superhero campaign ideas

[Matuka]

Recently, stupidly and without thinking, I gave my players the choice of the type of our next campaign. They chose superheroes. One problem, I don't know where to start, I do not own any superhero tabletop rpg books, so I have royally messed up. I need ideas, not necessarily good ones, just something to give my brain a jumpstart, like how to balance there powers, encounters, villain ideas. Whatever you give me I'll build off of.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Suggestion 0: Talk with your players to see what they want out of a "superhero game". They picked it, so they must have some idea of what they want. Ask them both about what they want superheroes to be in this world (Adventurers in fabulous costumes? Independent crime-fighters? Organized superhumans defending the Earth from constant threats? Just another day job?) and the tone they're looking for (Superfriends or Worm?).

Once you've got that out of the way, you need to ask yourself a basic structural question: Do you want to run an episodic game or one with an overarching plot? If you want to run an episodic game, do that. Copy the formula of ye olde comic bookes: Make up a new supervillain with a new plot each session/adventure/arc, see what sticks, copy the successes and/or bring back favorite villains for an encore.

Overarching plots are trickier. A good story requires a protagonist, antagonist, and central conflict which are all thematically linked in some way; The Joker is a good Batman villain and Doctor Octopus is a good Spider-Man villain, but they wouldn't work as well if you had the heroes switch villains or the villains switch modus operandi. This is a problem if you have several protagonists with no thematic cohesion, poorly-defined backstories, and personalities that don't really exist for two or three sessions. (This is another reason to run a Session 0 establishing expectations and asking about player characters before the game. It's easier to build a plot for your heroes if you know who they are. You can mask this desire for thematic cohesion by saying it's to make sure the heroes will work together or something, if you want.)
Once you have an idea who the heroes are, make a villain for them and a plan for the villain. The villain should fit with all of the heroes in at least one way each; maybe one hero's greatest failure pushed the villain down the slippery slope, transforming them into a foil to another hero, who wound up an instrumental part in a third hero's backstory. If you're lucky (or the players make it easy on you), you might be able to make multiple such links between each hero and the villain.

Once you have protagonists, antagonists, and an idea of what your players want to play, you should be able to come up with a plot without too much difficulty. Ask yourself:
1. What does the villain want?
2. How will the villain try to get it?
3. How can the players interfere?
4. How will the villain try to put their plan back on track?
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until dramatic conclusion.

[Hopeless]

Session zero them to discover what they like and dislike about superhero campaigns!

Off the top of my head for game ideas;

1) Superhumans are a recent event, most are either Government, Military or former members of either.

Around the 50's it was discovered that a specific area in what was known as Yugoslavia hid a bronze age fort deep within was a particularly nasty fungal plant that in return for shortening the recipient's life span granted them some measure of power that often resembled super powers.

However continued use of these powers exasperated the infection requiring blood transfusion to avoid the recipient from dying or turning into what can only be described as a supernatural killing machine seeking to spread the fungal infection in to a form that makes the Walking Dead look like a benign flu infection.

There are rumours of a treatment that cures this form of empowerment, but the most recent attempt resulted in the medical complex in Chelmsford being wiped out by a combined military operation to secure the cure and a gather army of undead led by a superhuman monster seeking to wipe out this potential threat.

You start off rushing back to a train station in London that's been overwhelmed by a creature that used to be a popular TV mogul.

You get to the train which begins rushing back up the track but are quickly pursued by allies of the monstrous entity forcing a very dangerous fight that could lead to them jumping off to avoid the monsters or if they manage to reach Witham stop the train to allow it to change tracks and head down to Braintree so its route can be hidden tricking their pursuers to head straight down the track to Colchester and Ipswich.

You learn you're new recruits in the fight to reclaim the UK from the undead forces that control the major cities.
Some of you have agendas.

For example the American is seeking the only surviving scientist from the Chelmsford facility believed to have escaped with samples of the cure which might explain why the Braintree community has survived so long if they have a secret means of countering the super power virus.

The Welsh woman is seeking her family hoping to find news of them or a way to head home so they can discover what happened to the rest of her family.

The Scot is very bitter after the entity basically destroyed their home city of Glasgow in a horrific televised event that makes the most bloodiest horror movies look tame in comparison.

And then there's the former Serbian astronomer with a fascination with botany whose definitely hiding a secret let alone their former military career given they're the groups literal tank.

Rotted Capes if you haven't guessed from the above description!

There's plenty of examples out there maybe you could run your own variant of Batwoman but without the agenda and bad writing?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Superheroes being a recent or local phenomenon allows many good adventure seeds; superheroes being an established global institution works as well. There are many adventure and overarching-plot ideas that work for one but not the other.

It might be worth asking what superhero stories they imagine/want the world to resemble, then ask yourself "What's going on in the other big cities?" What sorts of problems could fit into the MCU's Midwest for C-list heroes to handle before the Avengers need to be called in? What sorts of problems could B-rank heroes deal with in City Q? What does the PRT get up to in Anchorage? That sort of thing.

[ErdrickOfAliaha]

Have you decided on a system? Some mechanics lend themselves better to certain tones. I've had meh experiences with DC's d20 system, for instance, but M&M lends itself to more leeway in power structure.

A positive note on DC, they have a power level chart that quantifies effects at the same power level as mass, time, distance, area and volume. This helps a Lot in scaling abilities even if you use a different system.

Obviously, superheroes and powers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and formats and the system should perform the type of interaction your players plan on using most frequently quite well. DC and social interaction, for example, are not a mated pair.

My group has also had great success with Genesys. I should point out that among my players are 3 super comic book junkies.

For plots, a lot of it depends on what tier and setting you have. In a modern earth like world, there's para military ngo's, international peacekeeping (UN contracts), big city ultra crime stoppers, natural disaster prevention. I would recommend checking out My Hero Academia for starter level stuff, or even (less time investment) the film Sky High. Most superhero characters get their powers in adolescence so...

[NichG]

I've been running one for the last year, which is currently wrapping up. The system is a custom one (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pD...xMFGmT4isb9iGI) but it's pretty tied to the particular setting and setup, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a general purpose superhero game (it's also very much on the high tier cosmic scale type superhero shenanigans).

I started with the idea that maybe (this segment of) the superhero genre is fundamentally about the psychological disconnect between characters whose abilities find their natural level far beyond the interpersonal level, but who ultimately are more driven by personal-scale issues than by issues that occur at the level of their abilities. Spiderman might stop an alien invasion, but he does so thinking about homegrown wisdom passed on by his aunt and uncle, or about how Mary Jane would react to a world where he didn't intervene, or things like that. Dr. Strange deals with timetravel and dimension travel and so on, but his backstory is about coming to grips with losing things that fundamentally supported his ego. And so on.

So the game tried to explore that by saying that, literally, you can do anything. But, the cost is this: if you do a thing, you have to fully accept the implications of the fact that you were able to do that thing; that you chose what happened. If you want to snap your fingers and kill half of everything in the universe, that's within reach for a starter character - no infinity gem fetch quest needed - but they have to accept that that's the kind of decision that they will be making from now on, and not trying to pursue a childhood crush or enjoy themselves in a barfight. Once you decide that editing the laws of physics is within your purview, it becomes your job. You no longer get to do an experiment and ask what happens - if you do an experiment and something happens, it can only be because you willed it.

