Advice for the Supers GM?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Buzzardo

I'm toying with the possibility of running a Supers campaign. I've been GMing fantasy since GURPS 1e in 1986 and, before that, in the Arduin Grimoire since 1977. However, I've never done a Supers campaign, so I have some questions for the folks who have done it (and others with informed opinions):

• What point total works well?
• How can the GM challenge characters at that point total? (I've GM'd a 300-point campaign with characters that grew to 400 or so points.)
• How do I keep it from bogging down?

Thanks, folks. :)

So I just finished a fairly epic (part 1) of a supers campaign (Aeon) that lasted over a year, took me about 4 months to prep, and spanned four interlocking gaming groups (1 face to face, 3 online, about 20 players total). I succeeded pretty wildly in some areas (the interweaving arc, the depth of the PCs and NPCs, the mythology of the campaign, use of tropes) and failed in others (I didn't weave the arcs enough, I didn't swap players from different groups enough, and a few other minor things). The one thing I learned how to do from this was to juggle the player expectations in a way that kept them entertained, was in genre, and allowed them to use their superhuman talents.

I talked about it a lot on my blog - there are over 80 session recaps currently - with a few more to come - and if you look at the Aeon tag I've got some stuff that may help.


Some specific posts:

• Shut up and Roll!: How to not bog down play.
• Building Player Characters to the Concept: How to build characters that feel like super heroes vs. super heroes on a budget.
• Someone Always Has to be the Nazis: Building bad guys your players can really hate.
• Decomplicating Combat: How to not bog down combat.
• Playing With High Point Totals: How to deal with high point totals.
• Framing Your Preferences, Part I: Finding out what your players want to do.
• Framing Your Preferences, Part II: Finding out what your players what the campaign world to do.
• Framing Your Preferences, Part III: Tying it all together.

If you come across something that happened in one of the recaps your curious about, but is not explained, PM me.