Advice for a Superhero one shot

My group has been running Deadlands using the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition system, and we recently got the Super Powers Companion. Originally I wanted to run an arc lasting many sessions and ending with a turtle kaiju attacking the city, I'm halfway done building a custom mini for said kaiju, but now I'm worried that it won't prove fun enough to make it past one session, or that the powers rules may prove too complicated. I am also worried because I've never run or played in a superhero game.

I need advice, how do I run a compelling superhero one shot? I'd like to have this be the story where the team assembles, like the Avengers stopping a Loki controlled hulk, or the Justice League fighting Starro. If possible i'd like to use the turtle kaiju, it's based on leatherback sea turtles. I imagine I need smaller enemies so that each player has the chance to use their powers and explore what the system has to offer. Outside of that I'm stumped, what should the plot be? Who is the villain? I still don't have the players characters made so I don't know their powers. I'm rambling. Any stories from your first superhero sessions, or advice in any way will help.

Ask your players what they like. Have they watched all of those marvel superhero movies? Or are they more into batman, or superman, or what kinds of things interest them about superheroes? Hopefully the list includes giant turtles.

one of my go-to one shot is a superhero one shot - begins with each character being taken prisoner and taken to a secret government facility / evil corporation laboratory / insert things that makes sense in the setting, because they have recently developed superpower and need to be kept under control / experimented upon / indoctrinated / etc. The characters need to escape the facility and to do that they need help - the other PCs.

Easy to add twists and seeds for future adventures (somebody is helping us escape! who will it be? etc)

Thank you for your replies thus far. Thinking about my players they have seen most of the MCU, a fair amount of dcau and other Batman movies, and the X-men series. Each one has different interests superhero wise which I think will result I a team like the teen titans where each member fills a different genre of superhero stories. The system also has rules called "campaign levels" that determine how many points the heroes, and the villains, get to spend on powers. I chose level 3, which is X-Men or Spider-Man level, so that also narrows the story possibilities.
I like the idea of having the group captured by a corporation and having to break out, which would fit perfectly for an X-Men style mutants on the run game. However, and I probably should have said earlier, that having played D&D and the western Deadlands with this group, that we have an unfortunate habit of resolving to kill anyone we don't like without much care for the law and I'm hoping this game may help course correct that.

I'd like this to be a game that cares about public perception, and mechanics that encourage heroic behavior. Saving innocents or preventing property damage in a fight will boost the team's reputation, giving them help from local government or citizens. Ruthless tactics or generally frightening behavior may result in citizens fearing you or the local law hunting you. Starting them off prisoners surrounded by enemies may not support this goal.

While I don't know Deadlands (... at all >.>), I'm decent with superhero stuff, so I might be able to offer some generalized advice.

* Keep combat fast and fluid, and highly mobile if at all possible (look at superhero media; most fights involve a lot of ZOOM). Hordes of weak-ish enemies with the occasional tough mob support the superhero-y feel well- a Dynasty Warriors-type dealie wouldn't be a terrible place to start (or if you're familiar with the MMO, City of Heroes does it quite well, albeit kind of differently from Dynasty Warriors).

** Thematically-oriented gangs make for a good source of superhero-style opponents- like the Joker's clown minions, or Intergang (the Superman enemies) with their gangster motif and crazy supertech. Or hordes of ninjas (boosted with ninja magic where appropriate), crews of ghost/undead pirates, mad scientists with swarms of robots of whatever style, that sort of deal. The sky's the limit, and you can usually re-purpose existing minis for this sort of thing without a huge amount of difficulty, and they come with a bossfight built in (since in superhero media whoever's in charge of the gang is often the most powerful member)

*** Next step up from the thematic gang is the supervillain teamup (the Sinister Six, Legion of Doom, Masters of Evil, Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Injustice Society, you know the tropes), often with enemies tailored to each member of the PC team. Probably a mid-season threat (assuming Deadlands Seasons work the same as TV Seasons, anyways)

**** And the highest on the supervillain pecking order is the crossover villain- a single enemy (often with hordes of lackeys and/or subordinate villanis, so some overlap with both the previous steps) who is an existential threat and can throw down with the entire team at once- Ultron, Thanos, Darkseid, Starro, pretty much everyone knows these. I'm guessing the kaiju turtle would be one of these, or else the monster belonging to one of these? (better make sure none of your players are fans of Showa films or they might just start singing about Gamera...). If I was DMing/writing the adventure, I'd have the kaiju be the final form of the villain, rather than a subordinate- makes it more memorable as a final battle, and there's less cleanup busywork with a leftover evil genius.


