{"id":1474,"date":"2019-07-16T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T15:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1474"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:43","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-hit-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/07\/five-or-so-questions-on-hit-the-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on Hit the Streets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Rich Rogers about <\/strong>Hit the Streets: Defend the Block, which is currently on Kickstarter<\/strong><\/a>! Rich had a lot of nifty stuff to say about the game, so check it out below!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me a little about Hit the Streets: Defend the Block. What excites you about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hit the Streets: Defend the Block (HtS:DtB) is a tabletop RPG about street-level supers. A game series of Hts:DtB will have the entire group working together to make up their team of Super-Powered Beings, drawing out a simple map of the neighborhood where they live and work, and dreaming up their rivals and threats to their neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What excites me about HtS:DtB is how well it plays at the table, allowing players to exist in the space of shows like Luke Cage and Daredevil, or to tell stories like you might read in Spiderman or Spider Gwen comics. I also love how the game pushes characters to expend or lose their Spark, a resource similar to Hit Points that represents their will to struggle and fight the good fight. That loss of Spark then sets up scenes where those characters have to regain that resource by doing positive things for the community or forging tighter bonds with their team. It has such a nice flow of emotional scenes to action and conflict and back again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Nice! How did you find the right vibe for the game, considering how widely superheroes are interpreted in different mediums and styles? What is the right style for Hit the Streets?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hit the Streets: Defend the Block<\/em> came from a need for something that would fit in a new living campaign that I began with Lowell Francis and Jim Crocker this year called Gauntlet Comics, which is for the Gauntlet community (https:\/\/www.gauntlet-rpg.com\/<\/a>\u00a0)\u00a0\u00a0as you’d suspect. See, I pitched them the concept of a shared GM setting called New Gauntlet City where each of us, and other GMs who wanted to join in, would run games set in this comic book universe. We have a city map with only a few neighborhoods defined, and we’ve been adding neighborhoods and characters to the map and wiki as we play. New GMs have jumped in, like Alexi Sargeant and Chris Newton, it’s been a real blast to see the world evolve, to create new characters and see different players’ spin on them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of\ncourse, there’s lots of Masks: A New Generation<\/em> happening in Gauntlet\nComics and I’ve loved those games, but I like to run a different RPG system\neach month for this series. Last October as I prepared for Gauntlet Comics, I\nsat down and pored over the hundreds of Supers RPGs that I have on PDF and\ncreated a list of “Want to GM” games. When I looked over the games on\nmy list, I didn’t see anything that would work in a single neighborhood, that\nwould deal with smaller scope problems that I saw on shows like Luke Cage<\/em>‘s\nHarlem or Daredevil’<\/em>s Hell’s Kitchen on Netflix, or Black Lightning<\/em>‘s\nFreeland on the CW. I’d tried out the RPG Icons<\/em>, which had most of\nwhat I wanted, but it was a bit heavy of a system for my tastes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d been running an RPG: 1%er – The Outlaw Biker Game<\/em>, from Creepy Doll Studios (a.k.a. Robert Nolan) for a couple of years for the Gauntlet and loved the sessions we’d had. I even hacked it for Star Wars and called it 1%er Swoop Gang (Kark yeah!) and it was so thrilling and fun to run and play. There was this yummy mix of thrilling action and connection between the characters and their community that I enjoyed. I started wondering if this simple but clever d6-based system would be the right chassis for a street-level supers game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started calling it 1%er Supers<\/em> and put it on the Gauntlet calendar. Playtested an early version in November and December of last year, and it was solid. It needed some more bits, like a neighborhood-creation system as well as a few rules tweaks, but the vibe was spot on. Eventually, I renamed 1%er Supers<\/em> to Hit the Streets: Defend the Block<\/em> (hat tips to Patrick Knowles and Alex Prinz for that name) That vibe, to finally answer your question, is a bare knuckles game where the Super-Powered Beings (I don’t call them superheroes) have day jobs, they have connections to people in their neighborhood, and they have to fight to keep the people they love safe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They can’t just topple an alien invasion and walk away from the wreckage. They’d have to LIVE in the wreckage. Hit the Streets: Defend the Block<\/em> characters have to make choices about how to deal with threats to their neighborhood, and punching it isn’t always the best answer. Of course, it’s comics, so punching is the best answer sometimes. Usually once per game session. But the fights in HtS:DtB are super quick, often one or two die rolls, then it’s dealing with the aftermath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tell me more about Spark and how it interacts with other mechanical bits. What are the core mechanics of the game like? Do different players use it differently? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spark is the “killer app” of Hit the Streets: Defend the Block<\/em>. It’s a reskin of a mechanic in 1%er – The Outlaw Biker Game<\/em>. Your Spark represents your character’s will to fight. It’s the strength of their body as well as their mental resolve. You can spend Spark to add dice to an important roll. You can throw a Spark to another player to help them on a roll of their own. But you have to keep a close eye on that Spark because in big conflicts, the hits that your character takes reduce your Spark. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you run out, your character is “out of the crime-fighting game”. Maybe they’re in the hospital. They might be locked up in jail. Perhaps, they’re dead (that’s up to the player). They aren’t out of the game if the player wants to bring them back in, but you have to regain their Spark somehow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you do it? Help to rebuild your community with works of charity or help to fight crime as a regular everyday citizen. Or you can call upon your team, the other player characters, and bond with them, share what’s important, ask for their help, or tell them how they’re important and how they make the world better, worth fighting for. Once you regain some Spark, you can don the mask and get out there again! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you support players in engaging with things that could be difficult to address like threats to home and family and trauma?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nI started writing Hit the Streets: Defend the Block, I made a decision to have\nit reflect the ways I most enjoy gaming, which is with an engaged and safe\ngroup of friends. To that end, the book starts with an excellent discussion of\nthe X Card safety tool written by my late friend Paul Edson who was also my\ndevelopmental editor. The game stresses that the safety tool is only part of\nthe process, that each participant needs to look out for their fellow players,\ncheck in, and proceed with best intentions while remaining aware that we are\nhere to have fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nGM section covers Roses and Thorns, my feedback tool of choice. This is another\npowerful tool to ensure safety, giving voice to players after a session on\nareas of the game that may have been sketchy. Of course, my preference is the\nuse of the X Card up front, but a Thorn that mentions the content is a nice\nfail-safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One\nimportant factor to Hts:DtB is that it isn’t supposed to be a grind of a game.\nThere are lighter moments in the game with Refresh scenes where the player\ncharacters take the opportunity to perform charity work to improve their\nneighborhood and help out their neighbors. Also, there are bonding scenes where\nplayer characters strengthen their connection to one another to lift themselves\nup to continue the fight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are some of the threats these superpowered characters encounter in their experiences, and how does it go down mechanically with some different threats?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the first session, the\nplaygroup works together to not only draw out their neighborhood, but they talk\nabout the threats to their home, whether it’s financial, corruption, or\notherwise. Then, they create a group of Rivals, these are GM-played characters\n(GMCs) who are opposed to the player characters. They aren’t black and white\nvillains, they are rivals. Sometimes they seem villainous to the\nplayers, but the GM should ensure they have a motivation. Also, the rivalry is\nmessy. At least one player character has a personal relationship of some kind\nwith a member of the rival team, the rivals have something the PCs lack, and\nthe PCs have some way to thwart their rivals when they need it. That sets up a\nnice opposition between the team and the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mechanically, your characters will\nface down threats and conflicts by declaring their intention, then they look\nthrough their character’s details to pull from different areas, like the mode\nof their approach, the stat they’re leaning on, if they’re fulfilling their\nteam role, what powers, if any, are in play, then adding in Spark from their\nown pool or from anyone who’s trying to help. That builds their die pool of\nsix-sided dice that they roll against a GM declared difficulty. In most\nconflicts, it’s a single roll to bring things to a resolution. The system is\nquick and has a nice bite when things are on the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with the regular approach to\na challenge, the GM has some neat little tools to play with that difficulty to\namp up conflicts. They can set two difficulties for a challenge. The first is a\nlower, “get it done” target number. The second is a higher difficulty\nwith an even more comprehensive victory or with adding benefits (something\nas simple as \u201cyou\u2019ll look awesome doing it\u201d or something more tangible like\n\u201cand they won\u2019t be able to fix their security system any time soon\u201d). That gives the player a bit of a\ntactical risk-reward decision to make as they build their die pool. It’s really\nfun to see folks consider how much to push towards the big win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last, but not least, is the Big\nThreat or Big Bad. This how HtS:DtB models a conflict with a major foe or an\nextended stressful conflict (like a large fire burning down the block, a\ntorrential rainstorm, open warfare between gangs on the streets, whatever is\nmost interesting to the group). The GM sets a Total Threat Difficulty, a very\nhigh target number. Any player who decides to have their character tackle the\nthreat can slowly winnow it down, but as long as that threat still has muscle\n(the total number of successes needed hasn’t been met or exceeded), each attempt\nis at best a mixed success and things will continue to escalate. The Total\nThreat Difficulty often ends up with player characters in dire straights, hurt,\nand paying the price for their victories, which then leads to Refresh scenes\nwhere they work back up their Spark. It’s a lovely cycle of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks so much to Rich for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed it and that you’ll <\/strong>check out Hit the Streets: Defend the Block on Kickstarter today<\/strong><\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Rich Rogers about Hit the Streets: Defend the Block, which is currently on Kickstarter! Rich had a lot of nifty stuff to say about the game, so check it out below! — Tell me a little about Hit the Streets: Defend the Block. What excites you about … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on Hit the Streets”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[20,10,4,17,25,8,15,12,23,18,56],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-interviews","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs","tag-worldbuilding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/7n8HgJW.png?fit=768%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-nM","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":206,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2017\/02\/five-or-so-questions-with-storybrewers-games-on-alas-for-the-awful-sea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1474,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions with Storybrewers Games on Alas for the Awful Sea","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"February 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I have an interview with the creators of Alas for the Awful Sea, a PbtA game currently on Kickstarter noted as being about \"why people hate, and what they fear.\" I imagine you can see why I was excited to interview them! 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