Fledgling GM Seeks Help

[Supabeasto]

Buenos Dias.

 

This will be my second time trying to run a Champions game, but I'm at a bit of a loss as far as knowing what to prepare. I've read a lot of fun stories here, and ideally I'd like to be able to emulate them.....I just don't know how ( )

 

My last campaign went fairly well, but things got a bit out of hand fairly early on (mainly due to me not doing my due diligence in checking my player's character's for balance). The campaign then pretty much fell apart when half the group ended up dropping out.

 

But now I'm back! With a new group and a hunger for more Champions. For this campaign, I've more or less replaced UNTIL (though pretty much in name only) with the Hero Association from the anime/manga "One Punch Man". I've also implemented a Hero Class system from said anime (basically just power level / access guidelines).

 

To help my players I put together a players guide that is an amalgamation of a wonderful guide I had found on here, tidbits from the HERO and Champions Complete books, and some other stuff.

 

We'll be using 6th Edition, starting at 200pts.

 

With that out of the way, my question to you fine folk: Where do I start?

 

I've read the Champions Universe book multiple times, as well as Champions Complete, Dark Champions, and the HERO book. I've looked at the plot seeds and instant plot generator, but for some reason it's not really clicking for me. I can't even decide what city to start them in.... (I've picked up the books for Millenium City, Vibora Bay, San Angelo, and even Bay City from Champ: New Millenium).

 

So far I've come up with a few basic scenarios for like a house fire, a small bank robbery, and stuff of that nature, but overall I just feel like I'm super underprepared.

 

Anybody got some ideas for a struggling newbie?

 

 

[TheQuestionMan]

What is the inspiration for the GM?

 

Campaign Setting Feel? Superhero meets Anime?

 

What kind of Superhero game do the Players want to play in? My PC's always shape the Campaign?

 

Character Creation Guidelines must be clearly thought out in advance?

 

MOST IMPORTANT! Character Creation should be done as a GROUP!

 

Champions, for Hero System 5th Edition is highly recommended!

 

Villainy Amok for Hero Games for Champions, Hero System 5th Edition is a great resource for GM's

 

Champions Complete 6th Edition for Champions. Checkout Starting Levels. 200 pt characters are nit going to be LOW POWERED! " The Power Pack kicked our butts!"

[Supabeasto]

 

What is the inspiration for the GM?

At this point, kind of everything hehe. Stories I've read on these forums, old cartoons like X-Men and Batman animated series, SWAT Kats, a bunch of comics I've read over the years, and maybe a bit of inspiration from the Champions Online and City of Heroes MMOs.

 

Campaign Setting Feel? Superhero meets Anime?

Aside from using the anime to create a Hero Association and Classes (read: license), there isn't much of an anime feel. From what I've gathered from my players, we'll most likely be going with a typical superhero feel, if maybe just a bit cartoony.

 

What kind of Superhero game do the Players want to play in? My PC's always shape the Campaign?

Two of my players are new to tabletop gaming in general and were a bit confused by this type of question when I asked. That said, I figured I'd be going with a more episodic approach as the players gain XP and "climb the ranks".

 

Character Creation Guidelines must be clearly thought out in advance?

At this point I wouldn't say clearly, but at least a vague idea of what their character growth can be expected to look like. For instance, one player is looking to become a full-fledged speedster, another is looking at teleportation based abilities, and another is just looking to make a luchador.

 

MOST IMPORTANT! Character Creation should be done as a GROUP!

I....have not done this D:

I stressed the importance of teamwork in the guide, and I set up a group on Facebook for everyone to communicate and share ideas. However, they've been creating their characters individually.

 

Champions, for Hero System 5th Edition is highly recommended!

Hehe, unfortunately, all the books I've bought have been 6th edition with the exception of a couple source books from 5th.

 

Villainy Amok for Hero Games for Champions, Hero System 5th Edition is a great resource for GM's

Thank you, I'll look into this!

 

Champions Complete 6th Edition for Champions. Checkout Starting Levels. 200 pt characters are nit going to be LOW POWERED!

