Advice for a new campaign

[levi]

Let me preface by saying that I have run Champions games for over 10 years. I am trying to put together a Campaign in which the battle of Detroit killed all but a 3 to 6 heroes and the world's reaction was to enact Worldwide Superhuman Registration managed by UNTIL. The PCs, are the only recognized Hero Team on Earth and they are responsible for global peacekeeping. I was hoping that there may be others out there who have run similar games and could give me advice as to what kinds of pitfalls I might run into and how they can best be avoided.

[ShelleyCM]

My husband and I were just talking about a common problem in games, TV shows, and novels that we've noticed -- a tendency to get too grand too quickly. Given that these heroes are the only sanctioned heroes, the temptation is to give them BIG problems, BIG villains to fight, even early on. Heck, it'd be my temptation.

 

So my advice is to start small: let them fight a bunch of thugs for a while -- focus on the human side to the characters first. Then slam 'em with the big threat later, after appropriate foreshadowing. It'll seem a LOT more powerful for the wait!

 

-Shelley

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Shelly hit the nail on the head IMO. Start small & work your way up. Gives you a lot more maneuvering room to plot and it gives the players a while to get used to their characters. By the time you have the big opponents come into the game the heroes will feel established.

 

A good tactic is to establish your foes too. Start small with them. Several smaller seemingly unrelated subplots might be later showen to be connected in some way. You can establish your big threats in small ways early on without having all out battles.

[Ghost who Walks]

I assume the villains are still all around?

 

Be prepared for your players feeling very outnumbered. They may try and recruit villains to be heroes, or they may kill off villains they capture.

 

If they are the only heroes, unless they are extremely powerful, they are likely to be under UNTIL's control.

[Storn]

International in scope. Limited superthreats? You are looking at a lot of politics to fill in the void. a lot of folks wondering how to use (sometimes benignly) the remaining heroes. I would throw floods and earthquake relief missions their way. I would elevate their public quota high. The heroes words count. And might be more powerful than their powers. Let them use their bully pulpit.

 

And then I would use the cartel, whether it is Viper or drug narco-terrorists respond logically... the heroes can't be everywhere at once. Let them exploit that weakness. The logical response to THAT is that Interpol and UNTIL, FBI and police services the world over are going to have to pick up the slack. Put some time into how you want to portray those types, people and organizations.

[Chuckg]

The "New Sentinels" campaign that we are in has the premise that we are the World's Mightiest Superteam, at 750 points, the guys who will get trouble calls when even Unity feels outgunned. Our team leader is the game world's version of Superman. So if any campaign was going to go really grand really fast, probably would be ours, right?

 

We're eleven sessions into the campaign, and here's the score...

 

* Firewing vs. "Superman" (Horus-Re), solo challenge -- our only fight so far that was 'epic' by any remote definition of the word

 

Rest Of Team vs. the Ultimates -- a two-Turn curbstomping during which none of us were even Stunned, much less hurt.

 

(Correction -- Thunderbolt got lucky and tagged our first martial artist. /Once/. That was the only CON Stun we've had so far in the game.)

 

Entire Team vs. Some Teleporting Killer Robots That We Think Were Mechanon's But Could Have Been Anybody's -- they didn't even last a full Turn. And the only one of us who was Stunned was my character, when I deliberately RP'ed my "Novice Hero" disadvantage by trying to do a 60" Pushed Move-Through... straight down into the ground. (Long story!)

 

Half the Team vs. Five Low-Rent VIPER Thugs With Reflex-Boosting Helmets That Gave Them Temporarly DEX 30 SPD 7 Martial Arts -- not only was this a curbstomping, but some of us literally just stood there and let the villains punch us repeatedly in the face (taking zero Stun, Body, /or/ Knockback) while politely asking them over and over if they wouldn't mind stopping now. The only suspense from that encounter was figuring out how to disarm the cortex bombs VIPER had rigged them with without killing the poor guys.

 

That's all the fights we've had in eleven sessions. The rest have been talky time, personal characterization subplots, dealing with secret ID crises, and following up leads.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Edit -- Jeff, if you're reading this, you rock.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

So my advice is to start small: let them fight a bunch of thugs for a while -- focus on the human side to the characters first. Then slam 'em with the big threat later, after appropriate foreshadowing. It'll seem a LOT more powerful for the wait!

