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[#3] Unleashing the Hunters

9/30/2017

The Core Hunters
As it stands right now, the core rulebook will contain full write-ups for fifteen pre-made, ready-to-use hunters. Eleven of them were ported from the original card game version of Urban Manhunt and I created a brand new one today (Neon Leon). The Grinning Reaper, based on the fantastic illustration Nolan Segrest crafted for us, will be statted up soon as well. That leaves two “slots” open. I’d like to do a create-a-hunter contest soon to fill one more slot.

The list of hunters is as follows:

Chang Mu: A vicious but philosophical bad-ass with an “Attila the Hun” type of gimmick.
Gridiron: This strong woman in football garb is hellishly dangerous when she gets up close.
Magnum Steel: A veteran who has defined the role of the modern hunter. Super versatile!
Sly Fox: A weasel of a man who delights is screwing with other hunters and using his cleverness to win matches.
Crazy Joe Hacker: A psychopath with a chainsaw. What’s not to love?
Hugo Strong: A big-game hunter who meticulously stalks his prey before making the elimination.
Punkster: A chaotic young woman with a skateboard, sword and unpredictability on her side.
Fastlane: The most popular hunter, even though he relies on constant communication with his “Pit Crew”.
Pirate Jane: Her name says it all. She’s a true swashbuckler and violent as hell. Her parrot helps her out a lot too.
Blue Beret: This military woman is serious-minded and lacking in pizzazz, but she is absolutely brutal, capable of taking out multiple crims in a short amount of time.
Neon Leon: A gargantuan ex-pro wrestler in power armor covered in neon lights. His glow can be very distracting to other hunters and crims alike.
The Grinning Reaper: Very dark and mysterious killer who may be the best melee combatant in the game.
Bonnie Clyde: A lethal woman with a tommy gun and a 1930s-era gangster gimmick. She can avoid damage so easily!

My goal with creating these hunters was to encourage a truly different playstyle for each one, yet make them versatile enough to accommodate other ways to play them. Some are more versatile than others, but that goes with the territory.

One would think that porting the old characters would be an easy task, but it wasn’t. Their stats for the card game were extremely generalized and simplified due to the nature of that style of game. For example, each hunter had one special rule and all fighting skills were relegated to a stat called “Combat”, with no mention of specific weapons. That simply wouldn’t due for a miniatures game that focuses on each player controlling one hunter. So the old stats were of little assistance.

I had to reconstruct them more or less from the ground up, using their illustrations as a guide and working in the various weapons depicted and the like.

Creating Sly Fox
To give you a better idea of what was involved in recreating the old hunters for a new type of game, I decided to shine the spotlight on one hunter and go through the process with you.

In the card game, Sly Fox was quite one-dimensional. His sole ability was to allow the player to draw two cards instead of one. Granted, in that game, it was a pretty powerful ability, but it didn’t do much to give the player a grasp of who he was as a person, what his personality was like or anything else. It simply insinuated that he liked having options at his disposal. That was a start, at least.

When it came time to create his new stats, I found more inspiration in his name and in Patrick Sullivan’s illustration than I did in the game stats. “Sly Fox” speaks volumes about the man, really. Or at least as I saw it. To me, it indicated that this fellow was slick, cunning and knave-like. The illustration certainly bore that out as well, which is testament to Patrick’s ability to bring these characters to life visually. The rakish mustache, the little domino mask, his facial expression and even the way he was pulling the pistol out of his jacket… it all suggested that we were dealing with a smarmy but charming rogue. Now THAT was something I could work with!

The flavor text on the old card lent a hand as well, but also opened up another question that needed to be answered. It read:

“Sly’s success is baffling. He’s not that good in a scrap, he doesn’t have an imposing aura about him, and he doesn’t seem to possess a strong killer instinct. But the truth of the matter is that the man is good. Damn good.” ---- Hugo Strong

That vagueness was fine for the card game, but for a miniatures game with a lot more detail? Not a chance. I had to figure out exactly how he managed to do well in the sport if he wasn’t a great fighter, didn’t have that “it factor” and lacked killer instinct.

After some serious thought, I came up with a solution: maybe he screws with other hunters, stymying their efforts at every turn so that his modest combat abilities would be enough to pull him ahead. He’s a pest!