I was actually using the points guidelines from CC, as well as a few recommendations from the Champions, and 6E books. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the anime at all, but Class C heroes are usually street avenger type heroes along the lines of Daredevil, Punisher, Kick Ass, etc, though usually with a minor gimmick power. So far my players' character I have looked over look to be on par with this. Almost like a Hudson City Powers campaign from Dark Champions: The Animated Series. My intentions here are to start them off at a fairly low power level, then have them grow into the powerful badasses, akin to a D&D campaign where players go from level 1 to 20.

[bigdamnhero]

Welcome!

 

What is the inspiration for the GM?

At this point, kind of everything hehe.

Heh, I get you. But the more you can narrow this down, the better things will come into focus. What works in a DC Animated Universe-esque campaign won't work in a DC Movie Snyderverse-esque game, let alone a Silver Age Batman-esque game. Put another way: nothing ruins a superhero game sooner than half the players thinking they're in Chris Reeves' Superman and the other half thinking they're in Henry Cavill's Superman. Relating everything in terms of superhero movies is probably the easiest way to have this discussion: Do we want to play The Avengers? Or The Incredibles? Or Big Hero 6? All great options, BTW, no bad choices. But trying to fit everything into one campaign leads to player frustration and GM madness.

 

MOST IMPORTANT! Character Creation should be done as a GROUP!

I second this motion. With D&D, if you know this player wants to play a rogue and that player wants to play a paladin, you already have a decent idea of how the characters relate to one another, both in combat and as individuals; if you know you have 3 healers but no front-line fighters, then the party is unbalanced; etc. None of those conventions/cliches apply to Champions (thankfully IMO!), so figuring out how and why the team fits together requires a bit more conversation. Sit everybody down; have the "What flavor of superheroes do we want to play?" conversation (above); establish the character creation guidelines, power levels etc; and then discuss how the PCs fit together, both in terms of power sets and how they relate together as individuals. A lot of potential problems can be headed off here.

 

Champions, for Hero System 5th Edition is highly recommended!

Hehe, unfortunately, all the books I've bought have been 6th edition with the exception of a couple source books from 5th.

6th Edition Champions is nearly identical to the 5ed version. It goes into a lot more of the world-building and game-running advice than Champions Complete does.

 

I second the recommendation for Villainy Amok: lots of great material there, all easily updated to 6ed. Among other things, Villainy Amok covers a number of "standard" superhero plots like Bank Robbery, Alien Invasion, etc. I'd also suggest Champions Battlegrounds if you're looking for some nice pre-built adventures, which can be run individually or as part of an overall plot. The 3-volume Champions Villains books are full of pre-generated supervillains, which saves you the time of having to build your own.

 

Class C heroes are usually street avenger type heroes along the lines of Daredevil, Punisher, Kick Ass, etc, though usually with a minor gimmick power.

The type of character you describe typically start as Low-Powered Supers (300 points) at the very least; anyone trying to build Daredevil or Punisher on 200 points is going to be *highly* frustrated. Take a look at the sample characters in CC or CU for comparison; VIPER Agents are built on 200 points, and they're the kobolds of the Champions Universe.

 

The point guidelines in CC are suggested as different starting points for different types of campaigns, and aren't meant to be a "start here and level your way up" progression. If you want to play a heroic-level urban vigilantes game, that's fine. If you want to play superheroic level (even relatively low-powered ones), fine. But pick one; trying to mix the two is a challenge even for veteran GMs.

 

My intentions here are to start them off at a fairly low power level, then have them grow into the powerful badasses, akin to a D&D campaign where players go from level 1 to 20.

Ah, I think I see the disconnect. The idea that starting characters can barely handle kobolds and then grow exponentially into gods is another D&D convention that doesn't works well with either the Champions system or the superhero genre in general. For one thing, Champions isn't nearly as XP-driven as D&D games tend to be; Champions characters generally start out bad-ass, and get somewhat more bad-ass as they advance. For another thing, the conventions of the superhero genre don't generally work well when the heroes can't even stand up to a bunch of street thugs. You're also making your job as GM exponentially more difficult, since 99% of the pre-generated villains/adventures/etc are geared towards 400-point heroes, so you're going to have to build everything yourself or risk constantly overpowering your PCs.

