BoloOfEarth

I'm sorry Scott. I didn't really read your post as reductio ad absurdum, but I suppose it was. So my apologies.

An urn painted with various depictions of cats doing amusing things, with an inscription of "Μπορώ να έχω το κρέας των τυριών?" ("I can have meat of cheese?") around the rim.

The woman heading the coven in India is Mother Terroresa. Masquerading as a humble nun, this ruthless mentalist gathers the homeless and destitute and mind-controls them to do her bidding.

I think you mean Hugh Neilson. (Credit where credit is due.) As to dealing with "loophole" powers, I've found that a little creativity can go a long way. I ran a game with a PC (Mosquito) who had shrinking, clinging, and a no-range 3d6 Continuous Uncontrolled NND attack. She would land in the middle of a villain's back (where he can't reach), and sting him, dumping a chunk of END into the attack. One time, she tried it on a brick, and he did a backwards superleap move-through on the wall. His PD was good enough to absorb most of the damage. Her PD, not so much. In the Mental Entangle case, I'd create a story arc dedicated to it. Here's one, with a nod to Mardoc for the "mental reflect" mention. Starting out, she crosses swords with a solo supervillain, a gadgeteer teleporter thief-for-hire who has a memorized safe house location he can teleport to, and a monumental ego (both EGO stat and self-image). When she zaps him, he ports away home, leaving behind his ill-gotten gains. A minor side thing, maybe a bit frustrating that he escapes but ultimately a win for her and soon forgotten. Then, starting a handful of sessions after the 'porter's escap, something troubling begins to happen during battles against various groups. When the wife's character throws her attack, it somehow manages to instead strike one of her teammates. Or a PRIMUS agent. Or an influencial bigwig who doesn't like superheroes much. Or a time or two, it actually hits a different villain than the one she was aiming at. Maybe a time or two, instead of the portal, the attack simply disappears enroute, and then a second or two later there's a flash of light and a "FZZ-ZOT". If she's really perceptive, she might notice a small portal open up immediately in front of the attack just before it disappears enroute, with a corresponding portal opening behind the new target. In the first encounter or two, the villain saved from attack seems baffled at the miraculous save, but in later encounters they seem smug, maybe even taunt her into attacking them. It only ever happens once in any given battle. Not even necessarily at a key point, or to save a key villain. Just an occasional but repeated "WTF?" moment. (If you ever read the Iron Man storyline where Justin Hammer is remotely accessing Tony's armor, turning on or off a boot jet or a repulsor or opening his eye and mouth slits underwater, that's what I'd try to portray. A seemingly out-of-the-blue thing.) As you may guess, the teleporter who escaped is the one behind it. He's pissed at her for screwing up his job, so he decides to screw with hers for a bit. He already has a stealth suit (Invisibility), so he dons that and practices short-range teleports until he can do them without detection (Teleport with Invisible Power Effects), if he doesn't already have that power. He also practices creating small teleportals to send attacks directed at him elsewhere (Reflection at Any Target). Then he finds out who is about to pull a job in the campaign city and tags along while invisible. As soon as she's winding up to attack, he teleports to impose himself in the way, and tries to redirect it at one of her friends, or someone else who wouldn't take kindly to it, or perhaps at a different villan that he just doesn't like. If he misses the Reflection roll and is paralyzed himself, the safe-house teleport kicks in (the FZZ-ZOT noted above). After a time or two doing this, the villain realizes that he can make money by hiring himself out to villains as their "safety net." That's going to be his undoing, because now somebody else will know he's doing it. And if Mental Ninja can figure out who's behind what's going on, she can figure out a way to stop him.

Alternately, you could run the players as VIPER agents, with them probably being pretty effective. (Players tend to be able to eke out a victory despite the odds.) Make them an elite team, with a distinct name (like the Python Fangs). Not a long-term campaign, but long enough to give them a good feel for the characters, maybe give you (the GM) a few insights into possible agent tactics and schemes. Then run a Champions game, and early on have the heroes run up against their agent characters. Maybe offer each player the chance to pick whether he wants to run his VIPER agent or his superhero in the fight. Or have them run both, if you can trust your players to do a fair job of it.

