Types of Missions

Most "adventures" "missions" "sessions" involve a short story that can (hopefully) be completed within one session. Sometimes they're episodic like watching Futurama, sometimes there are over-arcing plot threads, like Lost, and sometimes they are continuous adventuring like True Blood.

Today, let's look at the basic types of missions and how they relate to your superhero campaign.


Stealth- This is a problem in every system. The stealth mission relies on the party infiltrating an area without getting caught, and usually (but not always) requires them to complete some objective without anyone being aware that they were there. More often, stealth is used to get in to a location, and combat blazing on the way out is not a big deal.

The problem with stealth missions in all game systems is that it's very weakest link oriented. In combat, the barbarian can carry the rest of the group. In negotiations, the charismatic character can speak for everyone. With stealth, the worst stealth roll can ruin it for everybody, unless the mission is very carefully orchestrated or planned. Otherwise you end up forcing the stealth character to solo large parts (or all) of the mission.

Mutants and masterminds offers additional challenges. First, it's easy to make a character nigh undetectable with concealment effects. The only way to beat those effects is with detection powers which effectively makes stealth impossible. Then there's esp and teleportation which makes sneaking around almost useless anyway.

So where does stealth fit into your campaign?

- The Party must aid another hero without him realizing it.
        This option allows broken stealth to be just fine while providing a level of challenge also as they must be unobtrusive with their success as well as their failures.
- The party must perform counter-stealth guard duty
         This way you can use stealth on the enemies and let the party try to find him. They either find him or they don't and have appropriate consequences.
- The party must use stealth while guarding NPCs
          This way the NPC can be the "weakest link" and the party must help them sneak away. Maybe they can be spotted, maybe they can't, but they must make sure the NPC escapes, which they are less likely to have the special powers already on hand to make this easy.

Negoitiation- The "chatty" role playing option. In this scenario the party must talk to the NPCs. Maybe they must negotiate a peace treaty, maybe they must learn secret information, or get the NPC to give away their computer password or room key, maybe they're trying to discover plot exposition.

In most games, this scenario has some problems. For one, it can sometimes be boring, for two it can (and is) usually soloed by one PC while the others standby and watch. For three, sometimes the "odder" PCs "ruin it" and we need some suspension of disbelief to move forward. (So Bob the orc is still wearing his belt of decapitated human heads while Dave addresses the king?).

Mutants and masterminds offers more challenges. Mind reading, mind control, emotion control, precognition, postcogition, object creation- there are so many powers that can bypass the need to communicate with NPCs. (Copy the key with create object, technopath the computer so you don't need the password, mind read the plot exposition). Perhaps you can argue that circumventing the diplomacy is just as valid a way to complete the mission- and you'd probably be right, but those are things you need to keep in mind if you're going to have a lying grand vizier or corrupt government official going up against a mind reader.

So here are some "negotiation" alternatives

- The party can do it, but isn't sure what to do:
     An example I used- a man is killing dragons to use their body parts for medicine. A dragon wants to locate him and kill him. The man, if he learns there are more dragons, will effectively become a dragon serial-killer. The party must decide who to side with and whether to negotiate peace or not. The challenge here is DECIDING the course of action, not taking it.
- The party must negotiate over the phone or on TV or something
   This way they can't use the mind reading, mind control, or other such powers.


Investigative- These are the missions where the party comes upon a scene and must decide what happened, and then figure out who the bad guy is before going to apprehend him. Most missions start out with some kind of investigative issue.

In most systems this involves some uses of Search, Tracking, Urban Tracking, Gather Information, Knowledge Checks, or reserach.

In mutants and masterminds, it's often as easy as Postcognition, Mind Reading, Esp-searching, and powered-tracking. It's often not so easy to conceal what happened. (You can see my previous posts on these powers if you want to outright nerf these powers).

Here are some "investigative" alternatives

- The party must create a false trail to throw off other investigators, perhaps leading them into a trap.
- The party is involved with other investigators and must corrupt the investigation in some way
- What you see throug postcognition is deceptive (such as the killer having been mindcontrolled or imitated by a shapeshifter creating false clues).

Combat- Most adventures have heavy combat pieces and most gamebooks of all types of games have very detailed combat rules, feats, and weapon details, and mutants and masterminds is no exceptions. Rather than go into too much detail, since combat is probably the most balanced part of the mutants and masterminds system, I'll just refer you to the breaking power level post, the minion tactics, and the combat complication posts to make combat more interesting.