Your Meta-Plot.

[Herolover]

Many GM's and games have Meta-Plots. Kinda like Babylon 5's five year plan.

 

I have used them before in other genres, but never before for Champions. What kind of meta-plots have you used?

[TheEmerged]

Gonna have to use spoiler text here -- my players *claim* they don't read these boards but I'm gonna air on the side of caution. To read the following text, highlight it.

 

If some of the following sound odd, remember that I'm running a villain campaign right now -- the PC's are villians in a world closely related to the Champions Universe (which I jokingly call the NeoChampion Universe).

 

First, all of the PC's have a grudge against Primus -- a grudge they have limited ability to indulge in for fear of the Golden Avenger's wrath. Of course, the Golden Avenger in my campaign runs around with a 150 STR multipower and clocks in just under 2000 points... Eventually the PC's are going to discover that the Golden Avenger was created by Dr. Destroyer as a eugenics experiment to breed supersoldiers. Similarly, GRAB's "old man" is none other than the bad Doctor too.

 

The IHA has discovered a technological way to detect novas (superpowered people) -- and is ready to start Phase 1 of their Final Solution. Very shortly they're going to come forward as a "third party" for elections -- with existing candidates supporting them, giving them "instant incumbants". Once they have public political power, they can move to Phase 2...

 

One of the PC's has a rather tragic origin too lengthy to go into here. At some point he's going to discover he's being manipulated by the Trickster (the guy behind CLOWN's origin). Things will get interesting.

 

The PC's have discovered that young Billy Cranston of Michtendorf has erupted with powers that seem to be on the level of Dr. Destroyer's. The so-called "Boy With The Power" has his own version of the cornfield -- and is still finding his way around his powers & what those powers mean.

 

There are actually more but I'm pressed for time. I'll try to remember to come back later.

[Supreme Serpent]

OK, first off, TheEmerged, that was cool. First secret message I've ever seen on a message board! I'm going to have to start secretly including parts of the Master Plan in my posts...

 

OH - TheEmerged's players - if you're reading this thread, DON'T reply to it, or you'll see the spoilers!

 

OK, back to the question.

 

In my now departed but long-running campaign, out of the five main characters handed in, three had VIPER hunteds - one just had a nasty grudge, one was the result of an experiment, and the third used to be an agent before he got enlightened. Since VIPER was so important to their pasts and they would probably be showing up a lot anyways, might as well make them central. So, the struggle against VIPER was the central goal of the campaign, leading them all over, eventually stopping VIPER's massive plan after years of gameplay.

 

Plenty of other long-running plots/subplots, recurring villains and such, but that was the ultimate "goal" of the campaign.

[bcholmes]

Re: Your Meta-Plot.

 

Originally posted by Herolover

Many GM's and games have Meta-Plots. Kinda like Babylon 5's five year plan.

 

I have used them before in other genres, but never before for Champions. What kind of meta-plots have you used?

 

There are three big story arcs that have been happening in my campaign.

 

The first, now mostly answered, is, "what happened to the second Northern Guard?" Since the beginning of the campaign, the PCs (the new, fourth incarnation of the Northern Guard, Canada's official super-team) have had clues that the second Northern Guard didn't disband, but actually disappeared. The PCs just recently discovered that most of them were killed by Dr. Destroyer in 1989. When the team discovered the bodies, it was in one of Destroyer's underground bunkers (from which they also discovered the evidence that Dr. Destroyer wasn't killed in the Battle of Detroit).

 

The second meta-plot is that the team knows that they're going to fight Dr. Destroyer one day. (Captain Chronos let that slip). They're nowhere near ready for that yet, but they know that things are building up to that. (I've just recently picked up a second-hand copy of Day of the Destroyer, which could be fun).

 

The third meta-plot is that the PCs are convinced that Multicorp (a corporation from Champions of the North) is up to something. They've just recently learned that members of the Multicorp executive have ties to DEMON.

 

I recently ran the players through "Murder in Stronghold" (from Champions Presents #2, although in my campaign it was "Murder in MISSION Lock-Up"), and decided that one of the key villains, Amarylis (who never actually appears in the adventure) is actually the CEO of Multicorp, and has improved her powers significantly since her old mentor, Master Magus, died (part of the back-story to "Murder in Stronghold").

