Forums of the Megaverse®

Trying to come up with new ideas beyond "Bad Guy of the Week" and thought I throw this out there.

Being at the older end of the spectrum and having a fairly good memory as well as collection, I've been able to use old (80s/90s) comic books as inspiration/templates. I've had a lot of fun with Genosha, for example. Instead of the psychic lobotomies, I've created and version of the Wheel of Time collars.

I'm not a HUGE film buff, but I'm sure there are stories/scenarios out there that are ripe for my Heroes. Especially classic westerns. Magnificent Seven could give me a lot of mileage.

As a related well of ideas, I feel like going through all the Criminal Minds synopsis could give me ideas I never would come up with on my own. Those writers have issues.

What do you all think? Suggestions?

If you're going to do collars the 90's X-Men cartoon series did something similar. I'd make them have some sort of detonator if people try to mess with them but you're also going to need to find a way to protect them against someone with Machine Merge or Telemechanics or Electrokineses from messing with them.

Depending on how much time you have for the game you could also do an invasion type story line based off the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Dennis Lee, Cody Martin & Veronica Giguere with Space/Dimensional Nazi's invading Earth.


Daniel Stoker

I've said it before but if you have Nightbane books my favorite HU games are Nightlord invasion of HU Earth.

You take your heroes, the public loves them, local police cooperate with them and then after a dark day event they are being hunted by federal agents under the control of the Nightlords. I take all the stuff about the NSB(?) I think it is from Nightbane and put it all into SCRET.

You don't even have to have a Nightbane in the group, just a few characters with knowledge of magic will suffice. If you use Century Station there is even a great idea for a Nightlands version called Grim Gulf .

It is a lot of fun to see super beings throw down with packs of Hounds and Hunters and this is a game were Mega-Heroes would not be too overpowering.

My approach to this has been to build up the PC's supporting cast and their world. We often start new players and characters with a one on one session. I'm very interested in finding out who and what the character cares about. From there I find or create antagonists that have opposing goals. Once you've done this for 2 or 3 PCs you now have 3 major "Archvillains".
You can start these off as "Bad Guy of the week" but in the early sessions, PCs are not necessarily meeting their own direct opposite, and the "villains" are not necessarily working together.
In any case, the events of each session trickle down and affect how the other Antagonists proceed, as well as how the PCs interact with the world.

Mixed in with all that I pull elements from published adventures (Palladium and non-) and swap them around as needed.

For example:
I have a player who owns a "magic shop". And another player who went through a loose version of "Trouble Down the Line". The resolution to TDL has a direct effect on the Shop owner.

A group of my Mutant PCs destroyed a Medical Experimentation Lab that housed many Mutant Animals. (loosley based on Holy Talking Animals) In the ensuing chaos, many creatures escaped.
I also have a Mutant animal that's trying to pass as human. He's a park ranger, and an environmentalist. A large part of his sessions are keeping his identity hidden from his coworkers and love interest.
But now he he's dealing with this swarm of escaped mutant animals that are kind of camping out in his park Shrek-style. (not all of them are "Good") I have a Cyborg Character that's been hired to hunt these dangerous Mutant Animals now. This also creates opportunities for TerrorBears and TerroronRural Route, and Ceaser adventures.

Eventually these characters with differing power-sets and goals are going to meet (some already have). The next scenario I pick or write or modify or HLS is completely dependent on the actions of each session. So have a giant flowchart that I can pick and choose how and where to draw the next adventure from. This also allows me to be flexible with which players are available at any given time.
I have very broad plot-lines involving:
Mutants' Acceptance, Magical Society Goals, Political Machinations, Police Force, and a brewing Gang War (the mob bosses often recruit supers as enforcers). So all of these "plots" move forward or are influenced by the last and once I've noted how these plots are affected (or not) by each session, I can then put in place the next move. This can affect NPCs that are intimate with other players.

A week after each session I send out a "News Report" that kind of gives the PCs a sense of how the community is responding to their adventures. PCs also see glimpses of adventures that they weren't present for. Were they blamed for the attack on the "Completely Innocent Medical Facility"? Did someone see the Mutant Tiger Man Jump 50 feet and scale a tree when the PC thought he was alone? Why does this PC care that the Magic shop got burglarized? Should he care?

