ysabetwordsmith | Superhero Board Games

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Superhero Board Games

... sadly, these look as boring as mainstream comics have become.

Meanwhile over in Terramagne they have games based on municipal disasters that citizens are supposed to handle, and some of those games have super characters. Your best response to a fire is different if you have a character with Fire Control, if you have a fire truck, if you have a wrench and a hydrant, or none of those things. And it gets people thinking about resources, so when there actually is a fire, they are more likely to work the problem than panic -- which has consistently better results regardless of available resources.

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Of the lot of those, I've only played Sentinels and it's relatively decent. It does riff on a lot of classic comic book tropes but many of the characters are actually meaningfully different and have different play strategies. In addition, there are a variety of synergistic effects possible depending on which characters are in your party, adding significant depth and replayability.

>> Meanwhile over in Terramagne they have games based on municipal disasters that citizens are supposed to handle <<

OK, anyone wanna start brainstorming one? How about combining elements from some of the modern wave of board games?

Maybe we want to do one for practice first, but I'd like to see a whole line of games based on The Big One. You could have the large-scale The Big One, with all of Westbord in play, and also smaller ones like The Big One: Vancouver or Seattle or Portland or San Francisco -- and maybe some city-level ones like The Big One: Eureka. And even play modules on neighborhood scale.

Thoughts?

I second the CERT prep game.

Bear in mind that official CERT training requires a lot of privacy violations, not to mention some unfortunate preconceptions. However, their handbook contains some useful material and is readily accessible.

I haven't taken the training, and was hoping to get the handbook for my birthday, but the sensible response to the actual emergency seems to be 'minimize unnessecary purchases' to protect the delivery folks.

So read it online.

I probably will, I just haven't gotten to it yet. (Also, I prefer paper books, and have a stack of them to go through.) Once I get fed up with reading about home repair, Nordic economics, Welsh, and John Woolman I'll likely dig up the file.

My to do list also involves things like research and write a food forest proposal, set up our / our elderly neighbor(s) garden for planting, figure out which not-stupid companies are hiring for unskilled jobs right now, research for a genealogy project to be done with a relative who has terrible internet, finish all my backlogged sewing projects and fix our bedraggled collection of yard tools.

Isn't it funny how as soon as you get some stuff done, you seem to have 3x the stuff to do?

>>I probably will, I just haven't gotten to it yet. (Also, I prefer paper books, and have a stack of them to go through.)<> Once I get fed up with reading about home repair, Nordic economics, Welsh, and John Woolman I'll likely dig up the file.<<

:D I like your diversity.

>>My to do list also involves things like <<

Awesome.

>>Isn't it funny how as soon as you get some stuff done, you seem to have 3x the stuff to do?<<

I know how that goes.

I feel if I own a book, I should read it at least once. (Exceptions for my two Latin books, authored by a distant ancestor - I do not speak/read Latin). I also feel I should be informed about practical skills as well as intellectual ones - unclogging a toilet and juryrigging a pre-Social Securityesque solution to keeping people out of bread lines are both very useful skills. :)

Incidentally, if you like history, try the Time Travellers Guide... series by Ian Mortimer.

>> OK, anyone wanna start brainstorming one? How about combining elements from some of the modern wave of board games? <<

Well, we can look at common elements such as:

THE PLAYERS
Games which can be played by a variable number of people, in different social styles, at different skill levels, etc. are much more flexible and desirable -- but harder to design well. However, any kind of disaster or citizen response scenario facilitates this approach as the topic is inherently varied.

Number:
* Solitaire
* Small group
* Large group
* Head-to-head
* Pair-vs-pair or other teams

Sociability:
* Self-comparison
* Competitive
* Mixed (e.g. individual win conditions but a collective loss condition, or vice versa)
* Cooperative

Skill level:
* All players face the same challenges.
* Stronger players face harder challenges while weaker players face easier ones, allowing them to play together better
** Difficulty determined by character and/or goal
** Difficulty achieved via statistics (e.g. weaker players roll more dice and keep the better ones)
** Difficulty determined by terrain area on board
** Difficulty variable based on party role as chosen by players

THE PLAYING FIELD
Fixed boards are easiest to design and calculate for playability, but have less replay value. Malleable boards are more challenging to design well and calculate playability, but have much higher replay value. They are also easier to support via expansion sets for fresh settings and revenue. Another advantage of tile-based boards is they fit through most printers.

