A New Mega-City One (Opinions Wanted)

[MongooseMatt]

Hi guys,

Thoughts are beginning to turn round to a new MC-1 miniatures game next year. We have some good sculpts in the original range that we can bring back, and there is scope for a whole lot more.

However, it is the game itself I want to take a look at. Gangs was all well and good, but it wasn't really 'Mega-City One'. It has some trappings, but wasn't quite 'there'.

Put another way, great gangs/skirmish game, not so much for bringing people into the wacky and weird world of MC-1.

Our thoughts at the moment are that any new game based in MC-1 should focus on the Judges, and not have them at the sidelines. Perhaps players have a squad or maybe a 'unit' of Judges, and play through scenarios, developing experience, promotions, new requisitions, etc.

They engage in a number of scenarios, ranging from chasing perps down the megway on Lawmasters, to busting apart a criminal hideout, to facing down a Block War.

Every player has a unit, they take it in turns to play the judges (much as people swapped Marines and 'Stealers in Space Hulk, say).

Probably using something akin to the BF Evo rules (after all, Gangs was the genesis of BF Evo!).


This is what we are kinda thinking at the moment - but what would _you_ like to see? Any and all ideas accepted right now!

 

[btom]

Well thats unexpected. Great news.

I do disagree that Gangs was not MegaCity enough, within the constraints necessary to have a miniatures skirmish game you HAVE to rely on gangs as they are the only real ‘units’ of combatants in the setting. Unless you’e going to refight the Sov invasion you can only get massed combat if you do gang warfare or a Block War.

Where I think you are potentially onto a winner is with the scenario led game as playing from the Judges point of view is interesting and is something that would probably attract a lot of players unconvinced by the Gangs focus.

The problem then is that you are relying on playing law enforcement which is 90% boredom and 10% excitement. The only way to do that I think (and I’m playing about with such a system set in a block at the moment) is to narrow the area to either a part of a sector or a single block and have one player taking control of the gangs (i.e being a mobster type) and the other being the judges.

The judge would have to allocate resources to certain areas – i.e. 60% on patrol, 20% on investigations etc and the mobster would do likewise – i.e. sanction bank raid in Block X or increase protection racket in Block Y.

A simple cross matrix would then generate where the 2 sides would clash – i.e a judge might be on hand to bust the bank raid and then be able to call up reinforcements to deal with it. If the mobster is successful over a period of time then he might get the citi-def on side and need to be dealt with by hordes of Judges.

Alternatively, sod all the above and just give us Block War.

To be perfectly frank anything involving a Mantra tank is fine with me.

 

[btom]

Oh, and plastic judges. Remember the plastic judges.

 

[Agis]

:shock: Goods news! IMO you hit the nail pretty good.

I still think that MC1 had the right feel but it lacked focus on the judges.

I still remember when I tried to get some players into the game and all replied:
"What? I have to play a stinking horde of Gangers? I stick with Necromunda..."

So focus on the Judges, make it the 1st of the super detailed small skirmish Evolution games.

 

[Bostich]

Have a look at INFINITY. It has a really good AP system that's a bit more flexible, and the units are always on overwatch which makes for more firing opportunities.

Love the idea of making the judges more involved in the game.. so "Megacity One" not "Gangs of...".

Consider working out a deal with Worldworks to get some Megacity-specific terrain to work in to their Mayhem range.

Expand the campaign side a bit.. provide campaign maps.. Look to what PP has done: http://privateerpress.com/WARMACHINE/default.php?x=game/downloads

Keep it a skrimish-level game: low unit density but lots of action.

That's it for now

 

[Arabin]

Finally! A post worth logging in for

First of all, excellent news that you are finally working on a sequel. I guess the merger with Rebellion is starting to pay off.

I still love GOMC-1 itself, but "GOMC-1: II" focusing on the judges makes it likely I'd play both.

One way to keep the excitement and mega-city whackiness going on would be random events. For example, it is your squad's turn, you are closing in on the Shuggy Hall for a crime blitz, you draw a card from the random pile... oh no... a Fatty Streaker charges onto the play area. As a judge, you shouldn't ignore a crime... but maybe there is a roll to see if you can ignore it, and if you deal with it, maybe there is a downside or the perps noticing one of your squad moving about.

Some other ideas:
- a passerby drops some litter
- a leaper comes into play and splats in front of you, chance of hitting your squad, or maybe just chance of panic. Afterall, your squad isn't as tough as Dredd.
- sky surfer snatches a purse from the bystanders
- if vehicles are in play, you could have
- illegal boing user bounces onto the table
... the possibilites are endless, and gives a chance for all the fun on the Big Meg to come into play.

Adding bystanders would be a great addition... as a judge squad, you'd need to keep the panic down, couldn't shoot into a crowd, and best of all for Mongoose, you could sell tons of citizen sprues!