At least for my group, players did not rush headlong into godhood but slowly and reluctantly crossed boundaries of power as the situation around them escalated. So it was an interesting experiment. In the end though, I'm not sure it really felt 'superhero-ey' in the sense of MCU and the like. It was much, much more cerebral (to its credit, for my tastes and perhaps the tastes of many of the group as well).

[Beleriphon]

Have you decided on a system? Some mechanics lend themselves better to certain tones. I've had meh experiences with DC's d20 system, for instance, but M&M lends itself to more leeway in power structure.

A positive note on DC, they have a power level chart that quantifies effects at the same power level as mass, time, distance, area and volume. This helps a Lot in scaling abilities even if you use a different system.

Do you mean DC Adventures? The game that is mechanically identical to M&M 3E, with a splash of DC paint? The big allure of DC Adventures isn't the rules per se (the book isn't super well organized) its the DC Universe book and the two Heroes and Villains books, which stat out hundreds of DC characters for M&M 3E. If you want a ready made character that is basically <<insert DC Character here>> with a different name this is hard to beat, assuming M&M 3E is your system of choice.

Obviously, superheroes and powers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and formats and the system should perform the type of interaction your players plan on using most frequently quite well. DC and social interaction, for example, are not a mated pair.

My group has also had great success with Genesys. I should point out that among my players are 3 super comic book junkies.

For plots, a lot of it depends on what tier and setting you have. In a modern earth like world, there's para military ngo's, international peacekeeping (UN contracts), big city ultra crime stoppers, natural disaster prevention. I would recommend checking out My Hero Academia for starter level stuff, or even (less time investment) the film Sky High. Most superhero characters get their powers in adolescence so...

M&M, and by extension DC Adventures, definitely goes with high flying adventure/action. Interaction skills are useable more so than D&D tends to make them, but less so than a more narrative focused game like FATE or Genesys would be. FATE is a great system for superheroes since it doesn't rely on power levels to make things fun, but rather how much a character can contribute to the story. Plus it kind of assumes an action movie type of play where the characters get a few defeats, before accumulating enough resources to bring down the hammer in the last act. Its basically an action movie simulator, rather than a logical consequence simulator in terms of rules, so keep that in mind.

[ErdrickOfAliaha]

Yes, I was. But again the granular power chart - as opposed to the Marvel table of ridiculousness - helps with scaling, tremendously. Also, due to the long term exposure of DC characters, more people are likely to be able to describe a power as "X's shtick" than actually describing what the power is. Ie Firestorm's power as opposed to matter transmutation/molecular manipulation.

Many people, I hesitate to say most, find it easier when they have an example to emulate or be inspired by. Especially for something as immersed in popular culture as Superheroes.

FATE does work well, but my group has found Genesys to be a better story telling system, simply because of the fun situational additions created by the narrative dice. In another thread, someone kept mentioning "Yes, and/yes, but/no, but/no, and", each time they did I couldn't help but think of success with despair, or failure with triumph, etc.

FATE's biggest advantage to me is the cooperative creativity with situational aspects. But it is definitely Not a system for every table. Something about the being better at something creating an even greater chance for failure. It's like having a d12 in Savage worlds. You're better, and therefore sometimes it makes you less likely to succeed.

[Matuka]

While walking today, I thought of a villain for my setting. Doctor Tobarlic (that's robot put in reverse with a few letters swapped and added). As the base of his name implies, his whole thing is robots, robotic henchmen, giant robot attacks, that kind of thing. His over arching goal? To revive his dead wife by putting her brain into a robotic body. The hiccup in his plans? The university he worked for said he was taking too long with too little results, when he tried to fight it, they fired him. What does he plan to do about it? Use his robots to steal money and equipment to fund and build his wife's new body. (And I have been reading all your advice and it is very helpful.)

[Jay R]

Firsdt, I strngly urge you *not* to run a superhero game unless you are familiar with comics, and probably should know the game system.

My favorite superhero game is Champions, but I do not recommend that anybody run it who hasn't played the game first.

The safest thing to do is tell your players, "OK, you opted for a superhero game, but I don't know any well enough to run it. Who's going to be the GM?"

If you run the game anyway, set it in a period of comics, or a worldview, that you know really well. used the Silver Age, because I know it at least as well as all my players. Set the limits clearly and unambiguously, in advance. IHere's what I used in a Champions game. Use it or ignore it as you choose.

Spoiler: Long introduction to Silver Age superhero game

Show

I am beginning an early Silver Age campaign, using the Champions rule. The characters will not be as powerful as you are used to, and the villains will be similarly de-powered. Because I wish characters to take the kinds of risks that comic book characters actually take, I guarantee that your character will not die. Bad things may happen, but they will not be permanent.

[Note: you are not immortal, and I cannot save you from your own stupidity. If you choose to dive into a volcano or a vat of acid, I can’t save you. But the normal run of comic book adventures is not going to do you in. Spider-Man does not, in fact, get shot to death in the comics. Take risks to save people. Really. That’s what heroes do.]

The first adventure or two will involve normals that you should be able to defeat easily. I will slowly introduce non-powered “theme” villains (i.e. Joker, Penguin, Batroc, Mad Thinker, etc.) followed by mad scientists with powerful machines and spy rings with extensive resources (Luthor, Red Skull) before getting to true super-villains. The goal is to slowly work up to the harder challenges. (That is my current plan – it is not a commitment.)

The early Silver Age genre means that continued stories are rare. Most stories (adventures) will be completed in a single comic (session). It is possible that later stories will refer back to earlier ones. Continued stories are almost always two or three issues.

These are early Silver Age characters, which means that they have difficulties and weaknesses. Don’t try to make a character who can survive anything. The team books of the time leaned on the weaknesses of each character, allowing other heroes to rescue the one in trouble. (Kryptonite was extremely common in Justice League stories, for instance.) You may assume that I will arrange to take each of you out of the action occasionally, for story purposes. Don’t make me have to drop a mountain on you to do it.

The world has always had heroes. Gilgamesh, Achilles, Robin Hood, Scaramouche, Zorro, Phantom Eagle, Tomahawk, the Blackhawks, the Lone Ranger, the Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Cheyenne Bodie and Kwai-Chang Caine are all historical figures, well-documented in any history book. The super-powerful ones don’t exist (yet). You may assume the existence of any well-known Golden Age comic hero (except the ultra-powerful -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Captain Marvel, Spectre, etc.) if you have a specific need for him or her. (Your character was saved as a child by the Red Bee, which is why he wants to be a hero, for instance.) You may not have an established relationship with any such earlier hero without special permission. Special permission is not hard to get if I like the character design and persona story.

The term “super-hero” exists, but is not as common yet as “mystery man”. (This is 1959, ten years before the self-conscious approach to gender terms in our language. Yes, the term is “mystery man”, and yes, that includes women, and no, nobody gets upset over that. It’s common English, like “peace on earth, good will to men” or “to boldly go where no man has gone before”.)

