Connecting Supers to Their World

#1

Inspired by TechNoir’s connections (and adding a dash of Discern Realities from Dungeon World) I’ve worked up a set of questions I’ll use at Session Zero for our Vigilante City run. The idea is the PCs will each provide names and pithy descriptions for a few of these People, Places, Things, and Events, and then when plotting sessions, I’ll roll two or three times on the d4xd6 table created, adding these chunks of Player connection into the scenario with the usual Block Crawls (plus occasional genre appropriate side trips) as they fit in.

Thoughts?

People

  • Someone in your personal world you feel hyper-protective of
  • Someone in a position of power you’re obsessed with
  • Someone with special skills or access who would help without asking too many questions
  • A group or org you left, burning bridges on your way out
  • A group or org you have a secret contact within, who owes you a favor
  • A group or org that you respect, but have no real connection to.

Places

  • A hidden part of the city on the verge of being discovered
  • A favorite public place to safely relax in your downtime
  • Someplace strange, weird, and not on this Earth
  • Someplace on Earth few alive have ever returned from, but you have
  • Someplace connected to your origin or powers
  • Someplace you are no longer welcome and will be met with violence if you show your face

Things

  • Something Harmful on an unprecedented scale
  • Something Precious/One of a Kind
  • Something with Information worth killing for
  • Something Powerful and Ripe for Misuse
  • Something Helpful that should not exist
  • Something Everyone Believes Forever Lost but you know better

Events

  • Major Headline from 10 years ago that you’re convinced was a coverup for something else
  • Feel-good news item from from a few weeks ago
  • Small, Private Social Event or Meeting
  • High Profile Public Event filled with Media and Celebrities
  • A Devastating Man-made or Natural Disaster
  • Soon to be announced Scientific Discovery or Invention
Some Table Clutter (Prepping VC)
#2

Damn, Lon. This is awesome and I’m gonna outright steal the idea for an upcoming game.

#3

Thanks! I’m pretty jazzed about it myself. Though can’t take but so much credit…For me the seed of this brainwave would have been impossible without following some of the scintillating conversation on IMMORTAL discord. I’m very grateful to be at a place in life where I can support a bighearted creator like HF in this way, and keep seeing new benefits in my own GM-ness sparking off left and right.

#4

Another neat use of this resource in-game would be when you want to figure out what the baddie being interrogated might say: “I dunno nuthin! Except Spray and Pray was both awful focused on [rolls dice] those schematics of the old Gasworks by the Docks…”

ETA: Aaaaand now I have to drop everything and create a problematic supervillain duo: a gritty, determined gunslinger and a cussed old timer from Ghost Mountain banished to VC by a Hepawa Shaman for being so gol’durn meanspirited and ornery.