Brainstorming a superhero theme park

Games Menagerie RPG
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What are our goals here?

  • Create a legally distinct substitute for Disney World that gives a related vibe without infringement
  • Create a challenging and potentially dangerous environment deck that will lead to an interesting Sentinels of the Multiverse match
  • Create a compelling fiction that engages player interest and takes itself seriously

Premise:

  • In the 1960s, a respected super-scientist was doing research into time and dimension travel
  • In the process, his child (or children) got pulled into the machinery, as they ran through the lab, and vanished into the timestream
  • The professor’s calculations indicated that they could emerge at any time, and be around for an indeterminate time, but they would be located nearby spatially
  • He thus resolved to ensure that until he could solve the problem and anchor them back in normal time, he’d make sure they always found themselves in safe and positive surroundings
  • Thus, he bent his genius to building something new: a theme park driven by hypertech, where there would always be children, and always be smiles

Why would this be the logical place to fight Clockwork? Leo brought a dimensional anchor along to stop Infinity from warping out. In our alternative reality here, Leo benefited from the professor’s work on time anchoring. That makes it worth the risk of having a fight in the middle of a bunch of civilians.

What elements would the theme park have, as an environment deck?

  • Gawking onlookers who must be protected from danger
  • Rogue or damaged animatronic patrols
  • Overzealous security robots
  • Hypertech rides (“take a spin on the magnetically powered Ferrous Wheel!”)
  • Surprise materialization of the children themselves, and perhaps temporal eddies or warping as they appear and disappear
  • Backstage machinery and facilities
  • Hidden time-anchoring machinery that messes with powers
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Goals

  • Include Clockwork in at least one of the card art. It can just be a general “disaster” themed card (SotM has Deus Ex Machina for Oblivaeon in Champion Studios) so it’s not a difficult lift, but needs to be there to show the link.
  • Need to think of another villain fight that occurred in the park. Perhaps something water themed so we can work Stingray and Ninjess into the deck?
  • An ask from one of my collaborators was to avoid tickets and carnival games as big parts of the deck so it doesn’t encroach on one of their decks. (Alesia Circus)

Wants/Ideas

  • If we do have costumed mascots, differentiate them enough from the Mighty Milestone enough so that it doesn’t feel like we’re retreading old ground so soon. The Milestone will be back, but I have other plans for him later.
  • Power Pony is in Challenger Park, Nono is going to have her own hero deck as part of the MIA, could we fit one of the Ponies into this deck? Still want the park to be far-ish away from Halcyon (Jacksonville, Florida?) so it might not make sense, but I could see us being able to make it work. (MLP stand-in is one of the themes of the park?)
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Here’s the vibes I’m starting from

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Sure, some equivalent to Sea Base. If you need a villain idea for this, you can borrow my character Sea-Czar (whatever you assume about this character based on the name is 100% accurate).

The vibe I’m imagining is much more about shows, entertainment, and fascinating rides than games as such. So that sounds very reasonable.

Amagi Brilliant Park leaned very heavily into fantasy & fairy type creatures, including talking anthropomorphic animals and the like. That should be a good place to start. The 1960s-era super-science vibe can conjure up some Zeerust robots and rocketships and the like too. So pick the style you feel like you can draw better. :smiley:

Duskshine, working at the park as professional costume consultant.

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Looks like I have a lot of watching Defunctland videos in my near future to mine for aesthetic inspiration. (I was probably going to do that anyway, so at least now I claim it’s for research purposes.)

Hmm, this makes me think of the World of the Future Fair from Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. :thinking: I can work with that.

Sounds like we’ve brainstormed a lot of interesting ideas and themes. Now the question is “what do we call it?”

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Future Faire

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For what it’s worth, I think the key here is to sell the undercurrent of sadness that made the park a reality. The professor may have been researching time travel to undo some kind of tragedy, for example, and losing access to his children thanks to that research would have just made things worse. The park is a form of atonement and correction.

I don’t have any specific concrete recommendations on how to sell this impression right now, I just want to call it out to address your concern about it being regarded as a joke deck.

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Now we’ve got some ideas, let’s see if we can’t put some of them into context.

First, a list of things I immediately like and can see some interesting mechanics out of:

  • Gawking park goers
  • Rogue animatronic robots
  • Temporal eddies
  • Leo’s Dimensional Anchor

Now let’s associate some of these with some stories.

First we have the Masks game where the Menagerie were able to lock down Clockwork and the Magus’ time fight to that area. The dimensional anchor and the temporal eddies are natural here and we can probably associate some gawking park goers as well.

This leaves us with the rogue animatronic robots. We already talked about the JHHL kids, so we can associate that with them. The first thing that comes to mind is a tech-related villain who uses the animatronics to spy on the park (find some secret tech perhaps?) and then releases them to cause havoc while they enact their real plan. Berserk park robots threatening crowds of thousands definitely sounds like something the JHHL would get involved in. Think of the news coverage.

