This is a questioin about feasibility of a house rule/varient (not about a core rule) - if there is a better place to post this, feel free to move this post or tell me where to repost it, etc. :)
I love the nemesis mechanic in that it is thematic and simple. And I was trying to see if I could extend a similar thematic (and simple?) mechanic for environments.
Something along the lines of: "If Rook City is in play, heroes from Rook City (Mr Fixer, Wraith, others?) start the game with 2 extra cards in hand, and villains from Rook City (Chairman?) play an extra card on their first turn." (basically representing that they are from there and therefore have access or knowledge to more resources).
For different environments, I could make a different effect... i.e. for Insula Primas, it would be Expatriatte and Citizen Dawn each take 1 less damage from environment effects. OR I could make it the same effect for everyone like I have for Rook City to keep it simple (plus start of game effect is not hard to track compared to remembering to reduce or add damage every time).
(in any case, i'd have to have a list that i keep in the box since i don't remember everyone's backstory as of yet)
Think something like that is worth it? Or not really worth the effort?
And yes there would probably be one or two heroes or villains who don't get on any environment list, but i am personally okay with that.
Edit: I tried posting this earlier and didn't seem to take....but if this some how shows up twice, i apologize!
Why would Expatriette and Citizen Dawn be affected by Insula Primalis? Are they not from Rook City or Megalopolis or something? Not many big guns to loot on an island full of dinosaurs ;).
I personally don't care much for this, as anything that allows The Organization or The Matriarch to play more cards is anathema. Mister Fixer starting with two extra cards probably wouldn't break much (considering Fixer's limited number of plays), but Wraith with two more cards in hand would be a massive bonus.
If you want to do something like this, you should. However, I don't think there would be much enhanced by granting a mechanical bonus to certain heroes and villains, and it would be hard to balance. Unless it's a three man team of Fixer, Tachyon (?) and Wraith in Rook City against Plague Rat or Spite, it will be pretty imbalanced and won't provide equal reward to everyone. If that doesn't bug you, give it a shot. But it's hard to balance a benefit to some heroes while the whole team deals with a benefit to the villain they're all facing. It seems like it would make the whole game harder for everyone with a minor benefit to one to two (maybe three) players.
This SotM player would probably not have fun with this house rule, but your group may be very different from me and mine.
@Ameena: Citizen Dawn's base is in Insula Primalis, and it is also where Expatriette was born.
Oh, is it? Wow, how did I miss that one...maybe it's not in their bios in the manual. I've hardly read any of the ones on the website (yet) so maybe it's there. Bit of an odd place to set up a base, with pterodactyls nicking all your stuff and volcanoes going off every five minutes :D.
Makes you wonder how she got off the island in order to go somewhere where they had enough tech for her to get her hands on the zillion guns she owns, and learn how to use them…
I love stuff like this. Anything to make the game feel like more of an actual story, I'm all for. My first reaction was that you could just keep it simple and say that certain heroes & villains are associated with an environment like you say, and those associated heroes/villains take/deal an extra point of damage to environment targets, basically adding a nemesis effect to environments. But then it would be possible to game the system you made up. For example, if Chairman, Wraith and Fixer are all nemeses of Rook City, then you could just always play against Chairman in Rook City and never use Wraith and Fixer there. Since it's your house rule, I'd assume that you wouldn't want to do that, but it's still a weakness in the system.
In any case, it sounds fun. You should try out a couple of options and report back with which ones turned out to be the funnest.
Also, I would argue that "Rook City is Mine!" already represents thematically The Chairman's power in Rook City, as the bulk of the deck is filled with things that complicate the heroes' lives. I'm sure there are others, but I think The Chairman's Environment immunity and RCiM! are already a mechanical boost from playing him in the thematically appropriate Environment (same goes for Pike Industrial Complex, with its Checmical Explosions and mutant rats).
Thanks for the thoughts so far. For the mechanical benefit i wasn't hard coded in to it begin what i gave as an example, just gave an example to show what i could potentially do with the idea. I was just trying to see if the idea/concept of even having a mechanical effect based on the chosen environment was even worth it, etc. (and i can appreciate that it wouldn't be a good house rule for all people/groups)
That said, I am convinced I will do something, in some form, as a house rule, just not sure what yet. I (and the people I generally game with) just really like/appreciate thematics
When I had initially thumbed through some of the environments, I was looking to see if some environment card had some 'general effect' and then had a special sort of line that said for people with X symbol, this happens instead. Thus providing an effect for the bulk of people but a slightly different (or increased/decreased) effect for people with the X symbol if they happened to be in the game. But I hadn't seen that (at least not in the environments that i looked through) which is why i had this idea for a house rule in the first place.
@Reckless – that is good to know! In my (albeit limited experience) I have not yet come across anything in the environments that had been specific to anyone (hero or villain) which is why this idea was in my head in the first place. I'll have to thumb through that combo of decks and see what it's like.
So just providing a report… After trying a few different things, my group has seemed to settle on this as a house rule:
* We assigned every hero and villain to an environment as their "home" (some environments don't have anyone; other environments might have more than one hero assoicated with it, etc)
* During setup, if the environment is home to your hero, you draw 5 cards instead of 4 and then discard 1 card to the bottom of your hero deck (thus you start the game with 4 cards just you have a little extra pick at the beginning ) – again, all this is done during setup.
If the environment is 'home' the the villain, the villain begins play with 5% more hit points than his max.
We aren't completely satisfied with the villain mechanic (partially because some of the villains utilize hit points in different ways or reset hit points on flipping, etc). But it is the simplest that we seem to be settling in to until we can think of something better.
But this does seem to limit all this to the setup rather than needing to remember anything during actual play. And has been quick and simple/streamlined to implement. and further it does not change the power level of one hero over another so no player feels like he/she might be getting short-changed for something he/she didn't know about.
(i emphasize that this is a house rule that works for us. and i'm in no way is implying that this is a must do for your own games… we simply like the idea of playing up on thematics and while heroes-villains choice has something thematic in the way of their nemesis mechanic, the environment choice did not have an did not and we wanted something, so that's what this is meant to address as our own house rule)
If you're not loving the +hp for villains thing, maybe you could choose a card that that villain will always have out at the start of the game if they're playing in their home environment. Maybe one of Voss' sub-lieutenants always start the game out if he's attacking Mars, or Omnitron always has a drone or two out when he attacks Megalopolis. Something like that.
