Robot Viking

Players will create virtual adventures inside the virtual game they're already playing. Sort of like when Marvel Comics existed in the fictional universe of Marvel Comics.

Sometime this spring, venerable superhero MMORPG City of Heroes will release their 14th free expansion, “Architect.” Fans of classic superhero RPGs will be agog at the options available in the new mission creator. Design your own villain group, create a story, and allow other players to face off against an arch-nemesis you designed (who spouts dialogue you wrote yourself).

Here at Robot Viking, we cover video and computer games very sparingly. We’ve been around a month and a half, and this is the first time we’ve even mentioned one. But once in a while, something comes along that just feels like something tabletop gamers would love.

Which brings us to City of Heroes. For the most part, it’s your standard MMORPG. You fight, you team up with friends, you level up and gain new powers, you get loot, you equip better gear, etc. But the Mission Architect feature adds a whole new level of interest. You create missions, or link up to five missions together to create a story arc. You write the story, including the dialogue spoken by the mission contact, any allies you meet along the way, and of course the enemies you’ll fight against.

The level of customization looks impressive. There are many types of mission goals possible, and you can combine them in novel ways to create unique mission paths for the players who choose to take on your mission. There are something like 20 different objective types to combine.

The coolest feature of all is the ability to create all the characters in your mission from scratch. They actually delayed the Mission Architect several months to build this into it. You can have a signature villain, with a unique set of powers. You can even create all his minions and lieutenants – no more fighting the same generic bad guys. Considering the insane depth of the City of Heroes character creator (there are literally thousands of options), this will be a lot of fun to play with.

There have been “RPG Creator” programs before, but they’ve all been of the elves and wizards variety. To my knowledge (and I misplaced my Helm of Omniscience, so I could be wrong), this is the first RPG creating tool involving the superhero genre. It may also be the first time a major MMORPG has opened the doors to user created content. You can head over to the official announcement for more details and some additional screenshots of the Mission Architect.

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