 

The Canadian government simply sees Multicorp as a fine, tax-paying Canadian corporation. In the coming weeks, Multicorp is going to initiate a takeover of the technology company that one of the PCs works for, and Multicorpo also going to "help" the government by revealing some data that they've "stumbled upon" about VIPER nests in Toronto and Montreal.

 

The PCs haven't been able to prove anything about Multicorp, but they're itching to take them down.

[Adventus]

In my champions campaign.the major factor altering reality to allow superpowers is going away. There was a tear in space/time in the Arizona desert. This tear leaked transdimensional energy into the faric of reality allowing superpowers, much as magic does in CU. This means most, but not all characters are going to lose their powers. Thois means the superbeings who derive their powers from gadgets and skills will become the most powerful supers in the game.

 

Cut to several years later. The world has settled down and are living with a sense of swfety, knowing that they don't have to worry about some cuper battle destroying their homes. It is at this point a chain of clubs opens up across the US, named Mirrowview. They cater tyo the late teen, low 20's crowd. After a few months the clientele starts exhibiting powers in the real world. These powers have nothing to do with the club.

 

The focus of the campaign is where are they getting these powers when everybody knows their are no more superpower anymore? The people who get the powers are the onees society has thrown away for the most part. They distrust authority and want to hurt the flat reflections, normals . There will be many references to mirrors. The main bad guy group will be called The Dark Reflections. They will be kids who have embraced their powers and became drunk with power.

["V"]

I used to make more use of Metaplots when I had a lot more RPG time and players were more likely to pick up on long-running threads...

 

My favourite one (apologies for those who read a brief mention of this in another thread) was when I ran a metaplot that extended as a background feature across several campaigns I ran (different genres & systems) over the course of years. Players thought it had come to an end when their AD&D team travelled to the decaying world of the evil Alfar who had been sending cross dimensional agents to countless other worlds to soften them up for invasion. Alfar hurled into Negative Material Plane, world saved, everyone happy.

 

It was a moment of sheer GM sadistic pleasure when in my next Champions campaign one of my more astute players suddenly realised the identity of the "stranded psionic lifeforms" that the team's mentalist/teleporter had located and whom the team had just expended great amounts of energy in returning to "their homeworld."

 

I did enjoy the moment when the PCs realised they had just helped the Alfar break free from their transdimensional prison and given them a free lift to the AD&D campaign world I was using...

[RevHooligan]

My overall plot will be a certain NPC engineering the invasion of Washington DC by the forces of Hell. He or She plans to use his/her huge resources to play a decisive roll in turing back the demon hordes and then parlaying that victory into a successful run for the Presidency.

 

The PC's have both hindered and helped this plan so far, but patientience is possibly the only virtue the npc possesses.

[OddHat]

V's metaplot reminded me of one of my favorites.

 

Campaign 1: Nightlife (think WoD). The players fake an alien invasion to conceal the fact that Vampires and Demons live among the humans. Game is set in the 1950s. The main enemy of the "kin" are mages and the Virus, a group of magic-cybernetic meldings of humans and machines. Campaign ends when several "aliens" (PCs and Virus members) are captured by the government and never seen again.

 

Campaign 2: Psionics / Biotech / Cybernetics. Game is set in the 1980s. The players are genetically altered government super-agents fighting other bio-agents and "aliens." They slowly realize that the Cyber and Biotech that created them was developed from experimentation on captured "aliens," their PCs from the previous game. Eventually they go back in time to the late 1930s, where they act as Super-Heros. Nazi-afiliated magicians invent the Wild Card virus to fight them which leads us to campaign #3...

 

Campaign 3: Wild Cards, with a much different back story.

 

The players had a blast.

[Lightray]

I have a metaplot that actually began in the campaigns we were running in high school over 10 years ago (!).

 

The original premise of our campaigns was that magic is real, but has been hidden from public knowledge for eons. Several of the PC groups fought evil from the shadows (as it were), but my PC (the White Magus) went public with a school for magic (the other PCs were other teachers).

