Overpower history: Power Players to OP

[JohnL]

OverPower began as a game called Power Players that was really a very different game to the one we came to know and like. I'll post the rules eventually but I thought I'd post a few cards first. Some of you may have seen the Power Players hero card that was shown in the first Monthly Venture (March 1996). Again, I'll post the info from that here when I dig it out.

Power Players came as a complete 2 person game with two different decks, in printed card boxes, complete with a rules booklet.

In addition to Power Players there were at least two other draft versions of OverPower printed for trial and demo puproses. I obtained these cards from a variety of different graphic designers who worked on the game way back when I was mainly collecting OverPower art but picked them up because I thought they were interesting. Neither of these card collections came with rules. One is clearly very close to the finished OverPower I'll call it pre-OP and it was printed up on cardstock with the OP card backs but with no art on any of the cards. The other is much more similar to Power Players. Since I believe it came after Power Players (PP) I'll call it PP2. This PP2 set, like PP, used some recycled art. I recognize some of it from various Marvel trading card sets. PP2 is on card stock but is not printed with the card backs.

As Richie pointed out to me the PP game really does have closer connections to an rpg than a ccg. Characters can leap onto objects and objects can be hurled. Objects had a MUCH bigger role in the game. Witness the evolution of the humble tree from Power Players (top left) through two drafts to the useless piece of lumber we all learned to ignore.


Hero cards went through a similar simplification. Here are the 4 versions of Punisher I have.


Note the PP card has 11 stats and a note that the gun is a ranged weapon. Not only is combat separated from movement but attack and defense values are different so Punisher can use a level 6 weapon strike card to attack but not to defend.

Power cards at least look similar although notice the rather redundant terminology of 'weapon strike' and 'weapon block' on the same card. The color coding (red strike, blue block) matches the stats on the hero card. The bottom right card here is of course the first OP promo card. The decision to remove the lettering from the power cards was obviously taken pretty late.



Finally the specials also look familiar although there was a downgrading of some of the specials between pre-OP and the actual release. Old timers may remember the game guides that came with intriguing pictures of level 5 AA and AE cards.



Obviously this was still a bone of contention when the game was released. Anyone else remember Steve Domzalski altering and initialling level 4 AA cards to make them level 5? I think was San Diego in 1996 but I bet he did it other places.



I don't think PP and PP2 contained Teamwork cards. First ones I have are in the pre-OP set and are called triple shots. But the few I have are NOT completely overpowered (pun intended) like the example depicted in the game guide and shown below.


All four cards below are from pre-OP. The game back is the same but without the copyright.


Okay. Power Players rules to follow at some point. I think that one of the first magazine articles on OverPower (maybe the obscure Ventura magazine that the Fighting 6 promo came in?) had an article that covered a bit of the game design. Does anyone have a copy of this handy? I'm trying to track down the story I read somewhere about who introduced the venturing element into the game (making it a winner in my book). This element was not in Power Players and my memory was that the suggestion came from some exec (presumably a poker player) rather than a game designer.

To be continued...

[Onslaught]

I think a new meme in our playgroup is going to be "Tree - Brute Force: 6." That card detailing all these specific things about the tree (limit 4 heroes getting on top of a tree at a time!) is really amazing.

Does anyone remember Battle Books? They were kinda like choose your own adventure comic books, where each person needed one and you had a fight against each other by flipping to different pages. I'm pretty sure they came out way after Overpower, and some of the assets in them look like they were recycled from some of these cards. For example:



I'm almost positive those stats/fonts are used on the characters stat cards for Battle Books...I have a promo Battle Book somewhere, I'll have to find it and compare.



This looks so modern compared to the cards we ended up with. There's something about the font that makes it look like it's from 1998 instead of 1995. I'm really glad they didn't go with this template though, it makes the card look like a trading card with the game mechanics as an afterthought (though it may be the recycled art throwing me off). That poor Punisher hero card also looks like there was barely any room on the card to squeeze in a picture. That was probably just placeholder formatting though?