That's an interesting concept. I've just started a new campaign where the PCs are the world's first superheroes and I have started fairly small. How long do you think it should be session-wise before there's a world-shaking threat?

[ShelleyCM]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae

That's an interesting concept. I've just started a new campaign where the PCs are the world's first superheroes and I have started fairly small. How long do you think it should be session-wise before there's a world-shaking threat?

 

The hints should be there from the beginning. Say a Senator is kidnapped, and the heroes save her, seemingly from a low-level group. They get awesome press for it....but later on, they realize it's all part of a larger plan. Say she gets injured in the "rescue" attempt and turns on them publicly and becomes very anti-hero. Or she's mind controlled and later introduces legislation to outlaw all paranormals. Or something.

 

The Champions game I enjoyed running the most was my Hudson Hawks Campaign. Even though the plots were very different, I modelled things on Babylon 5, because I felt it was such great storytelling -- the characters were thoroughly established by the time the big events started coming down, and when they acted, for good or bad, it was completely consistent with how they'd been before. I loved it.

 

But the foreshadowing element -- it makes a world feel SO much more consistent than if it's just 'fight of the night.'

 

I can't remember exactly how I did things now in that HH game (It was almost 10 years ago....ack, getting old...) but I staggered things so that every other or every three games had an event that was leading to a "big" event. A throwaway encounter with someone in one game would lead to a subplot in the next. You know, stuff like that.

 

If only I had time to run again!

 

-Shelley

[Chuckg]

Again, for a good example, look at the 'New Sentinels' game logs... Jeff's been foreshadowing the huge big threat since session 2. (A possible re-invasion by Istvatha V'Han).

 

All the while we've been trying to a) confirm the intelligence(*), figure out WTF to do to prepare, and c) make sure we're not being snow-jobbed by Doctor Destroyer or fill-in-the-blank. As well as, natch, dealing with all the /other/ ongoing distractions...

 

The game logs for our campaign (it's done in AIM chat) can be found by looking at the thread on:

 

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=78583

 

(note -- you have to keep looking to find all eleven, we also use that thread for all sorts of campaign business and bluebooking)

 

Or you can e-mail me and I'll send you the zip file.

 

 

 

 

(*) Warmaster Fielan can't help us there -- while he was a senior flag officer under V'Han, Earth was not within his area of responsibility. He has confirmed that V'Han has been keeping deep-cover agents on Earth since the first invasion, and he's had full access to all the after-action reports of the first failure, but he does not know for certain if the Majestrix has authorized a second offensive, or what form it will take.

 

Of course, given his skills, if he /had/ been in command of the first effort, the planet would've gotten stomped like a bug. The main inspiration for Bob's character was Grand Admiral Thrawn, and it shows up in the stats.

[levi]

Thanks

 

Great advice all around. It definitely helps out. If anyone's interested, I will update you on how the campaign progresses.

[ShelleyCM]

Re: Thanks

 

Originally posted by levi

Great advice all around. It definitely helps out. If anyone's interested, I will update you on how the campaign progresses.

 

Please do!

 

-Shelley

[levi]

First let me give you some background on the Campaign World…

 

In 1922, a German scientist from another reality (essentially Nazi World) comes back in time to create a sentinel of Liberty to turn the tide in WWII. Thus Anthem is genetically engineered and becomes a staple in my group’s campaign world. In the Iron Age Anthem joins a hero group in NYC called the Guardians. One of the members is Pulsar (EP with alien power bands), Pulsar has twin sons who both are born mutants (due to exposure en utero to the alien power bands) and Anthem takes one of the boys under his wing. This boy grows to become the hero Flashburn, while the other twin grows to become the villain Betastar. Pulsar dies of cancer just after Flashburn takes up heroing.

 

A major focus for several Campaigns (and GMs) in my group has been the Defenders a group that started in Chicago and eventually spawned a West Coast Defenders team as well. The field leader of the first Chicago team is a former CIA agent turned superhero named Slider (master of Magnetism). Slider has a history of friction with Anthem in that Slider is aware of the darker side of American military policy and thinks Anthem is naïve and lies to the American people. The other three members of the original Defenders were Brawl (regenerating brick with a huge Italian-American family), Masked Marvel (fourth generation mutant with a host of minor powers – think Spidey/Nightcrawler/Beast), and Syphon (low-grade brick with ranged Drains and an armor piercing EB). Masked Marvel and Syphon were graduate students at the prestigious (and fictional) Midwest University together. At some point later (a different GM), Masked Marvel strikes out and begins the West Coast Defenders. He recruits a blue-collar brick named Piledriver to the WCD team.

