How do you design your champions game

[Eldos]

Hi all

 

I've admited that I'm fairly new here but all of you seem freindly. I was just wondering how your games are designed. Does the GM just work up a couple of supers, have them rob a bank and call the PCs in? Or is it more investigative? Do you use villian organisations like VIPER or DEMON? Are their arcs and/or sub-plots?

 

I ask because the guys I game with are more the first type I mentioned. The GM works out some villians and basically starts a fight. Perhaps I was just looking for a bit more. I tend to like a plot to my games, a story and to try to have it make sense or at least give me the oportunity to do something clever rather than just hope that I roll well.

[bubba smith]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

a fair question

[hfergus]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

It depends. (yes, I know that's not helpful, but it's true.) I will now list some things I do.

 

One of the hardest things to do in some way is get the heroes together. Some of the things I have done follows: 1) classic bank job. Bad guys (supers or not - not important) One hero is in the bank (best if they can get away or do not have a secret ID) One is nearby. One is scanning the police band. They get together, beat the robbers and team up. 2) Big bad super comes into town. By whatever means, they end up togeher fighting the big bad. 3) Experienced super is starting a team and you apply. Works especially well if due to whatever they have worked with him in the past. 4) Some accident brings them together in a situation where they have to lean on each other ot make it. Say, they each got caught in a time/space/dimensional vortex and end up in the same strange place and have to make do. This can take into account vastly different backgrounds and give them something to do: find a way home. Of course, they may stay anyway. 5) Some of the individuals work together and over time all get together. A crisis can gel the group quickly. 6) Depends on personality of hero. Investigative type is following leads on disapperances. 4 color golden age is being heroic. Mystic is checking out strange goings on. Iron age dark guy is busting heads. Viola! Meet at same place, for example: A Demon demonhame. Or a Viper nest. Or... get the idea?

 

A lot depends on your players. Experienced roleplayers (or actors) can get quite complex quickly. Others need the bank robbery. However, the bank robbery can be part of a larger plan, and they can be: 1)testing weapons (Viper) 2) getting money (almost anyone) 3) setting a trap for heros (almost anyone) or 4) testing the heros to see what they were like and capable of (Long thinking villian)

 

I hope this helps and welcome to the board.

[Stone]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

It all depends on the PC's. If they are more into the mystery, then I will give them clues and let them try to solve the puzzle. However I have been in games where the PC's really did not care about solving puzzles. They just wanted to pound the bad guys, so in those cases I may take a book villain and add a homemade villain or two to go along with them.

[Maccabe]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

I like to look over the character sheet and see if any Hunteds, DNPC's etc show up. That can lead to a storyline real quick.

[HawksmoorSD]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

I tend to get the teams together by a recruiter. Someone who's aware of what they do or what they can be contacts them and effectively offers them a way to do what they do on a bigger and better scale. Got a player who'd normally stops bank robbers? Why not have the allies and resources to stop the whole "syndicate" behind the robberies? The access to funds and a base are also a strong way to get people together.

 

Once they're together I try to use at least one huge arc in my games. I keep at least half as many subplots going as I have gamers. So 5 players gives at least 2 or 3 subplots. A personal favorite was the FBI agent with gravity powers who started seeing ghosts. That way they have something to do when they are not working the big case. I also try to have at least one major mystery running while all this is going on so they have something to think about and not just punch. It may not be there when the game first starts but they may or may not find it over time. I just find that laying all the answers out in a nice neat row for your gamers at the beginning of an adventure leaves people a little bored.

 

Yes I pack a lot into my games. I know some GM's who do the same and some who don't. It should comes down to running the sort of stories that your players are going to enjoy. However, occasionally "running outside of the box" can help you in the long run by expanding what everyone considers a good game.

 

Hope it helps!!

[assault]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

I like mysteries - but not when getting the team together, for some reason. Maybe I just prefer to have everybody working on the same case, not following their own tangents.

 

Of course, in the Golden Age, "team" missions were usually just a collection of loosely related solo adventures, so everyone doing their own thing is actually totally in genre. Even in the Silver Age, a lot of cases involved teams like the JLA splitting into subteams.

