Tell me about your Superheroes game!

[JediSoth]

In the vein of a similar thread on Star Wars, I'm interested in hearing about people's superheroes campaigns. Several of my players are interested in trying something new when our current D&D games wrap up and Mutants & Masterminds has been bandied about. I would most likely be running this game, and since this is an entirely new genre of RPG for me (OK, I lie, I played Marvel Super Heroes WAAAAAYYY back in the mid-80s, but I never owned the game), I'm not quite sure where to start...beyond purchasing Mutants & Masterminds, that is.

JediSoth

 

[Ilium]

Lets have a "design JediSoth's superhero campaign" competition!

I ran a Champions campaign for quite some time. It was a lot of fun. Low-key in the sens that the PCs rarely if ever dealt with world-shaking events. It used a lot of themes of discrimination/acceptance of metahumans (most metahumans are very low-powered, so they can't just throw their weight around like the PCs can).

I also ran a Marvel game WAAAAAYYY back in the mid-80s (were you in it? ) It was a big old bucket of Mary-Sue characters, cameos by our favorite Marvel characters and all the things that make fanfiction wrong. It had no fewer than three different immortal, flying, plasma-throwing characters named Al (who were completely unconnected to each other) and it was entirely too much fun.

 

[jezter6]

While I don't actually run a game, in the spirit of helping you out with ideas, here's what I would be doing.

First, I've always wanted to run an Angels vs Demons game. The kind where demons walk among us, but look like humans until they use their evil powers. Angels are the same way. Most people don't even know the demons exist, and therefore don't see the changes (ie: sort of like Urban Arcana and 'the veil') and make different excuses for it. Maybe 'enlightened' (either by good or evil side) people could see them in their true form when they use powers, that way you could have non-angel PCs that can still fight the demons.

I've also wanted to do a Hellboy-esque game of monster vs monster hunting.

another idea I've had were to do pulp supers, where the heroes fought nazis in zeppelins and stuff...

 

[JediSoth]

I also ran a Marvel game WAAAAAYYY back in the mid-80s (were you in it? )

Only if you were an Army brat living in Würzburg, Germany at the time. Man, I think we played everything under the sun from 1985-1990. D&D, AD&D, Dr. Who, Star Trek, Marvel Super Heroes, DC Heroes, Top Secret S/I, Star Frontiers...but mostly AD&D.

Oops. Didn't mean to threadjack my own thread


Right now, I don't have any major ideas. I own Mutants and Masterminds, and a poster-sized map of Freedom City (I'll buy the book soon). I'm going to write a superhero story for NaNoWriMo, but hadn't really intended to use that as my campaign.

JediSoth

 

[ValhallaGH]

I'm currently playing in a Freedom City campaign. The premise (which will make more sense if you read the setting) is that Omega attacked again in 2006. He, and his dimensional destruction army, were beaten back and the portals between realities closed again, but many of the world's heroes and villains, including most of the Freedom League, were killed or dragged into the Terminus (the end of all universes). The campaign started a year later, with the PCs as most of the current Freedom League (Johnny Rocket and Lady Liberty are the only previous members still around).
We now save the day in classic, four color fashion. Whether there are plots by a nemesis to learn secret identities, coalitions of super villains seeking wealth/power, bikini cheerleaders trapped on a magical island filled with zombie dinosaurs, inter-planetary political marriages being disrupted, or simple liquor store robberies, we do what we can to save the day. During an investigation of an illegal super-powered fighting arena, two of our members were killed and a third nearly so, but we managed to survive.

Currently, we're trying to expand membership of the League, create a new European League, and recover the lost soul of King Arthur.

In the future we'll probably get attacked by the machinations of the Crime League, which should be an exciting and interesting adventure against a coalition of powerful foes.


Super campaigns are harder to run because there are fewer crutches for a GM to lean upon. There are no limits to what the characters can do, the world has to grow and evolve with the team, you have to challenge the party while still maintaining the desired tone and level of realism.

