Campaign Cookbook

"A bunch of heroes were hanging around together for no particular reason. Suddenly they heard about a super powered villain's evil scheme. For no particular reason they set out to find the villain. They did, and in a big fight they defeated the villain. The end."

You'd be bored by a comic book with this storyline. You might even say, "I can write a better comic story myself!" When you become a Judge, you can. In your own "comics," your roleplaying adventures, you can create stories with as much excitement as the Marvel comics.

This means you create, not just a series of fights, but a storyline with a beginning, middle, and end; giving PCs a clear goal and a struggle against villains with conflicting goals; and featuring a supporting cast of NPCs who can hinder or help the players.

This chapter discusses the elements of a good Marvel story or scenario. First comes a general discussion of story elements, pacing, staging, and other important matters. Novice Judges in particular should find this useful.

Then the chapter presents a series of detailed treatments of "plot ingredients" such as villains, NPCs, deathtraps, and grand finales. By mixing and matching these ingredients, you can create hundreds of new scenarios. Any Judge, no matter how experienced, can use these to improve adventures.

A "genre" refers to a distinctive kind of story, such as mysteries, Westerns, romances, or fantasy, usually used to distinguish it from general, or "mainstream," fiction.

Readers of these genres quickly point out that there is wide variety within each one. In the same way, the Marvel comic book genre includes many kinds of stories. But there are certain similarities among them that are worth discussing here.

Why is this important? Because to tell stories like those in Marvel comics, you should understand the rules by which they work. If you already under stand the genre (and if you've been reading Marvel comics for a long time, you probably do), skip this section.

"Tone," the most important factor in gaming a genre, refers to the general quality or atmosphere of the genre's stories. For instance, hard boiled detective stories usually have a dark, brutally cynical tone, whereas romances stress true love and heartbreak.

Stories of the Marvel heroes vary in tone between the high tech galactic adventure of the Fantastic Four and the urban nightmare of Daredevil. With this variety, what genre elements should you use in setting your tone?

Many elements depend on the kind of campaign you choose and on the power level of your PCs. But here are some elements common to all Marvel stories.

Good vs. evil. The heroes and villains may not always wear skin tight costumes, but you can always tell the good guys from the bad guys. Marvel heroes fight the good fight against various agents of death, destruction, tyranny, corruption, and chaos. The heroes, and your PC heroes, are always clearly on the side of right.

Some heroes, such as Wolverine and the Punisher, often work on the wrong side of the law and inhabit an extremely gray area on the spectrum of morality. But almost without fail, their foes act worse than the heroes ever would. So they, too, embody the conflict of good and evil.

Heroes who are highly motivated. These characters have reasons for what they do. Spider Man knows that with great power comes great responsibility; the FF prevents super villains and aliens from conquering the world; the X Men and X Factor protect mutants from persecution; the Punisher fights organized crime to avenge his slain family.

Just having miraculous powers is, in itself, no reason to risk your life battling bad guys. Your PCs should have origins that explain their motives, and your adventures should reinforce those motives.

Bad guys, just as motivated. Don't forget that the bad guys are people, too (at least some of them). They fight for a reason. The villains are greedy, crazy, or just plain nasty; they yearn for power, slaves, or ideological purity; or they just want to prove they're the best at what they do.

Whatever they are, villains are not collections of numbers that exist to be pounded on. They hatch many plots, and they can really antagonize your heroes get on their nerves in a personal way. The villain who insults a hero, makes his life hard, and kidnaps his dog will mean a lot more to that hero's player than just another thug from the rulebook. This gets players more involved in the story.

High speed action: Marvel comics are exciting, and your adventures should proceed in that tradition. Every play session should include plenty of chasing around, suspense, and as much action as you can squeeze in.

The characters should be dynamic types who throw themselves into things instead of hanging back and not getting involved, afraid of losing Health. They show their personalities through their deeds, just like the characters in the comics. The comic book audience enjoys a fast paced story, and your audience of players is no different.

Humor. Don't forget, while your villains plan civilization's collapse and the end of life on Earth, that Marvel comics also feature liberal doses of comedy relief.

Spider Man always gets off plenty of one liners; where Thor goes, the enormous Volstagg is seldom far behind; even Doctor Strange manages to grin from time to time. And some villains, such as the Impossible Man, add welcome doses of silliness.

When your scenarios get too grim, players can forget the reason they play: to have fun. So throw in opportunities for wit, satire, or even slapstick.

Aside from the elements that create the genre's tone, there are also unspoken assumptions that allow them to work. Every form of entertainment uses "conventions" of this kind. For instance, one of the conventions of opera is that everyone sings beautifully; of space opera science fiction movies, that you can move from planet to planet in a reasonable time. Without such assumptions, the whole story falls apart.

You might think the conventions of super hero adventures include things like high tech gadgets, explosions, and big, climactic battles with villains. But those are just plot elements, and many perfectly good Marvel stories don't involve any of these. Conventions are more subtle. For example:

This is the way secret identities work. No one can figure out a hero's true identity without careful detective work.

Occasionally this idea fails, but only when the story specifically calls for it. For instance, Daredevil turned in the agent called Bullet, but Bullet's government connections got him out of police custody in hours.

In general, though, this convention prevents heroes from having to worry about the legal system, since having to do so seldom produces exciting stories.

Give your PCs time to make threats, stirring speeches, or insults between thrown punches. Villains can drop clues or gloat. Think of these orations as the word balloons in a comic book panel. These "soliloquies" take no game time, and they make for a colorful fight.

The Marvel Universe, especially New York City, is crowded with heroes. But part of what makes them heroic and what makes a good story is that each one faces his or her problems head on, alone.

When the assassin Bullseye went on a killing rampage through Manhattan, did Daredevil knock on the door of Avengers Mansion and say, "Thor, could you take care of this little matter for me?" No. Daredevil fought and bested his enemy alone, because it was Daredevil's story.

In game terms, you should prepare scenarios uniquely suited to your players' characters. If they aren't able to handle magic, don't throw a lot of magical perils at them; they will just have to locate Doctor Strange and ask for help. Your PCs are the stars of the story, so they are by definition the best heroes to handle the situation.

Of course, an occasional visit to Four Freedoms Plaza or Avengers Island is okay. For instance, the heroes might need to borrow a piece of equipment that only the Avengers or FF would have. But if the players start to lean too hard on other hero groups, make sure those others are conveniently "off on missions" when your scenarios take place.

New York City may be huge and have problems that millions of people can't solve, but the efforts of its few super humans make life better for everyone. Sometimes this convention, too, is honored in the breach rather than the observance, but, in general, Marvel comics strike a positive note about their heroes' role in society.

When you show that your PCs are improving their world, the players feel good and continue playing. But if the PCs mess up all the time, and their presence only makes things worse, the players will come to feel that they are better off staying home.

How do you turn all of these ideas into an adventure? How do you mix elements of plot, characters, settings, surprises, and goals, present them to your player characters, and turn their responses into an exciting story?

One funny but useful approach compares your role to that of a chef in a big kitchen. The episodes of your story are like the courses of a dinner, and you have a selection of staple ingredients to mix in your recipes.

Premises: These are the springboards for stories or adventures. A premise provides a situation, a goal, and reasons to try to reach the goal. For example, "The Leader has captured the TV and radio stations atop the Empire State Building and is broadcasting subtle hypnotic suggestions. The heroes must get to the studios, stop his broadcasts, and find a way to reverse the hypnosis, or at dawn millions of people will walk into the ocean and drown."

For more premises you might consider using, see the "Summary" sections that begin the scenarios in Chapter 11.

Goals: In a story, the player characters work toward genuine goals. "Stop Doctor Doom from taking over the UN building." "Find the evidence that will clear a PC hero of this murder charge." "Locate and rescue the Mayor."

There are many goals, all of them having real effects if the heroes reach them or fail. Make your story's goal one the characters care about, and that motivates them to act heroically.

Settings: In a story, the environment is important. It can determine the course of the plot, and it does more than anything else to establish the tone and atmosphere of the story.

Think about Times Square. Or Four Freedoms Plaza. Or Doctor Strange's Sanctum. These aren't just maps with numbered rooms, they're places where people live or work, with unique features that set a mood.

If you give your players these details, they'll know more about this story than if you said, "There you are in a sleazy pool hall."

Another way to describe settings is to draw on your players' shared experience of reading Marvel comics. Compare sites to the scenes in the comics: "This is a luxurious brownstone like the one Matt Murdock used to live in," or "This is a big, shiny laboratory like Reed Richards uses in Four Freedoms Plaza." This is a shorthand way to set the scene.

The Hotspot entries in the Campaign Sourcebook include enough descriptive detail to get you started, and you can improvise the rest as needed, from your imagination or additional reading.

Conflict: It's not a story unless something prevents the heroes from achieving their goal with ease. Maybe bad guys are chasing them, only a stretched footstep behind. Maybe the person they're sent to find doesn't want to be found, or works to sabotage the heroes, or has been kidnapped. Or a tremendous disaster has endangered the city, so the heroes must spend valuable time rescuing innocents.

Obstacles to success make exciting adventures. They come not just from villains and henchmen, but from the environment, misunderstandings, or neutral NPCs with conflicting goals. And not all obstacles can be removed with a haymaker or repulsor ray.

Suppose your heroes need to catch a taxi to Queens, so they can warn Aunt May that a villain is headed her way. The only taxi around is occupied by a stuffy rich guy who wants no truck with rowdy muscular guys in funny suits. He's got bodyguards and powerful connections; he can probably outbid the heroes; and if they punch him out, they'll ruin their reputations.

This conflict forces PCs to think around a problem. Even though nobody has swung a fist or destroyed a building, the story is exciting and involving. Try to put many kinds of conflict in stories.

Non player characters (NPCs): Some NPCs are interesting allies or villains, with their own skills and goals. Others are faceless threats, like thugs or monsters, who are just there for the heroes to overcome. Both kinds fill essential roles in your plot.

Surprises: What comic reader doesn't like a good twist in the narrative? When Spider Man's first black costume turned out to be a vampiric alien, that startled readers everywhere. When Thor was briefly replaced by the alien Beta Ray Bill, no one was exactly sure what was going on.

When players are acting without much thought, because they think they know what's coming next, make sure they're wrong. Any story offers chances to make the players have to readjust their expectations with a sudden lurch.

Maybe the heroes are trying to rescue an ambassador's teenage daughter, who has been kidnapped by terrorists. The PCs cross the city to the terrorist hideout, sneak in, silence the lone guard, and wake the young woman. She lets out a screech and calls for the terrorists! It turns out she's allied herself with them to rebel against her father and create a new life without him. The players, having proceeded without thinking, must suffer the consequences.

But when the players are alert, think matters through, and plan intelligently for likely turns of events, don't shove in an arbitrary surprise just to mess them up. If the plan they offer would work as you have arranged matters even if it isn't the way you had figured it would be it deserves to succeed.

In this way you reward intelligence, and players don't start thinking, "Why bother planning when we're going to get blindsided anyway?" Sometimes when the heroes execute a plan flawlessly, with no drawbacks, the success itself surprises the heroes more than any failure you could invent.

The grand finale: A story's excitement should build to higher levels, and then be resolved in a single dramatic confrontation. More often than not, this is a slugfest with the main villain.

In this climax, the main story elements should be resolved, main goals reached or lost, and most important characters dealt with in some fitting fashion. Maybe the chief villain escapes, surviving to fight again ... but for now, no one has to worry about him or her for a while.

You can't always know your story's climax when you design the adventure, because players can act unpredictably and send the plotline careening off in new directions. But as you judge the adventure, be alert for ways to resolve the story in a dramatic final scene. Read more about finales later in this chapter.

Now that you've cooked up a dinner, you should decide how to serve it. How will you get your players into the story, and how will the plot develop?

Length: Have a rough idea of how long the whole adventure should take.

Of course, players always do unexpected things that affect the length of time a story takes to complete. They take a few days off to earn money or date their girl/boyfriends, or they accidentally stumble on the high tech item that destroys the villain in one turn. You can't plan for this, but you ought to have some notion of how many evenings everyone will have to keep open to finish the adventure.

A short scenario, with an immediate goal and one or two obstacles, can take a few hours one play  session. An extended adventure, lasting many days of game time or ranging across a wide area, with lots of fights or chases, can take many sessions of several hours each.

In planning an extended adventure, try to break down the story into session length "episodes" or installments. Each episode should offer certain features in its own right, such as action and an opportunity for each player character to do something useful. Otherwise, the adventure may drag, and some players can grow dissatisfied. Episodes are discussed further below.

In a campaign, it is often a good idea to alternate extended, multisession adventures with shorter, "one shot" stories. The short breaks provide light relief from the rigors of a lengthy adventure, in the same way you might take a break from reading multi part graphic novels to browse a short story.

Getting underway: First, make sure you have all the game materials you need, such as pencils, dice, and "paranoia notes" (slips of paper the players use to pass private messages to the Judge). And set out plenty of munchies—role playing is hungry work! Then everything is ready.

Before the adventure begins, get each player to introduce his or her character to the others. If it is not an established Marvel character, the player should describe the character's appearance and perhaps some background.

Starting an adventure can be a problem. The goal is not only to present a situation, but to involve the players in it to get them emotionally committed. The "Adventure Hooks" section later in this chapter gives specific ways to pull players into the story.