But they always have to deal with each other's decisions. And the next move from the villains are based on the outcome of the previous session.
Even if the next session is with a completely different hero or heroes.

It's all a little bit MCU/Acts of Vengeance/Butterfly effect.

my group has, when possible, all stuff in the same world. Sometimes we tie in characters to past events that happened elsegame. it adds a lot of flavor and life to the world.

zerombr wrote:my group has, when possible, all stuff in the same world. Sometimes we tie in characters to past events that happened elsegame. it adds a lot of flavor and life to the world.

I've never done this in Heroes but it does work wonders in Rifts. You get a real sense of scope and history when your players come across the consequences of other characters they have played.

Warshield73 wrote:

zerombr wrote:my group has, when possible, all stuff in the same world. Sometimes we tie in characters to past events that happened elsegame. it adds a lot of flavor and life to the world.

I've never done this in Heroes but it does work wonders in Rifts. You get a real sense of scope and history when your players come across the consequences of other characters they have played.

You know, this gives me an idea for the opposite of that.

Build a team. Not a whole team; maybe two-thirds of one, or four-fifths of one. But figure that the last teammate will be Mystically Bestowed as a spellcaster who starts play with a 15th-level spell of his or her choice, and figure that the choice is Dimensional Portal.

So the campaign could, right from the start, be that team’s journeys from world to world: exploring how key events played out differently in parallel timelines, possibly collecting exotic technology or helpful allies while learning valuable lessons, all with an eye toward returning home with exactly what it’ll take to avoid the sorts of ‘bad world’ outcomes they’ve just now witnessed first-hand.

The exiles! Palladium edition. Nice

Sounded vaguely Sliders-ish

zerombr wrote:The exiles! Palladium edition. Nice

Warshield73 wrote:Sounded vaguely Sliders-ish

And it’s vaguely RICK AND MORTY, with the portal gun; or DOCTOR WHO, back when he was stuck on modern Earth but could go sideways in time. But the big twist from those — and what I hope keeps this from running afoul of the ‘No Conversions’ rule — is that it’s all magic, not science: these are the adventures of a spellcaster who (a) may lack tech skills altogether, but who (b) draws on the power of eclipses and ley lines and animal sacrifices as he abracadabras his teammates from world to world with power on loan from the supernatural force he champions.

(That’s a sufficiently weird twist, right? A team of superhumans, each of whom may know a heck of a lot more about science and technology than the spellcaster who ferries them around by intoning some magic words while performing a ceremonial ritual?)

Team of World war 2 superheroes follow a superteam of nazi through a time gate to 1863 they need to stop them from changed the outcome of the Us Civil war.

You known a Superheroes in the Us,Civil war will be a Great setting,People born after 1840 develop powers at age 12 (No Mega or Major Powers) Super wokr for Both the Union and Confederacy,try to influence the outcome of Battles.

P.S Reason why thers no superled slaves revolt is the first super born in the South was in a rich famaly and can detect super and point out all the slaves who are one.

zerombr wrote:my group has, when possible, all stuff in the same world. Sometimes we tie in characters to past events that happened elsegame. it adds a lot of flavor and life to the world.

Yeah, I like running campaign worlds like that, where everything is fluid and in motion.

gaby wrote:You known a Superheroes in the Us,Civil war will be a Great setting,People born after 1840 develop powers at age 12 (No Mega or Major Powers) Super wokr for Both the Union and Confederacy,try to influence the outcome of Battles.

P.S Reason why thers no superled slaves revolt is the first super born in the South was in a rich famaly and can detect super and point out all the slaves who are one.

Slaves with powers trying to break free of their masters is a great theme. Then you add in vampire masters who feed on their slaves regularly. I like the idea of characters with powers hiding them from the government to avoid becoming slaves as well.

This talk of time travel to the past, and the campaign hook I mentioned above, gives me a quick story idea: again, the rest of the party simply fits a modern-day superhero game; but the last PC is, apparently, a time traveller sent from the future to — well, he’s not sure; his memory is scrambled, presumably as a result of the journey back through time.

