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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fiery James" data-source="post: 1351704" data-attributes="member: 625">History of Atomic CityWell, 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.<img src="http://www.fierydragon.com/ACd7.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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.  <img src="http://www.fierydragon.com/ACBAM.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  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.<img src="http://www.fierydragon.com/ACCAM.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />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.<img src="http://www.fierydragon.com/ACWW2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />- James</blockquote>

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