Running a Mutants & Masterminds game, I don't know how to carry on the story for my players.
One of them is an mind-controlling alien who just wanders the world doing random shit, the other is a teleporting OP bastard and the last one is fucking Luigi. The first wants to control the whole world for its alien empire, the second just wants to smoke pot and fuck girls, and Luigi wants to kill his brother for bailing on him.
I have some idea of where I want the game to go, but they just go full random in the game, and I don't want to railroad it so hard. Also, I'm having trouble finding heroes for them to fight, since they are extremely strong (especially the teleporter, he just send them into the deep ocean).
I could really use some help, I'm getting frustrated trying to make a fun game, but sometimes I think I do shit and just want to go back into being a player.
Running a Mutants & Masterminds game, I don't know how to carry on the story for my players
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Restart the game, but this time tell the players that you want them to make serious characters who are willing to work with each other and have legitimate and realistic goals that can help drive the game forward, and that you're not going to run the game if they aren't going to stop being faggots.
tl;dr stop letting your players walk all over you.
I don't mind them going evil and being all random, I know them well enough to know it's what they want to do whatever game we play.
Also, I would not want to restart the game, they like those characters and I'd like to try running a game for these. Furthermore, creating characters in M&M is a pain in the ass
IMO don't create a scenario for them, create the world around them. Then just go with what seems like the natural consequences of anything they do. In my experience this often leads to characters getting killed or driven out of the city, but at least until they die they'll have fun.
Oh, and before you say that OP teleporters can't be killed, just remember, if you piss off the wrong person a sniper just has to know where you'll be.
You should've told them to not make them THAT strong. M&M campaings are really hard to GM if you got OP players. You need to make them weaker somehow or you will scratch your head all day thinking in good challanges for them.
Things in a setting have consequences. If they mess around the whole time, then bad things happen.
I'm probably weakening that Teleport's roll so that it is easier to avoid. Mind-control and butt-based attacks don't scare me, but that Teleport is just a Save-or-die roll when you are creative enough.
What would you say I should focus on when creating the world? I mean, I have a few organizations, a city and some heroes in there, but they normally don't care about it or care about totally different stuff.
Also, the teleporter is also a hacker and a paranoid. I don't know how to create a challenge for him without swapping the entire focus of the campaign or looking like a resentful dick.
Thank you all for the help too.
The problem is that your players don't buy in the genre conventions i.e. they're playing random joes instead of super heroes. If you read cape comics just about any of the established characters could wander off doing whatever they like but instead they're acting heroically because With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Talk to your players and explain to them they cannot play their characters like they were D&D murderhobos, or otherwise you won't have a game. They need to follow the genre conventions if they want a super hero game in the first place.
Luigi crashed the ISS into Earth (he comes from Planet Koopa), the teleporter destroyed the house of a russian mob by teleporting it into the air and letting it fall, and the alien just made public his existance by openly forcing a slave to kill herself in the middle of a big city.
I have plot lines to follow. I just don't know where to start, and how to make them follow them without going again full random.
Is a super villain game entirely out of question? I already knew they were going full murderhobo, and I don't mind that. The system also doesn't seem to make distinctions, so it's just me being unable to keep up their pace.
Then simply use those.
Well, if the alien is mind controlling people and planning to invade the Earth then you should send your setting's equivalent of notAvengers or notFantasticfour to combat the alien menace. Be sure to include a teleporter on their side too.
In my setting, superheroes and villains recently fought and the most powerful of them are MIA. I kind of promote them going full retard this way, but it also eases some pain on me for not needing to create so many supers they won't care about or which they will kill in mere seconds.
I introduced a police notIron-Man. The teleporter just sent her into the deeps of the ocean. I will reintroduce her later on, but I'm in a struggle to justify her surviving, not to say how the hell will she fight back.
This raises another question: how do you deal with science and justifying shit in a superhero setting? Especially when you don't know jack about technology and science and don't want to abuse the usual made up mumbo-jumbo.
Bump for M&M discussion.
Currently the PCs are:
>reformed ex-con that can see exactly one minute into the future, uses some gadgets and fights crime at night.
