Failure

Obviously a game-ending TPK is the end all be all of failures for a party to go through. In most other systems, Death is a pretty permanent failure as well. Not as much in fantasy setting with True Resurrection, and certainly not in Mutants and Masterminds when resurrection, and regeneration can easily make death a very minor complication. (Some characters die multiple times per combat due to that high level regeneration).

So how can one keep up the stakes and make REAL consequences for failure:

1. The Villains Win- The most obvious answer- the villains are able to abscond with whatever McGuffin the PCs were trying to protect, or their superweapon goes off and blasts away a good chunk of the city, or whatever plan happens works. This can leave the party trying to "undo" whatever evil was done, and make for several upcoming missions.
2. The Party Gains a Complication: Maybe the people seeing superman fall makes people lose faith in superheroes, or a character loses his fame or security clearance after a horrible loss. Perhaps a character gains self doubt and his powers become unreliable like in Spider Man 2. Perhaps a secret identity is revealed. Giving out complications (and the hero points that go with them) can provide real world consequences while keeping the plot moving.
3. A Loved one is Kidnapped- When the PCs lose or are forced to retreat (or even if the Villains manage to escape with something), they may choose to take out an "insurance policy" against future intrusions.
4. A Device is Damaged- Perhaps a device is damaged and either becomes unreliable, or stops working altogether, until it can be repaired via another mission, or perhaps the enemy even steals it.
5. Cursed: The PC might have bad luck (roll twice, take worst roll) or become werewolves, or otherwise succumb to a curse as a result of their failure.
6. Mental Condition: The PCs might suffer emotional trauma that manifests as a psychological disorder, or depression, or something that they need to overcome before they can adventure again.
7. TPK Alternatives: Sometimes when the party loses it's because they all died in combat (or are knocked unconscious). Here are some alternatives to just ending the campaign there:
1. Death Traps: The villain locks them into a death trap to enjoy a horrendous death (that they can escape from)
2. Powerless: The villain nullifies their powers "to get them out of the way" and the PCs must find a way to restore their powers before taking on the villain again.
3. Transformed: The PCs are turned into cats or different people or something, and may need to get to their true bodies.
4. Framed: The PCs are framed for the crimes they were foiling, throwing them in jail, or an alternate prison dimension or something where they must stage a prison break and clear their names.
5. Exiled: The PCs are send to the moon, shrunk to the microverse, an alternate dimension, to the deep past/future, or somewhere they can't simply come back from, and they must find a way to return- meanwhile the villain is free to act without consequences.

Inevitables

The Fiend Folio of D&D introduced us to a class of creatures called the inevitable.

While drastically under-powered compared to their flavor text in the Fiend Folio, in mutants and masterminds they can represent a real force to help curb some of the broken character concepts, without outright banning them.

Inevitables are Lawful Neutral creatures from the plane of Mechanus, whose job it is to enforce specific "natural" laws. While generally clockwork in appearance, they are not golems, and they can grow personalities (though these are purged when they return home).

In many ways, they act as DEATH from the discworld novels, or the Time Wraiths from the Flash TV series. Inevitables can hunt a PC who is using a broken concept too much, or "glitching" the game with cheesy manuvers.


The Inevitable of Oaths- This would be the weaker of the inevitables, but it seeks to punish oathbreakers and to force them to keep their vows. Armed with compulsion effects (as well as combat ability) they seek to outright MAKE a PC who has broken solemn oaths make good on their word. While regular lying is too commonplace to summon such a creature, a hero who promises a villain succor, and instead kills them might bring one, or one who is guilty of treason, killing a guest in his home, or other such atrocities.

The Inevitable of Time- For the PC who breaks time travel, a Time Inevitable can appear- not to fix a paradox, mind you, but to punish the super who caused them. (Though it might seek to repair a damaged timeline). Characters who use very liberal ideas of time travel to duplicate objects by keeping versions of the same object from different timelines or times is a great example. These creatures might keep a PC suspended in stop time eternally, or use various temporal abilities (precog, slow, haste, etc) to combat them and destroy them for their infractions.