Most of the mystery men are not known to have any actual powers. In fact, most of them don’t have any powers, but it is also true that they are not really public figures. They’ve learned that it’s important that the crooks not know too much about them. Many simple people in masks are assumed to have powers even if they don’t. When designing your characters, remember that a power describes an effect, not a cause. A skills-based stealth hero could have Invisibility (only can be turned on when nobody’s watching). That doesn’t mean he has super-powers, but that his stealth and movement are so good that it’s easier to simulate that way. Similarly, heroes might be believed to have powers that they don’t really have. There are rumors of a half-man, half-flying-predator creature seen flying around the streets of Gotham at night. Don’t assume that that means the creature can fly, or even that it really exists.

Heroes are vigilantes, at least at first. This does not carry any inherent illegality – it’s perfectly legal for somebody to try to prevent a crime in progress. You will all be based in the same town, one in which there are no other current heroes. (I’m thinking of putting you in Metropolis.) There is a certain amount of public fascination with the heroes, especially now that there are so many fewer than there used to be.

1938-1950 is called the “Golden Age of Heroes”. It seems like every city had a masked protector, and some had several. It was a grand and glorious time, in which many gangs, mobs, spy rings and crime bosses were put out in jail. Unsurprisingly, business got much better, and the United States has pulled far ahead of other countries in wealth and prestige. By the late 1940s, crime was at an all-time low, and the mystery men slowly slipped into obscurity and retirement. No point patrolling all night if you can’t find any crimes. For the last ten years, there have been very few heroes, and very little need. But there’s a new breed of young adult with less respect for the establishment, older criminals are slowly getting out of jail, and the super-deterrent is no longer there. The crime rate is slowly creeping back up, and rumors of Communist spy rings are flourishing.

Rumors about heroes are also extremely common. In fact, there’s a supermarket tabloid that specializes in them. “The Brave and the Bold” is a source for any rumor about any hero you could ever want to read about, from Forbush-Man to the Crumple-Horned Snorkack. They are responsible for the rumor that Captain America didn’t really die at the end of World War II. They are currently writing an “expose” about a putative hero team called Sugar and Spike, (who nobody else thinks exists), and are trying to convince everyone that these are merely new costumes and identities for the Golden-Age Fox and the Crow. Nobody takes them seriously, but everybody seems to know what they’re saying, and they outsell the National Enquirer by millions of issues each week.

You may break a maximum of one of these rules, and only with my permission. Only one of you may break any given rule. (So one of you may have magic, and another may be an alien, but there will be no magic alien, and only one magician and one alien.) For that reason, you must tell us all which rule you wish to be the exception to. If nobody else claims it in two days (and if it’s an exception I’ll allow at all) then you may have it. Some rule-exceptions I will not allow at all, and some I will impose restrictions on. Tell me what you want to do, and I will help you find the best way. But when we’re done, the character will be less powerful than you’re used to, and with greater weaknesses.

I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it. You must pay points for any technology you intend to use at will in adventures. Of course you have a phone at home, and can find a pay phone in the city, but if you want constant contact with the team, you need to buy it as a power. Even Batman’s rope is bought as the power “Swinging”.

Any special effects or uses must be spelled out on the character sheet and paid for with points. If you bought “fireball” just as an attack, then you can’t use it to warm up a room, or as a wall to keep people from escaping. If this is your goal, I can help you design a flexible set of powers.

This is 1959. There are no cell phones or Internet, and computers are rare.

I expect the characters to have a valid backstory, exclusive of their powers. This means, among other things, that your character should have a reasonable set of ordinary abilities and skills. Any adult must have a professional skill, for instance, and if he or she is better than average in the profession, then it needs to be fairly high-powered. You should also consider secondary skills. The Silver Age Lois Lane was primarily a reporter, but she was also a candy-striper, and was trained in unarmed combat and helicopter piloting.

I believe in persona. I want to understand who this person is, totally apart from his powers. It’s not enough to know that Spider-man sticks to walls; I want to know that he’s a shy teenager, raised by a single aunt after the death of his uncle by a robber he could have stopped but didn’t, that he lives in Forest Hills, likes a girl named Mary Jane Watson, is fascinated by science and makes a living taking pictures for the Daily Bugle, and believes that “With great power comes great responsibility.” Besides powers, he should have a couple of science skills, a Professional Skill: Photography, and probably Deduction, Acrobatics, Breakfall, and maybe one or two more.

I strongly recommend the use of skills. They are cheaper than powers, and I tend to ask questions like: "Who has Deduction?" when asked about clues, or "Who has Persuasion?" when you're trying to convince somebody of something. A complete team ought to consider having somebody with each of Bureaucratics, Conversation, Criminology, Deduction, Disguise, High Society, Interrogation, Lipreading, Oratory, Persuasion, Security Systems, Shadowing, Stealth, Streetwise, and Tactics, just to be able to go everywhere and get information.

If the character’s backstory requires a specific subculture (Norse gods, Kryptonians, the Green Lantern Corps), we will discuss it until we have agreed on the basic form. I reserve the right to decide some things about the culture that you will not be told at the start.

Characters are encouraged to build attacks or maneuvers that work together, similar to the Colossus / Wolverine “Fastball Special”. Any such maneuver requires each character to buy the maneuver as a skill, and then the advantages of their two attacks can be combined. (The Fastball Special adds Colossus’s strength and range for a thrown attack to Wolverine’s HKA, for instance.) The skill will be bought after the characters meet, so you can’t start with it, unless the characters are defined as close friends who know each other’s secrets. If the idea occurs during a battle, tell me what you’re doing and then make it work. If it works well, you might get extra experience points just to develop the skill.

If you want, I will design your character. But I need time. Please tell me what you want, and we’ll come up with the best version I can produce.

As the characters grow, they will get Experience points, but they will also get new Disadvantages. You must accept Disads to use EPs, but only at a 50% level. For example, to spend 20 experience points, you must accept 10 points of new Disadvantages. This is not as onerous as it seems, as you will most likely get new Hunteds, DNPCs, Reputations, etc. in the course of play.


