INPUT NECESSARY - superhero - total revamp,

Grim, I think we're right on the same page. Action Action Action is the name of the game. I think by having players rotating movement, so each person moves a hero, then a the next moves one and down the line till everyone goes is one of the best ways I've ever seen in a game t o keep players engaged. Having to constantly re-adjust your plans on the fly has always been something I really enjoy in board games (looking at you Lord of the Waterdeep/Agricola)

So here's what I'm thinking action wise.
The game will take place in 4 10x10 boards (1.5 inch squares so the board can be used for heroclix and heroscape) Whenever a player enters an empty board (or when the game starts) t hey will draw the distress cards (there won't be more then 10 of these) They will tell you the bad guys spawned, as well as where the civilians are and where the crimes are happening. (think of the random thugs as almost trash mobs, but the idea is to make them strong enough to be significant but not strong enough to be imposing, a well played player should have no issue just wiping the floor with these suckers)

Whenever a player stumbles upon a crime marker, this means there is a crime in progress (dun dun dun) you draw a crime card and it will tell you whether there's a supervillain there, a armed robbery, blah blah blah. Similar to the distress call, it will have a small 3x3 grid with the Crime Spot being the center one, and it will tell you the bad guys that are there, fi there's anything like a armored car, or something else. (maybe these could be people in need of help, and they will point to something going on somewhere else, it could be like quests that give you fame, oOo, that's a good plan)

So let's think of an example of a particular round (at least in my mind)
Your team consists of The Iron Druid (Tree-guy), Kinect (the kinetic power guy) and Col Creedence Beuregard. You start out in your team space which happens to be in the top of a building this turn. There are 3 mobs of 5 guys, and 3 "quests" you can pick up. Keeping in mind that there are no green spaces in your set-up (Why did you pick the druid dumb -dumb?! You know he can't recharge unless there's nature around) You know that ID is gonna have to take a backing role till you move. So you move K and Col to engage the first group and turn on ID's passive (BarkSkin) that gives him a slight defensive bonus and a slight attack bonus since its' only at lvl 1, but since he can't recharge there's no reason why he shouldn't use it. Kinect runs towards the Bad guys and uses his Charge ability, That adds +2 to attack for every tile he's traveled that turn (i'm the juggernaut B*tch). He knocks into the first guy but hits him so hard (attack is higher then defense so kinetic charge not only does dmg, but it also does knockback) that he flies into the second guy and they both have to roll defense against Kinect, One lives, the other dies since common thugs only have 1 HP. Col uses his Dual Pistols ability purposely targeting 2 of the last 4 guys but misses both times since his attack was tied with both thugs but he did not roll a 5-6. ID begins moving towards the first citizen to pick up a quest + get the points for saving that citizen. the thugs attack Kinect but none of them roll a 6 (they attack is low so they must roll a 6 to hit) and he's fine for now. Kinect has no energy to use this turn because he can't move and he used the charge from his move to barrel into the first guy so the player plays a Feats&Failures card, it's the supercharged card that recovers K's energy. He uses Mega Blow but reserves 2 of his 5(?) energy for his defensive ability. It connects and K removes another thug from play, he now has 3 xp, and 3 fame. Col uses his dual pistols again and manages to get one of the guys, meanwhile ID talks to the civilian and he says that a supervillain and his thugs are robbing an armored car in square (8,8). THat's just around the CORNER!

This is the kind of turns I would like for this game to have. It think the stats and abilities will lend themselves to being very intuitive. The supervillain cards will have abilities and stats like the heroes, but they will also have behavior; This will tell the players how the villain should react when confronted. Does Mole Man have a tendency to Run from danger? Whenever Heroes get too close, does he burrow underground and show up somewhere else?

