What Makes A Successful Superhero CAMPAIGN

[jian]

Im.not sure how either of those things apply.

In Watchmen, no one is super (well,one guy, buy I don't think Manhattan is a PC). And in The Boys, everyone but the PCs is super.

Yes, a better comparison would be Miracleman, though of course your PCs don’t have to be quite that super. But if you as supers are an out of context problem for everyone else - whether because you’re militarily unstoppable or because you can do things like turn microplastic pollution into rare earth minerals - then everyone will have an opinion about you, and some of those opinions will involve absolute terror.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

So, taking the allegory of the racial strife that the mutant strife puts a thin veneer on... Certain mutants cannot be denied. Mystique. Nightcrawler. Blink. Strong Guy. Etc, etc. Others can 'pass'. Those are only known by their identification and their association. It's for this reason, that sometimes humans are swept up in the 'mutie' hate - you don't hate them? You must be one! Just hiding amongst us! That's also one thing that stokes the 'red scare' type of environment that leads to Sentinels, mutant registration and mutant detectors.

Absolutely! I like this. It's also potential drama between 'passing' and 'non-passing' PCs (and NPCs) should players want to go there. A bit of Jokers vs. Aces energy, if you will.

The average punter wouldn't know about the distinction from just observation in most cases. But they might still know something about the differences - that supers like Spider-Man are freakish one-offs whose origin can't be effectively reproduced vs mutants with in-born powers that bear the existential threat of modern humanity being "replaced" if they aren't controlled. Almost certainly this replacement theory would have to be stoked up in the media by someone or some groups but, as we see today just by observing politics, replacement theory can be appallingly effective.

Oh yeah, replacement theory nonsense would of course be a major trope within the campaign.

In my Theoretical Mutants Campaign (TMC) I'd go with anyone having innate powers being a mutant, regardless of how the powers activated. So in Cyclops case they activated when he... fell out of a flying saucer? I can't remember. But let's say it was in response to serious stress. Well, in my TMC, Spidey's powers activated when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Most folks would have gotten blood poisoning and leukaemia, but because he had the mutant gene he got super powers. Hooray! (I love Spidey.)

This sort of speaks to @Doug McCrae's post above. All supers would be suspect. But all supers would also be mutants. I don't think I'd even have aliens, it would just muddy the waters.

Just to be clear folks, all I'm doing is noodling about with some concepts for a theoretical campaign. Please don't take disagreement as a shot or a major philosphical disconnect or anything.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Im.not sure how either of those things apply.

In Watchmen, no one is super (well,one guy, buy I don't think Manhattan is a PC). And in The Boys, everyone but the PCs is super.

Ozymandias is arguably as super as other characters like Batman or The Manhunter (Paul Kirk).

IOW, Oz possesses a combination of physical and mental human attributes at levels that are highly improbable in a “non-super”- including catching bullets without it being stage magic.

 

[TheHand]

My most successful Supers campaign was back in the 90’s. We were using Champions with a lot of Dark Champions material sprinkled in, because it was rhetorical 90s and it was Extreme!(tm)

The heroes were a mix of tech and super powered characters. They had costumes but they were all very subdued compared to your standard four-colour. However, the villains were largely of supernatural origin. It didn’t start that way but kind of evolved into super heroes vs the minions of eldritch horror… definitely influenced by the rise of Call of Cthulhu and comics like Spawn and Hellblazer.

Since then I’ve run a few supers games but they tend to only be 1 or 2 “issues.” My later games are much more traditional heroics. Most of my current players don’t really appreciate the genre much more than watching MCU movies, so I don’t really have that big player buy-in others have mentioned.

Also my tastes changed so games like Champions (and even M&M ) are too crunchy for me. I haven’t quite found a replacement engine I truly love (Icons & Sentinel Comics come close but both have some shortfalls for me).

 

[nevin]

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.

They have to win more than they lose. No infinity war crawls through glass where after losing for 12 games you finally win please.