The Inevitable of Death- While resurrection and regeneration are common in comics and in the game, as are immortals immune to aging, the Death Inevitable might come when the books are drastically out of balance. Perhaps he kills someone else for each person resurrected, or he comes to punish a PC who resurrects every dead body in the cemetery, or who solves every crime not by finding the killer, but just resurrecting the victims. This inevitable might take on a "shape" much like the "antagonist" of the Final Destination movies, circling back to reclaim its victims or take new ones. They might also seek out characters who transform themselves into powerful intelligent undead, such as liches, or who harvest souls and prevent them from moving on.

The Inevitable of Divinity- While there may be gods, there's only so much faith to go around. Since faith sustains gods, if too many people were gods, all gods would be too weak to be very impressive, and their low faith rations would shrink even more. Thus the Inevitable of Divinity seeks to limit the number of gods. Perhaps he challenges those who would ascend to Godhood, or attempts to slaughter priests who create new cults. Perhaps he seeks out gods who have lost too many followers to "make room" for the other gods. While the in-game applications of this inevitable might be limited, it might make the characters think twice about getting "all the powers" and becoming a full god themselves.


Keep in mind, inevitables are not meant to end campaigns. Rather, they are intended to be creatures that come forward to punish characters who abuse natural laws and create conflicts for a PC to overcome, and a new mission strand. PCs should be able to avoid or defeat an inevitable, but know that they might summon more if they continue to abuse game balance destructive powers, and it might encourage them to limit their uses (or at least not to cheese monkey time travel).

If nothing else, the inevitables might be after the NPCs, giving the PCs something to do.

Tech Level

Tech Level would be a way of describing a world or campaign setting so the players know what kind of technology is appropriate, and which kind is not.

This is taken for a large part off the GURPS wiki, but would fit into any campaign.

TL	Era	Timespan	Signature technologies
0	Stone Age	Prehistory and later	Counting; oral tradition.
1	Bronze Age	3500 B.C.+	Arithmetic; writing.
2	Iron Age	1200 B.C.+	Geometry; scrolls.
3	Medieval	600 A.D.+	Algebra; books.
4	Age of Sail	1450+	Calculus; movable type.
5	Industrial Revolution	1730+	Mechanical calculators; telegraph.
6	Mechanized Age	1880+	Electrical calculators; telephone and radio;
7	Nuclear Age	1940+	Mainframe computers; television.
8	Digital Age	1980+?	Personal computers; global networks.
9	Microtech Age	2025+?	Artificial intelligence; real-time virtuality.
10	Robotic Age	2070+	Nanotechnology or other advances start to blur distinctions between technologies...
11	Age of Exotic Matter
12	Whatever the GM likes!

