M&M campaign help

[dmteeter]

I seem to have backed myself into a narrative corner here. My players reacted to a couple of scenarios a little differently then i anticipated and managed to through a series of lucky crits and good strategy they managed to knock out and interrogate the wife of my Big bad who is loosely based on Lex Luthor. They now know that the big bad villian is planning a terrorist attack on a worldwide scale using the same nerve agent that gave them their powers.

They have decided they are going to go straight at him and attack his headquarters. I did not expect them to be able to take out most of the npcs and minions so easily but this being my first M&M campaign( i just bought the books a couple weeks ago) i have seriously under estimated the synergy their powers have and how insanely effective they are.

I am trying to figure out some way to prevent them from going straight into this fight on account of this chapter of the campaign being planned to take at least 3 or so more games. I managed to delay them by having his building surrounded with an insane level of security and requiring an employee I.D chip that is implanted in the employees body.

My one PC who is telepath followed the janitor home and mind wiped him causing him to forget to show up for work thus creating a job opening that he has applied for and through some very convincing roleplay he has been hired as the new janitor. Now i'm not sure what he plans to do once he gets inside but i assume he is planning to shut down the power grid somehow and get the rest of the PCs inside.


Any suggestions on how to throw a wrench in their plans without just saying NOPE didn't work?

I want them to feel like they were successful but i don't want to have the game stall out?

[Koo Rehtorb]

Serious answer, don't. Let the game go where it will and don't try to force them into some arbitrary planned schedule of how long things should take and what they should be doing and the game will be better for it.

However, I don't see anything wrong with presenting them with another immediate unrelated crisis which would at least be tempting to spend a bunch of time dealing with. If they don't bite on it, though, then let it go.

[dmteeter]

Serious answer, don't. Let the game go where it will and don't try to force them into some arbitrary planned schedule of how long things should take and what they should be doing and the game will be better for it.

However, I don't see anything wrong with presenting them with another immediate unrelated crisis which would at least be tempting to spend a bunch of time dealing with. If they don't bite on it, though, then let it go.

That is pretty much what i figured. I just have been drawing a blank on something else to try to get their attention??

Any ideas?

[Koo Rehtorb]

That is pretty much what i figured. I just have been drawing a blank on something else to try to get their attention??

Any ideas?

I mean if you're just looking for superhero plots then that's not too hard.

Supervillain holds a train full of people hostage until his demands are met.
Alien spaceship shows up and demands the return of technology currently being studied by a big tech corporation, under threat of immediate violent reprisal.
Ratmen beneath the city open a portal to Hell and unleash a horde of demons on the city.
Radical environmentalist mutates all the animals in the zoo with superpowers and then unleashes them on the city.

[Great Dragon]

Have you considered placing Low Level "Supers" within the Big Villian's company? Doing so can remind the Players that they aren't the only ones around.

These can be Petty Villians that work for the Boss, in the hopes of getting "rewarded".

There can also be other "superheroes" that are trying to take down the Boss, but don't want to share the "Glory" and will oppose the PC Heroes in ways both direct and indirect.

How about a Low Level Telepath that the 'janitor' PC must somehow deal with, or avoid at all costs?

Maybe the Building Security Computer he has become Self Aware, and asks/blackmails one or more of the PCs for aid in escaping? Perhaps it is like Ultron, and it's going to take everyone, Hero and Villian, to stop?

[Ken Murikumo]

If you really want to salvage the situation & turn it to your advantage:

The nerve agent plot was a ruse. This man (if modeled after lex) is smart and cunning. His wife was a plant with fake info. The heroes are being directed into an elaborate trap; all planned from the beginning, mind you. How else would they have been immediately hired for the janitor position? All part of his plan! Now it makes sense for why everything fell perfectly into place for the heroes.

[Erulasto]

You can throw complications in the way, to be sure.

Maybe the Boss gets a clue that there is a mole in his organization? I mean..if security is that intense, it only stands to reason that there would be extensive background checks on all new employee's. Not to mention the likelihood the boss would have access to small-time super-powered thugs under his employ (or at the very least a bunch of private security in power-armour-like Lex-Suits).

Maybe he finds out they're trying to infiltrate and sends some of his thugs to cause a major distraction. Like a terrorist attack at a children's hospital, or something else that would lure out those who stand against him.

Alternatively, there's always the chance that he sets the players up?

For instance, what if he found out they'd infiltrated...so he set up a proverbial dead-man switch that goes off right before the big show-down. Of course, the switch triggered a release of the nerve agent all over the city.

And doctored evidence released annonymously to the public and police shows the players being in the position to have released the nerve agent.

So now the big bad looks like a victim to the public and the hero's are subjected to not only the authorities looking to bring them in (for questioning), but also being villified in the court of public opinion.

Now they've got to clear their names, find proof of the Boss being the true villain and stop any further terror attacks.

[Metahuman1]

Let them succeed. Then have it turn out at the end that something involving some other plan he didn't tell his wife about was going on.

After all, it's not unreasonable that he'd have things going on in his work life he keeps confidential.


So, when crap happens, some member or other of his board of directors get's scape goated (maybe said board member is like an uber unethical mad scientist or serial killer that the BBEG keeps around cause he's useful, as long as you keep an eye on him and keep him pointed in the right direction. That way the PC's still feel like they did take a bad, bad, bad dude off the board.) by the BBEG over the Nerve Agent incident.

The BBEG himself was off dealing with something else in Switzerland or Japan or something. Last minute emergency, something-something-something corporate speak that required him to be there for a few days to handle it personally for the good of his company.

As far as the world outside the party knows, it was this other board member, and the BBEG was innocent and new nothing of this, and the real bad guys been dealt with by the hero's.



Thus, they have won the battle, but perhaps not the War.



And then you have a different unrelated villain come out of the wood work to keep them occupied for a few sessions.

[TerryHerc]

Ultimately if the players come up with an unexpected solution, my experience suggests the best plan is to reward them and roll with it. Take the encounters you had planned and rework them into the aftermath, and decide what the next challenge will be.

It sounds like your players make good use of roleplaying. I like two ideas earlier in this thread that give lots of RP possibilities: the "other team" of supers and the false information/ruse idea. You could also have the Lex Luthor character be a pawn for a larger villain, maybe even who has extensive knowledge of the characters and is a skilled manipulator. The characters could arrive, thinking they will just mop up things quickly, only to discover the stumble into the midst of something far larger.

[Rhyvurg]

Can they prove in court what the wife told them? If not, Lex'll be out in a matter of hours and the heroes are publicly discredited. Remember, publicity is Lex Luthor's greatest weapon. Maybe the plot they exposed is a ruse, or maybe when they show up to thwart him, there's...nothing, because they made a huge racket getting there and he just packed up and left. Maybe he has distractions prepared, or a secret door or hidden jetpack. Use body doubles, robot decoys, anything that will draw them off and every time it's a ruse, they either become more reluctant to chase, or chase even harder only to be tricked again.

[Great Dragon]

I like this, especially when combined with the Ruse to take down a Board Member.
Mix and match these ideas as you like.