Chrome City Crime-Fighters
Posted: 07 Jul 2024, 12:04
After we finished the D&D Essentials Kit, Biter suggested we play a supers game. Him, his wife Rollergirl and kids, Splat and Catbro, would be playing. Even though Biter hates that genre, his kids love it so my challenge was putting a twist on the typical supers tropes, such that Biter would enjoy it too. Since they'd purchased their own 7 poly dice sets, the game had to use those too.
Index Card RPG (ICRPG) is a red hot mess of rules, settings and spurious ideas. Despite having a player's guide section, the Master Edition is a book for the GM to unpack and organise with coloured index tabs. In fact it should've been renamed "Index Tab RPG" and many reviewers have generously called it a toolkit.
Beneath it all though is an elegant core mechanic using a 7 poly dice set, and if the GM is building pre-gens anyway that it makes for an excellent one shot.
The smörgåsbord of settings in ICRPG, all blendable, reminded me of Palladium Books' Rifts that me and Biter played as kids. We had fond memories of that game, even if its system was a quagmire. I imagined a game that started out as supers in the city but became more Rifts-like.
I asked Splat and Catbro what super heroes they wanted to play. Catbro said Spider-man and Splat showed me the teleporting, mind-controlling teddy bear she'd created in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2. She explained quite clearly that her bear was an antihero and it reminded me of a nightmarish Care Bear.
I knew Biter was a fan of Lobo, Conan and the Warhammer 40K Space Wolves, so I worked with that. Rollergirl was a fan of Lara Croft and had some Batman graphic novels, and those two characters overlap quite nicely.
Cromwulf
Last surviving clone warrior of the Jovian Wars, turned interplanetary bounty hunter and hellraiser
Lara Bryce Wayne
Ruined aristocrat, globetrotter and avenging angel, out for justice against those who murdered her father
Nightmare Bear
Popular cuddly toy possessed by a dark entity, who’s seeking those responsible for summoning it from beyond
Spider-Vex
Diego Domingo was a normal schoolkid until bitten by a Martian spider. Then he vowed to fight street crime
Index Card RPG (ICRPG) is a red hot mess of rules, settings and spurious ideas. Despite having a player's guide section, the Master Edition is a book for the GM to unpack and organise with coloured index tabs. In fact it should've been renamed "Index Tab RPG" and many reviewers have generously called it a toolkit.
Beneath it all though is an elegant core mechanic using a 7 poly dice set, and if the GM is building pre-gens anyway that it makes for an excellent one shot.
The smörgåsbord of settings in ICRPG, all blendable, reminded me of Palladium Books' Rifts that me and Biter played as kids. We had fond memories of that game, even if its system was a quagmire. I imagined a game that started out as supers in the city but became more Rifts-like.
I asked Splat and Catbro what super heroes they wanted to play. Catbro said Spider-man and Splat showed me the teleporting, mind-controlling teddy bear she'd created in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2. She explained quite clearly that her bear was an antihero and it reminded me of a nightmarish Care Bear.
I knew Biter was a fan of Lobo, Conan and the Warhammer 40K Space Wolves, so I worked with that. Rollergirl was a fan of Lara Croft and had some Batman graphic novels, and those two characters overlap quite nicely.
Cromwulf
Last surviving clone warrior of the Jovian Wars, turned interplanetary bounty hunter and hellraiser
Lara Bryce Wayne
Ruined aristocrat, globetrotter and avenging angel, out for justice against those who murdered her father
Nightmare Bear
Popular cuddly toy possessed by a dark entity, who’s seeking those responsible for summoning it from beyond
Spider-Vex
Diego Domingo was a normal schoolkid until bitten by a Martian spider. Then he vowed to fight street crime