* I'm not sure how you plan on doing it, but if I wanted to incentivize heroic behaviour, I'd use passive buffs gained from reputation, rather than more tangible help or hindrance- after all, if the police were fully effective, or even effective enough to slow the super-types down, you wouldn't need superheroes. But something like 'the people like you, so MegaHuge Corp sees it as a good PR move to give you their prototype widget that gives you a +2 to whatever', or 'you're a hero of the people, so the residents of this neighbourhood are helping with your investigation; you only need two skill challenges (or whatever, sorry, still don't know Deadlands) instead of five'.

** Alternatively, you could give them a Jimmy Olsen; a non-super pal that idolizes them as a hero. Story-wise they're the weirdness magnet- they find the strange stuff that drives the plot or the sidequests, and mechanics-wise they give a consistent passive buff (if you'll pardon another D&D-styled example, something like a permanent +2 to attack; something that's not game-breaking, but it'd hurt to lose it) as long as they're on the heroes' side. Then if they break faith with their 'pal' by being murderhobo-y, bye-bye buff. If they go too far, they might find that buff (and the sidequests, or at least the benefits of the sidequests) going to a more heroic force that is opposed to the players.

*** Alternatively alternatively, you could use both, if you need a 'leash' on specific players. Although I'd advise maybe making the 'pal' something tailored more closely to your players' perception of cute than Jimmy Olsen...

**** As a final aside, possibly have two distinct stats- 'heroism' and 'public perception'; a group with low heroism and high public perception would be like Lex Luthor, Homelander (from the Boys) or the Thunderbolts, and low public perception but high heroism would be Spider-Man (a lot of the time, anyways), the X-Men, or Batman (again, a lot of the time), while someone with both would be Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, that kind of thing. Gives you a bit more leeway in tailoring the game, and makes it more flavourful (assuming it doesn't interfere with the actual fun, anyways). Rewards for high public perception would be things like cash and materiel (body armour, or new widgets, or things of that nature), and ego-stroking type stuff like being asked for autographs or speaking engagements. Rewards for high heroism would be things like crossover help (other superheroes coming in to lend a hand when needed, or asking for help from the PCs), prototypes from the gadgeteer heroes (like getting a teleporter from Reed Richards or something- the way I'd do it is that these would be more powerful than the high public perception widgets, but have a small chance for failure/doing something odd, or else quite a bit more powerful, but be consumables), or thanks from more marginalized and/or less-powerful groups.

Anyways, this is already getting sort of long, so hopefully some of it helps or points you in a useful direction.

Thank you TeChamelion that's a lot of good stuff. The system is Savage Worlds Adventure Edition or SWADE, with Deadlands being a setting you can play using the system. SWADE is a very general system that gives rules that can apply to virtually any story or setting, but it also has companion books that focus on one setting or genre.

I agree with the progression through the "season" as you face bigger and bigger threats with some secretive throughline connecting everything. I like that a lot, but fear that if the players don't care for the game for whatever reason that this'll be a one and done.

I had an idea earlier today that a villain may have created a machine to lure the kaiju to the city to serve as a distraction while they run a prison break. Perhaps some sonic emitter that draws sea life to the shore, maybe have the party fight man-size lobsters or something before the kaiju emerges from the water. Maybe the party will fight off the kaiju, or maybe they'll have to deduce what's drawing it to the city and shut down the machine which would leave the confused turtle returning to the ocean. Afterwards they are hailed as heroes, hopefully decide to stick together as a team, and the question of who built the machine and let supervillains out of prison is in the air. Plus catching the runaway villains.

Would that work? Is that too much to leave in the players hands? Are the lobsters too silly?

Heh. That sounds like the premise of the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon (the prison break of supervillains, that is). It worked there, so I don't see why it wouldn't fly for a game.

As far as lobsters go... might I suggest coconut crabs instead? They're already huge, so it wouldn't take much to make them man-sized, and they've got a visceral terror factor going for them that I don't think lobsters can match (for example, one theory on Amelia Earhart's total disappearance was that after she crashed, her body was torn apart and eaten by these things). They can also carry 7.5 times their own body weight, easily exert enough force with their pincers to crush a human skull, and climb trees. And that's at their normal size- bigger ones would just be straight-up nasty.

I'm not sure if it's too much to put on the players or not; you know your group and I don't, there's not a lot I can say there. The usual 'have a session zero and get buy-in from your players' applies, but beyond that, I don't know, sorry. Although I will say that if you like a concept, go for it. Don't necessarily burn a lot of time on it or anything, at least at first, but don't discard an idea just because you're worried things won't work out.

