Creating unconventional game structures

[FunSize]

In the planning stages for an Mutants and Masterminds game that with an atypical set up. The basic idea is to recreate the vibe of CW's Arrowverse or the MCU, where each hero has their own "solo adventures" as well as team ups.

Each player will get to pick a "hometown" for their hero, the primary setting for their hero's solo adventures. These are settings that I either made from whole cloth, or are analogues to fictional or real world settings. Settings lean themselves towards certain concepts, of course. Your sparkle shooting popstar heroine might not be at home in a gritty Gotham City analogue.

In addition, each player has another character in each other player's "supporting cast" -- the Peggy Carters, Felicity Smoaks, and Steve Trevors of the setting. These characters will be at a lower PL -- Probably 6 or 8 if the heroes are PL 10. The setting the characters are in may also influence what the supporting cast can spend points on at creation. Supporting cast in a creepy supernatural infested town may be allowed to buy a small amount of magic or psychic powers, or pick up Ritualist, for example.

To keep supporting cast from being completely irrelevant, they gain hero points at double the normal rate to give them the extra "oomph" they need narratively even when they aren't doing a superpowered smackdown.

I'll probably provide a handful of templates for each setting (things like "Cop," "Scientist," "Reporter") in case players need help.

After each player gets a "solo adventure," we have the Crisis Crossover Teamup where everyone plays their heroes (Supporting cast can pop in for a scene here and there if they'd be suited to it and it makes sense plotwise).

After the first team up, we'd restart the cycle of solo adventures, except a player may have the option of "calling in" another hero for help with an adventure.

The scope here is pretty big but I think if the players are into it it could be fun. Any opinions or advice here?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd promote the secondary cast to the Kid Flashes, Mon-Els, and Black Canaries-- the secondary heroes who actually go out and fight/adventure alongside the "main" character in each setting. You don't want most of your players sitting idly by shouting "we believe in you!" through a comm link, and M&M is not particularly well set-up to focus on soap-opera dynamics where your actual power doesn't matter.

[JustIgnoreMe]

The Ars Magica RPG called this Troupe Play: all players would create a society of wizards, like a college or monastery*. Everyone had a Wizard character, a couple of companions (knights, nobles, priests or whatever) and a horde of Grogs (bit players, bakers, footmen, whatever), with the idea being that you could always form a story where one player played his wizard and everyone else played companions of assistants.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG had the difference between Heroes and White Hats: in any group there was meant to be one Hero (such as a Slayer) and everyone else played Scoobies with various skills or specialities. White Hats had lower overall points values but had (if I remember right) cheaper costs on some advancements. It didn't really work in the games I played (too small groups), but the concept is sound.

I agree with Grod that you want people playing the "junior heroes" rather than the true support team (although all the DC CW-verse teams seem to have people advancing from "support" to "capable of taking on villains"... watching Iris West face down Blacksmith in a recent episode surprised me). So the characters should be more like Alex Danvers, Jim Olsen as Guardian, Vibe, Mr Terrific, and less like Cat Grant, Winn Schott, or the other "non-combat" team members.

PL8 allows you to build a very competent Robin-type character (I remember a build on the Atomic Thinktank where at PL10 you build a PL8 Robin with a PL8 Spoiler as sidekick, and it seemed to work quite well). If you have the "main" characters PL10, PL8 would be about right for the "supporting cast", I think, unless you want to have a bigger difference in power.

You'll want to encourage people to build support characters that do things the main character for that city can't do. The comic-book idea of "junior sidekick types" who have the same powers as the main character but at a lower level works ok in comics and TV, but I think it would be dull to play. Why send Kid Flash to do something when Flash can do it?

* I read the book ages ago, AM fans please don't get mad if I am misremembering or misrepresenting things here.

[Jay R]

Near as I can tell, you are running the individual heroes' books as well as the team book, with the Green Arrow player also playing Jimmy Olsen, **** Grayson, and Doiby Dickles.

The only danger I see is that in the majority of sessions, most players are running lesser characters supporting the main heroes.

For the right gaming group, it sounds like a very interesting approach. But many modern gamers hate the idea of an unbalanced game, and all games except the crossovers will fall in that category.

[GreatWyrmGold]

This sounds like it would work well in a PBP game. You could theoretically run adventures for most or all groups simultaneously. Actually, I might need to borrow that idea...tweak it to make it more original...hm...

[Knaight]

I'd recommend shying away from Mutants and Masterminds here - not only does the system not work too well for more normal characters, it has a fairly long character creation process. That's fine when you're making one character; it's a little more irritating when you're making four to six.


For the right gaming group, it sounds like a very interesting approach. But many modern gamers hate the idea of an unbalanced game, and all games except the crossovers will fall in that category.

I wouldn't worry about this - the distaste for an unbalanced game applies within a fairly specific framework, and this isn't it. Ars Magica's Troupe Play has been mentioned already, as a similar structure that was well received.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Accidentally unbalanced games are very different from intentionally unbalanced ones, especially ones with a rotating framework like is being suggested here.

Actually, the thing that jumps out at me here is Fate-- in particular the Dresden Files version, which had an interesting way of doing things. The supernatural abilities were definitely more powerful than normal stunts... but if you went "pure human," you got bonus fate points every session. You wound up with less overt mechanical power, but more narrative power and freedom (because more points mean you're more able to ignore compels). Might be an interesting way of doing things here-- give the sidekicks an extra hero point, or maybe some "demihero points" that can be used for everything but rerolls.