Longshot City
A downloadable game
Longshot City is the super heroic roleplaying game where you and your team of baddy-bashing buddies kick seven shades of JUSTICE out of world ending villains, all in a lavishly illustrated 70-page book. With just this book and a couple of six-sided dice you'll be able to provide years of comic-book adventures for you and your friends.
Longshot City, the place, is a dangerous town and the players are protecting it. Build your own hero team from a huge selection of Archetypes and Origins, covering almost anything you can think of! Are your a trenchcoat mage who got their powers from being sucked into a work of fiction? Or maybe you're a parasitic powersuit from outer space? And if your imagination is bigger than one book, fear not! There are simple guidelines on how to make more.
The rules are based on the classic tried and tested science-fantasy RPG, TROIKA!, so you know it's good!
What's Inside?
Longshot City has everything you need to start and stay playing for a long time:
- 36 player character Archetypes ranging from ace reporters to superpets. The rules support almost any kind of hero you can think of.
- 36 hero Origins, like experimental clones and one-way time travellers! With the archetypes this makes 1,296 possible combinations of hero.
- 24 arch-nemesis each using our innovative Motives & Methods system. A powerful tool for making and running a tense campaign.
- 3 procedural campaign structures you can follow to get running a super hero game TODAY.
- Rules on how to patrol Longshot City and bump into trouble with barely any prep. Players can look for trouble and the GM can take a break!
- A Conspiracy Board system to keep track of your villains, their relationships, plans, and methods. Never forget an NPC grudge again!
- Escalation rules! Set the villains plans in motion and see if the heros can foil them before they come to fruition.
- A sectioned map of Longshot City for you to explore.
- KO Tables! Heroes don't drop dead, they get kidnapped, have character altering flashbacks, or get an awesome grimdark relaunch.
- Nameless Grunt creation! Every villain needs an army.
- Inventions, vehicles and hideout creation system! Be the super-scientist of your dreams.
- Game system based on the best selling science-fantasy RPG, TROIKA!, with suggestions on how an enterprising GM might combine them.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of £13 GBP. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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The game is awesome but lacks that most important detail. An introductory adventure or any adventure support. It has a few pages on campaigns but it's not much to go on IMO. Everything else is great. Hopefully someone publishes adventures for it.
I've been reading several ttrpgs with the idea of running superhero games for some time, and I think Longshot City is finally the one I would love to take to my gaming table. Within its pages, the Troika! system is adapted to allow for powerful characters, with dozens of powers and different origins. Trying to recreate your favorite comic book characters by exploring its tables is already a fun game in itself, enjoying the gret new options you can play with these. However, with the choices it offers, it's best to embrace its madness and create a more random character, in search of a new superhero you have never imagined before.
Even without having an extensive section dedicated to its setting, all entries and tables exude information about Longshot City. The city map is filled with evocative locations where chaos and common (and not so common) adventures can unfold for your game, with a very special mention for the antagonists compiled in the manual. They serve both as examples of the type of characters you can create and help establish more information about Longshot's setting. I find it especially admirable that (except for a few cases) almost all the rivals are characters that may initially frighten or confuse you but are not inherently evil; they just need to be listened to and a helping hand.
The three styles of art presented in the manual, one more epic and cosmic, darker and more terrifying in others, and even a more underground one, provide different visions on how to develop your own adventures. The texts are precise and fluid, and overall, delving into the intertwined world within its pages is a super fun experience.
Where can I purchase a physical copy?
Physical Copies will be availble on our website https://www.melsonia.com/ as soon as we finish shipping the Kickstarter orders!
How come you responded to this comment, but not the one I made 12 days ago? I also left a comment on the Kickstarter page that never got answered either.
Hi Futuremc,
Our apologies, we're only in and out sporadically to Kickstarter and don't see the messages there very often.
We did see the one below a couple of days ago and reached out the the Author for his answer but haven't got it yet.
Will be back to answer as soon as we have it
So the author doesn't work for you all? And doesn't this game use the Troika! system?
That's correct, most of the authors and artists we work with are freelance and bring us projects they would like us to help with. Most of which are for Troika! but not all.
Troika! is an entirely open licence game and can be used by anyone to create anything they like just by including a short piece of text we supply on the files for the main game, in the case of Longshot City it has taken a few more liberties in adapting the rules so we need to check in with him to ensure we're getting it right for you.
So when players roll for checks, what number are they trying to roll under and how do their powers affect the final total? The book is very vague on how it works and doesnt give any sort of checks table to use.
Hi Futuremc002,
Having spoken with Christian he has said that it mostly works as Troika! does so:
Generally speaking anything that's easy or non critical to the game doesn't require a skills check it can just happen.
Anything that needs to be checked requires a player to roll under their skills (2.1.1 p32).
For example a player has a skill of 5 and an advanced skill of 3 in climbing.
They need to roll under or equal to an 8 on 2d6 to succeed the challenge
Okay, but nowhere on the page you mentioned does it say I use the character skill points for the check factor. As someone who has never played Troika before, how was I supposed to know that???
Hi Futuremc002,
Having taken a look I can see that what might help new players in the future is an example perhaps but in section 2.2 p32 Advanced Skills it does say that the "Advanced skill number given in the background plus the characters base skill yields the character's skill total."
Followed by section 2.2.1 which explains the use of skills to pass both roll under and roll versus for actions in the game.
As per this image I am sharing, all that is says is that you can use advanced skills to test a roll. That still does not clearly outright tell me how to roll for that test. All mechanics should be explicitly detailed step by step.
Is there a reason this is formatted in an awkward 2 page manner? The map up front won't display correctly because of it and it doesn't work well reading on a phone/tablet this way
It defaults to spread view, but there should be an option to change it to singles in your preffered dedicated PDF viewer.