The Most Grandiose Crime?

[Steve]

What is the most grandiose crime your heroes have seen a supervillain attempt in a campaign?

 

Take the mayor hostage?

Kill the mayor?

Hold an entire city hostage?

Destroy an entire city?

Hold the leader of a country hostage?

Kill the leader of a country?

Conquer a planet?

Destroy a planet?

Conquer a universe?

Destroy a universe?

 

I didn’t set this up as a poll because it is more of an open question with many possible variant answers.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, I've never had an opportunity to actually run it, but some years ago I did outline a plot suggested by and utilizing concepts, characters, and artifacts from the official Champions Universe. The plot revolves around Xarriel, the setting's Darkseid/Thanos analogue, and his quest for three artifacts of immense power. I would use details and hints from the published text to make Xarriel's path to each of the artifacts lead to Earth.

 

The first artifact is the Annihilation Scepter, a cosmic device of unknown origin which can trigger a "Big Crunch" event, collapsing the entire universe back into a primordial atom, preparatory to another Big Bang creating a new universe. It has the additional drawback of also annihilating its wielder in the process. The second artifact is the Kdothri Mirror, created millions of years ago by an advanced civilization using both science and magic. The Mirror can alter any object or area that is clearly and recognizably reflected on its surface, in any way its possessor can imagine. But the Mirror is enchanted so that it only remains with a person for a limited time, before translocating itself to another random location.

 

The third artifact is a Cosmic Gem, a few of which are known to exist, which is capable of channeling immense cosmic energy at its wielder's mental command. The type and magnitude of energy manifestation depends on the will and native power of the person using it. For a being like Xarriel who is already at cosmic level, a Gem's potential power is nearly infinite. (Xarriel and all these artifacts are described and game-statted in Champions Beyond, except for example powers for the Cosmic Gems, which are part of Galaxia's write-up in Champions Villains Volume Three.)

 

Once he has all three artifacts, Xarriel's scheme is to first trigger the Annihilation Scepter. He calculates that his own power, plus that of the Cosmic Gem, will be enough to shield him from being destroyed in the collapse of the universe. He will then position the Kdothri Mirror so that the primordial atom is reflected in it. When the Big Bang occurs, Xarriel will use the Mirror to shape the growth of the resultant universe so it will be completely subject to his will, and every sapient being in it will unwaveringly obey and worship him as their one absolute God.

Edited February 11 by Lord Liaden

[Christopher R Taylor]

I did love the crime attempt in Despicable Me a lot: steal the moon and hold it hostage.

[death tribble]

The original Big Bad was The Destroyer who wanted to destroy all life and we had to battle throughout time to stop him.

 

Then we were helping the Archon to stop the Destroyer from recovering his power. Only the Archon was the Destroyer.....

We stopped him but the GM conned us

[Duke Bushido]

Build up the new restaurant.  This time, do not refuse Pepsi.  Conquer the world with military might.  Acquire a second restaurant location.

 

 

[GDShore]

Mine is actually from"Traveller Hero", The party is hired to retrieve a runaway scion, along the way they find they are not the only ones looking for him. The other group is trying to kill him. Shortly after that they discover he is an Imperial prince, fifth in line to the throne. Much adventure some heartache (one of the party is lost permanently {shot out of a missile tube into a sun will do that}) they succeed. When they rendevous to hand over the princeling, the Imperial Chancellor greets him as "Your Majesty" there had been an attempted coup and the prince was the last of the Imperial line.  THe story arc took just under two years and was my second best storieline. 

[Khymeria]

It was in a Fantasy Hero game in my homebrew setting where the heroes discovered an heir to the throne of the wicked kingdom that had plagued the land and broke in to the prison and rescued the heir. It was big stakes, one of those missions that I could make resource management a focus, as well as stealth. It wasn't the Death Star and I have had supes knock down nukes, but it seemed the biggest stakes at the table for all involved.

[DShomshak]

The largest crime a villain ever attempted in play in any of my Champions campaigns was Doctor Thame's attempt to destroy the universe. There's a hypothesis in physics called the "decay of the false vacuum": in brief, that space itself has an intrinsic level of energy, but this could be lower; and if something happened to convert even the tiniest speck of the universe to this lower energy state, the rest of the universe would nigh-instantaneously drop to this lower energy level as well. This would of course destroy all matter in the current universe, as there would be entirely new laws of physics. Or none, if the new energy state was in fact zero, meaning no matter or energy at all. Thane wanted to test the hypothesis by inducing such a phase shift. He was highly confident his dimensional force field would keep him alive for at least several seconds, long enough to observe the result of the experiment if it succeeded. No, he did not have someplace else to go afterward: He fully expected success to kill him, but at least he would know. Anything for Science!

