INPUT NECESSARY - superhero - total revamp,

I think heroes is a very loose term when it comes to the characters in this game. Think super powered. I wanted the characters to feel more like odd-balls (inspiration from guardians of the galaxy and x-men mostly)

Creedence is supposed to be kind of a spin on a wolverine type character. Because of his light-based healing property, he has never really aged or died and still holds on to those particular values, the game plays around the idea that although these are all superpowered "heroes", they're not exactly the good guys.

I plan on including a well thought out story, where the heroes like creedence and beard guy can be played individually and work towards a common goal, where as teh versus mode people would start with a predetermined team, draw a random scenario and get to bashing each other in while trrying to collect the most amount of points.

Beard wrap: i didn't think of that but that is awesome

I was thinking of a nemesis character to col creedence that could also be a playable character or a villain, and it's a darkness based character (shadow stepping, causing fear, etc etc)

The idea is that there will be a set of common henchmen, and some specific. Let's say lord Hydra can have the olympians and common mercenary thugs, playing wit hthe fact that he could be a greek demigod or a military leader like the cobra organization.

The tree guy was what inspired me to change this from a card game to a board, i like the idea of characters getting entagled in roots, and having a massively powerful character that's virtually indestructible like tree guy, but is very limited compared to the others of where he can use his abilities, as per most scenarios will have maybe a quarter of it being grass at the most.

I'm on the fence as to whether the combat should be dice based, card based or a mix.
what i'm thinking right now is that the resource cards you use to build up your arsenal and hire other heroes as back-ups can be played during the attack/defense phase to pump up your natural attributes. So let's say beard guy has 5 attack and he's attacking tree guy who has 8 defense. Beard guy plays a card with 4 value that boosts him up to 9 and if tree guy doesn't play anything he gets hit for damage. I also thought that if there is a tie, the attacker rolls the dice, if he gets a 5 or 6 the attack is successful. Powers also can be played at any time, so let's say someone is about to attack one of your characters, you can use one of your characters powers to try and help defend, but that's that's characters action for this round. (maybe) The only thing i think would work really well, is that if in the beggining of each "round" everyone rolls a d6 to see turn order for that round. I think that'd be an interesting idea that always keeps you on your toes and makes you feel more involved even when it's not your turn.

by the way, I'm loving the input. I'm also super excited and trying really hard to do this right as I can see this being an awesome game with tons of replay value.

Hehe, Yeah.

i've basically been living on superpowers wiki.

I thought maybe the civilians and thugs, aside from the mastermind, could be represented by tiles on the board. on the top of the tile it would be their picture, LOS movement speed and attack/defense
on the non visible side, it would show you maybe how much they are worth dead/alive. Or maybe the tiles could just be the basic character,

and have a standard sheet that says all the other information, like a card. it would say which kind of scenarios this character can participate in. idk, any thoughts?

That's pretty funny storm.

Should maybe the distress deck offer secondary objectives

Yeah, I plan on adding "side quests" in a game set-up, make it so it's almost like everyone is playing together trying to keep the criminals and badguys from showing up in this city

Grim,

After our talk yesterday, the game has developed quite a bit. You gave me some very strong ideas to base my design on. This is what I think im leaning towards, let me know what you think.

set-up,
- 4 8by8 boards making up a huge board. Each player starts out in their individual board (so 3 players would be 3 starting positions, 2 would be 2, and players can bring that number up and down depending on what they are planning on doing
-the boards are just a basic +sign of streets with modular input spaces on each board to add things like buildings and such.
Think grey boards with dotted yellow lines to mark the middle of the roads, but when you place buildings and things, which are like large tiles you place on the board, they’ll give you the layout of the place.
-9 supply cards are dealt to each player, each player picks one and passes their pile on to the next till everyone has a final 9 cards in their hand, this is the equipment they are using for the duration of the game, (things like smoke bombs, air lifts, med packs, maybe weapons that help some of the characters)

a distress call card is revealed for each grid that’s occupied, it will tell you where the civilians are, where the bad guys are, if there are any supervillains present, and if there are any “side quests” things like, cat stuck in a tree, building on fire that the player needs to put out, all those kind of things. Side quests have revealed values, so, when someone completes it, everyone knows how many points it will give them, whenever they reach a predetermined amount of “obvious value” like, a minimum point value of a criminal, dead or alive is 1, so they count as 1 obvious value, but this not be what they are worth at the end game.

gameplay:
each player gets 2 movements per character, and rotate characters, at the end of each round, everyone rolls their dice and that’ll be the turn order for that match.
- All civilians and thugs have the the amount they are worth dead or alive, per gameplay rules, for every token you have it’ll count as 1 point.
- High areas and cover will come into play, if your character is behind a bench when he’s attacked, he will have a defensive bonus,
Combat:
Every successful hit does 1 point of damage, unless a power or card deems otherwise.
- If the attack value is higher then the defensive value then it’s an automatic hit, if the player is feeling lucky he can try to roll a 5 or a 6 for a double or nothing (2 points of damage or a miss)
- If it’s a tie between characters, a 5-6 will hit, everything else will defend
- If the defensive value is higher, the attacker must roll a 6 to hit, this will keep players from having an almighty never get hurt hero running around, everyone’s in danger of everyone. So a well placed character could potentially be a HUGE threat.
- Movement and character values will all be depicted on the cards, there will be general cards for the different thug types, but civilians will be much simpler since they have no attack/defense value (unless it’s a police officer or something, maybe)