But here is one point of general advice:

Consider starting the heroes right in the middle of everything. Tell the players that their characters received an urgent summons from a police stoolie; when they went to rescue him, they stumbled into a Maggia ambush. The gunmen are firing. What do the PCs do?

Already players can make interesting choices, they're headed in a clear direction, and you begin to establish the tone for this adventure. When the action lets up for a moment or two, convey the premise and goal of the story, and let the heroes charge onward.

Pacing the story: Once they're charging, how fast do they get where they're going? As fast as possible, of course. Keep things rolling along, and don't get bogged down in detail. If you are not sure about a rule, invent something reasonable and continue; then you can check later, and reverse your earlier ruling if it's still necessary and feasible.

And players shouldn't make things drag with rules questions, either. Their characters don't have time to flip through rulebooks in the midst of heated exertion, so the players shouldn't either. If you make it clear to players that you will treat them fairly and that a finicky rules question won't govern the success or failure of their mission, they should be willing to surrender to the moment and play the roles, not the rules.

The way you describe settings, impersonate characters, and dramatize action directly influences how much fun everyone has.

First, don't drone. The Judge who recites his or her narrative in a bored monotone or a singsong voice, like an accountant reading figures off a tax return, inspires players with no more enthusiasm than the tax return would.

Also, when the action becomes exciting, get excited! Raise your voice. Gesture. Make noises, like the explosion of gunshots or the zaps of magic spells. Just look at any Marvel comic for sound effects ideas. Ham it up! Your enthusiasm will draw people into the spirit of the story. Or if not, at least they'll be entertained watching you act crazy.

Here is how two different Judges, one brand new and the other experienced, describe the end of one battle.

* * *

The new Judge: "What did you roll? Okay, that's a hit. Doctor Octopus takes Incredible damage. That brings him to 0, all right. He makes his Endurance roll, so he's not dying, but he's out cold."

The experienced Judge: "What did you roll? Okay, your energy bolt shoots out like lightning, kzat! It crackles yellow, white, blue. The smell of ozone fills the air. The bolt strikes Doctor Octopus right in his stomach. His arm controls spark and fizzle, he jerks his head back, and he screams!

"His arms falter. They're still holding him up, but he's sagging to the floor like an old man. He sinks lower and lower. And all the while he's mumbling, 'You can't beat me again this time I've got you just let me catch my breath ' Then the arms give way all at once, he hits the floor, and he lies there twitching."

* * *

The second Judge's narrative excites the players, helps them visualize the action, and simulates the "feel" of Marvel comics. This is called staging.

There's nothing wrong with rules, but they exist only to help you and the players create stories. So tell the stories something like an on the spot radio news reporter. Describe the fight blow by blow, not die roll by die roll.

A few tips for colorful description:

Use many senses. Describe what the PCs see and hear, but also include interesting smells, the temperature, when it's useful, and the way the scene makes the characters feel: "The Hudson River is wide, slate gray, and smells like the oil in an old gas station. A stiff, cool breeze blows toward you. A few derelicts are staggering along the waterfront. You feel as desolate as they look."

Use sound effects. As mentioned above, don't hesitate to "bang! kaboom! zam!" all you like. Don't be shy you're the Judge, so you can do anything you want. If the players make fun of you, throw an incredible superpowered villain at their characters.

That should hush them up!

Design dramatic entrances and exits. A major character's appearance or departure is worth playing up. It's okay to say, "There's Doctor Octopus, and he springs to the attack." But you increase suspense and interest if you say, "The only sound in the warehouse is the buzzing of a fly. It flies down in front of you and suddenly a metal tentacle lances down and grabs it out of the air! Overhead, Doctor Octopus shouts, 'I have you now!' "

Melodramatic entrances and exits can be overdone, so be careful. Listen to your players. If they sound primed to expect a big splash, consider catching them off guard by having the villain slip in quietly. "You searched the city for the Beetle, but you found nothing. After several hours, you get tired and go back to headquarters. You head for the kitchen to make a cup of coffee ... and he's waiting for you at the kitchen table."

Describe powers vividly. If your PCs fire power bolts of Amazing intensity, make them sound amazing.

"Orange fire builds around your fingertips. For half a second you wonder, as usual, whether this time the power really will incinerate your hand. The energy builds before you can blink your eyes, and you launch the fireball in a blaze of yellow light."

This makes players feel super human in a way that "You hit him with your flame bolt" just can't.

When you create a long story that players can't complete in one session, give thought to breaking up the plot into episodes.

Each session of play should be interesting in its own right. Otherwise, after a dull stretch, the players might not come back for the next one.

And it's a good idea to break off a session either (a) at some natural pause, such as after a big fight, when the players and their characters would naturally unwind; or (b) at a dramatic, cliff hanging moment, such as just before a big fight, when your players can hardly wait to see what comes next. This way you know they'll come back for the next session!

An exciting episode of your story should include a lot of the ingredients

of the whole story: a clear goal, interesting characters, maybe some mystery, And the episode involves specific plot elements, such as (one or more of) these:

  fighting

  a chase

  high tech superscience or magic in the mighty Marvel manner

  investigation, if the story is a mystery, or if the goal isn't clear

  comedy, such as interaction with NPCs or weird twists of the plot. Don't let the laughs undermine the importance of the fight against evil; but don't get so solemn that nobody has a good time.

The most important rule: In plotting an episode of your story, think about all the players and their characters. Ask what each character can do in this episode. Each player should feel his or her involvement is important.

Maybe only one character speaks the language of your important NPC, while another knows how to infiltrate a villain's master computer. A third is the only one who can detect that magical trap, while the fourth has a weapon perfect for foiling an ambush.

Make sure everybody gets to show off at least once. That's one of the prime attractions of role  playing.

So the game is going along famously. Eventually, however, like any story, it must end.

In theory, your adventure has set the heroes a particular goal, and they have been opposed by one or more main adversaries or obstacles. In the climax, try to draw together the heroes, the adversaries, and the goal . Either the heroes reach the goal, or they fail conclusively; the bad guys are overcome, or escape, or triumph (for the moment).

One way to analyze your story and design the climax is to visualize an event that changes the situation, obviously and permanently. Somebody dies; a hero's (or item's) latent power is activated; the object the villains seek is destroyed; a hero and heroine fall in love; the setting burns down or explodes.

As the story reaches its end, the players should not lean back to watch the show. You must dramatize the action. That doesn't mean waving your arms dramatically as you describe the ending; it means you involve the PCs as key actors in the drama. The heroes must take action to achieve success.

If the climax of the adventure is an exciting battle, that's fine, and certainly not without precedent. Another interesting type of dramatization requires characters to make a choice, then act on that choice. Then they must deal with the consequences of the choice.

For example, the villain may kidnap a guide who helped the characters on their adventure. At the climax, the villain appears with a knife at the victim's throat. Do the heroes let the villain get away?

Or a spy who's been reporting to a villain on the PCs' movements turns out to be the daughter of an important NPC, perhaps the characters' patron. Do they arrest her on the spot?

Perhaps players will have no trouble with these decisions, but making them agonize isn't the point. The choices they make define their characters and determine the course of the story. There is a whole section about these "dilemmas" later in this chapter.

You manipulated the sequence of events to bring about the story's climax. But once you reach it, major manipulation is uncalled for. You can have a villain miss his FEAT roll or fail to see a brilliant tactic, if it would make for a dramatic defeat (see below). But in general, the actions the player characters take of their own accord should decide the story's outcome. Otherwise, the players feel like they're watching events, not shaping them.

If they fail completely, the failure need not be permanent or fatal; see "Victory Levels," below.

The heroes corner your master villain, confront him with his crimes, deliver their impassioned speeches, and hit him with overwhelming force. Everything's set up for his defeat; he'll stagger a few steps, shake his fist in impotent rage, and drop into a bottomless pit. All they have to do is hit him. You roll his Dodging or Evading FEAT, and he evades their blow with ease. The moment is lost. The PCs resort to a long, tedious battle of attrition, wearing him down into unconsciousness so they can kick him while he's down.

What went wrong? You lot your dice do the thinking for you, that's what. The dice don't tell the story, you do! If their results interfere with a fun, satisfying adventure, what do you gain by slavishly obeying them? The reason you're all playing is to have fun, and "having fun" and "following each and every rule, without exception" don't always mean the same thing.

You might ask, "But isn't this cheating?" Sure, but only to help the players have a good time. That's the rule that precedes all other rules. So if you think a scene would flow better if your villain rolled low instead of high he did! (Just make sure you roll the dice out of the players' view, so they don't know you're fudging.)

It makes a good story. It doesn't hurt anybody, except the villains. And they won't complain.

The heroes won or lost. But maybe it's not that clear cut. They rescued the hostages, but the villain escaped. Or, they defeated the radioactive monster, but it managed to destroy midtown Manhattan beforehand.

In designing an adventure, think about levels of victory. The major goal may include certain minor or accessory goals, and the PCs may achieve some but not others.

Most importantly, the heroes' victory may not be conclusive. If they overlook clues, don't take all the right actions, or suffer a string of awful luck, the villain may get away. Or they catch the bad guy, but the building the heroes were guarding gets destroyed in the process. Not good for the reputation.

These inconclusive victories sow the seeds of future adventures. The villain vows revenge, or the site must be rebuilt and looters chased away, and so on.

Defeat. Beyond the foggy land of inconclusive victory lies the swamp of utter, dismal, unconditional failure.

Marvel characters don't often blow it in major, permanent ways. Both in

comics and in game scenarios, they come out on top. And a good thing, too; given the high stakes in a superhero adventure, the heroes' failure may mean the end of life on Earth as we know it.

So are you forced to put PCs on a railroad track to success? No. Failing a mission need not mean the death of everyone involved, nor the triumph of evil. If the players fumble, there are less extreme ways of ending the adventure and letting them know they blew it.

They can lose weapons or devices. If the PC playing Thor loses his Uru hammer, you can be sure he knows he made a mistake somewhere. If your characters are forcibly parted from their possessions, they'll hunger to track down the bad guys and retrieve them. Another adventure!

Or you can let the enemy capture the player characters. Then the heroes escape in the next scene and try to pull together the remnants of their mission. And remember, after a failure the goal should somehow be harder to achieve.

Other penalties include reduced Karma awards, scathing editorials in the Daily Bugle, and the scorn of the characters' peers.

A bad way to handle the players' failure is to bring in an  NPC to make things right. This galls the players and makes them feel useless. An important part of role playing is the illusion that the player's character can, and must, influence events. If an NPC is always waiting in the wings to patch up mistakes, a player will think (justifiably) that he or she could have stayed home.

The ultimate penalty is death. In a story, death is important and, usually, final. Don't let your characters die pointlessly in some random gunfight. Their deaths should serve the plot (but not—note!—be vital to it). A hero's death should be a dramatic, emotional moment in the story. Try to stage it as part of a climax, or vice versa, and be sure to give the character a chance for a few poignant (or defiant) last words.

Failure happens. Reasons are not important, after the fact. Be ready to salvage the situation and set the stage for another adventure, in which the heroes have a chance to redeem themselves.

Rewards: The good guys usually win. After a long and hard fought battle, the PCs want to know their efforts have been appreciated. That appreciation usually takes the form of Karma awards, but there are also other ways to reward heroes.

Equipment, for example. A rescued millionaire or grateful bank president could give them a spiffy limousine or private aircraft. Or the heroes might crib a magic ring or high tech gizmo from the villain's headquarters. (Not only does this work as a reward, it can also trigger a future adventure.)

Intangible rewards can be just as useful: the friendship of a more powerful or experienced hero; favors earned from the mayor or chief of police; a contact at the Daily Bugle; even the grateful tears of an old widow.

What about the rewards for handling really world shattering events? Depending on the heroes' reputations and standing with the police, city officials could arrange a ticker tape parade up Fifth Avenue. Filthy rich or influential people could build an entire headquarters for the heroes. National news shows broadcast the PCs' heroism. Of course, that means every gunslinging super powered villain hot to make a reputation will target the PCs!

Every reward should sow the seeds of future adventures. The story grows into a campaign ... but that is the subject for the next chapter.

The following pages describe a few important story elements in greater detail. These discussions include lists of "plot ingredients" that you can combine to create your own scenarios. This approach owes much to another TSR product, the excellent Dungeon Master's Design Kit by Aaron Allston and Harold Johnson. Though intended for fantasy role playing, this product offers a great deal of interest to Judges and to game referees in any genre.

Here are several key points to keep in mind when choosing scenario goals for MARVEL SUPER HEROES adventures:

This is essential. If the players don't have a clear idea of where they are going, they may just dither, or even strike out in frustration at the nearest likely looking target.

Not only should you convey the goal at or near the beginning of the adventure, you must also take care to give a clear minor goal in each scene of the adventure. The heroes may know they are supposed to stop Doctor Doom's plot to shrink Manhattan to the size of a grapefruit, but if they don't know how to start looking for him, you haven't clearly defined the first scene's goal.

If the consequences of failure don't seem serious, and preferably drastic, rethink the goal. Make it important!

"Important" does not always mean world shaking. The consequences can be completely personal. For instance, if failure in the adventure means that Aunt May dies, a good Spider Man player will be just as motivated to reach the goal as he would if failure meant the downfall of America.

