn"). This sort of thing would have to be managed very, very carefully, because I think it'd tap into some very visceral stuff for the players. We all play for attention, it seems.

More to your point, it seems as if players should spend their fame for immediate benefit to themselves... at the cost of some sort of benefit to a rival PC. That's my instinct for how this kind of story would go, anyway.

Hell, you could even play the effects out in a sort of minigame where you roleplay the eventual news report about the PCs' actions...

[Narf the Mouse]

If the PC's fight rival teams, how do the coorperations sell the idea the're fighting for freedom?

[Ken]

Hey-

The spotlight (or maybe call it STATUS, that sounds cool) as currency idea is just fine. I don't know how many points a character would normally have on tap at one time, or how fast they regenerate; and that would effect your rules. On the surface I think that if you spend points to mess up another PC's action , and if they do screw up, then the points are gone, and you should be happy that they didn't succeed. If the PC still succeeds then they could get the extra points for their pool. This could describe the "you get egg on your face, while the other character becomes the shining star" type situation. I would imagine that at some point multiple characters could spend points to counter one PC's action, making the chances of success slim to none. Like I said, I think how valuable the points are, how many you normally have, and how easy they are to come buy will defintely effect the rules dynamic.

While I don't know much about Wushu Open, having a tight story concept that plays so close to character abilities gives you the opportunity to create some really intersting stats. Like E (gene) the measure of how powerful you are, and how long you have to live. Instead of the normal rpg characterisitics you could make a very interesting game by creating stats that measure how flashy you are, how photogenic your character is, or how frequently they say something stupid in front of the camera. Also, in a game like this, I wouldn't think that your power rules would have to be too detailed, and be more geared for fast dynamic action/resolution. These are all possibilities, but maybe not in the direction you plan on going.

I don't know how detailed your character generation rules are, but if making characters is fast I would suggest a fun team builging dynamic. I was watching the auditions for WHO WANTS TO BE A SUPERHERO, season two (which I think has some fun similarities to your game) and thought, what if your players come to the table with five character concepts (maybe not fully generated characters) that they are willing to play and the other players vote on who they want to see make the team.

There is plenty more to discuss here, but I'm out of time. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing more about your project; it sounds very fun. Good luck.

Ken

[anubis9]

The notion of Spotlight as a spendable resource makes total sense. One (dangerous) idea it gives me is to actually express this as spotlight time for the players - that is, if you win fame in the game, you get more real-world attention (another "turn"). This sort of thing would have to be managed very, very carefully, because I think it'd tap into some very visceral stuff for the players. We all play for attention, it seems.

More to your point, it seems as if players should spend their fame for immediate benefit to themselves... at the cost of some sort of benefit to a rival PC. That's my instinct for how this kind of story would go, anyway.

Hell, you could even play the effects out in a sort of minigame where you roleplay the eventual news report about the PCs' actions...

Thanks for the feedback and the ideas!
I absolutely love the idea of the news report as part of "post game" play. That's genius.
I never thought about the spotlight's effects on the players, but I really like the idea of it bleeding over.

Thanks again for your input.

[anubis9]

If the PC's fight rival teams, how do the corperations sell the idea the're fighting for freedom?

Yeah, I see your point, thanks.
It may be a little hard to swallow that one corporation sets up another corporation as "terrorists."

I think the best thing to do is just drop this idea.
It's much more part of the landscape than the game mechanics anyway.

It could still work if I build a world in which people are loyal to TV networks and corporations like people are loyal to sports teams, states, or nations today. But I think that we are generally becoming less and less loyal as a people, fleeing to whatever source offers us the most bang for our buck/attention span. So, it's probably not as "realistic."

Thanks for the input!

[Narf the Mouse]

Why not make it a sports game? Teams of superheroes against each other. Depending on how you want to go, goals could be sports-like or it could be bloody arena combat - Or both.

[Callan S.]

Hi, welcome to the forge!

In short, it's all about gaining fame and converting it into what I'm right now calling Icon status. Why? Cause it's better to burn out than to fade away.

Are you interested in examining if at any point one of the characters, for instance, decides to fade away for a real cause? Or is it set in stone, kind of like bad guys are always bad, good guys are always good settings, where good guys never do bad things and bad guys never do good things? Kind of sticking to the idea of a setting, rather than seeing if a character rebels against the moral status quo.

[Ken]

It may be a little hard to swallow that one corporation sets up another corporation as "terrorists."

I think the best thing to do is just drop this idea.
It's much more part of the landscape than the game mechanics anyway.

It could still work if I build a world in which people are loyal to TV networks and corporations like people are loyal to sports teams, states, or nations today. But I think that we are generally becoming less and less loyal as a people, fleeing to whatever source offers us the most bang for our buck/attention span. So, it's probably not as "realistic."

The bad-corporation thing may still be do-able. Corporations could field thier primary sponsored team for public consumption, while secretly employing more shady freelancers and super-mercs to cause trouble for their rivals (this is where your terrorists and villains come in). So, essentially a company could have a public hero team and secret villain team, that they field according to their goals at the time; you could even have the heroes fight their company's villain squad.Corporations aside, there is some real potential for trouble if organized crime and terrorist factions decided to fund and field their own supers.

Had you given any more thought to the sources of super threats in your game? Do conventional super villains exist in your game?

Also, do villains get fame too, or is it only a hero thing?

If you haven't already come across these sources, I'd like to recommend some reading:

The Psycho, by Dan Brereton, DC comics. This is a great miniseries, and probably over a dozen years old now. Its set in an alternate present where a super serum was created during WWII before the atomic bomb. Now, countries are involved in an arms race where they stockpile super agents. The drug either kills you or gives you random super powers. The only common side effect is that super don't dream. Neat stuff.

Strikeforce Moritouri, from Marvel. I don't know a lot about this series (which is also pretty old) other  than they work for the government and the process that gives people super powers also gives them something like a one year lifespan. I've heard its really good, and a few years ago it was optioned for a tv series, but I guess nothing really happened with that.

Aberrant, rpg by White Wolf. Through its sourcebooks, does a pretty good job of examining the pop culture and politics (corporate, military, and international) that surrounds modern supers. Its pretty dark stuff overall, but an interesting read. Neat system-world.

Good Luck,

Ken

[boswok]

The notion of Spotlight as a spendable resource makes total sense. One (dangerous) idea it gives me is to actually express this as spotlight time for the players - that is, if you win fame in the game, you get more real-world attention (another "turn"). This sort of thing would have to be managed very, very carefully, because I think it'd tap into some very visceral stuff for the players. We all play for attention, it seems.

This is easily justifiable by the character grabbing the spotlight doing something that draws attention to himself by shocking the other characters into inaction for a few precious seconds.  I'd levy heavy penalties on these attempts, maybe requiring one spotlight token per PC to be taken aback in this manner.  That might be fair.  Optionally, the player can choose who gets slowed up, allowing for the unassuming underdog to make a dramatic entrance while everyone else is off guard because of our intrepid "hero".