The President wants to talk to you

[Tech]

I have the barest bones of an idea but have run into a mental block so I'm asking for suggestions. The bare bones of the idea is:

 

The President is made aware of a 'problem' (whether through Secret Service, FBI, CIA, whatever but not SAT/PRIMUS). The President calls his staff for information on heroes to assist with the problem. The staff tell of the nationally known hero group that has great skill dealing with national & international problems but that idea is nixed. The President wants a group not as well-known that can be called in quietly. The staff tell of a hero group known in name & deed only in L.A. but nothing is known 'about' the heroes. The President agrees and wants to keep things quiet without it reaching the press.

 

Question is: what is the problem the President is calling the heroes in to?

 

The ideas can range from the simple to the extreme such as:

- the President's daughter needs a date for her prom (what greater protection can she have than a hero?). For that matter, the President's son needs a date.

- a stolen missile control system

- Mt Rushmore was stolen (figure that one out) or whatever.

 

Any ideas would help, even based on the ones I just threw out.

[nexus]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Are you running a Four Color Golden or Silver Age game or something more Bronze or Iron Age? Are the PCs "typical" heroes for your setting or the mightest force for good on the planet? Just looking for what mood you'd like before suggesting anything.

[Doppler]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

I'm thinking he's found out that someone high up in the government (or an allied government) has been kidnapped and replaced by an alien or other bad guy. You wouldn't want to see the Avengers beating up Tony Blair, even if the President told them it's a good idea. So you put a team of nobodys out there for plausible deniability.

[RDU Neil]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Your ideas sound much more lighthearted then mine. When the gov't wants something on the QT... I tend to think of a lot of people dying and lots of deniability.

 

• A rogue nation has the A-bomb... gov't wants to send in a search and destroy operation without direct links to the US.
  
• Organized crime has flaunted the law long enough... the gov't wants to dress up the heroes as criminals, and have them kill all the criminals in what looks like a bid to take over the underworld.
  
• They finally found Dr. Destroyer, and he is on Chinese soil. The gov't wants to send in a group without official ties to the gov't.
  
• President wants to destabilize a third world government and provide an excuse for invasion to get oil resources.
  

 

 

That kind of thing.

[Vanguard00]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Going after rogue elements is always good.

 

"We gave asylum to these guys because they gave us good intel on the Super-Soldier program their home country was developing, but now they've disappeared and it appears they might have their own agenda."

 

You can keep the "agenda" vague, or develop it in detail. Maybe the people who disappeared are metahuman terrorists, and the whole Super Soldier program was a beard to give them a credible reason for seeking asylym. Now that they're in the US they plan on doing dastardly deeds.

 

Alternately, maybe they disappeared because they're afraid for their lives. They've learned that another superhuman hit squad is after them and they just don't know who to trust.

 

Just a few thoughts...

[Battlestaff]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

I wonder why the President need something handled by supers, but doesn't want SAT/PRIMUS involved.

 

Is a Silver Avenger believed the be a security threat, and the President needs someone to track his movements and report to an FBI agent liaison?

 

Is the Golden Avenger staging a mini-coup within the ranks of PRIMUS, seeking to become the sole power within the organization?

 

Is someone selling the design for battle suits/advanced weapons/Cyberline formula to unfriendly nations, and the President want supers to act as interested buyers to catch the rogues red-handed?

 

Is a member of the White House staff being blackmailed, and the President want to handle the situation discreetly? He might look for an outside team so that (a) they aren't likely to know the victim, and ( are less likely to use the information against him/his party in future campaigns.

 

Does the President need plausible deniability for a covert strike against Telios/Malachite/Dr. Doom?

[MikeyMitchell]

Re: The President wants to talk to youIf the President is looking to some low-key outsiders for help, it's possible he fears that his internal resources have been compromised in some way - either infiltrated by foreign / supervillain assets, blackmailed, or something of the like. Perhaps he wants a less well-known hero with some significant detective skills to ferret out the possibility.

[Ghost who Walks]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Random ideas, based on your comments.

 

~The secret government base inside Mount Rushmore has been taken over! Can the heroes quietly capture the evildoers, while not alerting thousands of tourists to the existance of the base?

