Getting the band back together: Methods of Forming a Superteam

[Tae Kwon Dan]

The title pretty much says it all. I'm just looking for your ideas and your favored methods for turning a group of individual heroes into a super teams.

 

Just to be clear I am not looking for the best method, but methods you've use over the years to get them there.

 

I already have the two classics:

 

1. 4-5 heroes happen to respond to the same robbery and work well together. (Defenders, Avengers, etc.)

 

2. The story starts from the premise of them being a super teams. (Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc.)

 

I'm sure there are more and some creative variations on these two themes. So bring them on.

[Chuckg]

In our current campaign...

 

In our own continuity, the flying brick and resident 'Superman' figure, Horus-Re, is one of the last two survivors of the Sentinels, who all died at the Battle of Detroit. (The other survivor is Dr. Daniel Collins, aka 'MicroMan', who had already retired before that and is an NPC friend of Horus'.)

 

The other PCs include one novice just starting out (my character, Starguard), one local hero who works for the Millennium City PD (Streethawk), one mutant who's been operating solo for a while (Warp), one extra-dimensional hero who suffered a drive accident and is stuck in our reality and is currently performing public featas of herodom (Psi Legionnaire), and we have just been joined by one AI robot that Dr. Collins has built to carry on his legacy, as his Shrinking Ray doesn't reliably work on any /living/ matter but himself (MicroMan II).

 

We haven't formed the new Sentinels yet, although that will happen next session...

 

How the team met is...

 

* The Champions had given notice to Mayor Biselle that they were going to have to leave the city for a while on an extended trip

 

* Mayor Biselle called Horus-Re and a couple local operators (Streethawk, Warp, and Psi Legionnaire) down to City Hall to ask them to patrol the local area a little more heavily while the Champions were gone

 

* Then Firewing showed up outside during the meeting, challenging Horus-Re to a duel of honor...

 

* To move the fight away from the city, Horus-Re challenged Firewing to solo aerial combat at 10,000 feet, and the rest of us prepared to watch...

 

* ... until Starguard, who was in her civvies as one of the gawking crowd outside, noticed the Ultimates sneaking close to City Hall, prepared to attack, and used her powers to broadcast an alert on all police radio frequencies...

 

* ... leading to a massive brawl. During the brawl, Warp and Starguard noticed that an invisible probe of some kind was hanging around the fight, recording everything. The probe was eventually captured and the bits put into the custody of Warp.

 

* After the brawl was over, most of the team stuck around to discuss things (except Starguard, who ran like hell back to her job before anybody noticed she was missing). However...

 

* ... later that evening, Starguard showed up again to track down Streethawk, who in a chance encounter earlier that morning had inadvertently said something that gave her the (mistaken) impression that he knew who she was... which, since Starguard has amnesia, is something she *doesn't* know.

 

* But by this point, Streethawk had gotten the news that his old enemy, Green Dragon, was back in town and was threatening his fiancee, which sent Streethawk off to Chinatown, obsessively working the streets, hunting his foe...

 

* .. where he met Starguard, who immediately pitched in to help him do it. After finding out from some street gang members that Green Dragon's sister was holed up in an apartment, heavily guarded by the local Triad boss's men, Starguard volunteered to go in -- in civilian clothes. (In her civvies, Starguard is an 18-year old waitress, and looks less threatening than a smurf... she walked right past the bodyguards as a normal visitor, although Lin Chow had to order them to let her in, and they never knew she was a superhero until the very end of the interview.)

 

* However, by this point, Horus-Re had taken the bits of the probe from Warp, and flown them to Dr. Collins' laboratory to have them analyzed... where he he was introduced to MicroMan II, who had just been completed. Dr. Collins asked his old teammate Horus-Re if he wouldn't mind showing MicroMan II the ropes for a bit...

 

* ... and then returned his analysis of the probe -- and it was bad news. The probe had been built with Istvatha V'Han's technology. Meanwhile, the results of the interrogation of Binder had been concluded -- their mission had been the capture of Horus-Re, after Firewing (who had been decoyed into the fight by working on his ego) had worn him down enough.