1. The character will have 100 base points, and up to 125 more balanced by character disadvantages. YOU CANNOT ALLOCATE THE POWER POINTS UNTIL YOU HAVE SET THE DISADVANTAGES.
2. The character must have at least one DNPC, worth at least 20 points.
3. No magic.
4. No aliens.
5. No gods (No exceptions.)
6. No god-related powers or origins. (The one exception may have a mythological artifact, or have powers from gods like Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, but may not be a god or demi-god like Thor or Hercules. I have to approve the pantheon, and will decide some things about them that you will not be told.)
7. No super-advanced tech, as determined by the standards of early sixties comics. You can be Iron Man or Batman, but not Brainiac, Kang, or Booster Gold.
8. Each hero has a theme, and all powers must fit within the basic theme of the character. A flame-based character could have a fireball, flame-based PD and ED, a flame cage entangle and flight, but not super-strength. A hero with Spider-based powers can stick to walls and have high proportionate strength, but he will not have a danger sense. A brick may have high strength, invulnerability, etc., but will not have heat vision. I will allow a certain amount of “stretching” of the theme, but I reserve the right to determine what is outside the theme of the character. (If this rule is your exception, I still have to approve the power mix.)
9. No power pools. Each power will be explicitly defined in advance. (If you choose this rule as an exception, the basics of your powers must still be acceptable to me. Cosmic Power Pools probably aren’t. Only somebody who knows the rules well enough may take this rule as an exception.)
10. I reserve the right to put limitations on the following powers, to prevent game-warping effects: N-Ray Vision, Clairsentience, Desolidification, Extra-Dimensional Movement, Faster than Light Travel. (No exceptions to this rule.)
11. The character must have at least one reasonably common weakness – a Vulnerability or Susceptibility, or a conditional PD and ED. I must have a way that I can take the character out quickly, for plot purposes. He or she might take double damage from fire like J’onn J’onzz, or be vulnerable to Kryptonite like Superman, or his defenses might be in a shield that doesn’t block everything like Captain America. (No exceptions to this rule allowed.)
12. A sidekick must either be a normal, or have the same flavor as the main character. An archer may have a young archer, or a Superman may have a super-dog, but an energy projector may not have a ninja monkey. Anybody can have a sidekick who’s a 100 point photographer, detective or reporter, though.
13. The hero will have the 15-point Silver Age Code: “With great power comes great responsibility. These powers aren't for self-aggrandizement, but for a higher purpose. The most important priority is to rescue people, and to not endanger them. Second priority is to stop crimes & capture criminals. Save the children first. (The adults are assumed to be trying to help, with all the skills they have.) The greatest heroes of all are the policemen, firemen, rescue workers and others who risk their lives daily with no powers -- just naked courage. We owe them our highest level of respect.” (If you take this rule as your exception, you must still have a code that I accept.)
14. I will add a –1/4 limitation of my own choice to any power of 60 or more active points. I will add a –1/2 limitation to any power of 80 or more active points. I will add limitations adding up to at least –3/4 to any power of 105 or more active points. I will decide on a case-by-case basis how much Limitation I will give any powers much above that level. These limitations will be chosen specifically to keep them fun and valuable, while limiting their ability to screw up my plans, so I will not tell you why I chose them. You may or may not know what this limitation is at the start of play. Limitations I choose are likely to include side effects, gestures, restrainable, Reduced by Range or Reduced Penetration, Gradual Effect, Extra Time, or something else that gives me as GM an opportunity to prevent their use at specific moments for story purposes. (If this rule is your exception, only one power is an exception to it.)
15. No power may have over 45 Real Points (how much it costs after adjustments for Advantages and Limitations). For instance, you may have a 100 Active Cost power, but you will need to give it Limitations totaling –3/4, so that after it gets my –1/2 Limitation, it will only cost 44 points. Powers in an Elemental Control or Multipower will be treated as stand-alone powers for purposes of this rule. Note that this is separate from the above rule, so you cannot have an exception to both. If you choose rule 14 as your exception, then you still must get every power down to 45 real points. If you choose this rule as your exception, only one power may exceed 45 real points.

If these rules make your character conception impossible, talk to me. That may mean the character conception cannot be used for this game, or we may find a work-around that meets your goals and mine together.

[SimonMoon6]

As several have said already, the first place to start with is: What is the setting?

Is the setting a pre-existing comics world? Are you going to play in the DC universe or the Marvel Universe or some other lesser universe? I hope that you're super familiar with all of the source material because the players will almost certainly want to take advantage of their knowledge. ("Hey, Clark Kent, I know you're really Superman, so come help us.")

Is the setting a generic superhero world with a bunch of heroes that aren't from any previous source? If so, then you've got a lot of work to do, making up a bunch of superheroes to populate the world because of course the PCs should know about "The Justice Guys of This Location" if they're super important heroes that everybody knows about.

Is the setting a world where the PCs are among the first superheroes ever? Are they going to be forming this world's version of the Avengers or Justice League? Or are they going to stumble around with no idea what they're doing, like, say D.P.7 from Marvel's "New Universe"?

Is the setting really a world with superheroes or is it just a world involving people with superpowers? That is, is it a realistic world, where dressing in spandex does not make you special (just weird) and where you're unlikely to encounter super-criminals simply by "patrolling the city"?

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The second question is: What kind of adventures are the heroes going to have?

One of my biggest issues with running a superhero game is that most superhero universes have the heroes acting only when the villains have already enacted their plan (forcing PCs to be reactive rather than proactive) and then everything returns to the status quo. This can be fine if that's what everyone wants, but it's hard to have truly epic adventures that way.

Another option is: something major is happening. There's a massive alien invasion and the aliens have already won; can the heroes rescue their doomed world? Or... Villain Man has captured all the heroes except the PCs for "reasons", so villains have taken over; can the PCs save the day? Or... the villains have time traveled to dozens of places in the past; can the heroes stop them from changing history (and sometimes, do they want to?). In other words, is there some over-arching theme to the entire campaign, or is it just "well today you beat up the Vulture, tomorrow you beat up Doctor Octopus"?

[Starshade]

Most of D&Ds 'basic' power sources might exist in a more realistic fantasy settings without any heroes or supers. Know of Brandon Sandersons books? he writes about "realistic" fantasy worlds, where there is few super heroes. The team could be somehow like the heroes of some of his books, the first with real super abilities, or extreme rare. mixing creative D&D with Pathfinder steampunk or with the d20 Call of Cthulhu, you could make a realistic near-modern world where a team become masked superheroes, some of the rare kinds with powers. Start with some generic 1800s, add a bit steampunk, babbage engines, etc. D&D classes with close to no magic users (outside heroes).

The villains would probably be more of an challenge, since a good villain is crucial to the Superhero genre.

[Jay R]

There is a huge stock of available superhero plots, each in its own small pamphlet. They used to cost 12 cents when I was growing up.

In my Silver Age campaign, the heroes heard reports of a rocket ship landing outside of town. They arrived, and their flame-based character Flamebird flew over the area. She saw the rocket, and also saw a larger-than-life, grotesque, vaguely man-shaped orange alien, who threw a tree at her. The character with the empathic link to a dog saw coils of some plasticine substance wrapping around and around an empty space. He also smelled two humans, but couldn't see them.

The battle was on, and one of the aliens turned out to have flame powers as well.

The battle lasted for over an hour of real-time before they figured out that they had blundered into the origin of the Fantastic Four. (And yes, in the original comic book, the Thing threw a tree at the Human Torch, and Mr. Fantastic tried to wrap his stretched-out arms around the Invisible Girl.)

[Beleriphon]

The battle lasted for over an hour of real-time before they figured out that they had blundered into the origin of the Fantastic Four. (And yes, in the original comic book, the Thing threw a tree at the Human Torch, and Mr. Fantastic tried to wrap his stretched-out arms around the Invisible Girl.)

