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.

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.

Sharing for the sake of sharing.

Sharing for the sake of sharing.

Sharing for the sake of sharing. I have a supervillain(ish) group I’m going to have my PCs face soon (first I send them to space!), and I’m very proud and amused of the idea.

The group is called the Disasterinas, or the Mallerinas, or the Black Swans. I plan on having them argue on-screen over what the name is. They are school-age girls who gained elemental superpowers through an alien drug, and have decided to use their powers as villains for a while, until they get caught. Then they plan to use the exposure and notoriety for fame and fortune in the entertainment industry. Sort of the Halcyon City version of putting out a sex tape to get famous. Be a villain, get caught, sell the rehabilitation/redemption process as a reality show, then release an album.

I haven’t decided whether to give them one set of moves or give them individual moves. Deep down, I don’t consider them an important part of the story for the PCs, just a view into the world of modern era heroes and villains while they fret over the very deep hole they’ve dug themselves in with a clandestine government agency.

Friday we had our second session of a new Masks campaign.

Friday we had our second session of a new Masks campaign.

Friday we had our second session of a new Masks campaign. It went very well, and felt much better than the first session to me. Admittedly, the first session was character creation and introducing the players to the system, so that’s not unexpected. What made me very happy was how well the system seemed to click in this session, with the players getting more into their characters and the trappings of Masks specifically.

So a big part of that was due to how much I spent the first chunk of the session focusing on character stuff, giving them an in-game feel for their character’s lives, as well as the possible complications stemming from it. That part felt really good, and laid the groundwork for the glorious drama and tension that appeared at the end, which was great.

That said, I’m having an odd issue with my game. I am super excited about the personal drama and the character-specific stories, but I’m having trouble coming up with suitable superhero stories. It’s weird. I mean, I have a couple of obvious arcs in the background, that are intrinsically bound to the characters, and because of that I’m keeping a slow burn on them, so I don’t just power through the stuff everyone is interested in.

So I’m having difficulty coming up with suitable superheroic distractions. I suppose that’s a good thing, because it means we’re all really invested in the characters and their stories, but I feel like it needs to be more comic booky than all that. I’m not sure there’s any advice to be had for this kind of issue, but I figured I’d mention it, because the community has been super helpful while I lurked here, and maybe I’m not the only person with this very specific problem.