Some of these cards could have multiple copies without any issue (the robots, the temporal eddies, the part goers), so just need 4-8 more ideas to have full coverage for a 15 card deck.

And this is why I like making environment decks. A couple solid ideas and you’ve already got a cornerstone of a deck.

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So I’ve been letting this deck percolate in the back of my head for a couple weeks and this is what I’ve come up with. Wanted to share this with the group to see if anyone saw any oversights and/or wanted to comment on any of the choices.

Things with ??? mean I have no idea. Things with [comments] means I have the broad strokes in mind, but nothing solid.

Automata Song Birds
HP: 3; Device; Qty: 1
Whenever a target enters play, choose one:
{ Reveal the top card of that target’s deck and either replace it or put it on the bottom of its deck.
{ This card deals each target other than itself 1 sonic damage.

Theme and Flavor: The park’s information booths are actually groups of robot birds that sing directions and other information to park goers.
Image Concept: [Either a close up on a single zeerust robot bird, or a whole group of them nesting in a tree together.]
Quote: “Can you birds alert us if anyone heads
this way?” This was met with a chorus of
“Someone’s coming!” from the hundred tiny
birds. "We might need to rethink this plan.”

Automated Walkways
HP: 8; Device; Qty: 1
At the end of the environment turn, play the top card of the environment deck.

Theme and Flavor: There’s nothing more zeerust than moving walkways.
Image Concept: [someone] riding the walkway through the park.
Quote: Calls to name this mechanism “the
Electric Slide” were met with confusion
from the park’s less cultured engineers.

Duskshine
HP: 6; Halcyon Herd; Qty: 1
At the end of the environment turn, choose one:
{ Each hero target regains 1 HP.
{ Reveal the top three cards of the environment deck, then replace them in any order.
Then this card deals itself 1 toxic damage.

Theme and Flavor: Duskshine at her summer job. She can help the heroes with some backstage access, but can’t stick around forever.
Image Concept: Duskshine hanging out at a booth looking so bored. Also probably a little unhappy to be dressed in her park uniform.
Quote: Duskshine knew she’d be better off
redesigning the park uniforms instead of
this dull summer job. If only her bosses
knew it too.

Ferrous Wheel
HP: 6; Device; Qty: 1
At the end of the environment turn, choose one:
{ Until the start of the next environment turn, increase damage dealt to and by devices by 1.
{ This card deals each other device and hero target with an equipment card in their play area 2 lightning damage.

Theme and Flavor: This one is all about the pun. A big electro-magnet ride.
Image Concept: [A big sparky ferris wheel. Totally not an OSHA violation!]
Quote: A magnetic marvel of the amusement
industry, the ferrous wheel’s only downside
was that riders needed to carefully
degauss themselves before disembarking.

Gawking Park Goers
No Keywords; Qty: 2
At the end of the environment turn, choose one:
{ Select a hero character. Increase the next damage dealt by that hero by 3. Until the start of the next environment turn, increase damage dealt to that hero by 1.
{ One player discards down to three cards. If at least one card was discarded this way, shuffle this card into the environment deck.

Theme and Flavor: It’s a group of gawkers, here to watch the superhero fight. Because of course there is!
Image Concept: [Radiance herding cats. Er, gawkers.]
Quote: Much to Radiance’s dismay, the hardest
part of getting the vulnerable civilians
to safety was that they all wanted
a selfie first.

Leo’s Dimensional Anchor
HP: 8; Device; Qty: 1
Redirect the first damage dealt to a hero target by a villain target each turn to this card.
Whenever an environment card would have you choose one, you may instead choose both.

Theme and Flavor: A device helping to stabilize possibilities (mechanically by giving the players great freedom in their choices). But its sure to be shortlived.
Image Concept: ???
Quote: “How will we know if it’s working?” Leo
and Aria shared a grim look. “It’s working
from the moment it starts smoking to when
it eventually catches fire.” "Eventually?!”

Packy the Alpaca
No Keywords; Qty: 1
At the end of the environment turn, choose one:
{ Each player puts one equipment card from their hand or trash under this card.
{ Put a random card from under this one into play.

Theme and Flavor: It’s Packy! The Future Faire’s mascot!
Image Concept: Alycia hugging a Packy Backpack in front of a Packy booth. She is very embarrassed to be in love with a corporate mascot.
Quote: Future Faire was everything she’d imagined: a
monument to capitalism and conspicuous
consumption. And, as much as she hated
herself for it, Alycia loved every minute of it.

Rogue Animatronics
HP: 6; Device; Qty: 1
At the end of the environment turn, choose one:
{ This card deals each non-environment target 2 melee damage.
{ This card deals the hero target with the highest HP and the villain target with the lowest HP 4 melee damage each.