 

My advice: Start everyone at 400 points. Run through a couple of the published adventures. Get used to the game, the system and the genre conventions. Give the players a taste of what it feels like to be a real superhero. (One of the very first Champions games I ran had a moment where a novice player threw herself on a hand grenade to save a group of civilians: "That's all the damage I take? Being a superhero rocks!") Once everyone has a feel for things, if everyone wants to start over as mooks and work their way up to heroes, you can always push the restart button; either new characters or as a prequel/secret origins version of the same characters.

[Tasha]

As for choosing a starting city. I would say to choose a RL city that you know and then add supers to the city. It's not too hard to take the organizations from Champs Universe, Bay City, San Angelo, or even Millennium City and transplant it to your own city. Also Players get a rush out of defending a place they have a connection to.

[TheQuestionMan]

Hudson City and Vibora Bay make good Resources too!

[rjd59]

Even though its written for Dark Champions, I have based my campaign in Hudson City. I left everything as written, and just added real supers. Gives the supers a real world feel behind them. However, they are usually too busy with the bigger bad-guys to mess with the lower powered, that is usually left for the street level vigilantes, sometimes a super or two wind up involved with happenings in the city. Those times are when only one or two of the players can make a session.  

 

My group has travelled to most of the published cities at one time or another.

[Supabeasto]

Sit everybody down; have the "What flavor of superheroes do we want to play?" conversation (above); establish the character creation guidelines, power levels etc; and then discuss how the PCs fit together, both in terms of power sets and how they relate together as individuals.

I've actually taken this to heart already and schedule a character building / intro session on Thursday.

 

My advice: Start everyone at 400 points. Run through a couple of the published adventures. Get used to the game, the system and the genre conventions. Give the players a taste of what it feels like to be a real superhero.

I believe I will be following this closely, but not quite. I think I can still keep most of my original plans and start my players off at 300pts. I feel like I may still be in too much of a D&D mindset, but I can't help but feel like it's what I want to shoot for. This campaign isn't really intended to be a very long-term campaign. I've only been playing TTRPGs for a few years now, and the longest game we've managed to run was a 1.5 year Pathfinder campaign. I'm hoping I can be lucky enough to have to my campaign run for a year before switching systems (Given that most of my group is also new to TTRPGs and are eager to try different systems, the switch is inevitable).

 

As for choosing a starting city. I would say to choose a RL city that you know and then add supers to the city.

We're actually based out of Vegas, and as cool as I think it would be have Sin City be the campaign city, general consensus seems to be against it. My players hate it here

 

Hudson City and Vibora Bay make good Resources too!

Similarly, Hudson City is where our last campaign took place and has thus been vetoed as an option by the group. That doesn't mean I haven't already transplanted the Card Shark organization though, hehe. Right now Vibora Bay is my top contender, with Millennium City as my second choice.

 

 

Thank you all for the ideas! I'm using what I've learned so far and scheduling a short session on Thursday to get my bearings. Hopefully that will help and I will no longer feel like my constant worry will lead me to commit seppuku for disappointing my players >.>

[Ninja-Bear]

Or for fun, you could have a 200 pt agents go after a 400 pt villian ala Bank Robbery to get a feel of power levels.

[bluesguy]

First of all welcome to running Champions.  It can be a lot of fun.

 

Second you are getting some wonderful advice.

 

Let me add a couple of things.  When people are use to playing games where the object is to 'kill the bad guy' playing in a Champions game can be a difficult transition.  That is one of the things you need to work out with your players.  Some Champions games are very much like D&D when it comes to dealing with opponents - kill them.  Comic book examples are Wolverine, Punisher, and some others.

 

The other approach is the one you typically see with most superheroes they try not to kill the opponents.  That choice will drive a lot of decisions about the kind of characters and powers they have.

 

I am a big fan of using the actual place where the players/GM live if the city is big enough or a general location that people know that can be expanded to be big enough.  Vegas has so many excellent opportunities to have adventures.  You can get the published material and then 'cut and paste' it into Vegas as you need it. 

 

I think you should try building some characters at the point level you are thinking.  What you are going to find is that you make an interesting agent at 200 or 300 points but they are not superheroes (i.e. Agents of Shield - Coulson, May, Ward vs. Captain America/Iron Man/Spiderman etc)?  I would recommend that you go with 400 point characters but limit the number of starting points in powers and characteristics and talents.  That will encourage the players to get more skills and perks.

 

Then players can save up points for 'radiation accidents' where their powers are seriously boosted up.

