Reynard
aka Ian Eller
That other thread is about system, so I would liek to keep that discussion out of this thread. here, I am more interested in what you think makes for a good superhero campaign. What style of supers works best for you? What sorts of adventures? What sorts of PCs? What have your most successful superhero games been like? What about your failures.
I think the seminal text for superhero campaigns is the original Strike Force sourcebook by Aaron Allston. Though written for Champions, most of its advice and practices are universal for supers games (and some beyond). Making secret ID's matter and engaging in bluebooking for the melodrama both help supers campaigns have the complexity and texture of long comic book runs.
My most successful supers campaign was actually a D&D campaign that reached the superheroic modern era (using Mutants and Masterminds). It was the third campaign after one that started in AD&D 2E and the next using 3.x. Basically magic disappeared for 1000 years and the world developed in a "mundane" way until the equivalent of the 1920s, when magic was unleached again and the world's superheroic age began. That happened in a pulp adventure session. then we played a Golden Age mini-campaign, before moving onto the main heavily silver age inspired campaign. It all came to a head in my own Crisis on infinite Erebars for our group's 20th anniversary. Connections to the D&D lore and past replaced things like North Myth inspired supers, so instead of a group of idiots dressed up like animals for Spiderman villains, we had a group of idiots dressed up by low level D&D monsters as villains.
Anyway, tell us about what you think makes a successful superhero campaign, outside of game system concerns.
I think the seminal text for superhero campaigns is the original Strike Force sourcebook by Aaron Allston. Though written for Champions, most of its advice and practices are universal for supers games (and some beyond). Making secret ID's matter and engaging in bluebooking for the melodrama both help supers campaigns have the complexity and texture of long comic book runs.
My most successful supers campaign was actually a D&D campaign that reached the superheroic modern era (using Mutants and Masterminds). It was the third campaign after one that started in AD&D 2E and the next using 3.x. Basically magic disappeared for 1000 years and the world developed in a "mundane" way until the equivalent of the 1920s, when magic was unleached again and the world's superheroic age began. That happened in a pulp adventure session. then we played a Golden Age mini-campaign, before moving onto the main heavily silver age inspired campaign. It all came to a head in my own Crisis on infinite Erebars for our group's 20th anniversary. Connections to the D&D lore and past replaced things like North Myth inspired supers, so instead of a group of idiots dressed up like animals for Spiderman villains, we had a group of idiots dressed up by low level D&D monsters as villains.
Anyway, tell us about what you think makes a successful superhero campaign, outside of game system concerns.
