Spider-Man Mini Campaign - Planning

As I am still somehow struggling to get some decent superhero cards up and running, and it has been quite a while since my last "Rulebook" article, I thought I could show people how it is I get a game (or in this case, campaign) up and running. Hopefully it's instructive and you can start planning your own games based on how mine go.

The Death of Spider-Man
Years ago, with my original "Champions of the Omniverse" TSR Marvel Superheroes RPG, one character, Spider-Strike had a fun little background that stuck with me, being an "Edgy 90s" version of Spider-Man that took over for a while after Spidey's death, ala The Death of Superman. It was a fun joke that sat in the back of my head for years, and was slowly added to as new ideas occurred to me. Coincidentally, I also really got into converting Heroclix to make unavailable characters and home-brewed ones, expanding my options greatly and offering opportunities for unique characters still in the mold of existing settings.

The concept behind my "Death of Spider-Man" mini-campaign is pretty straightforward, really, as the entire process is an obvious pastiche of The Death of Superman, so my framework is already done, and I just need to plug in the Spider-Man related details. Let's start with the easy part, who will replace the main players in the original story?

Well, Spider-Man is our obvious Superman stand-in, here the 616 Peter Parker version (more on that later) because he's almost as iconic as Kal-El, and that lets us spin this out to alternate Spider-Men and Spider-People when we get to the big blow-out at the end. Next, we pretty much have to consider Doomsday, a lame character to be sure, but necessary for the narrative. Where I've settled is "Venogoblin" (pictured above, 3rd from the right), a version of Norman Osborn who thought it would be a great idea to mix the Goblin Formula with some Simbiote he had lying around, turning himself into a rampaging monster that Spidey dies trying to stop. We'll be running into a "Reign of the Spider-Men" story, so we'll also be needing Eradicator, Superboy, Steel and Cyborg Superman analogs; enter Spider-Strike (or is Spider-Stryk more '90s?), Octo-Spider, Spider-Slayer and, um, Cyborg Spider-Man. Look, I opened him in a booster, ok?

More on these characters later, but yeah, Spider-Strike is an edgy, '90s take on Spider-Man, with too many pouches and combat pants, he also probably uses an awkward slang phrase too much. Octo-Spider is actually intended to be Flash Thompson, using an experimental mobility harness made by Otto Octavius that he has stolen and weaponised. As usual, this Flash went to war and was injured, and is a huge Spidey fan, so his death would encourage him to get out and try and take his place. Steel Spider would probably be a better idea here, but as Heroclix haven't made one, I decided to make something up myself. Finally, yes, that's meant to be J Jonah Jameson inside the Spider-Slayer, affected enough by the death of Spider-Man, and the revelation that it was Peter Parker, a close confidant for years, he has broken his Slayer out of storage and is doing the best to undo the damage his papers have caused over the years.

Naturally, some of my Spidey villains will be playing a part as well, either as "dressing" in some scenarios, or for the various "Spider-Men" to fight in some games. You'll notice a lack of some famous faces here, but that's deliberate, and we'll get onto it in a later entry.

I've also long been a fan of the idea of Spider-Man side characters getting to do their own thing as a team, like the Slingers or Silver Sable's Wild Pack, the latter being my inspiration for the above, work-in-progress team.

So far the plan is to run say, 4-6 games, mostly small ones, but maybe a big blow-out at the end with a kind of Spider-Verse deal happening, if I can get enough Spider-people ready. At this stage, the end of the campaign is pretty far away, so I'm comfortable with it being a little vague right now. By the time I get going, things should be worked out, but right now I don't need every detail covered, and getting bogged down is just going to delay things further. Next time, we'll break down the scenarios and how I plan to link them together.