 

~The President's daughter/son is going on a date with a supervilalin, or has been talking to them online. The heroes need to put a stop to this sort of thing.

 

~Aliens/terrorists abducted the Presidents kids while they were at the prom, and are holding them for ransom. (Make sure to use a stereo, to play Prom style music in the background when the attack to get back the place.)

 

~If PRIMUS/SAT exists, they obviously have a rogue Aavenger in their midst, who has been letting criminals get off. The heroes have to travel to the city, pretend to be criminals, get arrested, and try and bribe their way out. All other government agencies will cooperate in helping make PRIMUS look bad.

 

~Its all a setup by the mysterious villain "Staff". Known for his duplication (he is able to teach at hundreds of universities nation wide, every dday), Staff is arranging the entire situation to humiliate the heroes. It seems that one of them unknowingly allowed one of his duplicates to drown at a LA beach.

 

~The President really dislikes the offiical team, ever since they supported his rival in the last election. He is looking for ways to "outsource" their responsibilities, and will send the LA team on a mission they are underqualified to do, without adequate support. Next week, he'll send some other team out...

 

~Several foreign superheroes have entered the country illegally, and are taking away jobs from hard working American superhoroes. In conjunction with the Immigration Agents, the heroes must subdue these people and send them back where they came from.

[Funksaw]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

It turns out that the press correspondant he's allowed into the white house press briefings in order to throw him soft-ball, partisan questions, and to leak classified CIA information to used a pseudonym to hide the fact that he worked as a gay hooker.

 

The heroes are sent to create a catastrophe in order to knock it off of the news cycle. Suggestions include some sort of explosion in Iran.

[Blue]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

I'm thinking the reason the "top" superhero group is rejected for this is because It's believed that one or more of them are involved in some wrongdoing and the others couldn't be trusted to be objectionable in the investigation. (This could lead to one of the classic "Hero group versus Hero group" confrontations like in the comics before they team up against the true villain).

[Barton]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The "mission" is to bring a message/package to spy in an unfriendly area of the world. They are the decoy for the real mission, but will not be told of that, in fact it will be leaked to the baddies that they are the "real" group. The best part is if they manage to deliver the message/package it will be worthless!

[Mr. R]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The "mission" is to bring a message/package to spy in an unfriendly area of the world. They are the decoy for the real mission' date=' but will not be told of that, in fact it will be leaked to the baddies that they are the "real" group. The best part is if they manage to deliver the message/package it will be worthless![/quote']

 

If I tried to pull this with my last gaming group they would have hung me. "You mean we went through all this for nothing more than to be targets to hide the real operation? F--- you!!!" Seriously this would only work with a mature group and even then you may get the we have to get back at the president for this BS he put us through. It's a great idea, just remember your group.

 

Jerome

[McCoy]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

An underworld informant tells his handler there are moles in the Secret Service and SAT. If there really are moles the President is in danger, if this is disinformation, it may be drawing the usual protection away from the President for an assassination attempt. PC's have to conduct a mole hunt without disrupting the function of the Secret Service agents who are not moles.

[Mike W]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Recruiting an unknown group of supers smacks of plausible deniability. Preferably, they're so low key that they don't have international reputations or even many press clippings that could be researched.

This smacks of black ops stuff. Destabilizing governments. Assassinations. That sort of thing.

 

Another possibility is that another country's supers are in the way and the President needs them eliminated quietly.(For example, Marvel has the Tarantula in Delvadia, the Winter Guard in Russia etc.).

[David Blue]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

A previous adventure with the nationally known hero group that has great skill dealing with national & international problems started with a mission from the president, and eventually involved a spectacularly nasty device - state-wide area effect fully invisible mind control nasty, Satan Bug nasty, a Bad, Bad Thing that ought to have been destroyed at once, despite its scientific (or magical/national/historical/whatever) interest.

 

The great and famous group handed over the doom item instead of destroying it, on the president's solemn promise that it would only be studied briefly (by "top experts!"), and then cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die destroyed. If that promise was broken, the president has no working relationship with the great and famous group; or at least one of its members, probably the leader, will never forgive the president. Maybe even future presidents would not be trusted after a breach of faith like that.