 

* Concluding that Istvatha V'Han was likely preparing for a renewed assault upon Earth, and was working to take out Earth's Mightiest Hero (and by extension, presumably others), the decision was made by the last two surviving Sentinels -- it was time to reform the team.

 

* And first up on the list of people to be contacted and asked... was the impromptu gathering of heroes who had helped stomp the Ultimates earlier that day.

 

* So Horus-Re and Microman set out to find us all, and MicroMan II had been invisibly riding Starguard's shoulder in microsize during her interview with Lin Chow (which is how Starguard got tapped, despite being an obvious novice -- she'd displayed great power earlier that day, and was now displaying great restraint).

 

* And just as the team-to-be was about to all get their phone calls to meet at Memorial Park and discuss things...

 

* ... several of us got teleporting killer robots entering our lives... which was really inconvenient to Psi Legionnaire (as they'd materialized *inside* his ship/base), and Warp (who was in his Secret ID, in the fanciest restaurant in town, with a date!)

 

That's where the session ended. We find out tonight how it's gonna go down.

 

But as team formation goes, I think this one was *fun*, especially since it took 4 sessions to get this far.

[Pattern Ghost]

LOL, that's pretty much all I've ever used. Call me clichéd.

[phydaux]

I set my campaign in Boston, mostly because that's the major city near where I live. To start a super team in Boston, I've used two variations on the same theme.

 

One is a major hero (400-500 points) is getting ready for retirement. He recruits local heroes to be the team, with him as their mentor.

 

Another is the "heroes by decree" where PRIMUS comes knocking on the hero's doors (figuratively, if the heroes have a secret ID) and tell them "PRIMUS has recently authorised an expantion superhero team in this area with YOU as a founding member. As a new member of a PRIMUS-sanctioned superhero team, failior to comply with any instructions from PRIMUS, including this order to form up, is punishable by 10 years in Stronghold prision and up to a $100,000.00 fine..."

[Chuckg]

Is Kaufman still the Golden Avenger in your world's timeline? This sounds like one of his nutty ideas.

 

(Seriously, draftees don't work as well as volunteers for small, elite forces that must operate with a high degree of initiative and motivation... i.e., superhero teams.)

[Supreme Serpent]

Big menace that everyone responds to is a good jump-off point.

 

My most recent campaign started out with time-travel villain attacking the various heroes, knowing that they were GOING to be a team in the future and cause him problems. Unfortunately, his attack is what actually brings them together.

 

I'm playing in a game starting with the "branch team" idea - Hero Team X is expanding to your area, looking for recruits.

 

Common origins work well too, if you can pull them off with the characters - all know each other in normal ID, and all get powers in same incident (ala FF). Can get watered down later on as people switch characters, new players come in, etc. but hopefully the group will have "established" by then.

 

Startup I WANT to do someday involves a moon-based villain team of mine, including one whose EB's also destroy memories. Heroes will wake up together, obviously having just been flattened, but having no memory of the fight or the last few days. Must piece together what happened, retrace own past detective work (including how/why they all teamed up the "first" time), etc and fight the villains again, hopefully with a better conclusion this time...

[phydaux]

Originally posted by Chuckg

Seriously, draftees don't work as well as volunteers for small, elite forces that must operate with a high degree of initiative and motivation... i.e., superhero teams.

 

I know. That's what makes it fun.

[Blue]

The heroes share a common origin (They were all created by the feds, all experiments of a mad doctor, all were present when Uranium-Q32 explosive space modulator was spilled on the ground and now they all have powers, etc.)

 

In a "Mutant hysteria" vein, they are brought together as a means of protecting one another from the outside world.

 

A mentor seeks them out and makes them his/her pet project because he's getting on in years.

 

The city has a villain problem spiraling out of control so they put out a call to all heroes to come and help; they'll be given access to a super-base if they can work together. (This is the basis for my current campaign.)

 

A common foe targets them individually. Once one or more of them figures this out he gathers the others to keep them safe. They band together to defeat the common enemy.