One other bit of advice I'd offer, just on the very vague impression I've gotten of your group... I would suggest the main 'punishment' for non-heroic behaviour be the loss of the ongoing rewards they already get for being heroic, rather than any specific bad stuff happening to them. Although I would make certain that they actually want to be heroes for this game- if it's not a premise they're interested in, no amount of rewards or punishments will drive them towards it.

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Originally Posted by Carrion Knight

Thank you TeChamelion that's a lot of good stuff. The system is Savage Worlds Adventure Edition or SWADE, with Deadlands being a setting you can play using the system. SWADE is a very general system that gives rules that can apply to virtually any story or setting, but it also has companion books that focus on one setting or genre.

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My biggest question is this - does Savage World supers *feel* super?

Spoiler: Quick aside

Show

I loved Deadlands (original/"classic" version, whatever). I liked the idea of Savage Worlds as a generic, low barrier to entry system. I hated when groups around here started "Savaging" everything, though. Design goals seem to be limited by generic systems, and things run in generic systems start to feel...generic.

Street-level games are well and good (and frankly my preference), but it might well lack the distinctiveness and feel you're looking for since you've chose a Tortugaiju as a key element. If it intended as the actual foozul, you need Justice League or Avengers level talent, and not just the token street level heroes that claim membership. If it is the dupe, controlled by the Luthor character (or Zemo or Joker or whoever) then you can lean in to street level.

Limiting yourself to one session, though, makes street level more difficult. I'd normally want an establishing phase with some mook fights (introduces the characters to each other, lets the PCs feel out their powers and skills), an investigation phase (uses the non-power parts of the street level heroes to get a fuller picture of the adversaries and learn more about the plot), and then the climactic gauntlet leading to the showdown with the boss (often with either an escape or breadcrumbs for the boss's boss).

For one session you either have to cram a lot in a limited time frame or jump in media res, perhaps, and then narrate a bit. Heroes start the session knowing that EvilGuy! has threatened the city, demanding ransom of $2 million jillion quintillion or destruction will ensue. Media or science hero knows there have been reports of island villages/structures/whatevers not too far away being destroyed by Something Terrible!. Now the crew of Lone Wolves have to band together to save the city by finding the secret hideout (Observatory/Sewer/Junkyard/unassuming split level home in the suburbs), punching out EvilGuy! before he pulls the level that summons the Tortugaiju and then pushes the button that makes Tortugaiju all angry. With panache!

If Savage allows "super" supers, you can go in reverse. Establishing sequence of all the Supers fighting AlienInvasionStrikeForce, then coming home. Then Tortugaiju attacks (oh no!) so Supers defend, beating down the poor critter...but surprise twist! Totugaiju didn't want to smash the city, it was minding its own business when it was irradiated and grew to giant, acid-breath spewing proportions, and then goaded into coming to Supersville. Who did such a dastardly deed? EvilGuySuper!, of course. Now they have to find and defeat him in his specially built, trap-filled lair before he can escape and create an entire armada of Tortugaiju and hold the entire seaboard hostage.

Just my scattered thoughts on what I'd want to play this Monday morning...

- M

Depending on how powerful you want to make the players feel, I suggest that generic mooks have one HP (or whatever the Deadlands equivalent is, IDK the system). And the mooks probably don't even bother attacking the heroes, but they DO try to execute their dastardly plan before the heroes can drop them all. So this isn't a question of "are the heroes defeated", it's a question of "are the heroes skilled enough to prevent the villains from killing the hostages/setting off the bomb/detonating the doomsday device".

The key thing for a Supers fight, is you really have to establish what the Supers are fighting FOR. The fight has to have stakes that the players actually care about too. Therefore, character creations and motivations are critical to making a Supers game work and the core personal details have to come into play. Oddly, powers are a gimmick and don't matter that much to the game.

Fighting the Kaiju is not important, it is WHY they are fighting the Kaiju that matters. Often times, just saving the world is not good enough to make a good climactic battle. The stakes have to be personal to the players almost as much as they are to the characters story.

My.advice for one shots generally.
1. Keep the plot moving forward as fast as you can.
2. Keep,PCs simple and easy to use. Allow synergies to exist between PCs rather than within PCs. (i.e. the players get bonuses for teamwork)

Specifically for the superhero genre.
- Superhero plots usually follow the investigate then combat model. Therefore each PC should have one good investigative/social ability and one good combat ability. They can have some secondary abilities as well, subject to the next point.
- Don’t overload the PCs with too many abilities. It becomes too hard for players to manage in a one shot.
- It’s probably best to make the PCs rip-off toned down versions of well known superheroes. This makes it easier for the players to get into their roles and play the game.

