[GB] Heroes

[Mike]

For the initial game, we are looking at Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hermes for our initial gods.

Now we need heroes. I would like six heroes to start--one for each god--but then I'd like an extra six in our back pocket to offer in Kickstarter stretch goals. Heroes will be cheap to add, because they just require one hero card and a token.

So give us some ideas for heroes and which of the gods they would connect to well.

So far Phoebe has suggested Argus for Hera and Atalanta for Artemis (even though we have no Artemis yet). Then there's obvious ones like Heracles, Perseus, Jason, Achilles, Bellerophon, and on and on.

I'm not strong in this area, so all help is welcome. Heroes, demigod, maybe even some monsters. Anything is possible. A good gender mix would be nice too.

[FlameBlade]

Hippolyta, queen of Amazons, but under Ares.
Enyo is a minor goddess of war, often accompanied Ares.

Too bad Ares isn't a part of the pack. All from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... n_folklore

Found a larger body of works:

https://www.paleothea.com/Basic.html

Oooh. Helen of Troy?

[Mike]

Oh, that's good stuff Flame.

I just asked Noah, since he's all Percy Jackson these days, and he suggested Minotaur, Medusa, and Circe for the secondary set of heroes in the base set.

[Mike]

And right now is mostly about playtesting the god decks. Eventually the heroes will have powers and abilities of their own, bit not yet. Mostly I just want names so I can make hero cards for the Print-n-Play version.

[Mike]

Heracles
Atalanta
Achilles
Hippolyta
Penthesilia
Bellerophon
Theseus
Perseus
Circe
Medusa
Minotaur
Enyo (technically a goddess... but a minor one)
Argus
Ajax
Helen
Jason

[Mike]

Silenus (chief of satyrs)
Chiron (centaur)
A number of notable nymphs--Amalthea, Harmonia, Syrinx, Echo, Calypso... A bunch of others.

[Mike]

Heroes I am making cards for:

Achilles
Ajax
Argus
Atalanta
Bellerophon
Circe
Helen
Heracles
Hippolyta
Medusa
Penthesilia
Perseus

These are not at all set in stone. I just need names for flavor. They won't have individual abilities yet.

[Eliahad]

Flame had the thought that maybe we should have two heroes, two heroines, and two monsters. I like it. Or 3, 3 and 2.

[Mike]

Don't matter to me.

They fit 4 to a page, so 8's as good as 12. It's just so the playtest can have names.

[Mike]

With that being the case, I'm going to use Argus and Medusa as the monsters.

Achilles
Argus
Atalanta
Circe
Heracles
Hippolyta
Medusa
Perseus

Again, not at all set in stone. Just adding flavor. I think the hero cards will each have:
Name
Picture
Spaces for GP and HP
Favored Terrain (for now I will tie it to heroes instead of gods)
List of hero actions with costs
Maybe turn outline if there's room

[Eliahad]

Use these hero actions:

Sprint
Level 1 - Grab an ankle
Level 2 - Force Fumble
- or -
Level 2 - Shove
Level 3 - Knock Down
Level 4 - Knock Back
Level 5+ (Each level after 5 is a Knock Back, but harder to resist.)
Rest (only if did not take movement)

Sprint - 2 HP+hex cost: Move hero 1 hex.

Grab An Ankle - Hinder Defender for their next Hex of movement. Must pay 1 HP to move or the last adjacenr Hero to grab an Ankle is placed in the vacated hex.

Force Fumble - Defender drops Godball to a hex of their choice.

Shove - defender is moved to one of the 3 adjacent hexes that are away from the attacker.

Knock Down - The defender is knocked down.

Knock Back - The defender is Shoved and knocked down.

Rest - If the Hero did not take a move action, they may rest as their Hero Action and regain 2 HP.

[Phoebe]

I know a fair bit about this topic but there's something to be said for going with the ones that have the greatest cache right now in popular culture elsewhere. If a bunch of kids who watch movies and read Percy Jackson are going to identify with certain heroes, maybe those are the ones you should go with because that's what the audience will know and enjoy. If you're going to have an Athena IMO you need to give her an Odysseus as a hero... But if you have slots taken by others that are more popular or better known to people then go for it. Theseus might be good for Aphrodite.