>misanthrope that can control insects, only does good because his mom died and wants to make her proud
>cat that can shapeshift into a humanoid cat because of experiments, hates humanity because of it
I have some ideas for the setting but I want to talk it over with the players before I start writing stuff.
>don't want to abuse the usual made up mumbo-jumbo.
Are you sure you want to play a super hero game to begin with? That's like saying you want to play a Star Trek game without the technobabble.
You don't need to justify a thing, you can just handwave it away by calling it SUPERSCIENCE!!! and that's entirely fine. For example, she survived because her suit had built in anti-pressure features, piece of cake. She learned from the experience and built a teleport dampener, and brings friends the next time they meet. It's not like you actually need to build the opponents from scratch, just eyeball what they should be able to do and pull the rest from your ass.
Sorry, I would have given you a different answer had I known more about the situation.
Pretend I just said "fuck off, frogposter".
What are your ideas? You can make a villain that kills cats and use them for his evil plan, that will make the party work together.
I'm definitely gonna have a big game hunter type to try and take her down, as well as the mad scientist responsible for the catperson's intelligence/sentience. I can connect the latter with the insect dude if the villain also does weird bug experiments or something.
For the PC with minute-into-the-future sight, the player (at my request) drafted some ideas for their own villains. One of his is a dude that can teleport a few feet in any direction, which will make for some fun *teleports behind you/NANI!?* moments. I'm also thinking of a charlatan fortune teller as a foil but not necessarily a villain.
I don't think superheroes need that much to justify their stuff, problem is coming with some justification that doesn't look like 'they can do that because you want to screw with us'. For instance, that teleport dampener. Will follow that advice tho, I don't think i need to justify everything, ty.
pic related
Look, without a teleport dampener how do you expect the next fight to go, or the one after that, or the one after that, or the one after that? It's just common sense to come up with a way to foil your nemesis's special move and there's genre expectation for it to happen to boot (Superman and kryptonite etc.)
I know. But dampening every single fight with her or other heroes because I don't want to deal with that might be a little overkill, doesn't it?
Especially since the other players don't get so heavily countered, and because I can't actually come for a logical explanation for the dampener.
Make dampener have some restrictions. Maybe after certain distance from generator power of effect drops fast. Maybe it is a touch attack - you need to touch the target with generator.
Or use the idea from the Jumper movie where they shoot wires at teleporters and hit them with electricity. Wire also makes attacker to teleport together with the jumper.
If powerful characters start stirring shit on Earth they make a lot of people angry. There is families of those whom they wronged - hellbent on revenge. There is governmental spy agencies trying to squash them. There is supers and vigilantes that band together to beat them. And there is also villains who don't like someone else going for the world domination.
They declared war on the whole world and the world will very much oblige them.
The Jumper movie idea sounds very good, will probably use that.
I also like the idea of other villains going after them, but in this setting they recently banded together to fight back the heroes. Maybe later on I will follow on that route, for now I think I'll use your advice and go with the Russian mob family the hacker angered, Mario against Luigi and the government fighting back the alien menace.
Thank you for all the ideas :)
>I introduced a police notIron-Man. The teleporter just sent her into the deeps of the ocean.
regular iron man armor would survive being sent deep into the ocean tho
or what, your teleporter can teleport them without their clothes or something?
Either way, send the flash their way. He can outrun instantaneous teleportation.
You need to think more capeshit. If the players are bullshit, send even bigger bullshit at them. Don't send them regular superman, send superman PRIME. Don't send realistic batman, send batman will all the preptime in the world. Send them mr fantastic at his highest "I can make superscience do ANYTHING" and make him develop an anti-teleport field, forcing the players to cooperate to deactivate that field so they can do their insta-win thing.
Even if normal people can't get their hands on equipment to battle supers and don't have enough numbers to threaten them they can hire some super-mercenary to hunt for PC heads.
Also even if some villains died or got captured it only opens the way for younger generation and the most smart from the old generation who were able to hide in the shadows during conflict with heroes.
Or send groups of weaker/less universally capable enemies that work together.