Edit to add:
When designing a one shot think more of a team like the Fantastic Four where each member has a specific role than a stand alone heroes with a plethora of skills like Spiderman.

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Originally Posted by Carrion Knight

the powers rules may prove too complicated.

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Don't all Savage Worlds games use the same basic rules and effects for their magic systems? A superhero's Blast power might have different trappings than a Huckster's, but it's still

As for gameplay, I one hundred percent agree with TeChameleon that movement is critical. More broadly, a superhero game should emphasize the scale of the powers being used. If you get punched by the Hulk, you don't just fall over, you go flying back fifty feet and smash through two walls. If Iron Man takes a potshot with his repulsers and misses, he's not going to put a neat little hole in the building behind the villain--he's blowing half of it away. When Superman and Darkseid trade punches, the shockwaves are going to break every window in a half-mile radius. You don't have to go nuts with collateral damage, and you should probably be careful not to imply that innocent bystanders are getting killed in the process, but if there aren't bodies flying through the air and piles of rubble littering the battlefield, something's wrong.

(That's one reason why it's so helpful for players to have movement powers. If a character can move five hundred feet in a single action, chucking them a hundred feet away is more descriptive fluff than an actual hinderance)

Also helpful? Super-senses. It might just be me, but having some sort of super-hearing or x-ray vision or ability to hear radio waves or what have you always makes me feel like I'm playing a character with Superpowers.

One thing that has consistently come up in the super hero games I play is that generally speaking, the direct throw down is not an interesting combat. Like, even DnD if you stand in the center of a featureless space and just have both sides roll attacks until one loses tends to not be interesting, but superheroes magnify this massively due to a) the ease of which characters can build extreme powerhouses, and b) the difference in punch power between a punch focused hero (Hulk) and a cool-but-weird-power hero (Kitty Pride).

The solution is to make the Big fights (not all the fights, mind) not be simple punch ups. Make the focus of the fight not “who wins a punch off”, but instead, “what objectives do the villains accomplish” and “what collateral damage do they cause.”

“Can Megawitch get away with that stollen book of spells?” will generally end up more dynamic and interesting than “How many attack rolls will it take to beat Megawitch?” Characters with less straight up punching can bring a lot to this.

It also lets you have encounters tuned such that the PCs lose a straight punching contest, but still win by getting the target to safety, delaying them long enough for civilans to get to safety, etc. Useful for recurring villains, not great for PCs with a DnD-trained mentality that the fights not over until the dragon is dead.

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Originally Posted by Carrion Knight

I need advice, how do I run a compelling superhero one shot? I'd like to have this be the story where the team assembles, like the Avengers stopping a Loki controlled hulk, or the Justice League fighting Starro. If possible i'd like to use the turtle kaiju, it's based on leatherback sea turtles. I imagine I need smaller enemies so that each player has the chance to use their powers and explore what the system has to offer. Outside of that I'm stumped, what should the plot be? Who is the villain?

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Here are some suggestions:

The Justice League vs Appellaxians In the first version of the origin of the Justice League, each superhero was fighting a different alien creature. They, then got a clue that led them to the main threat (another alien creature, but the toughest of them all). They had to use all their powers in combination to defeat the new enemy.

This has the advantage of each hero getting a chance to shine before joining the entire group. The disadvantage of course is that you'd have a lot of time with solo adventures before the main adventure, which is fine when you only do it once because you're building up to a group of heroes that will then continue on to have many adventures. Maybe that's not so great for a one-shot adventure.

And of course, this plot structure doesn't have to literally have aliens as the individual encounters. It could be a mystery of giant eggs that each hero investigates, possibly leading to, I don't know, foot prints leading to a larger monster. Or it could be investigating various science labs that have been robbed of key components for a machine that could turn a creature into a kaiju. And they find the perpetrator but just one moment too late. His henchmen (or failed experiments-- mutated humans or animals) attack the heroes while the evil scientist fires his ray to create the kaiju.

The Justice League vs Starro When Starro first arrives, he creates three lesser Starros as his sort-of henchmen that wreak havoc. Again, these could be separate encouters for each individual hero, but you could design it so that the hench-creatures are a group of monsters that the heroes have to deal with before getting to the boss creature, which might be interested in nuclear power. Maybe it attacks a nuclear power plant (or nuclear missile silo), knowing that with enough nuclear power, it can become even more powerful than before and nothing will be able to stop it.