L	Transportation	Weapons and Armor	Power	Biotechnology/Medicine
0	Skis; dogsleds; dugout canoes.	Wooden and stone weapons; primitive shields; hides for armor.	Human muscle power; dogs.	First aid; herbal remedies; primitive agriculture.
1	Bare horseback; the wheel (and chariots); ship-building; sails.	Bronze weapons and armor.	Donkeys; oxen; ponies.	Surgery; animal husbandry; fermentation.
2	Saddle; roads; triremes.	Iron weapons; iron armor (including mail); siege engines.	Horses; water wheels.	Bleeding the sick; chemical remedies.
3	Stirrups; oceangoing sailing ships (longships, roundships, etc.).	Steel weapons; early firearms; plate armor; castles.	Heavy horses and horse-collars; windmills.	Crude prosthetics; anatomical science.
4	Stagecoach; three-masted sailing ships; precise navigation.	Muskets and pikes; horse artillery; naval broadsides.	Improved windmills; belt drives; clockwork.	Optical microscope makes cells visible.
5	Steam locomotives; steamboats; early submersibles; balloons and early airships.	Early repeating small arms; rifled cannon; ironclads.	Steam engines; direct current; batteries.	Germ theory of disease; safe anesthetics; vaccines.
6	Automobiles; continental railways; ocean liners; submarines; aircraft.	Smokeless powder; automatic weapons; tanks; combat aircraft.	Steam turbines; internal combustion; alternating current; hydroelectricity.	Antibiotics; blood typing and safe transfusions; heredity; biochemistry.
7	Nuclear submarines; jet aircraft; helicopters; manned space flight.	Ballistic body armor; guided munitions; combat jets; nuclear weapons.	Gas turbines; fission; solar power.	Discovery of DNA; organ transplants; pacemakers.
8	Satellite navigation; SSTO ("single stage to orbit") spacecraft.	Smartguns; blinding lasers; unmanned combat vehicles.	Fuel cells; advanced batteries.	Genetically modified organisms; gene therapy; cloning.
9	Robot cars; space elevators; manned interplanetary space flight.	Electrolasers; heavy laser weapons; battlesuits; combat robots; designer viruses.	Micro fuel cells; deuterium-hydrogen fusion; high-temperature superconductors.	Human genetic engineering; tissue engineering; artificial wombs; cybernetic implants
10	Fast interplanetary space flight.	Compact laser and heavy particle-beam weapons; Gauss guns; nanotech armor; nanoviruses; antimatter bombs.	Helium-3 fusion; antimatter.	Brain transplants; uploading; bioroids; uplifted animals.
11	Manned interstellar space flight.	Compact particle-beam weapons; disassemblers ("gray goo"); defensive nanites.	Portable fusion power.	Living machines; cellular regeneration.
12	Faster interstellar space flight.	Gamma-ray lasers; "living metal" armor; black-hole bombs.	Portable antimatter power.	Full metamorphosis; regeneration.
^	Reactionless thrust; contragravity; faster-than-light (FTL) travel; matter transmission; parachronic technology; time machines.	Monomolecular blades; force-field technology; gravitic weapons; nuclear dampers; disintegrators.	Broadcast power; cold fusion; zero-point energy; total conversion; cosmic power.	Fast-growth clone tanks; psi drugs; regeneration ray.

Now, one of the signature parts of the superhero campaigns is the concept of SUPER TECH (we call it MAD SCIENCE in my campaigns).

Mad Science: These are special super devices paid for with character points as a device power. These cannot be mass produced or replicated due to the law of Mad Science:

The Law of Mad Science: A scientific discovery can happen by design or completely by accident. This discovery should not really happen due to laws of physics, but to the Mad Scientist, it happened because he did not intend it to: he was not actively disbelieving that it should happen. Once it has happened though, and the process is examined, it's clear to the Scientists (as well as any other Scientists that try to replicate the experiment) that it shouldn't have worked that way. Their faith in scientific laws interferes with reality so that the experiment cannot happen again. It's much like when you do something cool, but can't do it when people are watching.

This provides an in-universe explanation for crazy super hero tech that can resurrect the dead, or teleport people between worlds, or whatever, but can't be used for the betterment of society by curing cancer globally. 

Mad Science devices should be allowed at a power level 1-2 above the tech level of the campaign. (A stone age campaign that you've time travelled to probably does not possess the materials for you to make an adequate printing press). 

However, any EQUIPMENT should be purchased at or below the current tech level of the campaign. You can't buy alien starships if earth doesn't have them, and you might be able to build one as a device, but not using equipment points, even if you're a super genius. This helps keep the campaign in the right scale.

Think about how disruptive it would be on real world earth if the PCs just purchased using equipment points a series of starships that could rain down destruction from space. How would villains be able to do anything? This is meant to keep the tech of the party aligned with the tech of the world without eliminating the device powers. 

Death Boons

Death Boons are a way of rewarding players for Character death. Usually this is a setback- having to create a new character, and as such, players will typically try to avoid having their characters die at all costs. This can lead to cowardly and overly-cautious actions on the part of the players (unless they're immune to death somehow), and teamwork starts to suffer.

Thus I've created the benefits below. A Death Boon is granted to the replacement character as a reward for the circumstances of the death of the first character.