In assessing a goal's importance, be aware that in a role playing context, threats against a PC's well being are functionally identical to threats against the city, nation, or the entire world. Both are equally serious. They both involve the players' emotions to the highest degree.

This principle is useful when you want to run an adventure with potentially disastrous consequences, but you don't want to materially alter the campaign world. Even though life goes on, a single death in an adventure can be a disaster.

If one PC is a sharp detective, a la Daredevil, and another plays a powerhouse like Hercules, give both of them ways to be useful. This is fundamental

to all good scenario design.

But the heroes should be able to succeed in the goal even when a particular PC is missing, unconscious, or otherwise indisposed. If the PCs can't win without that one character, something is wrong. Ideally, each individual PC could be the key to victory, with the others working as backup and support.

This is really just chrome, a way to increase the players' sense of place. You can run a fine generic adventure that has nothing special to do with the setting; you just miss an opportunity, that's all.

And some stories work regardless of the ultimate bad guy. The villain's psychology and peculiar motivation are unimportant; he or she is just an opponent to beat up in the last scene. This kind of story is not wrong or inherently bad. It just doesn't take advantage of many colorful possibilities of storytelling.

All that said, here are some sample goals that should inspire new and inventive scenario ideas:

Someone has framed a hero or NPC for a dreadful crime. While the accused hero evades public brickbats or the NPC languishes in jail, the heroes must find the responsible villain. Then they must bring back satisfactory evidence of the frame up, sometimes the trickiest part of the mission.

In a continuing campaign, keep in mind some outcome in case the heroes fail the mission. The accused must stand trial or the group's reputation is ruined. This can give the campaign a new direction for a while. But eventually, of course, you allow the heroes to discover new evidence to clear themselves. (See "Evidence Uncovered" and "Mistaken Identity" in "The Adventure Hook" section below.)

Not many places on Earth remain unexplored, but there are always the ocean, Subterranea, outer space, and

other dimensions such as the Negative Zone or Dormammu's Dark Dimension.

No one can get there but super beings, so a scientist or research society asks the PCs to look around. The heroes must journey there and come back alive. Often the heroes must bring back some legendary artifact associated with the location.

Most likely a villain is using the destination as a headquarters or is plotting to strand the heroes at the destination. Whether or not foul play ensues, play up the sense of wonder, the idea that the PCs are heading "where no one has gone before."

The Vault calls. "Uh, don't exactly know how to explain this, but remember that arch nemesis you dragged in last month? Well " A clue or two, of a kind only the PCs can decipher, puts the heroes on the escaped criminal's trail.

This goal is straightforward and to the point, and especially suitable when the heroes have a personal grudge against the escaped villain.

A fellow hero, dependent NPC, or childhood friend seeks out a hero's help. The NPC is being menaced by some side effect of the villain's plan. The heroes must quash the plan to get the friend out of trouble.

If you prefer to increase the paranoia level of your campaign, the "friend" could traitorously lure the heroes into the villain's deathtrap. But once stung this way, players will never regard their friends with open hearted fellowship again.

Super beings are, as a rule, above monetary pressures (though Peter Parker would disagree). But "gain" doesn't have to mean just money. The adventure goal might be procuring advanced technology for a hero's fancy power armor but the needed gadget was just stolen by the adventure's villain!

Alternatively, the heroes might be looking for information about their mysterious past, or legendary magic spells or treasures. Or they might be trying to "build their rep" as heroes so they can apply for an Avengers franchise.

The PCs must guard a valuable person or item, such as a witness to a Maggia killing, a priceless Lemurian artifact, the US President and the Soviet Premier during a summit meeting, and so on.

Another simple, straightforward goal, protecting something puts the heroes in a passive role until someone tries to do damage to the protected item. So plan on either a slow start to the adventure, or just cut immediately to the exciting scene: "You were called on to guard the Wakandan ambassador, and for three days, all has gone well. But suddenly—"

A ransom note, a whispered phone call that is suddenly cut off, a broadcast appeal by the Mayor  anything can let the heroes know someone has a person or item that the PCs must get back. Usually they know the villain's identity from the start, but must find the bad guy's stronghold, enter stealthily or invade in full force, and get out alive. (Most self respecting heroes don't try to get out until they've thoroughly trashed the place.)

Often the villain is expecting the heroes and has a deathtrap or two waiting. Only forethought and skillful entry can keep the PCs out of the trap.

This goal also appears when the PCs have messed up the "Protect" goal above. "You let this mess happen," some authority figure tells them, 11 so get out there and make up for your mistake!"

Colonel Mustard has been found dead in the drawing room, and a bloody lead pipe lies beside the body. Who did it?

Murder mystery plots don't often work well in super hero stories. Their complicated structures of motive, method, and opportunity call for heavy thinking. Many PC heroes aren't built for that kind of endeavor; or they may have powers that solve the whole case in one turn.

For a more appropriate genre example, who turned the Eiffel Tower upside down, and why, and how? How did that minor villain become so powerful? What are those strange rumblings issuing from that new IRT subway tunnel?

This kind of mystery suits a heroic campaign much better. The heroes immediately see courses of action. They can solve the mystery through physical means (getting to the end of that subway tunnel, for example) and confront the responsible villain in battle. This is the heroic equivalent of a mystery, and it works well in a scenario.

The quintessential goal. The Mandarin has just mind controlled all of Wall Street and threatens the Western world with economic chaos. The Kingpin is turning an entire student population of a downtown high school into drug addicts. Doctor Doom has planted nuclear weapons underneath every state capital building. And so on.

The heroes must find the bad guy, punch his or her lights outs, and destroy all equipment vital to the plot. You can't find a purer version of classic comics than this.

What would comics be without them? Nothing better defines the point of your story than the identity of its villain.

If you want a rip roaring chase across the city, you need a fast-moving thief to purloin a valuable item. If you want to tell about racial intolerance, your villain should be an insane ideologue. For an adventure with awesome landscapes and titanic power, choose Mephisto or Dormammu. For a comic change of pace, who better than Madcap or the Impossible Man?

Choose a villain according to his or her motives and methods, as well as power level relative to the heroes. Power levels are addressed in Chapter 10; motives and methods are discussed separately below.

Motives tell what drives your story's villain, the goal his or her plots try to achieve and (often) weaknesses that the heroes can exploit. For example, a villain motivated by greed can be tempted away from his target if the heroes create a convincing illusion of greater gain elsewhere. And a villain who is just crazy has many weak points.

Here are some sample motivations. Some are expressed as goals that the villain strives to achieve.

This sinister, often horrific villain works to debase all that is good in humanity. His or her methods are customarily subtle and insidious. A single defeat does not spell the end of this villain's threat. Such villains may not necessarily be very powerful, but are truly as evil as they come.

Example: Mephisto.

The bad guy has already seen Ryker's Island or the Vault and has no desire to visit again. This motive is usually transitory, lasting for an adventure or two until the bad guy reestablishes a headquarters and begins plotting afresh.

See also "Find Escaped Villain" in the "Goals" section of this chapter.

Example: Electro.

This catch all category describes villains who do bad things for reasons of personal belief, derangement, or just pure nastiness.

The belief can be a twisted version of an accepted ideology, such as Nuke's super patriotism. Or the belief can be straightforward hostility to human beings' continued existence, as with the Lizard or Ultron.

This category also includes those under the authority of higher agencies that support a specific ideology. For example, Freedom Force is nominally controlled by the US Government, and the Soviet Super Soldiers usually follow the Kremlin's orders. Note that super powered villains are independent types who seldom follow orders without question.

An ideological or crazy villain works best in one of two ways:

1. A horrific expression of man's darker side. The villain throws away all notions of civilized conduct and the brotherhood of man because of a narrow, distorted doctrine. Play the fanatic carefully; keep him or her scary, not Oust) contemptible.

2. A total bozo. Some of these guys can be funny, in a twisted way. In a humorous adventure, you stress the bad guy's distance from reality, instead of his or her potential threat. Don't let the bad guy kill anybody, or the adventure suddenly turns grim.

Examples: The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Crimson Dynamo, FoolKiller, the Hand, the Jester, the Lizard, Mister Hyde, Nimrod, Nuke, the Punisher, the Red Ghost (formerly), Scorpion, the Sentinel robots, and Ultron.

Life is boring! Time to pep it up a little. And those PC heroes they're such stiff necked popinjays. Maybe they should have their lives stirred up a little, or a lot ... just for laughs.

Examples: Arcade, the Impossible Man, Madcap, Typhoid Mary, White Rabbit.

These villains all want to conquer the world, the universe, or at least a part of New York City. In general they have the power to reach their goals, and a single minded drive that motivates them to remove potential obstacles to conquest. Such as the PCs.

Examples: Annihilus, Ares, Attuma, Baron Mordo, Baron Zemo, Diablo, Doctor Doom, Dormammu, the Enchantress, Hammerhead, Hate Monger, the Hellfire Club, Hobgoblin, HYDRA, Kang, Kingpin, the Leader, Loki, Magneto, the Mandarin, the Master, Psycho Man, Red Skull, Urthona, White Dragon, and the Wizard.

The villain with this motivation thinks he or she is the best in the world at a chosen pursuit. Anyone in the PC group who shows ability of the same kind becomes vulnerable to this villain's challenge. (See "Challenge" in the "Adventure Hook" section, following this one.)

Examples: The late Kraven the Hunter, the Miracle Man, and Puma.

This bad guy is just the point man (or point thing) for a whole lot of similar bad guys. They all want New York, or America, or Earth, but they want to see how tough the opposition is. When the PCs fight an invasion scout, they must defeat the villain decisively, or the invasion force will just send in another scout later.

Examples: Atlanteans, the Brood, Deviants, Skrulls, Super Skrull, and the Subterraneans.

Some villains do what they do just to survive. This sometimes, though not always, lends them a tragic air that usually depends on how much the bad guy enjoys his or her work. Remorseful villains can arouse heroes' compassion even as the two sides square off.

Frequently the general public is unaware of, or not sympathetic to, the villain's self preservation motive. This can mean that, once the immediate threat is defused, the heroes end up protecting the villain from an enraged mob.

For instance, Reed Richards was instrumental in saving the life of Galactus in the Planet Eater's most recent visit to Earth. This earned Reed the wrath of most of the civilized universe. At his trial in the courts of the Shi'ar, it took the testimony of Eternity, Odin, and ultimately Galactus himself to exonerate Reed.

Examples: Galactus, Morbius, and (before their destruction in the Marvel Universe) vampires.

This extremely offbeat motive makes for a tragic, downbeat adventure. For some reason the villain is unable to die. Tormented by existence and longing for release, this villain dupes the heroes into attacking, in the hope that they can marshal enough force to kill him or her.

The only recent example in the Marvel Universe was Machinesmith, who hated his life (if that's the word) as a machine intellect. He tricked Captain America into fighting his robot bodies, evidently destroying him. But Machinesmith survived the defeat after all. Whether he still longs for death is not yet clear.

The all purpose villain motive. Every bad guy the heroes have ever fought . . . enemies of NPC heroes that have turned to fighting the PCs as a kind of dress rehearsal for their revenge on their NPC nemeses ... figures from the forgotten past, attacking friends of the PCs for some barely remembered offense.

All of these long held grudges are typical of the villain mentality. Anyone who gains power and decides to throw it around becomes bitter and vengeful when that power is foiled.

Examples: Anybody!

Almost as much an all purpose villain motive as vengeance (above), this indicates that the bad guy is just greedy for money, treasures, equipment, Van Gogh paintings, or what ever the villain views as necessary for the good life.

Examples: The Absorbing Man, Batroc, Blacklash, Blastaar, Boomerang, Bullseye, Cobra, Doctor Octopus, Electro, the Enforcers, Jack O'Lantern, Killer Shrike, Klaw, Mastermind, the Mad Thinker, Mysterio, Nitro, the Owl, Prowler, Red Ghost (current), Rhino, Sandman, the Serpent Squad, Shocker, Speed Demon, Stilt Man, Taskmaster, Terminus, Trapster, and the Vulture.

These are some of the paths a villain may take to achieve his or her goal. You can easily come up with other methods, either on your own or by paging through Marvel comics.

The villain has power over some person or agency, and will use it unless the victim pays up by a given deadline. Usually an urgent summons by the victim brings the heroes into the adventure, but sometimes the flashier villains make their threat known over public airwaves.

The victim can be any person of wealth or relative of such a person, but it can instead be a valuable object, such as an objet d'art, a rare chemical isotope, or urgently needed medicine.

This scheme has special emotional significance if the heroes desperately need the person or object in question to satisfy another goal. For example, a hero might need medicine to save a dying NPC.

The villain does not care to soil his or her own hands doing the deed, and instead enlists some third party, perhaps an unwitting or mind controlled dupe. The Puppet Master excelled in this type of scheme. It can send the heroes on a wild goose chase for the longest time. By the time they find out who is really behind the scheme, they should be ready to thrash the villain soundly.

Especially suitable for insane or vengeful villains, this method demands extreme power. The source of power can be a giant monster or robot (for instance, the Red Skull's Sleeper robots), a nuclear reactor, or that old standby, the atomic bomb.

The heroes learn about the scheme just hours or days before it will occur, and the tension builds as they try to find the villain's headquarters or destructive machine and destroy it, or stop the monster before it achieves widespread destruction.

