What a character

(Characters.)

Narbonic is a character-driven comic, and I don't really feel it would be a Narbonic card game if all the players are exactly the same at the beginning of the game. Thus, I decided that players would actually play characters from the webcomic, and it was pretty easy to pick 4 characters: Helen, Dave, Mell, and Artie. However, I don't like games capped at 4 players; I can't entirely explain why since the sweet spot of many games listed as 3-5 players is 4. Anyway, it would be weird to have the lab only fighting amongst themselves.

Of the recurring characters that can actually stand against the main characters (Antonio Smith, Madblood, Dr. Narbon, Dana and the superintelligent hamsters, the Dave Conspiracy), Madblood is the obvious choice. His role in the webcomic is to serve as Helen's rival mad scientist. Antonio Smith, forensic linguist, is neither mad ror evil. Dr. Narbon, while quite mad, is just too similar to Helen. Dana and the hamsters are more experiments gone wrong. And the Dave Conspiracy is too chill to do anything. But don't worry: these characters will have their place in the game as well.

The problem (problems, really) with having specific characters is that 1) each must play sufficiently different from each other, 2) they must be interesting to play, and yet 3) they must be balanced. This is not a trivial problem, as anyone who has played a strategy game with different characters (or tribes or races or whatever) can tell you.

Tomorrow, how to address this problem of being different, interesting, and balanced.