Theme and Flavor: Robots gone feral and dangerous! It’s an old trope, but it works.
Image Concept: [Some of the JHHL fighting animatronics. Ninjess and Stingray, most likely.]
Quote: Animatronic Thomas Edison did his best to
electrocute unwary park guests. It was
little consolation to the injured that
this was very in character.

Temporal Eddies
Time Distortion; Qty: 2
At the end of the environment turn, shuffle one non-character, non-indestructible card from each non-environment deck into their deck. Then reveal the top card of each deck in turn order. If that card is a one-shot, discard it. Otherwise, put it into play. Then destroy this card.

Theme and Flavor: Signs of Clockwork’s plans, as well as the park’s natural temporal weirdness.
Image Concept: [Something with Clockwork]
Quote: The site the Future Faire was built upon
had thin temporal barriers. Clockwork’s
schemes would use them to return
everything she’d lost.

The Scurrilous Hullabaloo
HP: 7; ; Qty: 1
Reduce damage dealt to this card by one while there are other environment targets in play.
Increase sonic damage by 1.
At the end of the environment turn, the environment target with the lowest HP deals the non-environment target with the second highest HP 3 sonic damage.

Theme and Flavor: Had an idea for this character and figured an amusement park would be a good place for them to cause some havoc.
Image Concept: A big crowd of people having a ruckus time.
Quote: Nobody really knew who or what the
Hullabaloo was. Their modus operandi
was to enthrall crowds of people into
mindless craze and then rob them blind.

Totally Distracted
No Keywords; Qty: 2
Play this card next to the target with the second highest HP.
When the target next to this card would deal damage, prevent that damage and they instead regain 1 HP. Then destroy this card.
When the target next to this card would be dealt damage, increase that damage by 2. Then destroy this card.

Theme and Flavor: It’s an amusement park, of course it’s overwhelming.
Image Concept: Unmute and Fractal standing in front of one of the park attractions getting their photo taken. Both are wearing the park equivalent of the Micky Mouse ears [Packy the Alpaca ears like Alycia? Or maybe park shirts?].
Quote: “What’s next on the schedule, Becks?”
"I’ve got a fan meetup at the Professor
Holcomb statue and then, if it’s still
standing, I want to try the teacup ride.”

Thoughts?

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“Calls to name this mechanism “the Electric Slide” were met with confusion from the park’s less cultured engineers.”

“Duskshine knew she’d be better off redesigning the park uniforms instead of this dull summer job. If only her bosses knew it too.”

“Visitors must degauss themselves before exiting the ride.”

“The hardest part of getting vulnerable civilians to safety, Radiance knew, was that they all wanted a selfie first.”

At the center of the image is an Atomic Robo-esque device. The rest of the picture is made of pie slices, representing the device at the center of multiple similar realities. To reduce the art burden, each pie slice can have the same or a similar image (a hero punching a villain?) but with different colors or some other easy-to-tweak visual property, suggesting alternative outcomes. A stylized padlock on the device can suggest its purpose.

“How will we know if it’s working?” “It’s working from the moment it starts smoking to when it actually catches fire.”

“Animatronic Thomas Edison did his best to electrocute unwary park guests. It’s a small consolation that this was very in character.”

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Oh these were very good suggestions that I’m using most of them with only minor modifications (mostly for spacing and overlap/repetition with other quote text reasons).

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Some very belated thoughts here, so feel free to ignore or save them for the sequel or whatever.

I like the idea of some World Fair vibe – mentioned in the “World of the Future Fair” bit above – with some riffing off of the similar bits in Captain America:

The advantage here is that not only can there be actual research going on (overtly or covertly), perhaps a part of trying to get the kids back, but it creates a setting for all sorts of high-tech shenanigans and time-based set pieces (not to mention the temporal eddies previously mentioned).

As for a ride, consider Time Mountain – a combo of Disney’s Space Mountain, Voyage into Inner Space, and some other things of that sort – the ratchety ride to the top where a city of the future is built, then the cars racing downward, “back in time,” passing different, surprisingly life-like tableaux, eventually swinging past dinosaurs before the narrator insists that that is a journey for another day, and they’re back at the lines.

The trick there might be that (a) the actual movement of the cars is generating an electro-kinetic field for powering of some other device, perhaps something that manifests (intentionally or not) actual views through time to the park visitors, which (b) leads to the possibility of intrusions (robots, alien invaders, army troops, cattle rustlers, pirates) that pose a generic threat.

A World’s Fair kind of setting lets you build mascots and the like around something other than media figures. For example, “Pete Progress” (modeled after the scientist’s missing son) can be a symbol for the park who helps kids learn some of the science being demonstrated, etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

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