 

The PCs of Avant Guard got their first clue what Doctor Thane was attempting when their precognitive leader, Doctor Future, made a routine look into the future and saw there wasn't one. So the universe was saved, apparently at cost of the life of Doctor Thane and Doctor Future. Both were time travelers, though, so either of them might reappear in the campaign.

 

(I admit, LL's plan for Xarriel does top Doctor Thane's.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

The largest crime a villain ever attempted in play in any of my Champions campaigns was Doctor Thame's attempt to destroy the universe. There's a hypothesis in physics called the "decay of the false vacuum": in brief, that space itself has an intrinsic level of energy, but this could be lower; and if something happened to convert even the tiniest speck of the universe to this lower energy state, the rest of the universe would nigh-instantaneously drop to this lower energy level as well. This would of course destroy all matter in the current universe, as there would be entirely new laws of physics. Or none, if the new energy state was in fact zero, meaning no matter or energy at all. Thane wanted to test the hypothesis by inducing such a phase shift. He was highly confident his dimensional force field would keep him alive for at least several seconds, long enough to observe the result of the experiment if it succeeded. No, he did not have someplace else to go afterward: He fully expected success to kill him, but at least he would know. Anything for Science!

 

The PCs of Avant Guard got their first clue what Doctor Thane was attempting when their precognitive leader, Doctor Future, made a routine look into the future and saw there wasn't one. So the universe was saved, apparently at cost of the life of Doctor Thane and Doctor Future. Both were time travelers, though, so either of them might reappear in the campaign.

 

(I admit, LL's plan for Xarriel does top Doctor Thane's.)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Kind of you to say, Dean, but from the viewpoint of everyone in the universe, extinction is extinction. What happens afterward Is probably irrelevant to them.

 

The trick with grandiose villainous goals is to find a motivation for them that an audience can comprehend. The grander the scheme, the harder it is to relate to. For Doctor Thane you chose the quest for ultimate knowledge, for Truth. Like Krona in the DC Universe, or Odin in the recent God of War: Ragnarok computer RPG, Dr. Thane was prepared to sacrifice everyone and everything, even himself, for that Truth. I must say, though, leaving himself only a few seconds to enjoy the knowledge seems rather... unrewarding. But hey, what do I know? I'm no obsessed universe-destroying lunatic. Not yet, anyway.

 

[wcw43921]

The 4th Edition Champions Adventure Day Of The Destroyer had a particularly grandiose--and horrifying scheme in which Doctor Destroyer announced that he would kill nine out of every ten people, stating that with the population much reduced, there would be less damage to the ecosystem and more resources available for the survivors.  Not unlike the first Kingsmen movie, in which Samuel Jackson's tech genius character wanted to use a mass mind control system to make everyone in the world beat each other to death, thus saving the planet from humanity, and the James Bond movie Moonraker, in which Hugo Drax would wipe out all humanity with some sort of biological agent, enabling him to repopulate Earth with his own race of genetically superior beings.

 

I've always figured that a mass human extinction scheme would bring much more harm to the ecosystem than help.  First, you have all those billions of corpses and no way to completely dispose of them--and as they decay they become incubators for disease organisms, which would spread unchecked through the surviving humans.  Second, there would be an explosion in the vermin population as all the rats, mice, insects and scavenger beasts would suddenly have an overabundant food supply--and as they fed, they would breed all out of proportion of their predators' abilities to keep them in check.  And once the supply of dead bodies is consumed, those vermin would then turn to the living to survive--and that includes surviving humans.

 

Hope that helps

[Lord Liaden]

Or the scheme by MCU Thanos. I defined a similar motivation for an eco-terrorist supervillain team I put together out of existing published Champions villains: Gaia's Wrath.

 

Everything you say would be bad for us humans, at least in the short term. For the ecosystem of the planet, it would be just dandy. Besides eliminating our polluting and parasitic presence, all that food and fertilizer would nourish the food chain. Any disease-related damage to other organisms would balance out in just a few decades.

