I originally posted this on my RPG blog, but I also wanted to share this with the Hero community at large.
The "Dark Champions" board seemed the best fit for this. If a moderator disagrees, please move this to the proper place. :-)
How I Ran a "Heroes"-like Hero Campaign
After watching the first two(-ish) seasons of NBC's "Heroes" with my wife, and chatting about characters and aspects of the show with her and my friends, I thought it might be interesting to run a "Heroes"-like RPG campaign.
I say "Heroes"-like because I didn't plan (or want) to run the game in the "Heroes" universe. Rather, I was intrigued by what I saw as the premise for the show: normal people with normal lives suddenly begin manifesting supernatural powers of various sorts. My campaign would explore how those people lived, how they kept their secret (if they did), how they used and abused their powers, and how movers and shakers of the world around them tried to use and abuse their powers. I called the campaign "Normal Heroes".
I decided to use Normal Heroes as my first experience running the Hero System (5th edition). One of my players, James Salyers, has many years of experience running and playing Hero System, and he helped me a lot in setting up the campaign, and in running it once the campaign got underway.
Normal People with Normal Lives...
I had my players create PC's with 50 base points and a maximum of 50 points from disadvantages. I also applied the Normal Characteristic Maxima rule.
My goal was to have the PC's be "mostly normal" Hero System characters. They would be "just folks", though maybe a bit ahead of the curve in terms of physical and mental attributes. Guns and knives would scare them because guns and knives could kill them.
In the same vein, most of the people the PC's would interact with would be "mostly normal". If the PC's weren't careful with their powers, they could kill normal people, almost without thinking about it, maybe even by accident.
Manifesting Supernatural Powers...
I let the players choose the general nature of their power or powers. They would describe their power in 2-3 sentences, and describe how/when the power began manifesting.
Then I took their descriptions and created a set of Hero System powers for them. I used "No Conscious Control" at both the -1 and -2 levels and an "Unaccustomed to Powers" disadvantage to help keep the point costs to 65 points to start out with.
The Unaccustomed to Powers disad forced the PC's to make an EGO roll before they could consciously use their powers. The No Conscious Control modifier was intended to make the outcome of using their powers uncertain, maybe even dangerous.
I only let the players know of about 1/3 to 1/2 of their powers. My plan was to let them discover those other powers within the game, when doing so would be dramatic.
Introducing the Gallo-Rose Society
Finally, as a mechanism for bringing the PC's together to form at least a loose "adventuring party", I created the Gallo-Rose Society.
The Gallo-Rose Society is a secret, though generally lawful and good, society of people like the PC's who have joined together to help each other out--and sometimes to help society at large. The Society noticed the PC's and invited them to join just before the campaign began.
I ran two overlapping, simultaneous campaigns within this framework. Here's a brief "post-mortem" of what went right and what went wrong.
What Went Right
1. Players and GM both had fun. Or seemed to. :-)
2. The game achieved a "Heroes"-like feel. Through interaction with the PC's families and co-workers, and interaction with the trappings of modern life (law enforcement, soup kitchens, school, etc), combined with criminal elements and other superpowered characters and organizations--and through the course of multiple, simultaneous, non-overlapping storylines--the campaign "felt" a lot like the TV show.
There was the very mundane (going to work at Best Buy) alongside the very unusual (stretching 20 feet to hit a biker with a gun). There were the temptations of power (punching the dazed thug with rock-hard fists) and repercussions (collapsing the thugs chest and lungs with a sickening crunch). There were kids with powers held incommunicado and exploited by large corporations. There was more going on than could ever be fully explored.
3. Gradual discovery of powers provided additional PC development. As the PC's used their powers and saw what they were capable of, and as they discovered new powers, they evolved in interesting ways.
One PC drove himself insane with guilt, while another became more and more ruthless. One PC manipulated people and events to better profit from what was happening around him, while another adopted an alternating policy of honesty and deception to explain how he was still alive after being shot at and blown up.
And one PC learned that it's best not give the GM the carte blanc opportunity presented by the simple phrase, "My PC has amnesia."
4. The GM learned how to run a campaign in the modern world. In my two decades of running RPG's, I've tended to avoid running games in the modern world--and in science fiction/future worlds. This campaign helped me expand my horizons. It also taught me a few things about running the Hero System (which I fully intend to run again). And it was also good practice in creating a campaign world from (almost) the ground up.
5. I have a new, ready-made campaign world. Even as I wrapped up my two "Normal Heroes" campaigns, I knew that I could easily revisit them. I have my campaign city, Rio Cruces, I have the Gallo-Rose Society, I have a lot of NPC's and situations and more, that I can pick up and use again.
What Went Wrong--or at least "Less Right"
1. Preparing the power frameworks of every PC was a lot of work. Especially since this was my first experience running Hero System. Fortunately, James helped out a lot. I used him as a sounding board for ideas and had him critique what I came up with for the other PC's.
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job creating the powers. I've played Hero System since 2006, so I wasn't a complete newb. Still, I ended up with a couple of power frameworks that weren't exactly ideal. One proved to be almost unstoppable. The other was very awkward to use (though still kinda cool, I think), with the added disadvantage of letting the PC be too passive.
2. Keeping track of the powers of each PC proved to be a lot of work. I made it a goal early on to introduce previously unknown powers once per session until the PC's knew all of what they were capable of (at least in general terms). And for the most part, that worked. But some powers didn't have easily available hooks to introduce them with (like immunity to disease). Once I completely dropped the ball and missed what would have been an excellent opportunity to introduce a new power (and instead ended up with a very dead PC). Soon after that, I let the players know the full extent of their powers (though still with some restrictions on use).
3. Even with the Gallo-Rose Society, there were a lot of totally separate storylines. I learned a valuable lesson. If you have a party of 4 PC's, and none of them are in the same place at the same time doing essentially the same thing, you don't need merely twice as much material prepared. You need 4X (quadruple!) the material ready to go. Several times I wasn't as prepared as I would have liked.
Another related lesson I learned was that I needed an overarching storyline or theme for the campaign (Sylar provided this in the first season of "Heroes"). I didn't think I could create such a storyline before the players created their PC's, because until they created PC's I didn't have any idea of what story I should even try to tell. So it seemed to me (and maybe to the players), that I was floundering and thrashing about sometimes. This sense of floundering played a part in my decision to end both campaigns (combined with an urge to run D&D in the Iron Kingdoms again), though, as I said above, I fully intend to run a Normal Heroes campaign again.
Conclusion
I'm posting this write-up for a couple of reasons. First, I tend to write post-mortems of everything I do, once it's over. Why break a useful habit? :-)
Second, I wanted to give my players a chance to post their own impressions of the campaign and how it went. Maybe even provide some advice for how it might be done better in the future.
Third, when I first started planning this campaign, I looked through the Hero System forums for advice and ideas. And didn't find much. There was an incredibly long forum thread about the show "Heroes" (mostly chatter about plotlines and characters), but very little about using the Hero System to run a "Heroes"-like campaign. So I wanted to offer this as my contribution in that regard.
Have fun!
-David
PS If there are other forum threads about running a Heroes-like campaign, I'd love to get the links. Searching for "Heroes" on this board is...well...going to get you a lot of hits. ;-)
PPS For those who are curious, here are the session logs from one of the campaigns:
Normal Heroes Campaign Page