I did that once. But with Green Latern's origin (the Silver Age one, not Alan Scott).

For fun, even if you never use Mutants and Masterminds as a system, Green Ronin has a pretty sold setting that has some original concepts, as well as some solid homages and references to classic comics. STuff like Schuster Avenue, The Siegel Building, and my person favourite the Kirby Institute of Modern Art.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I've been running one for the last year, which is currently wrapping up. The system is a custom one (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pD...xMFGmT4isb9iGI) but it's pretty tied to the particular setting and setup, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a general purpose superhero game (it's also very much on the high tier cosmic scale type superhero shenanigans).

Speaking of custom systems tied to a specific setting, there's Weaver Dice, a system created by Wildbow for games set in the world of his web serial, Worm. The rules are pretty simplistic past character creation, but it should work well if you want your players to feel like their powers were thrust upon them. (You might even consider using Weaver Dice's power generation mechanics

So the game tried to explore that by saying that, literally, you can do anything. But, the cost is this: if you do a thing, you have to fully accept the implications of the fact that you were able to do that thing; that you chose what happened. If you want to snap your fingers and kill half of everything in the universe, that's within reach for a starter character - no infinity gem fetch quest needed - but they have to accept that that's the kind of decision that they will be making from now on, and not trying to pursue a childhood crush or enjoy themselves in a barfight. Once you decide that editing the laws of physics is within your purview, it becomes your job. You no longer get to do an experiment and ask what happens - if you do an experiment and something happens, it can only be because you willed it.

That sounds interesting...I might borrow that for a one-shot some time. It wouldn't work for a typical supers game, but it would work great for a team of potential Dr. Manhattans.

While walking today, I thought of a villain for my setting. Doctor Tobarlic (that's robot put in reverse with a few letters swapped and added). As the base of his name implies...

Minor point: I'm pretty sure people are going to think "garlic" before "robot" when they hear his name.

The hiccup in his plans? The university he worked for said he was taking too long with too little results, when he tried to fight it, they fired him.

What was the university paying him to do? The wife-revival thing, or something else? Was the wife-revival distracting from his day job, or was the university trying to get something out of Togarlic's passion project? Was Tobarlic negligent in his work, or was the university greedy? Is Tobarlic tragic or not?

One of my biggest issues with running a superhero game is that most superhero universes have the heroes acting only when the villains have already enacted their plan (forcing PCs to be reactive rather than proactive) and then everything returns to the status quo. This can be fine if that's what everyone wants, but it's hard to have truly epic adventures that way.

That's true of most TRPGs, especially published adventures. That might be because making an adventure the PCs want to get into without being dragged in by the villains requires the DM to know the PCs' motivations before they start designing the adventure (which is obviously impossible for published adventures). But then again, that's frequently true in most genres of fiction across all media, so maybe I'm looking at it too hard.

[Hoplite308]

Most of the post above have really great advice for the campaign itself, so mine is based on just the mechanical side of it. I usually recommend Mutants and Masterminds 3e, Fate, or World of Darkness. Fate is super simple, if they prefer to have more storytelling than mechanical combat. M&M is a bit complicated on the mechanical side, involving a LOT of GM calls, but the core materials are entirely free online. Also, it balances the characters out pretty well on its own. It's not perfect, there is power-gaming, but a smart GM can curb that pretty easily. World of Darkness is generally set up for horror genres (vampires are a LITTLE OP), but the mechanics are universal enough that you can apply them to a lot more situations with some creativity.

With the villains, don't be afraid to make them over the top with interesting powers, as long as you don't kill your players. That said, this isn't D&D. Don't expect your players to just kill the enemies, and if they do, make sure they knew beforehand what the consequences were, based on your setting. A more MCU-like universe can be a bit looser on killing, but it's strictly taboo in DC.

[Arbane]

There is a huge stock of available superhero plots, each in its own small pamphlet. They used to cost 12 cents when I was growing up.

They're 3$ or more apiece these days.

It's been mentioned before, but with superheroes, a session zero is desperately needed, unless you want to end up with a team that's wildly unable to work together even without taking powers into account. (Imagine a superhero team of Batman, the Punisher, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny...)

Also, it can be VERY easy to break superhero games right in half with certain powers - sometimes unintentionally. If that happens, talk to the players and try to figure out a way to redo it that's not quite as overpowered.

Conversely, there's nothing wrong with making plots that the Authorities CAN'T do anything about without the PCs using their powers.

[Matuka]

What was the university paying him to do? The wife-revival thing, or something else? Was the wife-revival distracting from his day job, or was the university trying to get something out of Togarlic's passion project? Was Tobarlic negligent in his work, or was the university greedy? Is Tobarlic tragic or not?

I think you just asked the same question four times, just in four different ways. His work was reviving her, that's what he was paid to do. The university was greedy. It is tragic.

[Malphegor]

What books do you have? I'm convinced that any system can be jury rigged into a superhero game, if you tweak the setting and gameplay to fit the weirder mechanics and what that system does.

For example, for 3.5, I'd probably end up homebrewing a few "Superheroic Progression Paths" where you get spell like abilities and skills based on the superhero archetype you chose on top of your normal character progression. (sorta like the racial progression they introduced like that drow race class that slots on top of your existing class to remove level adjustment). So someone who picked Flying Brick would probably go their normal class (fighter maybe?) but they also get Overland Flight and Fly or some equivalent as a at-will SLA. And of course I'd throw in modified versions of the modern/future weapons from the DMG.

For newish stuff, I've heard that Fate Accelerated is good for superhero stuff, albeit it does on surface seem to lock you into a character who only does a few things well.

[Beleriphon]

For newish stuff, I've heard that Fate Accelerated is good for superhero stuff, albeit it does on surface seem to lock you into a character who only does a few things well.

Sort of, this is the reason I prefer FATE to FAE (which is a massive acronym: Freeform Universal Do-it-yourself Gaming Engine Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment Accelerated Edition). FATE does allow for advancement. Adventure 1, 2 and 3 are kind of a background thing. The first is you come up with, two and three are done in conjunction with other players and are meant to explain how they meet. In our hypothetical game we've got Cap, Spider-Man and Tony Stark. Skills are rated at character creation as One Great (+4) skill, Two Good (+3) skills, Three Fair (+2) skills, Four Average (+1) skills


For example Captain America might be setup like this:
High Concept Patriotic Super Soldier from WWII
Trouble: My Past Haunts Me
Adventure 1: I lost Bucky, then got frozen
Adventure 2: Spider-Man is my inspiration
Adventure 3: Tony Stark can't agree with my politics
Skills:
Fight (Great +4)
Athletics (Good +3), Physique (Good +3)
Rapport (Fair +2), Contacts (Fair +2), Will (Fair +2)
Drive (Average +1), Notice (Average +1), Stealth (Average +1), Lore (Average +1)

Stunts:
Shield Toss: When Captain America succeeds with Style on a Fight check he can attack one additional opponent up to one zone away.

That's a pretty basic one, but I'm not practiced enough to get a good stunt going for the shield throw.