Also, I've been thinking about your idea of clues. I never thought of maybe having a clue system where players are rewarded for doing some behavior with a clue to the villains whereabouts. I don't think this is quite the feel I'm going for right now, but it's something I'm leaving very VERY open for the future. Right now I'm planning a comic book mode, where players play through a story. (i plan on making the boards double sided, so you could flip it over and have a jungle, or an underground cave, obviously there won't be as many tiles for those places as the city but you understand.) Also, there will be a Crime Wave mode, which is what I've been talking about. Crime Wave can be played everyone vs the board in a semi-cooperative mode, or semi-coop vs one player playing the villains. The rules will be slightly different as the thugs will still be controlled by the board but the Villain player will control a team as well which he will use to try and take out the Hero players. Keeping in mind that the Villain characters are substantially stronger then a hero character on a 1v1 basis. Keeping in mind that a well played hero, with a few tricks left up his sleeve should still have a fighting chance, unless it's a really bad match up, like Kinect not being able to build up energy unless he's being attacked or moving. Considering he's not meant to be a ranged character (although items such as cars and lampposts are intented to be used as weapons in this game, yeah, you heard me. They will have attack bonuses as well as STR requirements, so not only can your weaker guys hide behind the car for cover, a particularly strong character could be able to grab it and hit someone with it.

I started working on the board yesterday, and I have a couple of hero's I created using the heromachine hero creator. I should post one of them up on here later.

Once again, thanks for the insight Grim.

Haha, yeah, it sounds more daunting then it is.

Fame is kept track of on the actual thugs. Once you beat a thug you flip it over and it tells you how much fame it awards. Experience there will be a tracker with a slider on the top of the hero card. The amount of heros is dependent on the amount of players. For gameplay purposes, the game is either gonna end after a certain number of rounds or when a player reaches a certain amount of fame. You can play multiple players vs the board as well, everyone working as a team trying to be the most famous, which will be a simpler way that they can play 1 hero each, i feel like this will be the most used play-style. Either this or the story mode i plan on including in which each player takes control of a hero.

all the information should be easily to read on the card. I'm a HUGE fan of accessibility, I don't like large rulebooks. I want my games to be intuitive. Like, the bonus you get from being on top of the building will be displayed on the bottom right of the building saying like, Range (bulleye, it will match the one on the hero card) +3 and defence (shield) +2. Like I said, if it's not easy it's hard. Like, all the buildings will have red borders that will tell the players it costs more to move onto that tile, such as a red border with a foot (movement) and a 3 beside it, or something like that.

I have a young kid I want to play it with as well, and if a game isn't accessible my wife won't even touch it. She's normally the gauge I go by. If everything seems accessible to her then i'm on the right track.

The goal right now is that you want your superhero to be the most famous out of the bunch. That's the winning condition, I don't know exactly how to execute. Quests will give you more fame then just beating up bad guys or saving civilians (think of quests as news reports)

Once again thanks for all your input and desire to make the game even better then it already is. I decided that unless the player’s want a completely custom game (where they set up the city on a blind draw) the blueprint deck (formerly known as the distress deck) will tell you the layout for that specific city square, 4 are drawn in the beginning of the game, it will tell you where the thugs are, the civilians, quest givers and then a certain number (haven’t figured it out yet) of crime cards are drawn. Crime cards will tell you which of the 4 squares they correspond to, and what’s going on and who’s there and how much time you have to stop it. Of course all this information will be provided for all 3 levels of difficulty. As your hero gets fame, more and more stronger thugs and villains will want to come and test their mettle against the saviors of yor precious city.

As for character creation. The base stats and unique character abilities are pre-set. On top of that, there will be 6 different power types (more to be added later, expansion maybe?) each with about 9+ different abilities at different costs. Each of the 15 heroes will be aligned to two different power types. Each power type will act differently from each other and change the way your character plays. Right now my archetypes are (Physical, Telekinetic, Tech, Fire, Water, Magic) This will probably bear some changes. Like let’s say one of them is Physical, in physical you might have 3 super str cards, each with a different “move” 3 different super speed that will give you a passive + a move (or nothing, which then will make them cheaper) and Flight, acrobatics. Whatever. So that character that’s a Physical/Tech character, can have as many powers from the physical and tech tree as long as it doesn’t surpass the game limit. On top of that, otherwise, you might want to purchase a sidekick with some of the poinst and give him some powers so you have a few extra moves. Let’s say you have a tech/physical character, you could purchase a water/magic character to compliment him, so each character would have a set number of turns. You’d be trading in powerful-ness for moveability. But at the same time, you can’t move if you’re dead.

