Help me shore up my superhero game

Hey Blunder,

Thanks for sharing your design with us. I love superhero games, so you "had me at 'hello'."

It would help if you broke down the game in terms of your primary design goals and the mechanics you're using to achieve them. You have given us much of this info already, but it requires some "reading between the lines." Given that, please take everything I say with a huge grain of salt.

> The mentalist and the brute are rolling their dice together, and roll a total of 5 physical dice and 4 mental dice (a 5/6 is regarded a success)
> So thats the idea, you go round and you fight easy crime as vigilantes to level up sufficiently to take on the big crime.
> The BIG problem I have is that sometimes its impossible to win vs a card and you feel nothing like a superhero.
> My problem with this is balancing 4 archtypes, and working out initial power caps, power generation and power costs!

From these, I gather that the game is multiplayer co-op, with players trying to prevent crime from consuming the city. Players should feel powerful at every stage, but not so powerful that threats are easily overcome. Also, characters should become more powerful over time, with threats' power growing at the same rate, up until the final boss appears.

As for mechanics, it sounds like you're using a "Power" resource to activate abilities and die rolls to resolve success.

Is that about right?

Are you looking to modify existing mechanics, willing to change them completely, or keep everything as-is and add new systems?

> Sorry I have a tonne of ideas and trying to articulate them concisely is a challenge.

Everybody on this board knows exactly what you mean. :) No need to apologize!

Your mechanics clarifications helped a lot.
I'm still not sure what your primary design goals are. Can you state your top 3?

Example:
1) Make players feel powerful
2) Encourage teamwork
3) Fun combat

Off the bat, I'd say you should strip the initial prototype down to the core features you know you want. You can add the rest back once you get the core solid and balanced.

Based on what you say, I would guess these are:
-- Special areas in the city
-- Degradation of city
-- Hero archetypes

I love the idea of having secret identities vs hero identities, but are these absolutely necessary to the core of the game? I understand that your current ID affects which parts of the city you can visit. Does it do anything else?

Can you describe, as simply and abstractly as possible, the main gameplay loop?
For example:

-- "Tick" existing crimes
-- Check for new crime
-- Player chooses a space in the city to which to move
-- Player moves to the new space (may include switching from secret to hero identity or vice versa)
-- Player resolves action at his new space (battles a enemies, collects Resolve, heals Damage, etc)

Finally, in the OP, you mentioned having trouble spacing the encounters to maintain a good pace. Have you considered letting players *choose* when crimes occur? For example, suppose you say that players have 10 rounds until the Mastermind appears. The Mastermind will come to battle with more forces when anarchy reigns in the city, so players must beat as much crime as possible to improve their chances in the end game.

Then suppose you divide the Crimes into three classes:
A -- easy
B -- medium
C -- hard

On a player's turn, he can decide to flip over a new Crime from any deck, or decide not to add a new Crime to the game. If he chooses to add a Crime, he draws from the deck of his choice. (To keep things interesting, the 'A' deck should include a few special cards that force the player to draw from the 'B' deck, and the 'B' deck should have a few that force the player to draw from 'C').

Each A/B/C crime is worth "Justice Points":
A -- 1 JP
B -- 2 JP
C -- 4 JP

When it's time for the Mastermind to appear, consult the JP of all crimes players prevented:

JP less than or equal to 15, the Mastermind is accompanied by extra henchmen
JP less than or equal to 30, the Mastermind is accompanied by the normal amount of henchmen
JP 30+, the Mastermind arrives alone

Or whatever. The numbers don't matter (and will have to scale with the number of players), but you get the idea. You should be able to balance this such that the players have very few rounds without crime if they want to have a good shot at defeating the Mastermind.

Loving the sound of your game.

Mark

Thanks for taking the time to explain things more deeply. It helps considerably.

To make sure I understand: the choice of using your hero ID vs secret ID allows you to visit different places on the board? The hero ID mainly lets you resolve crimes and collect vigilante cards (which do what?); the secret ID lets you collect bonus that help you resolve combat on later turns. Is that correct?

If making players feel powerful is your first priority, I agree with your decision to change combat from die rolls to power activation. I think you could adapt your "Resolve" system to enhance the feel of power during combat. When players visit certain locations, they can draw cards from the Resolve deck. Players can use these during combat to increase their effectiveness.

Examples:
Iron Will: +2 to any Mental power.
Second Wind: Regenerate 4 Energy.
Dodge: Reduce damage by 2 points.

etc.

The idea would be for players to horde these as much as possible over the course of the game so that they can more easily overcome the final boss. Of course, they can use them during regular crimes, too, but that reduces their supply for the final battle.

One final point about combat. You may not want to eliminate die rolls entirely. If an encounter requires 2 Mental and 3 Physical points to beat, and you know that activating Psy Lance does 2 Mental, there's no tension. If, however, the encounter says "beat 2 Mental dice and 3 Physical dice," and the player has to activate Powers before the roll, there's the tension of, "Did I activate enough Powers to beat the required roll?"

> I like the crime idea you outlined but there are a few issues
> 1: the heroes may never feel under any pressure and the best co-op games have that mechanic where the board is ganging
up on you
> 2: the heroes not taking crime cards will result in the degredation of the city not really occuring

Probably the idea isn't appropriate, but I'll add in one other possibility. Suppose that players in their hero ID can "patrol," which means they draw a Crime card. They can also choose not to. If they choose not to "patrol," or can't because they are in their civillian ID, they instead roll a "crime die" that moves a cube along a counter. If that counter hits a certain number, a part of the city degrades automatically (represents uncaught crimes happening automatically). When this happens, the cube resets to its original position.

This system could work with or without the "Justice Points" system from the earlier post.

Hey blunder, when trying my hero game I felt like the dice really slowed down the game play. Did you feel the same? What are you doing to resolve the crimes?

can you give me some ideas of how you incorporate the dice into it? I'm using a mechanic in which the dice for the crimes are usually better then the ones the heroes have, therefore making it harder for anyone to win on their own forcing them to work together if they don't want to loose entirely. Most of the powers on my game either affect the board keeping things from being destrroyed, help you get an upperhand on someone else, or get you to roll better dice or reroll what you already have.

what are you using?

i think you're right.

on mine it's semi-cooperative. There is a way for the game to win, but there is supposed to be a clear distinct winner between the players. They can team up and tackle the bad guys. I think my game is in need of a serious restructuring. I', debating forgoing the dice and going for a straight card system. where each player picks a hero, and they all draw from a common pile. they will only be able to play from certain "suits" but they will try and add two cards together to form either plane moves, adjectives or play them together as a power move. The aim will be to get a higher number this way then the crimes going on. IDK just how yet, but i feel like i need to change something drastic on my game. I think i'll put on the back burner for now though, i have a couple of ideas that don't have a road block right now.

I'm thinking of some kind of card draft mechanic. Like castle panic, where players draw from a common pile but htey have an individual smaller pile where they can draw from that will have things that are beneficial or maybe not so much.