I have a white whale. I’m always looking for the perfect superhero RPG experience. I thought I found it in Sentinel Comics RPG, but then my game store got in the Marvel Multiverse RPG, and the hunt was back on. I really want to like the game, but I keep struggling with games. My players love it, but it keeps being not right for me and I’m never sure why.

But I’m not confident that it’s not right for me. I need to run a game where I have everything prepared, where I’m as fluent as possible, so that I can know for sure that it’s the game system itself I have the problem with, and its not something I can work around. But let’s put a pin in this thought for a second. We’ll rejoin it in a bit, I promise.

On a different topic, I like running sandboxes. I like the control it gives my players, where they can be the masters of their own destiny. (Probably the type of thing that could get psychoanalyzed.) While pondering sandboxy thoughts, I had the idea of the inverse sandbox, where the players essentially stay still, but dangers around them are generated for them to deal with. (As opposed to where the players move, then interact with danger just where they moved.) As I was trying to put this ideological flip into words, I realized it could be perfect for a superhero game, where instead of the players chasing the plot of a singular villain, the city around them is emulating life, as the villains are following their own ideas, pursuing crimes, and the players have to hunt down the clues, and actually do some detective work to solve crime, where the plot doesn’t screech to a halt because the player fails the roll, because the game’s structure is okay with villains getting away with things.

Put a second pin in that, and follow the red thread to a new topic, where I talk about Batman for a second. I like Batman, and it TOTALLY makes sense to me why he doesn’t kill or use guns at all. (It’d be so, so easy, to just kill them one by one until the city is quiet. And if no one is left but the bats, well, so be it…) I’m one of those nerds who gets into arguments about Batman and has strong opinions about the franchise. Not super far along the bell curve, but certainly over the hump. I’ve thought a lot about how Batman works, and those discussions can get really interesting.

Third pin in place, we’re moving not very far to a tangential item. I realized recently that I’ve not seen the Adam West Batman show. I’ve seen clips, but not the whole thing. And since I had access, I realized I needed to actually watch it, So I grabbed the DVDs, and began the marathon. I have a LOT of thoughts all through the experience, but there was one fact that sort of blew my mind and became the focus that all of these pins connect to.

In the 1966 Batman, the villains were already established, not introduced each episode.

This may not seem mind blowing to you, but it through me for a serious loop. Most of the Batman shows I had seen previously had established the batman, then we got a new villain created and introduced. Sure, a popular character like the Joker or the Penguin reprise their role later, but most first appearances of a character was not just their first appearance in that series, but also the character’s first appearance in the world of that series.

To me, this says that the Batman of the 1966 show is winning. He’s sending people to jail, fixing problems, and making the streets safer. (Presumably. They don’t really have published crime statistics)

The modern story of the Bat asks about the arms race. Now that there’s one costume freak on the side of law, criminals will come out of the woodwork to challenge him. That’s what the Dark Knight seems to claim. Is it ethical to be the Batman, if you inspire people like Killer Moth to commit to a life of crime? It’s a tough question, because vigilantism is probably bad, in most circumstances. And if the Joker is killing people to challenge the Caped Crusader, isn’t their blood on his gloved hands at least a little? The world is dark, Gotham is doomed, and it’s only going to get worse.

But.

Imagine a world where Batman is winning. Where fighting the good fight is, well, good. A world where Gotham was so awful, so irredeemably, that everyone accepted the city was going to be horrible forever. Everyone, that is, until a man decided that the best way to fix it was to dress up as a bat, put on some tights, and take things into his own gloved hands. A world where all law and order need to stand back up from the gutter where dishonor and crime have been kicking them was a champion, someone to take a bit of pressure off the police, and to stand as a symbol for the common man, that there was hope.

(If you read that last paragraph as if Adam West was reading it, then we are on the same page)

So, with this mind-blowing realization established, we collect our pins from previous. A superhero game, with a reverse sandbox, that takes advantage of my love of Batman lore and tells the story of a city in darkness coming to light.

These are the thoughts that led to the Welcome to Gotham campaign.

The Pitch

I’ve come up with a pitch I really enjoy. It lets me do all the handwaving I want, canonical to the setting, lets players use any out of game knowledge they have without being too game breaking, and is all sorts of just plain fun. This is what I would share with my players before they even agree to play the game.

“During the course of a regular nerdy discussion about Batman, the players were interrupted by Bat-Mite, the 5th dimensional fan of Batman, who uses his reality warping powers to throw the players into a pocket universe where a crime-laden Gotham City is ripe for the players to prove that the can, in fact, ‘do the job better than Batman’, now that they are in his shoes. Can they turn it around and prove that they can fill his cowl, fixing the city, fighting crime, solving mysteries, and making life in Gotham brighter for its citizens? (System: Marvel Multiverse, Genre: Super Heroes, Inverse Hexcrawl)”

This would give players a lot of the information they would need to know if this is their sort of game. I would also give out the following details, to help answer any questions. 

System: Marvel Multiverse (Probably)
Genres: Super Heroes, Action, Mystery, Politics, Inverse Hexcrawl
Action: Exact mix of action style is dependent on players. Action scenes (aka, fights) are likely, but choosing to engage is going to normally be player choice.
Role Playing: Plenty of options for inter-player interactions. Plenty of potential for NPC roleplay, if players choose.
Homework: Minimal required. Ideally, in-world newspapers exist that are filled with hooks that can provide clues, but it’s not necessary. Players familiar with setting will have more of a feel of the world and potential, but nothing overly helpful.