Is the idea to have a wider selection of Heroes and have a couple Heroes assigned to each god? Maybe each God gets a couple Heroes - one male, one female, and one monster? I'm not sure yet how you envision this working in the final version. If you have questions about which ones should go with which, I can probably answer that.

[Mike]

No. The idea right now is to have names slapped on these cards so we have some extra flavor when playing them. So we can get used to calling the heroes by name instead of saying "Hermes moves to Mr. Olympus" or "Aphrodite puts 3 pts into an attack." These are ones I picked with very little consideration of the input of others.

Ultimately, the plan is to have 6 heroes in the final set. It would be nice if they each matched up sorta with one of the gods, but people will mix and match. And assuming this is a Kickstarter, then additional heroes will be included as some of the stretch goals so that if we meet everything, there will be 12 in the final product. Some who lend themselves to certain gods and some with no affiliation.

The final heroes will include some of the ones I've listed here, I'm sure, but the final selection could be just about anything. Right now all I know is that I'm a heavy advocate for Heracles, Atalanta, and Argus to make the final cut.

[Phoebe]

Okay I get it now. So you don't really need to generate a big old list and have them matched up - you just need to figure out which ones you think are the most awesome for flavor. There are so many good ones, don't really know how you can pick!

[Mike]

I don't know either, but I know you can help! Because you have opinions!

Honestly, I'm going with these for now just to finish the print and play, but please continue this conversation. We need to examine all sorts of heroes and monsters and demigods, hash out possible special abilities, discuss what gods (if any) might work well with each one, all sorts of stuff.

[Phoebe]

As soon as you guys get a printable copy - even if it's really rough and I have to put in some things with a pen - let me know because I would print it out and play it with all the various family and friends who are going to be around here over the various holiday breaks. My kids would like to try it and we could have a good 4 or even 5 person game. The other interesting thing that will happen in this house, given our natural tendencies, is that you'll have God's making deals with one another outside the gameplay in order to thwart another God in the game play. I'm interested to see if that makes scoring any easier. I'm sure you can understand why this is how we have to play all games. It's starting to become a problem with the youngest kid, since soon he is going to make himself a second target who needs defeating so that anybody else can accomplish anything. It's not hard to beat me in chess but it's a little harder, shall we say, to beat me in risk and he's getting close. It's also very annoying to be challenged by him for real, because the entire game he has made plain his sole and relentless strategy by chanting A - sia A - sia A - sia, and a person doesn't like to see someone so obvious succeed in his machinations. It is also annoying when he and his sister sing, this time for Africa. Risk used to be a quieter sort of experience.

[Eliahad]

Athletic Things Brainstorms:

Sprint
Kick (The Godball)
Throw (The Godball)

Wrestle
Hit/Punch
Grab
Knock Down
Throw/Shove (Players)
Kick (Players)
Block
Charge

I'm thinking for our Godless Godball playtest, we should try a BUNCH of different actions. But, to differentiate the Heroes somewhat, each gets two traits. One Passive (Hercules always gets to shove players an extra hex) and one active (Icarus can pay 4 HP to fly to a hex 2 hexes away, passing through any Heroes in his way).

[Mike]

Yeah...

Sprint
Kick ball
Throw/punt
Steal ball*
Force fumble
Dive for It* (If the ball drops/fumbles/lands in a hex adjacent to you, you can dive for it as a reaction--very expensive)
Knock down
Shove (push opponent 1 hex away from you)
Knock back* (shove opponent away AND knock down)
Flip player* (move adjacent opponent to any hex adjacent to yourself)
Throw player* (toss adjacent opponent to any hex up to two hexes from yourself)
Hurdle/Fly/Invisibility* (different flavors of moving through/over an occupied hex)
Bull Rush* (combo shove opponent and move into vacated hex)
Restrain* (reaction to stop hero from moving)
Reaction* (special power--probably only as a Gift that allows you to apply any Hero action out of turn)

Adding my brainstorming to yours there.

*May be a standard ability but may just be in the realm of special abilities and gifts.

[Mike]

Oooo...

Multiple Moves* (Ability to take two actions in the same round)

[Mike]

So what are you thinking for maneuvers?

Like, we have a set of standard Hero Actions, and then a list of specials. We each take two heroes and select one or two special powers for each one. Start with 5 or 6 points and just run them around for a while.

??