Supreme Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 A bunch of you expressed interest in staying appraised of my "Marvel Age" mixed power-level game so... For those of you unfamiliar, I am embarking on an experimental campaign whereby I offered my players a choice. Play a 200 pt character with little combat effectiveness, but all the science and detective skills useful for advancing plots and solving mysteries they want (within the limits). Play a 500 pt character who is a combat monster, but isn't good for much else. Play a 300 pt character who is in-between the two (non-combat abilities are generally good for finding clues -- like enhanced senses -- but still lacking the skills to advance from there) So far... We had one session which was mostly finishing everyone's characters. One of our players dropped out before the first session because he's moving to another city. So I have three players, one for each category. We played for one hour. The 200 pt character investigated a mystery associated with his origin, and the others got their characters, to the campaign city (one comes from Antarctica, the other from another dimension). The real test will come next session, at the end of the month, the extra-dimensional character brought a giant beastie thing with her (she doesn't have EDM, she was brought here by accident). The giant beastie is TOUGH, so only the 500 pt character will be able to last long going toe to toe. Hopefully the 300 pt character can last long enough to protect the 200 pt character while he figures out the beastie's weakness. Of course the trouble is that the 300 pt character doesn't speak English yet. Should be interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hyper-Man Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign sounds like you're running into a common problem that I have too. Not enough players. If they are experienced gamers it can be great. Thanks for the update an let us know what happens next week when our heroes face.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengal Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign This is presicely the thread I was hoping someone just happened to have handy and ready to go when I was thinking about mixed-point-level characters a little while ago. Please please keep us posted. Well... not presicely; more like accurately. What I was really looking for was someone who was running a campaign with sexperienced players without specific point caps, but rather well-rounded characters, sort of like the Avengers or JLA. But this is goooooood. Happy to read along, fellas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tgaptte Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign Yep, me too. I'm very interested in how this turns out... Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug McCrae Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign Sounds really interesting. It's fortunate you still have one of each type. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheQuestionMan Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign GREAT SCOTT !!!, this is exactlly what I've been looking for. You sir are a visionary(or at least a published one now ). This kind of thing really needs to be explored. The closet analogy I have seen was introducing new player characters at starting point levels with experienced and more powerful PC's. Please do keep us appraised. Cheers QM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pegasus Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign It is too bad that you only had three players. I'm curious, was there any bickering or squabbling over roles, or did they all just happen to like different things? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSword Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign Well... not presicely; more like accurately. What I was really looking for was someone who was running a campaign with sexperienced players without specific point caps' date=' but rather well-rounded characters, sort of like the Avengers or JLA. But this is goooooood. Happy to read along, fellas.[/quote'] I am interested in how the game turns out as well. I was thinking about doing a game in a more JSA style. A few older more exeperienced characters and and a larger number of new heroes. Our group has only three players plus a GM, so I thought of having everyone make three characters, two low powered and one high powered. I didn't know if it work out better to mix the power levels, or keep the power levels consistent and have the heavy hitter team for the desperate time scenarios. I wouldn't do open-ended because one of the players would come in with a 10,000 point character, and that would be his lowest power (but still in concept, I swear) character. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Posted June 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign It is too bad that you only had three players. I'm curious' date=' was there any bickering or squabbling over roles, or did they all just happen to like different things?[/quote'] No bickering actually. What happened was I explained the situation to them, when there were four of them. Right away one of the players opted for a 200 pt, and another opted for a 500 pt. The only difficulty came from the fact that people misunderstood that I only wanted a minimum of one PC per type, and that I was (naturally) expecting to have one of the types have two PCs (i.e., two 200 pt-ers, two 300 pt-ers, or two 500 pt-ers). So the Wife Supreme who was only interested in being either a 200 or 500 pt PC got bummed, until I clarified, then she picked the 500 pt option. The forth player, who left the game, never really expressed a preference, so after everyone else had spoken I asked if he wouldn't mind playing a 300 pt PC, because that slot was still empty. When he left the game I asked the Wife Supreme if she wouldn't mind changing Kir to a 300 pt version. The reason why I asked was because Kir's concept made a lot of sense to have certain non-combat skills (she's a primitive hunter with insights into tracking people that modern detectives don't). Thus she has a 300 pt brick who is plenty effective in combat (75 STR!) but also has tracking skills and senses -- but doesn't have genuine detective skills like forensics, criminology, etc. I think in the future, I'm going to ditch the whole, no-empty-slot rule. If I get a team of 500 pt combat monsters, then fine. No significantly hard mysteries to solve. If I get a team of 200 pt detectives, LOTS of mysteries and few major combat challenges (i.e., no giant robots). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted June 7, 2004 Report Share Posted June 7, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign Sounds grand, Supreme. Count me among the interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengal Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign I think in the future' date=' I'm going to ditch the whole, no-empty-slot rule. If I get a team of 500 pt combat monsters, then fine. No significantly hard mysteries to solve. If I get a team of 200 pt detectives, LOTS of mysteries and few major combat challenges (i.e., no giant robots).[/quote'] With experienced players, this seems like a good way to go. Explain what the three kinds of characters should be capable of, respectively, send them off with their FREds, and then see what develops, and plot from there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightray Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Re: Status of My Mixed Power-Level Campaign I am interested in how the game turns out as well. I was thinking about doing a game in a more JSA style. A few older more exeperienced characters and and a larger number of new heroes. Our group has only three players plus a GM' date=' so I thought of having everyone make three characters, two low powered and one high powered. I didn't know if it work out better to mix the power levels, or keep the power levels consistent and have the heavy hitter team for the desperate time scenarios. I wouldn't do open-ended because one of the players would come in with a 10,000 point character, and that would be his lowest power (but still in concept, I swear) character.[/quote'] This is almost exactly my campaign. I've got 3 players, and they each have 1-2 primary characters (~300 pts), 1 heavy-hitter (~600 pts), and we've got some other extra player characters. (and the "superhuman school"). I mainly just kept the campaign limits on DC and Active Points the same regardless of character pointage. Then I made sure everyone had their own "niche" to fill -- no overlapping between the heavy-hitters and primary characters. It plays out pretty well even when the characters are mixed. The heavy-hitters tend to have better defenses, more skill levels, and more options with their powers, but no one feels left out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haerandir Posted June 9, 2004 Report Share Posted June 9, 2004 Speaking of mixed power levels A while back I was toying with running a mixed-power-level game based on Alan Moore's Top 10. Each player would be given a pool of points (say, 600 or so) with which to build 2 characters, who would work together as partners in their role as super-powered police officers. Thus, some partnerships would be like those of Smax and Toybox (or King Peacock & Synesthesia), where one is clearly the powerhouse and the other is primarily a utility character, while others could have roughly equivalent power and skill levels, much like the team of Shockheaded Peter and Dust Devil, or Irma Geddon & Joe Pi. Where I ran into trouble was with the realization that if I wanted to make a real police procedural out of it, there would be relatively little interaction between partnerships, and thus players would essentially operate independently of one another, or have to swap characters around while I as GM tried to keep track of half a dozen or more separate story lines. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but I didn't want to have to be the one to do it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bengal Posted June 10, 2004 Report Share Posted June 10, 2004 Re: Speaking of mixed power levels A while back I was toying with running a mixed-power-level game based on Alan Moore's Top 10. Each player would be given a pool of points (say' date=' 600 or so) with which to build 2 characters, who would work together as partners in their role as super-powered police officers. Thus, some partnerships would be like those of Smax and Toybox (or King Peacock & Synesthesia), where one is clearly the powerhouse and the other is primarily a utility character, while others could have roughly equivalent power and skill levels, much like the team of Shockheaded Peter and Dust Devil, or Irma Geddon & Joe Pi.[/quote'] Mmmmm.... Top 10. Nummy nummy! There was a one-shot or miniseries which I never got about ten years ago about a superhero who only had his powers while in close proximity to a tiny, frail child (who was called Nifty Lad I think). So everywhere he went, he had to carry this kid around with him. I think it was played very optimistically and romantically, maybe even for laughs... but it does bring up an interesting campaign idea, one where each player gets a pool of points out of which to make two characters, who are only superpowered when they are together. I think there was something about Quantum and Woody, who had this goat or something, along the same idea. One guy was a superhero, the other guy wasn't, but they had to fight crime together or something bad would happen. 600 point total, while fairly arbitrary, might be the way to go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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