I'm mulling the idea of a low-prep, drop-in drop-out, supers game.

What I'm looking for are GM tools and tips to make running this kind of game as easy as possible. Adventure seeds, ready made maps, villains, etc... to accommodate an episodic format with a dynamic cast.

Ideas?

Ok, so for Marvel FASERIP (really good for low-prep supergaming) Classic Marvel Forever not only has stats for every single major Marvel hero, plus most DC heroes, but also every module and supplement and book ever released for the game:

http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/cms/

...hard to go wrong.

For decent no-railroad hero sandboxes, the Secret Wars module and the Future Past module are pretty good.

Tips:

Unlike D&D or other setting-heavy RPGs, with supers just deciding on your villain gives you half the session right there: you got tactics, motive, atmosphere right there. So pick 3 villains and an environment and you've got more than enough.

Heroes are usually reactive, so if you don't want a railroad you need to put them in an environment where evil is everywhere.

I ran a low-prep, drop-in drop-out, supers game like this...

http://www.dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2012/08/shield-high-priority-faserip-alert.html

1) Don't just look for superheroes, look for modern characters (NPCs) any place you can find them.

2) Read the news paper crime pages of any major city for ideas.

3) Pick up some of the old Marvel Adventures/Characters from Classic Marvel Forever as mentioned. The books can give you many ideas. A few palette swaps and new names and you've got a whole new villain.

4) Don't sweat continuity too much. Be relaxed. Keep adventures short enough to wrap up in a single session. So no need to explain why X hero isn't around.

5) Give heroes clues more often in investigative style situations, and NPC's to help them, so it doesn't bog the adventure down.

6) Keep things fast paced. Make the players create a handful (3-6) NPC's their character knows and interacts with regularly. These can be simple things like relatives, loved interests or more complicated like foils/foes, some of them should probably be contacts they know who can throw in some support now and then.

7) Keep things breezy, don't get too hung up on the rules working exactly so--get it close enough to be entertaining, and believable to a comic book readers.

Look up "Strange" or "Weird" Crimes online--steal those and add in some bigger oomph to them. Cracked is a source of much wonder for strange ideas on crime, criminals, etc. Use Snopes and its myths for real heists and world crazy-ness.

9) Sketch out the plot on drawing paper like a quick flowchart. No detailed outlines, just general ideas like "Villain X steals furs here, for Y reason, leads to plot C"

10) Ask questions online. Lots of help can be had from other superhero gamers.

11) Buy some cheap 1 dollar or so comics, or pony up for some trades of comic book characters you enjoy, and look at how they do things.

Century Station. It's for Heroes Unlimited (which I don't recommend), but it's portable to anything. Complete city with maps, and just the right amount of detail to allow you to do just about anything. Some good NPC's in it too.

You can just drop PCs into one of dozens of neighborhoods and let them roll around Grand Theft Auto style. There are hundreds of plot hooks that can be tailored to suit your game.

I have a set of adventure/encounter generation tables I used in street-level a supers campaign I ran last year. Have a look, see if it is of any use. http://icons-truth-justice-and-gaming.wikispaces.com/file/view/CrimeTable%2BToolkit.pdf.

The stats for NPC and Pyramid Test are for ICONS so you can probably ignore them. Though this is as good a time as any to explain why ICONS is the ideal drop-in, low prep game other than the fast and easy system.

1. Character Folio: This is the character generation tool. Sure maybe your players might prefer to roll their own characters by hand but for the GM there is no quicker way of creating supervillains.
 
2. Pyramid Tests: ICONS has an easy, versatile way to model complex tasks which is a lifesaver for the low-prep GM. http://icons-truth-justice-and-gaming.wikispaces.com/Success+Pyramid

3. Published adventures: ICONS has a dozen or official adventures most of which are suited for a single evening play. Most of them are really rather good (though there are a couple of duds).  "Sins of the Past" is probably one of the best adventures for any system in my view.

You may want to check on forums for various games (and or mailing lists) If the game system you use has an active one--this allows you to expand your tools to the tools everyone else has who will share.

You can also make use of Seventh Sanctum's various generators for all sorts of idea inspiration.

You can also use Writeups.org for villains and heroes statted up for the old DC RPG, even if you don't use their stats that is a wealth of character information you can use.

If you want you may look for the old DC's Who's Who, or Marvel's Official handbook of the marvel Universe books in trade/essential format. I use them for a lot of things, like inspirations for backstories, alien invader types, and powers for certain villain types.

