PCs are not the most important in the world

[Warpcore Breach]

I have a question for GMs. How do you explain the absence of the City's prominent Super Group when your PCs are saving the day? They can only be called out of the city or off the planet so much, right? And when they come back I'm afraid that the PCs will be overshadowed, even if they aren't directly.

 

Suggestions please?

[Karmakaze]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Off the top of my head...

 

a) Set the game someplace where there is no existing super group.

Make the mysterious absence of the existing super group a plot point.

c) Face the PCs with threats that the existing super group would not normally address (If they're the sort to be off-planet, they probably don't focus on local affairs all that much).

d) Invite the PCs to join the existing super group. (The Avengers, for example, have a huge roster)

[CraterMaker]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I usually don't have another prominent Super group in the city.. Works out nicely, and later on you can create some great storylines when antagonistical forces in the local govt. try to hammer a new group into existence..

 

The new group invariably is either slightly corrupt, doesnt work together well (leading to catastrophic failures), or is revealed to have some serious flaw - Illuminating the strengths of the PC group. The players eat that stuff up with a spoon..

 

-CraterMaker

[teh bunneh]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

The way I did it in my UNITY campaign last year is to make the heroes the most important team in the world -- the ones the others come to for help. It kind of freaked them out when they faced a major menace and wanted to call the cavalry... "Wait, we are the cavalry!"

[garou]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

The new group invariably is either slightly corrupt, doesnt work together well (leading to catastrophic failures), or is revealed to have some serious flaw - Illuminating the strengths of the PC group.

You know, up until you mention this as illuminating the strengths of the PC group, I thought were talking about the PC group.

[Tom]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Time is usually the easiest answer. Unless the 'more prominent' NPC team has major movement capability, they can't be everywhere at once -- even within the city. And NPCs have lives too. The entire team isn't sitting next to the 'mass transporter' waiting to leap into action at all times...

 

For many adventures, you just need to make the PCs the one who stumble onto the necessary plot hooks. Unless you make it clear that something 'REALLY BAD!!!' is about to happen if they don't call for backup, the PCs should be trying to deal with things on their own. Maybe giving the other team a friendly heads up just in case and letting them know that things are being dealt with (and the reciprocal action can be a plot hook in itself in the future). If you've got battles resulting in major property damage going on, the NPC team can show up if you need a backdoor, otherwise they (or at least some of them) show up as the dust is settling to help with the clean up and to apologize for not being there sooner (or to chew the PCs out if they were exceptionally stupid or that's the 'vibe' the NPC team has)...

 

The only time you really need to worry about shuffling the other team out of the picture is when you want the PCs to deal with a 'big bad' and their most intelligent response is to call in all the help they can find.

[MitchellS]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I have a question for GMs. How do you explain the absence of the City's prominent Super Group when your PCs are saving the day? They can only be called out of the city or off the planet so much, right? And when they come back I'm afraid that the PCs will be overshadowed, even if they aren't directly.

 

Suggestions please?

Make your gaming world like a comic book world and don't worry about it. Marvel's New York has had the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Defenders, New Warriors, Power Pack, X-Men, New Mutants, and more indy heroes then you can poke a stick at all in the City at the same time. When you were reading the Avengers did you ever care what the FF or Defenders were doing? Nope, me either.

 

Each group has their own adventures to deal with. Unless those adventures intersect with the PC's just tell your players the "Super-duper Squad" has their hands full with the "Legion of Doombots" across town and leave it at that.

[OddHat]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Don't put a more important Hero team in the same city, or have them spend most of their time chasing insanely powerful bad guys far away, or on publicity tours, or mind controlled, or dead.

[Chimpira]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Usually, I do not make a more competent hero team stay close to the PC team. This is for everyday adventures, things that are happening right friggin' now and the heroes only really have a small amount of time to get something done. I stress the actual size of the city and how little time is acually eaten up by combat. I avoid high level NPC's that always pop up ,except when a battle takes place.

 

One of my players has described my game as a living world. This means that while the PC's are doing their thing the world does not stop. Other NPC's or heroes are doing their thing as well and since the world is a large place, this does not mean that they might even cross over.

 

There is this thing though. I have been fascinated by this idea of running a game ina Crisis on Infinite Earths style. What I mean by this is that the players will be involved but will not be the head guys, that will be some other superteam but the players will be given a key role to help save the universe. I just like the idea of the PC's being crowded into an area with teams and heroes from around the world. Handled just right, it can be a really good adventure plus it sets the stage for the next universe shaking event, when the PC's call everyone together.