Seeing how complex the original Power Players is sort of makes you wonder what spurred them to create a Marvel CCG in the first place. Based on all these intricate interactions with ranged distance and weapons and such, it seems like the game would have been pitched to the higher ups as something that would appeal to pretty hardcore/niche gamers. Obviously it was made more casual friendly before being released; but the fact that it began as something so dense in early design stages probably indicates that they weren't making the game just as a quick cash in on the burgeoning CCG market.

Anyone else remember Steve Domzalski altering and initialling level 4 AA cards to make them level 5? I think was San Diego in 1996 but I bet he did it other places.

Haha, the best part about this is someone on the newsgroups arguing that they should have been tournament legal.

In the same vein, I competed in San Diego's Overpower Tournament
and made it to the final 16 players.  After I lost that match, two of the
artists came up to me and signed a few of my cards, even altering two of them
to make them one point of damage stronger (Doom and Carnage Special Cards
bumped up from attacks of 4 to attacks of 5).  Everyone here knows I play
with them when playing those characters and no one has yet to complain
except Al.  He does not accept that just because other card games allow
for signatures and alterations that Overpower should.  This frustrates me
because I consider those cards a sort of prize for getting as far as I
did given me by the Fleer reps themselves.  Sure, there's no ruling on   
such things, but should I have to give them up just because Al refuses to
accept current CCG policies.  If Fleer ever writes it down somewhere to
make it official, he'd be fine with it, but using Magic as a precedent-
setter doesn't fly.  What do you guys think?

Thanks for scanning all this, I've really never seen it ever discussed on the internet. A piece of history has been saved! Looking forward to seeing how intricate the rules are for Power Players.

[drdeath25]

Wow! this is amazing, I haven't seen anything like this or knew about anything like this being planned before overpower went into development. Thanks so much for sharing this with us John!

[Nate Grey]

This was a fantastic read! I never knew about the history of the game and how fascinating it would be. Thanks so much for taking the time to go through it with us. Can't wait to read more.

[JohnL]

Thanks for the feedback. As long as someone enjoys it I'll post more stuff. Here's a puzzler for you. Check out the 4 hero/character cards above. Notice that the Power Players and PP2 have a value for the number of hits to KO. This is obviously gone by the time of the OP cards, or was it? Has anyone ever seen any pictures of hero cards like this:



This is from an official OverPower promotional product (a picture only, not a card). What I mean is that it may be photoshopped but not by me! Other cards pictured look a lot like regular OP cards except they all have the style of the Fighting 6 promo (ie the word Energy, Fighting or Strength plus the character name.

This seems to suggest that this idea of having hits to ko persisted really late in the development process.

Has anyone ever seen any other hero cards like this? Anyone ever seen an actual card like this? I was always surprised that different characters didn't have different values to ko. It would have made a lot of sense. I rather like the little bell icon....

[Onslaught]

I've never seen that in any kind of advertisement, not even in an EARLY advertisement from an Archie comic I have. Maybe that official promotional image was from some kind of fact sheet that they sent to distributors? As far as the mechanic goes, it actually makes perfect sense now that I think about it. It would really open up design balance if each character required a different total for cummulative KO instead of a flat 20...though I guess inherent abilities (in theory) could have reflected this. Some people had inherent abilities with restrictions on how you could KO them, but it wasn't really heavily explored.

It does make you wonder where the intellect icon would have gone though. It's kind of surprising that they didn't deem an intellect type stat necessary at some point during the original development. I'm guessing the reason it was introduced in DC is that they got to characters like the Riddler and had no idea how to assign any sizable stats, so I guess that just means none of the hero cards in the original set brought that problem up.

_{I think that bell icon is quite cute too}

[gameplan.exe]

This is crazy-cool! I'm pretty speachless!

[JohnL]

I was going to post the PowerPlayers rules but I got distracted by sorting out the credits. Rules are still to come.



According to both Issue #1 of the Monthly Venture and the Board Game Geek website;
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2127/overpower
the designers of the original OverPower game mechanic were Michael and Theodore Stern. The Venture says 'both active in the gaming field for over nine years.' Board game geek has Michael associated with the design of 3 other games (not ccg's). I assume that they delivered the Power Players game as a fairly complete entity. I do not know if they were involved in the game after that.