My advice is to talk with your prospective players and get a feel for what kind of supers game you, and they, would like to see. Four color? Golden Age? Silver Age? Gritty Iron Age fare? A mix of all of them? Then, don't be afraid of inspirations, even silly ones. One of the more interesting, and frustrating, adventures we had was inspired by the title Cheerleader Bikini Beach Party on Dead Dino Island; silly name, excellent inspiration for a really fun and interesting adventure.

I hope that helps some.

 

[Stormborn]

The most succesful quasi-super hero mini campaing I ran was called Arcadia and was set inthe 30s. I ran it using d20 M and a homebrew Template Class idea that basically boosted the powerlevels from Mere Mortal to Pulp Hero. The PCs were an artist turned mystic and a Iron Fist-y martial arts girl from Chinatown. The PCs were recrutied by the Zenith Foundation, founded by the Doc Savaage like Dr. Zenith, to serve as field agents some 5 years after all of the Dr's original assistants retired or disappeared. We played for several weeks and as things progressed the PCs exorcized a haunted tree, stopped a series of kidnappings that led to a moreau lab, an undead outbreak at a museum, infiltrated a diabolical night club and investigated the where abouts of Zenith's former associates. Eventually they discovered that Zenith was not horribly injured but under the control of a mindflayer like being possing as his manservant Akun.


I ran a solo Mutants and Masterminds oneshot with a pregen PC for a friend staring Hellion, the daughter of a supervillain who comes to Shadow Bay (think a Gothic San Francisco) to discover her heritage. The premise was that both the Wardens of the West (arcane JLA) and their archnemesies the Coven of Crime have disappeared leaving a power vacum that is being filled by old sidekicks, protoges, children, and jumped up henchmen. Hellion, after a confrontation with a former sidekick called Kid Crusader, winds up working undercover for the setting's SHIELD analog.

Later I ran a MnM game set in a fictitious Gulf Coast city staring a slightly superpowered version of Nightwing called Rascal and a motorcycle riding psychic ninja. The campaign was a little more straight forward (4-color) than the other two, but refrenced elements of both. In the end we never got a good hang on how everything worked in MnM and decided to move onto something else.

I think I would like to play a good on going Supers game, but no one in my group could really run one long term.

 

[Ilium]

I think I would like to play a good on going Supers game, but no one in my group could really run one long term.

I find this to be a chronic problem in superhero games. They rarely have the staying power of a fantasy or modern/historical game. No idea why.

 

[Ben Robbins]

I find this to be a chronic problem in superhero games. They rarely have the staying power of a fantasy or modern/historical game. No idea why.

It doesn't have to be that way -- I ran an M&M campaign that ran for about 120 sessions.

The trick is to resist the temptation to just throw in the villain/slugfest of the week and include overarching story and character arcs instead. Explore the backstory for each hero and weave it into the plot -- make that the development instead of just having the heroes become rapidly more powerful.

 

[klofft]

My friend and I ran a Champions campaign for just about 5 years non-stop, with the same core group of players and characters. It was set in my Champions world, which I have been running on and off for 20 years. Superhero games can definitely be long-term.

Our approach was to just go heavy (really, really heavy) on the soap opera of the characters. Their private lives (as rich, youngish Los Angelenos) were so complicated that superheroing was often a bit of an inconvenience!

During one session, one of the players (who admittedly was having a bad day) burst out during a fight scene, "Can't we just skip to the end and get back to the role-playing?"

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

I'm not quite sure where to start...beyond purchasing Mutants & Masterminds, that is.

JediSoth

And a very good start it is. M&M has become my all time favorite game system. IMHO it is by far the best game system I have ever played if not ever written. It is d20 the way it was meant to be. I know not everyone is as enamoured with it as much as I but you really cant go wrong with M&M.

I recently had to quit my current M&M group unfortunately for personal real life issues and I am saddened that I can not continue with it at this time. We as a group sat down and tossed out ideas on what the game world was like and desided certain key features that wee wanted in that world. When play started we devoloped our characters and the world as it went. The GM role has been shared as a few of us have taken turns telling stories. It really worked out well and was a TON of fun.