Tropes for superhero campaigns

Any Superhero

I'm in the process of assembling a campaign in M&M which will be a bog-standard superhero campaign. And part of it is that I have to come up with a metric fecal tonne of NPCs and their relationships to the characters....and I'm only coming up with the starting NPCs; the rest will be developed in play. The non-standard part here is that there are three different campaign levels because it's troupe play. So for each player there are three circles for them to move in: low-level, mid-level, and high. Because I'm starting with M&M, you can think of them as PL8, PL10, and PL12, but you could also think of it as neighbourhood, city, and global level.

Obviously, the characters can cross over. In my head, I think of it as writing the Batman family: some adventures deal with Robin; others deal with Nightwing or Batgirl; and yet others deal with Batman in either city mode or godglobal mode.

That's a fair bit to come up with, even if the troupe characters can mix and match.

So I asked the fine people at the Facebook group World of Supers for their favourite NPCs or tropes, and I'm hoping to use them directly or reverse-engineer them into classes that I can then use to build an instance of a campaign.

Some comic book things won't translate. This is a group activity, after all, and a set of stories about the brooding loner who's all alone and doesn't have anyone (and did I mention loner?) won't really work. But there are a lot of useful bits we can use, harvested from comics and campaigns.

Because of where my head is at these days, I'm thinking of them more in terms of what story possibilities they open up. That's not the only way to look at them, and in fact it's not a way I've looked at it in the past. But essentially, this is my version of Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations for superhero campaigns. (If you want the Polti list, Wikipedia has a reasonable summary.)

Obviously, in comics, characters can fill several roles, but I'm just starting to think of it this way, so I'm not going to stress if I only pick one.

In a sense, I'm looking for plot engines: roles that generate stories.

A role for each identity

A character who has one attitude to the public identity and another to the secret identity. Lois Lane for much of her history disdained Clark Kent but adored Superman; Aunt May loved Peter Parker but was afraid of Spider-Man. I feel like this is not so much a role you'd give an NPC but a layer you'd add to them, because really this is a way of pointing up the Secret ID. Examples: Lois Lane, Flash Thompson

Aide & assistant

Providing necessary assistance for lots of different things, and occasional counselling. Steve Kenson suggested Icons A to Z: Support, which has a number of roles around the headquarters, such as Handyman, Mechanic, and Pilot. They are more specialized versions of this (well, maybe not Handyman). Mechanically, they provide aid in some way; in a story sense, they usually provide commentary, such as "Go get'em" or "Are you sure this is a good thing to do?" or subtle nudging, such as "Perhaps if you investigated the Senator's parents; I find that evil is a fruit that does not often stray far from the root." Examples: Alfred, Jarvis, Wintergreen

Attractive crook

Love interest who does bad things but not too bad Examples: Catwoman, Black Cat

Crook who might not be reformed

The crook who looks like he's gone straight, but there's some question about it. Examples: Most "reformed" Batman villains; Lex Luthor; Norman Osborne after leaving the asylum (again)

Crook trying to go straight

This is slightly different: a crook with a good heart but he's always in danger of relapsing. In one case, we know that the heart is good but the situation might be bad; in the other we don't know the heart. And of course many crooks pass through this until we know that their motives are good. Examples: Sandman in Spider-Man

Cross Purposes

Usually someone acting against the hero but for good reasons; the character might act for the hero if convinced Examples: Amanda Waller

Demanding Overlord

The character who expects actions of the hero that interfere with hero-ing, such as the boss or sometimes the insistent love-interest. Though some characters have this written right into their role (when JJJ became Peter's market, it happened) it can also be something you layer on to an existing NPC Examples: J. Jonah Jameson, Gwen Stacy, Perry White

Duelling love interests

There are situations where the hero has one love interest in hero identity and another in secret identity and this challenges fidelity or obligations. Examples: Spider-Man with Mary Jane and the Black Cat

Friend on the inside

Someone in a position to help the hero, but who might be forced to act against them. Examples: Commissioner Gordon

Hostage

Unlike the millstone, this character is associated with the hero identity, so is often used by villains to blackmail the hero in hero identity. Examples: Robin, Rick Jones

Mad Inventor

Generally a source of things to fight, where we deal with his or her latest scheme gone wrong. Good intentions, bad follow-through. Examples: Emil Hamilton

Millstone

Your traditional dependant NPC, such as Aunt May, who provides a responsibility but no obvious benefits; the millstone is usually associated with the private/normal identity. If a character has obligations to someone but no apparent benefit, you probably have a millstone (most love interests as written are millstones). In these cases the benefit is just notional — "Oh, the shock will kill Aunt May" or "She's my fiancee!" You alleviate this by giving them some kind of benefit to the hero, either emotionally or tactically. Often you can do this by revealing the secret identity to them. Examples: Aunt May, Julie Madison

Nosy parker

Mostly obsolete now, but a staple in the Silver Age: the character whose investigations threaten to expose the hero's secret Examples: Lois Lane, Vicki Vale

Rival

The character who is competing with our hero, in either identity; a beginning or inept character is more often a Wannabe Examples: Various reporters

Villain with a Problem

This is the character who is really a nice (or acceptable) person, but when something happens, they become a villain. Examples: Man-Bat, the Lizard, Carol Ferris

Wannabe Hero

Like a rival, but less effective or sometimes even a supervillain/problem of the week. Examples: Frog-man, Man-Bat

Other ideas?