This channeled my efforts into developing Special Rules, Attacks and Momentum Options that would facilitate how I was now envisioning him. I gave him three Special Rules. The first one was “Outfoxed”, which could force an opponent to discard a card from their hand. The second was “Denial of Glory”, which represented him sabotaging the eliminations made by nearby hunters so that they seem less exciting to the fans (who normally award exciting eliminations with additional points). The final Special Rule was “Steal the Thunder”, allowing him to steal a point of Momentum from an opponent.

I wanted to carry this theme on with Momentum Options as well. While he has the “Re-roll” Option that almost every hunter has and the fairly standard “Upgrade”, he also has “Distraction”, an Option that reflects Sly constantly annoying other hunters when they’re trying to win the game. To those ends, he can spend 2 Momentum to downgrade all their dice to effectively lessen their chances of success. His final Option is “I’ll Take That”. With it, you can plunk down 3 Momentum to swipe a freshly drawn from another player.

Now, before you start thinking that ol’ Sly is completely incapable of eliminating crims, rest assured that although his Shoot rating isn’t stellar, it is respectable. He can handle his pistol fairly well. And what a pistol it is! The Bruiser Pistol is capable of doling out some blood-soaked punishment. If used in conjunction with his “Re-roll” and “Upgrade” Momentum Options, this gun can blast right through just about any crim!

All told, I’m excited to see how he balances during playtesting. I’m sure some adjustments will have to be made, but I want to ensure that the character’s essence stays intact. That’s what’s important to me. Sly Fox offers a unique way to play the game. To lose that would be a travesty.

With all of the crims, I want their game stats to define who they are, not just what they can do. Their individual personalities should be as integral to how they’re played as their skills with swords and guns.

Here’s what Sly’s stats look like:

Sly Fox
Fight       2
Shoot       3
Defense   5
Athletics   2
Mind       4
Pizzazz   3

Height: 2
Wound Maximum: 5

Special Rules
Outfoxed: This hunter may take a Universal action and choose another hunter within 12 inches and in line of sight. Make a Mind vs. 2 check. If the check is successful, the player who controls the targeted hunter must discard a “Keeper” card from their hand.

Denial of Glory: Hunters within 6 inches of this hunter can not make Elimination Quality checks unless they spend 3 Momentum to do so each time.

Steal the Thunder: This hunter may take a Universal action and target another hunter within 6 inches and in line of sight. The target hunter loses 1 Momentum and your hunter gains 1 Momentum.

Attacks
Strike (Range 1”; Accuracy +0; Damage 1; Keywords — melee, blunt, unarmed)
Bruiser Pistol (Range 10”; Accuracy +0; Damage 2; Extra Rules — Each surplus success on the Shoot check will inflict 2 Wound Tokens; Keywords — ranged, item, small, gun, ballistic, depletable)

Momentum Options
Re-roll (1+ Momentum): Once per check or roll, this hunter may re-roll one die for each point of Momentum spent. All re-rolls must be made simultaneously.

Upgrade (1 Momentum): Once per check or roll this hunter makes, upgrade one die for each Momentum spent. All upgrades must be made before the dice are rolled.

Distraction (2 Momentum): Use before another hunter within 12 inches and in line of sight makes a check. Up to three of the dice are downgraded.

I’ll take that! (3 Momentum): Use when another player puts a “Keeper” card in their hand. The card is placed in your hand instead, unless the player spends 2 Momentum.

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[#2] Crim Control

9/20/2017

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In this installment, we’ll discuss what has become one of the game’s signature mechanics: the system that allows the game
itself to control the crims.

Demeanors and Action Slots
Each crim has a Demeanor (Typical, Aggressive, Cunning or Cowardly) that establishes their general tendencies.

On each crim’s stat card, is a list of three action slots, labelled “Action 1”, “Action 2” and “Action 3”. Some slots have a single action listed, while others have two. This will be explained shortly.