[David Johnston]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I have a question for GMs. How do you explain the absence of the City's prominent Super Group when your PCs are saving the day? They can only be called out of the city or off the planet so much, right? And when they come back I'm afraid that the PCs will be overshadowed, even if they aren't directly.

 

Suggestions please?

 

It's not that hard. The A-Listers simply have no idea what's going on. I mean if your player characters are regularly facing obvious threats to the entire city, giant robots or attacks by madmen who levitate the entire city to threaten it, then they ARE the A-Listers and you've got no excuse for not making them the famous ones on a par with the biggest heroes in the world.

 

But when I ran a team of B-Listers, sure Troubleshooter and Company or the Street Warriours may have saved the city from a major catastrophe once or twice but the threat was simply one that the A-Listers had no idea existed. They had no way of knowing that Lady Death was trying to poison the city reservoir or that the Unseelie had established an invasion beachhead in Central Park. In fact I fondly remember one scene I ran where where the characters were doing their thing and up above their head I mentioned that two flying supers were duking it out. They had no idea who those guys were or why they were fighting, but of course the fliers had no idea what the bad guys the ground level heroes were going after were doing either.

[Warpcore Breach]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Thanks guys. I have always just left it open but one of the players mentioned in passing at the last session "Where are the Avengers?" So I figured an explanation was coming. Even if its just as simple as a prolonged battle off-planet.

[OddHat]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Thanks guys. I have always just left it open but one of the players mentioned in passing at the last session "Where are the Avengers?" So I figured an explanation was coming. Even if its just as simple as a prolonged battle off-planet.

 

1) Book tour

 

2) Nobody knows, they vanished months ago

 

3) Fighting mole men

 

4) In jail, but they say Evil Clones did it

 

5) Crisis of Civil Infinite Identity Secret Earth Wars

 

6) Trapped in a small bottle fighting the Last Battle over and over and over

 

7) Dreamy Lands of Nod

 

8) Dead, but they'll come back. They always come back.

 

9) Scarlet Super Franklin Prime punched the Multiverse and ret-conned them away

 

10) Who do you think you're fighting?

[Enforcer84]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Don't put a more important Hero team in the same city' date=' or have them spend most of their time chasing insanely powerful bad guys far away, or on publicity tours, or mind controlled, or dead.[/quote']

"Wait, arent' you guys dead?

 

"We got better."

[Warpcore Breach]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

One of the most identifiable, special things I set forth about the campaign universe was that all comic and alot of non-comics fictional personalities exist in this world. The Justice League Avengers are the whole world's premiere Super-Team. The PCs are a team thats still really in the process of forming. The roster is still in flux and they have no real leader as such. So far the PCs have met Deathstroke, almost met the Joker, and are currently working with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Who knows who else I may pull out of a hat? MacGuyver? Indiana Jones? I've even envisioned an encounter with the future Emperor of Man from Warhammer 40K.

[Balabanto]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

Hang onto your hats, True Believers, because the Brawling Balabanto has run a world that's sort of like this for 20 years!!!!

 

Solution One: DON'T ALLOW SUPERHEROES TO MOVE AT RIDICULOUS NONCOMBAT SPEEDS WITHOUT A TEAM VEHICLE!!!!!

 

This is the best solution. If the NPC's can't get there in time, then your PC's get to save the day. No matter how powerful their cavalry might be, if they can't move faster than, say 20" with a x16 NCM, then by the time the NPC's get there, the battle will be over.

 

Solution Two: DON'T ALLOW UBER TELEPORTATION DEVICES (Except for your master villain) AND MAKE THE TECHNOLOGY DIFFICULT TO ACQUIRE!

 

See above. If Matter Transport is difficult to use, or has a long lag time (5-10 minutes) the battle will still likely be over by the time the NPC's arrive.

 

Solution Three: Make sure you set up real roleplaying rivalries between the heroes and their enemies. "Professor Agammemnon, do you need our help?"/"Sorry, I can't accept it. He's my problem, (I created him, he's my brother, etc)

 

Solution Four: Make sure you set up real rivalries between the heroes that make them want to do things themselves. "We really don't need Millennium Guard to handle this problem. We started this, and we're going to finish it."

 

Of course, I've seen situations where the PC's in my game called Millennium Guard ANYWAY. (And they have the fastest response time in the world.)

 

Solution Five: Law of Economy of characters=Law of Intelligence: If the villain knows that Partacel, the world's greatest armored hero, is in the city, he'll be devoting time and resources to preventing this man from finding him, while your heroes get to be the stars. If your villains aren't morons, then this works fabulously!!! Plus, if your villains are morons, and he catches them, then the PC's get the satisfaction of saying "Wow. They were morons!"