* Fixed board, free motion
** Square grid
** Hex grid

* Fixed board with path(s)
** Single direction, single path
** Single direction, branching path
** Free motion along a network of paths

* Malleable board
** Tiles with square or hex grid
** Tiles with path sections
*** Laid according to one of a few fixed patterns
*** Played by choice as part of a turn
*** Laid randomly

THE CHARACTERS
Identical characters are easier, but boring, and in a highly diverse setting just don't compare to the other options. Fixed characters are okay if you make enough of them, straightforward to calculate. Composite characters are really flexible, but harder to calculate. Fixed or composite characters offer the most opportunity for expansion sets, which players love. Generated characters are the hardest to calculate, take the most time to set up per game, but have the most flexibility. Most disaster/response games do best with fixed or composite characters.

* All identical pawns with the same abilities

* Fixed characters from a small set of cards, each with one or more unique abilities, goals, etc.
** Chosen by players
** Drawn randomly

* Composite characters
** Elements chosen by players
** Elements drawn randomly
** Base character plus
*** Profession/skill cards with abilities
*** Superpower or other special ability cards
*** Item cards with bonuses or abilities
*** Relationship cards for multiplayer games
*** Individual goal cards

* Generated characters
** Randomly generated
** Guided generation (e.g. point-based)
** Free player choice among set options

GAME MECHANICS

Spectrum of choice:
* Free player choice over most or all actions
* Some fixed and some free choice
* Random events
* Major parts of the game decided by a fixed sequence

Tools:
* Dice
** d6 only
** standard polyhedral dice
** customized dice

* Cards

* Other objects to be drawn, thrown, or otherwise manipulated to decide game events (we own one game that throws rune tiles, very interesting)

* Spinner

* Dexterity-based elements, such as aiming game pieces at a target

Here is a huge list of extant game mechanics. Among the things useful in a disaster/response game:
Action Points
Advantage Token
Area Influence
Card Drafting
Card Play Conflict Resolution
Critical Hits and Failures
Elapsed Real Time Ending
Follow
Income/Resource Gains
King of the Hill
Line of Sight
Lose a Turn
Movement Points
Narrative Choice Paragraph
Negotiation
Physical Removal
Pick-up and Deliver
Prisoner's Dilemma
Random Production
Role-Playing
Stat Check Resolution
Three Dimensional Movement
Trading
Victory Points as a Resource
Worker Placement, Different Worker Types

Some things I see in T-American games but not much here:

* Fault tolerance (how far from optimum can things go and still function somewhat)
** Shrinking resources
** System breakdowns
** Injury/illness/exhaustion/damage

* Surge plans
A surge plan defines action thresholds when new things happen in response to growing problems.
** Increasing/reducing difficulty of player actions
** Widening/limiting player choices
** Shifting legal parameters (e.g. hotwiring a bus is normally illegal, but becomes acceptable to evacuate refugees when a hurricane reaches a certain proximity/threat level)
** Giving rewards/penalties
** Used to define game phases
** Used to calculate victory points

* Threat zones
** Red/Hot
** Yellow/Warm
** Green/Cold
*** Affecting player choices
*** Affecting damage to characters
*** Affecting resource availability
*** Affecting movement

Scenarios:
A game with multiple scenarios is more challenging to build, but much more flexible and replayable. New scenarios using the same or similar mechanics offer much opportunity for expansion sets.
* Natural disasters
** Blizzard
** Dust/sand storm
** Earthquake
** Flood
** Hurricane
** Ice storm
** Landslide/mud/avalanche
** Tornado
** Volcanic eruption
** Wildfire

* Unnatural disasters
** Cape fight
** Electrical outage
** Gang war
** Political coup
** Terrorism
** Warfare
** Water outage
** Worker strike (e.g. trucker strike shuts off supplies coming into city)

Scale:
* Individual person or persons
* Small to medium group
* Town/city
* State/province
* Country/other large area
* Planet
* Larger spacefaring area units

In-game timing:
* Realtime
** Short "speed games"
** Longer games up to a few hours

* Gametime
** Hours
** Days
** Weeks
** Months
** Years
** Evolutionary time
** Geological/astrological time

THE SCORING

Tallying the winner(s):
* point-based (usually most wins)
* condition or goal-based
* first to the end
* last survivor

