superhero boardgame, how?

Hello

Let's start from the beginning of making a game. A game consists of 3 different major components:
- The theme
- The mechanism
- The goal
All is important for the final game. What you have is the theme and an idea´ of the mechanism (board game) but no goal. Put in a goal and you have the first (simple) outline of your game.

Next, put in some (a lot of) work by sketch the game. A lot of questions have to be answered as, the number of players, timeframe, components, who should play ? and a lot of other questions. (The biggest questions you have to say yes to in all situations are, "Would you be attracted to play this game". If the answer is No, then you have to redo parts or the whole game)

At all the time, make the theme, mechanism and goal work together.

// Johan

You might look at a recent game called "Heroes Inc". I don't know much about the game but I think it's about more than "players battling each other". If the latter was what you wanted, HeroClix or Star Wars:Epic Duels might be good models.

If you're looking at the "players are up against an NPC badguy", then you're probably more interested in the "horror" genre for inspiration. Games like Chill:Black Morn Manor, or Fury of Dracula, neither of which I've played, have elements of what you're looking for. Actually, Fury of Dracula has one player as dracula, which makes it more like Scotland Yard. The recent Lord of the Rings board game is also a nice approach.

I think a decent superhero game would be great, the difficulty is going to be incorporating the super powers in a compact way but one that also gives you the variety of the powers. For example, if you just have various powers that all modify one attribute, a la "Cyclops: laser vision: +1 to attack; Colossus; turns to metal: +2 to attack; Wolverine: adamantium claws; + 1 to attack" and so on, the game won't really have any flavor. But if you try to have too many rules so that you can really differentiate the abilities, your game will end up being fiddly and cumbersome. It's a tricky tightrope you're trying to walk. But if you pull it off, it will be great!

Good luck!

-Jeff

I had an idea for a CCG about 2 years ago which I called Crime City: Clash of the Kingpins (info about it can be found [url="http://www.dakotacom.net/~sej/CCCCG.html"]here[/url]) which began as a Super Hero CCG. To compare it to Magic, here's an idea of how I envisioned it:

Each Color in Magic would be analagous to a particular Hero. This is actually more like the 'suits' in the LOTR CCG. Anyway, each Hero would have generic cards, Hero Specific cards, and Villains who are badasses, but weak agains that particular Hero (or alternatively, Strong agains that particular opponent and weak against other Heros). The object was to 'defeat' the other guy's Hero. There would be Villains and Thugs which would be Offensive cards, and there would be the Hero stuff which would be defensive.

This quickly evolved into more of a Kingpin vs Kingpin with the defensive Hero cards to stop your opponent by calling in Batman or something. Like the city is protected by a Superhero, and you use cards like "Dark Knightfall: Batman catches target Criminal" to thwart your opponent.

Before long the Superhero thing dropped off completely and the game was simply a couple of Kingpins vying to take control of the city. You'd send thugs to 'attack' your opponent and steal his cash (your deck is your cash, and if you run out you lose), and you use cards like "Call the Cops" as defense against opposing criminals. Of course you have cops on your payroll so it's no problem telling them what to do.

I don't know if this helps, but I thought it was on-topic.

I'm currently talking with Scurra about expanding the All For One mechanics to other games, and one obvious choice is a team of super heros (like the X-Men for example). We'll let you know if anything becomes of it.

- Seth

Since playing it, I've thought of how to do a super hero game myself, that is not so close to a wargame but I really haven't thought that much about it. I just put the idea at the bottom of my list for future use. Keep us posted on how things go with your ideas!

I've always wanted to make a superhero board game as well. However, with all the features that I would want to stuff into it, I'm afraid it would turn into a RPG, or at best, a War / miniatures game.

My wish list for a superhero board game:

- Carry your 'character' from game to game (Here is where the RPG aspect rears it's ugly head).
- Cool landscape/map features. Players should be able to manipulate their environment (pick up cars, wield light posts, throw post boxes, etc).
- Variable campaigns... Perhaps at the beginning of each game a random campaign is drawn. Or the players could choose the campaign. I think such a game could easily be both cooperative and competitive. I.E. Players play against a 'game controlled' enemy/conflict or some players play supervillians and some play superheroes, or some mix of the above.
- Drafting powers... I.E. Players could bid for powers, like one offense, one defense, one utility and one 'special' power. At the beginning of the game you could be given a certain # of bid tokens with which to buy the available powers..

That's all I have off the top of my head. Since playing Marvel Super Heroes and Villians and Vigilantes as a kid, I've always wanted to have a fun superhero board game. I think it's a void that needs to be filled in the board gaming market (which may have been filled by Strange Synergy, not sure since I havent played it).

At any rate, good luck with your fascinating project!
-Darke

just found "These games are Comical" over at boardgamegeek, for some further superhero inspiration.

http://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=2908