[Christopher R Taylor]

In addition to the other tips:

 

1) ask them to build a life and character before the guy got superpowers.  What is he when he's not a hero?  What does she do when she doesn't wear that cape?  Its worth having them build a 50-100 point just regular person, then add the powers on once they have that done.  If you need to, give them free extra points that they can only on background and non-combat related stuff like professional skills, contacts, languages, etc.

2) Have them give you 2 NPCs important in their lives with at least a basic one paragraph sketch on who they are.  The girlfriend, the boss, the aunt may, the child, etc.  This gives you hooks for storylines and role playing.

3) Run a series of adventures enforcing the genre.  Have them save people, protect people, stop disasters, etc.  collapsing subways, fires, floods, etc.  You can throw in some bad guys such as looters or mafia taking advantage of the situation, but use the story to help players realize that they aren't playing a "kill the bad guy and loot them" game.

4) Try to work in at least one character's complication and back story into every adventure.  That NPC shows up, that hunted arrives, his fear of spiders comes up, the weakness to high energy fields arises.

 

 

Starting small and lower powered is a very, very good idea, in my opinion, for a starting game.  Don't throw superman at them, give them daredevil to play.  That way they can learn the system and learn to think creatively and as a hero before they get power.

[TheQuestionMan]

Allow tweakin characters inbetween adventures. Allowing the Player to adapt the chatacter to the rules, you campaign, and their perception of the character.

[Amorkca]

The game that I've been working on has the heroes starting with no powers, low stats and skills (125 pts max).  I have the way their powers will manifest planned out but am keeping that under wraps in case they start frequenting these forums...

[TheQuestionMan]

That only works if the players fully understand it from the beginning.

[Supabeasto]

When people are use to playing games where the object is to 'kill the bad guy' playing in a Champions game can be a difficult transition.

This is exactly what happened in the last game I tried running. My players went from anti-heroes to pretty much villains right off the bat. For my first session I tried running a slightly modified version of the "Road Kill" adventure.....my players ended up blowing up the bar and feeding both bad bad guys and civilians to their summoned plant monsters. The campaign then ended up becoming a Saints Row-esque city takeover.

 

Ask them to build a life and character before the guy got superpowers.

I'm not sure if you had a chance to check out the guide I wrote for my players (linked in the original post), but there's a whole section devoted to just that. So far it's gotten me some pretty great results. One of my players is a washed up star athlete who more or less burned all his bridges and is looking to start fresh. Another is a famous luchador who has his eyes set on the Oval Office.

 

Have them give you 2 NPCs important in their lives with at least a basic one paragraph sketch on who they are.

This is great and I'm totally doing this!

 

Run a series of adventures enforcing the genre.

This is pretty much my main plan and is actually one of the main focuses. The premise for my campaign is that the players are basically professional heroes, so saving people from disasters (both natural and supernatural) is actually within their job description.

 

Try to work in at least one character's complication and back story into every adventure.

I did a very bad job of this last time . That said, I now know a little more and will definitely be trying to do this.

 

Allow tweakin characters inbetween adventures

I was actually pretty unsure about how to approach this. In my last game, I allowed the players to tweak their characters in between sessions. For this game, I figured I would do the same, but I was thinking any big changes could be done in-game (similar to a Shadowrun game I was in where karma pretty much had to spent in game through RP).

[Tasha]

When people are use to playing games where the object is to 'kill the bad guy' playing in a Champions game can be a difficult transition.

This is exactly what happened in the last game I tried running. My players went from anti-heroes to pretty much villains right off the bat. For my first session I tried running a slightly modified version of the "Road Kill" adventure.....my players ended up blowing up the bar and feeding both bad bad guys and civilians to their summoned plant monsters. The campaign then ended up becoming a Saints Row-esque city takeover.

 

Ask them to build a life and character before the guy got superpowers.

I'm not sure if you had a chance to check out the guide I wrote for my players (linked in the original post), but there's a whole section devoted to just that. So far it's gotten me some pretty great results. One of my players is a washed up star athlete who more or less burned all his bridges and is looking to start fresh. Another is a famous luchador who has his eyes set on the Oval Office.

 

Have them give you 2 NPCs important in their lives with at least a basic one paragraph sketch on who they are.

This is great and I'm totally doing this!

