Kristopher Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 So it looks like I might get to run that Teen Champions game I've been working on for awhile. I've got some story ideas based on the probable PCs and my NPCs, but I can always use more ideas. So, I'm shamelessly begging for anyone's story arc ideas for a game centered around 15-19 year old supers at an academy for the, um, "gifted." Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kolava Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 Encourage them to act like reckless teenagers and the plots should practically build themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 There is that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebuchet Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 I'd start by watching "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episodes and shamelessly stealing ideas. Demons can be "gene-engineered monsters" created by a mad science teacher, prom night ends up with "Carrie" as the villain, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Serpent Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 There's always the "survive the Danger Room run amok" scenario. Hormones and superpowers are a dangerous mix...powers may activate at inappropriate times. There's the "It" phenomenon - supernatural threat that adults, even the teachers at the academy, don't believe. The parents of a student with mysterious past arrive - but are they who they say they are? Will the student know the difference? X pop star/band (whomever PC/PCs have crush on) is playing in town, completely sold out show. Characters get offered tickets with backstage access, limo ride to and from show, all the VIP treatment...all for performing a small favor. An instructor (preferrably the hard*ss one the PC's don't especially like) is having trouble from their past come knocking again. They're in over their head, but refuse offers of help. Do the PC's try to help anyways, and risk REALLY getting on their bad side? Aww, can we keep him? PC has an unusual "pet" follow them home from an off-world/other dimensional adventure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SleepyDrug Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 1) don't ignore class schedules. in the current issues of X-Men the latest batch of new mutants are required to take: math, a social studies course, english, a science course, physical education, martial arts, individualized power training. And that is just the basic course load day to day. 2) the teachers. in the new mutants, the teachers are the X-Men. personality clashes, the school being attacked, resticted areas of the base? 3) school rules? visitations? passes? most boarding schools the students need a pass to leave the grounds... 4) rival mutant school? villainous mutant school? 5) mutant specific crime? black op mutant research programs? mutant hunters? mutant slavery? underground/street fighting? mutant specific drugs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 A club drug on campus is turning people into hideous beasts. The school has inexplicably gone through it's fourth librarian in six months. It seems that something in the stacks is causing them to flee in terror or perhaps just vanish altogether. A famous actor is at the school to see what it's like to be a superpowered-teen for a role; He is buddied up with one of the team members (someone uncool but responsible). That's when someone tries to abduct the actor; Possibly a group of teens of the opposit sex who refer to themselves as the "Fan Club" Vandals appear to have destroyed parts of the school and a night later a teacher is put in the hospital. Eventually the characters discover that the football team gave the school mascot something from the chem lab to make it stronger, but it mutated and is stalking the halls of the school. The beautiful people are getting uglier! It seems that some ingenious nerd has found the best way to get revenge on the pretty people is to make them ugly; This also makes him/her better looking by comparison. Alternately, the nerdly type is collecting pretty people, shrinking them and putting them in jars a la "the collector". Chicken-Fried steak is people! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freakboy6117 Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 the team go out to a party but some one has spiked the punch so now there too drunk to drive broke and there powers are out of control due to the booze can they get home without getting grounded or arrested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayday Posted March 9, 2004 Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 Rip off almost every Sci-Fi show ever. The students wake up fully invisible one day, trapped slightly out of phase or maybe just invisible and no idea what happened. Powerful Being takes over the instructors, and now the kids have to defeat them, or else. Infect them with alien pods/C4 jackets on a timer. Show up for class, but the teacher is late, very late, in fact he never shows up. Theyre all gone in the night with no word. (Could take them awhile before they notice the teacher is late tho) While the teachers are away on a mission, the teachers arch villains show up at the school and try to take it in order to surprise them upon their return. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 9, 2004 Excellent. Excellent. Keep it coming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 A bus load of students are at the museum when a theft occurs. Someone has stolen the physics building! It's just missing when people report for 1st period. Apparently it's really still there, just out of phase with the rest of the world; borrowed by a local villain who needed to work in peace because his base is under seige by heroes. During a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the cast are turned into their characters (Faeries and such). They must all be captured and returned to the theater or else the spell cannot be broken. Bullies. Gangs. Assistant principals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinecone Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Teen prankster sneaks into other sexes locker room and sees something they should not have seen.....kids go out to party and stumble across evil, new fad is evil plot by Them.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug McCrae Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 The teachers get taken over by alien parasites and try to infect more and more staff, students and townsfolk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scatterbrain Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 The new prinicpal, secretly working for a group of anti-super religious fanatics, is getting the cafeteria food spiked with drugs that will suppress super-powers. Alternately, there could be a plotline involving puberty; some superpowered younger students fear the onset of puberty will cause their powers to disappear, and as the hormones go crazy, they decide to go out in one last "blaze of glory". A non-powered PC infiltrates the school, using hidden foci to mimic inherent superpowers. How long can he keep it up without blowing his cover? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Rebel without a clue One of the students starts to regularly head into town to engage in a bit of life in the fast lane: sex, drugs, & rock 'n' roll. Not to mention fast cars and/or motorbikes. His heightened reflexes make him a natural, and his invulnerability allows him to take risks no normal would take... How long will it be before he blows his secret identity, or otherwise gets into real trouble? If that's not enough, he is looking for something to believe in. Cults are rather overused here, so maybe he's joined a political fringe group... While the group aren't terrorists (too obvious!), they believe in some really intense stuff. What happens when the young super ends up on national TV, denouncing US involvement in Guamanga? And once he goes out into the political fringes, how long will it be before militant mutant/metahuman rights activists recognise him as one of their own? And what about anti-metahuman types? Even if that kind of thing isn't a big deal in your setting, political radicals who are exposed as metahumans will tend to draw a lot of attention from all directions, whether hostile or "friendly". Definitely make the group he joins non-villainous. It's too pat if they just turn out to be nasty. Well, unless you are really going Comics Code, where anyone out of the mainstream is an Evil Communist. Make the tension one where there is a tension between his newfound (controversial) beliefs and his identity as a student of the school and member of the group. Which is more important? Don't provide pat answers... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SleepyDrug Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Rip off the school rules from Harry Potter, Babylon 5 (for telepaths) and other places. No using powers off of school grounds. No using powers against another student or faculty No using enhanced senses on faculty or students Create other students.....be imaginative. Check out the XMen movies....how would the other students react to someone such as: Rogue.....the character who cannot be touched An empath or telepath that always knows what you are thinking A super-intellect who blows all the curves Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jhereg Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Depending on how serious you want to get, you could throw in a few contiuous storylines to run in the background (if not for the PCs, you can throw memorable NPCs' lives into turmoil): relationship troubles, drug abuse, teen pregnancy. Don't forget, the goodie-two-shoes aren't the only ones trying to recruit young supers. Super-teens are easy pickin's for clever, manipulative villians. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Originally posted by Plastick Hero Depending on how serious you want to get, you could throw in a few contiuous storylines to run in the background (if not for the PCs, you can throw memorable NPCs' lives into turmoil): relationship troubles, drug abuse, teen pregnancy. Don't forget, the goodie-two-shoes aren't the only ones trying to recruit young supers. Super-teens are easy pickin's for clever, manipulative villians. Yes. See the thread detailing my Purple Gang. http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10102 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egyptian Posted March 10, 2004 Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Well if you were a teenager and had super powers what would be the first thing you'd do with your cool new powers? Sacrifice your time to help others? Or go tear up the city? If you had the power to influence minds how long would it be before you "convinced" one of the cheerleaders to go out with you? What if one of the murderers at Columbine had been strong enough to lift a bus? Now kids aren't dumb, they know that on their own somebody might be able to take them down. But what if they had a gang of people just like them? What if an established hero came to the PCs asking them to talk to his out of control son? What if someone like Franklin Richards or Jean Grey had come from a broken home? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2004 Thanks for getting my imagination going. I'm going to copy of these into a file and start expanding on the ones I like. Hopefully, Allen will get some use out of this thread as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted March 11, 2004 Report Share Posted March 11, 2004 Just a final thought... Originally posted by egyptian If you had the power to influence minds how long would it be before you "convinced" one of the cheerleaders to go out with you? Stuff like this can get very dark very fast. If a PC started pulling this kind of stuff, I would have a Professor X type NPC slap them down right at the start. Running with an NPC is different. I think the approach to take would be for the NPC to abuse their powers in minor ways at first, gradually escalating as they learn that they can get away with stuff. Preferably, they get stopped before things go as far as rape or murder. And this, of course, is where the "with great power..." moral lecture comes in. It raises the whole business of the relationship of those with superpowers to those without, and all that kind of thing. So, yes, I think this kind of issue does need to be looked at - provided it is done tastefully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 11, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2004 Originally posted by egyptian Well if you were a teenager and had super powers what would be the first thing you'd do with your cool new powers? Sacrifice your time to help others? Or go tear up the city? If you had the power to influence minds how long would it be before you "convinced" one of the cheerleaders to go out with you? I guess it depends on who you're asking. I don't know if I'd be running around in a costume, but I know I wouldn't have behaved like that either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egyptian Posted March 11, 2004 Report Share Posted March 11, 2004 I was just making the point that some people are going to make the wrong choices. It doesn't necessarily make them a snarling mustache twirling archfiend, just someone who woke up with a lot of power and no idea what consequences that power brings with it. I think there's a lot of room for stories there. That and the ol' "Rampaging Robot" story. That one is always good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike W Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 I've always advocated use of Anti-hero types. Not outright villains per se, but people who see themselves as heroes but have methods that the heroes wouldn't sanction, or who have different agendas that may/may not be sanctioned by the authorities. Such characters make the PCs think about where they actually stand/ what they stand for and whether or not they are even heroes. Someone like the Punisher, or even Mr. Sinister was as much anti-hero as villain. Marvel turned Venom into an anti-hero too. Spidey's rouge's gallery was full of anti-hero types. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeAsianKid Posted March 12, 2004 Report Share Posted March 12, 2004 There's always peer pressure from your normal friends to use your powers in wrong ways. There's always the situations that no matter how powerful you are, your powers can't save the day (a suicidal DNPC or a kid coming from an abusive home, a kid dying of aids, a kid addicted to drugs, etc). Clark Kent had to learn that the hard way on Smallville. How do you balance playing a hero and growing up? Is it soccer practice today or prowl the streets? Would you miss your senior prom to save the hospital that caught on fire? And let's not forget the biggest issue teens have: parents. What happens if your parents want to withdraw you from the school? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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