 

When FREd came out, I restarted the old campaign. All of the old PCs have vanished, mostly in a spectacular and public fashion (mile-high columns of blue flame). "Magic" has become more common, leading to good ol' superhuman types. And the foremost superheroes are the former students at the White Magus' school.

 

So the PCs are left with questions to ask: What happened to the powerful wizards and others who vanished? Why is magic becoming more prevalent? Did the White Magus plan for what happened?

 

Adding to the fun is the fact that the players know some of the metaplot -- and some of their characters know some of these details, as well. There's an organization of extradimensional wizards bent on conquering Earth and seizing an artifact wielded by one of the missing PCs (Tarot). There's an organization of Earth magi -- of which the White Magus was one -- that opposed them, and are probably still around too, but who are also missing.

 

In the meantime, as I dole out bits of metaplot information, I'm having fun updating the fates of minor PCs and NPCs from the old campaign. Since the players know the gist of the metaplot, I'm under no pressure to move it forward, allowing time to focus on character development first.

[MoonHunter]

I have had a couple

 

First is the lifting of the veil. The world became aware that werewolves and elves lived among them, that a vampirism was a real disease, and that magic did exist, though it was not normally as cool as super powers. This story arc slowly creeped forward as things occured that could not be explained otherwise.

 

The second was the artificial life connundrom. They saw the legal issues that occured dealing with all those bio constructs and artificial intelligences the Bio-Masters and other big science guys were making. This issue divided most of my heroes, as some of them did not want to treat "monsters" with kid gloves that needed to be arrested not taken down. Others did not like the idea of the base computer having legal rights (and the base computer was one of the biggest political aggitators for AI rights- he was also an ex-supervillian construct who kept trying to find a way to forclose on Brazil).

 

The Third was the Dr. Appocolypse story line: Dr. Appocolypse a transdimensional techno-mage, who had managed to conquer several other worlds. He occasionally worked on the side of the angels (helping to fix serious time warps and shifts- after all it is his section of the multiverse as well). It was discovered that his activities were the source of all superpowers on the world, casting a pale over how good even the heroes could be if the Big Bad sponsored their existance. He was responsible for certain being being transported to our world (leaving their world without a hero, now open for invasion). He was responsible for several extra-dimensional entities and their followers finding our world (the heroes defeated most of their forces, normally going on the offensive- liberating the innocents of that world from their evil tyrants (and puppet governments manipulated by Dr. A took their place). Dr. A was on top of their entire existance.

 

Dr. A understand this sphere very well and played it like a harp.

 

And it was not just my champions campaign. The Players were playing a pulp game, and Dr A showed up under another guise and helped them as a "foreign patron". The players were all wrankling about and trying to look for "signs of evil". How could they know that the good deed they were doing, stopping an evil organization, could be in the Dr's best interest.

 

And that all his Japanese minions were the bad guys, cleaned up, from the Nippon Fantasy game we played were he was the Lord End of All, Demon Daimyo.

[zornwil]

My first long-running Champions campaign was centered, though often way in the background in individual issues, around a global conpsiracy "for good" that was a secret cabal. The campaign ended as I moved, just as the characters were getting into the thick of it.

 

Without disclosing anything, this one's about the nature of the causes of mutation on Earth.

[ch0wyunf47]

I nearly went with a metaplot built-in to the campaign world that I've been working on and such. Basically, there's some other unseen radiation type thing that came from Nuclear power and it allowed for the mutations neccessary for mutants to exist. There had been pulp heroes and such before the emergance of Nuclear power, but not a whole lot of them (this follows the histroy of comics relatively well, and provides for fun things like the generally western-skew to things).

 

Anyway, if anyone has seen the anime Giant Robo (or as I saw it subtitled in a pirate copy from Hong Kong "Gaint Robo", "Giant Robot", "Giant Lobo", "Ginat Lobo"...) you might see this coming from the whole Shizuma driver thing.