Direct and to the point. The motives for murder coincide with those of mass destruction (above), but this is suitable for less powerful villains.

The villain tries to achieve his or her ends—a war, perhaps, or a battle between two equally despised heroes by arranging a fraud. The fraudulent scheme lays blame on one innocent party for an attack on another's interests.

The heroes often are too late to prevent the scheme itself from being activated. But they can search for evidence to implicate the villain, or find the villain and force him to confess, just moments before the provocation leads to ultimate disaster.

The standard villain scheme. An early adventure in every campaign is the bank robbery, and attempted thefts of valuables continue on a regular basis thereafter. The players understand their goal and have no trouble telling right from wrong. And virtually no villain is above an ordinary burglary or robbery.

The standard method of the corruption motivated villain. Gambling, racism, envy, lechery the usual catalogue of sins are all profitable to the criminal element. The he roes may believe the villain's goal is mere wealth... until a more sinister pattern emerges and the surprising identity of the Corruptor is revealed.

The adventure hook, sometimes known by Alfred Hitchcock's term of the "maguffin," is the plot device you use to introduce your scenario's goal and involve the heroes in achieving it.

You grab your players' interest in an adventure by appealing to the psychology of their characters. For instance, a character obsessed with locating his or her true parents will obviously respond well to an enigmatic note found in the attic of the hero's ancestral home.

If you involve one hero in the scenario, the rest of the group will probably tag along just to be friendly. But beware of activating their own contrary psychological traits (in the example above, a hero who says, "I refuse to help you dredge up past scandals!").

Here are a few tried and true adventure hooks:

A remote controlled plane writes smoky letters in the sky above Manhattan: "TRICKERY CANNOT HELP THIS TIME, (name of hero group). MEET TONITE AT OUR LAST BATTLE SITE OR ADMIT YOUR COWARDICE"—and, of course, the skywritten note is signed by your archvillain.

The challenge leads all the evening newscasts and makes the front page of the Bugle's evening edition. Maybe the heroes don't feel like walking into a trap just at that moment, so they pass up the challenge. But the next day the skywriting challenge gets nastier. And the day after that ...

The heroes become laughingstocks. Sooner or later they get fed up with the humiliation, and they launch themselves into your scenario, ready to pummel the taunting villain.

Obviously, the challenge can take some form besides skywriting. Each form varies in its public exposure, nastiness, and allure. Aim for the dramatic.

A hero is on patrol, appearing at a posh charity function, or just lounging around the public HQ. In staggers a mysterious figure. The man (or woman or child or alien) mumbles a few words, hands the hero a clue, and perishes.

The clue or dying words should tell the hero where to start investigating this mystery. The victim may have named his or her killer, or the assassin's employer, or maybe a loved one who should be informed of the death.

For a twist, the victim might have a completely wrong idea of the killer's identity. This leads the hero on a wild goose chase to the wrong villain, but the chase uncovers another evil scheme. By defeating that scheme, the hero group somehow uncovers evidence that points to the victim's true killer.

Complicating the investigation, whoever killed the victim now wants the clue in the hero's possession. Naturally, he or she will stop at nothing to get it....

Create an NPC who is sure to fascinate your heroes. The NPC shows up from time to time (perhaps in earlier adventures) for no apparent reason, manifesting strange powers—perhaps powers identical to a hero's! The hero group, intrigued, looks into the mystery and discovers a villain's plot.

Who is the NPC? Some ideas:

1. The villain's agent, luring the heroes to their doom. Heroes should become suspicious of the NPC's actions before that doom strikes.

2. The villain's hostage, who keeps escaping but never quite long enough to get to the heroes.

3. A freelance hero, fighting against the villain and trying to warn the hero group about the scheme.

4. The ghost of one of the villain's victims. This option is best suited to heroes who have psychic or magic powers.

5. The villain's ally or dependent, who is caught between love or duty and worry over the villain's scheme. This character either dies at the villain's hands by the grand finale or is rescued by the heroes and becomes a dangling subplot for future adventures.

After some lengthy time, new evidence in an important criminal case has appeared, or a key witness has blown back into town. The statute of limitations runs out in an absurdly brief time, so contacts in law enforcement enlist the heroes' aid to locate

and protect the witness or evidence. It goes without saying that some evildoer has also learned of the new evidence and works to prevent the heroes from achieving their goal.

One way to give this hook some emotional momentum is to make the evidence capable of freeing a hero's longtime friend or childhood buddy from unjust imprisonment. Conversely, the evidence might put away a hero's longtime foe for good.

This adventure hook resembles the "Help Friend or Ally" in the Goals section. Here the friend's predicament is easily handled, but proves to be a lead in to a larger plot.

In campaign terms, this hook gives you an excuse to bring in a recurring NPC, perhaps to foreshadow a major later development.

"Get involved or die!" A longtime foe has poisoned the heroes, cursed them, or framed them. If they don't achieve the adventure's goal, it's curtains for the heroes and maybe the free world.

An example: The Hobgoblin once poisoned Spider Man and his friend Harry Osborn with a slow acting venom. He promised them the antidote if Spider Man would steal valuable notebooks from the Kingpin. But Spidey instead negotiated with the Kingpin for the poison's antidote, in return for capturing the Hobgoblin. It turned out, as one might expect, that the Hobgoblin never had an antidote in the first place.

Taking a leaf from the book of Power Man and Iron Fist, the heroes may be employed to prevent the villain's plot, or working a job that is directly endangered when the scheme is sprung.

Most hero groups don't need to take odd jobs to make ends meet. But your heroes may be willing to take on a particular job for reasons besides money. For example:

Compassion. The heroes must carry a vital donor organ to a dying patient far away. Nobody but the heroes can make the journey fast enough.

Prestige. An extremely high brow embassy party will attract the movers

and shakers of world government. The heroes may volunteer to guard against terrorists just so they can make connections with partygoers and get their pictures on the Daily Bugle's society pages.

Glamour or recreation. The heroes might play bodyguards to rock star Lila Cheney or another celebrity on a world tour. Who wouldn't take a job like that? Similarly, many high security courier jobs take the heroes to the world's most luxurious watering holes. This is a good hook if you want to take your players to some exotic foreign locale.

Social duty. Suppose a touring exhibition of priceless artwork is arriving at the Met or another museum. Somebody has to guard them while the exhibits are set up. Can your heroes refuse a heartfelt request from the museum's curator?

In this classic adventure hook, the hero is seen robbing banks, mugging old ladies, sabotaging public events, and acting generally discreditable. Of course, the real miscreant is an impostor, and the impersonation is all part of an evil plot. But no one believes it except the hero's group.

The hero gets a lead when someone in the villain's employ mistakes the hero for the impostor (confused?). The henchman drops a clue to the hero, and that is the avenue into the adventure.

The villain often turns out to be the hero's oldest enemy. By ruining the hero's public image, the villain takes gloating revenge for past defeats.

And who is the impostor? Perhaps a robot. Perhaps an ordinary agent with high tech gadgetry that simulates the hero's powers. Perhaps another hero with similar powers, whom the villain has kidnapped and brainwashed.

When all else fails, bluntly manipulate the heroes' beliefs and emotions. Find out what one of the PC heroes hates above all else killing innocents, for example, or persecuting mutants, or beating children. Then have a villain do that very thing, right before the hero's eyes. Inevitably the hero pursues the villain right into the adventure.

The heroes are not alone in their world. Give them interesting people and creatures to interact with. The NPCs can help heroes achieve their goals, put obstacles in their path, or just stand on the sidelines looking pretty. But all have a function in the story. Every NPC has a use, even a spear  carrier that the hero defeats in a couple of blows.

In your adventure, think about the characters the heroes will meet while pursuing their goal. Try to make the most important ones interesting and memorable. Make this one funny looking, that one talk with a lisp or an accent, the one over there a tourist from some foreign land.

Each important NPC has beliefs and objectives in his or her own right. Nasty NPCs have motives and methods like those of the scenario's master villain, but on a smaller scale. Friendly NPCs may share the same emotional involvement in the adventure that the players have. Neutrals just want to make a buck, observe, or be left alone. Perhaps they're just acting as inadvertent conduits for information.

Your players enjoy interacting with these various personalities, and you'll have fun impersonating them. Just as important, you can use the NPCs as tools for your story. They provide many functions:

Information sources, as with a captured thug or stoolie;

skilled people, such as a cryptographer who can break Doctor Doom's coded message for a price;

Incentives, as with the rich movie star who offers a huge donation to charity if your heroes will serve as his bodyguards on a trip through dangerous territory;

Humor or atmosphere, as with the street urchin who won't leave your gruff hero alone;

Or conflict. Sometimes the players just want to pound on something. That's fine. Throw them a minor villain or a gang of his henchmen and let them blow off a little steam. But bring in these foes for a reason, in a plausible manner, and adjust their strength to that of the player characters.

These "random" encounters should not produce serious damage or otherwise obstruct the plot. Suppose Spider Man is swinging toward a climactic confrontation with the Rhino and he stops to prevent a mugging. The dice go incredibly wrong, the mugger knifes Spidey, and the story is over. You wouldn't want to read that in a comic, and you don't want it in your adventure story. Remember the earlier advice about not letting the dice mess up your story.

There is no way to present an exhaustive list. For examples of some of the many roles NPCs can play, see the Hotspot listings in the Campaign Sourcebook. Following, however, are a few general roles NPCs often play in super hero adventures.

Heroes usually loathe, but often respect, the NPC who has some kind of power over them. This NPC serves as an information source, an obstacle in touchy situations (meaning all those that expose the NPC's own agency), and in some cases a genuinely useful contact.

But try to restrict a useful NPC's role. If the NPC always cooperates and has plenty of pull, adventures could move along much too easily for the PCs. And where is the heroism in that?

Here are several time honored authority figures:

Government observer: Usually a royal pain, this man (it is practically always a man) insists on adequate supervision of all the heroes' activities. Otherwise, they lose their government clearance, and probably a lot of nifty devices like satellite communication links, jets, and even their headquarters.

Whatever it may say about our society, in practice government observers are often hostile and troublesome. The cardinal example in the Marvel Universe is longtime nuisance Henry Peter Gyrich, a fanatic who distrusts all heroes.

Law enforcement official. These include officers on the beat, plainclothes detectives, precinct captains, commissioners, and FBI and CIA men (again, they are nearly always male). An international adventure could feature agents of Interpol or intelligence services of other countries. Any of them can be friendly or hostile.

Friendly officials bring heroes into troublesome cases, provide deep background information, and alert heroes to actions by hostile officials. Often a friendly official is impatient with the usual law  enforcement channels and wants to see justice done, even if not "by the book."

A friendly official is a likely NPC target for a villain's plot, providing a strong adventure hook to involve the PCs.

Hostile officials harass the heroes, stonewall PCs who want information, and say things that J. Jonah Jameson loves to quote in his Daily Bugle editorials.

If you include a hostile official in the story or campaign, establish a reason why the official doesn't make the heroes' lives even harder (for instance, by arresting suspect PCs on the spot). Perhaps the official's superior is friendly to the PCs, or the PCs have official government jurisdiction to investigate cases.

Lawyer. Heroes may run afoul of the law, or at least the fringes of the law, whenever they haul someone to the police station, accidentally destroy property, break into a criminal's off ice, or fail to heed the summons of a police officer. All of these things happen all the time.

In the Marvel Universe, lawyers are often respected figures. Think of the one time firm of Nelson and Murdock, lawyers for the Fantastic Four.

Other lawyers can be mere nuisances. These ambulance chasers may try to harass the heroes into settling out of court for "molesting" their clients, who are innocent until proven guilty of bank robbery, muggings, or whatever the heroes caught them doing.

Then there is the truly crooked lawyer, who springs villains on technicalities and casually commits perjury to frame a hero. For example, Caesar "Big C" Cicero has become so successful as a mob lawyer that he is the probable successor to leadership of the Silvermane family of the Maggia.

Here are two general varieties:

Childhood friend. This NPC, usually not a recurring cast member, knew one of the PCs in the old days, usually before the hero began his or her heroic career. You and a player can establish some retroactive reason why the PC cares about the NPC, no doubt rooted in some childhood event. Perhaps one saved the other's life.

The childhood friend returns suddenly, possibly in suspicious circumstances. Though still friendly at first, the old acquaintance soon betrays the heroes, steals something vital, harms an informant, or otherwise shows that the friend is working for a bad guy.

The friend might really be evil, or the master villain might be extorting the friend's cooperation. The bad guy holds a hostage, or the friend is just weak kneed and buckles under to the villain's orders.

Inevitably, the interested hero must confront the childhood friend, perhaps in battle. The friend can be converted to the good guys' side or may be irredeemably treacherous. Either way, the friend usually dies at the end, at the hands of the master villain another good way to develop personal animosity between a hero and villain.

Relative or romantic interest. Functionally much the same as the childhood friend, but this variety of NPC can easily be a regular member of the campaign's supporting cast. A hero cares deeply about the NPC and would go to great lengths to protect him or her.

This kind of NPC never turns out to be evil, but is often temporarily mind controlled or coerced into betraying the hero group. When the villain's plan is smashed, the NPC begs forgiveness. Depending on the circumstances, the heroes may welcome him or her back, or abandon the NPC to a solitary life outside the campaign.