Apply benefits (GM Discretion) based on the nature of the characters death (as seen on the chart below):

Death Was	Modifier
Mechanical- This just happened as a natural consequence of the dice rolling in battle.	+0
Unlucky- This happened as a result of a nat 1 on a saving throw	+1
Sacrificial- The PC purposefully sacrificed themselves to help the team succeed, holding off enemies, or shielding them from a blast, etc	+2
Cowardly- The death resulted from cowardly or evil actions by the player (trying to escape from a combat everyone else was involved in, betraying the team, etc)	-2
Fiat- The death resulted from a GM fiat or some story purpose where mechanical rolls could not save the character.	+2
Unprepared- The death happened when a character MIGHT have survived a situation but didn’t (such as drowning after a submarine was damaged or being ejected into space without a space suit)	+1
Retirement- The PC retired his character due to him no longer wanting to play the character (or he lost the sheet, etc)	+0
Forced Retirement- The PC gave up his character AFTER PLAY BEGAN due to the GM request- PC was overpowered or similar.	+1*
Betrayal- The PC died as a result of betrayal or negligence of the other party members	+2
Blaze of Glory- Death was a result of a blaze of glory or other play feature.	+1

*Only apply this bonus once in a campaign, don’t encourage players to make multiple BROKEN characters jut to get a death boon on replacements. Also, only use this if a character grows to powerful, don’t reward them for a character you outright ban. 

Total up the points and apply as follows:

Negative to Zero: No death boon

+1: Minor Boon

+2-+3 Major Boon

+4 or higher: Grand Boon

Then consult some possible boons below. Maybe you do random, let the player pick, or choose yourself. 

Death Boons
Minor	Major	Grand
+1 to one of your saving throws (fort/ref/will)	1 free feat (1 point)	+1 hero point per session
4 free skill points	+1 to attack or defense	1 free headquarters
5 free equipment points	+1 to toughness saves	+1 Power Level

The idea here is that if a player dies in a particularly heroic or story relevant way, he is rewarded by having his new character get some benefits. He still must sit out the rest of the session, since he died, and the GM needs time to review and approve a replacement character, but his new character has some benefit to offset the loss of the previous character and to encourage heroic role-playing.

Character Creation Gimmicks

So let me venture a guess. If your group is like mine, you have the following players: the power gamer, the player who plays the same archetype every time, the guy who copies other people's character concepts, the role-player, the roll-player (not a power gamer, but doesn't waste any time on non-combat abilities), and maybe the guy whose just there because he has nothing to do and creates characters who "look cool" but don't do much of anything.

Close to home? Well here are a few character creation gimmicks you might pull when running a new campaign.


Character Swap: The party all makes characters, but they don't play the characters they create- they randomly draw characters from a pile- so they might get their power min-maxed character, or another player's role-playing specialist. That guy with a specific archetype is forced to play outside his comfort zone.

Sidekicks: The players make characters and sidekicks. In the first session, all the main characters die and the sidekicks become the primary characters. The min-maxers will probably have sidekicks who are little more than point-boosts for their main character and are now forced to play an underpowered or niche sidekick, while they guys who made everything normally will have a relatively more powered sidekick.

Multiple Characters: The players make 2 characters. The GM then choses (or its random): 1 is played by the player, the other is an evil NPC controlled by the GM- a min-maxed villain team for you to fight against!

Premade Characters: Certainly makes for a quicker first session, though the downfall is that there's little connection between the players and the characters. The upside is you can make a team that works together.

Team Flavor: The players must decide on a them for their superhero team, and make a character that fits that theme. For example, the Holiday Squad, where each character's powers are based on a holiday, or The Artists- where each power is based on a style of art (sculpting, drawing, etc). Causes more creativity from the players and forces them to work together.


Any other gimmicks GMs have used? Share in the comments.

Secret Codes

So often it comes up that the heroes need to communicate with each other on the battlefield to lay out strategy, or to discuss what's going on. But how to do so without alerting the enemy.

Well, there's telepathy, that's an easy one for superheroes, but what if you don't have it, or if someone's immune to mind-affecting (and thus can't receive telepathic communications)? Or what if someone can overhear your telepathic communication?