Victory conditions:
- Once the amount of victory points is shown, people will flip over their tiles and see the true value, this way, no one really knows how far ahead they are, hopefully it’ll keep them going till the end. Player’s characters will have cost associated to them too, but they are only worth points to the opponents if they are captured or killed. It’ll be something along the lines of, civilians are worth 1,2 alive or -1,2 dead, thugs are worth 1 dead, 2 or 3 alive, heroes are worth 1 dead, 4 dead, and supervillains will be worth 5 dead, and maybe 6-8 alive. Like I said, that’s all very speculative though.

Right now I’m planning on the game coming with 4 grids (which is the maximum someone would need) and plenty of buildings and things to go into and explore and such things. 4 sides will be the basic cityscape grid, with the other side being maybe a couple of things a underground lair and maybe something else that I would need in the story mode. But seeing as the main focus of the game is the City scape and players moving through that, that’s where my main playtesting will take part, see if the mechanics in there work most of the other ones should too as well.

so components got cut down A LOT.

so maybe 50 cards total for the resources
4 8x8 double sided boards
maybe 20 different buildings and such
quite a few chits to represent the players, thugs and civilians as well as some of things like destroyed.
And player cards showing the hero, name, stats and powers (20 heroes in the game)
plus maybe 10 suppervillains and their chits.

That's it, it sounds like a lot but i think it's less then we're expecting it to be, the board is a little under 8 inches per board, making the cityscape (probably will end up being 6 city sides, and 2 lairs and maybe some other environments that'd be cool (did someone say jungle?)

i envision cars on the street with the bottom right corner depicting how much health it has before it blows, how strong you need to be to pick it up, as well as what kind of defensive cover it provides.

What do you think?

Ok, let's clear everything up and start from scratch. It seems like we're all getting a little off base. this is the concept/gameplay/art direction I'm planning on taking it as it stands.

Theme:
In a world where super-powered people have realized that their powers put them at a strict advantage when dealing with specific problems, they have taken to the mercenary market to try and collect. You run a team of highly trained super powered people (supers from now on) that are called upon to be the line of defense against the threats that the local government cannot seem to handle. You are there to collect, when Supers started using their power against the free world, bounties were placed on all illegal, unregistered supers. It's your job to stop them, to die or get rich trying.

Components:
-There are 4-6 double sided boards depicting different areas. The Cityscape tiles of the board are 8x8(maybe 12x12 not sure yet) grid made up of asphalt grey with things like cracks and and other artistic flairs and the spaces being depicted by Yellow dotted lines.
-There are thick cardboard buildings that will have parking lots and will be able to be flipped over to go inside as well as players being able to climb on top both giving very distinct bonuses. (i like your idea of the starting board build) So people take turns drawing buildings and different things that will adjust how those spaces act, such as a drain pipe might give a bonus to a character that has water based powers, but it puts you at a negative defense value when being attacked bu someone higher then you in altitude.
-There is large card for each hero depicting their character information (stats, powers etc)
-there are 50 "heroic feats"(far better then supply cards) - these are cards that will give you a one time bonus, think spell instead of items. They are cards you can use to directly help your players on the field or hinder others.
-I’m hoping that the buildings that are set down will help players depict where the spaces actually are, (sidewalk blocks and such)

I’d prefer player pieces to be miniatures, but taking into consideration cost concerns and other such things I think that would be difficult to achieve while still trying to maintain a decent budget (art’s not cheap) Preferably I’d like a stand up cardboard piece, depicting the hero in some sort of stance, with bottoms of each color square shaped so that it can be clearly seen which direction the character is facing (as this seems to be a big part of what I’m trying to do here is making something that’s fast and tactical) The difficulty is that I feel like whatever I do for the heroes must be done for everyone, so with that in mind I do plan on making stand up tokens for all the moveable heroes and civilians (boy is that gonna take some work) but things like destructible trees, and chits that you place on top of destroyed parts of a building (rubble) won’t get the same treatment.
-The distress deck will be 3.5x3.5 cards with the basic (8x8, 12x12?) grid on it and where everything will be placed, a bad guy starts on top of a building, good for him, bad for you.

