Even the video would be perfect, if you tweaked the theme from spies to Gotham City...
More discussion about the series and the game itself after the jump...
Real Life always has an...interesting effect on Gaming Life. Two of the Leads got caught up in roller derby and made it hard to schedule game. So I put it on the shelf for a bit. But people kept talking and asking me when I was going back to it even as I picked up a pretty brisk schedule of games. The clouds have parted in Real Life, so I will be going back to Gotham in the next few months.
My original concept has stretched somewhat. I originally envisioned this game as Law & Order: Gotham City. It was heavily influenced by Gotham Central, which, if you haven't read, you should do so now. Go ahead, I'll wait. The Wire was also a big influence, with it's parallel tales of the law and the criminal, showing neither is completely good or completely terrible.
I was thinking more of a game where the PCs had little contact with Gotham and got wrapped up in their own drama with the superhero stuff very much in the background. They were going to be worrying about their marriages and mortgages while Batman and Two-Face battled each other on the rooftops. I always wanted to run a game that was more of a straight drama than the usual PCs with awesome powers. If I had to lure people in with the promise of Batman, so be it.
I had a little heartburn with Sarah first suggested Lisa get a bionic Waynetech leg. I wasn't expecting the players to have powers. There would be some limited contact, but I wasn't expecting anyone to be in love with Batman, right? Then when Mike brought in Mr. Freeze as a Feature, I saw my visions of a police procedural drift . This was supposed to be a cop show. It even says so in the address of this blog. How come there's only one cop as a Lead?
And yet, I saw how engaged everyone was in making characters, myself included. People were laughing, suggesting great story ideas and using the crazy relationship map to tighten up the net between the Leads. I learned one of the important rules not in the book.
The less prep work you do for the series, the better. I can get a little OCD it comes to my games. I've set up wikis for games and sent out pre-game flash fiction. This blog is actually a step back from what I would normally do. But the more the game got away from my original idea, the more players were laughing and getting fired up to play. The lure of playing in a game in Gotham is the chance to interact with characters everybody loved. Watching Mr. Freeze go from a quickly tossed off choice from Mike to someone that tied into everyone's background was amazing. I had an even better experience when I set the game up for a one shot for some out-of-town friends. The premise was "80's teen superheroes in high school. It is a week from Homecoming. Go." And they went. They couldn't dive fast enough into Stressing each other out and causing a metric ton of teen angst. (and then laughing about it afterwards). It was so much fun I think I am going to spring it on some co-workers when I get a free weekend.
So the series went less Gotham Central and more Alias; the lives and loves of those people that are supporting characters in the comics that you get a few a panels off every arc or so. The ones that Batman barks orders to for a page and then forget about as he chases down the bad guy. What must it be like to How does one go from being a petty street crook to one of The Riddler's fanciful costumed henchmen? Where does he get those wonderful toys? No, really?
This brings us to one of the other great rules not in the book. Everyone is equal when defined by Values and Relationships. Most licensed RPGs stat up the established characters as monstrously huge. It is difficult to show them off in regular play, because they are five times as competent as the entire group of PCs.It may be because the license holder doesn't want the game to be about killing the good guys and taking their stuff. It may be because the character has been around for forty years and fans will howl if every single adventure is not accounted for in the write-up.
It's the relationships with the established characters that make it special. I knew giving everyone a relationship with Batman was a risk, but it paid off. The choice of whether or not the players want to resolve an issue themselves or have Batman swoop in and punch bad guys is in their hands. The fact that everyone has a different opinion of the Bat just adds another thing that I can use as a Wedge to drive between players. And they love it.
Morgan's relationship with Harley Quinn is heartbreaking. It clearly affects her thinking on the issue and is driving her into the seedy work of Rogue's Gallery artifact collection. We have the classic secret ID relationship drama from Lisa involving Bruce and Batman, but this time its from the girl's point of view. Instead of the usual cutaways to the Batcave where Alfred says something droll about Bruce's love life, we have Lisa clearly in love with the legend, but thinking the man is harmless. That doesn't even count the potential love triangle between her, Bruce, and Harvey Dent. That just came up in play and is unconnected to the relationship map. Or would that be a love rhombus? Perhaps a love pentagon?
I still have a few guidelines from my initial campaign write-up. One Rogue per episode, max. Hold no fidelity to anyone previous interpretation. Try to do one episode a season with no rogues whatsoever. That last one may be the hardest to hold to, since even the plot I have in mind for the Rogue-Free episode would be a great place to introduce Penguin. But, with the players I have and the Gotham we've created, I have no doubt we'll entertain ourselves.
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