Unlike the typical HeroClix game, this is not player-versus-player. Rather, players work together, on the same team, against opponents chosen by the "Editor" - alternately known as the "GM" or "Gamemaster" or "Referee". Battle relies heavily upon the HeroClix rules, while the unfolding of the story between battles relies more heavily upon the moderation of the Editor - and upon how the players choose to characterize their heroes and heroines. (After all, this is a simple game, and by its very nature, there aren't rules to cover everything.)

This necessitates several rules changes to the HeroClix system for the scope of this campaign.

The main areas of change consist of:

Other special rules are covered elsewhere on this site in greater detail.

REDEFINITION OF TURNS AND ACTIVITATIONS
In the HeroClix system, each player has a set number of activations - one activation per 100 points of the starting force. During each Turn, one player makes his activations, and then the other makes hers, and so forth.

For the purpose of this game, Turns are treated differently, and some of the powers depend upon Activations rather than Turns.

At the start of each Turn, each side rolls 2d6 to determine Initiative. The highest score goes first.

The heroes' team is divided up amongst the players. For example, if there are four players, then they will have a total of four Activations for their part of the turn. Each player normally commands a single Hero (usually worth 100 points in this campaign), though some players might have control of a sub-team of lower-powered characters, or might also have control over a Sidekick or other minion/henchman/follower.

The Editor controls other characters - typically enemies of the heroes, but also possibly including neutral parties, such as "innocent bystanders". The Editor divides up the models under his command into a number of sub-teams equal to the number of players present. These sub-teams need not be equal in size or power; the most important thing is that they follow some sort of easily-remembered grouping scheme. For example, all the "ninjas" might go as one group, the "leader" in another, his "bodyguard" in another, and various "innocent bystanders" might form a fourth activation group.

If the heroes get to go first, then the Editor nominates one of the heroes whose turn it is - typically starting at one end, and then ultimately going around the table, to make sure that all players get a chance. (The purpose of the Editor nominating a player is for expediency, so that things can move quickly. The situation might suggest some other order than merely "around the table". For example, if all the heroes were in single-file in a narrow corridor, it might make sense to nominate the hero at the front of the line first.)

The nominated player may, at his discretion, defer to any other player who has not yet had his Activation - or, if he so chooses, take his Activation as normal. Any rolls for Leadership among the heroes may be made at this time, and certain free action powers, such as Perplex or Probability Control may be declared by any player, during any friendly player's turn.

The player makes all his activations, placing action tokens as appropriate, and then play goes over to the Editor.

When it is the Editor's time to act, he may choose any one of his own Activation Groups. He then moves all members of that group. Due to the large number of characters typically controlled by the Editor, compared to the number of heroes, the Editor may use a single action token to indicate that an entire group has been activated, rather than placing a token by each member. In the case of models that have been "pushed", however, two tokens should be placed next to that particular model.

Play goes back and forth in this way. When all groups have been activated, then it is the end of the Turn. Any models with two action markers are dealt Pushing Damage as appropriate, and all markers are removed. Initiative is then rolled, and a new Turn begins.

SPECIAL EXCEPTION: The assumption in the above rules is that all the players have characters that are friendly to each other. However, there may occasionally arise differences of opinion, rivalry, or outright hostility among fellow heroes. It may occur that a player announces that his hero is going to perform a certain action - and then another player declares that his own hero would try to stop that other character, or else perform an action before he can do so.

The second character must still be able to perform an action during this turn. Either he must not have been Activated yet, or, if he has already Activated, he must be able to Push himself to take an action to intervene.

The Editor has both parties roll for Initiative. The highest value wins. In the case of a tie, the tie goes to the player who first declared his intention. Whichever player wins may Activate his character normally. Play order then resumes as normal (which may mean that the character who was interrupted won't get to actually act until the Editor has finished his next Activation).

If it seems that there are players who are obviously hostile to each other, or to the rest of the group in general, then the Editor may decide that there are multiple "factions" on the table. Turn order is then treated as if there were three (or more) teams. If a lone player has multiple characters under his command, then he should divide up his models into separate Activation groups to model, as closely as possible, the number of Activation groups used by the hero group and by the Editor.

Since this is bound to get confusing eventually, ultimately whatever the Editor says, goes!

REDEFINITION OF PUSHING
"Pushing" is handled differently than in the standard game. There is no prohibition on any character taking actions in two subsequent turns. In fact, it's expected that every character will act during every turn. However, a player can elect to "Push" a hero under his control (and the Editor can do likewise with his models), thus allowing that character to take a second action during the Activation. This second action is handled immediately. Two markers should be placed next to the model instead of one, and at the end of the Turn, Pushing Damage (if applicable) will be handled as normal. Please note that this means that the "Willpower" ability effectively grants a character the ability to take two actions per Turn, thus making this a very potent ability, possibly out of proportion to its normal point value.

REDEFINITION OF POWERS AND ABILITIES
Several Powers and Abilities are significantly impacted by these changes.

