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View Full Version : DM Help Mutants and Masterminds Plot Ideas



Ezeze
2016-09-30, 10:26 AM
My Real Life group was playing a game when that GM had to back out for personal reasons.

But we all like each other, and all like playing together. Since I've GMed in the past I offered to step up and run a game for everyone, as an excuse to hang out weekly :smallwink: I asked the group - what systems do we all like? One of the players delivered a glowing review of Mutants and Masterminds.

I have never played Mutants and Masterminds :smalleek: but I do love a challenge! I am not worried at all about learning the rules, but I'm not entirely sure where to get started writing a plot for the setting. Please, Playgrounders, will you tell me about the awesome Mutants and Masterminds games you have been involved with? :smallsmile:

Beleriphon
2016-09-30, 10:48 AM
My Real Life group was playing a game when that GM had to back out for personal reasons.

But we all like each other, and all like playing together. Since I've GMed in the past I offered to step up and run a game for everyone, as an excuse to hang out weekly :smallwink: I asked the group - what systems do we all like? One of the players delivered a glowing review of Mutants and Masterminds.

I have never played Mutants and Masterminds :smalleek: but I do love a challenge! I am not worried at all about learning the rules, but I'm not entirely sure where to get started writing a plot for the setting. Please, Playgrounders, will you tell me about the awesome Mutants and Masterminds games you have been involved with? :smallsmile:

Green Ronin has some pretty good free adventures:
http://mutantsandmasterminds.com/category/extras/mutants-masterminds-adventures/

Just keep in mind you need to find a reason the characters are working together. They should all be members of some kind of group, whether students or faculty of a school for gifted youngsters, prisoners offered freedom in exchange for partaking in suicide missions, or the misfit a crew of a spaceship out to guard the galaxy.

RickAllison
2016-09-30, 03:11 PM
Rip off other superhero media. Some ideas:

Heroes (Volume 4): The PCs had powers, but the world at large doesn't know about them. A government agency knocks out and kidnaps the PCs and a bunch of other metahumans, drugs them, and is flying them/other way of transporting them to a secret government complex to study them and keep the public safe. A knowledgeable stowaway (may or may not be one of the party) removes the sedation tube from the party members before having to hide again. Play out from there where they can attempt to take the vehicle, crash it, or skydive. The campaign is then about how they react as they are hunted by the government in a world that doesn't know them and is possibly terrified.

Marvel Civil War: Talk with the players ahead of time and get buy-in on which side of a Superhero Registration Act they would want to play out. Once an agreement is reached, play out a world in which the PCs are coping with the fallout from the law. Pro-Registration forces could be forced to take orders from the government while being blackmailed, have to hunt down unregistered heroes who are disobeying the law by protecting the people, or be former supervillains contracted to be cape-hunters in exchange for your relative freedom a la Thunderbolts or Suicide Squad. Anti-Registration force could be hunted by former friends, personal heroes, mentors, or supervillains who are now being paid to hunt you down. You could be hated by the people you protect. You could be like Luke Cage and try to live an ordinary life while the government forces you to take a side (probably doesn't work as well for a team, but it could be a personal motivation).

Superhomeys: From the Empowered-verse, these are that universe's version of the Justice League and Avengers. The notable difference is that where those organizations operate globally with very few members and out of a central location, the Superhomeys establish chapters in various areas. So instead of being the glorious protectors of the world, the PCs are the merely the predominant superhero organization of their area.

Grod_The_Giant
2016-09-30, 06:30 PM
The first M&M campaign I ran is still probably the best game I've ever done. Let's see...

The game was set in a mildly crapsack world. The first big crossover event wound up with Cairo in ruins and a very popular superhero dead. After that, the UN established an Avengers/JLA type organization called Overwatch to deal with superhuman crime and other extreme situations. The first team featured some of the setting's most popular heroes, and lasted almost a decade until the next big crossover, where a madman calling himself Darwin unleashes an army of monsters, overruns most of South America, and holds off the combined forces of the rest of the world for more than six months in an insane bid for god only knows what. Millions are killed or mutated, including most of the original Overwatch team. In the following months, Overwatch gets a major funding upgrade and a satellite headquarters, and a new lineup. **** continues to happen; one bunch of unfriendly alien refugees pay a visit, and a friendlier bunch settle in the wastelands of South America, both with tales of an unstoppable, world-killing force called the Scythe Armada. A time-powered villian prophecises the failure and death of Overwatch, and new supervillains and terrorists begin to emerge. The UN coughs up the money for a second Overwatch field team.

Enter the players.

The party was the brand-new Overwatch Team B, whose final selection process was interrupted by giant steampunk robots teleporting into New York. This is eventually revealed to be the work of a group calling itself the Forever Conclave-- a ragtag band of immortals making a new bid for world domination. While Overwatch Team A, the existing NPC heroes, continued to handle day-to-day emergencies, the party went on a specific hunt for the Forever Conclave. They eventually discover that they're trying to resurrect some ancient hero (I don't remember if I ever specified; might have been Alexander the Great) to lead them to victory. It's not an easy process, as it violates a major setting law, but the bad guys manage to assemble all the magic and technology they need to pull off the ritual. The party arrives just moments too late, as the head of the Forever Conclave makes contact with a spirit from beyond... which promptly gets shoved aside by the ghost of Darwin.

After a lot of panicking, the second half of the game was all about figuring what went wrong, and what Darwin is going to do now. It eventually comes out that he's somehow seen the Scythe Armada coming, and has been trying to force the human race into readiness. Last time he tried a cataclysmic war; this time he's come up with a gene-splicing virus that can give, oh, ten percent of the population superpowers, and everyone else a messy death. (At one point it gets dumped on Salt Lake City, which is promptly destroyed by the combination of widespread death and thousands of newly-minted and out-of-control superpeople). The party continues to dig into things, at one point making some trips to the future. In one timeline, they kill Darwin, and it's not pretty-- the Scythe Armada turns out to be made up of cosmic-sized parasites that lay their eggs inside planets, incubate them in the fear and suffering of the population, before the newborn hatches after having converted most of the planet's mass into its body. In another future, they find that Overwatch stole his virus and used it to create a massive army of supersoldiers, driving off the worms and creating a totalitarian state.

Upon returning, the party is forced to conclude that one way or another, they need Darwin's virus. Though probably not in the way he intended to use it ("infect everyone and let natural selection sort everything out"). They wind up having to defend him from a not-so-small air force and several increasingly powerful heroes, up to and including the setting's version of Superman. Eventually they all pummel each other to a standstill, Darwin is killed again, and (switching at this point to broad narrative) the party manages to create a less-lethal version of the virus and a less-dystopian means of empowering the planet. Billions of super-people greet the Scythe Armada when it comes calling, and the world is saved.

...aaaaand cue next year's campaign, where holy ****, it's the future and everyone has superpowers!

Beleriphon
2016-10-02, 06:00 PM
Upon returning, the party is forced to conclude that one way or another, they need Darwin's virus. Though probably not in the way he intended to use it ("infect everyone and let natural selection sort everything out"). They wind up having to defend him from a not-so-small air force and several increasingly powerful heroes, up to and including the setting's version of Superman. Eventually they all pummel each other to a standstill, Darwin is killed again, and (switching at this point to broad narrative) the party manages to create a less-lethal version of the virus and a less-dystopian means of empowering the planet. Billions of super-people greet the Scythe Armada when it comes calling, and the world is saved.

Holly Moly! Cue Spinal Tap: Its like Wild Cards turned up to 11!