[Tae Kwon Dan]

Keep 'em coming guys, a lot of these are good.

 

For my future group, I'm currently leaning towards the whole Wealthy benefactor that has no powers of his own, but has a lot of money. Dan's Angels has a certain ring to it. ;-)

 

I'm also thinking of maybe a retired hero angle as well. Like a Batman from Kingdom Come or Batman Beyond type character.

 

I think I like this method for a fledgling group, because it give me as the GM a voice when they're straying off target and a means of nudging them back in the right direction. (Without too much Deus Ex Machina of course.)

[Houston GM]

Origins

 

If you're starting an Origins type campaign, you can have them be a group of normals (friends, coworkers, neighbors) who all get their powers from the same incident.

[Tae Kwon Dan]

At first I thought that wouldn't work, because of the varying degrees of abilities, but I think I could make it work in sort of a current super group passes on their abilities sort of way.

[Lightray]

If you'll have a lighter tone in your campaign, you might want to consider the "Legion tryouts" route:

 

Public announcement of recruiting for super-heroes, who are to show up at specified place and time, to demonstrate their powers.

 

Then you can amuse everyone with the lame powers the competition demonstrates (Color Kid, Porcupine Pete, Arm-Fall-Off Boy, etc.).

 

Way back our Ultra Force campaign started off this way. I was playing an Iron Man clone (powered armor guy with rich industrialist secret identity), whose secret ID was funding the team. Our GM had all kinds of third-rates come try out -- it was a riot.

 

Later, of course, my arch-nemesis sicced some of the runners-up on us. I think the GM'd been reading Alpha Flight for that one...

[pinecone]

I used to use the old "Giant monster attacks the town" ploy...all of the heros hear about it and are motivated to respond, they see up close that there are threats they need to band to gether to defeat, and they work well as a group. I also have used the "All hunted by X" ploy in this one I set each hero up in a hopeless situation and have another save them from death, then they save their rescuer from death...so they band together to live and owe each other their lives....

[starblaze]

In my WWII supers campaign my characters are all in the military and have been formed as the Elites, a superpowered commando team. So I used the government superteam way of getting them together.

 

In another supers game I had a more mystic masters kind of feel to it and created an old MU that got together a team of superheroes with all magic type backgrounds. One of major PC's in the game was Arcana, a female apprentice to the Master Mage who then took his place when he died at the end of the campaign.

[CraterMaker]

One introduction I ran was :

 

Street hero Blitz hears on the grapevine that a group of

powered armor guys (the ones from Strikeforce) have

been hired to make a hit on The Man In Black, another

street hero in a different part of town. Not knowing how

to get a hold of him, he contacts a hero he's worked with

before to help him out - OverMan.

 

The Two eventually track TMB down in an Italian diner,

and as they are trying to figure out who put the hit out, the

bad guys attack. During the fight, another Hero, Lady Kiesa,

shows up to bust

on the armor guys, and help out her fellow supers. The

heroes drive off the bad guys, and eventually tap another

hero's help, Breaker, to find the originator of the hit.

 

The hero's finally confront this guy, a mobster, and after a long discussion that drops tantalizing clues get

ambushed by the kid who led them there when he turns into a twelve foot tall monster,

described as an "Alien, but Bigger" - henceforth they called

these creatures Abbs - But then they had to tap another

quasi-hero/investigator, Doc Beowolf, who was a specialist

in magic (did I mention the ABB was casting spells, too?. Finally, the gang all together, the adventure went

into full swing.

 

-CraterMaker

[Blue Jogger]

A big one that I use is Adoption.

 

A character develops superpowers that poses a threat to himself and/or others. (Works great with amnesia background or sudden emergence) The group of heroes adopt the young hero and teaches him to control his powers.

 

A variation is Outcast where the hero can't maintain a secret identity. He's a horrible non-human looking monster but has a kind heart. Sometimes, it's just Bad Press.