[Theron]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

In the case of my current game, I used a bit of a plot crowbar to get things started. I set things up so that the City's senior superhero was being called away to deal with a greater threat and he needed some of the lesser locals to take up the reins in his absence. After that, I let the players come up with the characters they wanted and from there, I've mostly just let their actions lead me. If I don't have a solid lead from them on where they want things to go, I go searching through my copious archive of Hero material (I own every Champions product for every edition published to date, including Adventurers' Club, so I'm not hurting in the resources material). If nothing jumps out at me as appropriate, I flip through my villain books until someone looks interesting.

 

If I'm still stuck for ideas, I start making Hunted and DNPC rolls and see what looks interesting.

 

Finally, if nothing's coming to mind, I go to the Superhero Oracle, a handy generator of plot elements.

[csyphrett]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

If you have one villain for every super involved, and all the villains are doing separate things at the same time, that can be a start up game right there. The follow up is fixing what the villains did, the villains wanting revenge, new villains who want revenge for what was done to the old villains.

CES

[Certified]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

When working on a campaign I tend to start from the outside in. Talking with the players to establish the general feel of mood of the campaign should be. Once there's some insight from the players I turn back to the world building. What is the scope of the campaign, what are the general themes if any and what might be going on behind the scenes that drive larger plots.

 

After putting together a rough idea of the world itself circle back to the players relaying general history or details of the campaign that may be important. Once they have their characters I like to start with an establishing story. Even if players already are a team before hand using things like DNPCs, Hunteds or parts of their background to craft a first story that engages the team as a whole helps to bring things together for me.

 

In a super heroic setting I try to mix the larger arcing plot lines with one shot spin offs, these often involve something about one or more of the characters themselves from background stories to disadvantages. Also, I try to incorporate things the characters do into subsequent story lines. I think this is important because it helps to give players a sense of belonging and hopefully purpose.

 

One thing I like to do in the super heroic settings is to look at grand schemes and have several of them lined up. Maybe crafting villains and organizations around these plots then intersperse adventures with some from one plot and later some from another. This is really something I do trying build the feel of comics where the character might not have all the details but knows something is coming down the pipes. Alternatively, as more clues are dropped players may go on the offensive investigating connections creating adventures and story lines for me (I'm lazy.)

 

So there you go, how I structure my games in a nutshell. Depending on everything that's going on I may create a plot diary to track it all. This may be good practice for gaming in general so that you don't loose track of characters personalities or motivations. Hope that helps.

[RadeFox]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

Some excellent ideas here in this thread!

 

I do always make sure I know the player characters before the game starts, as well as the desires of the players. This helps me make those split-second additions to the flow of the story and make it look like I planned it.

 

IN MEDIA RES!

 

I think that is the absolute best way to kick off every session and especially the campaign. Before the players get to the table, we've worked out backstory's and who-knows-who-how stuff. When the campaign opens at the table I always try to do it with a BANG to get the action rolling, and let the characters interplay be woven into the action as they deal with the situation at hand.

 

That said, I do try to avoid the bank robbery as the first issue. Usually I know what the major overarcing story is going to be, and I tie in a handful of clues to this in that first encounter to make sure they stick in the players minds.

 

Roll Cameras.......Action!

[prodigyduck]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

How I run a superhero game depends on the characters presented to me and the feel of the campaign that the players are looking for.

 

Typically, me game group enjoys a standard superhero game with Bronze-Age style stories (similar to the DCAU).

 

One of the things that I find helps drive the game is trying to have particular scenes happen. For instance, I think like a movie director: I want a particular scene to happen, and I try to arange a plot where that scene will appear in the campaign. This worked well in my recent Metaworld Reborn campaign, when I got the two superheroine PCs to appear in all sorts of fun outfits (sci-fi slave-girl, egyptians, amazons, cave-girl furs, etc.).