 

SPOILER:

The plot was so badly translated that I could only kind-of understand what's going on, but it basically went like this: There was this new super-powerful source of energy, called the Shizuma Driver (named after the doctor who invented it) which was uber eco-friendly and super-efficient. There was a bi-product from the driver that entered the atmosphere, but only the scientist really knew about it. During the show, there's a group trying to come up with a bomb (think EMP type thing) that will destroy all of the Shizuma Drivers, and the heroes of the show are trying to stop them from causing a world-wide blackout. The 'twist' is that after 10 years of that bi-product being put into the atmosphere it would cause some reaction with the oxygen in our atmosphere (this actual reaction is a complete guess as the translation was really just that bad) that would kill everyone, so the 'villains' were actually trying to save humanity, etc.

 

It was a cool idea, and I was trying to put that into the gameworld as a possibility, partly because the anime (much like many animes) was clearly referencing nuclear power (including a city that was destroyed by some reaction thing). The biggest problem is that I watched that particular anime with one of the players and the other two had seen it. The show had resulted in several inside jokes as well, leaving the meta-plot basically useless.

 

In short: My idea was to use the one from Giant Robo b/c it's cooler than any meta-plot i've come up with in years.

 

Btw, if anyone likes giant robot anime and crazy plots, check out Giant Robo. If you're lucky, you'll get the pirate copy like I did and be utterly amazed at characters changing names, the various translations of obviously english words, typos, and the utterly amazing ability to change the name of the series EVERY EPISODE. The series was named "the day the earth stood still" which had all kinds of fun translations. Why they varried is beyond me.

[Ghost who Walks]

First off, I think most of these mega-plots are really good.

 

Hears the one I've been running (inbetween more normal adventures)

 

Back History

~a million years ago, uber-tech aliens visit the Earth and take genetic material from the human race. They use this to create a race of psionic warriors to protect themselves (note: the psionic warriors look like homo erectus...)

 

~Wanting to make sure no one else finds out where their new guards came from, the uber-tech aliens sig a mutual protection pact twith the inhabitants of the second planet in the solare system (Venus, a race of Saurians). Earth, and its primitives, become an alien protectorate.

 

~300-100K years ago. Another race of aliens (intergalactic capitalists) from another dimension decide to invade this one. Massive war results, and the dimensional portals are sealed. Ubertech aliens vanish, taking their Dyson Sphere with them. their Psionic warrior race settle several worlds, and forget their origins.

 

~50K Interdimensional aliens invade again, this time by sponsoring another race with advanced technology/information. This race becomes the source for the myths about "demons." The destoy Venus and its guardians, and conquer the Earth. They begin numerous gene-engineering projects to produce "pets" from the human populace. They also trade with the evil capitalists from another dimension, who they are massively in debt to.

 

~25K years ago: A young member of a race of timetravellers, known as Al, (with the ability to timetravel) becomes disturbed by the injustice in the universe, in particular on Earth and the other worlds in the "Demon Empire". He aquires several thousand human children, trains them and gives them superpowers, and unleashes them against the demons. They become the source of the legendary Titans, and mount a millenia long guerilla war.

 

~20K years ago: Rivals of the interdimensional aliens, jealous of their monopoly on this dimensions trade, form a coalition of this demensions alien races and mount a campaign against the "Demon Empire". Just as they are about to proclaim victory, Al (the time traveller), appears with a court order from their home dimension ordereing them to desist (long story, but interdimensional invasions were illegal where they came from). Al does this without approval of his race, who reluctantly agree (they are like the Marvel Watchers, with time travel). Earth and the other worlds of the Demon Empire are allowed to fend for themselves, while the court case goes on.

 

~Present: The former allies of the alien coalition which freed the Earth are becoming active again. They are making moves against worlds near Earth, and aliens on those worlds are abducting Earth's metas to go and fight them. (damn crop circles). In general Earth blunders along, not knowing at all its history, or the ongoing legal battle (in another dimension). Only a few people know, and most of them are regardes as crazy. Some of the Titans of 20K years ago are still around (to give the campaign a really old guard)

 

~The Future: the trial is thought to be coming to an end, and it doesn't look good for the Blue-white marble. Can humanity clean up its act, and prove that they deserve to continue to exist? Or will they go down as just another vanished race.

 

Note1: As you might guess, the theme of my campaign is mostly philospohical, entire episodes revolve around "what it means to be human." And "do we have a right to exist" Over all, I like it as a theme, because often non-humans are more noble than humans. (Humanity has a millenia old reputation among other species for...cannibalism. They are regarded as the interstellar equivalent of Haiti)

 

Note2: Also, most of this history was only revealed through time travel, as players became aware of the back story. It allows me to use supplaments from virtually any game system, which I like.