Note that in a campaign, NPC relatives or lovers should have some useful role in addition to the emotional tie to a PC. For more about this, see Chapter 9.

Since Marvel Manhattan is crawling with heroes, it is simplicity itself to throw in a guest appearance by Thor, Spider Man, or Captain Britain. But note that the guest hero should not solve the adventure's main problem, rescue the PCs from a deathtrap before they've tried to rescue themselves, or otherwise steal the PCs' thunder.

Although guest stars work in the comics, because a reader finds all the heroes equally interesting, in a game the guest hero is just another NPC. And above all, NPCs must never make the PCs look bad!

Publicly known heroes may have fan clubs, or just one or two groupies. A groupie can be a fun way to stroke a player's ego, or the NPC can be a pest who demands autographs at inopportune times, hangs around the headquarters, and interferes during battles with villains.

Worst of all, the hero worshiper can be emotionally disturbed. A young boy idolized the Human Torch to such an extent that, in order to be like Johnny Storm, he set himself on fire. The boy died, and Storm was hit with a severe emotional crisis. Don't play out this grim sort of encounter unless you can sound out the affected player first. Some players would rather not handle this in the context of a "fun" roleplaying game.

The NPC could be crazy. There is ample precedent for this in the comics. Often the loony knows something significant to the adventure, and the heroes have to put up with his or her babbling to get the clue.

This NPC type is often not far removed from the previous one, but the expert doesn't froth at the mouth at least not publicly. The heroes must humor this NPC's eccentricities because of his or her valuable knowledge.

Beware of making the NPC an expert in one of the PCs' chosen fields. If this is so, the NPC should be less qualified than the hero, or not given to hogging the stage and showing up the PC.

Alternatively, a scientist's researches may have gotten him or her into really deep trouble, and it's up to the PCs to extricate the "expert."

A classic NPC. This journalist knows that uncovering a secret identity or a skeleton in the closet would be the scoop of the decade. In modern times newspaper reporters are being supplanted by hair  sprayed TV "reporters" who slept through their Ethics in Journalism classes. But the Daily Bugle can always serve as a source for the more traditional type of snoop.

Every streetwise hero maintains a network of informants. Those who don't may meet stoolies through the police department, or the stoolie may seek out the heroes to deliver some especially hot information. These characters are all different, often have very colorful personalities, and can be either tough guys or comic relief. If they come across some really dangerous information, they can end up dead or, that is, start an adventure by dying in a hero's arms. (See the "Dying Delivery" adventure hook in the previous section.)

Many stories have some kind of gimmick. Perhaps the heroes must work under a condition that changes their usual way of operating. Or the resolution of the story thrusts a hero, or the entire player group's heroes, into a choice between unpleasant alternatives. This section discusses these conditions and dilemmas.

Don't overuse these gimmicks. If you tell too many stories that rely on them, your players will feel put upon and frustrated. But if you run an ongoing campaign, throw in a condition or dilemma every third or fourth adventure to keep players on guard and explore new ways of playing.

This is a catch all term for anything that limits the PCs' effectiveness or forces them to work in a new way. There are many, many possible conditions, of which the following are merely examples.

This common condition puts a time limit on the resolution of the adventure. If the heroes don't achieve their goal within a certain time, specified at the start of the adventure, then disaster will fall. The city may blow up, or a slow acting poison will kill one of the characters (see "Grim Necessity" in the "Adventure Hooks" section).

If the heroes seem to be moving smoothly toward success long before the deadline is reached, you can give them a nasty surprise by revealing that the adventure's villain was lying, and that the time limit actually expires much sooner than the PCs believed. But this often appears too blatantly manipulative, so be careful.

This one always puts a scare into the players, or at least disturbs them. Some malign agency has tampered with their powers, so they don't work quite the way the heroes expect or, often, not even remotely as they expect.

Possible causes include passage to another dimension where natural laws work differently; a mutagenic agent that alters the PCs' body chemistry; or sabotage of the heroes' favorite gadgets.

The adventure's climax should include a way to restore the powers to normal. Or a PC, discovering he or she likes the new powers, decides to continue with them without further change.

This classic comic book plot device puts one character's mind in another's body, and vice versa. It can easily work with and lead into the "Mistaken Identity" adventure hook (see that section).

This gimmick works well in a comedic adventure, as one hero tries to learn how to control the other's powers. It also has a sinister side, though, especially if a switched hero finds himself in his arch foe's body and is hunted by the foe's own enemies!

The heroes have the goods on the bad guy, and they know his or her location and weaknesses. But for some reason they just aren't allowed to lay a glove on the villain.

Reasons could include diplomatic immunity (see "The United Nations" in Chapter 3 of the Campaign Sourcebook), or a close relationship between the villain and a hero or friendly NPC.

Or a psychic villain might possess the body of a young child. Will the heroes blast the child in order to hurt the villain? Of course not.

This is a frustrating turn of events, so play it up for one adventure, then never use it again until the players have gotten over the sting of it or avenged themselves on the immune villain in some satisfying way.

A frequent turn of events in the comics frames the heroes for some crime, and they must go through the adventure while fighting or evading law enforcement officials. Spider Man has had to live with this for years.

In a dilemma, the heroes have to make a choice between two unpleasant alternatives. Draw the consequences of each choice as clearly as possible, and (if circumstances permit) allow the players as much time as they want to debate the question.

As stated earlier in this chapter, the point here is not to make the players wrack their brains in anguish... though that is certainly entertaining. Instead, by making these decisions, the heroes define and display their characters in dramatic fashion.

Here are some sample dilemmas, starting with the one most often seen in super heroic adventures:

With great power comes great responsibility. Will the heroes take the responsibility of breaking the law, if they believe it means a greater good?

The obvious context for this dilemma arises when the heroes have the chance to kill a truly powerful, truly evil villain. Kill, and violate every claim to civilized conduct? Or let the villain survive to pillage, plunder, and (often) kill again?

Every Marvel hero has faced this is­ sue. In nearly all cases they decide not to kill, because "that would make me no better than the villain   " This is true. Pragmatically speaking, a hero who kills is also hounded by the police and press, and loses Karma and popularity.

Warning to the Judge: If you present the heroes with this dilemma and they disagree on what to do, the next session may turn into an extended policy meeting on the topic "To kill or not?" And the schism may well split the group apart. If you want to protect against this, make sure all the PCs take the same view about killing before you begin the campaign.

Many heroes derive powers from devices, magic rings, swords, amulets, animal familiars, and so on. In this dilemma, one of these devices proves to be the source of the adventure's problem.

For example, a magic ring may be gradually possessing the hero's mind and forcing him or her to commit mayhem. A villain may have found a way to install a doomsday device in the hero's armor, only the armor's destruction will save the day. Or a mind controlled animal familiar may turn savage and bestial.

The hero must decide whether to destroy his or her own device in order to solve the problem. Or another hero may destroy it without consulting the owner, a situation that would certainly lead to tension between the two from then on.

The item should not be permanently destroyed. A hero can rebuild a gadget, though usually at some inconvenience and with a delay of an adventure or two. Unique devices, especially magical ones, should require the heroes to undertake an entire adventure to replace them.

When the group's outlook and methods become distasteful to a hero, the hero and group may part ways. Most often this is a consequence of divergent views on the issue of killing (see "Break the Law?" above).

Another cause of this dilemma may be the discovery of a hero's dark secret (see "Revelation of Dark Secret" in the section on "Grand Finales," later in this chapter).

When a player is cooperative, you can introduce a subplot wherein that player's hero leaves the group, allegedly for one of these reasons. In fact, the hero is operating solo for a secret reason, perhaps to undertake a dangerous mission without endangering the group. The player plays a different character while the departed hero is gone. Or, for a twist, the player can introduce a "new" character that is really the "departed" hero in disguise.

This one is a killer. A PC must decide whether to tell his or her true identity to another or even, perhaps, go public.

You usually have to do a lot of groundwork to set up this dilemma. For instance, establish a condition in which, for this adventure, the hero cannot appear in his or her secret identity. Perhaps the PC is wanted by police in that identity (the "Mistaken Identity" adventure hook lends itself to this development).

Then, by a chain of circumstances, a valued NPC friend is accused of the murder of the PC! The hero can clear the friend of all charges instantly, just by revealing that he or she still lives. But will the hero do this?

Note: Never put a PC in the dilemma of having to reveal another PC's identity. This just creates bad feelings no matter what action is taken.

Another dilemma that will have players scratching each other's eyes out (and maybe yours, too). The heroes must enlist a hated foe's aid in order to dispatch a still deadlier bad guy.

The villain agrees to help either because (a) the deadlier bad guy is cutting in on his act ("You can't conquer the world! I'm conquering the world!"), or (b) the villain wants to spy on the heroes, learn more about them, and look for a chance to shoot them in the back.

The Fantastic Four once had to fight beside Doctor Doom in a valiant struggle against the Over Mind. As one would expect, they spent as much time threatening each other as the Over Mind.

The real dilemma may come when the fight is over. The common enemy defeated, do the heroes (probably weakened) try to capture their erstwhile ally? What if the ally is unconscious is it honorable to reward his or her aid with capture?

You should never kill player characters arbitrarily. But it's perfectly all right to make it look as though you will arbitrarily kill them.

A deathtrap, naturally, threatens the heroes with death. This is useful in a super hero story, because the heroes are ordinarily invulnerable to most damage and seldom fear death. A good deathtrap hits them where they live.

But judging a deathtrap is tricky. There must be an escape, since an ugly death in a trap is neither heroic nor dramatically appropriate. But the escape can't be too obvious, or the threat vanishes. But the heroes have to find the way out, or they're dead meat. This is a fine balance to strike.

Still, you have many tools to keep things under control. For example:

1. The villain's motives. Despite the term "deathtrap:' the bad guy may not want to actually kill the PCs. Perhaps he or she just wants to find out more about the heroes' powers, or toy with them, or preoccupy them while a crucial part of the villain's scheme takes place. When the deathtrap turns out to be non fatal, play up the narrative surprise.

2. Coincidence. An accident can cut power to the deathtrap just as the heroes are about to die. A PC ally, separated from the deathtrap victims earlier in the story, can discover them just in time to stop the trap. And so on.

3. NPCs. Generally it is too cheesy to have an NPC release the heroes from a trap. But if necessary, a repentant henchman of the bad guy can work a deal with the heroes in return for freeing them. Or a rival villain may rescue the heroes so he or she can kill the heroes him  or herself! Out of the frying pan . . .

What ways can the heroes use to escape the deathtrap? They will nearly always think. of something you hadn't, but here are some avenues you may consider:

1. Heroic effort. This traditional method relies on the idea that the villain doesn't have a clear idea of the hero's power level.

Doctor Doom may know a PC is incredibly strong, but that does not mean Doom knows specifically that the hero has Incredible level Strength. Perhaps the heroes can snap their bonds with ease. But next time Doom puts them in a deathtrap, their bonds will be stronger!

2. Cleverness. Ideally, the hero responds to the deathtrap with brain power, not brute force. Observation, deduction, and improvisation should show a way out.

For example, suppose a detective hero is covered with honey and tied up on a termite mound beneath the blazing sun. The hero could work loose the magnifying glass in his or her belt, then focus the sun's rays to burn through the ropes.

If the players prove unable to see the deathtrap's solution, you can break down and give them a Reason or Intuition FEAT roll to see an escape route. But this makes players feel bad unless you handle it carefully.

3. Trickery. If the villain is gloating over the trapped heroes, they may try some elementary trick such as, "If we die, you'll never find out the identity of your greatest foe." The villain may rightly sneer at feeble lies. But the players, often a clever lot, may come up with a bluff that really does sway the villain.

The deciding factor should be the degree of admiration and hilarity the bluff produces in the players. If everyone thinks the idea is brilliant, then it probably is. The players enjoy themselves more when they think they've put you on the spot even if you are secretly cooperating in being put there.

A few points to remember:

1. Be serious! This is no laughing matter. Avoid dumb puns, unless that is a gloating villain's style.

2. Keep the heroes conscious. One would think the ideal time to spring a deathtrap would come when the heroes are kayoed and can't free themselves. But villains like to see the heroes sweat. So if they have knocked out the heroes, they shouldn't activate the deathtrap until the heroes start to wake up.

For more about waking up, see the optional rule, "Grogginess:' below.

3. Move things along—but not too fast. The heroes may have scant seconds to think their way out of the trap, but give the players a little more time than that. Answer their questions, and tell them about whatever they could observe. Don't let them take forever, but a few minutes of suspense won't hurt.

If the heroes snap out of unconsciousness and can function at full strength right off, that may make the deathtrap less dramatic. As Judge, you might want the heroes to be groggy for a few minutes, so that the villain can gloat unmolested or so the heroes must strain more heroically to break out of the trap.

If so, consider this optional rule. When a hero regains consciousness, his or her abilities are at Poor rank (or   2 CS, whichever is worse), whether or not the hero lost Endurance ranks. However, the hero recovers + 1 CS per turn in each ability, up to the original ability rank (or up to  2 CS, if the hero lost Endurance ranks).

This means that when they awaken in the clutches of the master villain, the heroes will probably be too weak to just bust loose. They may even spend some time thinking of clever ways out of the trap.