Gameplay:
now onto what we all want to hear, gameplay
set-up:
- Each player picks their designated number of heroes (probably 3-4 each)
- boards are set down (however many players want to use) 2, 4 , 6, GO CRAZY
- then players take turns drawing buildings and placing them on the board, making their very own malleable world for that turn.
- each player draws a distress card from the pile, this card will indicate in which tiles there spots there will be events occurring, what they are worth as well as where the civilians are and where the thugs are, where their traps are and so forth and so on
- once players have this knowledge then the Heroic Feats deck is shuffled and dealt (each player is dealt a certain number of heroic feats, I think that maybe to tie in the theme of the game, players get to draw more feats when they do something heroic, like save a citizen, capture a bad guy without killing him and so on (this just came to me and I think it could really help carry the theme) Think of things like heroic entrance where if a player moves into Line of Sight and attacks on the same turn they get a bonus if played. Things like that, like med pacs and recharge of powers, something to keep people on their toes.

Turn Order:
- Everyone rolls their die, this will depict turn order for that round. So even though you were first last round, you might not be this time, (I think this will add a certain risk factor that makes for excitement in these kind of games, do I make this move hoping that next round I’ll go before that player or not, well at least to me that stems into excitement)
- Players may perform 2 actions per character (start with the highest die roller moving one character, going around till everyone moves all their pieces, then move all the thugs and civilians, on each thug’s character card it will depict what kind of actions he prefers, like If hero in LOS, but out of range thug will run for cover, if in range thug will open fire)
- Once everyone moves, the round ends and everyone rolls again.
 Actions include Movement, attacking and resting (attacking and resting cannot be done twice but movement can, running twice is considered sprinting)
 Powers are free actions (powers that attack cannot be played as a free action and count as an action)
 Heroic feats are free actions
o Powers Explained:
 Players will have a power meter at the beginning of the game that will deplete every time they use their power, So let’s say kinetic man’s mighty blow costs 4 energy and he has 6, he’ll need to recharge his energy either by playing a heroic feat, or by resting
 Passive Abilities: Passive abilities are cheap abilities that remain on, the downside is that while passive abilities are active, that hero may not rest.
o Resting Explained:
 Resting consists of the player not performing any actions in that turn, if a player sprints or attacks then says he’s resting it does not count. If player just moves and then rests, he will gain 1 energy back for the resting action, if he gives up both moves to rest he will gain back 2 points
- Combat:
o Combat is simple, If your attack stat (plus modifers) is higher then the target’s defense (+modifiers) you do one point of damage.
 Player may try and go for a critical hit, in which case he must roll a 5-6, if he does not, he does no damage, if it connects he does 2 points of damage instead of 1
o If player’s attack (+modifiers) is equal to the defenders defence(+modifiers) then attacker has to roll his die and must roll a 5-6 to hit
o If defending player’s defence(+modifier) is higher then the attacker’s attack(+modifier) attacker must roll a 6 to hit (this was instituted to keep a player from being to just building a team that will never get hurt and going to town on everyone else, i think it will add a nice risk factor)

victory conditions:
- each token or ability will have a basic value attached to it as i've mentioned before, civilians, thugs and all that will have points attached to it to judge when teh game ends. Whenever a player reaches a preset number of secondary quests pplus villains defeated (let's call this basic thing fame) reaches a certain point, no more bad guys will spawn and when the board is cleared, players will tally their bounty to see how well tehy did. Obvciously super villains need to be worth enough that it could bring a player from last place to first, think of this as almost like a Lord of the Waterdeep quest mechanic, that all these different things have hidden points associated wit hthem, and you can get a sense of what they have, but never really know till the end. I think this will make it far more engaging for the players.

Well, that's it in a nutshell i guess, let me know your thoughts please. This forum has been extremely helpful.
Thanks again.

Do you have any idea what size the Heroclix Figures are? Also, I read the size of the heroclix maps and they are huge. 1.5 inches per space, this is all doable, no problem. My main concern with making the game like this is this, I use a different power system then they do in the heroclix. from my understanding, where as mine has a power cost system, they have an amount of abilities per turn. My only other concern with this, is that even though I want people to be able to enjoy my game whichever way they want, I don't want people to look at it as a HeroClix clone since I have personally never played it. The ideas I came up with have been garnered from my own experience with board and video games and I would hate to leave people thinking that I'm a thief (which I'm not). I just feel like the more I try to make this accessible to the heroclix players the more it's going to be perceived this way.

Maybe I need to make the base game less of a superhero game and more of a tactical game.

what do you think?

Oh, I want to make my superhero game. I just feel like the more I look into HeroScape and HeroClix and how their systems are set up and how to make my game about to play with theirs as well as theirs with mine, I just feel like I'm doing a remake of those games with new characters and settings. Sure I think the addition of a co-op mode would add a totally new vibe to the game, and maybe that's where my focus should be, but whenever people are wanting to play a scenario where it's more competitive (wihch is the idea) then things start to get muddy. Like I said, maybe the focus of my game needs to be a really good story/scenario mode.

Edit: I think what I really need is something very distinctive to my game. Maybe the idea of it being more semi-cooperative then a ?v? kind of game. I think having more maleable maps could have a lot going for it. But part of me still thinks the combat mechanic and stat system could be more distinctive.