Your last major story arc in Champions

[dsatow]

How would you describe your last major story arc in your Champions campaigns?

 

Rules: 

1. Minimum of 100 characters.  That's about 20 5 letters words.  So "police procedural" doesn't cut it as a description.  More description helps.
2. Maximum of about 300 characters.  That's about 60 words.  This isn't a hard limit but try to keep your description to only a paragraph or two.  More description is good, but we aren't looking for a novel.
3. Try to describe it in a way that a new GM might take inspiration from it.

 

Example: 

Last year I completed two story arcs.  One was fairly long.

 

#1(2014-2020) The PCs are involved where the failure of established units and super powered military of the government (PRIMUS) kept failing to stop large scale supervillain attacks.  Several political figures decided to use a civilian contracting unit to replace Primus.  This turned out to be Viper who with the politicians started a long story arc where they took over the government in the name of law and order.

 

#2(2020) This Legion of Superheroes style game had a story arc where communication was lost on a mining colony.  The mining colony used biosynthetic humans (replicants effectively) to do all the menial labor.  The governor of the colony goes mad and begins to think himself a god and bioengineers himself and several others with powers stolen from genetic material of aliens. 

[Greywind]

100-300 characters? That's a lot of thugs to give screen time to.

[Lord Liaden]

Several years ago, I ran a multi-faction alien invasion story arc for my modified-CU campaign. (All aliens referred to can be found in Champions Beyond and Book Of The Empress.) Earth has recently experienced renewed hostility from the Gadroon and Qularr, who are actually being manipulated by Istvatha V'han into fighting each other over Earth to weaken it for her own invasion. The Hzeel, who also want to invade Earth, staged an incident to provoke the Gadroon/Qularr Earthly cold war into a hot one, to get them out of the way. PCs get help from the Warlord (who knows the Hzeel better than anyone on Earth) to find proof of Hzeel involvement, as well as V'han's intentions for the Qularr and Gadroon, and get those last two to purge Istvatha's influence and jointly attack the Hzeel. All while minimizing collateral damage from the conflicts.

 

(This was my strategy to clear all those lingering invasion plots off the board.)

[Christopher R Taylor]

It was a Golden Age champions adventure, about 10 years ago now?  Something like that.  It sounds more lurid than it payed, because this is a golden age comic book setting.

 

Quote

The Amazing Zanzo with his magical wand that can grow and control animals, had decided that he'd take girls from a girl's school and form a harem using them.  He enlarged and controlled dogs to carry the girls off, and when the PCs got involved the two Magician's Assistants he has (succubi, in disguise, who are controlling Zanzo) fought the heroes to stop them.  This involved a lot of role playing because the PCs had set up the school as a place for orphans and (hopefully) former prostitutes to learn a trade and get food and shelter.  One of the women in the school had begun turning out the girls again while the PCs were off saving the world in places like Dunkirk.

 

The next adventure was going to be the PCs involved in the Battle of Britain (they'd already been involved in the previously mentioned Dunkirk, sinking the Bismark, and the SS St Louis, among other historical events.

[Sketchpad]

The last Champions arc that I ran? Hmm... I guess I would pick the last 4e one...

 

The New Champions: Destroyer Unlimited

Last episode, Dr. Destroyer discovered the Ultiversal Code and began re-writing the universe with his devious mind. As the New Champions descend on to Destruga, they must battle dark versions of themselves, as well as Destroyers new, powered-up agents. Can they save the cosmos itself, or will Destroyer be triumphant?! <cue Champions Theme>

[Jhamin]

I'm running a Ravenswood Academy Teen Champions game every other week.  Am I the only one who is playing?

Lets see.... According to my notes I've run the following arcs since the Covid Lockdown started:

 

*When a social media spat between on of the PC's (normal) highschool buddies and the Insta Influencer "supervillians" Mr. Finsta and THE GOAT went viral they drew the attention of the Kanrok the Aquisitioner and were kidnapped to the Malvan Moon arena where they fought in the "immature league".  Things were looking dire for the PCs when ZPARTKUS worked out that one pc was Mechanon's "Son" and felt he owed it to the boss to spring them.

 

*When the PCs got home they discovered that they had been replaced by robotic duplicates & had to reclaim their lives.  The fallout proved especially difficult for the PC who is an amnesiac spirit using the body of a former mean-girl queen bee (arranged by Dr. Tennebre) and had spent the whole school year carving out a new place for herself in the school.  It turned out the Malvan robot used a scan of her organic brain instead of her spirit when assuming her life, which lead to a lot of fallout with her new friends as it looked to most of the school like she had reverted to her "pre-coma" personality.

