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Accidental Campeign


JmOz

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So last week I finished my long running Fox is dead campaign.  The players were disappointed to see it go so I agreed to start a new campaign. 

 

My game world (Centurion Earth) has some consistencies, and one of them is that to be a legally sanctioned team you need to have a member of STRIPES (kind of like SHIELD) on the team.  They do have super powered agents (mostly Super patriots with a Super Soldier serum power set) and high tech agents.  If the group does not have a player who wants to play that type of character they either get an NPC (often more of a paper pusher) or are considered rogue. 

 

This time it looks like the whole group is making super soldiers... I really was not expecting this, so not sure what to do as a campaign guideline.  Was really planning on a normal super team...  

 

Ideas would be appreciated... 

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33 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Once you gathered the writeup, you can decide what to do. I suggest a team of clandestine agents fighting the equivalent of COBRA and other no-do-well organizations in a paradoxical private/public war.

I thought of that.  Problem is there is actually a different agent group (STARS) that would fit more of.  STRIPES is about super heroes / villains instead of the pajamma ramma gangs (Hydra, Cobra, Viper, Kobra, etc...)

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1 hour ago, JmOz said:

 

 

This time it looks like the whole group is making super soldiers...

 

 

1 hour ago, JmOz said:

 

Ideas would be appreciated... 

 

 

Give them a war.

 

 

Seems simple enough.

 

Decide if it's overt, if it's clandestine (weirdly, this is actually easier to control), or something in between.

 

Invasion?  From another country?  Planet?  Dimension?

 

Team of crack super agents sent in to stabilize / destabilize a jungle republic teetering on the brink of making alliance with your nation's enemies?

 

Agents of the shadow government charged with making sure America still believes the visible government is the real one?

 

 

I don't know.   They all sound good, but what's your take?

 

What does "Soldier" suggest to you?

 

 

 

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I'm curious. What do the presumed acronyms (STARS and STRIPES) stand for?

 

Since it's looking like you will have an entire team of super soldiers, what enemies would a team of Captain Americas fight? In the comics, that would be HYDRA or the like, but you've already said that this is what STARS is for. This presents you with your present conundrum. One way you might resolve this would be to give one of these groups its own superteam. Maybe one or more of these groups have obtained the super-solder serum that STRIPES uses and put together their own squads of elite agents, so a counter is needed. I guess the team's missions could feel like the comic book version of GI JOE, only with superpowers.

 

I agree with Duke Bushido's suggestion about a war. How about an anti-alien task force fighting against different invasions, secret or overt? Or a group that fights against creatures from the dark dimensions that would (literally) eat a group of STARS agents?

 

Come to think of it, why not just make them a team of STARS agents? Do those guys not have super-solders?

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Well, since they are owned by the DoJ, your looking at mostly running stuff in the US proper and fighting crime. I don't really see that much different from a traditional supers campaign. Since they're federal government, I would think more like FBI. They probably have a field office they work out of that covers a certain geographic area. Whenever an event happens that stinks of powers, the local police call them in to investigate (or deal with if it's something ongoing).

 

I don't know enough about your world and how normals interact, but you could find a lot of mileage from having a known public office they're required to work out of. Politics of being a super. Does the community hate it? Do they love it? Both?

 

Honestly, I would sit down and ask my players what kind of game they want. If they want a war, push them over to STARS instead. If they want investigation shenanigans, responding to local hotspots, and chasing down villains to bring them to justice, then keep STRIPES and run it like a normal supers game.

 

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After some thought, I suppose it could be like a superhuman version of a cop drama. The team works out of a designated base in the campaign city and probably have a bunch of normals for office support staff (DNPCs galore!). If the team members have some specialist skills, like one of them being a detective, another one a martial artist, then that brings in more hooks. Perhaps the detective expert PC works with or heads up the CSI support team. Maybe the tech expert is pals with the engineers that maintain the base's equipment.

 

You also have the potentially interesting possibility that other superteams may view them as government stooges, since they have no civilian supers on the team, only government-paid agents.

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To answer the acronym  

 

In the sixties the United States Government approved the funding for two new agencies due to the rise of costumed criminals.  The first agency (Special Target Reconnaissance, Investigation, Policing, Espionage Service; aka STRIPES) was placed under the authority of the Department of Justice.  While the second (Special Target Attack Response Squads; aka STARS) was placed under the supervision of the Department of Defense.  Both agencies are tasked with protecting the United Stats from the rise of “Super Threats”.

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How about their primary foes being a new organization who is creating super-soliders for hire by supercriminals?  The heroes can investigate the kidnappings of scientists connected to the STRIPES super-soldier serum creation, thefts of high-tech weapons and gear to arm these super-mercenaries, locate and shut down covert training academies, etc.

