I love super hero character creation. FUN! FUN! FUN! In fact, I think I have spent more time with the Marvel Superhero's RPG supplement Amazing Powers than any other gaming resource. (I loved trying to figure out a common thread for a robot with plant control, vibration, and summoning)
BUT
when it comes to playing. It gets boring quickly. Not the fighting, the storylines. It almost always seems to be main bad guy X is collecting money, jewels, pieces of tech to assemble his/her latest world domination scheme.
help me reduce the scale...I want weak heroes with more local flavor and concerns (local news items only) What would you suggest?
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Re: Superhero games: Not that same old plot
Local teen gains superpowers. He uses them to rape his girlfriend and knock over a local convenience store.
Enter heroes, because the cops sure don't wanna fight a bulletproof lightning-bolt-slinging gangbanger.
What I'm trying to say is, just use normal criminals, but give them superpowers. It's what you'd expect in the real world if people started being able to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes, anyway.
__________________ Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be! - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Reason and Ignorance, the opposite to each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it. - Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
I'm currently running a Champions game where all the players are playing adolescents who've just discovered that they have superpowers. One of the characters' dad is an ex scientist who used to work for a government project that discovered a German plot to produce supersoldiers during WWII, and brought back the tech and started their own program. The kid begins to learn that he wasn't an orphan after all, and what his dad has been up to for 20+ years.
Needless to say, he gets lead around by the nose for a while before he runs into dad, finds out his brother was buried alive to preserve his condition (the treatment didn't go so well), and that he has another brother he didn't even know existed... throw in a couple of random elements (like a vampire/werewolf war), stir vigorously, and season to taste.
You know, you should allow the players to direct their stories a little more. If they have villains that are hunting them, then those villains should have motivations all their own, which can help you grow your own storylines. And the random things that players will do will sometimes turn the story in unpredictable ways...
One of the players is playing a Chinese martial artist named Cricket. He's an ex-Triad member who's leader is after him. The Triad Leader wants an amulet back from Cricket that will help him summon a big bad demon into the world. The TL is also on the lookout for these Chinese Zodiac talismans (ala the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon) which each have a cool power each. When they come face to face, Cricket makes a play for the Tiger talisman that the TL has. The talisman's power is to split the wearer/victim into two people, one good, one evil. Once it hit Cricket that he had been split into two people, and his evil half was running around doing God knows what, the fun was on for me... some of the funniest sessions I've had in a long time.
I think Jared Sorensen's The Code is calling out to you to playtest it.
"The Code is a superhero game, minus the superheroes. Characters are "normal" people who have decided (for whatever reason) to take upon the mantle of "superhero" in order to fight injustice, protect those in need or just have fun wearing a cape and mask. Their motivations, methods and goals may be different, but in them is the desire to bring about change."
(I loved trying to figure out a common thread for a robot with plant control, vibration, and summoning)
Hey, don't be a tease.
You do NOT start a thread like this and then FAIL TO TELL US ABOUT THE ROBOT.
As far as reducing the scale and local concerns go, start by having everyone make a lower-scale, locally-concerned hero. Think Daredevil or Luke Cage, not Superman or Green Lantern. If you need a bigger threat than local-criminal-maybe-with-powers, throw in the mob. There are lots of cool things you can do with the mob; drug smuggling, protection rackets, prostitution, robberies, murder...more than enough to keep a superhero busy, none of which requires a devious mastermind to collect flawless diamonds for an orbital mega-laser.
And it's fun, too.
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especially once you start butting heads with the fbi
ryan
Actually, as far as the aforementioned robot, I just typed that off the top of my head from powers I remembered, but let me invest a bit of thought and see what I can come with (or feel free to give it a shot if you'd like!)
All such good advice!
Also am really pumped about the Code. That is such an interesting concept. Only took a glance at the sample characters but looks coooool!
I just got Mutants and Masterminds. Do you think that it will support a low level campaign? Start at Power Level 5 or so?
I am drawn to creating kind of suburbia which is producing an unusually high number of mild but useful mutations that are coming evident with puberty. All mutants have very little control of their powers, but have managed to keep their presence hidden. (fast talk and misdirection mostly). I'd like to deal with a love interest being perhaps stolen by a weak mind controller. What happens when a teacher begins to get suspcious of some things. A mysterious group of night-time pranksters whose pranks keep getting more and more dangerous. Also various family/school pressures that go with being of that age.
Indeed, what I love about comic book superhero "universes" (and which makes me so eager to create my own) is that they tend to be pastiches of every genre fiction trope imaginable.
Atlantis? Yeah, it exists, it's inhabited by a race of fish people. Dinosaurs? Sure, there are plenty, you just gotta find the right lost valley or entrance to the hollow world. UFOs- heck, there are 12 different alien races, and they all visit Earth frequently. Ghosts, other dimensions, magic, ninjas, pirates, all there.
Running a superhero game- heck, writing a superhero comic- is basically a license to introduce any idea you want.
__________________ STAR WARRIORS- Space opera, CARTOON ACTION HOUR-style.
I think Jared Sorensen's The Code is calling out to you to playtest it.
"The Code is a superhero game, minus the superheroes. Characters are "normal" people who have decided (for whatever reason) to take upon the mantle of "superhero" in order to fight injustice, protect those in need or just have fun wearing a cape and mask. Their motivations, methods and goals may be different, but in them is the desire to bring about change."
I read that and all I could think of was,"I shovel. I shovel well."
If it would let me do Mystery Men I'd be on it like white on rice.
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