 

*(Stolen from a published Mutants & Mastermind's adventure) A dilettante radical who is an animal-rights protester this week worked out that her Grandfather had been a superhero in the 70s and arranged with a group of henchmen for hire to steal a reality-altering gem from the mothballed super-base trophy room & then used it's power to try to turn Zoo Animals into her "Army of Liberation".  The PCs got the gem back and reverted most of her victims but kept the super-intelligent Hedge Hog "test subject" they rescued from her & got him added to the Ravenswood Faculty.  (Headmistress Timmons knows Professor Quill will be important to later events)

 

*The Great Supervillian Contest: Junior League (Ongoing) the heroes have been nominated as valid targets for the Jr. class supervillians and get called out or outright jumped by the participating villians looking to score points in the contest.  The PCs had to deal with Mista Finsta & THE GOAT, Chess Club, and AlphaGeek Prime before being jumped by the Rapturians (a group of teenagers being trained as An Chi Assassins by Raptor, a longtime homebrew villain).  They talked the Rapturians down from their unmotivated attacks & convinced them to go to a movie.  They then had to save them when Raptor declared open season on the students who befriended the PCs.  (This one isn't over, but the PCs are ignoring the rest of the contest until it pulls them back in)

 

*Things came to a head when the PCs and several other Nontraditional Students were invited to a New Years party thrown by one of the riches trust-fund kinds at Ravenswood, only to discover the whole thing had been arranged by Kyle Ward, youngest daughter of Black Mask X who decided that their presence should prevent any funny business against the host by Generation V, the rival Nontraditional Students from the Von Drotte Academy and Viper's Dragon Branch trainees.  The PCs and their Metahuman friends prevented anything untoward from happening, and kept their secret identities intact, but were incredibly upset with Kyle for not treating them openly.  She responded that she handled the situation as she saw best and that "amatures" like them had no business second guessing her.  (Kyle is the younger sister of Black Mask XI's current teen sidekick and is more than a bit upset that her mother (Black Mask X) and godmother (Black Mask XI) have chosen her brother over her to continue the legacy.  Stunts like this are *exactly* why they don't trust her and her mom is hoping she learns some humility at Ravenswood)

[krevvie]

I was trying to introduce some new players to the game (5er) and setting pre-COVID, so I had a DEMON Morbane break away from the fold to make some money selling a street drug that let the user experience any hallucination he wanted for a few minutes, completely under the user's control, no limits of any kind.  It was called the God Drug and it was, of course, just addictive as hell.  The fun part is that it achieved this effect by being comprised of demonically-tainted human blood, and the users that willingly ingested it were willingly donating a portion of their own blood (more than they'd like) to summon a demon prince once enough people were using the drug.  (I figured demons would have no problem giving people hallucinations, and also deliberately injecting demon-tainted blood counts as "active voluntary submission.")  VIPER caught wind of the plot from an informant and did not want to deal with a full-on demon prince, but didn't have nearly enough information to do anything (including to get law enforcement involved.)  So they sent a fake PRIMUS agent to get the PCs on the trail and monitored their progress as their "friendly contact."

The PCs were enthusiastic, good-natured and impulsive the way only new players can be.  First they destroyed a building full of police evidence for reasons I was never clear on, then they managed to nearly destroy a shopping mall just trying to buy some of the drug, then after one of them (multiple science Ph. D.s type) determined that the drug was made of super strangely contaminated human blood and not much else, another one ingested it anyway and decided it was awesome and he wanted to keep using it forever.  We stopped meeting because of COVID right when the players managed to inadvertently expose VIPER to PRIMUS and got both sides into a full-on battle with each other--and the players, with no idea who was who, were in the middle of attacking both sides.  The very last action a PC took before we wrapped up the last time we played was to direct-charge an APC head-on.  He's a new player, we're having fun, the group's definitely got a good social vibe; I won't kill him if we ever meet again.  But that was definitely one of those "that's a big heavy gun pointed right at you and you can go literally anywhere else, are you SURE?" moments.

 

Good times.

[Tech]

One of my story arcs started 14 years ago, with each episode story well-received by the group. Each episode focuses on a particular character in a situation that must be resolved. If resolved well, the hero has grown a little as a hero and perhaps a person; if not resolved, there may be some dire consequences (such as losing their powers, for example). Fortunately, the heroes have never failed.

 

I'm actually doing my next one this coming Friday. This story goes something like this: the sword-user's special swords will fail during a fight with a villain; these are swords of legend. Another hero from England will help the group travel to England to find an actual knight who can give him the Knight's Oath. The hero must take the Oath, which will restore the swords to power. Restored now, the hero faces the villain again to triumph over him.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Ran through a variation of Imaginary Friends.

[Asperion]

17 hours ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

Ran through a variation of Imaginary Friends.

 

Do we get Ross, Phoebe, Monica, and all the rest?

[Dr. MID-Nite]

On 10/9/2021 at 10:30 AM, Asperion said:

 

Do we get Ross, Phoebe, Monica, and all the rest?

 

Yes, but they're imaginary...

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

But they still show up and interfere with you trying to watch Babylon 5