So, here it is the preview of Marvel Heroes - part 1!
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When Marvel approached us with a proposal to license and design a "big and beautiful" strategy boardgame based on the complete Marvel Universe, we were immediately excited by the challenge. Marvel Comics created hundreds of great characters and countless stories: to convey a meaningful picture of such a complex universe was even more diffficult than representing the "War of the Ring" as we had done in the game that at the time was just recently released.
In the end we decided a few 'fundamentals' we had to keep in our game. First of all, we wanted both Heroes and Villains to be featured. Marvel created some of the greatest Villains ever and we wanted them to be more than just a mechanical factor which the players were challenging. After much discussion, we decided that the way to go was to let each players control BOTH superheroes and villains. There were a number of problems to be addressed - we did not want a 'strange alliance'
to be created where a players'action as Villain could help his superheroes or vice-versa; but we thought this concept also opened the way to deal with the subject in a new and interesting way.
The second point was that the game should belong to the adventure/strategy category. The Heroes should face menaces, solve mysteries, fight villains, and the characters would evolve and change during the game, however in a way which should remain faithful to the stories. We wanted a "large story" to bring the game to a climax, and of course smaller stories to set the stage.
The third point was the location. The Marvel Universe is as big as, say--- the universe. Actually something more, with infinite parallel universes, extra-dimensional realms... More or less every realm ever conceived by the human imagination has been included in a Marvel story, from Asgard, to Hell, to Atlantis. But...
Manhattan has been the setting for countless stories in the Marvel Comics. Everything has happened in Manhattan, everybody - hero or villain - has been there. The only other alternative would have been to have the whole world, or the universe! as a setting, but the feeling was that it was somehow not appropriate to a character-based game. Manhattan was the solution to make geography and topography meaningful for our characters.
With these concepts as a foundation, we then went through several possible designs.
There was another challenge: we wanted to keep all the game elements consistent with the stories, but we also wanted the game to be played with different teams and villains. So every element should fit any character - how could that be? Our first design did not address this problem properly, making everything too 'generic' to be meaningful from a thematic point of view, so we had to drop it (and a few months of work with it) and start anew.
The end result of many months of thought and labor is the design that we decided to develop and publish and which I will start to describe in these previews.
In "Marvel Heroes" every player controls a team of 4 Heroes. Four teams are included in the game, for a total of 16 characters: X-men (Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Jean Grey), Fantastic 4 (you know who they are), Avengers (Cap, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man), Spiderman and Marvel Knights (Spidey, Daredevil, Elektra, Dr. Strange).
Every team has its "Nemesis", a Mastermind Villain controlled by one of the other players: Magneto, Dr. Doom, Red Skull, Kingpin.
Every Hero or Villain is defined by a reference card and essentially is represented by a set of combat powers; a special combat ability; a special non-combat ability; his endurance (how many KOs he can receive before being defeated); and his "Troubleshooting" ratings.
Mastermind Villains have very similar stats but the "Troubleshooting" ratings are replaced by "Threat Ratings". We will see later how these ratings are used.
At the beginning of each game round, players will have to use their allowance of "Plot Points" to set the strategy for their Team. The number of Plot Points is limited in the beginning, but may improve during the game allowing the Team to be used at full effectiveness.
With Plot Points, we achieved several objectives. First of all, we did not want all characters to be balanced. The level of power of the characters in the game is very varied and while all of them should be useful, we wanted to show a difference between characters, like Daredevil, Spiderman, or Captain America, which can be found fighting everything from petty crimes to world conspiracies, and characters like Thor or Dr. Strange which would be involved only in "high level" plots. So, each character has a Level, i.e. how many Plot Points you must pay (from one to three) to put him in action.
In addition to this, Plot Points are a very useful device to make the game progress from smaller plots involving only some of the characters to more challenging missions possibly involving a full team. The "experience" which is somehow an element in most adventure games, in "Marvel Heroes" is essentially represented by an increased allowance of Plot Points as the game progresses (there are also "Power-ups" which give additional abilities to Teams, which may be gained in the game).
After each player plans what he wants his Heroes to do, it's time to start the action! Each game round includes 5 action rounds, and in each action round a player does only one action, so the game progress very quickly around the table: Move a Hero, Use a Special Ability, Heal, Story Action, and the most important action: Troubleshooting.
Story Actions are essentially a representation of the fact that the life of a Superhero is not all fighting Villains. Other things happen which are important to a Hero or a Team: a baby is born, a photo book is published, the government gives an official recognition... These events are generated by a deck of Story Cards, and the players must use Story Actions to make these stories happen to the benefit of their Team.
The Troubleshooting action is used to try to solve missions, called "Headlines" as they are written in the style of newspaper headlines.
(In the next preview, we will look in more detail to how Headlines and Troubleshooting works).
Posted Sun Jun 11,2006 11:49 pm