 

The president meant to keep his promise, but life is full of surprises. A senior Primus (or your top agency) guy has done a runner with the doom item, which should have been destroyed by now. He may have had inside help (in pressing to delay the destruction, of the item till he could flee with it). The president does not trust his own agencies till they have done a serious internal investigation and explained to him why the item was not destroyed on schedule. Also, the defector may be (is!) hooking up with a loitering villain or villain group that the lesser-known hero team has beaten before.

 

(There should be objective reason to think the heroes can do this, though a senior Primus guy loaded for bear will certainly make it harder. Otherwise the president would be silly to give the lesser group a job where failure might have such large implications.)

 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make good the president's word, retroactively. Destroy the doom item. If you get the traitor, bonus. If you get the villain (group), bonus. Any information on confederates, possible buyers, whatever - bonus. If you can do this without the great and famous group finding out anything till the president can tell them in person "but we did ultimately destroy it like I said we would" - sweet! But focus on the one essential task.

 

If this is the mission I strongly recommend that the president be telling the player characters the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Otherwise, you have more or less thrown away your option to start any future adventures on a basis of patriotism and trust.

 

Also, if the heroes do this (and don't kill civilians or otherwise mess up while doing it), the next time the heroes ask this president for something (including a pardon for someone who wants to go straight) the answer should be "Yes!"

 

If you want to gee up a rivalry, have the director of Primus present and strongly recommending that the hero team not be used. Primus (practically) never messes up, and finding one of its own guys (who designed all the routines that would be used to find him) should be "a slam dunk". In this option, my assumption is that the president has a pretty good idea the top Primus guy has his heart in the tight place and is not one of the possible traitors (or he would not be present). The free information is how this mess-up happened (since the blind overconfidence of Primus will be on full display). The story idea is that the president would explode and tell the director of Primus to stay completely out of the case and out of the hero group's way, thus reinforcing the hero group's responsibility: it will all be up to them, with no Primus cavalry riding to the rescue. (But if you picked an item so big that if the heroes fail the campaign ends, you can have Primus rescue them - and the director of Primus, having made good his "slam dunk" boast and proved once again that Primus can cut corners with good effect, will gloat about it till the heroes want to strangle him.)

[OddHat]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The President is insane. He gives the Heroes progressively more random and sillier tasks, until they won't take his calls any more. Then he starts following them around, wearing his underpants on his head and trying to fight crime. The Secret Service is convinced that the team has him under some kind of mind control, and if he gets killed while with the team their career as Heroes will be over.

[Battlestaff]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The President's son/daughter wants superpowers. Some government agency claims to have come up with a way of transferring powers from one super to a normal person. The President is setting up the unknown team to "disappear" and end up in the lab, so the scientists can experiment before choosing who's powers to give to his child.

[OddHat]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The President is deeply in lust with one (or more) of the heroines (or heroes) on the team, and is finding excuses to gain access to the group, an to the contents of their trousers. If the heroine he propositions turns him down, he can't risk having a security risk like that going to the media. If she says yes, his wife and political enemies will find out about it ...

[Tech]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

I wonder why the President need something handled by supers' date=' but doesn't want SAT/PRIMUS involved.[/quote']

I should have been more exacting: SAT and PRIMUS no longer exist in my campaign. My goof.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

*The well-known hero group has been mind controlled. Making it public might cause a panic. Sending cops or the army to deal with it would get the normals killed. Blowing up their HQ would be bad PR and might kill some of the supers. So they need a group of supers to take them down and break the mind control. A competent but lesser-known group is best because the mind controlled team will not have any idea of the PC's capabilities/tactics, while the PC's will know a lot about the mind-controlled group.

 

*The govt is testing the idea of sponsoring more hero teams, and the PC's team is selected as a pilot program.

 

*One of the team members has a unique power needed for the situation (dependent on the team's powers).

 

*Something's going down in L.A., and supers with good local knowledge are needed.

 

*The government's psychics have been getting visions that this specific team needs to be at place X at time Y. They don't know why exactly, but in visions where the team doesn't show up...well, no one is seeing anything AFTER that.