[Arbane]

For low-ish superhero power levels, you might want to check out the Atomic Robo RPG - it's specifically about playing pulp-Science!-heroes, and specifically has rules for when (for example) the guy with superstrength tries to wrestle someone. (They auto-win against anyone else who doesn't also have superstrength.)

[SimonMoon6]

That's true of most TRPGs, especially published adventures. That might be because making an adventure the PCs want to get into without being dragged in by the villains requires the DM to know the PCs' motivations before they start designing the adventure (which is obviously impossible for published adventures).

Possibly I'm too used to making sandbox style games too often that I have a hard time simply railroading PCs into one single adventure with no other choices. That makes it hard for me to want to run a standard superhero game (even though I'm big fan of the genre and of one particular superhero RPG's game mechanics).

And, yeah, published adventures are typically terrible since they have to be. They have to say "Here is the one adventure that you can go on" since they aren't going to give you a sandbox world (or nobody wants to buy such a thing).

Back in the late 80's, when I was running a game using TSR's Marvel RPG (with FASERIP), I used to try to deal with the problem by starting off each session by handing out the front page of a fake newspaper. On the front page would be several possible plot threads that the PCs could investigate as well as articles about the PCs' recent adventures (so they could see what the world thought of their adventures). Sometimes the latter was a bit of a stretch, as one player laughed about how the front page mentioned "Cap Cap Saves Cat. Takes Poor Thing to Vet." (Cap Cap was short for Captain Capitalist.)

But in general, it's hard to make it so that the PCs are in charge of their adventures, the way I prefer to do in most games.

Like, with the suggested robot plot, it's probably going to begin this way:

1. Robots are attacking a bank. The PCs go there and fight robots.
2. The PCs investigate the robots and find clues.
3. The clues lead them somewhere. Possibly right to the main villain in which case, they fight the main villain, and that's the entire adventure finished. Alternatively, the clues might lead from one tech supplier to another, each of which might be paranoid tech-guys with reasons to fight the PCs before giving them the next piece of information leading to the next section of the adventure.

In all of that, where is the player agency? Where do they get to choose what to do?

Possibly, in a world based on a particular work of fiction (the DC universe, the Marvel universe, etc), the players might have a few more choices ("Let's take the clues to Batman and have him help us out" or "Let's see what Lex Luthor has to say about these robots"), but it's still somewhat minimal.

[Beleriphon]

Like, with the suggested robot plot, it's probably going to begin this way:

1. Robots are attacking a bank. The PCs go there and fight robots.
2. The PCs investigate the robots and find clues.
3. The clues lead them somewhere. Possibly right to the main villain in which case, they fight the main villain, and that's the entire adventure finished. Alternatively, the clues might lead from one tech supplier to another, each of which might be paranoid tech-guys with reasons to fight the PCs before giving them the next piece of information leading to the next section of the adventure.

In all of that, where is the player agency? Where do they get to choose what to do?

Possibly, in a world based on a particular work of fiction (the DC universe, the Marvel universe, etc), the players might have a few more choices ("Let's take the clues to Batman and have him help us out" or "Let's see what Lex Luthor has to say about these robots"), but it's still somewhat minimal.

The part where they take control is when they decide what to actually do about Doctor Torbalic, when they get there. Or what do about Commissioner Nodrog chewing them out for letting him escape. Maybe Torbalic wants to recruit our erstwhile hereoes, maybe he's actually a shill for Shadow Government Agency #37, whatever. This can be partial setup in the session 0, where you get player input into what they are expecting from the game. If a group wants to play a superhero game to a degree they're expecting to play the tropes, which usually means doing exactly what you describe. The thing to keep in mind is that you can have a few different path options, that ultimately lead to the bad guy, but each one picked closes off options from the others. Don't investigate the tech company, they deleted their files and you can't check later.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I think you just asked the same question four times, just in four different ways.

I was going for "ask the question, and subsequent questions to make sure you got to the point at the heart of the question".

Possibly I'm too used to making sandbox style games too often that I have a hard time simply railroading PCs into one single adventure with no other choices.

I've played in two games that professed to be a sandbox game. One was effectively "railroady" due to being one or two plot hooks at a time surrounded by an empty open world; the other (still ongoing) feels aimless beyond "roll a ship encounter, fight the mooks, get plunder/infamy/etc; maybe eventually vengeance??" Sandboxes are harder to pull off in TRPGs than VRPGs because the latter have teams of professionals working for years to fill the open world, whereas TRPGs have one amateur using their free time to create something that works (usually without the pre-campaign production time to plan things out in advance). VRPGs can afford that expense because they're usually being sold to millions of players; something that only 1% of players will decide to check out is still worth including, because that's tens of thousands of people. Something that 1% of TRPG players will decide to check out is a waste of time, because your table probably only has 4-6 people at it.

Back in the late 80's, when I was running a game using TSR's Marvel RPG (with FASERIP), I used to try to deal with the problem by starting off each session by handing out the front page of a fake newspaper. On the front page would be several possible plot threads that the PCs could investigate as well as articles about the PCs' recent adventures (so they could see what the world thought of their adventures). Sometimes the latter was a bit of a stretch, as one player laughed about how the front page mentioned "Cap Cap Saves Cat. Takes Poor Thing to Vet." (Cap Cap was short for Captain Capitalist.)

Either you have a lot more time to devote to adventure prep than I do, or you are way better at improv than I am. I like the idea of handing out newspapers to remind the players of their characters' impact on the world and stick out a plot hook, but I'm not thrilled about the idea of throwing in five times as many plot hooks as the players are actually going to follow if that means 80% of my prep work is garbage by design. (It doesn't help that my players are generally capable of rendering 80% of my prep work in ways I didn't plan for, so that leaves me with something like 4% of my prep work being usable.)

But in general, it's hard to make it so that the PCs are in charge of their adventures, the way I prefer to do in most games.

Like, with the suggested robot plot, it's probably going to begin this way:

1. Robots are attacking a bank. The PCs go there and fight robots.
2. The PCs investigate the robots and find clues.
3. The clues lead them somewhere. Possibly right to the main villain in which case, they fight the main villain, and that's the entire adventure finished. Alternatively, the clues might lead from one tech supplier to another, each of which might be paranoid tech-guys with reasons to fight the PCs before giving them the next piece of information leading to the next section of the adventure.

In all of that, where is the player agency? Where do they get to choose what to do?

Where's the agency in Frodo taking the Ring to Mordor? Not in the quest, not in the journey, but in the choice. It's not much, but it's not a problem unique to superhero media or TRPGs.

[SimonMoon6]

I've played in two games that professed to be a sandbox game. One was effectively "railroady" due to being one or two plot hooks at a time surrounded by an empty open world; the other (still ongoing) feels aimless beyond "roll a ship encounter, fight the mooks, get plunder/infamy/etc; maybe eventually vengeance??" Sandboxes are harder to pull off in TRPGs than VRPGs because the latter have teams of professionals working for years to fill the open world, whereas TRPGs have one amateur using their free time to create something that works (usually without the pre-campaign production time to plan things out in advance). VRPGs can afford that expense because they're usually being sold to millions of players; something that only 1% of players will decide to check out is still worth including, because that's tens of thousands of people. Something that 1% of TRPG players will decide to check out is a waste of time, because your table probably only has 4-6 people at it.

