How to start one off with a bang?

[Ilari]

I'm planning a campaign. I've got most of the specifics down, but what I am trying to figure out is how to start the game. "You all met by accident and decided to fight crime together", while more or less a comic book trope, is also the superhero equivalent of the old man in a tavern. I don't want to do that.

 

So what I'd like to do is outline what I know of the campaign so far, and invite you all to chime in: if you were running this game, how would you start it?

 

Genre: Low-powered, "street level" superheroes. I'm specifically restricting PD and ED to where a guy with a gun is a credible threat: a dozen guys with guns is a major one.

Setting: Hudson City, albeit one where superhumanity exists. (For some reason, none of the really flashy supervillains have ever targeted it with a plot. What's the reason? Ah, that would be telling.)

Age: somewhere between Bronze and Iron. All heroes are required to have a 10-point CVK, but nothing more than that.

 

Known PC concepts: a disgraced former psychologist with mental powers, an astrophysicist who can turn himself into a mini-black hole, a former MARS agent who resigned from the force after an accidental shooting and only then found out she's got superpowers, and a complete unknown. (None of these are set in stone: players are still creating characters, so I can influence character creation a little bit if need be.)

 

Known villains: I know almost for certain DEMON and VIPER are going to pop up, because two of the players are considering using them as Hunteds. I am also considering using PRIMUS as a villain; put them under the aegis of Homeland Security, have one of the Patriot acts give some real teeth to the Metahuman registration act on the books, and Bob's your uncle.

 

(Yeah, I know, it's been done to death in the Marvel Universe "Civil War" event, but, well, I don't read Marvel comics, so it's all new to me. )

 

Then there's the wealth of villains in the Hudson City book. I'm not going to be short on enemies any time soon.

 

Known allies: There's only one I thought of. Irene Dubois/The Velvet Phantom will occasionally anonymously drop them bits of information gleaned from The Raven's tarot deck.

 

I'm aiming for a somewhat gritty "good guys on the edge of the law, if not over it" feel, so I don't particularly want to use the "you're a superteam sponsored by someone" shtick, either, but I will if I have to.

 

So..... ideas? Thoughts? Comments? Thrown fish?

[ghost-angel]

Re: How to start one off with a bang?

 

You can do what our Star Hero campaign did: place all the PCs in a bar and then immediately blow it up (technically, it being a Star Hero campaign, the space station was blow up).

 

Nothing like the immediate danger of a fire, and then the subsequent tracking down of the perp to kick start a campaign.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: How to start one off with a bang?

 

 

Known PC concepts: a disgraced former psychologist with mental powers, an astrophysicist who can turn himself into a mini-black hole, a former MARS agent who resigned from the force after an accidental shooting and only then found out she's got superpowers, and a complete unknown. (None of these are set in stone: players are still creating characters, so I can influence character creation a little bit if need be.)

 

That first PC looks like a possible catalyst to bring the team together. Before being disgraced, the psychologist may have been called in as a consultant to do a psych profile on the agent after the accidental shooting, and thus knows about her powers. He might also know the astrophysicist, or at least know of him.

 

If that player were willing, I'd enlist his help in getting the team together. Maybe he accidentally picked up a stray thought and knows VIPER or DEMON is planning something huge, but he doesn't have enough details and neither PRIMUS nor the cops will listen to him.

 

I got my current heroes together through a bunch of seemingly unrelated crimes that ended up tying together into one big plot. This is one example, though I'm sure you could come up with something similar that fits your world better:

 

• Synergy interrupted a pair of makeshift robotic constructs (created by Artificer) stealing bags of laundry from a company that he later learned had the contract to clean PRIMUS uniforms.
  
• Sentinel ran across a supervillain (Dr. Discus) and some hired thugs purchasing a bunch of weapons from VIPER. (They got away with most of them, which were actually stolen PRIMUS blasters.)
  
• Serendipity fought two supervillains (Fractal and Beamline) breaking into a bank after hours to clear out the vault.
  
• Squeeze captured Ogre, and while waiting to testify at his trial, witnessed a bunch of dogs (robotic followers of ROVer) somehow steal the waiting prisoner transport vehicle while almost all the PRIMUS agents were inside; the vehicle had hologram generators to disguise it during transport.
  
• Styx overheard a hired goon trying to recruit his younger brother as a driver for a "big job" coming up, involving among other things the theft of a dozen UPS trucks.
  

 

Styx had overheard the goon mention the new team of supers he was working for, though the goon mixes up words constantly, so he called the supers Artificial, Dr. Disco, Fracture, Beeline, and Roper, as well as Soundcheck (actually Soundwave) and Psycho (Psyche).