This deathtrap works best in some exotic land, planet, or dimension, one with a different culture and denizens. The heroes get thrown into an apparently inescapable arena. After them comes a variety of opponents: formidable warriors, hungry monsters, or squads of normal level gladiators.

For drama, have a hero face the adventure's master villain in a duel to the death. The chosen hero should be one with a deep, personal grudge against the villain (or vice versa).

The cruelest stroke forces the heroes to fight each other. However, most heroes simply refuse to do so, no matter what the cost. They get to be noble, but the deathtrap loses a lot of impact. Drastic coercion, such as holding a beloved NPC hostage, should be frowned upon unless your bad guy is truly nasty.

In certain circumstances, such as in a primitive culture, the heroes can become gladiator heroes, lead a revolt of their fellow slaves, and overthrow the government. However, this is a time-consuming process.

The villain places the heroes, bound and probably gagged, in some building or other site scheduled for imminent destruction. Often this is the villain's own headquarters, about to be sacrificed.

The villain may destroy the headquarters to conceal evidence or because his or her latest evil scheme involves its destruction. For instance, a rocket carrying a mind control satellite is due to launch soon, and the exhaust will destroy the launch site.

Really crazy villains will sacrifice themselves and their HQs to kill their longtime foes. The Red Skull did this many times in repeated attempts to bump off Captain America. Of course, he always had a concealed escape route.

However, the typical villain will tie up the heroes, gloat a little, then run off to avoid the upcoming calamity. Since the villain seldom sticks around, the heroes' escape and reappearance may take the villain by complete surprise.

Exploited Weakness

Many super powered heroes have a secret weakness. For example, the Shi'ar warrior Gladiator, one of the most powerful mortals in the universe, can be harmed by an unidentified form of radiation. Other vulnerabilities can include mental attacks (these work well on the Juggernaut), particular chemicals, or strange magic.

In this deathtrap, the villain has learned of the hero's weakness, and the trap is loaded with whatever causes it. Details of the trap vary according to the weakness exploited, but the trap can be quite deadly according to how much the substance weakens the hero. Sometimes the only way out is to have a non-vulnerable teammate rescue the susceptible hero.

Often seen in the comics, this deathtrap is a favorite of villains because one of the heroes own teammates killed them!

In one version, all the heroes are wired into the same murderous gimmick, like a multi slot guillotine or parallel electric chairs. Any one hero can get free without a problem but the action triggers the device to kill all the other heroes. Coordination and cooperation are the keys to success.

(Before you run this trap, be sure everybody caught in it cares about everyone else!)

Another version puts all the heroes except one in a totally escape proof trap. They're helpless. A villain mind controls the one free hero into triggering the deathtrap. ("Now, Kitty Pryde, push the button and activate the plasma beam that will fry the X Men!")

Naturally, the hero, by tremendous spiritual exertion, breaks free of the mind control, belts the villain, and frees his or her friends in time for the grand finale showdown.

Remember that mind controlled heroes get a Psyche FEAT to throw off the control. In this extreme situation, you can allow the hero + 1 or + 2 CS, and even allow the PC to spend Karma. After all, you don't want the hero to fail the roll.

Avalanches. Volcanic eruptions. Tidal waves. Earthquakes. The bad guy leaves the heroes in a spot where their powers can't help, and Mother Nature is about to do something awful. Not much time left; what do the heroes do?

Old Standbys

The walls that close in, the sharpened scythe that swings lower and lower, the heavy block poised to crush the life out of the hero beneath, the sawmill blade, the chamber that slowly fills with water or gas, the Burmese tiger trap. .. all of these classics can be made fresh with a new slant on them. But be sure the slant is genuinely new, or at least new to your players. Nothing gets old faster than a routine deathtrap.

A favorite of the assassin Arcade, this is a favorite pinball or video game blown up to larger than  life size.

Perfect for the villain who toys with his or her prey. A gauntlet is technically a double line of armed warriors. An unarmed person, either a criminal or an applicant to the warriors' ranks, must run between the two lines while the warriors beat him or her with their weapons. The term now applies to any severe trial or ordeal.

This starts out as one of the deathtraps described above, but there is one obvious escape route. This leads straight into another deathtrap. That leads into another, and so on, for as long as you want to run it.

Perhaps, while trapped in the slowly filling lava pit, the heroes spy an air vent and crawl through it. The vent's bottom suddenly drops away, and the heroes plummet down a long slide into an alligator pit. Leaping to the rim, the heroes find a boulder rolling down at them. Evading it, they dodge into a room filled with poison gas.

The traps may really be lethal, but the villain does not count on it. Generally, he or she is observing and taunting the PCs at every step. When the heroes emerge from the gauntlet, ragged and exhausted, the villain and all his or her henchmen are waiting there for a huge battle.

A story's climax is often marked by battles, explosions, or sudden cosmic transcendence. Fair enough, but that is not what the story's climax is about.

A well designed finale doesn't just blow up scenery; it concludes the plot's dramatic action. Indecisive characters make decisions and act on them. People searching for something find it, or lose it for good. Uncertain relationships become sharply defined.

These generalities indicate that no discussion can give specific, concrete advice for resolving every storyline. Each grand finale is unique and should be tailored to the storyline. Nonetheless, here are some ideas for staging your grand finale.

Matters have grown so tangled, or the stakes are so high, or the bad guy is so incredibly powerful, that one of the entities of the Marvel Universe steps into the fray. This could be Eternity, a Watcher, a god, or even Death. Consult pp. 54 57 of the Judge's Book in the Advanced Set.

Aim for maximum drama in staging the encounter. These guys never just walk into a scene. They always appear in a cloud of mist, reshape reality to their needs, or summon the heroes to them from across the dimensions. Make the players realize this is a big deal!

This climax is often associated with a conceptual breakthrough of some kind. This high falutin' term means that a character achieves a sudden new understanding of the world and his or her place in it. The entity in question is usually responsible for the breakthrough.

For example, when Reed Richards was on trial for rescuing Galactus from death, the story turned into a hit parade of the biggest deals in the Marvel Universe: the Shi'ar empire, the Watcher, Odin, Eternity, and Galactus. In a massive conceptual breakthrough, everyone involved was made to appreciate Galactus's key role in the development of the universe.

This confrontation can have long-term campaign implications, or even mark a change in the campaign's direction. So be careful. Another danger is that the players have nothing to do except gasp in awe at the entity. Try to arrange an opportunity for the PCs to deliver impassioned speeches, protest, and so on.

Like the one above, this finale stresses role playing over combat. The heroes have found some lever to use against the bad guy. They confront him and say, "Drop the scheme or else. "

For example, the Kingpin supported Randolph Cherryh as candidate for mayor of New York City. Daredevil located the Kingpin's beloved wife, Vanessa, who had been thought dead. In return for bringing Vanessa to him, Daredevil coerced the Kingpin into withdrawing Cherryh from office.

There is some moral fuzz to this climax. The heroes are using the same methods a villain would employ. You can either ignore this issue or bring it up later on, when the villain returns and vows revenge. Some highly moral PCs may refuse to use extortion, so be prepared for arguments among players.

In gloating over the captured heroes, the villain or a henchman has stupidly revealed the crucial event of the nefarious scheme. Often this takes place while the heroes are struggling to escape a deathtrap (see previous section in this chapter).

After they escape, the battered heroes race to the site of the crucial event and prevent it from happening, often mere seconds before deadline. This usually leads to, or is preceded by, a pitched battle (see Slugfest, below) or one of the endings suggested under "How the Villain Loses" (also below).

This finale takes several forms:

1. Heroes uncover awful truths about the villain and broadcast them far and wide. If the villain has been masquerading as good, pretended to reform, or used a false identity, this means the end of the bad guy's plan.

2. The villain reveals an awful truth. For instance, the villain could be the hero group's patron in disguise, or a beloved relative of one of the heroes. The heroes may have to give up their fight and let the villain's plan succeed (for the moment, naturally), or they may risk the consequences and fight the villain. Try to expect many approaches.

3. A hero is forced to reveal an awful truth about him  or herself. This might be the hero's secret identity, a significant weakness (for instance, Daredevil's blindness), or a hidden relationship to the villain.

The revelation often exonerates a fellow hero or an NPC from some unjust accusation. Or it confuses the villain so badly that he or she cancels the scheme and retreats to regroup.

Judging tips: Never have someone else reveal a hero's secret. The decision to reveal it must be the player character's. (However, the hero can decide to allow someone else blow the whistle. As long as the hero has the power to prevent the revelation, this is functionally the same thing.)

Also, however tempting the prospect, don't obviously manipulate the plot to force the revelation at least not without discussing it with the player in advance. The player should have the chance to veto the revelation, since it may well mark a new direction for the character in the campaign.

The classic conclusion. All the main characters converge and start whaling away on each other. In staging this climax, try to present a neat setting with plenty of props that characters can use as weapons. Time honored sites include power companies (electrical wires, barrels of battery acid, big coils of cable) and construction sites (cranes, girders, skyscraper skeletons).

Be prepared to handle massive amounts of property damage, and be aware of how much damage the site can take before everything collapses. The usual answer is "enough to dramatically fall apart just as the battle ends."

Do not design one unique, nothingelse works solution to the adventure. This is heavy handed and may force your players into actions they don't want to commit. If you design the climax of your scenario as a specific scene where you manipulate a hero into doing one special thing, so the villain can die or fail in a pre arranged manner something is wrong.

Obviously, you should have in mind one or two possible solutions to the crisis, just so you can suggest something if the players come up short. But don't treat the finale as a scene, with specified entrances and exits.

Instead, think of the climax as a situation. In that situation, the PCs can try any number of things, and the villain's response varies accordingly.

Here are a few of the many ways the heroes can foil the villain's plot. Again, you should not pick one as the ending; instead, consider all of them and invent a few of your own, so you have a selection of responses for your villain, depending on what the player characters choose to do.

The villain is so distraught at some player tactic destroying the villain's HQ, or persistent taunting, or revealing that the villain's cherished son still lives that the bad guy just throws in the sponge and says, "Take me away."

The PCs can produce the same effect by exploiting a villain's psychological weaknesses. But in general this only works once, and next time the villain will not only be prepared for the tactic, he or she will be filled with hate for the heroes who dare to try it.

This works best with villains who are already on the emotional borderline, like Doctor Octopus, or outright nuts, like Daredevil's foe Typhoid Mary.

In this dramatic finale, the heroes can't stop the plot from working, which means certain death for everyone. But they manage to trap the villain with them, so that he or she will die in the same disaster. Panicstricken, the cowardly villain abandons the scheme and disarms the doomsday machine.

This will not work when the villain is a true fanatic who is willing to die for a cause. But most bad guys are cowards at heart.

The conventional end to a scenario. The heroes gang up on the villain and just keep punching. Consider whether the villain has some kind of safety hatch or emergency exit when knocked out. For instance, the loss of consciousness may trigger a homing teleporter that automatically pulls the villain to a predetermined hidden refuge.

This tactic is basically unfair to the players if they beat the villain fair and square. But sometimes, unfair or not, the bad guy has to get away to appear later in the story or in a sequel.

A variant of Emotional Collapse, above, the villain reacts to the same stimuli with a sudden urge to end it all. The bad guy tries to trigger a doomsday device prematurely, or leaps off a precipice, or turns a weapon on himor herself.

If the villain's death creates no disastrous consequences, the heroes may struggle with the dilemma of whether to stop the villain's suicide. Be ready to deal with either choice the PCs make.

The bad guy employs an assistant who goes crazy in the last act. Perhaps the NPC is a bestial muscleman whom the villain has continually mistreated. Or the NPC is the bad guy's fanatical follower, and he or she goes berserk when the villain displays some sign of presumed weakness or hypocrisy. Or... Well, you get the idea.

The henchman in this case should be powerful enough, or strategically placed, to produce massive amounts of damage to the villain's scheme. Often the villain and the traitorous henchmen go up in the same fireball, or the heroes last see the pair strangling one another.

A simple story ending, this assumes the villain's plot depends on one gizmo, doodad, or whatchamacallit that gets destroyed in battle. This wrecks the whole plan, and the villain slinks off or segues smoothly into Emotional Collapse.

In many cases, the villain's defeat does not mark the end of the story. If the plot involved the villain's attempt to forestall something, like a PC's discoveries or an NPC's wedding, the story concludes with a scene that depicts the event the villain tried to stop.

Good stories frequently involve a PC or NPC in some kind of moral dilemma. In such a case, the villain's defeat may only be a prelude to the story's true climax, in which the character takes action to resolve the dilemma.

A role playing adventure doesn't have to end with a big fight. If the story works best and the players will have fun, let it end with role playing. That's what the game is all about.

A scenario works like a single comic book issue or, at most, a continued story in several parts. A campaign, though, is a regular comic series, with continuing characters, subplots, ongoing rivalries, and longterm developments. A bad campaign can be tedious, but a well run campaign gives the highest pleasure that role playing offers.

Any campaign can be described by its genre, tone, concept, and rationale.

Genre: This point, the distinctive kind of story your campaign tells, was discussed at the start of Chapter 8. Your campaign genre is presumably comic book heroics in the Marvel Universe. You may want to define it further for instance, a campaign about SHIELD agents, or masters of the mystic arts, or mutant fugitives, or inner city vigilantes.

