Nearly three years after it was first announced, Kids in Capes is launching a crowdfunding campaign with the aim of publishing a superhero-themed version of its popular investigative tabletop roleplaying game. Later this year, it will be trading in the bikes, flashlights, wands and pointy hats for a whole new genre of storytelling from the perspective of unassuming children.
Kids in Capes is the third such board game from publisher Hunters Entertainment, following the small-town detective adventures of Kids on Bikes and the magical school antics of Kids on Brooms. We've known this game is in development since July 2021, when the publisher announced the project on their social media as a new game using the Kids on Bikes system, only with more capes and extraordinary powers.
At this time, not much is known beyond what Hunters Entertainment has said. published on their social networksAn official Kickstarter campaign is launching on May 29, which will apparently reveal a lot more about what it looks like in action. For those unaware, Kids on Bikes was originally designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski and tells stories that are very similar to the early plots of Stranger Things or the Paper Girls graphic novel series: a strange mystery plagues the towns and the adults are either too worried or helpless to pay attention, leaving the mantle of saviors to a group of prepubescent (or sometimes distressingly teenage) friends with more guts than know-how.
Watch on YouTube
Each character has six primary attributes (Intelligence, Strength, Fighting, Flight, Charm, and Guts) and a corresponding die from the traditional polyhedral array assigned to each. The higher the die, the better you are at tasks requiring that attribute. Dice can “explode” if you roll the highest number, meaning that, paradoxically, lower skills are more likely to hit a lucky streak (even on our worst days, the universe does us a favor). It’s an interesting system that trades the honed martial skills of D&D characters for the precocity of youth. There are also adversity tokens that can be exchanged for re-rolls, adding a bit of protection against bad luck.
Obviously, Kids in Capes can make great use of this system, portraying young superheroes with obvious capabilities and equally obvious flaws. Masks: A New Generation sings by embracing the inherent melodrama of cramming a bunch of supercharged cauldrons of hormones into one story, and while the Kids On series focuses more on mystery and group dynamics, there’s still fertile ground for learning tough lessons about life and being an adult while still punching bad guys right in the face.
More information about Kids in Capes will be available once the Kickstarter campaign launches later this month. You’ll have time to catch up if you’ve never tried these light, story-focused games, starting with the second edition of Kids on Bikes. If you want some inspiration on how to run it, Dimension 20 used it for a midseason of actual gameplay titled Mentopolis, which took place inside someone’s body, Osmosis Jones-style.