Another idea for a story serving as a Sins spin-off! I wasn’t sure if this should be a comic or a game, so the write-up is a bit of both.
The story follows our protagonists... The Almost Villains Club!
The comic takes place in the Demon Realm so we can see what they’re up to during the post-Manitou years, rather than just those boring humans. We follow a group of three loser demons that want to build their way up. They all figure they're rock bottom so life can only get better! They also all bring out the worst in each other and egg themselves on into bad situations.
It starts off as a story of the characters wanting respect through power like the demon barons of old, but ultimately learning the difference between fear and respect. They're all too full of themselves and insecure to actually admit they want real respect, so they try to pass respect off as power to keep up their charade.
The secondary theme is about using hate as a transformative tool. It's a tool to make you improve and move on, don't get complacent. The team’s enemies (real and imagined) frequently tell them to calm down because of how often they’re picking fights and ruining things for themselves, but the Leader's strength is in its hate. It hates things because it wants the world to improve.
At the start of our story, the crew is angry that the world has gotten boring, now that the realm is stable and the Sins work in the human world. The demons of old had power, raided the Human Realm, and life was more exciting back in the day. So now they're planning on stealing enough power to open a portal to a new realm to call home. Stories usually start with the crew finding ways to steal or use somebody else’s energy. Then, using the tears in Limbo, they’re able to investigate new realms to try to conquer. They find one splinter of a realm that's verdant and beautiful but unoccupied and they love it because it has tons of energy to leech, but it’s not worth conquering because there’s nobody there. They soon set up their headquarters there, giving it the threatening name “The Clubhouse”.
The Crew:
The Leader- An imp demon (like The Vice or Maw’s style of bodies). Stats-wise, it’s low attack and medium health at start. It fashions itself as the brains of the crew, but it really isn't. Late game/story, its strength is in magnifying the skills of its partners, to reflect its state as a leader. Its special skill is Hate, as it takes damage, its attack goes up on the next turn.
A Female lapid (but taller, rather than the Mayor’s size)- She was born into the Lust caste, but it's not her style so she doesn’t participate and shuns the succubae. She's very violent and quick to anger, so her special skill is that she explodes enemies causing high damage to one target and splash damage to the rest. Stats, she has high attack and low health (your glass cannon).
A cut up larger demon- Missing an arm and one of its horns, it rarely talks. Its large size and scraggy appearance make people afraid of it, but it’s just quiet. Very protective of its friends, it uses its gigantic body to shield them from damage or just serve as a shelter to protect them from rain on their adventures. It’s hinted but never explicitly stated it's a fallen Baron from before the Sins era. Stats, high health, low attack (your tank).
If we went the game route for the story, gameplay was split into two sections. One for management and one for combat.
Election Gameplay:
It starts off with the main character wanting to win a role as the leader of its den.
You start with one building and only one advisor in this first district.
As you gain power in and complete each district, you unlock more and more buildings and access to a few more advisors (but you always have more buildings than advisors).
Each cycle, the buildings produce “Weird” for currency and “Political Support”. Some buildings make both in different ratios others only produce one.
Some buildings simply add to your Defense rating.
Political Support is needed to unlock the boss fight to complete the district and advance the story.
Weird is spent to upgrade the buildings and to upgrade your team of advisors so they upgrade their building more each cycle.
Each building has a rank 1-5.
Not every building starts at the lowest rank to give them variety.
As buildings rank up, they produce more Weird and Political Support each cycle.
To improve a building's rank, you spend Weird and apply an advisor to the building.
Better advisors grant more experience to the building each but cost more Weird.
Each advisor has unique strengths so they may provide more or less experience based on the building's type (Good at upgrading “food” class buildings but bad at upgrading “succubi” class types, etc)
Each advisor can only be used once per cycle.
Each cycle, the game rolls to see if there should be a fight. The higher your Defense in the region, the less likely a fight will break out.
If your Defense fails to protect against a threat, that region will stop generating Weird and PS.
You must complete a battle using the AV Club to fight off the threat and start currency generation and upgrading again.
Once you reach a milestone of PS, you can initiate the election fight against the boss of the region to finish this chapter.
RPG Gameplay:
Stats involve very chunky numbers. The difference between 1 and 2 attack is huge, so it’s not like your Finally Fantasticals where characters have thousands of Health.
The main stats are just: Health, Attack, Special
Health and Attack mostly alternate as you level up
Special rarely goes up. It's the main stat for the leader but it still only goes up every few levels
Health is how much damage you can take before being KO’d.
Attack is how much damage you do with a basic hit.
Special determines the effects of the character’s unique moves. Instead of having a whole bunch of spells and specials, characters just have two or three. As you hit Special milestones, you unlock your second and third move and once you have them all, the moves start to take on new properties (for example, the Lapid lady’s explosion starts off just hurting one enemy but once your Special is high enough, it does splash damage too).
It’s turn-based RPG combat for boss fights to win the election and take back areas under contention that your Defense security failed. Every battle should feel significant. There are no grunt enemies you can just button mash through. Since the numbers are chunky, it’s more tactical and finishing the battle quickly is important because nobody has the stats for a prolonged battle.
Each turn, you choose an action for each character on the team and which enemy to target, then everything resolves once you've made your choices. There are no direct actions/twitch gameplay.
All actions resolve at the same time. So if you and an enemy are targeting each other, you both take damage at the same time. There is no turn order.
You level up your team by spending Weird on food for them and fighting gives you a nice chunk of experience too.
By the end, the team never actually succeeds and any victories are almost totally undone minutes afterwards in comedic mishaps that are their own fault, but they’d never admit it.
Through no planning of theirs, they actually do get caught up in some Agency/Sins affairs, help out, and they get thanks from the team for a good and kind mission, but nobody ever believes it. They still call themselves villains anyway after saving the day in their own tiny way.
The story’s finale is that the team uses their power to find a new realm just asking to be conquered by demons. They open the portal but ultimately refuse to go through. It’s best to use their hate to clean up their own world instead of running away.