 

It is important to have the PCs come up with interesting background for a GM to use as future plotlines. Goldenstar, for instance (one of the above-mentioned PCs) is the daughter of the world-famous hero American Eagle. She also had several Smallville-like adventures during her high school days. This allowed me to introduce villains from her father's past, as well as those from her school days.

 

It is also important to use villains of your own creation and find ways to tie them to the PCs for that added element of meta-plot. The other PC, Spirit Eagle, was made the ancestor of an immortal villain (the Sovereign). He felt the blood connection to her and, at the same time, attempted to woo her to his side.

 

Lastly, I recommend a GM to steal, steal, STEAL! Look through your favorite comics, movies, and stories and take ideas from them that you like. This helps flesh out the world you are running, especially when you are not sure of how to do these things yourself (it worked for me). Change the names, of course, so you are not accused of being completely lame. But use the characters nonetheless. American Eagle is nothing more than a Superman analog with a slightly different backstory. The Sovereign is a fun blending of Doctor Doom and Ra's Al-Ghul.

 

When trying to come up with plot ideas for a game, remember that three cliches can easily be turned into a plot.

 

Bank Robbers

Nazis

Giant Apes

 

Bank robbers are attempting to steal money to fund a mad scientist's experiments to create an army of giant apes using a genetic formula from the days of WWII Nazi germany.

 

I hope my ramblings help at least a little bit.

[quozaxx]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

I had friendly aliens come to each of the player's characters and tell them that they are observers and that a local festival will be attacked by VIPER, within minutes.

 

But there was a LOT more that the players didn't know. One of the aliens wasn't just an observer and was assisting VIPER with their technology.

 

And VIPER sucked the entire festival into an alternate dimension.

 

I gave them super opponent to distract them from what VIPER was really doing, gave them "plenty" of time to stop VIPER (Phase 12 to Phase 12), And yet, added villains so they wouldn't have time to stop VIPER. And despite all of this they came very very close to stopping VIPER.

 

But have an alternative in mind just in case they do stop the villains.

 

They had to think "out of the box" to get to this alternate dimension, stop VIPER without hurting any of the innocent people still in the festival area, and had to convince some aliens not to "upgrade" the "winners" of the fight.

 

Every plot can be a single plot or layers.

 

So if you want them to rob a bank, that's just the first step... Now, add interesting layers, hopefully something the players don't see coming.

[Sketchpad]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

I start campaigns a variety of ways ... a reality show gone wrong, recruitment for a teen academy, hard-luck villains needing to band together to survive, etc. Currently, I run about 10 campaigns within the same group, within the same world. I have one GM that alternates when I want to take a break and runs a Super-Mission Impossible sort of game in the same world. The players have developed every character and we have sessions where they battle, they RP situations and a little of both, allowing them to further plots that they would like to take their characters in. I use villain organizations of my own design quite often, as well as villains, villain teams and gangs.

To set up, I do research on my campaigns by reading comics, novels and anything I can get my hands on, as well as watching movies, TV shows and cartoons. I tend to find that I get the oddest ideas in some of the oddest places

[OldDirtyGamer]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

Starting a campaign never gets old for me as I always try to come up with something new and dump the players into a whole-hearted comic story. The best ones I've done (in my opinion) are usually linked to a natural disaster which coincides with a villainous plot... For instance:

 

Hurricane Horacio is closing in on the Carolina coast (home to my campaign) and some of the heroes are assisting with support matters across the city. Another hero, new to town, has been tracking a few unusual occurrences surrounding high-band, encrypted radio transmissions and they seem to be triangulating on an area of the city which coincides with an old indian burial ground. Yet another hero is sucked in when his kid-genius brother / sister / nephew / niece gets harassed by a couple of wanna-be VIPER thugs who, upon being vanquished let slip that VIPER is involved in some way with the approaching storm...

 

From there, I let the players' curiosity get the better of them as they will run across each other and allow the story to unfold. The big plot, of course is that VIPER is working on a weather manipulation machine but it isn't sure-fire thing. The local nest leader is under pressure to deliver, of course, and also knows that he could buy some time if he could uncover the dormant Mechanon body reputed to be buried somewhere in the area. While he doesn't want to use the stormbringer, he does want enough of a distraction going that he and a small group can recover the body without much incident. What he doesn't know is that his radio searches have activated the dormant Mechanon facility and new Mechanon is being built. And, to make matters worse, the actual Mechanon is heading their way to deal with those meddling organics who would attempt to interfere in its affairs...