Well, that's not how I would do sandboxing.

Generally, it helps if the players know about the world, what they can possibly do in the world, what things exist in the world, and so forth. Then, it also helps if the players have motivations and goals. (The problem with superhero games is that the PCs all have the same goal of "restore order".) Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "Well, there's known to be a huge dragon horde over in Mountain X... we *think* the dragon's gone, but we're not sure. You could go investigate. On the other hand, there were some strange lights over on Mountain Y where an ancient cult of evil druids lived 800 years... they couldn't still be alive, could they? To the west, goblins live and while they're not attacking us right now, that just means that they're probably up to something; you could go check them out. Etc, etc." This is what I call "the multiple plot hook" situation. The players can choose what they want to do, and sometimes they might not even agree on what to do. (I remember back in 1st edition D&D, one time the group's cleric had to go on an adventure by himself because none of the other players wanted to go that way.) And that can work.

But even better is when the setting is so well known that you don't even have to spell out the plot hooks. I've had a couple of games like this, and these have been the games that the players have enjoyed the most.

Either you have a lot more time to devote to adventure prep than I do, or you are way better at improv than I am.

It may be a mixture of both. Usually, what I would do is consider what would happen in each possible (predictable) direction that the players might go in. I might not have the entire adventures written out from beginning to end, but I have a rough idea of the plot. Then, the players begin the adventure and usually, we run out of time before they get too far. Then, I have all week to prepare the details before we meet again. And if the PCs go down a plot path too quickly, sometimes I use stalling tactics: random encounters or time-consuming interactions with interesting NPCs.

Of course, this really doesn't work in D&D 3.5, where it takes five hours to make a single character. That's why my game of choice has always been something rather straightforward and simple, such as Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG. If you know what you want the character to be able to do, you give him those abilities. No searching through hundreds of sourcebooks to find the best way to, say, synergize grappling maneuvers with touch-range spells. So, if the PCs encounter Doctor Energy Control before I planned, I can just jot down his stats in five seconds and I'm ready for combat, when and if it should happen.

And, yeah, sometimes there's a bit of improv involved, but you always have to expect the players to take things off the rails (especially when there are no rails). That's also a big part of superhero games anyway, where players often have abilities that make short work of standard plots. ("Haha, the players will never find out the villain's secrets. Oh, wait, your character can read minds? Uh-oh! Well, at least, you can't get past this wall! Oh, you can teleport? Uh-oh.")

Sometimes, I like to prepare by *just* creating characters with goals and motivations, with certain tasks that they will be performing if nobody interferes. Then, just let the PCs come in and mess everything up. Sometimes, you don't need more prepared details than that.

I like the idea of handing out newspapers to remind the players of their characters' impact on the world and stick out a plot hook, but I'm not thrilled about the idea of throwing in five times as many plot hooks as the players are actually going to follow if that means 80% of my prep work is garbage by design.

As I said, there shouldn't be too much prep work. Especially if there's minimal plot. I could easily improv an entire "Doctor Backwards Robotic" adventure with virtually no prep time.

But another strategy (that might seem like cheating) is to have multiple plot threads lead to the same adventure. I try not to make it "Well you can investigate the robbery of the occult bookstore or you can investigate the grave robbers, but either way, it just leads to the guy who's making zombies", instead having linked stories where, maybe one plot thread leads to an entire adventure that then leads into the other adventure that you could've gotten to earlier if you hadn't ignored this particular plot thread.

Where's the agency in Frodo taking the Ring to Mordor? Not in the quest, not in the journey, but in the choice. It's not much, but it's not a problem unique to superhero media or TRPGs.

That's the problem with "save the world" adventures. PCs *have* to go on the "save the world" adventures. I remember a player once wishing that one of my games had more adventures where the consequences weren't always so dire, so I had to rethink the adventures that I was providing for them.

But also, if Frodo was a PC things would be different. Maybe the guy playing Frodo finds this adventure boring. But if that's all the GM has prepared, that's what he has to deal with.

The thing is, there's a difference between fiction and RPGs. Fiction can be about the characters' growth and development (personality-wise) as much as it is about the plot and the characters don't mind if there's only one plot because nobody is playing those characters. But in a game, none of that is true. Will PC #1 be brave enough to attack an orc? Well, sure, it's just a game, it's not a big deal. But in a novel, it could be a very different story. For PCs, there's not as much choice about "do I dare go into danger, even to save the world"? I mean, that's the whole point of the game, so of course, they will. And saving the world's not much of a choice. Of course, they'll try to do that.

[Great Dragon]

I don't have any recommendations on which system to use.

It's been years since I had a TRPG Superhero group, and I haven't read comics in a long time. While the movies are cool, there has been entirely too much "alternate universe" recon shinagines for me to get too interested, anymore. Sigh. Even Spiderman and I liked him!

I think you just asked the same question four times, just in four different ways. His work was reviving her, that's what he was paid to do. The university was greedy. It is tragic.

This reminds me of the origin of the original Mr Freeze. (No offense to Mr Schwarzenegger, but Victor Fries wasn't that built)
Maybe with a little of Doc Octopus, except focused on robots, instead of "cold fusion".
(Dr Doom, without "magic"?)
LoL

****

Like others have posted, knowing what is the overall goal that Players want, is important.

Being like the X-Men (a semi-organized ragtag group of powerful people fighting not just against other powerful people out to destroy stuff or dominate others, but also against all forms of discrimination) [and yes, I know that X-Men doesn't always convey that message]

is different from being like the Avengers (mostly liked and respected Defenders of Earth)

and then there's the Scattered Heroes: Like Spiderman is in Downtown NYC, and Daredevil is in Hell's Kitchen, etc.

Each of the above has its own challenge for the GM.

X-Men are (usually) very reactive.
These also tend to be more PC to PC RP focused.

Avengers do patrols, seeking out problems; but getting the entire team there can take time.
Cool Power Combos are seen more often.

(IME) Solo Heroes are hard, because they need more "reasons" to work together. (I got tired of coming up with these, and just had consequences for lack of Teamwork, if that was what the challenge required) And the GM might need to do more one-on-one gaming.

****

Another thing is: Repeat Villains.
How many and how often?
Batman had, what, a dozen?
Give some of these actual Superpowers, and watch out!!

[Blue]Seems like Spiderman was fighting Doc Oct every other month. Swapping out with Green Goblin. With Vulture (Scorpion, Rhino, Venom, etc) thrown in at random.[/Blue]

*****

Do you have "Evil" Organizations?
Both powered:
Brotherhood of United Mutants?

Or the powered version of the Suicide Squad?

Red Skull?

And non "Superpowered":
the government backed project that created the Sentinels?

Or the equivalent of Dr Doom?
(or Lex Luther, if you prefer)

Or Hydra?

****

As Hoplite308 pointed out:
The question of killing, is also important.