There's having your team carry radios, but those could be overheard with radio powers (or tricked into saying the wrong things), or even overheard with someone with really high notice ranks.

You can create a language called Codespeak that the team members all learn to communicate with each other, though comprehend might be able to identify spoken languages. Below are some thoughts on ways to communicate between team members (or enemies) to allow for unified tactics.


1) Telekinesis: You could telekinetically "tap" morse code or a team code onto someone's skin. Must have precise and not full power on your TK, and it only allows TK people to communicate. Very difficult to pick up, because even if the villain detects the TK, he may not know what it means.

2) Illusions: Especially if the illusion is selective, you can have an illusion of words or a speaking person that only certain party members can see/hear (though a villain with detection powers might be able to crack the code). The illusion might also communicate through a secret language.

3) Sounds: Whether music, or sounds humans can make, or animal sounds, the ability to create sounds to clue in your team is useful. Anyone could hear it, but not everyone would know what it means. (A dog sound means attack, while a cat sound means use diplomacy, etc). You could make the sounds above or below the audible spectrum if you're team is able to hear them.

4) Sign Language: Completely silent, though requires team members to see each other (can't be transmitted over a radio). Anyone could learn that language unless it's a "secret" language you spent a point on, and comprehend may or may not identify your "interpretive dance" as a language.

5) Lights: Flickering lights, especially of various colors, could translate into a language. Difficult to decipher even with comprehend, as they're flickering lights. You could also make them of the non-visible spectrum (ultraviolet/infrared) if you're team is able to see them.

6) Scents: Rounding out the basic senses is scent- perhaps a certain odor could indicate a certain action- flowers means attack the minions first, skunk means flee, cookies means stop fighting to save the civilians, or whatever. Of course, you'd need the ability to create the scents, which requires some powers.

7) HUDs: Like radio, your teams could have eye-pieces with text that pops up and advises them of what to do. Someone has to be controllign it- a sidekick back at base, or a technopath perhaps, and anything seen by the PCs might be seen by the villains also.

8) Emotion Code: With the ability to create emotions, each emotional feeling could indicate an action. Since all data can be broken down with as little as a 0 or 1 (morse code is an example), you could have some complex communications with sequences of emotions by spending a point for the language. Some D&D mages have taken this at low levels for detailed communication with familiars over distances.

Lots of ways to communicate with your team out there, though many require some prep work or powers, but when you're trying to give direction to a team and don't want the enemy to overhear, all the preparation is worth it. A good way to reward PCs with certain powers is to have the enemies use these techniques and have 1 PC who is able to "overhear" them.

Laws of Alternate Powers

Alternate powers seems to be an item of contention in all the campaigns I've been a part of, in part because some of the rules surrounding it are vague, and in part because of debate over what an "alternate" power is. Then there's the power-gamer point buy argument.

Power Gaming:
One might argue that a character with a freeze gun and a heat gun should have 2 separate powers: Blast (Heat) and Blast (Cold) with whatever side effects those blasts will have. Well Blast costs 2 points per power level, so both guns at PL 5 cost 20 power points. (Let's just use basic costs, never mind that they might be nested as devices).

Of course, a cheaper way is to have a gun that can blast heat OR cold, which is 11 power points, 10 for the blast, and 1 point for the alternate power.

This seems all well and good in this instance- you can't use both functions at once, if the gun is stolen you don't have the other gun as a backup, this is a fair use of alternate power.

The problem is that we run into some crazy edge cases- like using super movement: phasing as an alternate power of flight. Of course, you'd almost never need to use both at the same time- phasing involves going through solid matter, and flight involves going through the air- but how does this make sense flavor-wise? How do wings help you phase through matter, for example?

This seems to be a case of taking the powers in a way that's cheaper mechanically but doesn't make flavor sense. The justification for alternate power being cheaper is the ability to use only one at a time, and there may only be a few edge cases (phasing through the floor of an airplane) when you'd want flight and phasing active at the same time. To me, this is an abuse of point-buy.