 

Run a series of adventures enforcing the genre.

This is pretty much my main plan and is actually one of the main focuses. The premise for my campaign is that the players are basically professional heroes, so saving people from disasters (both natural and supernatural) is actually within their job description.

 

Try to work in at least one character's complication and back story into every adventure.

I did a very bad job of this last time . That said, I now know a little more and will definitely be trying to do this.

 

Allow tweakin characters inbetween adventures

I was actually pretty unsure about how to approach this. In my last game, I allowed the players to tweak their characters in between sessions. For this game, I figured I would do the same, but I was thinking any big changes could be done in-game (similar to a Shadowrun game I was in where karma pretty much had to spent in game through RP).

 

Two things you can do to stop the Murderhobo play. One is not allowing the PC's to use stuff they grab from opponents, unless they spend points. Two, make sure that everyone understands that Superhero characters have a limited form of "Code vs Killing" also that you want to run a game where the PCs are all good guys. Not anti heroes, but regular heroes.

 

For Tweaking, I allow players to tweak their characters for the first 2-3 sessions. This allows them to make sure that the character works how they envisioned. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

For Tweaking, I allow players to tweak their characters for the first 2-3 sessions. This allows them to make sure that the character works how they envisioned.

 

I'll even let someone junk a character entirely and build a new one, in the first couple sessions.  You have to make sure that Johnny Boresalot doesn't just do this to change characters over and over, of course.

[womble]

...300pts. I feel like I may still be in too much of a D&D mindset, but I can't help but feel like it's what I want to shoot for. This campaign isn't really intended to be a very long-term campaign. I've only been playing TTRPGs for a few years now, and the longest game we've managed to run was a 1.5 year Pathfinder campaign. I'm hoping I can be lucky enough to have to my campaign run for a year before switching systems...

This worries me some. 50 sessions (assuming you manage to average nearly once a week) won't put them much past the starting point for "Standard" Superheroes unless you wildly exceed the guidelines for XP awards, which has its own risks when everyone's learning the ropes of the system. Adding maybe 50% to the points of the heroes doesn't come close to replicating the progression in power level you'd get in a DnD game that ran for a similar number of sessions. Specifically, my worry is that the game won't match your expectations, or those of your players.

[Amorkca]

That only works if the players fully understand it from the beginning.

 

4 Players, two experienced with Champions and 2 Newbies.  Should be good, will be gearing the game to the newbies,,,

[TheDarkness]

This worries me some. 50 sessions (assuming you manage to average nearly once a week) won't put them much past the starting point for "Standard" Superheroes unless you wildly exceed the guidelines for XP awards, which has its own risks when everyone's learning the ropes of the system. Adding maybe 50% to the points of the heroes doesn't come close to replicating the progression in power level you'd get in a DnD game that ran for a similar number of sessions. Specifically, my worry is that the game won't match your expectations, or those of your players.

I think this is often more a problem if the players have an expectation of what, point-wise, represents a powerful super, which basically is just being used to the conventions of a system.

 

Without knowing what most players and judges of a particular RPG consider the upper end of a power at a certain point in a game, what one group may see as weak, one may see as strong. In one group, an 8d6 blast might, when it hits and rolls decently, be quite a potent blast. In another, 12d6. In another, 15d6. Yet, in each game, the effect of each may be the same.

 

More often than not, whether the gameplay is dynamic has a greater influence on how 'powerful' characters and villains feel than any specific number we can produce to define what is powerful. Sure, in a particular campaign, you could probably find what specific number that is, but once you compare it to another campaign, it may be totally different. The effect on game play could be the same.

 

Definitely, if people are using worlds and supplements that are premade, there will be a specific 'convention' on what is a powerful blast or point expenditure, and players will acclimate to that relative strength value.

 

Otherwise, it is entirely relative. If an 8d6 blast is adequate in one game, and 12d6 is adequate in another, the 12d6 is not an 'advanced' form of the blast, it is probably getting a similar effect, just dealing with more points of ED. They are still producing the same effect.

 

I would think that, if the game starts at a higher value, and the players get a years worth of experience, or at the lower lever(I believe 300 was the number?), and gets a years worth of experience, the lower level characters will often have the same degree of gains, which will still seem like a substantial difference, IMO.

