SuperCity

[Simon W]

SuperCity is now up on my site as a PDF. I have changed nothing yet from my entry in the Iron Chef comp.
I could do with some ideas for judging winners/losers - I was thinking of a simple points system, but I was concerned with making sure it remained first and foremost a role-playing game.
I could also include more rules for the bases - maybe have points to spend on aspects of the base - like how well concealed it is, security, resources availability and so on.
Anything else anyone thinks is vital? Most may only come out in playtest.

Gideon
http://www.geocities.com/simonwashbourne/beyondbelief2.html

[Mike Holmes]

I'd have something like the Villains bet certain amounts of points on certain targets that they designate. Like out of the Villains 100 points they bet 30 on taking out the power-plant. And 25 on the dam, and another 20 on the bank. Etc. Then they head out to take these objectives and the heroes respond. So, the heroes don't know the exact nature of the plot, and the villains can feint.

Anyhow, getting the points is a matter of having control of the strategic space on the board for X amount of time. This is the Villain's disadvantage. The Heroes disadvantage is that they have to fan out to find out all of what's going on and can be ambushed that much more easily.

That sort of thing.

Just because it's highly Gamist doesn't mean it's not an RPG. You can have the GMs hand out Super Points for good role-playing, making that essential to winning.

Mike

[Emily Care]

Good game, Gideon.

I'd go with Mike's suggestion. You've covered the material well, and the team aspect of play makes it sound like it would be a blast.  I don't see anything vital missing, but here are some suggestions of things you might like to include: The losing team could have some kind of social forfeit, like having to buy the pizza & beer, etc.  Are normal mortal companions included in any way? They'd be good weaknesses.  Do you have rules for heros being captured? That seems to happen often enough. Or villains being jailed. A campaign could easily begin with the big boss getting sprung.  Villains also might increase in power after being captured or beaten, but also develop fixations on a given hero increasing the likelihood that they would go where a certain hero was in the city, or target them in their plans.  (Can you tell I saw Matrix Reloaded? :) The fixation would be a sort of play balance to the increased power since their movements and motivations would be more predictable.  Oh, having the villains have an M.O. would be tres TV Batman, but would be very fun as a sim of the genre. I think people would enjoy having a calling card to leave at a crime scene, or a signature move to use in escapades.  

The only thing I might change would be to allow the players to create their villains/superheros. But that's part of my general design aesthetic, and simply different than your approach. You might include it as a possibility.

best,
Emily Care

[Chris Moore]

Gideon,

I'm excited to try out SuperCity.  How do you envision the physical setup for play?  Heroes and Villains will meet in seperate areas to plot, etc.  Then, when they meet, do they physically come together (my assumption)? Do you have three seperate maps: one for heroes, one for villains, and one common map?  I apologize if I missed something; just curious about any suggestions you might have.

Chris Moore

[Simon W]

Thanks for your interest Chris.

The way we did it in playtest (yes, I had a SuperCity party at my house - there were 11 of us).

I had one team plotting in the kitchen with me as their GM and the other team in the lounge with my co-GM Mark George. We answered their questions ourselves, and dealt with the role-playing/GMing aspect. Only the GM's has complete access to both rooms and if things cropped up that we hadn't covered, we met to discuss it.

When heroes & villains meet, then they did physically come together. Each player had a HeroMachine character and all we did was show the opposing sides the picture of who they had met. That way, they could guess at their powers, but did not know them.

Mike, I like your suggestion of betting points on targets/objectives. I shall try to work this into the rules. Thanks.

Emily, thanks for your suggestions too. I will get some of them into the finished rules. For characters being captured, I would suggest that if a team member is knocked out, he is fair game. In the playtest, Privateer was on his own, and met up with Dr Necros and Wraith. He was too cocky not to think he could take them both, but was knocked out and captured and taken back to their base. (He said this was all part of his plan to find their hideout).

Yes, I usually prefer to let players generate their own characters, but in this case we had some players who hadn't role-played before and thought it would speed things up to let them choose. We simply got the players to split themselves into teams, then separated them and put the HeroMachine pics in piles and had them choose from the name and pic alone.

Yes, it would be fun to include normals in some way - the Mayor for example is a normal and the SuperHeroes need to protect him as the Villains will almost certainly want to replace him with one of their own (which can lead very nicely to some infighting, especially if both Dr Blood and Dr Necros are amongst the villains).

Incidentally, we assumed all team members were in communication with each other (they all had personal comms sets - those with Telepathy wouldn't need them).

Chris - three separate maps is ideal. Its the way we did it. You could move pins or markers around on the main map, to show where the different team members are.

I'll try and get the map we used up somewhere soon, whilst I continue to work on the rules. Happy gaming.

Gideon
http://www.geocities.com/simonwashbourne/Beyond_Belief.html