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Since they are Feds. I can see them doing a lot more traveling within the US. They will only be tasked to a city for the duration of an operation, but since they are looking at Federal crimes they might have members sent all over. So drug crimes, data piracy. Serial killings. Human trafficking, anything like that with a supernormal angle will be in their purview. They would also be available to assist in situations where a local super team has been incapacitated, or does not have the ability to handle a powerful group of out of towners. They could also interface with other state and Federal agencies that call them in, when it’s figured out that the problem involves Supervillains. This opens up a lot of opportunities and actually sounds like a very interesting and rich set up. 

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18 hours ago, JmOz said:

I like this idea, maybe tie in a drug addiction element, so the drug gives people temporary super powers...

 

Or steal the idea from the short-lived Morituri Project comic from Marvel (I think): the drug gives you superpowers--but it WILL kill you within a year.

 

Who would take such a drug? In the comic, people willing to accept an inevitably short but glorious career fighting an alien invasion. In a more conventional superhero world? People with terminal diseases who figure, "Why not?" People willing to trade their own lives in return for the chance to get revenge on an individual/group/nation/the world. People willing to trade a short, glorious career as a superhero (or supervillain) for a long life of poverty/misery/etc. And, of course, people who don't know (or don't believe--it's propaganda, guys!) the drug will kill them.

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How about a joint task force between STARS and STRIPES to increase public trust and popularity for the government agencies. Members would take on code names and patriotic costumes to fight crime while also being filmed for public viewing. This could lead to some interesting adventures as they try and maintain public face, while also dealing with marketing craziness, and maybe the eventual villain who might be behind their public rise. While there would be a team leader who leads during missions, all members would be taking orders from liaisons from both agencies who assign them missions. Depending on your players, you could even have public blogs (or written as vlogs) where they write up missions that would be available to their fans. 
Missions could be varied, including everything from standard superhero adventures, to battling terrorism (aka Viper), and invaders (aliens, dimensional forces, etc.), all while trying to live up to their own hype. Depending on the direction you want to go in, you could have the heroes discover a conspiracy that involves the formation of the team. Maybe they weren't the first team made in this manner? Maybe there's a Suicide Squad of villains working parallel to them? 

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17 hours ago, sinanju said:

 

Or steal the idea from the short-lived Morituri Project comic from Marvel (I think): the drug gives you superpowers--but it WILL kill you within a year.

 

Who would take such a drug? In the comic, people willing to accept an inevitably short but glorious career fighting an alien invasion. In a more conventional superhero world? People with terminal diseases who figure, "Why not?" People willing to trade their own lives in return for the chance to get revenge on an individual/group/nation/the world. People willing to trade a short, glorious career as a superhero (or supervillain) for a long life of poverty/misery/etc. And, of course, people who don't know (or don't believe--it's propaganda, guys!) the drug will kill them.

 

 

Strikeforce Morituri.

 

One of the very few comics I've read.  I found it online in its entirety a couple of years ago.  Still not a big fan of supers, but it was different enough, and I like the idea-- particularly that cast members _did_ die, with some regularity, and new members were recruited rather steadily.  Something about that, in spite of the spandex and women entering combat wearing bathing suits gave it a greater grounding for me.  Not a favorite, per se (though I did like the idea of "Get powers, die within a year" ), but better than most supers books I've seen.

 

 

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On 6/7/2020 at 4:52 PM, Sketchpad said:

How about a joint task force between STARS and STRIPES to increase public trust and popularity for the government agencies. Members would take on code names and patriotic costumes to fight crime while also being filmed for public viewing. This could lead to some interesting adventures as they try and maintain public face, while also dealing with marketing craziness, and maybe the eventual villain who might be behind their public rise. While there would be a team leader who leads during missions, all members would be taking orders from liaisons from both agencies who assign them missions. Depending on your players, you could even have public blogs (or written as vlogs) where they write up missions that would be available to their fans. 

 

This made me think about Agents of Smash, with little robot cameras constantly zooming around the PCs as they go about their business. Constantly in the public eye. I would be tempted to make some kind of reward for short little "reality TV" side monologues. "Yeah, I picked my buddy up and threw him, but I had no idea if his force field was strong enough to handle the impact..." The whole game would have to be very tongue in cheek.

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3 hours ago, theinfn8 said:

This made me think about Agents of Smash, with little robot cameras constantly zooming around the PCs as they go about their business. Constantly in the public eye. I would be tempted to make some kind of reward for short little "reality TV" side monologues. "Yeah, I picked my buddy up and threw him, but I had no idea if his force field was strong enough to handle the impact..." The whole game would have to be very tongue in cheek.

 

It wouldn't have to be. One of my campaigns took some inspiration from Todd Nauck's Wildguard comic in that the team was formed as a reality show. The first season of the game led the group to discover that someone was behind all of the villainy they were facing, with season 2 revealing it was the show's producer behind it all. The group eventually stood on their own feet and became a hero team in their own right. 

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