The History of Urban Legions!

Phil and Doug met several years ago in high school marching band. Back then, they had Big Dreams about one day working on a project together. Flashforward to a few years ago when Phil and Doug chatted at a housewarming party. Doug told Phil about Kingdom of Loathing, another browser-based role playing game. The conversation ended with something along the lines of, "We could totally do this... We should totally do this!" And, the ending of that converation was only the beginning.

The concept for the role playing game being superhero based derived from a card game that Doug was working on prior to this fateful housewarming conversation. The game was too complex as a card game. Too many moving pieces. Too much to keep track of. The game would work much better as a computer game, where the program can keep track of stuff for the players. Also, the card game was originally more of a strategy style of game, and not as much role playing.

Over many, many emails and several lunch meetings, details were hashed out about how to design Urban Legions as a role playing game. Even today, there are more features documented than are currently available in the Urban Legions game. About a year after that initial conversation, a working prototype of Urban Legions was available for beta. In December 2008, Urban Legions was made publically available.

Is Urban Legions complete? Simply put... No. Truthfully, it may never be "complete". Phil and Doug still have plans for tons of new content features to add over time. The main story-arc is not complete, but is incrementally updated over time, much like episodes of comic books. There are concepts for events and puzzles that still exist on paper. There is a feature wish list to enhance the game engine, and to potentially design other, future games with.

Creating Urban Legions was a piece of cake, right? Not really. Both Phil and Doug balance working on Urban Legions with their day jobs, their families, and many other side projects. Also, working on a major project such as this has strained their friendship at times, whether it was not seeing eye to eye on creative differences or money matters. A lot of compromises had to be made to bring the game to where it is, which is beyond their first thoughts of such a thing. Would either trade it for the world? No way! Why trade this experience for the world, when they are having such fun creating their own worlds? Phil and Doug are having a blast creating something they both find incredibly rewarding.

If you have an idea to do something like this, we both encourage you to chase your dream. Here is a bit of friendly advice from us.

• Find someone to share the creation of your project. The energy of bouncing ideas off another person helps drive you towards succeeding.
• Document all your ideas and concepts. Those ideas may come in handy one day.
• Never give up, and never get discouraged. You may get some negative feedback from other people who neither fully appreciate nor understand your project the way you do. Take what they say with a grain of salt.
• Don't have the resources? Be inventive! Urban Legions was created from more time and effort than money. Sure, it might not have all them high falootin' graphics that the latest off-the-shelf game has, but Urban Legions is an epic game developed in the spare time of a couple of creative, yet goofy friends with minimal out-of-pocket expense. Even with no marketing experience, Urban Legions has found its way to hundreds of players, and more sign up all the time.

Thank you for taking the time to consider Urban Legions. We'd love to hear your opinions about what we've created. Also, if you do come up with your own creative project, drop us a line and let us know about it.