Winning conditions:
* only one winner
* more than one winner
* players ranked in order
* everyone can lose collectively
* everyone can win collectively

Winnability:
* Easy = winning more than half the time
* Average = winning about half the time
* Hard = winning less than half the time

>> Maybe we want to do one for practice first, but I'd like to see a whole line of games based on The Big One. You could have the large-scale The Big One, with all of Westbord in play, and also smaller ones like The Big One: Vancouver or Seattle or Portland or San Francisco -- and maybe some city-level ones like The Big One: Eureka. And even play modules on neighborhood scale.<<

See above regarding scale. As in wargames, these could be released individually and then compounded. Neighborhoods would build into cities, a great choice for places like San Francisco with its very distinctive neighborhoods. On this scale, players would be (mostly average) citizens trying to survive, help each other, escape, etc. Cities could chain together into Westbord. A city-scale game would probably be about moving citizens to shelter and protecting them, whereas linking cities would let you connect a city with a functional harbor but no airport to one with an airport but no harbor to one with full warehouses but no way to move anything. You could even do a set of California, Oregon, Washington -- possibly extending farther north/south -- for a regional scale game focused on things like damage control, repair, worker placement, resource transportation, and restoration. The type of resources would have a huge impact, from superpowers to political pull to what ordinary things weren't smashed.

>> Thoughts? <<

They sound a lot more interesting than most games I've seen. They could be very educational in terms of problem-solving and disaster survival.

I would try to include realistic elements, but "realistic" varies between worlds. In T-America, you always want to know where the bus stops are, because they have a shelter and supply cache underneath. Trailer parks have to have bunkers big enough for all residents to fit plus fault tolerance for guests (typically 10-20% extra) because trailers offer no shelter from extreme events. When the shit hits the fan, you head for the nearest shelter.

Compare that to here, where some towns have closed all public shelters after a storm hit and revealed they didn't have enough. >_<

An example of this T-American game type is "Save the City."

I really am.

Okay, so, here's a tossout, off the cuff idea for a board game. Setup is
Pick an avatar. Soups are possible, so are naries, and disabled or other characters with interesting limitations. Since play is cooperative, not competitive, people often choose an avatar to complement someone else's. More difficult games can be made simply by limiting the number or type of soups allowed.

Pick a time limit to play. Speed games are usually half an hour, but the usual play takes about an hour. Plan on short turns, at most a minute, since players are moving simultaneously, and not competing for locations.

Set up the crisis. Draw a card from the decks for: staging location, type of disaster, number affected, and wild cards that either grant or remove resources. These are then put into an envelope with NO ONE seeing them. Each deck can be scaled for difficulty or number of players, and the backs are color coded from green to red to, ONLY for groups of 8 or more, purple (the equivalent of a world response to a tsunami). Overall, this adds up to a GREAT DEAL of fine-tuning before the first turn has even started. Note that these decks are only used for this step, and don't need to take up table space otherwise.

The board is the map, divided into a grid and including a color dot for some kind of problem or resource. (Hospital, grocery store, power substation, emergency shelter, bridge, etc. Buildings/areas that cover more than one square can include more than one resource, which is why dots are used instead of only full color squares.) The terrain is really NOT the key focus, so picture a pixellated color map. Traveling from one location to another is limited to a certain number of squares per turn, and this, too, is part of the difficulty scale. Everyone has a logical starting location (a college student on the university or library square, an accountant at a random downtown square two spaces away from the hospital, whatever. Since the whole point is civilian response, players are encouraged to think strategically and familiarly-- if I know cooking and work at a Mexican restaurant, I have a different knowledge base than the accountant, for example.

Play begins, and tokens move around the board to collect resources and develop a personal emergency plan. But they DON'T know what the emergency is, yet! So, do you choose a very basic first aid class at the community center (1 turn) or take the first cert course at the hospital, which takes two turns? Each choice has pros and cons, all “working blind.”

This is cooperative. However, sending one person to do ALL the grocery shopping and someone else to the hardware store for contractor's trash bags and duck tape, can bite people on the butt if they can't get both tokens to their chosen meeting place before play ends.

Here’s the twist: the crisis can happen BEFORE the end of the agreed upon number of turns. For average difficulty, players will have at least ⅔ of the agreed number before the crisis hits, and for easy ones, they get at least five turns more than the chosen number. More difficult games shave turns off, but there’s always a range, whether 1-6 or 4-12, etc..