The initial rulebook does not contain any credits but later rulebooks do. The DC rulebook credits the Stern's with  'Initial OverPower game design'. Much of the final OverPower game design is due to Steve Domzalski and Ron Perrazza (Ron was also art director). In the DC rulebook they are credited with 'Additional Game Design and Development'.

By the time the Monumental rulebook came out Game Design was solely credited to Ron and Steve.

Just to confuse matters the Image rulebook (yes the Japanese one, it has the credits in English) lists 6 people under 'Initial Game Design' plus Steve and Ron under 'Additional Game Design and Development' again. The six listed are Ron, Steve, the Stern brothers plus William Jemas and Steve Seckar. William Jemas was president of Fleer Entertainment Group in 1993 and went on to become vice president of Marvel in its turbulent bankruptcy days, I don't know what position Steve Seckar had. I'm guessing it was one  of these two guys we have to thank for the venturing aspect of the game.

[JohnL]

Power Players rules with some more card pictures for entertainment. Sorry for using photographs rather than scans. I don't currently have access to a scanner so it's much more convenient for me to do it this way. I think the resolution should be good enough to read without too much eye strain.



















Since the Environment cards play such a big role I thought I'd post some more. The ones above seem okay. You can't jump on or into an empty bottle. Four people on a tree and one in a phone booth.



But only four in a bus? And infinite people in a museum? Cool. You can hurl the bus but you can't hurl the museum. Oh and you can't get into the mailbox but you can get on it. I think. Maybe I should read the rules...

Comments welcome but don't expect me to know the answers to any rules questions! We haven't even tried playing this game, I suspect there are a lot of gaps in the rules.

Enjoy, John

[drdeath25]

All of this is really amazing, John. Thanks for the rules. I've been so busy at work I cant type out a long response at the moment, ill be able to read them a little more in-depth later, and post a better response. Just wanted to say all of this new information is greatly appreciated. Keep it coming.

[Onslaught]

Hm, well if it was Steve Seckar who introduced venturing, then huzzah to him. Speaking of boardgamegeek, I see Matt Fell posting on there from time to time! He still goes by Grim Jester.

So after reading through the rules to Power Players, here's a bit of an easy reference chart

List of mechanics that were kept

• Drawing 8 each turn
• Reshuffling your deck if it runs out (though it doesn't specify that only powercards get reshuffled)
• Characters having primary skill types (with Hand to Hand = Fighting, Brute Force = Strength, Energy = Energy, and Weapons falling to the wayside...this is probably crazy speculation but maybe since hero cards were the most prominent they didn't want to put "WEAPONS" on them in part of their obvious push to make the game more family friendly?)
• Power cards work mostly the same and require you to have a high enough stat to use them (though they were only 2-8 instead of 1-8)
• Specials seem identical
• Hits stacking up as a sort of permanent record, and you can only attack active chars (not the reserve or "unactivated" facedown cards)
• Hard and fast rule of only being able to play one defensive action during opponent's one and only attack (no "stack" or "chain" allowing you to continually do things in response to other things)
• Lose when all characters are KO'ed, no floating life total or losing when your deck runs out or anything like that

List of things that evolved into/potentially influenced the retail release

• Putting character cards into your deck instead of starting in play ---> activators from battlesite
• Locations card that start in play
• Hero cards that start in play but have no immediate use (this is a pretty huge difference though - it seems like choosing when to use up an action to activate a facedown character has far more strategic implications than simply having a character sit unused until your opponent KOs somebody)
• Objects (with some interesting mechanics and 1000 rules) ---> universe cards (too simple for their own good)
• Destroying objects/locations (still not entirely clear on this) ---> similar to attacking battlesites
• Character dies after taking hits total to his Toughness/Hit points ---> "hits to KO" with the little bell icon in previous post ---> flat 20 points cummulative KO

Cut stuff with no real analogous leftovers in the final version

• Movement (fly/jump/climb)
• Positioning (ranged attacks, which I'm not sure how ranged attacks differentiate from regular attacks in terms of defending vs. them)
• Little implied benefits to being high in a primary skill stat (energy blasts are always ranged, characters with high brute force can hurl larger objects, etc).
  

