Monday, September 27, 2010

Alter Ego cards

I made some Alter Ego prototype cards last night. Unfortunately, I can't show them to you because (a) I left them on my home computer, and (b) Blogger doesn't have a good way to attach an image from PDF. I suppose when I get home I could save it as a jpg or something and then post - maybe I'll do that.

I made up 3 city names: Metro City, Gotham, and Arkham (OK, you caught me, I completely stole those names) and chose 3 types of crooks: Thugs, Cat Burglars, and Bank Robbers. I'm pretty sure I even spelled "Burglar" wrong on them, but they're printed now so I don't care. The Thugs menace the Docks, Cat Burglars are the bane of the Suburbs, and Bank Robbers plague Downtown.

Each card has a location ("Metro City Downtown" for example), a type and color (which associates with the location - so a Blue Bank Robber would be on a Metro City Downtown card), and finally a set of die icons showing the number of successes needed to defeat the henchman as well as the minimum roll which constitutes a success. Some henchmen require a 6 or two 5's to defeat them, others require five 3's.

The henchmen range from 6 expected die rolls to 18, and so the higher the required roll, the fewer successes are necessary. Note that a 6 is 'harder to roll' (less likely to come up) than a 5, but while the expected number of rolls to get one 6 vs two 5's is the same (6 rolls), you COULD roll the 6 on a single die while you need AT LEAST TWO rolls to get 2 5's. If there's some way to get modifiers to the die roll, that would make the fewer-hit, higher req'd henchmen more attractive.

Before I can give this game a test drive, I still need to produce player boards with the Alter Ego slots, insignia tokens (I think I'll use wooden discs I got for prototyping), and decide on the exact benefits of the Alter Ego slots.

1 comment:

Paul Owen said...

I just ran across your Alter Ego thoughts and went back to read all your preceding posts on the topic since your original KublaiCon inspiration, Heroic Deeds. I'm intrigued to see what you finally come up with.

I'm vaguely reminded of a card game I ran across at Congress of Gamers here on the east coast (http://congressofgamers.org/) called PowerMage 54 (http://powermage54.com/). I picked up a copy for my kids. The "classic comic book superhero" feel is similar, but it's really a different mechanic from what you're describing for Alter Ego.