 

What we define as a weak and strong attack may often be the conventions we accept, but what makes it seem weak or strong in-game is the in game-effect. We can say "8d6 blast, pshaw!" because our game has 12d6 as the conventional go-to number, but if, in one game, the 8d6 puts down a wider variety of opponents than the 12d6 in its game, then as far as game feel will go, the 8d6 is effectively more powerful in its game, and will feel that way. The 12d6 might even feel like the been there done that blast.

 

In AD & D, I often found that the gameplay at levels 4-7 was far more dynamic than at either the lower levels, or, especially, the higher levels.

 

So, I think most players will care little about the end numbers if the gameplay is dynamic, and if the gameplay feels like they have progressed and have a dangerous array of powers from when they started, they will be more focused on that than on whether they've reached the 12d6 number that they think of as powerful in other campaigns.

 

I only used blast as an example for simplicity's sake.

 

In short, all power in Champions is relative to other things that tend to hedge its power, and as points go up, not only do the powers go up, but the things that limit those power's effects. Now, some builds and such give that relative value certain stability, so if you want to melt a tank, as long as you use the stats from the book, then there is a value that must be reached. But under that upper end, there is a huge amount of variance. The strength of an unpowered costumed vigilante in a supers game varies hugely from one group's game to another's, for example.

[assault]

Now, some builds and such give that relative value certain stability, so if you want to melt a tank, as long as you use the stats from the book, then there is a value that must be reached. But under that upper end, there is a huge amount of variance. The strength of an unpowered costumed vigilante in a supers game varies hugely from one group's game to another's, for example.

 

I see two main elements to how powerful a character is.

 

One is, quite simply, how they fare in combat. Strangely enough, the comparison here is not so much with their opponents, but with their teammates. This is why (for example) 8d6 or 12d6 doesn't really matter, as long as it is consistent within the campaign.

 

The other aspect is how a character interacts with the surrounding environment. Can the character destroy a tank? Is the character faster than a fighter jet? Should they be? How do they compare with normals? Can they be outfought by a street thug? A police officer? A soldier? An ultra-elite special forces type? A group of any of these? Etc.

 

This is possibly as close to an objective measure of power there is in this extremely subjective and relative game. There are BtB stats for all of these things.

 

Except... they aren't necessarily well balanced against each other, and it's not cheap to achieve many quite reasonable effects. This is to an extent that it's practically impossible to do a lot of things within starting point totals.

 

There are ways around this, but they usually involve optional rules and/or house rules - and these should be avoided like the plague by new players.

 

(Personally, I tend to use the figures from earlier editions of the rules, where the world isn't quite as tough as in the current version. It doesn't solve the problem, but it narrows the gap.But of course this only works because I own earlier editions of the rules.)

[TheDarkness]

I see two main elements to how powerful a character is.

 

One is, quite simply, how they fare in combat. Strangely enough, the comparison here is not so much with their opponents, but with their teammates. This is why (for example) 8d6 or 12d6 doesn't really matter, as long as it is consistent within the campaign.

 

The other aspect is how a character interacts with the surrounding environment. Can the character destroy a tank? Is the character faster than a fighter jet? Should they be? How do they compare with normals? Can they be outfought by a street thug? A police officer? A soldier? An ultra-elite special forces type? A group of any of these? Etc.

 

This is possibly as close to an objective measure of power there is in this extremely subjective and relative game. There are BtB stats for all of these things.

 

Except... they aren't necessarily well balanced against each other, and it's not cheap to achieve many quite reasonable effects. This is to an extent that it's practically impossible to do a lot of things within starting point totals.

 

There are ways around this, but they usually involve optional rules and/or house rules - and these should be avoided like the plague by new players.

 

(Personally, I tend to use the figures from earlier editions of the rules, where the world isn't quite as tough as in the current version. It doesn't solve the problem, but it narrows the gap.But of course this only works because I own earlier editions of the rules.)

Totally with you here. Especially that last part. I've just started playing Champions again after a thirty year hiatus, and that's the first thing I noticed: the values are all quite a bit higher, even for many rank and file normals.

 

I'd be curious some of the difficult things to do within starting values, as someone who just started up again. I was quite young when last I played, and probably underutilized many aspects of the system that I'm now getting used to.