You can't jump on or into an empty bottle.

Hahahahahahahaha!

Some musings...I wonder how much playtesting was done to determine that powercards should go up to 8. It seems like it worked out well in the long run, but I bet it was an arbitrary cutoff. All of the cut stuff looks very tactical, like something you would expect from a war game using miniatures. The biggest loser in the transition to the final game is obviously basic universe cards. They went from being so important that they started the game in play with tons of complex rules, to "+3 lol." They could have found some kind of compromise between too involved and too simple...for example

Basic universe - Car. 6 strength to use +3. If successful, defending character can't attack for remainder of battle (he's trapped under a car!)
Basic Universe - Energy Gun. 7 energy to use +1. If used for defense, return the power card you used to your hand after blocking.

Anyway, all of those rules are a lot to digest so I'll have to think about them some more before coming up with any more thoughts.

[JohnL]

• Destroying objects/locations (still not entirely clear on this) ---> similar to attacking battlesites

Nice summary, thanks. The issue of destroying objects is clarified a bit in the next version (the one I called PP2). If you look at the set of 'Tree' cards I posted you'll notice that the PP2 version says  '*If tree is hurled twice it is considered destroyed'.

I don't think this issue of destroying objects by hurling is covered in the PP rules. However this adds text to an already wordy card and, presumably, requires some way of keeping track of how many times something has been hurled. So objects can be destroyed by hitting them directly (and exceeding their defense value) in order to get at a character on top of a museum say OR by hurling them a set number of times which will destroy them (once for a bottle, twice for a bus).

All the object cards I have from the PP2 set are like this but the instruction varies. The one that cracks me up is 'Old Tire' - *Tire cannot be destroyed by hurling.

Hulk hurl tire.
(Comedy bouncing noise)
Argg Hulk angry at Tire, Hulk hurl Tire
(Comedy bouncing noise)
etc etc

I suppose Hulk can just smash the tire with an attack but that wouldn't be funny.

[Onslaught]

So objects can be destroyed by hitting them directly (and exceeding their defense value) in order to get at a character on top of a museum say OR by hurling them a set number of times which will destroy them (once for a bottle, twice for a bus).

Ok, this makes more sense now.

All the object cards I have from the PP2 set are like this but the instruction varies. The one that cracks me up is 'Old Tire' - *Tire cannot be destroyed by hurling.

Hulk hurl tire.
(Comedy bouncing noise)
Argg Hulk angry at Tire, Hulk hurl Tire
(Comedy bouncing noise)
etc etc

I suppose Hulk can just smash the tire with an attack but that wouldn't be funny.

These object cards are really just too amusing. I'm still chortling every time I think about "Museum Capacity: Infinity."

[drdeath25]

Thanks for the feedback. As long as someone enjoys it I'll post more stuff. Here's a puzzler for you. Check out the 4 hero/character cards above. Notice that the Power Players and PP2 have a value for the number of hits to KO. This is obviously gone by the time of the OP cards, or was it? Has anyone ever seen any pictures of hero cards like this:



This is from an official OverPower promotional product (a picture only, not a card). What I mean is that it may be photoshopped but not by me! Other cards pictured look a lot like regular OP cards except they all have the style of the Fighting 6 promo (ie the word Energy, Fighting or Strength plus the character name.

This seems to suggest that this idea of having hits to ko persisted really late in the development process.

Has anyone ever seen any other hero cards like this? Anyone ever seen an actual card like this? I was always surprised that different characters didn't have different values to ko. It would have made a lot of sense. I rather like the little bell icon....

This is the first time I have ever seen that icon on an overpower hero card, amazing. Do you think that this means that originally there was only going to be cumulative ko's? It is a little bit surprising that they scrapped this idea, as I also think it would of been a good idea for different hero's to have different hits to ko. and yes, the little ball icon would be a nice little aesthetic change to the icons we are currently used to seeing while playing overpower  .

It does make you wonder where the intellect icon would have gone though. It's kind of surprising that they didn't deem an intellect type stat necessary at some point during the original development. I'm guessing the reason it was introduced in DC is that they got to characters like the Riddler and had no idea how to assign any sizable stats, so I guess that just means none of the hero cards in the original set brought that problem up.