CUSTOM TEAM ABILITIES / CHARACTERISTICS
The "Team Ability" seems like an ideal mechanism by which to give additional powers to characters, not normally covered in the basic color-coded list, or not possible to grant simultaneously, because two powers happen to exist in the same category. The Indy HeroClix character "Kabuki" introduces a wonderful way of getting around this: she has the "Kabuki" team icon on her base, and the "Kabuki Team Ability" is basically defined the same way as the Stealth Ability. So, she can actually have the "Flurry" power/ability, and the benefits of Stealth at the same time.

Following that precedent, in order to accommodate various new interesting powers for custom heroes, heroines, and villains in my campaign, I've created a number of custom "team icons" - or "characteristics" - to mark on the bases to represent additional powers or restrictions that apply to the character, regardless of the current damage.

It is possible for a character to have multiple Characteristics. A few custom Characteristics are indicated below:

NEW TERRAIN AND OBJECTS
This should be expanded later, but for now, a few additional objects suitable to be tossed about by superheroes and villains alike:

NON-COMBAT SKILLS
There are some activities that a player will want his character to take that simply aren't covered under the various powers and abilities - particularly in the intervening time between battles, as the heroes try to gather clues, disable doomsday devices, or track fleeing criminals.

For this campaign, each player character receives 10 Non-Combat Skill Points. These points may be freely distributed among any of the Skills defined for this campaign. If the player decides not to spend these all at once, they may be distributed during game play. When a skill is called for, the player may elect to spend one or two points immediately upon that skill, thus establishing it as a skill in that character's repertoire. If the skill comes up again, the character may likewise to choose to spend one or two more points, until the supply runs out. In this way, players need not feel pressured to arbitrarily choose skills, until such time as they get a feel for what their character can or can't actually do. (In game terms, the character could do this all along. We're just not finding out until such time as the skill actually proves to be useful.)

Having at least one point invested in a Non-Combat Skill ensures that the skill may be used. If desired, a player could choose to spend all 10 points in a single skill, thus making the character highly specialized. (He just won't be good at much else!)

It is assumed that all of these Non-Combat Skills represent a competent level of expertise, and not "Everyman Skills". For instance, within the campaign, it might be assumed that "everybody" can drive a car, or read directions, or figure out how to push the big red shiny candy-like button clearly labeled "Self Destruct" on the evil mastermind's doomsday device. There may be exceptions, of course, but that's for the Editor to figure out.

If a character invests a point in a skill, this is something that "Everyman" cannot do. If the character doesn't have even a point in a skill, then he can't attempt that task. If he has at least a point in that skill, the Editor may not even require a roll for it, if it's a relatively "basic" task. But, for those circumstances where success or failure are in question, the player rolls 2d6, adds the numbers together, and adds them to the number of points possessed in that skill.

To succeed, the character must beat a difficulty number set by the Editor. Typical difficulty ranges include:

NON-COMBAT SKILL LIST

HERO CHIPS
In a development largely inspired by the Deadlands Role-Playing Game, "Hero Chips" play a part in giving the players some small insurance against uncooperative dice. During the course of play, the players are rewarded with poker chips that can be exchanged for die re-rolls when desired. Typically, each player gets one Hero Chip at the start of the game session as a reward for showing up on time. Players get additional Hero Chips for witty in-character remarks, great role-playing, sympathetic compensation for a stroke of really bad luck, or minor rewards for in-game accomplishments.

After a player makes a die roll that he doesn't like the result of, he has a chance to toss in a Hero Chip if he wishes to re-roll one of the dice. Multiple chips may be spent: only the best result is kept. If he wishes, in a roll where two dice are involved, he may spend chips to re-roll both dice - but each one is rolled separately, and it costs one chip per die to re-roll.

You can also use Hero Chips to force an opposing character to re-roll anything that directly affects your character (such as an enemy rolling to attack you, or the damage rolled with Blades/Claws/Fangs). In this case, your opponent is forced to take the worse of the two results, even if the second roll turns out to be better.

Also, if your character should be Knocked Out, and thus out of the action, if you have any Hero Chips left, you may choose to contribute your Hero Chips from the sidelines to any still-conscious companions - either for their rolls, or to hinder rolls against them. This can represent either your disabled character shouting out words of encouragement at opportune times, the renewed fury of your companion to exact vengeance on the bad guys for defeating his buddies, or perhaps you happened to stick out a leg to trip a bad guy when he went past. (Players are encouraged to be creative in just how the Hero Chip might affect things favorably.)

There is an important exception: Ones and sixes CANNOT BE RE-ROLLED. If a one or a six comes up on a die, that die cannot be re-rolled with a Hero Chip. (It CAN still be affected by Probability Control, however!) If you spend a Hero Chip to re-roll part an enemy's attack, and the new roll is a 6, you have to stop spending Hero Chips to re-roll that die any further, but he still has to take the worst of the rolls so far. Similarly, if you spend a Hero Chip to re-roll your roll of "2" on Blades/Claws/Fangs, and you come up with a "1", then you'll have to stop, but you still get to go with the "2" at least.

There is also a cap on how many Hero Chips any one player may have at any one time. At the beginning of each session, no player may have more than 8 Hero Chips carried over from the previous game. (This limit is determined before the Editor hands out bonus Chips for arriving on time for the game, and there is no limit to how many Chips a player can have during the game. All the same, this is a cap meant to keep players from hoarding an unreasonable number of Hero Chips, only to unleash them at an unexpected time much later in the game.)