The Gaming Den

The title of this book guaranteed that I was going to laugh/cry/both. The presentation being high amateur, I was expecting cry.

But the concept was actually pretty good. The premise is a standard Champions-style superhero world where all the supers, hero and villain alike, vanish overnight in some kind of Secret Wars nonsense, and then there's a race by all the world's opportunists to break into the equivalents of the Batcave and the Fortress of Solitude and Avenger's Mansion and the Watchtower and the Nefarium and Castle Doom and so on, in order to get at the goodies.

Now, I think the actual execution is badly flawed start-to-finish (I'm not even going to go into it), but I would totally play a game based on that premise.

The premise sucked me in, too, though I've never found any joy in superhero games. The book's a'coming in the mail, hope it doesn't disappoint.

It is probably going to disappoint.

Are there any particularly cool dungeon ideas, at least?

I like the notion of having to complete some sort of quest in a Castle Heterodyne knock off. Traps galore. Sentient but insane castle overmind(s). Monsters and golems aplenty.

So, basically The Island of Doctor Destroyer but 32 years later someone expanded it into a whole RPG where the PC's don't actually get superpowers, the mercenary super villains aren't on the island and aren't necessarily racing the clock?

I'd rather see someone make an RPG out of The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.