 

Note3: The fun part about the campaign is that no matter how powerful the heroes and villains are, there is a higher authority which is judging them. It takes the "save the world" theme to an extreme height, I suppose

 

Note4: Remember that "Demon Empire"? Seems they were just experimenting with time travel...and one of their scientists travelled to our time. A couple of the players have finally learned that she is Dr. Destroyer.

 

Note5: One of the goals of the characters is to try to find a way to gather allies, for the court judgement is expected to go against them. The allies are many, most of them are other worlds or really powerful immortal beings. Some of them use magic, and have taught it to Humans in the past (usually to their regret)

[Blue]

My campaign city is doomed, reportedly. The plot involves an ancient order of extradimensional beings (demons?), their enemy (a religious figure from the 4th Century AD), a cult of women who keep an ancient secret, a handful of time-fracturing anomalies, and a team of heroes who are stocking the local prison with villains, and the end of the world that will ensue if a specific innocent man is executed (martyred) at the local prison, setting up the big climactic battle where the characters must break into their own super-prison to save the innocent man, and deal with the villains they've locked up there.

 

It's the height of evil I tells ya. I made the plot so complicated that I'm going to have to make a flow chart for it.

 

Every encounter in this campaign is linked in some regard even though it may not look like it. Except for the very first one, which ironically, sets up someting for the second segment of the campaign... when the metaplot becomes something else entirely because the first one is resolved.

[Fenixcrest]

Dunno how precisely on topic this one is-

I tend to use "mini" metaplots-

Background plots that cover the action for about 10 sessions and then wrap themselves up (but not always cleanly )

For example, the upcoming metaplot: A whole bunch of demons (A kind of ghosty doppleganger-ish thing in this case) have just popped up all over the city, and their leader is making a bid to replace an entire sector of the city with his minions. However, they only got in because this evil wizard (high magic game) had to shut off the city's early warning system in order to sneak an artifact into his stronghold. So there's a whole subplot revolving around the evil wizard and his attempts to gain immortality from said artifact (a big axe called the Midnight Edge, one of several "Edges" with godlike powers). The PCs get caught up in it (they're all high school students, and one of them accidentally plays a role in the Doppleganger King's plans because of his profession, or else they'll just find out by accident when a horde of undead freshmen tries to replace them with evil clones), and eventually will find themselves getting more and more caught up in chaos that results from the Edge being taken from its sanctuary, until there's finally a bigass fight in the eye of a giant hurricane.

 

Or something like that. My players are all crazy- I'll prolly have to re-write the entire second half of this thing when one of them accidentally breaks the internet or something

 

And of course, between and after that, I have some little episodic things, and then a new mini-meta-plot. Eheh.

[altamaros]

Re: Your Meta-Plot.

 

Originally posted by Herolover

I have used them before in other genres, but never before for Champions. What kind of meta-plots have you used?

 

i usually center my metaplots on the PC's story sometimes in the world history.

 

Campaign 1 :

my very first Champions campaign; set in the Marvel Universe, 20 years after Onslaught (but without Heroes return).

no magic, no extra-terrestrials (although extra-dimensional beings were allowed).

The team : mutants on the run; a kind of X-Force

Almasty : russian ex-soldier; were-"nasty hairy thing with big claws and bad temper" (like Sasquatch or Wendigo)

Eclipse : Teleporting ninja formerly member of the Hand

Lift : TK

Scan : Telepath, twin sister of Lift.

 

Metaplot :

The twin sisters were not twin sisters but "simili-clones" actually Mr Sinister bio-engineered them and implant them into women through in-vitro fecondation. Throughout the campaig; the PCs discovered the others clones (a pyrokinetic nun, a girl with astral projection, another with cyberkinetics) rand uncovered Sinister plot : all the clones were genetic alterations of Jean Grey.