Tone: This overall "flavor" of the campaign describes most of the adventures the PCs undertake. Most campaigns include all kinds of adventures, but one kind occurs more often than the rest. This type, the one you think of when telling someone about the campaign, sets a tone.

Are the PCs hunted by the government because of their mutant powers or secret information? This would probably make for a grim tone.

Do you want plenty of comedy, selfreferential jokes, and bozo villains, like the second She Hulk series? This would obviously be a humorous tone.

Most campaigns, like most Marvel comics, strike a tone of straight action adventure. The heroes fight to protect their city, or their planet, or their dimension from evil. Missions, usually serious, call for great effort and personal sacrifice.

Any tone is fine, as long as the players enjoy it. Just make sure you have one in mind before preparing the campaign, and know when to stick with the established tone (the answer is "most of the time") and when to vary it (the answer is "only for variety and a change of pace").

Concept. This is the central idea of the campaign, the description and focus of the heroes' activities. It ties in closely with "genre:' above, but a concept is a specific statement of plotoriented goals within the genre. For example, "high tech espionage" is a genre; "SHIELD agents battle HYDRA's plans for world domination" is a concept within that genre.

A concept can be "wide" or "narrow."

"Wide" concepts permit extreme variation in the campaign's activities, settings, villains, and storylines. During one session the heroes may catch muggers in the Bowery; during the next, they're off to fight the Skrulls in outer space. Then they fight demons summoned by a loony wizard, then go on to foil Doctor Doom's latest superscience plot. Next week, into the Negative Zone!

Most long running Marvel titles employ this type of wide base. For example, the Fantastic Four venture all over the world and the galaxy, and they have had every kind of adventure imaginable. Spider Man, too, has been all over the universe and into other dimensions.

"Narrow" concepts restrict the campaign to a particular subgenre, type of PC and villain, and storyline. At first this sounds like less fun than a wide concept. But a narrowly focused campaign can offer intense roleplaying experiences, strong character identification for the players, and a sharp, specific adaptation of a particular favorite comic book.

Suppose you enjoy Doctor Strange. You could create a narrow campaign with magician PCs, perhaps Strange's disciples. The PCs protect Earth from Dormammu's invaders and travel through infinite magical dimensions. There is enough story material here to keep a campaign going for years, all within a narrow focus. If your players like Doctor Strange's adventures, this is an exciting campaign. Many other narrow campaigns can be equally rewarding.

Rationale: The essential ingredient of any campaign is a reason for the PCs to be together. Sometimes this rationale is very general— "You're all good guys, so you decided to team up to fight crime."

In other campaigns, the rationale can be specific and powerful: "You all seek the Maggia scientist who created the drug that turned you into super humans. You want him to synthesize an antidote to the drug's horrible side effects." (This is the optional rationale offered in the campaign scenario, "Fun City," which starts on page 47.)

When you specify your campaign's genre, tone, concept, and rationale, you are really deciding what kind of stories you want to tell and the ones you don't want to tell, too.

For example, consider the gods. The Marvel Universe includes the pantheons of Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Norsemen, and every other human culture, not to mention the Celestials, Eternals, and powerful extra dimensional beings like Dormammu and the late Shuma Gorath.

These gods figure often in stories about Thor, Hercules, and Doctor Strange. These heroes are powerful enough for the gods to give them a real challenge. And their concepts include the high power magic that marks the gods.

But the gods hardly ever appear in stories of Daredevil, SHIELD, and Iron Man, because these heroes work best in genres and concepts that don't call for such powerful beings. Also, the tone of a "god adventure" would be wrong for them. SHIELD and Iron Man use super scientific devices to fight their opponents, and Daredevil uses his fists. Against gods, their weapons and abilities would be inappropriate.

When you describe your campaign, you define a range of villains, plot elements, and tones that you want to use. With these guidelines, you can start to prepare the campaign.

With a tone and perhaps a goal in mind, and with the background of the Marvel Universe well established, you are ready to begin putting together the campaign's many elements: player characters, villains, NPCs, and stories.

During a campaign, the heroes will spend a lot of time together, so you have to make sure they can work well as part of a team. Examine each PC with following points in mind.

Motivations: What does this hero want to do? Do you, as Judge, find that interesting, let alone suitably heroic? Does that goal match (or at least avoid conflict with) those of other PCs in the campaign?

Power level. Assess the character's abilities, powers, and talents. Are the attacks far more powerful, or less powerful, than other PCs' attacks? Is the character invulnerable to your villains' attacks, or will the character get blown away by the first punch?

In the comics, heroes of widely differing power levels work together without a problem; think of Thor and Captain America in the Avengers. But that is because comic writers give every hero careful attention and adjust the story to let them all show off.

You can't control your PCs the way the writer controls heroes in the comic books. If your Thor player decides to hog the limelight and wipe out every bad guy in sight, the Captain America player just has to sit back and watch.

Work hard to ensure that all the PCs have about the same power level.

Stepping on other characters: Every character should have a power, skill, or "flavor" unique to the team. Don't bring in another character who can do the same thing, only better. The first player will feel useless.

Also, watch out for the hero who can do virtually anything, the real jack of all trades. Every well  designed character has weaknesses and lacks, as well as strengths; this makes the character interesting, because overcoming those weaknesses is heroic. Make sure your players understand that.

Psychological profile: Is this heronot to be too blunt crazy? Can the other PCs trust the hero? Is the hero going to kill somebody, or go berserk, or just fail to get along with teammates? If so, have the player rethink this character. You won't regret it.

Villains are discussed in detail in Chapter 8. This section deals with the issues you must consider when choosing the campaign's recurring villains.

The opponents your PCs face can be conveniently divided into four categories: major villains, villain groups, organizations, and nuisances.

Major villains: Nearly every hero or team in the Marvel Universe is associated with one particular heavy duty bad guy. The FF has Doctor Doom; the X Men have Magneto; Doctor Strange has Dormammu. Loki, the Kingpin, the Red Skull, the Leader, the Mandarin, and, oh yeah, Galactus ... you know, the bad guy, the one the heroes love to hate. The one who may not show up very often, but who practically defines the hero team by his or her very existence.

Every super hero campaign needs one of these, a villain who creates mind shattering schemes and drives your heroes to their greatest exertions. Choose this villain with care, and with an eye toward getting PCs to build really personal grudges against him or her. Perhaps the villain is connected with the origins of one of the team members or directly opposes the heroes' goals.

Pick a villain that the PCs' powers uniquely qualify them to face. If they can't stop him (or her or it), nobody can. For instance, if your PCs are magicians, choose a magical villain like Dormammu. If the PCs are experts in robotics, choose a machine intellect that wants to exterminate humanity. Et cetera.

Naturally, the villain should be powerful enough to push around an individual PC with ease, and give a good fight against the entire group.

You should also keep a couple of lesser villains on hand for variety's sake. For instance, the Fantastic Four's ultimate nemesis is Doctor Doom, but they still find time to fight Annihilus, Diablo, and Mephisto.

Sometimes you can turn a minor villain into a major force just by looking at the character in a new way. For instance, the Kingpin was originally a small time crimelord with a laserbeam cane and a stickpin that squirted gas at his opponents. He fought Spider Man hand to hand, and of course he lost.

Later, though, the Kingpin became a much more cunning and sinister foe who preferred to manipulate others into doing his dirty work. Against Daredevil, the Kingpin became an evil force of almost elemental proportions. In this new and more interesting incarnation, the Kingpin has become a staple villain in many Marvel titles.

Villain groups: If one villain is bad news, six will be even worse. The villain group lets you showcase bad guys who, individually, wouldn't stand a chance against your PCs. Remember Magneto's longtime henchman in the first Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Toad? How else could you introduce a Toad into your campaign? If he didn't have backup bad guys, any self respecting hero could squash him in a round.

A well designed villain group operates as an efficient team, with code signals and pre rehearsed tactics that should catch your PCs off guard.

For example, at a leader's signal, the team's strongest member could grab a non flying PC, throw the hero high into the air, and all of the villains with ranged attacks could simultaneously fire on the helpless hero.

If your PCs don't practice teamwork, a well oiled group of villains can easily take them out, even when the individual villains are far less powerful than individual PCs. But after one or two of these humiliating defeats, players will get the idea and begin developing their own team tactics. Bravo!

The weakness of any villain group, of course, is the clash of gigantic badguy egos. Play this up over the course of the campaign. If the heroes take advantage of it, they can maneuver the villain group into smashing itself more effectively than the heroes ever could.

These groups are hard to design well. Fortunately, you need only one or two really sharp villain groups as a campaign gets rolling.

Organizations: What would the old SHIELD stories have been without HYDRA and AIM? How many stories have ensued from the nefarious activities of Roxxon Oil and Stane International and the Maggia?

Chapter 4 of the Campaign Sourcebook discusses some uses of organizations. In the campaign, bad  guy organizations serve two good purposes:

1. They employ lots of normal level agents for the heroes to beat up on. A combat between a hero and a slew of ordinary people proceeds much differently from a standard slugfest between super types. Also, the hero must avoid doing fatal damage to the weaker agents. (Who wants to blow a whole Karma pool on one measly HYDRA agent?)

2. Organizations create high tech equipment, which provides interesting story ideas. "Our Global Encephalizer Satellite will turn Earth's entire population into helpless slaves!"

You should design or adapt two or three organizations as the campaign begins, each with its own style, goals, and scale. "Scale" means the dimension of its operations. For example, the Maggia wants to make money through crime; but HYDRA wanted to conquer the world! These differing scales mean the organizations fulfill different roles in scenarios.

Alien races: This is really a subgroup of "Organizations." Are your PCs the types who could handle an invasion from space, the sea, or Subterranea? If so, the Marvel Universe offers many races as suitable adversaries. Aliens can be slightly tougher than ordinary agents, and they use even more exotic technology than HYDRA or AIM. For more about aliens, see the next chapter's subsection on "The Galactic Campaign."

Nuisances: Finally there are the bozo villains. No campaign is complete without the occasional would  be hotshot, the mischievous sprite, and the idiot musclemen. Think of the Trapster, who couldn't even defeat the Baxter Building's automated defenses, or the Ringer, or the Enforcers (Fancy Dan, Montana, Snake Marston, Hammer Harrison, and the everlovable Ox).

Players exuberantly trash these punks. They provide laughs, relief from grim world endangering plots, and a chance for the players to feel really superior to lowlife scum. Don't overdo it, but keep one or two of these clowns waiting in the wings when you need a break between serious adventures.

Non player characters are discussed at length in Chapter 8. This section deals with the role of NPCs in

a campaign. There are two important rules:

Players like to feel that their characters are experts, indispensable to the situation at hand. If you bring in an NPC who can do what they do, but better, the players will wonder why they bothered to show up at all. And next session, they won't make the same mistake again!

What is a "good reason" for making an NPC superior to the PCs? Well, the Marvel Universe has a few welldefined absolutes not as many as you might suppose, but a few.

Doctor Strange is Sorcerer Supreme. Captain America is the greatest mortal expert at fighting, and Reed Richards is the most brilliant human scientist (with the possible exception of Doctor Doom). Daredevil, apart from his blindness, probably has the sharpest senses of any human being. For many years, the Hulk was the strongest mortal. And, of course, Wolverine is "the best at what he does."

These heroes' abilities have been established so well that your players can hardly grouse that their characters aren't as good as these hero NPCs. What's more, you have the power to keep these titans out of the campaign, so your heroes don't have to feel upstaged.

But other NPCs, the lesser lights of the Marvel Universe and the ones you create yourself, should not be superior to the PCs. Think carefully before you give an NPC Ultimate Skill in anything the PCs can do.

In the comics, many heroes have friends, loved ones, or relatives who occasionally figure in adventuresusually as hostages, victims, or targets. The archetypal example is Peter Parker's Aunt May.

These "dependents" are often a part of your PC heroes' lives, too. They serve a valuable plot function: By endangering the dependent, you can get the heroes emotionally involved in your adventure, just like in the comics. But here is where comics and games part ways.

A hero in a Marvel comic is emotionally attached to the dependent and has a stake in the NPC's fate. Peter Parker would be deeply grieved if anything bad happened to Aunt May.

This emotional attachment is much rarer in a role playing situation. Players just don't relate to you, the Judge, as they would to an aunt or husband. The dependent's plot function becomes nakedly obvious. While players may role play their PCs' attachment well enough, outside the game they groan when Aunt May appears on the scene: "Oh no, we have to rescue her again, don't we?"

What is the solution? Give the dependent a legitimate function in the campaign. Make the NPC genuinely useful to the heroes, perhaps as a doctor, detective, scholar, or regularly visited source of information. Then when something happens to endanger the NPC, the players' alarm will be genuine, not just role playing.

The NPC should be able to do something the heroes can't or aren't interested in doing. Good jobs to give an NPC include Daily Bugle reporter, FBI agent or government liaison, financial advisor, stoolie, and vehicle pilot. But make sure the NPC isn't better than the players (see Rule 1)!

Now that you have a PC hero group, a master villain or two, a couple or three organizations, functional NPCs, and all the bozo villains your players can stand, you are ready to start playing. Or, as often happens, the campaign just grew, and you have been making all of this up on the fly, in the thick of the game.

Either way, it is time to discuss matters that arise as play progresses.

if you have already begun the campaign, you can skip this section.