 

Games like that one usually turn out to be a lot of fun and with it I am able to introduce a handful of new players to the game, start the campaign with a memorable story (complete with loose ends), and use a couple of the canon villains / organizations in a way that establishes them as campaign staples. This level of storytelling is pretty complex but by layering the storyline over a few sessions it allows people to go over and understand everything about their characters while getting to know the system.

 

Like a lot of the other people who've posted, I liberally steal ideas from a lot of places and do copious amounts of research so that some of the details I include make sense. Unfortunately, unless the game master is willing to put in the time, most game sessions will resemble the "Villain of the Week" club at best or a "Beer and Pretzels Slugfest" at the worst. Sadly, a lot of that lives with the GM and his tolerances. If you're feeling dissatisfied with the game you're in, you may want to bring it up (gently) with your GM to see if there's something that can be done...

[Doc Samson]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

My last two games revolved around a theme (both admittedly stolen from marvel). I like a concept that both ties the characters together and gives them either a common origin or goal. This also provides focus and direction for the game.

 

Exiles - A universal cataclysm occurs, shattering the universe into alternate "dimensions". In our game, it was a group of heroes who accidentally killed a reality warping villain. The characters, who are each from an alternate reality, are contacted by the world's leading scientist (sort of like Quantum Leap) who tells them that to return home they must reassemble the Universe piece by piece. To do so they must identify what is wrong with each "shard" they are transported to and "fix" it. As each shard is repaired, it "pops" the group to the next shard.

 

Academy X - The characters are in some sort of school for the children of supers. In our game they were the children of Supervilllains (our world didn't have Mutants so we needed another reason for them to be disliked by the public), sort of like a superhuman orphanage for villains who were in jail, dead, or just MIA. They are then contacted by the Feds with an offer..."How would you like to get out of here and redeem your parents names at the same time? The last five of you standing can meet me outside."

[Utech]

Re: How do you design your champions game

 

My process is more or less along these lines...

1. I start off thinking about what kind of story I'd like to share with the players.
   
2. I sketch out a rough story arc. Usually taking a good ten steps or so. Several of those steps are listed as TBD.
   
3. I work out what sort of villain(s) are essential to the story.
   
4. Each villain gets their own rough story arc that sits inside the main story arc.
   
5. I present the basic concept to players to check for interest. If there's not enough, I set aside what I've developed and go back to step 1. If I've got enough players showing interest, I press on.
   
6. I invite character creation -- hopefully a process of give and take on all sides to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
   
7. I solidify villains and other challenges based primarily on character creation and player interest.
   
8. I solidify the main story arc. It is, however, never totally solid. I'm always open to player input -- willing to change many things depending on what the players do and how they go about doing it.
   
9. Start play.
   
10. Review. Refine. Play. Repeat.
    

Recent Champions stories that have interested me:

 

• A dimension-hopping campaign that starts with underpowered heroes. At each hop of a dimension they gain in power. Eventually they will have enough power, information, contacts, and what-have-you to take on the villainous dimension conqueror. Heroes do not know each other at first, but come together after more established (and powerful) heroes disappear.
  
• An established group of supers, American Vanguard, participates in a "hero exchange program" with a group of Japanese supers. American Vanguard has to deal with unfamiliar terrain, an unfamiliar culture, and the unshakable suspicion that something VIPERish followed them to the Land of the Rising Sun.
  
• What if Dr. Destroyer wasn't a bad guy? What if our heroes worked for him? Rather, for her. Strikeforce Ironfist was about the heroes sworn to defend the benevolent dictator Ironfist and her small island nation against all threats. It starts with an attack on Ironfist Island during the first official run of the new space elevator. This campaign was intended to combine supers and agents. Sad to say it fell apart.