 

Styx figured out who the actual villains were, noted that some local solo heroes had been mentioned in the news having dealt with some of those villains lately, and contacted them to compare notes. They figured out that the villains were going to try to break Utility out of PRIMUS custody during prisoner transport. Their plan involved swarming the transport convoy with UPS trucks, remotely triggering the actual transport vehicle's hologram generator to make it also look like a UPS truck, then forcing it down a side street to break Utility out during the confusion.

 

The heroes ended up keeping Utility from getting free, and in the process set up a nice enmity with the villain group as well as with Utility. And the heroes naturally decided to stay together as a group afterward.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: How to start one off with a bang?

 

Okay, off the top of my head:

 

"Psych" is outside an office building, waiting and looking for a friend he's supposed to meet for lunch. (If he has a DNPC, it could easily be that person.) He decides to use Telepathy to "tap into" some random guy standing with a better view to see through his eyes (using most of the effect to make the effect undetectable by the target). In the process, Psych gets the following surface thoughts:

 

"Man, just 48 hours! It's gonna be beautiful! That building's gonna come down, and nobody's ever gonna rat out VIPER again!"

 

Unfortunately, he immediately loses the guy in the crowd so he can't hit him with any other mental power. The guy gets onto the subway / bus / into a car and speeds away, so Psych can't get more information from him. All he knows is that VIPER is going to level a 20-story office building on Thursday afternoon, but he doesn't know how, or exactly when, or why.

 

About the same time, a powerful subsonic wave generator/amplifier is stolen from a lab near where "Black Hole" works, and a security camera caught a group of VIPER agents loading it into a truck. The news doesn't report what was stolen, only that VIPER was involved, though BH finds out details from a friend who works in that lab.

 

The former MARS agent is on hand when VIPER tests the generator on a nearby construction site, causing the half-completed building to collapse and necessitating the rescue of several construction workers. The amplifier is hidden in a city utility truck so the former agent can't capture it. (VIPER was verifying the harmonic frequency of the support columns, which are the same material as those in the office building. It's also a dry run for the real deal.)

 

Without knowing more on the last guy, I can't suggest specifics for him. But he could catch some VIPER agents stealing blueprints of the target office building's support structure. Or he might learn that the company that owns that building is under investigation for possible dealings with VIPER and the CEO is now cooperating with PRIMUS. Or stop a scientist from being kidnapped -- an expert that can tell the heroes that to use such a device to generate harmonics to level a building, VIPER would need to get the generator within 100 yards of each of the four main supports of the building, and each time keep it going for 10-15 seconds (in effect, 1 Turn).

 

If all else fails, he might just get pointed toward "Psych" by the Velvet Phantom, based on info gleaned by the tarot deck.

 

They could have the battle outside the office building (a VIPER commander jumps the gun when he sees the heroes sniffing around just before zero hour, and sends in the troops), or if they're really good follow leads back to the VIPER's nest and take them on there before the big bang gets set into motion.

 

[Edit: That isn't the order I'd run the encounters. I'd probably go Theft, Kidnap, Test, Eavesdrop, with Psych knowing the target and therefore the one to call on the other heroes and bring them together.]

[The Weapon]

Re: How to start one off with a bang?

 

The MARS agent gets a report evidence about what really happens in the shooting incident is in an office of a violent and shady character.

 

"Pysch" learns that a former patient of his, who he reccomended NEVER to be released is out. A former nurse tells him that her sister was last seen in his office. His MO included vicious attakcs on females in his office.

 

"Black Hole" has had his power spontaneously turn on, which is dangerous if he's touching someone. Each time light distorted seeming to form a tunnel that triangulates to the office.

 

Cue simultaineous break ins. Feel free to have people hide in cupboards from each other, bedroom farce style. They don't find what they're looking for but there is detailed information on an upcoming supervillain plot.

 

Whether or not they discover each other the next morning there's video surveillance of them breaking in and a "suggestion" that they team up to foil the plot. Who got them together? For what purpose? Is it a former bad guy going straight but afraid to reveal himself? A villain eliminating the competition? Someone who just wants the city to be safer? Someone who's been threatened by the bad guys and can't handle them himself. The tapes disappear at the earliest possible time.

[Narratio]

Re: How to start one off with a bang?

 

I started a small campaign with all the characters in thier secret or public ID's spread around the city. Then I had a bank raid by a medium level villain go wrong. This led to a city wide chase wherein, as the villain fled from the police, he kept smashing into or through the places where the characters were.

 

Total chaos, with the bad guy slowly accruing 'heroes' in his trail and, the more damage he did to his surroundings in order to slow down the pursuers, the more pursuers there were.