Best published superhero adventure?

[jian]

I don’t think I’ve seen this topic around. Which do you think is the best (whatever that means) superhero RPG adventure on your shelf, and why? Bonus points if you’ve actually run it.

My personal favourites, though I haven’t run them - honestly, as a GM, I haven’t run a lot of published adventures - are probably the following:

• Sins of the Past (Icons): Just a perfect four colour adventure with a past Golden Age team, a new generation of villains, and a very personal motivation for the Big Bad. Reminds me of the Gail Simone comic series Welcome to Tranquility.
• Time of Crisis (Mutants & Masterminds): A wonderful homage to Silver Age trans-dimensional superheroics, especially from DC comics - the NPCs include expies of the Flash’s Rogues and the Freedom Fighters.
• Nightmares of Future Past, The X-Potential, and Reap the Whirlwind (Marvel Super Heroes): My old-school choice. Probably the most interesting of the old MSH modules: the PCs are mutants in the dark future of the USA controlled by the Sentinels. I’m still wondering whether to use this with my current 1995 X-Men campaign, with a bit of time travel.

 

[overgeeked]

Great topic.

Nightmares of Future Past, The X-Potential, and Reap the Whirlwind (Marvel Super Heroes): My old-school choice. Probably the most interesting of the old MSH modules: the PCs are mutants in the dark future of the USA controlled by the Sentinels. I’m still wondering whether to use this with my current 1995 X-Men campaign, with a bit of time travel.

Did you not run the fourth module in the set, Flames of Doom?

 

[jian]

Great topic.

Did you not run the fourth module in the set, Flames of Doom?

Quite right, I forgot that one. What’s 1980s dystopian superheroics without an imminent nuclear holocaust?

 

[overgeeked]

My favorites are mostly reading material or books to mine ideas from rather than to actually run them. Of all the genres I play, I think superheroes is the one least likely to get a module to the table.

I really liked the DC Heroes Chessmen 4-parter for the Legion of Super-Heroes. Pawns of Time, Knight to Planet 3, Mad Rook's Gambit, and King for All Time.

The Time Trapper "resurrects" several dead LSH members and sends them to kidnap someone from Legion HQ. The PCs are there when it happens, a fight ensues, the villains beat the PCs, and successfully kidnap the person. Which kicks off the whole thing. It's railroady as all hell throughout, not just the opening. It's specifically designed for Element Lad, Lightning Lass, Timber Wolf, Invisible Kid II, Polar Boy, and Tellus. It calls this out and tells the referee they'll have to rework the whole thing if using any other characters.

The dead Legionnaires are Supergirl, Nemesis Kid, Chemical King, Ferro Lad, Invisible Kid I, and Karate Kid. And there's a whole section on how best to beat each of the PCs with these NPCs. Who they'll attack, how they'll attack, strategy, tactics, etc. I think it might be the single most railroady start to a campaign I've ever seen.

There's all kinds of time travel shenanigans. Temporal duplicates, time lost people and objects (cavemen, T-Rex, biplanes and WW1 pilots),

And that's just the start.

Still...I'm a big fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes so I have a soft spot for these.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Marcus L Rowland's "Strikeback" in White Dwarf 58 (Oct 1984). It's five pages long and it has time travel, the Bavarian Illuminati, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, Captain Nemo, and a cartoon mouse called Benjy. Stats are included for both Champions and Golden Heroes. I love its idea density, that it packs so much content into such a small amount of text.

 

[Reynard]

Huh. I don't think it has ever occurred to me to use a published adventure for supers.

 

[jian]

My favorites are mostly reading material or books to mine ideas from rather than to actually run them. Of all the genres I play, I think superheroes is the one least likely to get a module to the table.

I really liked the DC Heroes Chessmen 4-parter for the Legion of Super-Heroes. Pawns of Time, Knight to Planet 3, Mad Rook's Gambit, and King for All Time.

The Time Trapper "resurrects" several dead LSH members and sends them to kidnap someone from Legion HQ. The PCs are there when it happens, a fight ensues, the villains beat the PCs, and successfully kidnap the person. Which kicks off the whole thing. It's railroady as all hell throughout, not just the opening. It's specifically designed for Element Lad, Lightning Lass, Timber Wolf, Invisible Kid II, Polar Boy, and Tellus. It calls this out and tells the referee they'll have to rework the whole thing if using any other characters.

The dead Legionnaires are Supergirl, Nemesis Kid, Chemical King, Ferro Lad, Invisible Kid I, and Karate Kid. And there's a whole section on how best to beat each of the PCs with these NPCs. Who they'll attack, how they'll attack, strategy, tactics, etc. I think it might be the single most railroady start to a campaign I've ever seen.

There's all kinds of time travel shenanigans. Temporal duplicates, time lost people and objects (cavemen, T-Rex, biplanes and WW1 pilots),

And that's just the start.

Still...I'm a big fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes so I have a soft spot for these.

It’s a real pity that you don’t seem to be able to buy any of the Mayfair DC Heroes material in pdf form. It’s a treasure trove, honestly. Just look at these titles:

DC Heroes - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Come on Down, Don’t Ask, and Four Horsemen of Apokolips look particularly interesting, as do the Pawns of Time series as you describe them.