[Tech]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

There are alot of interesting ideas. I think I'll use some of them for different groups. Thanks alot to all of you.

[Rikathos]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

I'm thinking he's found out that someone high up in the government (or an allied government) has been kidnapped and replaced by an alien or other bad guy. You wouldn't want to see the Avengers beating up Tony Blair' date=' even if the President told them it's a good idea. So you put a team of nobodys out there for plausible deniability.[/quote']

 

Something along those lines...

 

The President has asked the Heroes to attend a Parade or Event for the country. What he really is doing is looking to get a message to the group.

Aliens have taken over his administration and are using him as a figure head.

He cannot trust SAT/Primus for they may have been infiltrated. They are watching him closely and he and his family desperately need the groups help.

 

Or...

 

The NSA has brought to the Presidents attention a strange video tape that turned up mysteriously which shows a live news report from a week,month,whatever from today that shows the Supergroup killing the president violently.

Where did the Tape come from? Will the Heroes Kill the President?

[Rikathos]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Sweet Christ

 

I killed the thread!

 

I'm the guy laughing after everone else has stopped. Ugh.

 

 

 

Don't mind me I'll be over here making Professor Frink noises and being even more awkward.

 

Mmhey!

[red_eagle123]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

Actually after reading this thread I'm seriously considering using this plot seed in my own game. However I plan on combining it with two other plot seeds, from the grand PLOT SEEDS document found under free stuff.

 

I'm still mulling over the exact details, but the two seeds I'm going to combine it with are:

 

SAPPHIRE

Corrie is holding another concert, something she doesn't get to do as often now that she's a hero. It's political in nature, kind of a "Para-normals are people too" message to it. Encouraging tolerance and understanding. Naturally, not everyone is so fond of this stuff. One Wyoming Senator is there, scowling. He gets up on stage to protest her open display of mutant powers...things get heated, and a there is a sudden dimming of the lights and a blue flash! And the Sentator lays dead, the glowing Sapphire looking around and swearing "I didn't do it"! The IHA , working behind the scenes, is quick to pull strings. A Judge in their pocket puts a restraining order on Corrie's team mates NOT to interfere OR participate in the crimework (Clearly, the Champions would be biased). That's where the PCs come in. Hello Mystery

 

and

 

NIGHTHAWK

Your team of PCs returns to their own base. They might, or might not notice (depending on senses and perception rolls) that some security measures have been bypassed. There is a scent of blood. They find the wounded (And possibly dying if he doesn't get help) Nighthawk. The Champions have been captured, Homestead is compromised... and he's the only one to have escaped.

 

(all thanks to Hermit for the ideas).

 

What I'm thinking is, what if Nighthawk invades the teams base after they're returning from Sapphire's little presentation? Maybe he's trying to warn them of something. And what happens if shortly thereafter the President contacts the team? Could the Champions be something other than what they seem? What was Nighthawk trying to warn the team about?

 

Ideally my goal is to lead to a JLA vs. Avengers situation, where the players and the Champions both want to do the right thing, but how they go about it differs enough to cause problems. And problems lead to friction, and friction leads to conflict.

 

In my game world, the players are an east coast branch partially sponsered by the Protectors, residing in New Jersey. They've had contact with the Champions, and are mostly on good terms with the Champions. At least... they used to be. There's one other wrinkle. The PC's (and players) have never met the Champions. Due to time re-adjusting itself around the players, there's a missing gap of history. This missing gap is when the team moved to New Jersey. It all happened, the players (and PC's) just don't know WHAT happened.

 

Now to figure out the situation that causes the two teams to come into conflict.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: The President wants to talk to you

 

The President is insane. He gives the Heroes progressively more random and sillier tasks' date=' until they won't take his calls any more. Then he starts following them around, wearing his underpants on his head and trying to fight crime. The Secret Service is convinced that the team has him under some kind of mind control, and if he gets killed while with the team their career as Heroes will be over.[/quote']

 

Oh, no! It's Underwear Over His Head Lad!

 

Damn it, OddHat, I'm going to be chuckling all night, imagining Bush running around with his underwear on his head and a cape flapping in the breeze. "Stop, evil do-gooders!"