Villains and Vigilantes, and Mutants and Masterminds 1E (First Printing) had an identical set of situation table for rolling up events. If you have those even in PDF's it might be worthwhile to print or copy those out for yourself. Plus Soylent's wonderful ones above as well.


If you have Access both the Justice League cartoon, and the recent Avenger's Earth Mightiest Heroes, handle superheroes very close to comic books without a lot of their detritus, and may be useful for idea generation.

Steve Kenson had a blog which has awesome ideas and elements to look at for gaming derived from the cartoons.



Here is a bit from 1E H&S for villain inspiration:



The Random villain table:


(1)_______ (2)__________ uses (3)_____ to (4)________ because (5)___ is driven by (5) _________ (6)_______.



(1)
Roll   Term
1-3   Choose a Noble title (King, Queen, Noble, Baron, Duchess)
  4   Choose a Color (Red, Black, Blue)
5-7   Chose a title (Dr., Mister, Professor, Miss, Lady) or an adjective term for bad/evil (Hellish, Devil, Dark)
  8   Choose an article (a or the)


(2)  
Roll     Term
1-3      Choose an animal or insect
4-5      Choose a term meaning bad/evil/dark (malign, malovelant, Dark, Evil)
6-7      Choose a material or energy (Steel, Water, Fire, radiation)
8        Choose an general noun descriptor (walker, shaker, eater)

(3)
Roll  Term
1-3   Gadgets
4-6   Powers
  7   Attributes/Skills
  8   Magic

(4)
Roll  Term
1-4   Destroy
5-6   Control
7-8   Plot

(5)
roll    term
1       it/its
2-5     he/his
6-8     she/hers

(6)

roll
1-4      Greed
5-6      Megalomania
7        Hatred
8        Love

Quote from: Silverlion;594067If you have Access both the Justice League cartoon, and the recent Avenger's Earth Mightiest Heroes, handle superheroes very close to comic books without a lot of their detritus, and may be useful for idea generation.

Outstanding suggestions, these two series are in a class of their own.

Quote from: Piestrio;593857What I'm looking for are GM tools and tips to make running this kind of game as easy as possible. Adventure seeds, ready made maps, villains, etc... to accommodate an episodic format with a dynamic cast.

My group got a lot of milage out of Hudson City for Champions.  It's a good gritty Northeaster US city that works well with a lot of little local things going on for the players to pick and choose from.

In my opinion, most setting material explicitly made for Supers RPGs are pretty poor.  They're either a cheap knock-off of published comic book material, or they're trying very hard not to be.

In the former case, you're better off going with the real thing! There's reasons why rpg-publishers can't just have the Justice League or Gotham City in their products, but there's no reason you can't have those in your game!
In the latter case, the problem is that usually whatever the rpg writers come up with is not going to be nearly as good, or capture what you want the campaign to feel like, as the material that has stood the test of time in existing comics.

RPGPundit

The Biggest thing you need, besides player buy in, is a reason for the drop in and out.  

Might I suggest... Justice League Unlimited.  Okay, big super team, a dispatch center, and a teleporter.  Instant missions.

The second thing:  Supers games are about the interpersonal drama and the heroic decision.  If you make the focus about the powers and the fight, you are just playing a cool powers skirmish game.   The Villians are there to give you something to do AND to give you a tough decision.  

So Save Aunt May or Capture the Villian?

You are investigating a series of crimes and your favorite NPC (and budding love interest) may be a minor supervillian.

Uberman this and Uberman that.  We save the city more often then him, yet we get no press.  It is like he owns the newspaper or has some reporters in his pocket!  We need to get out there and get some better press.

Of course you are saving the bus of kids on the buckling bridge.  But here comes the villian to "make it tough".  He attacks you while you are trying to do it.  Defend yourself or just take it and rescue the bus?  

Even with a drop in game... you can set some of these up in prologue.


And third thing:  It is never about the powers.  

The powers are there to do fun things and give you the abilities to make a big difference.  If you make it about the powers, people will want to accumlate more. To challange them, you either have to do things that nullify their powers (alternate issues) OR you have to bump up the power level of the opposition.  Thus you get a power death spiral that will eventually end badly.   So it is about being heroic or doing cool things, not about throwing massive dice.

Thanks for the ideas everyone!