Spy agencies can make even most supers wet their pants if they get serious.
Yeah, I mean, the teleporter doesn't have like extra-sensory perception right?
So a sniper will fuck him up just as well as anyone else. Sneak attacks, surprise attacks. Groups of dudes attacking from every direction.
Shit you can even send a bee-man or wasp-man, a dude made of insects. Can this teleport guy teleport millions of insects at the same time? Probably not.
Funny that, I'm (OP) from One player wants to play a mind breaker, the other (unrelatedly) make an animal shifter and I want to be a magical user like Strange.
How math-complex is Mutants and Masterminds?
Also,where do you start a superhero RPG? RPGs and comics sorta run on different principles, you know?
M&M is somewhere between 3.5 and 5e in math complexity. But rules are much more streamlined and have less unrelated subsystems than both of them.
Get them to fight a full on plasma exuding Godzilla that is powered by the sun and can breath in space. Then it turns out to be the first of many ad part of a rival alien empire looking to take down all powerful people on earth. Like a giant lizard saiyan. Maybe making them attack on titan style controlled by an alien race so a guy pops out when they kill it. It Especially hates evil alien guy and his race so tries to track him.
In other words, don't tell your players you think they suck. Try to beat them.
Going with a sniper might be a bit unfair, but the super made of insects is a really nice idea, thanks.
Also yes, the teleporter doesn't have extra-sensory perception, but he is a sneaky bastard who doesn't get out of his house and does all the teleporting shit through hacking webcams or security cameras.
Main struggle now is not how to make them face challenging foes, but how to make them actually want to engage against them. The teleporter already stole the MacGuffin and gave it to the evil corp., now I don't know how to get them to play together when they go through different routes.
I have so many alien races already, between the alien guy, and the Koopa/Mushroom Kingdom (they are alien races here), that it can strangely work out.
It's a good system and very easy to play on, but get ready for a good reading and complicated character creation unless you decide to use pregenerated characters.
No. It should be slow and lumbering so they can escape but it will keep tracking them. they would watch it wipe the floor with some of the heroes they'd faced. Maybe first hint at it coming by having a missing superman like hero in a panic, coming after the alien pc but not to defeat him just to beat questions out of him about this named alien race that Is coming as he thinks the pc should know (he shouldn't) but don't reveal too much of why the hero is so worried. Just make it out as this massive threat. Let the players kill it after a hard fought battle, don't nerf them just make it tough. When it goes down the the controlling alien rips out and Spider-mans away to escape. If they catch him he sets off a beacon, drawing more. Though don't say that. Let the players guess.
Slowly reveal that there is an invading horde of these things in space that a bunch of heroes went to fight and have yet to return or be heard from, besides that one guy. Maybe when it first appears. It's on TV while the teleworker is smoking pot and it looks like it's fighting aliens of the same race as pc no.1 who it eats all but one of. The other is taken in by authorities at a secret location so the pc's can try to rescue him to find out what's going on.
Yeah, the numbers thing is mostly our speed bump. Not like we're dunces or anything. But we don't want to jump through hoops to do cool things. I guess I'll hunt down Mutants and Masterminds.
Been reading Worlds In Peril, I think the whole instruction book is a comic. Which is not bad. But the scan is pixel as fuck.
>who doesn't get out of his house
that makes it even easier to target him. There's no way he leaves 0 traces, and also, unless your game is on london, there's no way there are enough security cameras around for him to do everything he wants or needs to
Is the teleporting innate? Mind control can be easily countered by literally just having decent saves unless you REALLY fucked up the GM oversight part of chargen and he built some monstrous cheesefest
Have them fight a Batman expy at least two PL higher than them, with PL-maxed Will and a really fucking stacked Nullify power, and a couple of minions based on the Veteran Soldier statblock
There aren't many times where I'd say somebody can take a lesson from Worm, but in this case I'm actually telling you to take a lesson from Worm.
Throw shit at your heroes that don't directly negate their powers, but require more creative use of them. Make somebody who fucks up the teleporter the moment he's touched, somebody like Clockstopper from Worm who freezes people in time the moment he touches them. Throw a giant monster at 'em that can't be mind-controlled because it lacks a brain and nervous system.
