Story Premise

Gotham Knights is, or seeks to be, what you might call an “interactive graphic novel,” in the vein of such titles as Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween or Hush, with lots of characters and a large mystery to be solved.

Gotham City, Batman, and the characters associated with him hardly need any introduction, but some explanation is needed for the particular version of the world used for this game. Unlike the comics, where characters age much more slowly than in real time, this universe assumes Bruce Wayne was born in 1913, became Batman in 1939, and from there he and the world age in real time. As such, this is a historical game, in addition to a superhero game. Despite being set in 1954, this game does not reflect the campiness of the Silver Age Batman comics. Instead, it is the modern Batman of Year One and later, transposed to a more or less realistic 1954.

Your Characters

Your character should be a member of DC’s Bat Family, not an OC. I would prefer that the more central members (such as Batman, Robin, Batgirl, or Catwoman) be PCs before more secondary ones – it’s a lot easier to have a Batman game without, say, Cassandra Cain than Bruce Wayne. The GM reserves the right to refuse any character submission.

Themes of the RP

The “feel” of this game comes from Film Noir and other detective fiction of the 1940s and 50s, along with Batman titles such as Year One and Hush. Every Batman fan has “their” Batman, and “my Batman” is the World’s Greatest Detective version of the character. As such, this game is set on the mean streets of Gotham, with one of the major focuses being investigation and detective work, as your vigilante studies blood-spattered concrete and bullet-riddled corpses, seeking to piece the clues together.

This is a superhero game, and as such action will play a role, but players should take care to keep their characters’ abilities relatively grounded, in keeping with the street-level nature of this story.

Another important aspect of this is that I would like to “stage-manage” the characters as little as possible, allowing the players to decide what their character ought to do in a given situation.

Once this gets some interest, I'll add the character sheet and some important continuity info for this universe.

I would be interested in playing this. Maybe a version of Robin.

You have my attention, and a potential Nightwing.

I would be interested in playing this. Maybe a version of Robin.

Nice, would you be willing to play Tim Drake?

You have my attention, and a potential Nightwing.

Great! Nightwing would be good, but if you still want to play Jason Todd/Red Hood, that's certainly an option.

Nice, would you be willing to play Tim Drake?

Yes! I had Tim Drake in mind.

Great! Nightwing would be good, but if you still want to play Jason Todd/Red Hood, that's certainly an option.

I'm still in debate. I like Nightwing more but I feel like playing Jason in this setting could be interesting.

<Snipped quote by Fingal>

I'm still in debate. I like Nightwing more but I feel like playing Jason in this setting could be interesting.

I could see Jason as a Marlon Brando/James Dean sort of character.

OOC thread is now up: https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/189805-gotham-knights-a-bat-family-rp/ooc

@KaliW@DClassified

It looks interesting, but I'm gonna have to abstain. Too busy with my current stuff.

Best of luck!