 

As an aside, I think one way around the problems for the GM getting them to a certain level in a year could be mitigated by having there be an interlude at some later point. Maybe three quarters of the year through, after the characters have had the chance to slowly build up, and have the attachment to their characters grow(and their character concept develop), have a point that represents a passage of time in which they were doing epic things that lead into the end part of the campaign. Give them X number of points that will leave them close enough to the goal ending point total for where there characters are to get that they can get there with the remaining time.

 

That way, the GM gets to start at the level chosen, the development gets to be fairly natural, and the characters still end up at the level of superhero the campaign calls for them to end at.

[starblaze]

Sit everybody down; have the "What flavor of superheroes do we want to play?" conversation (above); establish the character creation guidelines, power levels etc; and then discuss how the PCs fit together, both in terms of power sets and how they relate together as individuals.

I've actually taken this to heart already and schedule a character building / intro session on Thursday.

 

My advice: Start everyone at 400 points. Run through a couple of the published adventures. Get used to the game, the system and the genre conventions. Give the players a taste of what it feels like to be a real superhero.

I believe I will be following this closely, but not quite. I think I can still keep most of my original plans and start my players off at 300pts. I feel like I may still be in too much of a D&D mindset, but I can't help but feel like it's what I want to shoot for. This campaign isn't really intended to be a very long-term campaign. I've only been playing TTRPGs for a few years now, and the longest game we've managed to run was a 1.5 year Pathfinder campaign. I'm hoping I can be lucky enough to have to my campaign run for a year before switching systems (Given that most of my group is also new to TTRPGs and are eager to try different systems, the switch is inevitable).

 

As for choosing a starting city. I would say to choose a RL city that you know and then add supers to the city.

We're actually based out of Vegas, and as cool as I think it would be have Sin City be the campaign city, general consensus seems to be against it. My players hate it here

 

Hudson City and Vibora Bay make good Resources too!

Similarly, Hudson City is where our last campaign took place and has thus been vetoed as an option by the group. That doesn't mean I haven't already transplanted the Card Shark organization though, hehe. Right now Vibora Bay is my top contender, with Millennium City as my second choice.

 

 

Thank you all for the ideas! I'm using what I've learned so far and scheduling a short session on Thursday to get my bearings. Hopefully that will help and I will no longer feel like my constant worry will lead me to commit seppuku for disappointing my players >.>

 

If they hate Vegas then destroying in superhero fights might be really fun!

[bigdamnhero]

Two things you can do to stop the Murderhobo play. One is not allowing the PC's to use stuff they grab from opponents, unless they spend points. Two, make sure that everyone understands that Superhero characters have a limited form of "Code vs Killing" also that you want to run a game where the PCs are all good guys. Not anti heroes, but regular heroes.

Right. Too many D&D games reward players for being bad (loot, gear, etc) while penalizing them for being good (betrayals, everyone takes advantage of you, etc.) So it's "simply" a matter of reversing the incentives. But it's better if you all discuss it up front - otherwise they're going to get frustrated fast.

[Supabeasto]

As an aside, I think one way around the problems for the GM getting them to a certain level in a year could be mitigated by having there be an interlude at some later point. Maybe three quarters of the year through, after the characters have had the chance to slowly build up, and have the attachment to their characters grow(and their character concept develop), have a point that represents a passage of time in which they were doing epic things that lead into the end part of the campaign. Give them X number of points that will leave them close enough to the goal ending point total for where there characters are to get that they can get there with the remaining time.

 

That way, the GM gets to start at the level chosen, the development gets to be fairly natural, and the characters still end up at the level of superhero the campaign calls for them to end at.

 

This right here is basically what I had in mind. My general idea was to have them handle various scenarios session-to-session, with an occasional "big event" every few months or so that would give them a boost. That, combined with a wee bit of time passage, is how I figure my players could make big advancements.

 

Other than that, I actually ended up using the Same Page Tool at my intro session last night and set the expectation that kills do not necessarily equal XP, and that XP gain will be rather slow. I have the advantage of my players consisting of 2 players new to TTRPGs (so no deeply ingrained murder hobo tendencies...yet), a very understanding former GM, and 2 experienced players from my last run.

 

Also, aside from XP per session, I figured I would use a variation of the resource points rules from the APG. Would anyone mind taking a look? Bad or good idea? Link to page.