Sir Osis of Liver
Explorer
I love the Tin idea, can't wait to see them. This may be cooler then a return to boxed sets! 
Fiery Dragon's plans for 2004
- Thread starter Fiery James
- Start date
Fiery James
First Post
Treebore said:
We are still debating exactly what form some of the stuff we've been working on will take. I can tell you that the traditional sizes and methods no longer work for us in the current environment. If we put out NeMoren's Vault (or Giant's Skull or Queen of Lies or Of Sound Mind) today, we'd lose money, and that's not in our business plan!
So, short answer: still to be determined.- James
Treebore
First Post
Fiery James said:We are still debating exactly what form some of the stuff we've been working on will take. I can tell you that the traditional sizes and methods no longer work for us in the current environment. If we put out NeMoren's Vault (or Giant's Skull or Queen of Lies or Of Sound Mind) today, we'd lose money, and that's not in our business plan!
- James
Then may I suggest an anthology type of format in hardback, stitched. I, for one, would like them to be in a format that could hold up to 20+ years of use, instead of a few games. Granted, it is a much higher price, but one I am willing to pay for longevity. For example, my Nemoren's Vault needs replaced just after two groups being DMed through it. With Necro's Lost City of Barakus I have paged through and used it for many more hours and it still looks like new.
I have used Giant's Skull only once, so it is still holding up well.
I am also looking forward to your counter products. Does anyone do dungeon versions of your cut-outs? Meaning tiles for laying out various floor plans? Castle wall features? This kind of stuff.
Teflon Billy
Explorer
I was looking at your entry for Atomic City on that list and had a few questions (thanks for the AC poster by the way)...
I thought that Atomic City was originally supposed to be a setting supplement for Mutants and Masterminds; did I just invent that myself or did I actuallyhear it from one of you guys?
Also, is it some kind of board game now? becasue that sounds like it would be a pretty interesting gimmick
Good luck to you in the new year, nice to see you gentlemen are back at it.
I thought that Atomic City was originally supposed to be a setting supplement for Mutants and Masterminds; did I just invent that myself or did I actuallyhear it from one of you guys?
Also, is it some kind of board game now? becasue that sounds like it would be a pretty interesting gimmick
Good luck to you in the new year, nice to see you gentlemen are back at it.
Fiery James
First Post
History of Atomic City
Well, the original plans called for Atomic City to be a sort of Superhero rules addition for d20 Modern. The basic system held out that Action Points were used as fuel for powers, and that they could be used to upgrade powers as well -- rather than gaining so many per level and burning them out as they were used, they became a set per level (like Psionic Power Points) thing. It was a system add on rather than a new rules set -- basically, you could take superpowers rather than your class talent. So, you'd have a regular "Batman-esque" Fast 3/Tough 3 Hero and then a super-powered Fast 3/Tough 3 Superhero who had swapped some of his class talents for Superpowers. They'd have the same number of Action Points, but the regular hero could use his to power gadgets or buy permanent bonuses while the superhero could fuel powers or buy power-ups.
You can see that we were incorporating the whole "Department 7" stuff from the rulebook. It was a neat little add-on for d20 Modern -- still a few bugs to work out, but we had some fun playtesting and tweaking. Jay Stephens had designed a pretty comprehensive setting, and we had lots of cool art from his peers - Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone, Cameron Stewart, along that line.
Then Mutants & Masterminds came out. After seeing it, it becomes kind of pointless to releasing your own superhero game, frankly. M&M plays great and the folks at Green Ronin are top-notch and always deliver top-notch products. We could never do a full-color book that could compete with M&M, and really, why would you want to? Truth be told, M&M rocks on toast and that's the game that you're going to want to have if you're playing vaguely-d20 Supers.
So then we contemplated releasing it as a M&M setting/sourcebook. Talking with Nicole from Green Ronin last GenCon, they were hoping to have a lot of people release stuff under their Superlink, 'cause frankly, the M&M base was building quickly and there were more products needed to meet that demand. We toyed with the idea, but then you look at Freedom City and Super Unicorn's upcoming META-4 stuff, plus some other setting suppliments released under the Superlink, and again -- does anyone need another setting for their heroes? Atomic City is pretty coherant as a concept, so it would be difficult to just add it to a world where Freedom City or something else already existed.
So, it sat for a while. We'd kick around fun ideas, but we sort of let it slide off the radar for a bit.
And then we started working on the Counter Strike idea - fully-contained mini-games that could be played in a night and had great replay value. The first wave were more along the lines of "traditional" war similation-type stuff. Very cool scenarios, and something that FDP pres. Jason Kempton is really into (give him anything with little cardboard tanks and he's as happy as a pig in the mud). About this time, I started working on a little skirmish system, a simple yet fun back-and-forth game, but it didn't have any "story" to it. At first it was worked as a generic "elves vs. orcs" kinda thing -- having watched hours of Lord of the Rings, I can see where that comes from! Then, it sort of hit me -- the silver-age-ish nature of Atomic City is a pretty good "good guys" vs. "bad guys" model, and the heroes and villains for the game were never designed to be anything but cool and fun! So then, the Atomic City characters started working their way into the design, and the idea gained some new flavor and life.