But the idea is, that’s what explains his knowledge of future events via Clairvoyance: think of it less as a power, and more as him struggling to recall a detail that must’ve been impressed on him before he was sent back — on what must’ve been a desperate mission to avert some crucial event that’s coming; but, again, he has no clue what that is, since (a) he has no knowledge of his past beyond waking up next to some pieces of futuristic tech, sure as (b) there’s no record of him in any database.

And if there’s an easily-spotted pattern in the events he gets heads-ups about, it’s this: plug in any ‘superhero’ plot, with psychic glimpses of an upcoming heist they can foil or a killer they can stop — but make it so he ‘suddenly recalls’ an upcoming heist that’s like the Watergate break-in, or a killer gunning for heads of state at a treaty negotiation, and so on. So it’ll keep turning out to be something with big-picture ramifications for governments at an international level (and, if you like: the common factor in the political careers being saved? Some proactive goal those elected officials are all on the same page about. So if said politicians then wind up dying after all, our heroes will realize their only hope of success at the half-remembered mission from and for humanity’s future is them proactively spearheading the societal changes in question).

(And, if you like: those glimpse-of-the-future warnings of upcoming crimes, coming to mind like memories from a dream in time for our heroes to spectacularly avert them? And it’s always candidates for office who’d have run afoul of those kidnappers or murderers or burglars or whatever? The cause they have in common might involve bankrolling long-shot scientific research that could generally solve a lot of the world’s problems before it’s too late — and could, in particular, maybe get the world’s first time machine up and running...)

HisTyness wrote:Trying to come up with new ideas beyond "Bad Guy of the Week" and thought I throw this out there.

Being at the older end of the spectrum and having a fairly good memory as well as collection, I've been able to use old (80s/90s) comic books as inspiration/templates. I've had a lot of fun with Genosha, for example. Instead of the psychic lobotomies, I've created and version of the Wheel of Time collars.

I'm not a HUGE film buff, but I'm sure there are stories/scenarios out there that are ripe for my Heroes.

Astraea, the Greek goddess who left for the stars centuries ago, publicly returns to Earth in spectacular (and superluminal!) fashion, and promptly tasks this era’s great heroes with legendary quests per the days of myth: completing each task will lead to a boon for mankind; completing all of them will, she explains, bring back the Greek gods.

Between tasks, the PCs can research and debate whether bringing back the Greek gods is a smart idea. It should play out as a genuine question: they did some good, but they also did some harm; and maybe the least bad thing we can say of them is that they opposed and locked away the Titans, who (a) were much worse, and who (b) may now be on the brink of escaping, which is why Astraea returned from the stars...

...or she’s just a liar, and she’s doing all of this to free the Titans.

Regularguy wrote:

Warshield73 wrote:

zerombr wrote:my group has, when possible, all stuff in the same world. Sometimes we tie in characters to past events that happened elsegame. it adds a lot of flavor and life to the world.

I've never done this in Heroes but it does work wonders in Rifts. You get a real sense of scope and history when your players come across the consequences of other characters they have played.

You know, this gives me an idea for the opposite of that.

Build a team. Not a whole team; maybe two-thirds of one, or four-fifths of one. But figure that the last teammate will be Mystically Bestowed as a spellcaster who starts play with a 15th-level spell of his or her choice, and figure that the choice is Dimensional Portal.

So the campaign could, right from the start, be that team’s journeys from world to world: exploring how key events played out differently in parallel timelines, possibly collecting exotic technology or helpful allies while learning valuable lessons, all with an eye toward returning home with exactly what it’ll take to avoid the sorts of ‘bad world’ outcomes they’ve just now witnessed first-hand.

I have been running a cross dimensional campaign for my wife, where she is a godling who is slowly ramping up to full deity. It's proven to be interesting as she starts to "see" worlds she's already visited through the eyes of her new worshipers. She even has a priest (formerly a druid) following her around and writing up the "epistles" of her adventures. Worked this story line into the Minion War and it's worked really well.