I’m coming up on my 10th session of my game, and I had an idea for how to start it.
I’m coming up on my 10th session of my game, and I had an idea for how to start it. So, my players seem to greatly enjoy the more personally focused stuff much more than the standard superhero antics. When I introduce traditional super fights, they tend to sort of get glossed over to move on to the things that drive the characters. The conflicts that involve those things obviously get more love, but I found that the big team fights tend to go very fast.
In my last session, a threat that the PCs have been pursuing since the beginning of the game (and strengthening with research and bad rolls), finally got a chance to make a move, and the short term result is that the major super team, the Guardians, have been taken out of commission for a week. As a result, the kids are being forced to step up and handle the Guardians threats for a week.
Now, building an arc for them and getting thought it would probably not work, with their greater enjoyment of the more personal stories going on. This would clearly be a side-quest rather than the focus of the game. If I made it the focus of the whole session, it wouldn’t go quite as well. So I have an idea of what to do for this to give them that story but move them on to the stuff they’re more invested in fairly quickly.
My idea is to start the session at the end of the traditional 6 issue comic book arc of the characters dealing with this threat. I will define one or two supervillains who are taking advantage of the situation of downed Guardians. At the start of the session, the PCs have just turned that corner from being out-gunned/out-maneuvered and have just turned the tables. The start will be the end of that arc, so to speak.
My current plan is to have the primary foe be the nemesis of the Legacy, with a second they’ve teamed up with, that I might leave up to the PCs to define. Might even add another, to make a more Injustice League type group.
I intend to have the players define the way the whole arc happened. I was thinking of asking questions much like the “When the team first got together” with questions about the enemy’s plans, how the enemy got the upper hand, how the PCs turned the tables, etc. If I ask them to build the story, they will naturally be more invested in it, we can tie the enemies into their stories in their own ways, and I think it’ll be neat. Even if it’s a one-time thing, I think it’s an experiment worth trying.
I would appreciate any suggestions as to questions to ask, and how to approach them. Do I ask specific questions of each playbook, like the team origin questions? Do I just prepare a list of questions that I throw out and let them hash them out one at a time?
Please note that while this might seem to circumvent the general view of how the game plays out, I know my players and what they enjoy. Also, this is the session that the Doomed is likely to face the doom on their own terms, but I don’t just want to drop the Week Without Guardians idea for that story. So trying to highlight the world part quickly to move towards the personal as soon as possible.