Also, if they're fighting individually rather than as a team, making this hypothetical Batman mercilessly wipe the floor with their characters will also force them to start sticking together
This might be a good idea to put them together, getting beaten and put together into a cell. Now I just need a way to track them that doesn't look like bullshit, to wipe the floor with their asses, and that they don't bail out on each other
Oh and come to think of it, it is specifically stated that villains don't need to follow PL limits, so you can built whatever the fuck you want with full support of the rules
So why play heroes at all? Is there a downside to being a villain?
Have they done anything important together? You can explain the investigation through dialogue. Maybe they thought they'd gotten away with one of their plans scot free, but not-Batman was just waiting for the time to strike. You can build this up for a session or two so it doesn't come out of nowhere.
It just means antagonistic characters. As in, the GM doesn't necessarily need to follow the normal PC creation rules
Not so far, I think this next game I'll go with Mario's secret base and the Russian mob family to build some enemies for them. Alien dude had no contact whatsoever with the other two.
It has an SRD. So it's basically free.
Throw Vandal Savage at them.
Seemingly normal individual with iron will but completely immortal. And every time they get rid of him he comes back. Even if they strand him in space he still comes back.
Wait, are those their only powers? You mean you don't have a party with over a dozen different array powers? No Luck Powers? Or even Summon?
Bitch you have no idea what true suffering is when you have a 18 year old kaiju girl that has a fucking army (even if it is technically only two swarm units) shooting out of her ovipositor and eating away at 3 super cyber assassins her level. Oh, and she also used their Affects Objects variable Affliction to literally take over and invest the ship they were ready about to depart on.
I am still having fun though, and she was exactly one hero point between succeeding and getting straight up one shot in that fight to be fair
Also, I am morbidly curious on the Luigi guy's statblock.
Am I the only one who thought
>maybe I should tell my players to make heroes of approximate power levels so they don't end up in a classic angel summoner and bmx bandit situation
and also
>I should remind my players to make characters that can work together so we don't end up simply doing a bunch of solo stuff
I get that superhero comics don't actually do that but we're playing a game, not writing a comic. Some accuracy in emulating comics can be sacrificed for the sake of fun play.
But BMX Bandit BEATS Angel Summoner some times.
The thing is that M&M is super easy to break. Even absolute newbies can end up with some serious bullshit by choosing what seems cool. On an ideal world PL would fix it by itself, but having a GM who's experienced with the system is the only surefire way to do it, and the rulebook says as much
Batman has literally never beat Superman in any incarnation in any universe, so that's a terrible example. Even his best showings are more "weaken and hit a few times and hope to god he doesn't smash me."
well when I said power level I meant more in the general sense, not the rules sense
as in, everybody agrees to either not break the game, or that everybody MUST break the game.
I didn't mean it entirely rules-wise either. I mean, the OP's group isn't even that broken. I don't see an array anywhere so they can't be full blown SYSTEM MASTERY munchkins. It is entirely possible teleport guy picked teleport for a thematic reason without realizing it was one of the most broken powers in the game, or that psychic dude didn't realize psychic powers just so happen to be a perfect excuse for picking all the most broken shit at once, and a psychic ALIEN even more so
Well either way, they suffer from
>wildly disparate power levels
>no reason to do things together
This is one of those things I feel like it's better to clarify at the start.
Please tell me that the Luigi guy has a power called Terminal 7
Might be off topic, but does anyone know a way for a poorfag to get Hero Lab without dropping $40?
Demo is free, works fine, just fill out a character sheet with a pencil when you are done.
Roosians pump poison gas into tport's house.
Poison his delivered pizza.
Blind him so he can't use spycams.
They would work hard to find an anti-tporter to get him.
KGBers with nullify pistols. Blow up his house. and the next one he goes to. Kill off anyone they care about.
More nullifier grenades.
Get a better group of players or just go back to playing video games together.
>how do you deal with science and justifying shit in a superhero setting?