_{I think that bell icon is quite cute too}

I assume the icons would of been made significantly smaller, I think the intellect icon would of fit with the hits to ko icon still being there. It would make the hero cards look a little crammed and "busy" though, definetly. I think a new player trying to get started in the game later in its lifespan would of been alot more intimidated with 5 icons on the hero cards, than just the 4 we ended up with at the end.

More observations to come later tonight after I take the significant other out to dinner... sorry to cut this one short.

[drdeath25]

Comments welcome but don't expect me to know the answers to any rules questions! We haven't even tried playing this game, I suspect there are a lot of gaps in the rules.

Enjoy, John

My first thought, while looking at the characters cards is that I am wondering why Iron Man can fly for defense, but not to attack. I guess the ranged attack rules were incomplete at this time, as they seem pretty vague in the rule book. I REALLY like the idea of putting your character cards face down while setting up the game, and you and your opponent simultaneously flipping them over at the same time. I can imagine sitting down in front of your opponent, while wondering which characters they are playing, followed by the excitement of flipping your hero card over to reveal it to your opponent at the same time that he does. And since you are not required to have all of your characters flipped over and into play at one time, your always wondering who that next character your opponent will flip will be, or what character your opponent just placed from his hand face down is.

Always having 8 cards in your hand is also really interesting, especially with the ability to pass your turn and discard any number of cards you want, and then re-draw from your draw pile to get back to 8 cards at the end of your turn. But I guess you would only need to do this when your hand was really bad, since you can waste your turn pretty easily by just jumping/flying onto an object.

As for the location cards, I like the idea of these also, and think it might even be superior to the locations that were used later in overpower. Being able to jump onto an object or hurl it sounds awesome. The Tree seems really good, but having 4 of your characters in one tree seems like alot, since you can only have a maximum of 6 hero's at one time. I guess it must be a really big tree if it takes 6 strength to hurl it. However, when compared to an Empty Bottle, a tree might actually have that much greater effect in a fight of super-hero's. I am not even really sure why you would use the Empty Bottle in a deck, but I assume you could always hurl it at someone since you cant jump into it, even if it breaks the first time you throw it. Makes you wonder if they were thinking of an "Empty Titanium Bottle" that you could throw a few more times before it breaks.  

If i understand correct, characters are ko'd by the number of hits (cards) on them, and not the total of the actual power level of each card combined. (So 3 level 2 cards hitting Daredevil ko's him just the same as 3 level 8 cards). If i am understanding the rules correctly, it looks like the different power levels of attack/defense/maneuver cards are just for being able to play that specific card. If that is correct, I like the idea that Overpower used with its cumulative ko system. It would be frustrating to have a character die with a total of 10 on him split between 4 cards, when you have a total of 20 on one of his characters split between 3 cards, and his character is still alive (assuming both characters had the same toughness rating of 4).

I do notice a lot of similarities between these rules and the rules that come out in the released version of Overpower. It's pretty clear that Overpower was based on a lot of what it seems like the developers were trying to do with Power Players.

On a side note, I also notice in the rulebook most of the time it refers to the player as "he", but in the "perfoming actions" section it always refers to the player as "she".  .  Maybe this has something to with the creation of the overpower card "Femme Fatale".... so.... John, can you please remind me what happens when you play that card on Brood or a character that is not human? Ha! just kidding of course!  

These object cards are really just too amusing. I'm still chortling every time I think about "Museum Capacity: Infinity."

Definetly is VERY amusing to think about the certain situations that could come up. I dont know why they didnt just put museum capacity at 6, since that is the maximum number of characers allowed in your deck. I could see 6 people fitting into a museum more comfortably than I picture 4 Sentinel's fitting into a City Bus. Haha.  




JohnL, Thank you so much for posting these card pictures and the rules to this game. I had no idea they even existed before you posted them here. They definitely get the imagination going. By the way, I'll shoot you an e-mail soon and let you know what I have been up to lately. Hope to hear back from you soon.

::hurls a tire at your character for the 20th turn in a row::