One thing I would love to see... could you partner with WorldWorks Games or Ebbles Miniatures to design cardstock models to go with the game?

Exciting times...

Arabin

 

[xeoran]

Kudos Matt- that's an excellent way to refocus it. I think the idea of putting you in charge of a squad of Judges is excellent. As all the characters introduced in the comic books are essentially introduced by their conflicts with the judges I think its the best way to go.

That also allows you far wider scope. So its not just Judges vs. Gang it can be block war, Mutants, Sovs, Renegade Judges, Robot Bank Robbers etc. That also allows you to balance the fights a lot more: dealing with a rogue psychic and his meat puppet army of citizens and you get sent a PSI-Judge to help. Defending against the Sov invasion? Have a squad of Cit-Def. Run it scenario wise, with a different enemy and crime each time, i.e.:
ENEMY
1. Mutants
2. Gangers
3. Robots
etc.
CRIME
1. Bank Raid
2. Muggings
3. Saboutage
etc.

This is absolutely something I could get behind and play to death. The only worry really would be the quality of any miniatures line and its release schedule. But I think you can guess where I'm coming from on that. I'm not hugely keen on the idea of the BF Evo system as anything but the most generic base but if you want help or playtesting I'm more than eager.

 

[Arabin]

Oh, one thing I forgot to say... definitely keep is skirmish, not massive table filling wargame like SST. Some scenarios like Blockwar could be played on larger layouts, but in general, the smaller, more focused gameplay in GOMC-1 worked much better for me.

I'm not interested, nor do I have the room for a large wargame... but I do love a skirmish game... and I love boardgames. Perhaps you could combine those ideas into a hybrid gateway type game. A miniatures game that plays like a board game, hence the event cards I mentioned above.

As I said, adding bystanders increases your profits, without having to go down the massive wargame route, requiring people to convert their garage to fit the gaming table.

Arabin

 

[Bede]

My advice.

Don't get back into miniatures.

We've all seen where that has lead in the past. I have a pile of SST and BF Evo miniatures to prove it.

 

[Shadow Queen]

how about a mix between a rpg and a minis game

 

[lochmoigh]

My advice.

Don't get back into miniatures.

We've all seen where that has lead in the past. I have a pile of SST and BF Evo miniatures to prove it.

Sorry to say amen.

 

[B_Steele]

I'm still a big advocate for Judge Dredd: Evolution. Make the rules, make the armies, make a good campaign system; let the players choose how they want to play it.

-Bry

 

[Rabidchild]

A Spacehulk style game would get me interested. Either playing the judges or the rioting mob, good fun there.

 

[xeoran]

Making it a full wargame is certainty for fail. Skirmish is absolutely the way to go. MGP has the ability to make decent minis, their GOMC line wasn't bad and some of the earlier SST stuff was OK, its just they really, really need to beef up quality control and hire decent sculptors.*

I really like the idea of packing it as a box with some judges and some gangers and a CD full of print-out terrain. MGP could do a lot worse than to team up with someone like WorldWorks. Then to cover all the armies in the rulebook (till they're released in metal) include print-out paper miniatures of all the various troop types. Considering the wealth of Mega City 1 artwork that shouldn't be all that difficult and it would be very well received as well as being new and fresh.

I think the spacehulk comparisons are a great idea of where to go.

*Obvious comparison: the various European games with superb minis and slow release schedule: Hell Dorado, Infinity, Alkemy etc. Spending the money pays off.

 

[GMAN]

It's great news to hear GOMC1 is being talked about once more. I'm a massive Dredd fan and the thing that put me off wargames was i could never get my head around the rules, so it was great to not only have a Dredd game, but also one with such great rules that i could understand.

I think the main set back it had was that, like so many people have said, there weren't enough of the judges, after all, thats what you read about in the comics, theyre bad ass and it's what youd want to play in a game. Although i do think that you cant over look the street gangs as a main feature in the game. Aspects like the territories, and my personal fave, the specialists, really kept it a Mega-City One wargame rather than a sci-fi wargame.

Personally id keep keep the core rules pretty much the same, maybe tweaking the odd thing or two, But i'd add a section for playing as a judge squad you can develop as well, such as a cadet judge squad, these could then specialise in different areas like PSI or Medics, or maybe even give them an option to go rogue. These could then grow along side the street gangs in a campaign.

I completley agree that events and scenarios are the way to add character and 2000AD to the games, so if you had a campaign with both judge squads and street gangs itd add a level of excitment to all players as well as keeping it in line with the comics.

As far as a mass battle game is concerned, id stay away from that for now, keep it small and siple, like the bulk of gang warfare happens in the comics. But i wouldnt keep the idea of mass riots etc out of the picture, expansions and supplements exist for this very perpurse. Get the core rules set, then add optional game styles. Plus once a new player has the minis for a gang or squad its not too far or expensive to build up a bigger bunch of minis for larger scale games.