Any campaign begins best with an "origin adventure," the scenario that establishes its premise, introduces its characters (and, if necessary, the players) to one another, and explains why these heroes are banding together.

Origin adventures can have unusual power, because they evoke a sense that these characters' lives are changing forever... that nothing will ever be the same again. An ongoing campaign can't sustain that feeling, and shouldn't try. Players would soon get worn out!

When you design an origin adventure, aim for a dramatic statement of the campaign's essential peril, the danger that the heroes have joined forces to combat. A major plot by the campaign's master villain is an obvious and excellent choice.

The PCs may not be together, and perhaps they even don't know one another, as the adventure begins. In any case, a beginning adventure (unlike most comic book stories) does not have to start out with a dramatic incident. It's better to spend a leisurely 10 or 15 minutes per PC, establishing the character's current life, attitudes, and perhaps powers. This nonthreatening "trial period" helps a player get the feel of the PC before the real action begins.

In the origin adventure you can play around with players' expectations in a way that takes them by surprise. For example, if the player wants the PC to have a dependent in the campaign, you might establish one early in the origin but then the master villain disposes of that dependent in horrible fashion! The adventure later presents a new dependent, the one you intended all along. Meanwhile, the PC has formed a royal personal grudge against the bad guy.

But be careful. Avoid sheer ruthlessness... unless that's the campaign tone your players expect.

Though this may sound to outsiders like some repulsive medical condition, Judges know this is the way to foreshadow future conflicts, new villains, and amazing changes in the heroes' powers. This foreshadowing builds suspense and keeps players coming back to the game.

Here are several intriguing kinds of subplots.

Mysterious appearances: Enigmatic notes in the mail or messages on the answering machine at HQ. Enigmatic manifestations of psychic power by a dependent. Enigmatic weather, or animals lurking in an alley, or surveillance drones. The common element is mystery.

You need not have a culprit in mind when you introduce the mystery. Listen to the players speculate, and try to pick up on what they find most intriguing. Then, several episodes later, it turns out they were right sort of! Throw in a devious twist to keep the players off guard.

For example, you tell your players that an unmarked package arrives at HQ. The postmark is from Wakanda. Inside, without any identifying note, is a shapeless hunk of pure vibranium worth almost a million dollars.

The players speculate that the Black Panther, ruler of Wakanda, seeks their help and is testing their honor: If they return the vibranium, they pass the test.

The PCs nobly decide that next session they will call up the Panther, offer to return the vibranium, and ask what's going on. You, having heard this line of speculation, plan a Wakanda adventure. But you decide that, though the Black Panther was testing the PCs' honor, he wants them as agents in selling the vibranium to a client! He can't trust his usual distribution network for this assignment. Why not? The answer to that, of course, provides the adventure.

Relations with the law: Some new inspector or precinct captain has it in for super powered vigilantes. The official makes life hard for the heroes in their every criminal investigation, and attacks them in the media.

But does the official have an ulterior motive in the attacks? Is there some darker figure behind the scenes, manipulating public opinion?

Increasing insanity: When Matt Murdock descended into paranoia, and the Kingpin systematically dismantled his life, the story gripped readers both old and new. The "Born Again" sequence showed that when fate plunges a hero into the depths, he or she becomes all the more heroic by climbing out again.

This tricky and risky episode requires a player's cooperation if you want to initiate it; or the player's character may already be heading overboard, and you decide to capitalize on the mounting craziness.

The hero begins to part ways with the group. He or she commits Karma reducing actions, minor ones at first, but gradually increasing in severity. The PC's attitude becomes dangerous.

At last a specially designed adventure faces the PC with the worst consequences of this new attitude. Probably the hero gets the opportunity to kill a hated foe, or the foe discovers the hero's secret identity and ruins his or her life (as the Kingpin ruined Matt Murdock's life). At this critical juncture, the hero either gives way to base impulses, or refuses to do so, thus setting the stage for a dramatic return to sanity.

If you want to keep the PC in the game, make very sure the player in question is inclined to choose recovery. Otherwise, the corrupted PC should be phased out of the campaign or become a villain's henchman.

Note: If you proposed this subplot and the player cooperated, be sure to return all the Karma the PC lost when committing crazy actions. They were your idea, after all.

Criminal trials: A valued NPC (or even a PC hero!) is on trial for some frame up. While the trial proceeds, good guys search for evidence to clear the accused, and bad guys plant more.

The verdict is by no means certain. Robbie Robertson's recent trial is a good example. If the accused goes to prison, the heroes may consider drastic actions to free him or her. When this subplot is resolved, the campaign may head in a new direction, with the heroes (at least for a time) on the wrong side of the law.

The fascination of campaigning comes in watching relationships appear and mature, people come and go, stories begin and end. This section talks about some of the developments that arise in a successful campaign.

Player characters: A story is inherent in almost every good character conception. Does the character have a particular goal, such as vengeance or atonement, or wiping out a given organization? Has the PC been troubled by an ongoing psychological problem, such as a fear of intimacy or a berserker rage? Is there some mystery in the PC's past, such as his or her origin, or the identity of the character's parents?

All of these imply an eventual resolution to the problem, over the long term of the campaign. The PC achieves the goal, overcomes the psychological hangup, or solves the mystery. The conflict is resolved. For example, the Human Torch, after years of dead end romances, finally found true love with Alicia Masters and married her. The Silver Surfer found a way to leave Earth and return to the universe at large. Doctor Strange became Sorcerer Supreme.

When a PC achieves the culmination of his or her story, that doesn't mean it's time for the character to retire. By that time, the PC has probably become so entrenched in the campaign that he or she takes on a kind of "elder statesman" role as an experienced hero, perhaps a leader, although his powers shouldn't be out of balance with the other PCs.

Over the course of the campaign, try to develop the PCs' stories. You won't ever have time to resolve them all, but their ongoing progress will give your stories the appeal of the Marvel comics and the players the feeling that they really matter to the campaign.

NPCs: These, too, can develop in stories. The boyfriend breaks up with the heroine and leaves town, or dies, or marries the PC. The sidekick gets corrupted by the master villain, but redeems himself with a dying gesture that defeats the bad guy. The helpless sister learns to fend for herself, opens a business, and becomes a financial success and a respected citizen.

Generally, such an NPC, unlike a PC, exits the campaign at this point. The character simply doesn't inspire stories any more. But he or she may return for guest spots now and then.

Villains: One of the most interesting aspects of the campaign is the gradual metamorphosis of the heroes' opponents. Master villains are reduced to annoyances, while minor henchmen take over and grow strong. Organizations are destroyed, but their agents go freelance and make further trouble.

When Doctor Strange began his sorcerous career, for example, Baron Mordo matched if not surpassed him in mastery of the mystic arts. But Strange grew in power while his rival lagged behind, and Mordo became a nuisance menace, a pawn in the schemes of more powerful beings.

Another example: Spider Man beat Doctor Octopus so many times that Octopus finally just went mad, For a time he was harmless, and then when he returned as a menace he was maniacally driven to defeat the wallcrawler above all else.

Just as your PCs have stories, the campaign villains also pass through life changing events and emerge from them changed. You need not worry about this for the first year or two of play, but don't overlook these possibilities as the campaign progresses.

If your campaign goes on long enough, eventually age becomes an issue.

In Marvel comics, characters age slowly or not at all. In almost 30 years of Spider Man stories, Peter Parker has gone from high school to graduate school. Reed Richards and Sue Storm married and now have a sevenyear old son, but their partner Ben Grimm hasn't aged a bit. Matt Murdock has been 32 ever since Daredevil #1 appeared in the early 1960s.

This is one of the conventions of the genre, as discussed at the beginning of Chapter 8. If heroes aged normally, the comics would eventually grow as old and tired as they do. Who could believe a 55 year  old Daredevil leaping across the rooftops?

Some Marvel heroes have authentic explanations for their eternal youth. Thor and Hercules don't age because they are gods. Nick Fury's Infinity Formula has kept him young since World War 11. The first time Doctor Strange died, he merged with Eternity. Reborn into this plane, Strange no longer ages. But most Marvel heroes stay young simply because they remain interesting that way.

In general, heroes who start out young age to a kind of "ideal point" that allows the most interesting stories. Then the aging stops, and instead the heroes' past history is revised and updated to make the current version plausible. In Marvel comics, the modern age of super humans is assumed to have begun about seven or eight years before the present, and most well established heroes have had careers lasting four to eight years of "real" time.

In the campaign, you and your players can choose to (a) ignore the whole issue; (b) play an adventure that gives a plot justification for retarding or stopping the PCs' aging; or (c) specify, by Judge's fiat, a rate of aging you all can live with one game year per year of real time, one game year per three or six real years, or no aging at all.

Not player characters, players. Role players are a various lot. Each person in your group may have a different style of play and enjoy roleplaying for different reasons. Try to determine each player's wants, and if possible, satisfy them in the adventure you run. That way, everyone has fun.

Here is a non exhaustive list of some common player types. (Thanks to Aaron Allston for these classifications.)

The Psychologist. This player enjoys exploring the personality of his or her character in detail. Role  playing is an acting challenge, and the deeper the character, the better this player likes the challenge.

Throw the Psychologist's character into lots of different situations that call for different responses: negotiation, examination of a new culture, romancing an NPC, staving off romance with an NPC, and crises of conscience. The more angst you foist on the character, the better the player should like it but be sure your player is of this type before you really heap on the bad news'

The Problem Solver. Faced with a mystery, or even the hint of a mystery, this player looks for clues and culprits and speculates endlessly on solutions. Faced with capture, the player figures a way out of your foolproof ambush.

A player who's alert and thinking is always better than one who isn't. But boy, does this guy make you work hard! If your story calls for the villain to capture the characters, the Problem Solver may send it spinning off in new directions. If you want your surprise twist to stay a surprise, you have to send the Problem Solver chasing after multiple wild geese to keep him or her from guessing the twist in Scene 2.

Judging tip: Listen to the Problem Solver's theories. Sometimes the player will come up with a solution far more surprising and effective than the one you had planned. Then at the story's conclusion, you throw out the real explanation and substitute the better one. "Yep, you guessed it, all right:' you say blandly.

The Killing Machine: His boss is giving him a hard time, or she's having trouble with her classes, or he doesn't get along with his parents. One way or another, this player arrives at the game ready to fight. The Killing Machine wants to take out frustrations on imaginary characters, as explosively as possible.

Role playing games are a healthy outlet for aggression, so satisfy this player with plenty of action and physical conflict. In the Marvel Universe, this shouldn't prove hard.

Another kind of Killing Machine is the player who worms through loopholes in the rules to design characters of maximum lethality. Many "role playing" games encourage this, since combat is almost their sole activity. In stories, these characters have less to contribute. But you can make this player happy by sending the character against huge opponents and watching him or her cut them into pieces.

When you're putting together your story, think of your players and try to include elements that will appeal to all of them. As long as everybody gets something fun to do in every session of the game, you'll have a satisfied group.

As the campaign proceeds, certain problems may appear. Here are some traps to watch out for.

Bad feelings between PCs: Even though your players are getting along fine outside the game, their characters may regard each other with cool hatred. Perhaps one, a Captain America type, has vowed to protect all life, whereas another, in the tradition of the Punisher or Wolverine, is ready to kill any criminal, Karma loss or no. These two have to get on one another's nerves.

In the comics, this friction can produce deeper characterization and interesting rivalries. It can in your game, too ... if that is to everyone's taste. Take care that other players don't become uncomfortable with the fractious pair, and keep the combatants from stabbing one another in the back. That's hardly heroic!

A certain amount of squabbling is entertaining. But carried too far, it can drive the group apart. If you prefer not to risk this, make sure your PCs are all on the same wavelength about important campaign issues before play begins. These "ground rule" issues include:

whether and when to kill;

relations with law enforcement officials;

and whether PCs should trust one another with their secret identities.

New players: Great! That is, as long as the newcomers know the campaign's ground rules: ways to behave, power level, overall goals, and how to uphold the team's reputation.

It's hard to make sure a new player isn't going to do something rash and cause permanent disaster. To guard against this, first have the player gueststar in the campaign as an established Marvel character, one whose behavior every player is familiar with. Once you decide the player can handle the campaign's ground rules, let him or her bring in the new permanent PC.

Too many players: Some Judges, who struggle to find enough interested parties to put together a play session, would love to have this problem. But having too many players is far worse than having too few.

The problems: the Judge can't keep track of everybody's actions; players don't get into the spotlight often enough; and to challenge the larger and more powerful PC group, bad guys have to be still more powerfuland that makes adventures deadlier for individual PCs.

In judging a game, the maxim is not "The more, the better," but "Everything in moderation." Aim for an optimum group of four to six players. If you have many more than this, consider splitting off the group into two separate campaigns.

Changing direction: After you have run all the adventures you can think of, you may want to rejuvenate the campaign by shifting its scene, premise, or goals.

This is fine, but talk to your players first. If a player enjoys playing a wealthy industrialist in the Financial District, he or she may not enjoy being flung back in time to 18th century Haiti or into a post holocaust future.

If the players object strongly to your proposed change, think it over. If they don't object, but don't think their characters belong in the new campaign, let them create new PCs. Or ask them to play NPCs in your adventures until the campaign returns to the earlier mode.

Remember, players just want to have fun, but usually they need to know what kind of fun they're going to have.