[Vanguard00]

The closest thing to a "meta-plot" I've used is the one I'm running now. It concerns a new street drug giving certain people temporary super-powers but will eventually tie into the organized crime figures of the city and likely a clash with Genocide. The trick to all this is that it's all a big ploy by the REAL villains, a pro-meta group that wants all the world in the hands of metas. Not themselves, necessarily, but the most qualified meta, whoever that turns out to be. There will be at least two adventure/mini-campaigns before the real villains are figured out. By that time half of them will have already been introduced (I hope).

 

All of the above should be taken with the proverbial "no plan survives contact with the enemy" caveat (or more appropriately, no plot outline ever survives contact with the players).

[bcholmes]

Originally posted by Ghost who Walks

Note1: As you might guess, the theme of my campaign is mostly philospohical, entire episodes revolve around "what it means to be human." And "do we have a right to exist" Over all, I like it as a theme, because often non-humans are more noble than humans.

 

For what it's worth, that sounds like a really interesting campaign.

[assault]

My nastiest one involved the creation of Mechanon. The PCs had all the chances in the world to stop it from happening, but they didn't realise what was going on.

 

Alan B

[BarryB]

The characters have learned at least one metaplot that has been going on for the last three years.

 

Like many campaigns, I use an energy field that has triggered superpowers within human beings. In the case of our campaign, the field is being generated, more or less deliberately, by the approach of a race of alien beings. The alien beings devour the life energy of sentient creatures. They particularly enjoy the flavor of those with superpowers.

 

This race genetically modified promising species millions of years ago, inserting genetic code to make possible the evolution of sentient beings and to make these beings susceptable to the energy field produced by these beings.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by assault

My nastiest one involved the creation of Mechanon. The PCs had all the chances in the world to stop it from happening, but they didn't realise what was going on.

 

Alan B

 

Hehe, I have something similar brewing. Although the players really haven't had a chance per se at this point, it's all background, soon to come out. It won't be Mechanon but it is that level of threat.

[lemming]

Originally posted by zornwil

Hehe, I have something similar brewing. Although the players really haven't had a chance per se at this point, it's all background, soon to come out. It won't be Mechanon but it is that level of threat.

 

Oh this is just great.

And my character wasn't all that paranoid at the beginning.

 

For my game:

There's a definite metaplot, but I've had to change a few things around due to some players. Mostly to do with aliens, other dimensions, and the Illuminatish groups in the background.

[Bartman]

By the way Emerged, that does not hide the text for anyone using the White Style instead of the Default style.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Bartman

By the way Emerged, that does not hide the text for anyone using the White Style instead of the Default style.

 

However if one really wants to hide stuff, this following technique may work:

 

 

After a quick test: Yep, works pretty well, and the person has to actually do some work to get the hidden message

[Lord Liaden]

Speaking of "Illuminatish" groups, a friend of mine gave me an idea that came to underlie the game world for my longest-running campaign: The Pact. This was a collection of immortal beings with various origins, each individually powerful and influential in mortal affairs. After enough occasions when their interests collided, leading to profitless conflicts, several of these entities agreed to a treaty of non-intervention allowing each of them their spheres of influence and banning any member of the Pact from acting directly against any other.

 

Over the centuries some members ultimately perished or disappeared, while others appeared to take their places. Some were villainous, others heroic, still others merely desired to be left to their own affairs. Besides homebrew characters, long-time Champions players will probably recognize several of these names: Taurus from The Zodiac Conspiracy, Lung Hung from VOICE of Doom, Adrian Vandaleur from Mystic Masters, Nuada of the Silver Hand from Kingdom of Champions, Baron Jean de Lear from The Mutant File, Dr. Yin Wu from Watchers of the Dragon, and Ra from Pyramid in the Sky.

 

While the members of the Pact had agreed not to interfere directly with each others' plans, they did act subtly to prevent any of their rivals from upsetting the balance of power. They also sometimes took action against new "upstart" players outside the Pact, like Dr. Destroyer or VIPER. The actions of the Pact often involved using superheroes against their enemies, through providing tips and "leaks" of information, occasionally even bringing heroes together to form a team, as was the case with one group of PCs.

 

The PCs eventually discovered the existence of the Pact and how much influence it had had on their careers. The campaign was headed toward the heroes becoming embroiled in a breakdown of the Pact and open warfare between factions within it; but the campaign folded before it could all hit the fan.