STUFF HAPPENS - RANDOM ENCOUNTERS

Comics are full of deep plots, interweaving plots, metaplots and ongoing stories but there are also a massive number of seemingly random, short-term, or even one-off encounters that occur in nearly every title. While this tends to be the province of solo heroes like Spider Man or the Incredible Hulk, just about every hero and team of heroes has had encounters with enemies outside their usual cast of characters. 

To a great degree, these sorts of randomly encountered characters serve to allow comics creators to experiment with new ideas play around, and have fun. They are often less defined, sometimes less well thought out and sometimes very silly. Quite often these character are introduced with the intention of having them become recurring characters should they prove popular enough but in many cases, they come, go and are never heard of again, that is until another creator decides they want a crack at the character.

This is one of the greatest benefits of these characters for GMs. GMs are notoriously creative, constantly coming up wth new NPCs and characters. With many games it can be tricky to find a believable, useful place for all this creativity but superheroes games have it written int othe very fabric of the genre. Leaning into this will only serve to make your games feel more like the comics they are based on. If you have an idea, jot it down, scribble together some quick stats and file it away in you folder of random encounters to use when you and/or your players need a break. That woodchuck-themed villain may only show up for one ill-fated fight with your players' heroes but he will be remembered. 

Random encounters need not stay random though. As I have pointed out in several previous posts, these characters are right for creating questions, rectonning, seeeding. A seemingly random hero may develop over time, returning as a lost relative, an alternate self, connected to a character's origins. Random encounters can spin off into new player characters even much in the same way that Peter Parker's styslistc costume change in Secret Wars became the pehenomenon that is Venom and then all the symbiote maness that came out of that. the key is that they never have to though, allowing  GM to create and use them freely.