Also, the panic meter is something that will force players to keep moving. Whenever there's no crime active, or a crime has successfully timed out, the panic meter goes up a notch. if it hits the max everything is out of control and the heroes loose. So it'll take a mix of characters balancing fame, as to not make anyone so much stronger that no one else can complete their things. All crimes will have a mastermind, and as long as the mastermind is engaged the timer stops.

The design elements of the actual game haven't actually changed much at all other tehn the way of assigning powers. All that's really changed are minor things, like what I mean to call the deck.

The blueprint deck is the same as the Distress Deck. (but you are right that the distress deck sounds better)
Then we have the Crime Deck, that has not changed, only a bit in execution.
And we have the Feats and failures deck, which will be designed to kind of look like a newspaper

The thugs will be physical pieces on the board. In my mind they will be placed on top of a disc that depicts What kind of thug it is and what abilities and stats it has, that will be shows on a regular poker sized card.

The buildings will be chipboard cut outs that will be placed on top of the gridded board.

My thoughts was maybe the distress deck could tell you where to place buildings, but since the scenarios will do that, I don't think it's necessary.

got a few character models on here for you guys to see.

http://www.bgdf.com/node/8012

let me know waht you think.

Technically, the way the combat is set up, it’s made so that there is no way for anyone to be truly 100% invulnerable. They may be hard to hurt, but not invulnerable.

Combat is as follows. If player’s attack is greater than the defending player’s defense, it is an automatic hit. The attacking player may try to roll a 5-6 for double damage. But if it’s not a successful roll, attacker does no damage at all. If attacker attack and defenders defense are equal, attacker MUST roll a 5/6 to hit at all. A player with a lower attack score then the defenders defense, can still attack, but will only hit if a 6 is rolled. Of course there are cards from the Feats and Failures deck that could increase as well as decrease the chance of them rolling the right amount.

Combat was developed this way to keep any 1 hero from being truly invincible. Let’s take a look at the invulnerability power. All it does is negate the first point of damage done to you in that round, BUT if 5 people attack you, or if a player does double damage to you, you can still be hurt. It was engineered this way so that no one character is every truly almighty. The last thing I want is people just ignoring the thugs because they can just run past them and rack up points on quests. I want players to consistently have to weigh the odds when facing any kind of combat. Hopefully this will push them (as it would be) that instead of making Superman, you’d make more of a Batman character who’s ready for everything, and very aware of his own shortcomings.

When quests are done, players are rewarded with fame. If players decide to team up, the one with the actual quest COULD choose to be benevolent and share his Fame, but it’s not mandated. Allegiances can be formed and players can be backstabbed as the game does have “friendly” fire. The trick is, can you make it look like an accident so the other players don’t turn on you? The feats and failures deck will give you all sorts of tricks and neat little bonuses.

Also, when the Super villains show up. Heroes will be hard pressed to stand up to them 1v1. They are being designed to be inherently more powerful then the heroes. Instead of forcing players to be the Justice League, think of them more as being forced into a Marvel Team-Up.

Should I just follow my original plan of having set powers for each hero?

Oh yeah, most powers will have a passive ability, then the more active abilities they can use that power for it will raise the cost. So passive = tier 1, passive +1 active tier 2, passive + 2 active tear 3. All the characters will have unique stats and at least 1 unique ability. I'm not sure whether this unique ability should be a one time use super powerful ability, or a mutiple use small ability, maybe vary it up.

I don't know if i want to give everyone access to everything. I think it kinda kills what I'm trying to do. I thought about arranging the archetypes in a diagram and you can buy powers from any of the ability types, but hte farthest from your own the more costly it gets. It's a bit tricky, any ideas?

I think giving everyone all the powers might screw up the comic book narrative I was going for in the game, maybe it wont. it's a good thought.