Or maybe its henchmen are trying to kidnap scientists to build it a machine it needs, but after the first couple are kidnapped, the heroes find out and stop them from kidnapping the next one. And then, they either track the creature to its lair or it comes out of hiding.

Maybe it needs scientists so that it can absorb their brain power.

Boss first, then lesser monsters, then back to boss

A classic plot of a lot of superhero comics from back in the day was: Hero encounters villain and loses the fight, the hero thinks about what happened and tries again, and then the hero wins because of their new clever plan.

To take this into kaiju territory, suppose the heroes start off encountering the kaiju. They quickly find out that it is way too powerful to defeat. But they gain clues. They find out where it came from and there are lesser monsters living there (possibly being created by an evil scientist). The heroes can beat the lesser monsters and find out that all the monsters have a weakness. The heroes can use this weakness against the kaiju, giving them half a chance against the giant monster.

Nobody ever comes back and tells us how the game went, it's always sort of disappointing.

I agree. Sad.

However, it is a lot of work and chances are you will just catch grief for how you "did it wrong" anyway.

On a rare occasion you will find a game log on the board.

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Originally Posted by SimonMoon6

Boss first, then lesser monsters, then back to boss

A classic plot of a lot of superhero comics from back in the day was: Hero encounters villain and loses the fight, the hero thinks about what happened and tries again, and then the hero wins because of their new clever plan.

To take this into kaiju territory, suppose the heroes start off encountering the kaiju. They quickly find out that it is way too powerful to defeat. But they gain clues. They find out where it came from and there are lesser monsters living there (possibly being created by an evil scientist). The heroes can beat the lesser monsters and find out that all the monsters have a weakness. The heroes can use this weakness against the kaiju, giving them half a chance against the giant monster.

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Eh. While I agree that this works from a story pov, it's trickier to implement in a game than you might think. What happens if the heroes do defeat the boss in the first encounter? Oops! And if you make it too obvious that the bbeg is "supposed to win" the first round, that can feel a bit off putting for some players. Also, the giant turtle isn't exactly a fast moving "can easily disegage and go somewhere else" kind of opponent, so I'd just save it for the finale. A good rule of thumb (in all RPGs, but especially in superheroic ones) is "assume the combat will go the way you don't expect" and then plan for that.

You can achieve the same thing, but without a direct conflict. Have the PCs encounter elements of the villain's plan at first. Maybe the villain needs to steal special high tech components for his sonic "giant sea monster" attractor device. The PCs arrive on the scene of some break in at some high tech business somewhere, encounter the villains minions, and about when they are wrapping things up, maybe notice the main bad guy(s) have gotten away. The information comes after the encounter, so the PCs can't actually prevent it from happening. But they got to whale on some minions, and it gets the party together and gives them something to investigate. How much interaction the PCs have with the main villain at this point is subject to one thing: How capable are the PCs of stopping a villain who is just trying to get away? Nothing sucks more than your villain flying away in his escape vehicle while mocking the heroes, and that's when you realize that "lightspeed" isn't just a clever hero name, and you can't actually rationalize how the villain would/could actually get away. Worse is if the heroes have abilities to both track and follow the bad guy.

So yeah. Be aware of the hero's abiilities when plotting out these early encounters. I find that superhero games tend to be far more "scripted" than most RPG genres. You want a certain ebb and flow of encounters for the whole thing to work. If this is a game system and group you play with regularly, you can get very good at the whole "heroes encounter the villains just in time for a brief exchange, some words, and then the villains escape" without being heavy handed about it (I got to be wickedly good at setting this sort of thing up in Champions back in the day). In a one shot? With a game system you aren't super familiar with? Maybe be a bit more cautious with that stuff.

I generally agree with the 'ramp things up over time" approach. The first couple encounters should be minor, mostly with minions of the bad guys, and serve the purpose of cluing the heroes in to what is going on. This is also where you can encourage heroes with contacts, friends, etc, since that allows for easier justification as to why/how the heroes figure out what's going on. And yeah, you can make super hero adventures a bit more scripted and a bit more "this just happened because... it happened", since the villains are supposed to be a bit less objecitve oriented and more about ego and grand plans that maybe don't always make the most sense. I mean, what exactly is the purpose of calling a giant sea monster in the first place? Just because you can? Sure... why not?

And hey. If you're really just at a loss as to how to get the heroes to the main battle location for the finale, never forget the classic "villain kidnaps the girl/boy-friend, aunt, co-worker, etc, and then sends the hero a taunt and clue to how to save them" trick. It's cheesy as heck, but... remember the genre.