Heh. Funny how that happens. :) That was "Superior City," which started out using the "Just Trust Me" model.
In other words, there was no formal character creation system, in the conventional RPG sense. I gave the players some questionnaires earlier on, asking for details on what sort of character they'd play in, say, a normal modern-day campaign, what sort of power they'd have in a supernatural setting, and a bunch of red-herring questions meant to obfuscate what I was finally going to do, and then I just declared, "Hey, you know what? Before we start the SERIOUS stuff, I've got all these HeroClix minis. Howzabout we run some silly four-color-comics-style punch-fests with custom superheroes?" And then I delved into the responses that the players gave me on their characters for "other" settings in order to fill out a backstory for what the character was "really" like (if applicable). For those players who actually gave me more detail to work with, I tended toward, "Well, you have -- or HAD -- an identity in the real world before you got 'stuck' in this game," whereas for those who were far more scarce about the particulars, I tended toward, "You were a background NPC AI who achieved sapience and free will!"
That game really worked in a way that I don't think I could easily replicate. Moonwolf was still in our group, and a big creative driver, and brought in maybe 4 or 5 of the players who were in the campaign (as a whole or in "special guest-starring" roles). Gwendel hadn't yet become such a recluse, and actually played and contributed. HeroClix and Mage Knight minis were abundantly available on the cheap in "grab bag" deals at local comics/game stores (and there used to be more of those than there are now in the area) and I happened across a useful tool online that would let me generate customized stat wheel labels I could use to insert into those turn-click bases for custom stat lines. (So, if there was some model with a set of powers that I thought would be really useful, but I wasn't about to shell out $20 for that special rare model, I could just use some random mook dial, proxy some other model -- in my setting, I could just just about ANYTHING as an adversary -- and insert a custom dial label. Voila!)
That, and back then most of the projects at work were local (in the Florida office) rather than requiring me to fly out to Ohio or Texas every few weeks (or several weeks in a row). But even so, prep was a lot simpler: All I needed, really, was a vague outline of a story, some "plot points" to reveal, some cheat sheets on notes about the characters, and a bin full of random superhero and monster minis to dig into. Encounter balance wasn't terribly important, because even if the PCs were overwhelmed and "KO'ed" early in the campaign, the worst that'd happen is that now they're strapped into easily-escapable-death-traps in the lair of the Evilmeister, with ample opportunity to cause shenanigans while he's busy monologuing. And any rules lawyers had a rough time rules-lawyering me, because there WAS NO RULEBOOK. We basically had a cheat sheet for the Clix combat, and for noncombat skills, many times it'd just be hand-waved (You're a mechanic. Given the time and tools outside combat, you FIX THE THING.) but where there was any stress involved (You want to fix the thing DURING COMBAT, and someone stole your wrench set.) I'd set a difficulty number, the player would roll 2d6 and add it to a flat value representing the skill level, and that was that. Pretty straightforward.
It got more complicated later when I tried shoehorning in the classic Deadlands system (this was before I discovered Savage Worlds) to handle how the characters would work in the "real world." (A primary driver for why I did that was really because I was getting pushback from players who were missing some sort of "character advancement" system, who were used to their characters improving stats and gaining new powers over the course of an adventure, even if in-game, only a few hours or days are passing at most. My system required that I "eyeball" the stats and give everyone a "balanced" setup, and tweak things behind the scenes if I felt that one player was handicapped compared to the others. But eventually the players wanted to chart their own course to get skills they wanted but didn't start with, etc. So, I needed a more conventional framework, and Deadlands seemed flexible enough.)
Not that I needed to get into that much detail just because you mentioned "Superior City." ;) I just kind of go overboard sometimes. Digital_Rampage was new to our group back then; I think he's the only player in my current group who was in that campaign.
no subject
In other words, there was no formal character creation system, in the conventional RPG sense. I gave the players some questionnaires earlier on, asking for details on what sort of character they'd play in, say, a normal modern-day campaign, what sort of power they'd have in a supernatural setting, and a bunch of red-herring questions meant to obfuscate what I was finally going to do, and then I just declared, "Hey, you know what? Before we start the SERIOUS stuff, I've got all these HeroClix minis. Howzabout we run some silly four-color-comics-style punch-fests with custom superheroes?" And then I delved into the responses that the players gave me on their characters for "other" settings in order to fill out a backstory for what the character was "really" like (if applicable). For those players who actually gave me more detail to work with, I tended toward, "Well, you have -- or HAD -- an identity in the real world before you got 'stuck' in this game," whereas for those who were far more scarce about the particulars, I tended toward, "You were a background NPC AI who achieved sapience and free will!"
That game really worked in a way that I don't think I could easily replicate. Moonwolf was still in our group, and a big creative driver, and brought in maybe 4 or 5 of the players who were in the campaign (as a whole or in "special guest-starring" roles). Gwendel hadn't yet become such a recluse, and actually played and contributed. HeroClix and Mage Knight minis were abundantly available on the cheap in "grab bag" deals at local comics/game stores (and there used to be more of those than there are now in the area) and I happened across a useful tool online that would let me generate customized stat wheel labels I could use to insert into those turn-click bases for custom stat lines. (So, if there was some model with a set of powers that I thought would be really useful, but I wasn't about to shell out $20 for that special rare model, I could just use some random mook dial, proxy some other model -- in my setting, I could just just about ANYTHING as an adversary -- and insert a custom dial label. Voila!)
That, and back then most of the projects at work were local (in the Florida office) rather than requiring me to fly out to Ohio or Texas every few weeks (or several weeks in a row). But even so, prep was a lot simpler: All I needed, really, was a vague outline of a story, some "plot points" to reveal, some cheat sheets on notes about the characters, and a bin full of random superhero and monster minis to dig into. Encounter balance wasn't terribly important, because even if the PCs were overwhelmed and "KO'ed" early in the campaign, the worst that'd happen is that now they're strapped into easily-escapable-death-traps in the lair of the Evilmeister, with ample opportunity to cause shenanigans while he's busy monologuing. And any rules lawyers had a rough time rules-lawyering me, because there WAS NO RULEBOOK. We basically had a cheat sheet for the Clix combat, and for noncombat skills, many times it'd just be hand-waved (You're a mechanic. Given the time and tools outside combat, you FIX THE THING.) but where there was any stress involved (You want to fix the thing DURING COMBAT, and someone stole your wrench set.) I'd set a difficulty number, the player would roll 2d6 and add it to a flat value representing the skill level, and that was that. Pretty straightforward.
It got more complicated later when I tried shoehorning in the classic Deadlands system (this was before I discovered Savage Worlds) to handle how the characters would work in the "real world." (A primary driver for why I did that was really because I was getting pushback from players who were missing some sort of "character advancement" system, who were used to their characters improving stats and gaining new powers over the course of an adventure, even if in-game, only a few hours or days are passing at most. My system required that I "eyeball" the stats and give everyone a "balanced" setup, and tweak things behind the scenes if I felt that one player was handicapped compared to the others. But eventually the players wanted to chart their own course to get skills they wanted but didn't start with, etc. So, I needed a more conventional framework, and Deadlands seemed flexible enough.)
Not that I needed to get into that much detail just because you mentioned "Superior City." ;) I just kind of go overboard sometimes. Digital_Rampage was new to our group back then; I think he's the only player in my current group who was in that campaign.