New Salem: Renaissance - super hero RPG module design

Getting back to New Salem, and I promise that July is the month where i flood you with corrupt social order adversaries to build out the other side of the threat conspyramid, I wanted to take a minute to look at how you could/would/should even design adventures for super hero games, never mind super-hero games that are trying to have a NSR/Sandbox/player driven focus like New Salem. 

I come to this having just...

1. Read some Mastodon posts about treating adventure writing as if it were technical writing - there is information on what to do and how to do it that needs to get in front of the Game Master as quickly and cleanly as possible for maximum use in play - and that adventures should be written with that in mind. This being gaming, of course there's push back and counter arguments in a healthy ecosystem where no two tables are actually playing the same game. 
2. Watched a video review for I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City (which I am running for my library kids D&D group this summer) which dings the 1981 module for not giving the GM a clearer story direction. Now, I suppose if you're producing content entirely for GMs who are used to modules giving them stories with rising action, climaxes, etc. then this is a fair warning, but since I1 started as a tournament module that was then expanded to "and once you've done that you've discovered a lost city full of treasure and plots and mysteries to explore" with the faith that 1981 AD&D players would want to do that without additional plot motivation, dinging it for that feels out of place. 

That being said, I've previously discussed how the super-hero genre is story focused as a rule, and the whole of the New Salem: Renaissance project is to get the genre into a place where a sandbox story would be effective. So what would a module for that look like?

Looking over the classic V&V Modules (there were 20 in the game's heyday, with four villain collections), with two of them being a back to back two-parter (Death Duel with the Destroyers + Island of Doctor Apocalypse). Others are set up as sequels (FORCE can be followed by Assassin; Enter the Dragon's Claw: HONOR can be followed by Search for the Sensei), and these are all very story-driven. There's a precipitating event that is outside the PCs control - the villain makes an attack or someone tells the heroes that there is an attack coming. There's then some back and forth with the villain where the author is making assumptions of the heroes tactics, powers, and strategies. This can get super clunky and railroading. 

My favorite is that FORCE opens with an investigative journalist dying at the PCs feet trying to pass along information about an evil cult. And then despite Revivification being a standard power in V&V the it absolutely cannot work here because it would break the investigative opening to the module. Super-heroes just have such varied abilities, power levels, and tactics. The genre wants you to write stories like the comics, but everything about the genre makes generic modules REALLY hard.

For some reason, my favorite is the deeply sketchy Dawn of DNA

How can you not love that cover?

The module isn't one direct adventure but a series of events being made by a shadowy mastermind who has a slow plan to take over the world. The three parts a) are the PCs having disparate encounters where either the mastermind is making quiet moves, or his henchmen are getting bored and making dumb plays that draw attention to their activities, b) the henchmen deciding the heroes know too much and taking steps to eliminate or ambush them, and then c) the shadow mastermind unfurling his grand plan, which the GM is meant to integrate into the larger world (with existing NPC hero teams already having fallen under his control, for example). Unlike other modules these are meant to be interspersed with whatever else is going on in the game world. To the players they might feel like almost randomly generated encounters. 

It is very short (about 16 pages of text) but like many sandbox adventures it opens up to "and then what do the heroes do next?" Exactly how entrenched Doctor DNA becomes in the world is based in how much effort the PCs put into resolving what is happening early, and maybe taking the fight to him, but it doesn't presume any of that. 

I'm going to delve more into the other modules I have over the rest of of June.