One of the biggest things id suggest is the box, i liked the game mat but the card the building were made of wern't that sturdy, id also look at new plastic gangers as well as the adition of plastic judges. The back of the box could also look more impressive, it should look dynamic and make someone want to buy it when they pick up the box in a shop, although i still really like the cover artwork. And one last thing would be to advertise the hell out of it in 2000AD and the Megazine, have articles in them leading to its launch date, espcially the Megazine. I didnt see much of that for GOMC1.

Anyway, thats my thoughts, since GOMC1 has been making a reappearance in S&P recently ive been dusting off some of the old articles i was writing up when i submitted the Trans Dime article, so i think im gonna start play testing those once more.

 

[xeoran]

The biggest reason to stay away from a big battle game is that would involve far more figures and as pretty much everyone I've heard talking about this has said- the miniatures need to be good. Start small with the pre-existing audience. If it goes well and people demand it then think about branching out.

 

[alien]

Wonderful.

I think that you would do something similar to the Infinity game, and a total skirmish game.

I'd like the miniatures.

 

[ned-kogar]

Smashing!

This is really good news.

As having judges fight against eachother doesn't make much sense (outside of SJS investigations, rebelling against Judge Cal, decomissioning Mechanismos, etc), I assumethat if everyone played judges you'd just be competing to fight crime better than eachother... hmmm.. all players play the 'criminal / disruptive' forces in the opposition's district.

The Bank Raid scenario (and the homemade Kidnap, Mopad Hijack and Mutant Animal Hunt we've mucked about with) made a nice change from going gang vs gang all the time. So I think that a system which allows people to throw judges at a variety of different threats, and indeed play potential threats as an ongoing concern would be dandy. Running a judge 'squad' (or perhaps a sector house) or perp gang or Xenomorph enclave or breeding group of albino gators or Citi-Def Unit or Sov cell in the same campaign, occasionally running up against eachother could work.

The difficulty is finding a campaign system that rewards each type of group.

I guess Judges work well, for me, in GoMC-1, cos they're not expected to have a consistent 'growth' that increases due to their success - their response is always in proportion to the threat. So perhaps judges should have a budget for each specific challenge, from which they can conceivably access any Justice Department resources. Just cos they used Weather Control vs that riot, shouldn't mean they must use them from now on.

That's all fine under BF:Evo's points-based army building / campaign attrition scores (they could work I guess... although there's that slight illogic in the Justice Dept being forced to pull out of an area. Not impossible though), but might be hard to reconcile with non-judge forces. Maybe.

I thought both btom's resource allocation idea and Arabin's random additional crimes would be ways of complicating the judges' game to compensate for their general hardness.

Hmm. I really look forward to seeing how this develops!

Ned

 

[Greg Smith]

Would a more straight forward combat game work?

With various factions/armies, such as:
Judges
Gangers
Fatties
Robots
Sov Judges
Cursed Earth mutants
etc

 

[leutenantbrittan]

Hurrah!

Id love to see some of the following being considered:

SJS squads
Wally Squad Judges
Hotdog Runs
League of Fatties
Angel Gang
Judda
Cit Def
Sov Judges
Riot Squad (rather than just having one miniature how about a blister pack of 3 different poses?)
Brit Cit, Texas City, Vegas, Luna Judges
Flying Squad
Dark Judges
Bite Fighters
Gila Munja Assassins
Muties

Each force could be based around a specific theme for example street judges, mob blitz agencies, hunting clubs etc and consist of between 3 and 15 miniatures. One side plays the law while the other the perps (or in the case of SJS law versus rogue judges!)

Also give each force the option to bring in specialists for example:

Organised crime could take a jimp or blitz agency
Street Judges could bring in a riot squad judge or even have a wally squad judge concealed in the opposition force
Bring in individual characters like dredd, anderson, fink angel (I believe many would buy character miniatures just to paint rather than just gamers!)

I would really like to see the game being scenario based with each side being given specific objectives. Also you could use a random events table or deck of cards to simulate the sheer randomness of the big meg (love to see Boingers Randomly dropping onto the table, weather control breaking down, Juve or eldster gangs turning up and starting a rumble, muties, dinosaurs, jimps, democracy rallys or just about any of the wierd things that can happen in the comics!)

I would love to see the universe that dredd inhabits be expanded on in the game too: campaign packs could be released covering some of the major stories from 2000ad such as dredd trek over the cursed earth to deliver medical supplies to mega city 2, the judge child quest, dredds time as luna marshal, block mania, the sov invasion... the list goes on and on as theres over 25 years of stuff to cover!

Some packs of citizens would be good too!
Walter and Maria!

There would be tons of interest in the game but it needs to focus more on the judges!