I'll admit, I learned early that my players would rather their characters die in battle than let themselves get captured. Doesn't matter whether or not it's in genre. They. Just. Won't. Do. It. So I try to avoid capture scenarios like the plague, unless I clear it with the player first. That said, if a player does agree to play along, it usually works well. I had one adventure where the PC was captured and replaced by Doppleganger. I asked the player if he'd mind playing Doppelganger for a week, and that he was free to make as many verbal slips as he wanted to give the other players clues that something was wrong. It took the other players for-freaking-ever to figure out that something was up, and that was with the player dropping nearly constant hints. He was frustrated enough that, when the PCs finally attacked Doppleganger, he volunteered to keep running Doppleganger and then used every trick at his disposal to nearly take them out. I had a player who wanted to take a hiatus from the game after his first kid was born, but didn't want to lose his character. So he was captured off-screen, and when he was ready to get back into the game months later, we ran his escape. If I get in the mood to have the PCs deal with deathtraps, I generally work them into a base break-in, so they're only technically very briefly captured.

{VIDEO} (link to video) {/VIDEO} but with square brackets instead of curvy brackets.

Not a tactic, per se, but just a suggestion when agents appear in-game: give a few of them distinct personalities. The players will have a lot more fun with them. One villain team had a pair of brothers (Phil and Tommy) working for them as agents. One was very book smart but lazy, the other very street smart but kept mis-pronouncing words and names, including the villains (Fracture instead of Fractal, Artificial instead of Artificer, etc.). The local PRIMUS base had an agent, Mac, who liked to tinker with stuff, modify his own blaster rifle or other gear for "more power!", etc. (Think Tim Taylor from the Home Improvement TV show both for personality and effects.) The PCs loved Mac, even when he had to toss his rifle aside because it was going into overload and was about to explode. During a fight with the Foxbat Five, one hero had disarmed Foxbat and actually tossed the Ping Pong Ball Gun to Mac to use during the fight. When the heroes are sneaking into the VIPER Nest, let them overhear a pair of male agents comparing the various... attributes of superheroines (including one of the PCs) or joking about a PC hero's possible choices in partners. And there's no reason you can't flip that idea on its head and have some female agents rating the male heroes' "spandex factor," speculating on a PC hero's fetishes, or getting catty about a PC superheroine's costume. Even something as mundane as agents discussing their criminal agency's dental plan and retirement investment options can be entertaining. The players will bring it back up, guaranteed. ("Why don't we find out how good VIPER's medical and dental plans really are?")

The puns are mighty within this thread. Sir Ghoulahad is a thin, greyish-skinned alien with a sunken face and patchy hair on his head. His ears are slightly pointed, and his teeth are very pointed. Ghoulahad has discovered that humans are very tasty, and will often stop in the middle of a battle to snack on a fallen foe. He is also very protective of King Argther's mate, Guinefear. (Since she's not a knight, Guinefear isn't one of the Mid-Knights, but I wanted to get her in there anyway.)

So very much this, on both parts. As GM, it's hard not to knee-jerk put the NPCs into dangerous situations as if they were DNPCs, though I did have them on the periphery a lot (witness a robbery the PC finds out about after the fact, etc.). The fun part, to me, was a year or two into the game when cross-interaction started to happen -- PCs would meet and become friends with someone else's NPC. Or the PCs interact with a "friend-of-a-friend" NPC. You're right, it really does make the game world more real. For example, Serendipity (in her secret ID) was dating a real estate mogul named Aidan. He had a personal assistant (Margaret) whom Serendipity would frequently talk to. (In effect, Aidan was Serendipity's NPC, and Margaret was Aidan's NPC.) At one point, Sentinel (another heroine PC) and Serendipity, both in their secret IDs, took Margaret out for a spa day. And later in the campaign Serendipity (a small business owner) helped Margaret set up her own secretarial temp agency. Excellent idea about the Contacts. In my new game I'm giving each hero 5 extra points specifically to put into a Contact.