Limit the setting to a single non -tech source that super power comes from. Don't have Dr. Strange, Tony Stark, Thor, and alien tech all together.
Wild Cards did this pretty plausibly.
It depends on what level of adversity GM wants. Most characters can be challenged but how easy it is to do depends on the tone of the world.
Even without nullification there is ways to make characters suffer.For example KGB vs teleporter can make calls to their friends in other countries and even some rival agencies - for some help. As a result almost no matter where he will go he would meet groups of people ready to kill him. Character will either need to constantly hide in uninhabited places or find some patron who is willing to cover him from assassin groups.
And over time the pressure will only rise.
>letting people play edgelord super villain power fantasies
Why?
>not playing an edgelord mcgoatfucker to blow off some steam
Why?
Seriously though, if anyone would let me play a Viscera Controller, I'd have a ball.
>Viscera Controller
Organs, Blood, Muscle, Skin, Bones.
Not the fat black dead wrestler
QUICK Veeky Forums, make a cool superhero name for someone with the qualities of a sponge!
Sponge
could i possibly recommend worm's weaverdice if you're still in the thread? it's a more serious/dramatic setting but you only have to roll multitudes of 1d6's.
Le edgy weeaboo nazi-chique.
Sponges are not cool. This cannot be done.
Maybe Absoro?
Introduce the concept of "x" level villains who can do shit they can't. They don't even have to be that powerful, just act several times each round to create a good solo encounter. Even D&D5e caught up to that.
Then create a tentacle monster with the quick grab advantage and loads of strength. 1 hit - 1 grab. Proceed to crush/molest the "heroes".
For shits and giggles, have it be an elder god with immunity to teleportation shticks (it can dimension travel and teleport, too).
Have it have cultists who tell the party that their insane antics cause the elder god to take an interest in earth, and that they are all going to be devoured.
If the monster is killed, it's fine too. It has spores that "cthulhu-ify" people or entire regions.
Step up your game, son.
Bob
It seems the teleporter guy gives you most of your troubles. Just talk with him if he agrees to nerf that power somewhat (he needs to touch that object, it isn't instantaneous, etc.). If he agrees, problem solved, if not, throw an Allmight/Superman who can just punch the shit out of him without problems.
As for the motivation problem, just make an enemy that pisses ALL of them off personally! Take Mario, who has enslaved countless alien races and wants to ban teleportation universally or something. Or just have that person kick their cat/family/ego/whatever they hold most dear.
Abso Rynt, master of liquid transference dynamics.
Make a Bizarro whose sole goal in life is to sodomize supers. That ought to motivate them.
you should have explained that before.
also how is this a worst case scenario if you approve of what they are playing and want to make a game around them?
I'm GM'ing a game but all my players browse Veeky Forums so I don't talk about it here because I'd be mostly asking for thoughts on things I'm packing away to possibly use later and I don't want to spoil things for them.
Plant red herrings for them. "My players are exactly X, Y and Z. Give me suggestions for great tech to give them when I run them through the UFO adventure I'm planning."
They'll be jumping at anything vaguely resembling UFO shenanigans.
have you ever actually fooled your own players by doing that?
How do you handle fights between giant monsters and PCs without superpowers or giant robots/tanks?
some other big weapons.
attack it's weakpoints.
summon a bigger monster
Comedy is defined as ordinary people in extraordinary situations or ordinary people in extraordinary situations. You have the former. Put them in boring situations -- deliver pizza for a cousin, mowing the lawn etcetera and watch how it explodes.
People without superpowers can actually be very competent in the system (see the martial artist and crime fighter archetypes), and a giant monster effectively only just has innate Growth ranks, which trade off defenses for a strength/stamina bonus. Granted, you would build a giant monster as stronger than the average villain, but there's no need for giving the "normal" characters any special bonus other than maybe encouraging them to pick a ranged weapon
Maybe give them a couple of minions to dispose of since characters with no powers tend to have a shitload of advantages, and Takedown tends to be among them
I did. Though it was mostly their own fault. They started to dig in one direction and kind of got tunnel vision.
Use skill to trick the monster into hurting itself.
The BFG needs a BFG