I tend to agree with SimonMoon6 - in that "Save the World" tends to require the Heroes to do that. I mean, even The Tick isn't that thick!
(His motivations are questionable)

In TRPGs, these tend to be Game Ending Challenges. If the Heroes win, ya status quo maintained. If they lose, the world is destroyed along with their deaths.
(One of the reasons I won't run D&D 5e Out of the Abyss in my World.)

If "Save the World" was what the game was from Session Zero (Independence Day), where Session One is the PCs dealing with the advance scouts, and working their way up the chain, great.

[Jay R]

Possibly I'm too used to making sandbox style games too often that I have a hard time simply railroading PCs into one single adventure with no other choices.

Unfortunately, the genre (combined with modern law) requires some degrees of supplying the adventure.

They can't just go attack anybody they think is evil. The bad guys have to try to rob a bank, kill someone, kidnap a child, or otherwise break the law before you're allowed to beat them up.

Unless you have multiple crimes by supervillains going on at once, the GM is choosing what adventure they have

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: SimonMoon6

Show

Well, that's not how I would do sandboxing.

Generally, it helps if the players know about the world, what they can possibly do in the world, what things exist in the world, and so forth. Then, it also helps if the players have motivations and goals. (The problem with superhero games is that the PCs all have the same goal of "restore order".) Sometimes it's as simple as saying, "Well, there's known to be a huge dragon horde over in Mountain X... we *think* the dragon's gone, but we're not sure. You could go investigate. On the other hand, there were some strange lights over on Mountain Y where an ancient cult of evil druids lived 800 years... they couldn't still be alive, could they? To the west, goblins live and while they're not attacking us right now, that just means that they're probably up to something; you could go check them out. Etc, etc." This is what I call "the multiple plot hook" situation. The players can choose what they want to do, and sometimes they might not even agree on what to do. (I remember back in 1st edition D&D, one time the group's cleric had to go on an adventure by himself because none of the other players wanted to go that way.) And that can work.

But even better is when the setting is so well known that you don't even have to spell out the plot hooks. I've had a couple of games like this, and these have been the games that the players have enjoyed the most.

I'm not seeing how this is relevant to the issues I brought up. It feels like an example I'd have given, except that you left out the "And the players only follow one of those hooks, meaning that you waste all the effort you put into the others".

And, yeah, sometimes there's a bit of improv involved, but you always have to expect the players to take things off the rails (especially when there are no rails). That's also a big part of superhero games anyway, where players often have abilities that make short work of standard plots. ("Haha, the players will never find out the villain's secrets. Oh, wait, your character can read minds? Uh-oh! Well, at least, you can't get past this wall! Oh, you can teleport? Uh-oh.")

That problem should be easy to avoid in superhero games. In D&D, casters have access to dozens of spells (hundreds at high levels, or with enough sourcebooks). In a superhero game, each character only has one or maybe a handful of powers, tied directly to their character concept.

Sometimes, I like to prepare by *just* creating characters with goals and motivations, with certain tasks that they will be performing if nobody interferes. Then, just let the PCs come in and mess everything up. Sometimes, you don't need more prepared details than that.

Nope. You might not, but I don't feel ready if I don't at least have a reasonably-detailed plan, maps for anywhere the players might end up going, and statistics for anyone they might end up fighting. (It doesn't help that A. I've mostly DMd games where you can't throw together a stat block while asking for initiative rolls and B. I've regularly been bitten by random details critical to the players' plans that weren't even mentioned in the adventure book, so I try to think of those details ahead of time.)

As I said, there shouldn't be too much prep work. Especially if there's minimal plot. I could easily improv an entire "Doctor Backwards Robotic" adventure with virtually no prep time.

Yes, but would it be a good adventure?
(I'm a chronic perfectionist.)

That's the problem with "save the world" adventures.

No, that's the problem with save-the-world storylines. This isn't a problem unique to TRPGs. That's my point.

The thing is, there's a difference between fiction and RPGs. Fiction can be about the characters' growth and development (personality-wise) as much as it is about the plot and the characters don't mind if there's only one plot because nobody is playing those characters. But in a game, none of that is true. Will PC #1 be brave enough to attack an orc? Well, sure, it's just a game, it's not a big deal. But in a novel, it could be a very different story. For PCs, there's not as much choice about "do I dare go into danger, even to save the world"? I mean, that's the whole point of the game, so of course, they will. And saving the world's not much of a choice. Of course, they'll try to do that.

You say that like fiction never has characters who don't think twice about throwing themselves into whatever plot-mandated danger presents itself, without being characterized as reckless.
But even in good fiction, there's a sense that the characters will of course go into danger because that's the point of the story, and of course they'll try to save the world or whatever. But good stories tie this into something core about their protagonists (ideally an opportunity for character growth).
The problem isn't that TRPGs are inherently different. It's that this kind of depth requires more forethought and effort than most players (GMs included) want to put into the game, and more coordination between protagonists and plot than you can usually get when they're written by different people.

Unfortunately, the genre (combined with modern law) requires some degrees of supplying the adventure.

They can't just go attack anybody they think is evil. The bad guys have to try to rob a bank, kill someone, kidnap a child, or otherwise break the law before you're allowed to beat them up.

That should be the case for any genre. Though the superhero genre does make it harder to attack someone you have good evidence is "evil".

[Great Dragon]

Unfortunately, the genre (combined with modern law) requires some degrees of supplying the adventure.

They can't just go attack anybody they think is evil. The bad guys have to try to rob a bank, kill someone, kidnap a child, or otherwise break the law before you're allowed to beat them up.

That should be the case for any genre. Though the superhero genre does make it harder to attack someone you have good evidence is "evil".

This is one of the reasons why both The Kingpin (Daredevil) and Lex Luthor (Superman) are so "difficult" for their respective protagonists to deal with.

Sure, Superman knows Lex was behind (whatever the Plot was), but - since he can't prove it - "beyond the shadow of a doubt" - he has to just fly away, until next time, where he tries (again) to get that proof.

Both Villains use others to do "the dirty work" and even if these are taken out, doesn't really hurt them much. Beyond possibly making sure that the "Goons" don't testify against them. Where both Blackmail and Bribery are used.

Even Magneto uses that against the X-Men a lot.
Until it's time for him to act to accomplish his Goal.

Now, those are Boss-level problems.
*****
For regular threats, simply defeating the villain (in mid crime preferred) is enough.

I mean how many times has Spiderman left thugs webbed upside down on a lamp post for the cops to take care of?

But, yeah: Batman can't punch Joker for just walking down the street. Even when everyone knows Joker is (insane) Evil.

Unless you have multiple crimes by supervillains going on at once, the GM is choosing what adventure they have

I suppose that the GM could give the main "clue" for each Plot to a different Player.
Let them debate and decide which one to do first, than which is next, and so on.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I suppose that the GM could give the main "clue" for each Plot to a different Player.
Let them debate and decide which one to do first, than which is next, and so on.

Bonus points if each clue aligns with that character's motivation, giving them a reason to argue for one plot over another. (Also giving each PC a specific motivation.)