The event happens, and all tokens are frozen while someone opens the envelope to read the situation. The first task is to compare the existing plan/prep resources for each avatar. That gives the player a number of movement points to use toward getting to the staging area.

Players regroup at the end of this round, and those with only the normal movement should take shelter in an emergency location (under bus shelter, in the bank, whatever’s closest to them and better than hiding in a bathtub)>

The second half of play sends teams of NPC first responders (police, fire, et al.) to rescue the outliers and bring them to the staging area, using the same movement rules. Once at the staging area, the player’s assets can be put into play to help resolve the crisis. “Doctor Madison may be in a wheelchair, but she’s our best medical resource right now!”

Yes, players can team up to help prevent such strandings.

The overall score is based on how long it takes from the moment of crisis to a full response, not who has the most resources.

>> I really am. <<

Yeah, we're evil.

I should be writing, which I also am, but I'm using this for breaks now.

>> Okay, so, here's a tossout, off the cuff idea for a board game. Setup is
Pick an avatar. Soups are possible, so are naries, and disabled or other characters with interesting limitations. Since play is cooperative, not competitive, people often choose an avatar to complement someone else's. More difficult games can be made simply by limiting the number or type of soups allowed.<<

I like these ideas. I'm especially interested in the inclusivity, because disabled people would have highly useful character skills like:
* Knows the location of every medical facility in town.
* Bonus on thinking outside the box.
* Manual wheelchair users get a bonus to upper-body strength.
* Blind people not affected by darkness or blazing light.
* Deaf people immune to noise damage.

>> Pick a time limit to play. Speed games are usually half an hour, but the usual play takes about an hour. Plan on short turns, at most a minute, since players are moving simultaneously, and not competing for locations.<> Set up the crisis. Draw a card from the decks for: staging location, type of disaster, number affected, and wild cards that either grant or remove resources. These are then put into an envelope with NO ONE seeing them.<<

Fascinating.

>> Each deck can be scaled for difficulty or number of players, and the backs are color coded from green to red to, ONLY for groups of 8 or more, purple (the equivalent of a world response to a tsunami). Overall, this adds up to a GREAT DEAL of fine-tuning before the first turn has even started. Note that these decks are only used for this step, and don't need to take up table space otherwise.<<

Okay, cool. That's a very scalable, customizable game already. Calculating and testing it for playability would be hard, but it's promising.

>> The board is the map, divided into a grid <<

Do we in fact need a board for this game, or could the playing field be created from cards? I've seen games where the cards make a playing field. It works if you don't need to do a huge amount of moving along them, because they are prone to shifting. Maybe have the cards be "blocks" in a city? Then they could be laid out with streets between them for characters to move along, with less disruption to the cards. Advantages to games that use cards as their playing field include a smaller box, more portability, and much lower cost.

>> and including a color dot for some kind of problem or resource. (Hospital, grocery store, power substation, emergency shelter, bridge, etc. Buildings/areas that cover more than one square can include more than one resource, which is why dots are used instead of only full color squares.) <<

Do we want to lock those in place, or make them flexible? That is, if a red dot means the hospital has medical supplies, does it always have medical supplies or are those variable? The dots have the advantage of being fixed to the card so they can't be lost, but they're less flexible, unless they only mean "Red dot = roll 1d6 for medical supplies" rather than "Hospital has 6 first aid kits for characters to use." If instead each location has a list of resources it might have, then it makes sense to use counters (such as plastic discs or melted marbles) to indicate the number. Furthermore, if have movable resources, a few can be randomly generated outside of the places that normally cache them -- perhaps we could make these hidden, to be revealed only when characters use a Search action.

>> The terrain is really NOT the key focus, so picture a pixellated color map.<<

That's one way to save a lot of money. However, it does take out some of the fun. Games with beautiful art are nice to look at even when it's not your turn. This could be a flexible point -- or if it were a Kickstarter campaign, a stretch goal. (At $XXXX, we will upgrade from pixellated to artistic maps.)

>> Traveling from one location to another is limited to a certain number of squares per turn, and this, too, is part of the difficulty scale. <<

Easy level lets you move more squares? Useful.

Another option is having actions determined by stamina points -- a character with more stamina can do more things -- and movement would be one type of action.