 

In a more recent campaign, a team taking on the name Guardians once again battles evil from NYC. One of the members is G-Force a young law student / speedster.

 

In this campaign, the Battle of Detroit is much more devastating…many more heroes are killed including the Earth’s Star Guard – Phoenix. Anthem is crippled in the battle by a thrown bus as he attempts to pull building debris off of an unconscious Witchcraft. The public outcry is tremendous as the countries of North America, Europe, Asia and Australia unanimously vote to outlaw the public use of Superhuman Abilities. UNTIL is given a broader role as the International Supercriminal Police, being forced to do so with technology and training alone. Primus is disbanded after a scandal involving a watered down version of the Cyberline drug hitting the streets and creating super-junkies (sorry Shelley). Five years after the Superpower Ban, John “Anthem†Jackson is elected Secretary General of the United Nations and recognizes the growing breakdown of UNTIL’s peacekeeping ability with so many super-villains still on the loose as well as many former heroes going vigilante due to the Superpower Ban. Jackson goes about garnering support from the Security Counsel to create a new UN Sanctioned team (Unity was all lost in the Battle of Detroit) called the Protectors.

 

Game one began with the last paragraph given as backstory and a discussion about what the player characters had been doing since the Battle of Detroit. Flashburn had gone to work as a computer programmer for HP in Palo Alto. Slider had rejoined the CIA and was working in South America keeping Hernand Cortez from unifying the countries of S. Am. under his dictatorial heel. Syphon was working as the Dean of Biological Sciences at Midwest University. Piledriver had gone back to construction work in the ruins of Detroit (it was taking much longer to make Detroit into Millennium City without any Supers to help). G-Force had become an International Law attorney for the UN. A Vibora Bay rookie cop goes to see the destruction of Detroit in the aftermath of the Battle and falls into a sinkhole where he finds the Star Guard Bands that had belonged to Phoenix. He takes on the name of a mythical animal as well and becomes the newest Star Guard – Griffin.

 

While Paul “Flashburn†Patterson was enjoying a lunchtime stroll down El Camino Blvd. In downtown Palo Alto he is suddenly aware of the lack of traffic and the inordinate number of men in black suits and sunglasses around him, when a familiar voice calls out ahead and he sees Sec. Gen. Jackson come around the next corner accompanied by the “click-whir†of his lower body exoskeleton. Jackson recruits Patterson and sends him to South America in an UNTIL helicopter to recruit Eric “Slider†Chambers. Jackson has a hunch that Eric will respond better to Paul asking than he would to Jackson asking. Paul cannot use his powers to fly to S.Am. because the team has not been unveiled to the public yet and as such would be violating the Superpowers Ban.

 

Jackson then goes back to the UN NYC base, as James “G-Force†Spencer is about to celebrate a recent legal victory in Afghanistan with his colleges. James is asked to join the team by Jackson as he watches UNTIL agents cleaning out his office. James is recruited and asked to accompany the team’s Logistics Officer Dutch Armbruster on a road trip to Vibora Bay to recruit the young Star Guard, Lucas “Griffin†Wall. James finds Lucas teaching some young kids skating tricks at a Boys & Girls Club yard and talks him into leaving the VBPD to come join UNTIL’s new hero team.

 

Paul finds Eric in a café in Bogota Columbia doing surveillance on Cortez’ men and the two have a conversation about fallen friends and the state of the world after the Ban and Eric agrees to join up. (This conversation happened between the players at the same time I was NPCing Jackson's conversation with James, so I don’t know all the details) The pair then head to Chicago to recruit Eric’s old teammate Dr. Joseph “Syphon†Centers who is heading up a research project involving some odd biological matter found in a Wisconsin meteor crater. Eric knows that Joseph goes to the cemetery on Matt “Masked Marvel†Morris’ birthday each year to remember his friend whose life was prematurely taken in the Battle of Detroit. The two old friends / teammates have a private moment in the cemetery before Eric recruits Joseph to the new team. The trio then flies to the ruins of Detroit (via chopper) and finds Chuck “Piledriver†Armstrong working an Atlas 1650 Excavator on site. Chug gladly accepts the group’s offer stating that the other guys on the site have been avoiding him after he took that thirty story fall and just brushed it off.

