Stalwart Team Up Part 3

Here's Tipo. I merged visual inspirations from classic Daredevil, Batman, and Spiderman (with some Moon Knight vibes because of the totem) to create my absolute favorite character I've ever created of all time. He's friggin' amazing. I cannot believe that this just came out of my stylus. I wrote the first 2,000 words of his story yesterday, and I'm hooked. I'll talk about my idea for a 'publishing model' for this in a bit, and how it's rapidly evolving, but my first thoughts (which I wrote yesterday morning, and am already starting to re-consider) are below. It's going to be a bit of a messy process, but I like my messy process. I am very confident it will take me where I want to go.

On to blogging...

I’ve already realized a big truth about writing superhero adventures. If I try to write ‘generic’ adventures for anyone, I end up with nothing. I have no ideas. Zilch. If I write specific stories for specific characters, I suddenly have the flood gates open and ideas roll forward. I’ve already got four or five ‘adventures’ roughed out. 

My plan is to do a multi-step process for each ‘issue’ I create:

1. Design the adventure/story/comic (it’s all three) here via the blog. Talk through my design process and how I put it together.
2. Actually play through the thing and write about the actual play experience on my blog.
3. Use my notes to write up a proper adventure to release as a pay-what-you-want release to support the game.
4. Write up the actual 'adaptation' of this issue in the way I've been writing Doc Stalwart adaptations and publish them somewhere (I'm thinking maybe going full Amazon e-book for these, and making each one longer - more in the range of 8-10,000 words rather than the 2,500-3,000 I was aiming for with Doc stories).
5. Bonus: Repeat until I get bored or run out of ideas. Or squirrel. Or fall play starts. Hopefully get a few 'in the bank' so when my mind has to take a hard right angle in 6 weeks, I've got enough stuff to keep a presence for a few months while I'm very busy on school.

In terms of how this adapts to something playable by others, there are going to be a few default possibilities:

• You’re playing a solo campaign (as I’ll be doing), and you use this pretty much the way I’m using it.
• You have two (or more) players, and one of them always takes the role of the main character, while others are the ‘team-uppers’.
• You just use original characters to play these adventures, adapting them to your group as needed. Ideally, each issue would include ‘alternate hooks’ to pull a group that is not rooted in this story into the same adventure via an alternate pathway.

It’s going to be a comic series (Stalwart Team Up) that was first released in 1984… right around the time of Mighty Doc Stalwart #251… so this is a parallel book. While it would make sense for Doc Stalwart to appear in the first issue, I feel like it should be Bronze Beacon… unless she left these things to Doc and he’s the one distributing them. I suppose that works. He could then ‘hand off’ some duties and officially bequeath some of the responsibility for protecting Meridian. He’s the one with the role now (and his name IS on everything I do), so him ceremonially handing it over in some way might matter in the bigger picture. On the meta level, the publisher would have wanted Doc to appear in the first issue from a marketing and sales perspective. If they could have sold a lot of books with Bronze Beacon as the lead, they'd have already done that. They know Doc is their money maker. I can always bring Bronze Beacon in later. She’s easier to justify later stories around; Doc is leaving Meridian, he will be off on a big adventure (that I’ve already published), so this is a narrow window between the end of the 250 and the start of 251. It's the same reason Spiderman appeared in everything for the longest time. He just sells more comics.

Okay, that settles it.

Let’s talk about some goals from a game design and storytelling perspective.

• I need to tell Tipo's origin in a compelling, concise way.
• I need to give him a reason to team up with Doc Stalwart.
• I need to create the mechanism by which Doc hands off the task of distributing the other relics.
• I want to create another hook for future stories (foreshadowing some larger threat).

Right away it comes to me. As soon as he can talk to cats, they can bring him problems. Report things around the city. He has a whole secret spy network of alley cats who see and know everything that’s going on. This is going to be a HUGE benefit in terms of hooking stories going forward. He doesn’t have to sit around listing to police scanners or patrolling the city looking for criminals. He just has to chat with the neighborhood cats to see what’s up.

I honestly think it’s kind of a brilliant hook. This is already a great idea for an ongoing comic book. Furthermore, it is rife with possibility for some humor. Daredevil keeps hitting up the same two thugs. He's got a few stray cats who are particularly connected, but who are a pain the butt to deal with. "I said three cans of tuna. What's with this guy trying to short me? Can you believe this Luigi? The disrespect we get from this guy?"

As an aside, this whole thing is my chance to work out my ‘frustrated comic book creator who never got to do it for real’ persona. I really, really wanted to live this life when I was in my teens and twenties, and to finally get to realize it in this way is sort of trippy.

So, the hook for future stories is already baked into my city book (which is how I’m hoping others will end up using it), which is that an unethical corporation is dumping waste in the poorer parts of town. I like the whole ‘little guy vs. corporations’ theme. It’s a larger theme that the book can focus on. This opens up potential for politics and intrigue and those things going forward as well. Ultimately, the book will work best if it’s comprised of stand-alone adventures that have a larger narrative thread linking them. This corporate entity is probably a good way to start it.

So, a possible order of events:

1. Doc arrives with a totem that ‘belongs’ to Teo’s family, and he is the ‘rightful heir’ to it. His father is dead, so it goes to him.
2. He gets powers, and quickly learns of a problem that the cats tell him about.
3. Doc agrees to help him with this (I have the image of Mr. Incredible at the beginning of the Incredibles checking his watch because he’s late for his wedding… Doc has a lot to do before he heads to the North Pole and gets to work at the Tomorrow Project, but he also is a hero and has a lot of loose ends to wrap up here… he kind of can’t help himself but participate, even though he has to leave soon. It puts a clock on it).
4. They solve the problem, defeat the villain, and take a first shot at the corporation in some way. This is obviously the big part of the adventure.
5. Doc leaves, tasking Teo with helping the city and distributing the rest of the items.

A good first villain… I actually want the new villain each issue to be a big part of the draw of this. From a game perspective, having a new villain each issue makes it something worth getting to expand your game in a meaningful way. A lot of the heroes will be existing (although I’ll get through them in short order), so I’ll be making new heroes at some point, too.

I’ve already got Sludge (he would have been perfect for this – toxic waste making the villain and all), but I’ve already got him published. I’m actually writing this blog post before I’ve finished the city guide to Meridian – Bog Horror is in there, but this would be a good place to do his origin story. Parallel him with mystical energy for good (Teo) and mystical energy corrupted by waste and contamination (Bog Horror). He’s a good parallel starter villain. But I don't love him as the recurring 'arch enemy'. I feel like 'issue one' is the chance to establish a keystone character like that.

I also think a hunter might be a good villain. Teo is a cat, so having a hunter be his first villain is a nice parallel as well. I start thinking about how to frame him as different from Kraven in some significant way…