 

 

[Gauntlet]

Had a villain once that had the ability to completely alter reality. He decided that the world was too bad a place and decided to transfer everything into cartoons. He managed to turn most of the city into cartoons including half the characters. Players actually enjoyed it as it was a rather serious and dangerous campaign, but when turned into a cartoon you couldn't die or kill anyone.

[Grailknight]

The mass extinction thing has the potential to be catastrophic to the environment if it's too sudden. Think of those nuclear power plants, oil refineries and industrial chemical plants that could break down if not for human supervision. Areas around airports and busy freeways are going to take hard hits also. But if we can avoid most of that and keep enough STEM professionals and construction types going, it would give us a long-term benefit at a horrific short-term price.

[Lord Liaden]

I've seen and read various studies of the outcomes of these "catastrophic" events from man's leftovers. Virtually all of them will be healed in a few centuries at most, an eyeblink in the lifetime of this world.

 

We tend to overestimate our impact on the planet. Global warming, for example, will be devastating for us, and will cause mass extinctions... which have happened dozens of times to life on Earth. The planet will eventually stabilize, surviving life will diversify, and equilibrium will be restored. Probably too late to do us any good, but the world doesn't really care.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Had a villain once that had the ability to completely alter reality. He decided that the world was too bad a place and decided to transfer everything into cartoons.

 

Yeah I had a guy like that, a reality manipulator who was fixated on movies, so he kept creating these cinematic events.  The biggest disaster was he had Chicago attacked by the aliens from War of the Worlds and Godzilla who rose up out of Lake Michigan.  I never did massive super grandiose stuff, I wish I had at least once.

[Lord Liaden]

The "most grandiose crime" scenario I ever personally ran was back in my 4E Champions GM days. My group's penultimate encounter with Dr. Destroyer was over his attempt to blackmail the world with a universe-breaching weapon which could cast entire cities into alternate universes. Initially sneaking into, then fighting their way into DD's base, the PCs managed to reverse the weapon and bring back Cleveland, Ohio, before Destroyer arrived. DD had regained control of it and was kicking their butts, when one of the heroes shoved her whole belt of grenades through a rent that had been torn in one of the weapon's control panels. The resultant blast caused the weapon to dimensionally implode, and Destroyer appeared to be obliterated with it; but none of the players believed that.

 

About a year later (game-time), the PCs were contacted by the Bogeyman, the nightmare-creating monster from the Dreamzone, whom they'd previously fought. (See Champions in 3-D.) This time the Bogeyman had come to beg their help. It turned out Destroyer had been cast into the Dreamzone, enslaved its native Dreamshadows, and built them into an army per his twisted imagination. He was now on the verge of opening a portal for his army to enter the waking world.

 

The heroes had to trek across the Dreamzone, which DD had reshaped into a literal totalitarian nightmare, to confront him and his assembled army. Since awake beings physically in the Dreamzone have power to shape it to their will, the PCs focused their combined wills on taking control of the Doctor's portal device, using it to trap him in a pocket-Dreamzone in which he believed he'd succeeded in conquering the world.

[Gauntlet]

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I've seen and read various studies of the outcomes of these "catastrophic" events from man's leftovers. Virtually all of them will be healed in a few centuries at most, an eyeblink in the lifetime of this world.

 

We tend to overestimate our impact on the planet. Global warming, for example, will be devastating for us, and will cause mass extinctions... which have happened dozens of times to life on Earth. The planet will eventually stabilize, surviving life will diversify, and equilibrium will be restored. Probably too late to do us any good, but the world doesn't really care.

 

Definitely have to agree with you, there even have been studies that if we have a complete nuclear war where everyone uses every nuclear weapon while humankind will end, life will not, and it will continue to grow.

 

 

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Yeah I had a guy like that, a reality manipulator who was fixated on movies, so he kept creating these cinematic events.  The biggest disaster was he had Chicago attacked by the aliens from War of the Worlds and Godzilla who rose up out of Lake Michigan.  I never did massive super grandiose stuff, I wish I had at least once.

 

Did the characters have to fight their way out of it or think their way out of it?

Edited February 15 by Gauntlet

[GDShore]

It can be a lot of fun running the big "score" event but it is taxing too, after every weekend of the 'Entomologist' I felt like I had run a marathon and I had lost 2 - 3 kilograms off my already light frame. I do not know that I would do it again but I am glad I ran that one. It is a good worthwhile memory. 