 

The recruits all meet up at the UN NYC base where they are genetically scanned and given team communicator pins to wear. Chuck is also given a Kendrium medical alert bracelet to wear ensuring that none of the UNTIL medical staff x-ray him (as he is Susceptible to x-rays). They are then introduced to Kevin Barret, their UNTIL Transportation Officer and experience the matter transporter to Gateway for the first time. There the team is met by their Communications / Public Relations Officer Rachel Garret (I used the pic from FREd pg. 357 for her). The boys have a hard time concentrating on the tour she gives them of Gateway. The highlights of the tour are the team’s quarters where they learn that they must share a room with one other team member and the Battle Simulation Room (BS Room). The roommates are chosen as such: Eric & Lucas, Joseph & James, Paul & Chuck. The team is given a chance to settle in as Rachel and her team prepares for the Gala Unveiling Event at Rockefeller Center.

 

The following evening, the team is escorted by limousines in tuxedoes and enjoy the chance to mingle with everyone from Statesmen to Pop Stars in their private identities. As the guests are ushered into the screening room for the Unveiling Presentation, the team is escorted to an adjoining room to don their costumed identities in secret and get arranged on the stage behind the giant projection screen along with Sec. Gen. Jackson. As the presentation ends, the screen retracting into the vaulted ceiling and the harsh stage lights and thunderous applause hit our new heroes as they are announced to the world as the Protectors. The assembled guests are told that a press briefing will be held in another room after which the Protectors will be rejoining the festivities in the main ballroom. The Players all do a great job of answering interview questions in character, even the difficult ones, and Rachel only has to intercede once to protect them from themselves. The heroes return to the party, this time in costume and mingle as celebrities. After the party, Eric and his roommate Lucas return to Gateway for some late night training. Paul also returns to Gateway and begins watching recordings of all of his new teammates and analyzes their combat strengths and weaknesses. Chuck also returns to Gateway to get some sleep. James and Joseph however meet up with the Pop Starlet Fionna Shear (think Britney Spears) and she invites them to an after-party. After a short discussion the boys take a raincheck, concerned about potential negative press. Fionna gives them each a kiss on the cheek and her bodyguard gives them a card with her number on it.

 

The following day every major newspaper in the world has a picture of Flashburn, Slider and Griffin flying away from Rockefeller Center with headlines like “Heroes Soar Again over NYC!†Training begins bright and early the next morning as Slider and Flashburn get into team co-captain mode. Sec. Gen. Jackson has set up their first Battle Sim and the players rename the BS Room, the War Room. The team enters and begins the Sim. They are in their quarters when an alarm sounds and they rush to the transportation room where they learn that members of VIPER’s Dragon branch (Ripper, Freon, Sidewinder, Draconis & Diamondback) are attacking the French embassy in Damascus Syria. The Sim rages on as the team realizes how much work they need. Most of the members have the Teamwork skill, but everyone except Slider & Syphon (having been on a team together in the past) suffer a –3 penalty to the skill rolls, since they are teaming up with guys they just met and have never fought beside. Despite being built on more points than the Dragon Branch and outnumbering them, the Protectors narrowly win out, dropping Ripper as Slider and Griffin recover from unconsciousness. The Sim abruptly ends and a real situation arises. Some type of gas has been released in Paris and the Protectors get their first team assignment.

 

I awarded them each 8 XPs for some excellent role playing and in-character interaction, then told them not to expect as much every game. There was a lot of excitement from the players and a real buy-in on the Campaign Premise. My only observations about the team are that there seems to be a glut of energy projectors (Flashburn, Slider & Star Guard Griffin) and a total lack of female characters or characters from different nations. I would really have liked to see more of an internationally representative team and at least one woman. However I can hardly complain as even the players who usually can’t wait to get to the big fight were fully engaged in the role-playing.

 

Game 2 will involve a mutating gas that turns French citizens into Ogre-like monsters, which will eventually lead the team to be introduced to Teleios. BTW, is that pronounced TEL ee ous?

[Beowulf]

I'm going to borrow this for a campaign idea. I think it would translate well to a dark champions type setting.

[levi]

Glad to hear you liked it Beowulf!