The possible actions are as follows:

• Flee: The crim moves a number of inches equal to their Move score directly away from the nearest hunter.
• Charge: The crim moves a number of inches equal to their Move score directly toward the nearest hunter and attacks if they get within their melee weapon’s Range (normally 1-2 inches).
• Fight: The crim makes a melee attack against a hunter they are engaged with. If the crim isn’t engaged, they take a Charge action instead.
• Shoot: The crim takes a shot at the nearest hunter, as long as they have range and line of sight.
• Seek Cover: The crim moves a number of inches equal to their Move score toward the closest piece of terrain with the cover keyword. If it reaches the terrain, the crim should be placed in or behind it so that they gain protection against the nearest hunter.
• Hide: The crim moves a number of inches equal to their Move score directly toward the nearest piece of terrain with the hideable keyword. The crim’s model is removed from the table and a “Hidden” token is placed beside that terrain piece. The crim is somewhere in or around it, but can’t be attacked until a hunter successfully searches for them or the crim takes a different action. Hiding is a whole other barrel of worms that deserves its own article, so we’ll save the details for later.

The Control Deck
At the beginning of each turn, the current First Player flips over the top card of the Control Deck. The card will let the players know several things:

Whether or not any Event Cards are drawn.
How many (and what types of) crims are placed in the zone if there are less crims currently in the zone than the number of hunters +2.
Whether or not the pods are restocked (pods are crates that contain goods such as adrenaline shots, medical spray, ammunition, etc.).
What actions the crims take this turn.

For purposes of this article, only the fourth nugget of information is terribly pertinent.

The Control Card has a space for each Demeanor, followed by “Action 1”, “Action 2” or “Action 3”. This determines which action the crims of each Demeanor will take. For example, let’s say that the current Control Card had the following listing:

Typical: Action 2
Aggressive: Action 2
Cunning: Action 1
Cowardly: Action 3

When it comes time for the crims to act, that list will be consulted for each crim, based on their Demeanor. Continuing the example above, let’s say that the first crim has the Aggressive Demeanor. The Control Card dictates that Aggressive crims will take Action 2. Looking at that crim’s stat card, it says “Charge”, so the current First Player carries out the Charge action for that crim before moving on to the next crim.

As I mentioned earlier, some crims will have two actions listed in a given slot, along with a number range for each. If that action slot must be carried out, the current First Player rolls a ten-sided die and consults the number range to determine which of the two actions must be taken by the crim.

For example, let’s say that instead of “Charge”, the crim’s action slot said “Charge (1-7) or Seek Cover (8-10)”. The die comes up 9, so the crim must take the Seek Cover action.

The purpose of having some slots with two possible actions is to prevent the same types of crims from always duplicating the same actions. For example, if three Petty Crooks are in the zone at the same time, there would be a chance of variation in their actions.

Rolling for Crims?
Crims never make rolls (or checks as we call them). Having them roll would go against the grain of the entire system. The hunters are the stars of the show, so to speak, so everything is done from their perspective. If a crim attacks a hunter, they don’t roll to see if they hit. Instead, the hunter rolls to avoid being hit. We’ll cover this more in a later installment when we take a look at the combat system.

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[#1] The Real History of Urban Manhunt

9/20/2017

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Welcome to the Zone! This is the first installment of a series of articles in which we will shine the spotlight on various aspects of Urban Manhunt.

Movies such as Escape from New York, The Running Man and The Warriors have always captured my imagination; films that show us what the near future is going to be like, even though the likelihood of their accuracy is pretty much nil. Such movies give us a candid look into the collective mindset of the era in which they were made. How they perceived “the future” speaks volumes about the fears, desires and fantasies that we, as a society, possessed at that point in time. Sure, we know now that New York didn’t become a prison city in 1988, as predicted in Escape from New York, or that there wasn’t an economic collapse in 2017 à la The Running Man (...at least not yet!). And we’ve certainly learned that thematic street gangs wouldn’t rule the streets “sometime in the future,” regardless of what we saw in The Warriors. But that doesn’t matter, because that’s what the filmmakers in 1981, 1987 and 1979 (respectively) saw the future as looking like. And it gave our imaginations one hell of a jolt.

It gave mine a jolt anyway. In fact, before I designed my very first (and unpublished) roleplaying game, Intergalactic Wars, in 1987, I attempted to create one called Turf. While I thankfully have no memory of the system my thirteen-year-old brain dreamed up, I do remember that it revolved around colorful street gangs inside a prison city. My inspirations for the setting were, of course, Escape from New York and The Warriors, as well as an arcade game called Trojan that I pumped an untold number of quarters into at my local convenience store. The seeds for Urban Manhunt were planted even then!