Movement often depends on terrain. If you catch a bus you could go very far, but less on a bike and less still on foot. However, if an earthquake cracks the streets, the bus definitely becomes useless and the bike much less useful, whereas you can still walk (or climb, at a higher cost over rubble) through the city.

>> Everyone has a logical starting location (a college student on the university or library square, an accountant at a random downtown square two spaces away from the hospital, whatever. <> Since the whole point is civilian response, players are encouraged to think strategically and familiarly-- if I know cooking and work at a Mexican restaurant, I have a different knowledge base than the accountant, for example.<<

That makes sense.

>> Play begins, and tokens move around the board to collect resources and develop a personal emergency plan. But they DON'T know what the emergency is, yet! <<

This is interesting. But why are they collecting resources and making plans if they don't know something is about to go wrong? Many emergencies give no warning. The ones that do are specific -- earth symptoms imply a different scenario than sky warnings. Some things always have a lead time, like hurricanes in a modern weather forecast.

>> So, do you choose a very basic first aid class at the community center (1 turn) or take the first cert course at the hospital, which takes two turns? Each choice has pros and cons, all “working blind.” <>This is cooperative. However, sending one person to do ALL the grocery shopping and someone else to the hardware store for contractor's trash bags and duck tape, can bite people on the butt if they can't get both tokens to their chosen meeting place before play ends.<<

That idea would fit with a club, neighborhood, or other group working together as opposed to random citizens who don't know each other and couldn't coordinate until after something brought them together.

>> Here’s the twist: the crisis can happen BEFORE the end of the agreed upon number of turns. For average difficulty, players will have at least ⅔ of the agreed number before the crisis hits, and for easy ones, they get at least five turns more than the chosen number. More difficult games shave turns off, but there’s always a range, whether 1-6 or 4-12, etc..<> The event happens, and all tokens are frozen while someone opens the envelope to read the situation. The first task is to compare the existing plan/prep resources for each avatar. That gives the player a number of movement points to use toward getting to the staging area.<<

Okay, cool.

One staging area or several? With lots of players, you might want more than one.

>> Players regroup at the end of this round, and those with only the normal movement should take shelter in an emergency location (under bus shelter, in the bank, whatever’s closest to them and better than hiding in a bathtub)<<

Cool.

>> The second half of play sends teams of NPC first responders (police, fire, et al.) to rescue the outliers and bring them to the staging area, using the same movement rules. <<

Are those types of profession not in play, or are these just extra characters beyond the PCs?

>> Once at the staging area, the player’s assets can be put into play to help resolve the crisis. “Doctor Madison may be in a wheelchair, but she’s our best medical resource right now!”

Yes, players can team up to help prevent such strandings.<<

Awesome.

>> The overall score is based on how long it takes from the moment of crisis to a full response, not who has the most resources.<<

I like that idea too. It would fit the framework of a realtime game, I think.

I'd thought it up to specifically gamify emergency preparedness. Picture it being offered before or after a class in first aid, babysitting, shelter-in-place tips, and so on. It leaks from THERE into common play.

The board can be replaced with a city map, if a ruler is used for scale instead of relying on the grid.

The board can be replace with playing cards tiled face down to form a map layout, with a sticky note saying what kind of resources are there. This is the "improvised on the bus" version, OR the version used when teaching a new player, since the cards take up a lot more room per square than any map.

Fiddling with the types of supplies is more advanced. A standard bus stop has a small first aid kit, a couple of thermal blankets, and flashlights. No portapotty. A trailer park shelter has bunks, a porta-potty and camp stove for every six people, pots, pans, silverware, plust the stuff at the bus stop. And so on.

Make the resources realistic to the players' situations. Avery is differetn than Mercedes or Omaha, and the maps should be, too.

I've also thought about something similar for role-playing games. My favorite genre for role-playing is science fiction, and I think a space-based search and rescue/first responder game would be awesome - I gave some suggestions for running such a campaign in the Storyguide advice section of the SF game I developed, Trinity-Continuum: Æon. However, I think such a campaign would work best in a far flung space opera setting like Traveller, Mindjammer, or Star Trek. One big advantage is some sort of interstellar search and rescue campaign would allow fun tense action scenarios with little or no violence (my tolerance for violence in media and gaming has gone down over the last 10-15 years). Another option would be gaming something like James White's Sector General novels.

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Superhero Board Games

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