The "Superior City" campaign takes place in a fairly "generic" superheroic world, based in the city of the title. The HeroClix rules are used to facilitate combat, though several rules are altered to make the game better suited for roleplay - with the role of the "Editor" (AKA "GM" or "Gamemaster" or "Referee") added to provide the story, to play the "bad guys" and "innocent bystanders" and "allies" ... and also to play as mediator when one of the many gaps in the rules \ comes up. (After all, this is a simple game, and by its very nature, there aren't rules to cover everything.)

First of all, rather than this consisting of a battle of player versus player, it consists of a group of players, each of whom controls his own 100-point custom superheroic model, against various opponents chosen by the Editor. Figures were kitbashed and glued onto MageKnight or HeroClix plastic bases, with custom icons and labels printed off and glued to the base's surface to represent point values, team abilities and ranged combat abilities. Custom dials were printed off, thanks to a utility created by Robert Doyle, and a bit of tweaking in Adobe Photoshop. I based new custom characters off of existing ones, thanks to the handy catalog of characters, abilities and points costs provided by Wiz Kids in their HeroClix Figure Galleries. (The "Advanced Search" was particularly valuable for finding characters with specific powers within specific point ranges.)

I've run many campaigns in many different game systems, though I tend to keep coming back to a few favorites. My play style was heavily influenced by my time of playing various tabletop miniatures wargames, such as Games Workshop's "Warhammer Fantasy Battle", and Target Games' "Warzone". I was particularly inspired by another Games Workshop product, "Advanced HeroQuest", which was ostensibly a board game, but it contained enough elements of a fantasy role-playing game that, with a little tweaking, it made for some very interesting (and fast-paced) campaigns.

I like the flexibility of role-playing games, the ability to, in essence, write a story with the players. However, there comes a point where all the detail in the rules gets in the way of the story. As the DungeonMaster, I find myself increasingly frustrated when a player insists that he has a special Feat from some sourcebook that I don't have (and which he can't produce, because a friend has it) - or I find myself struggling to remember the rules for Grappling or Attacks of Opportunity. In certain other games, I find that the superheroic action is bogged down if we're trying to add and divide to determine the powers of a new gizmo created from a "gadget pool" in the middle of combat - or we're losing track of which Speed Phase we were on. Or perhaps it doesn't seem that the game has the right feel if the heroes are engaged in a blaster fight with agents of the Evil Galactic Empire, and, due to the wild nature of "Wild Dice" in the game system, I as GM have to consider the possibility that the next blaster bolt that actually hits one of my unarmored heroes might instantly incinerate him ... or bounce harmlessly off the shine of his teeth.

Sometimes, simplicity is good. I like to know where I stand with the players. I like to have a good idea of how tough of a challenge I'm putting the players up against ... and I want the battle to go quickly, without much time being spent flipping through rulesbooks or reams of statistics.

That's where HeroClix comes in handy. Rather than me having to keep track of several sheets of statistics for various opponents, or flipping through a "monster manual", I can just dig into my Bin of Bad Guys and pull out a few characters, check to see that their point total adds up to something about the right number for this challenge, and then go into battle, relying upon their dials to keep track of the data for me.

For the players, the Combat Dial isn't quite so useful. After all, with the sorts of games I run, the players often have plates of food, and bottles of soda between them and the "play area". I'm typically the one who has to reach over the scenery to move the miniatures, as directed, and to turn the Dials when someone takes damage. The figures are too far away for them to comfortably peer at the dials themselves, so I've printed off reference sheets listing all their statistics and the rules relevant to them. A paper clip attached to the top of the page can easily be slid this way or that, serving as a pointer to which column on the "Clicks Chart" the character is currently at, and to tell when the character is finally "Knocked Out". That seems to do the trick nicely.

As for the campaign itself, it takes place in a fairly generic "superheroic" location. It's something like the "near future", with cars on the streets, rather than flying between buildings. Sure, there may be secret government projects, or the occasional guy with nifty gadgets, or people rumored to have mutant powers, but the world at least pretends to be something like our own. Some folks might be well adjusted to the idea of an alien from outer space, while others might scream and run. There's still at least some amount of mystery around amazing technology and paranormal phenomena. Of course, after a few attempts by supervillains to take over the world, a few alien invasions, and a few caped superheroes duking it out over the city, that just might change!

ON DEATH AND DYING
For the most part - at least at the beginning - the adventure consists of a string of battles between the heroes (each a custom 100-point superhero) and the bad guys (a selection of regular and customized HeroClix opponents - though typically granted new, non-trademarked identities for my campaign). In general, the heroes don't get killed; they merely get knocked out. If they get captured by the bad guys, they're likely to find themselves imprisoned by the villains, or perhaps locked into some overly clever device designed to give them a slow, excruciating (and ultimately easily escaped) means of death. That's not to say that it's impossible to die: after all, it does happen on occasion in the comics. But then, death is hardly permanent there, either.

Also reflecting the nature of traditional superhero comics, our heroes are fairly resilient. They may be knocked unconscious in a battle, or battered nearly to that point, but once the dust clears and the authorities come to lock up the captured bad guys, our heroes are pretty much back to normal. (In other words, their dials get moved back to full strength.) If, however, the heroes should regain consciousness in the middle of an evil madman's laboratory, they might find themselves at various levels of strength at the Editor's whim. (In a worst case scenario, they only have one last remaining click, but more often I let each hero roll 1d6, and that's how many clicks he has recovered since regaining consciousness.)

So, can our heroes die? I sure hope not! It should take some genuinely suicidal efforts or extreme incompetence to get to that point. A more likely doom for a would-be hero would be that he basically gets "written into a corner" - that is, if he is particularly anti-heroic, it might get to a point where the other heroes wouldn't associate with him, and I have no plans to make everyone sit and wait while I run the miscreant vigilante's solo adventures separately. Thus, if a hero's actions (or inactions) push him too far out of the spotlight, he just might be left behind.

ADVANCEMENT
Most games have some sort of built-in way for characters to advance in skill abilities or "hit points" - or perhaps gain power through the collection of wealth and "magic items". Not so here. Yes, I know that if I read the comics diligently enough, I would see exceptions, but the general perception of the "superhero" is one who has a distinct set of powers and abilities - and these are largely unchanging. Plus, HeroClix doesn't really have an "advancement" system, and there's no clear way that I have at my disposal to determine point values for increases in powers, abilities and statistics.

So, I'm focusing instead on the "perks" of being a hero. The hero doesn't change, in and of himself, but he might gain a sidekick. Or perhaps he gets fancier duds. Or he gets his own cool secret base. Or he gets his own spiffy super-vehicle. The hero himself is nonetheless fairly unchanged ... though there might be some shifting around of powers and abilities within the 100-point profile if it looks like it's really warranted.

OBJECTIVE
So what's the point? Well, that's for me to know, and the heroes to find out. It's not just going to be a mindless string of battles against villains who keep popping out of jail to come back for more. I plan on introducing an underlying theme and story for the heroes to discover ... or, for that matter, ignore, if they're so inclined! It's just my hope that by simplifying the combat system, we can still have the "Sock! Pow! Bam!" of the four-color comic world, without losing the story in the rules bog.