An alternate power should legitimately stem from the base power. Using ice blast to create objects of ice is not too much of a stretch. Using ice powers to fly by blasting against the ground might be awkward, but understandable. Using ice powers to teleport is just silly.

Lasting Powers and Continuous Powers
There are some very vague sentences here in the handbook. A continuous power indicates that it remains on until turned off. A Lasting power states that it continues even if the user switches to an alternate power. So the question becomes: Does a continuous power turn off if you switch to an alternate power?

Let's say you're using Mind Control as your base power. You have the ability to mind control someone and it's continuous- it won't wear off on it's own- ever. However, you find yourself in need of switching to mind reading, to secretly read the mind of some other person- an alternate power.

Does the mind controlled person regain his senses at that time?

I am of the mind to say he does. While continuous powers do not require any active concentration on the part of the user, and he may be able to mind control a large group of people, I would contend that switching to an alternate power constitutes "Turning Off" the original power.

Now if this was a LASTING power this would be different. Using snare as an example, you could telekinetically snare a group of people, then switch to an alternate power to use TK to fly away without freeing those other people. But snare is LASTING, while Mind Control is not.

From a game balance perspective, you can have a character effectively using mind control and mind reading AT THE SAME TIME despite them being alternate powers- sure he can't gain control of a new person while he's actively reading a mind (he won't have enough actions to do so anyway), but he would not lose control, and could still issue verbal commands normally. Where is the mechanical balance to offset the fact that the second power costs only 1 power point?

Something to keep in mind with those alternate powers. Watch for LASTING power abuse, also. Be careful of people taking boost as an alternate power to ANYTHING. Boost is lasting, so they could boost up whatever they want for the duration of the boost, and it costs only 1 power point for the alternate power.

Extra Effort:
So this is another issue. Extra effort can allow you a temporary use of a power feat- such as alternate power. So with extra effort, you can gain an entirely different power (depending on how lenient you are with alternate powers being different from the base power).

Even without going crazy off theme (such as an Ice Queen using extra effort to turn her ice beam into a fire beam), you can add extras very easily. Maybe you want to add autofire to your power- normally that would mean cutting down the PL due to extra point cost- but not if you add extra flaws to offset- and since you know the situation, you can easily make flaws that "don't matter".

Let's say you have a heat blast, and you're fighting against a group of Slaver Runners from Iraq late in the night. You could add 3 points of autofire (+3 / level) and add in Limited: Only affects slave runners, Limited: only affects people from Iraq, and Limited: Only works during the night time. These limiteds do nothing to hinder your power, but give free points to gain extra with. Since the power feat only lasts for the encounter, you need not worry about ever having to use it in the day time or against a different kind of target. (This also holds true for uses of the inventor style feats).

I'm of a mind to either say extra effort cannot create alternate powers, or that it cannot give you the same power name (thus not allowing you to switch extras and flaws freely).

Alternate Flaws:
This is similar to the extra effort issue, but in advance. Blast is 2 points per rank, so rank 10 blast is 20 points. For 10 points you can take Rank 10 blast with (only works against women). Then take a 1 point alternate power to take a blast that only works on men instead. Sure, you can't use both at once, but unless you have an area of effect on it, you're only attacking 1 person per round anyway, and switching is a free action. You basically took a 20 point power and made it cost 11 points.

Result:
So this is why I've created my LAW of Alternate Powes:

1) Alternate Powers must thematically derive from the Base Power (GM Discretion). This prevents abuses like using teleport as an alternate of flight.
2) Alternate Powers must have the same FLAWS as the primary power. (So you can't use alternate flaws do double the value of your current powers).
3) Non-Lasting powers are considered to be "Turned Off" when you switch to an alternate power, even if they are continuous.
4) When using extra effort to create an alternate power, you may not add additional flaws to the new power. If you want to add extras, you will need to either lower the PL of the power, or remove existing extras from your power. (Mind- the lower PL could be offset with Boost).


Any other Alternate Power Laws I need? Let me know!