It wasn’t until 2005, however, that those seeds would grow into something tangible. In one of my graphic design classes, each student was instructed to create a fully functional package design. Not knowing really what i wanted to create a package for, my mind drifted back to Turf for reasons I genuinely can’t fathom. Adding some elements of The Running Man into the mix, I created a rough idea for a card game called (you guessed it) Urban Manhunt. I still have that package to this day.

Even though the assignment was over, I couldn’t get Urban Manhunt out of my head. And when a game designer fails to expunge something like that from their brain, there’s only one solution: design the game! I worked with another student, who was an artist, to develop the look of the setting and even a few of the hunters. But it wasn’t until I contacted Patrick Sullivan, whose work I had been a fan of for quite a while, that the setting became something special.

Patrick immediately showed that he had a knack for taking my ideas and not only bringing them to life, but also improving upon them exponentially. Every piece of art he cranked out fueled my creative fire even more and it felt to me like my ideas fueled his as well. He and I have working together since that time, crafting many products together.

The card game was finished within a few months and playtesting went beautifully; far better than I expected. It’s a design I’m still proud of after all these years. The game controlled the crims (i.e. convicted criminals to be hunted) while the players tried to guide their hunters to victory. Sound familiar? It should, as the miniatures game was built using the same framework.

This was before making print-on-demand cards was an option, and raising the capital to launch a card game still proved impossible. Rather than let it completely languish, I decided to release it as a print-and-play game.

In 2012, I decided to dust the setting off and use it as the basis for a roleplaying game. Deciding I needed an entirely new history that provided more depth than the miniscule, one-dimensional backstory provided in the card game, I set forth to create something with more story hooks that could be exploited in an RPG. Unfortunately, this project found itself on the backburner.

That brings us to 2017.

As most people who know me can tell you, I’m a miniatures gamer first and foremost. Gaming-wise, it’s my primary love. I enjoy everything about the hobby, from painting miniatures to constructing terrain to actually playing the games. I’ve attempted to design a couple miniatures games over the years, but none of them came to fruition. Truthfully, as an avid miniatures gamer, that fact has always bothered me a great deal. So, I decided to do something about it once and for all.

Over the years, Spectrum Games has become known for faithfully emulating genres, so I had to ensure that whatever miniatures game I designed would stay true to our theme. Given that the Urban Manhunt setting emulated those dark future sci-fi flicks of the ‘70s and ‘80s, it seemed a perfect fit.

I dug out the revised background from the recesses of my harddrive and added more detail to the later sections, starting with the events after the supposed invention of the sport. What shocked me, though, was how the backstory I penned in 2012 paralleled with events from the real world! What a difference five years can make! In fact, I almost scrapped it and started over again lest people think we were making some kind of political statement about current events. However, it created a dynamic backdrop for the game that is bristling with possibilities.

With the setting info in place, I faced the task of actually designing the game. Fortunately for me, some of the work had already been done, as a handful of the core concepts of the card game were easily ported over to the miniatures game, such as Control Cards determining the game length and the crims’ actions.

The use of several decks of cards, especially the Event Deck, was something I argued with myself over for quite some time. Ultimately, I decided in favor of them, feeling that they add another dimension to the game and offer an experience not found in other miniatures games. There are a lot of miniatures games on the market these days. The last thing the world needed was one that played just like all the others. Urban Manhunt had to offer some new wrinkles to the mix, and the card usage contributes to that.

Another important factor of the game is that you won’t have to break the bank to get into it. Miniatures games have garnered a reputation for being an expensive hobby, and there’s a reason for that. Many games require a large number of figures, which can drain gamers of their cash in short order. We aren’t pushing our own line of figures and instead encourage you to scavenge miniatures from your existing collection or pick up whatever miniatures that suit your fancy. We’re even offering cylindrical paper miniatures that can be attached to miniatures bases, which means you won’t even have to purchase miniatures at all if you don’t want to. Even the cards will be available online so that you can just download and print them. In short, the rulebook will be your only required purchase to play the game and it’s going to be reasonably priced.

The end result is a miniatures game that I enjoy playing. Hopefully, gamers the world over will enjoy it, too.

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[#3] Unleashing the Hunters

[#2] Crim Control

[#1] The Real History of Urban Manhunt

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