[Lupus]

The game I'm planning, all characters have their own hook. The central character is a recently-manifesting superhuman with spirit/magic type powers, who's going to be tainted by some very black magic. So she'll be needing to find out what happened and deal with it. An older character, a mage, will be charged by the Trismegistus council with helping her (and keeping an eye on her in case she goes bad). Another guy, with a manner of cosmic danger sense, will arrive with the sense that something BAD is going on and he has to help fix it.

 

Fourth character is just basically hanging out. Do-gooder type who hopefully will just be drawn into the plot by her own action.

[Stephen Mann]

Two methods I've used

 

1) Mentor

Doctor Fate (same name, different character) was my world's Superman icon, and his secret ID was that of a college prof. One local rich guy attended one of his public lectures along with another average community member. A grad student working with DF was demonstrating a new machine that gave the audience minor headaches and sent the two other guys to the hospital. DF greeted them when they woke up, and explained his theory that their reaction to the otherwise harmless machine is an indication of metahuman abilities. He offered (as the prof) to train them since he knew a lot of heroes. Later, he revealed his identity to them after he had found other newbies to mentor.

Some time after that, he went missing while investigating a new menace, and his students declined to follow up because they weren't interested in his clues. They decided to stay home and wait for bad guys to show up.

The game ended a few months later due to stupid characters (and players).

 

2) Buttering up the police so you can get your license

I tried a setting where, to try and control superheroes, the government mandated permits and licenses for people acting as quasi-police. Anybody in a costume could pay $50 to get a superhero permit, and a lot of people did just as a joke. The permit didn't give any legal powers, but it showed at least a slight interest in playing by the rules. Serious heroes used this permit to introduce themselves to the police and other emergency response agencies in town.

Permit holders had to wait a year before applying for a license, and getting the license required good character references from the local police chief (and others).

It just so happened that a bunch of new heroes got their permits more or less at the same time. The clerk behind the counter suggested they team up, because the police prefer groups to loners, and they needed to butter up the police chief. As it turned out, they team never got their licenses because the game ended before a year, and the team rep was more or less ruined by the local J. Jonah Jameson-equivalent.

[st barbara]

"Lightray" your idea of "Legion Tryouts" sounds like something out of "The Mystery Men" ! Now how about a one off scenario featuring some of the characters that didn't make it at the tryouts in the movie. I can remember "The Waffler" and "P M S Woman", but who else was there ?

[Rechan]

The group STARTED because they (all but one) just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time; a malfunctioned robot burst through a wall and attacked a crowd of people, intending to target the CEO of a technology company.

 

They thusly pounded down el robotto, and the CEO happened to be a powersuiter. He is a young philanthropist who, by the will and testimate of his late dad, has to do something with some of the fortune, so the guy funds the superteam.

 

One of the PCs actually had a bomb and surveillance system implanted in him by Those Who Are Otherwise Unknown and was snet to protect the CEO, thus resulting in the party getting together.

 

Since then, we've had:

*'Party rescue an android.

*'Telepathic Super-fangirl discovering secret ID and begging to join so she can scope out Superheros personally.

[Battlestaff]

A lot depends on your players.

 

I was running a Champions game with a group that included players who had worked together for a while, and some new players. I was able to come up with a location for a crime that could reasonably bring together all the characters. Well, they banded up and beat the VIPER team, then met in a quiet bell-tower to talk about what happened. Shortly after they started talking, one player (a batman clone who was paranoid about his secret ID, even from the other players) decided to take off, and another character followed, until only one character (whose player knew this was intended to be the formation of a fledling team) was left there.

 

I admit it was my fault for not realizing the batman clone was not one for being a team player, and the another player would just do whatever everyone else was doing. Know your players before working up a plan.

[Redmenace]

In the Order, a sort of miniseries fpr the Marvel team of the Defenders, Kurt Busiek had a enemy mage put a curse on the members of the team. Whenever a threat occured that required their intervention all the individual members would teleport to wherever the threat was, the downside being they had no warning so there secret IDs, other battles they were engaged in at the time and poor innocent bystanders that they were in the midst of saving would be left high and dry. I suppose this is team formation by coercion/kidnapping.