I don't tend to specifically "target" a Limitation (whether a Focus, Limited, etc.) unless it hasn't come into play on its own during a reasonable number of prior adventures. One PC in a past campaign had the ability to "power up" his SPD but only 4 times a day for a Turn duration. However, since Champions combats don't tend to happen multiple times a day and rarely last more than a few Turns in my games, it didn't come into play on its own. So eventually I designed an adventure that culminated in a series of at least 5 separate combats. After the third combat, he figured out what I was up to and reluctantly stayed powered down for the next combat. And you've never heard a player complain so much.

A final note: In my previous Champions campaign, and also in my upcoming campaign, I've asked the players to each provide up to 5 NPCs (Note: not DNPCs) -- just a name, who they are and how they're connected to the PC, to round out their world. Family, friends, classmates/coworkers, etc., for which I give the PC +1 bonus point per NPC provided. I promise not to turn them into DNPCs, never use them as hostages or what-not, but at least one NPC for each PC usually puts in at least a token appearance each session. Sometimes they provide helpful info, other times not. (One heroine's NPC mom saw a supervillain rob a bank, a coworker NPC might complain about the PC's actions the day before not knowing he's actually talking to the hero in secret ID, etc.) I've found they add a lot of color to the world, even if their entire appearance consists of stuff like "While you were fighting Lady MacDeath, your sister called and left a voicemail - she has four tickets to see Hamlet next week and is inviting you and your new girlfriend to join her and her husband."

Regarding Disadvantages and Storyline (and keeping in mind I haven't run in 6th yet), I tended to sketch out the main plot for an evening, then rolled all the Disads for all the player characters and NPCs involved. Even had a program (in Access, along with my speedsheet program) which rolled for all the PCs and spit out a report, including what the die roll was. Then I would look at all of them together and see if there's any pattern that would either fit in well with the main plot, or would run counter to it. Often, I'd drop a Disad or two that didn't fit with the rest. And if the roll for a disad was incredibly low, I'd make sure that one happened and often tried to increase how much of a PITA that would be for the player. And if the Disads rolled seemed to run counter to the main plot, and more to the point if the Disads fit together well, I would occasionally change the main plot to fit the Disads rolled. For instance, let's say the plot is for VIPER to steal the Master Mystic MacGuffin from a local museum and use it to de-power one of the heroes. And for the hero team, two of them (including the to-be-depowered hero, aka TBD Hero) are college students and their Secret Identity rolled low enough to mean it makes an appearance for both of them. Not only that, but TBD Hero's Hunted by Utility (11-) rolled a 4, and Hero #3's DNPC: Uncle Brad (11-) rolled a 10. And to round it all out, Utility's Hunted by PRIMUS kicks in. Well, now it looks like the MacGuffin museum is on the college campus, and the attack will happen while the two heroes (in SID, of course) are nearby with a bunch of friends. Furthermore, VIPER is going to pay Utility to help get TBD Hero where they want him to use the MacGuffin. TBD Hero might even notice Utility on campus after the theft, always when TBD Hero isn't in a position to easily chase after him (like he's in class, or has been waiting in line at the college office for over an hour to get a problem with his tuition fixed) and nowhere near the museum. And all the heroes notice PRIMUS nosing around the campus, in places that have nothing to do with the MacGuffin theft. But what about Uncle Brad, you ask? I'd either drop him from appearing at all this adventure (but make a note to work him into the next adventure), or make his appearance this adventure something minor.

You can always Delete your vote and re-vote. Which is what I did.

I'm open to suggestions for changes or improvements. I'm about to start a new Champions campaign after a 5-year hiatus, so I'm sure I'll need to run groups of agents again.