 

Solution Six: The villain has it in for YOUR hero team. If this is the case, it doesn't matter who they call for backup. His plan is entirely set up around KEEPING OTHER PEOPLE FROM BACKING UP YOUR PC'S!

 

Solution Seven: The villain IS another superhero. (Don't use this too often, it will make your players paranoid) Then, he actively works against the PC's through other superheroes, and they have to PROVE he's a bad guy. But it's likely that his teammates won't believe you.

 

Solution Eight: The villain has no interest in the others. This works best for a comic villain, like Foxbat. For whatever reason, the momentary object of his fixation is the PC's, and the other heroes shrug and say "This is a perfect time to fight some normal crime while they're stuck dealing with Foxbat. Perhaps I should send them an anti-groping manual. Naaahh...let them learn the hard way."

 

And so on...

[SpydirShellX]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

The way I ran the campaign, the city had one main defender.

Which I promptly killed off in the campaign's introduction... thus in one fell swoop giving the PCs a good reason to work as a team, introing some of the badguys they might meet later one, hinting at some of the bad guy's potential weaknesses and strengths, and providing some backstory.

 

Plus it tells them to think rather than let the bad guys gang up on them.

[Warpcore Breach]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I'm liking what I have heard here so far. Now my dilemma is what to do with the existing team. There's no doubt that the combined JLA plus the Avengers is capable of dealing with just about anything so I'm not sure that I can just take em out in one fell swoop. Plus I have already had Cyclops from the X-men killed by the Joker for not having a sense of humor and I don't want this campaign to be TOO bloody.

[OddHat]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I'm liking what I have heard here so far. Now my dilemma is what to do with the existing team. There's no doubt that the combined JLA plus the Avengers is capable of dealing with just about anything so I'm not sure that I can just take em out in one fell swoop. Plus I have already had Cyclops from the X-men killed by the Joker for not having a sense of humor and I don't want this campaign to be TOO bloody.

 

Meh. Read the JSA TPBs. The entire mystic might of the JSA (Specter, Zatarra, Scarlet Sorcerer, Doctor Fate) can be taken out in one or two pages by random second rate cultists.

 

Or, to be less negative, comics are full of fights where vastly powerful groups are taken down by a single villain or a handful of mooks, if that's what's needed for the story. The Justice League Avengers can just vanish without explanation until you think of something cool; anything from being pulled away by the Beyonder to being captured by some never-heard of before or again villain fits things that have been done in comics.

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I'm liking what I have heard here so far. Now my dilemma is what to do with the existing team. There's no doubt that the combined JLA plus the Avengers is capable of dealing with just about anything so I'm not sure that I can just take em out in one fell swoop. Plus I have already had Cyclops from the X-men killed by the Joker for not having a sense of humor and I don't want this campaign to be TOO bloody.

Here's an idea that will allow you to either wipe them out, keep them busy for a long, long time, or greatly deminish their team roster: Darkseid gets a new piece of apparal. It's this golden Gauntlet with theses five Gems on the knuckles... (yes, I know it's been dome with Thanos, but he's a cheap Darkseid knockoff. This time, it's the real thing)

[Lucius]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

anti-groping manual?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Megascale palindromedary

[Zeropoint]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

The way I see it, the PCs don't have to be the most important in the world . . . just the most important in the game.

 

Having said that, I started my supers game by having the PCs form a replacement for the missing "official" team of the city.

[Kirby]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

...have them spend most of their time chasing insanely powerful bad guys far away' date=' or on publicity tours, or mind controlled, or dead.[/quote']I've had two campaigns where the PCs happened to be in the same city as another team (one was San Fran with the Protectors, the other was Millennium City with the Champions) and strangely enough, this was somewhat the same method I used. However, the "dead" option never came off the drawing board for either game (SF game had too many plots going, MC game died too soon).

[Boll Weevil]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

My PC team's concept is built around being the second string. The presence of the main superhero team is important to the story. Right place/right time is usually the key to the team's involvement.

[Kirby]

Re: PCs are not the most important in the world

 

I'm liking what I have heard here so far. Now my dilemma is what to do with the existing team. There's no doubt that the combined JLA plus the Avengers is capable of dealing with just about anything so I'm not sure that I can just take em out in one fell swoop. Plus I have already had Cyclops from the X-men killed by the Joker for not having a sense of humor and I don't want this campaign to be TOO bloody.

If you want the "main team" out of the way/spotlight/city for a while, -and since it seems like you're utilizing both DC & Marvel universes- why not have Darkseid boom tube the "Main Heroes" to Apokalips, saying he's had enough of their interfering with his plans, along with something to the effect of "how will this mudball survive without you present?" That gives the PCs the lime light and whenever you're ready, you can return the other guys.