Progression: Characters will start at Tier 2, and gradually progress to Tier 4. The base progression is slow, but accomplishing feats and milestones will give faster advancement for that session. Characters also have access to gadgets based on the progress of the city’s rehabilitation.

I try to have some details like this available when I send players a pitch. There’ll still be questions, I’m sure, but this gets some of the big ones out of the way. I also keep information for all sorts of games I’ve thought of, but not played. That way, once it’s time to spin up a new table, I can copy/paste the games I’m still up to run from my various pitch documents and send the results to the players. 

Mechanical thoughts

There’s still a lot of W2G that I need to figure out. The various expansions to the game have provided some of the pieces. The X-Men expansion has a piecemeal leveling mechanic that I plan to use as the basis of my Progression. The Spiderverse expansion has details on gadgets, which will let the players punch above their weight class. And being able to pull out some ridiculous gadget to save the day is very on brand. 

Side note: I’m currently running this in MMU because it’s a system that’s crunchy enough to have the improvement that I want players to experience as they learn their role. I’m not sure if it’s my forever system, but the prep I would need for this campaign might fix the issues I’ve had in being able to run the system.

Citizens are going to start the campaign by being terrified of the arch criminals, and not compliant with the party. This will adjust the target numbers needed to convince the public of anything, from “Report something suspicious” to “Don’t mention that I’m hiding here.”

The Inverse Hexcrawl and the resultant newspaper are going to be a HUGE aspect of this campaign, from the GM perspective. In an ideal world, all of the villains who are out of jail are DOING things. They each have their own capers being planned, each with a different target. And the newspaper should be sharing knowledge to the players the way it does for Batman. Articles about the Cat’s Eye diamond being hosted at the Gotham Museum of Natural History should be a clue that Catwoman is probably interested. But I need to know this way ahead.

Having some mook stat sheets is going to be useful. Actually, that’s one of the things that makes super hero games fun. Sure, at Tier 2, the players are going to be exchanging blows with henchmen, but those henchmen are going to be the same stats the whole campaign. At session one, the new batman can fight two guys. At session 30, he can fight like 20 of them solo. How easy it is to dispense of mooks is part of how you feel the level up.

I do wish I had some way of using the Villain Influence mechanic from 7th Sea 2e. It was a really neat idea that you need to foil villain plots to weaken them before your in person confrontation. Not sure how much it applies to most Master Criminals, actually, since getting caught and sent to a jail with a revolving door is how the setting operates. Maybe villains have a gadget budget too? I like that, actually.

Something I need to fit into the pitch is that at the beginning, the campaign will start 4-color, where Joker will have a scheme like “turn vending machines into slot machines, to corrupt the youth with the gambling bug.” Harmless, sort of. But if the players decide to kill people, to be brutal, then the tone shifts, and villains become darker and darker, being more likely to be the murderous version that they are in the modern era.

Player’s progression is going be broken up into three aspects. First, each session, the players will get one point of improvement towards the next tier. Each tier is essentially 10 points of powers, attributes and the like. Also, if the players foil a villain’s scheme or catch a villain, that’d be another point or two, depending on how impressive it is. The third method is through the gadget creation stuff, which is too theoretical at the moment for me to commit words to paper.

Matt’s Gotham

So, as you can imagine, I’ve been assembling a version of Gotham in my head to be the groundwork of the setting. Some of it is based on canon, other parts on my efforts figuring out how the aforementioned canon would work IRL, then even more is going to be based on what I’m going to need for the game aspect of this campaign. I have pages and pages of notes so far, but I can give some summaries.

Engineered Paradise: Gotham has been carefully cultivated to be a mafia paradise of sorts. All of its officials are corrupt, inept, or properly threatened, and have been for so long that the laws are merely a nuisance.

Low Consequence: Criminals aren’t immune to the law. They know that if they go too far, outside forces will step in and “fix” the city. So while crime is rampant, there’s actually the lowest murder rate. Criminals will also go quietly once caught. There’s no point in trying to escape and bring big heat, when going to jail is just 3 weeks of sentence. 

Super Affordable: Why would anyone live in such a crime hole? Well, it is super cheap, both to live, and for business. Businesses don’t last long, which is why there are so many abandoned factories in the city. There’s always real estate for a new corporate endeavor.

Civic Pride: Gothamites are a proud people, and deservedly so. Even though companies don’t last long, goods made in the town do. They sneer at outside goods. And people.

A Thousand Little Gangs: A few months of work at a short-lived factory provides enough to live on for the year, and many young adult residents have a lot of downtime. It’s not uncommon for them to fall into one of the many small gangs around the city. These are small, 5 people or so. They have a hang out, do some small crimes, and occasionally, provide the muscle for one of the crazy Master Criminals that do the big crimes of the city. 

Skraz

There’s obviously a lot of things that I have to do to make this campaign work. A lot of fiddly background work, so that I know what’s going on, no matter where my players decide to go, and what they decide to do. Ideally, at the end, I have a robust document that can be reused. This campaign idea is really cool, and I’d love to run it for different groups. I can see it playing out differently, time and time again. I’m excited for the potential, and I hope I can do the idea justice.