[Tech]

Don't know if this is grandoise but Foxbat had a list of things he was going to get, for his collection of course. Two of the unusual items were: a heroes costume (or part of it), and the mayors Toupee'. He managed to get a glove and the mayors toupee. Surprisingly, the battle turned into a keep-away game with the toupee bouncing from hand to hand. He almost got away with the heroes glove but a superspeedster nabbed it at the last moment. Poor Foxbat.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Did the characters have to fight their way out of it or think their way out of it?

 

 

A combination.  The street level part of the team handled the alien invaders (who turned out to be Gweenies) and saved lives, the heavy hitters kept Godzilla busy while part of the team looked for who caused this and dealt with him.

Edited February 15 by Christopher R Taylor

[Mark Rand]

This really isn't grandiose, but I had Foxbat kidnap someone in order to get Mickey Mouse's autograph.

 

I also had the idea of him using a helicopter in an attempt to steal a cell phone tower.  It would end up with the helicopter getting impaled by the tower, screwing up cell phone signals, and requiring the local medevac helicopter to transport people to the nearest trauma hospital.

Edited February 15 by Mark Rand

[Gauntlet]

I ran one game where Dark Seraph took on another form and created a school for those with magic talents. There he actually taught them magic as he needed a sacrifice for his future plans of 12 actual wizards. One of the characters in my game who had magic talents actually left the team and joined this school and learned magic. And at first she actually defended the school from the other player characters as she was actually learning magic (and spending points for it). But later learned that there was something strange about their teacher and allowed one of the other player characters secretly into the school (which was on another small magically created dimension) to investigate. They of course found the area where the planned sacrifice was going to take place and that Dark Saraph was their instructor. After running around and fighting a bit with the school's secret magical defenses they were able to find an entrance and allow the other members of their team to get into the dimension to prove to the other students what was going on (which was not easy as they definitely were learning real magic) and then with the assistance of the students fight Dark Saraph.

[GDShore]

I ran for about 7 years a monster month, in April, when origionally monster movies were released when I was a youngster. I did "Godzilla, Rodan, Giant Ants, the Blob, A variant of the Thing, a hidden world of Dinosaurs and finally it was how the Entomologist storyline began.  Usually the group used their regular characters but sometimes they would create somone entirely new. 

 

    As for magic, I have always used it as a science I never liked the D&D form. After all it has been said,, "A science sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic".

[Grailknight]

The last truly grandiose plan I dreamed up was a riff on the follow up to Age of Ultron. There's a giant vibranium spike sitting under that lake in Sokovia, along with the wreckage of several antigravity engines.

 

My villain wanted to collude with the Sokovian government and repair enough to make a floating orbital platform the size of a large stadium and from there begin an elevator, orbital ring and asteroid mining. Naturally, world governments would not agree but once launched it would have missile defense arrays and kinetic bombardment capability and it's own team of supers on hand.

 

A very grandiose Thunderbolts plot and for the kicker the villain offers to allow all heroes to join him and share in the leadership of the platform. He really does want to lead mankind to a brighter future but feels we needs a strong guiding hand to steer us there. He'd even be willing to step down for a Superman or captain America type to take over if that would build trust.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its not enormously grandiose but one of my favorite scenarios Hero published was in the 4th edition Viper book, and it goes like this.

 

A celebrity who has a chain of restaurants* opens one in The City.  Viper comes over with a powerful flying ship and uses gravity control to rip the entire building, including all the dignitaries and celebrities inside, and hang it in the air.  Then VIPER demands all of them pay a ransom or they will drop the building.  Obviously destroying or damaging the ship will cause the same result.

 

*They clearly meant Planet Hollywood and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but had to file the serial numbers off, but I used them in my campaign.

 

It was a good time for all, including a Hero who was inside the restaurant with his family.

 

This is the kind of Champions adventure I love.  Does it make sense?  Kinda?  Is there any real chance that VIPER could get away with it?  Nah.  But its fun and exciting and requires more careful thought than "punch the bad guy" with real dramatic challenge but not too depressing or deep.  This is the kind of VIPER I like, not terrorists, not super serious spy masterminds, but comic book bad guys who do comic book crimes.

Edited February 17 by Christopher R Taylor