Here's what I wrote up for Mass Combats. Not everything was tested extensively, but the bulk of it worked okay for me. MassCombat.pdf

Many years ago, while running a Campions campaign in 5th Edition rules, I wrote up some Mass Combat rules to keep from dragging out combat. I considered a group of similarly-trained and similarly-equipped agents as a single "character" with higher STUN, BODY, OCV, and Damage than any one given agent, and lower DCV the larger the group. The amount of those increases (or decreases) depended on the number of agents making up that group. So if you took a group of VIPER agents, each with 25 STUN, 10 BODY, 5 OCV (with levels), 4 DCV, and 8d6 EB, a five-man squad "character" would have 45 STUN, 16 BODY, 7 OCV, 3 DCV and do 10d6 damage. If the hero is using individual-target attacks, his damage was reduced somewhat against the group "character", but AOEs did full damage even if part of the group was technically outside the area. And as the group lost STUN, individual members would fall unconscious or injured, and the OCV and damage done per attack would drop. For any given group, I'd also allow one individual to act separately (sometimes for better effect, sometimes not). So a squad might have their grenadier throw a flash grenade, then everybody else fires their blasters at the blinded hero. This allowed the agents to be semi-tactically minded, and also allowed for some interesting or amusing individual action. With creative description of combat effects, everybody still gets the gist of what's happening, even though you're only making a few attack rolls. (For instance, a GM might describe three separate group "character" attacks as: "VIPER's Alpha squad agents pepper MegaMan with blaster fire from the left side of the room, doing a total of 38 STUN and 12 BODY against his defenses. As soon as Alpha squad pops up, the governors bodyguards open up on them with their pistols, taking down two of the Goons in Green. Meanwhile, Bravo squad behind the overturned buffet table tries to take down Lightning Lass, Liberty Lad, and the bodyguards by tossing stun gas grenades all around them, doing a total of 20 STUN NND to all of them, as well as the governor. And Mega Man's x-ray vision allows him to see one member of Bravo squad is crawling around the right side of the room, gas mask on and laser pistol in hand -- it looks like he's heading for the governor." It really sped up combat a lot, and allowed me to run a mass VIPER attack on the local PRIMUS base (multiple agent squads on both sides, plus the PC heroes) in a relatively short amount of time. It makes a group of agents something to be respected, at least until a hero has whittled it down with an attack or two.

FranklinStein's Mobster is a literally put-together creature, but from the parts of various Mafiosos killed by a dark vigilante (Killer Krane) last October. Everybody hoped the vigilante's attack had decimated the city's organized crime leadership, but they didn't count on Mob doctor Franklin Steinberg's eccentric medical skills and refusal to accept defeat in the face of death. Since FM is made up of members of all of the major crime families, FM has been able to able to unite them and make them even more effective than before. Unfortunately, it takes a full year to charge FM up to his full power, so he's really only able to be truly active and personally cause mayhem in late October. Until then, he rules his criminal empire from his wheelchair in his mansion in the glitzy part of town.

Actually, before reading the quoted post, I was thinking that an option that was missing from the poll was a collection of small unrelated one-off adventures. Which poll options are you considering as one-off adventures?

(Deleted - posted too late.)

Not a quote, but this seemed the most appropriate place to share it. A few days back I took my dad back to the independent / assisted living place where he lives, and on my way out saw a magazine rack. They had the AARP magazine on it, directly in front of another magazine whose title started with "L" but the rest of the word was hidden by the AARP magazine. And from a distance, the two magazines looked like one, with the title "LAARP." All the way home, my gamer mind was imagining these men and women in their 70s, 80s, and 90s zipping around in wheelchairs and walkers, dueling with three-pronged canes while playing a live-action role playing game. That's how I want to spend my declining years.

"Campaign? Is it a Champions campaign? I haven't been in a good Champions game in a while! Say, let me tell you ALL about my favorite character..."

The Scots vote instead to get involved in a land war in Asia. (Inconceivable!) NT: The first three new laws (one per poster, please) to be implemented if Scotland does indeed decide to go independant.

His plans start actually making sense. (Okay, I kid, there's not enough coffee in the world to do that...)

(Taking "being a gamer" as a faith) They insist there is no such thing as a gamer girl, and I know several personally.