It's a simple game -- probably simpler than something like Heroclicks, and definately the simplest out of the first wave of Counter Strike games, which are slightly more advanced simulations (but no lest fun) -- with simple 2d6 rolls deciding the action and the activation of powers. The scenarios are basic "4 heroes vs. 4 villains, try to knock out your foes!", but a lot of fun, and some really great flavor with the Atomic City characters.
And, if it does well, I'm already with our retro follow-up, where you can play the Atomic City heroes waging their battle against the evil villains of WWII.
- James
Teflon Billy said:I was looking at your entry for Atomic City on that list and had a few questions (thanks for the AC poster by the way)...
I thought that Atomic City was originally supposed to be a setting supplement for Mutants and Masterminds; did I just invent that myself or did I actuallyhear it from one of you guys?
Also, is it some kind of board game now? becasue that sounds like it would be a pretty interesting gimmick
Good luck to you in the new year, nice to see you gentlemen are back at it.
Well, the original plans called for Atomic City to be a sort of Superhero rules addition for d20 Modern. The basic system held out that Action Points were used as fuel for powers, and that they could be used to upgrade powers as well -- rather than gaining so many per level and burning them out as they were used, they became a set per level (like Psionic Power Points) thing. It was a system add on rather than a new rules set -- basically, you could take superpowers rather than your class talent. So, you'd have a regular "Batman-esque" Fast 3/Tough 3 Hero and then a super-powered Fast 3/Tough 3 Superhero who had swapped some of his class talents for Superpowers. They'd have the same number of Action Points, but the regular hero could use his to power gadgets or buy permanent bonuses while the superhero could fuel powers or buy power-ups.
You can see that we were incorporating the whole "Department 7" stuff from the rulebook. It was a neat little add-on for d20 Modern -- still a few bugs to work out, but we had some fun playtesting and tweaking. Jay Stephens had designed a pretty comprehensive setting, and we had lots of cool art from his peers - Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone, Cameron Stewart, along that line.
Then Mutants & Masterminds came out. After seeing it, it becomes kind of pointless to releasing your own superhero game, frankly. M&M plays great and the folks at Green Ronin are top-notch and always deliver top-notch products. We could never do a full-color book that could compete with M&M, and really, why would you want to? Truth be told, M&M rocks on toast and that's the game that you're going to want to have if you're playing vaguely-d20 Supers.
So then we contemplated releasing it as a M&M setting/sourcebook. Talking with Nicole from Green Ronin last GenCon, they were hoping to have a lot of people release stuff under their Superlink, 'cause frankly, the M&M base was building quickly and there were more products needed to meet that demand. We toyed with the idea, but then you look at Freedom City and Super Unicorn's upcoming META-4 stuff, plus some other setting suppliments released under the Superlink, and again -- does anyone need another setting for their heroes? Atomic City is pretty coherant as a concept, so it would be difficult to just add it to a world where Freedom City or something else already existed.
So, it sat for a while. We'd kick around fun ideas, but we sort of let it slide off the radar for a bit.
And then we started working on the Counter Strike idea - fully-contained mini-games that could be played in a night and had great replay value. The first wave were more along the lines of "traditional" war similation-type stuff. Very cool scenarios, and something that FDP pres. Jason Kempton is really into (give him anything with little cardboard tanks and he's as happy as a pig in the mud). About this time, I started working on a little skirmish system, a simple yet fun back-and-forth game, but it didn't have any "story" to it. At first it was worked as a generic "elves vs. orcs" kinda thing -- having watched hours of Lord of the Rings, I can see where that comes from!
Then, it sort of hit me -- the silver-age-ish nature of Atomic City is a pretty good "good guys" vs. "bad guys" model, and the heroes and villains for the game were never designed to be anything but cool and fun! So then, the Atomic City characters started working their way into the design, and the idea gained some new flavor and life.
It's a simple game -- probably simpler than something like Heroclicks, and definately the simplest out of the first wave of Counter Strike games, which are slightly more advanced simulations (but no lest fun) -- with simple 2d6 rolls deciding the action and the activation of powers. The scenarios are basic "4 heroes vs. 4 villains, try to knock out your foes!", but a lot of fun, and some really great flavor with the Atomic City characters.
And, if it does well, I'm already with our retro follow-up, where you can play the Atomic City heroes waging their battle against the evil villains of WWII.
- James
Voadam
Legend
I'm looking forward to the summoning counters.
Will it have short stat blocks for all the critters? It is pretty easy to use the base creature out of the MM and slap on the fiendish and celestial templates but it is still an extra step for a DM/player in the middle of combat that quick stat blocks would eliminate.
If not with the counters themselves, perhaps as a web enhancement?
Will it have short stat blocks for all the critters? It is pretty easy to use the base creature out of the MM and slap on the fiendish and celestial templates but it is still an extra step for a DM/player in the middle of combat that quick stat blocks would eliminate.
If not with the counters themselves, perhaps as a web enhancement?
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