How Would YOU Want It Done?

[zakueins]

One of my favorite non-"Ultimate" books for Champions has to be Allies. It's just so useful to either pull them for DNPCs, Hunteds (with the serial numbers filed off), filler characters, and sometimes even a character to give a new player to help them out.

So, shortly (as soon as the outline is done), I'm gonna send Hero Games a proposal for Allies and Associates, which is like CKC, except that they're good guys (mostly).

Here's my question-what do you want in a book on Allies and Associates? What I'm thinking of is-

1)Two big super-organizations (Primus and Danger, Inc (Danger, Inc is the huge contracting firm for low-to-mid powered superheroes, like GURPS Supers SuperTemps, but with more variety).)
2)Three to four Mega-Heroes (on the scale of Dr. Destroyer and ilk). There won't be a "Superman with serial numbers filed off" in the group, but there will be some pretty close clones, and one quirky Mega-Hero.
3)Groups ranging from the very powerful to newcomers, probably about 4-6. I'm gonna have two big "theme" teams, based on Semi-Popular Comic Mythos, with the serial numbers filed off. The rest will be more like most gaming groups, with a variety of character types.
4)Independents running from very powerful to talented normals. Around thirty to forty, wide variety of power levels and skills and powers.

So, anything I should add? Think about? Change around or otherwise tweak?

[Ghost Archer]

Need submissions?

[Lord Liaden]

I really enjoyed the Allies book for its variations on "standard" superheroes (The Redeemed, the Flashmen, Zen Team), but I think you and I are in the minority. From remarks I've heard over the years in and out of the company, NPC hero books don't sell all that well, since for many gamers "NPC hero" equals "screen time taken away from PCs". If this project gets taken up at all by DoJ, I suspect it would probably be done as an e-book.

To make the appeal as broad as possible, I'd suggest filling in niches in the established Champions Universe that aren't occupied yet. My first notion would be to give a lot of attention to international supers. These would take more research to write up (although the names in the "Project 3000" thread might help), but they're more likely to appeal to Champs players who don't have the time to do such research. There are several countries mentioned in CU as having significant populations of "capes" but few named heroes or hero teams. These would be good for color-adding encounters or jurisdictional conflicts with American supers. Probably best to use countries with whom such conflicts are likely to occur: Mexico, Canada, Russia, China, Middle East, etc.

You might also consider "corporate heroes" who work for a particular company and protect its interests (like Zen Team), or villains who pretend to be heroes to mask their nefarious activities - these are always good for interesting encounters.

Your "Supertemps"-like group sounds good, but you should probably dump your plans for PRIMUS; that territory looks to be officially ceded to Shelley Crystal Mactyre, who's already put out one PRIMUS sourcebook and several Digital HERO articles on it. My suggestion would be to develop a high-tech private security firm, like Starguard International from the old Super Agents book or World Security Services from HERO System Almanac 2. Because their priorities are often less altruistic than a lot of "pure" heroes, such organizations can be allies or enemies, as desired.

Hope that helps.

[Monolith]

I have a feeling that the big organizations (PRIMUS, UNTIL, etc) have very definite plans for development, and DOJ is probably not looking to give those out to a freelancer, or at least someone who does not have prior experience with the organization in question.

I would not mind seeing some stats for the non-US superheroes, but I get the feeling that due to the continuity issues (many of the superhero groups in CU are inter-related) DOJ would rather slowly develop the 10 US superhero groups on their own. Have you downloaded the CU Superheroes pdf? That lists most of the known superheroes (I left two off, and there are now more added from MC) and could give you an idea as to just how dense the CU already is with heroes.

Danger, Inc does not sound like a bad idea, and I would not mind seeing that as an Organization Book, but I would still want it to fit properly within the CU continuity. I think the Plug & Play aspect of Champions is not going to be used anymore. Everything published needs to fit within the world's continuity.

To be completely honest with you, I would much rather see someone write-up some new villain groups (the five we currently have are really not enough) in a Menaces, Alliances & Cartels supplement then I would seeing 40 new heroes that I have never heard of before, which I then have to try and fit into my continuity.

I am not trying to dissuade you in any fashion. I am just stating my opinions. No matter what you propose, I wish you luck on it, and I will probably buy it too.

[zakueins]

Not yet, I haven't run out of character ideas yet.

At a rough guess, I'm going to bring a quarter to a third of the original characters from Allies, if possible, into this book.

Originally posted by Ghost Archer
Need submissions?

[zakueins]

One thing I'm gonna include in the book is, at least for one of the superteams and some of the various independents, is "Villan Team Conversion"-how to quickly turn this same team into a bunch of supervillans.

Danger, Inc, isn't too lilly white (it also acts as a hiring front for supermercs such as Lazer and his ilk), but a lot of what it does is good stuff. There's one or two characters in it that could easily become Hunteds or Rivals (and if you ever get Darkness on your ass, just fill out your will now-she DOESN'T do anything less than "kill her Hunted"), and there's a lot of neat little character things that Danger, Inc can do, even be the sponsors of the player's own team.

So far, the super-team list is as follows-

SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF HUMAN EVOLUTION-If you can't figure out who's serial numbers I've filed off for this one, you flunk Superhero 101 and have to re-take the course. One hint-they have a school in Boston.
ZEN TEAM-There's been some swapping of characters, and some power improvements. Also, the Zen Jeep and the Zen Jet have been written up.
ORDER OF THE QUEENS OF HEAVEN OVER EARTH-Yes, a sailor suit team. Yes, they're barely post-pubesent. No, they are not going to be naked. And no, you're gonna be suprised at what they can do.
CYBERKNIGHTS-Like Zen Team, a partial port from Allies, but there's a new member and some other adjustments.
THE REDEEMED-Pretty much unchanged, with two new people.
JUDGEMENT-An entirely new group of vigilanties, based around a mystical character that claims to the the Angel of Vengence.

I'm thinking of adding these two groups as well, as "starter seeds" for a GM needing a group NOW and to fill out the universe-
SAN FRANCISCO SENTINELS-A newly formed group of superhumans in the San Francisco Bay Area, built around two other, defunct teams and with a few new members.
THE UNION JACK-England's premere superteam, badly decimated by an attack of the Crowns of Krim, but rebuilding slowly.

The independents are coming together pretty good. One thing which I'm emphasizing is a good number of "white hat" or "samuari" mercinary characters-more like contractors in the Metahuman world. There's one guy that I'm really starting to like-a powerful mage that one day decided to try and rob a bank, and just as he walked in, he realized, "How much money is there in preventing people like me from stealing stuff from people...?"

Originally posted by Lord Liaden
I really enjoyed the Allies book for its variations on "standard" superheroes (The Redeemed, the Flashmen, Zen Team), but I think you and I are in the minority. From remarks I've heard over the years in and out of the company, NPC hero books don't sell all that well, since for many gamers "NPC hero" equals "screen time taken away from PCs". If this project gets taken up at all by DoJ, I suspect it would probably be done as an e-book.

To make the appeal as broad as possible, I'd suggest filling in niches in the established Champions Universe that aren't occupied yet. My first notion would be to give a lot of attention to international supers. These would take more research to write up (although the names in the "Project 3000" thread might help), but they're more likely to appeal to Champs players who don't have the time to do such research. There are several countries mentioned in CU as having significant populations of "capes" but few named heroes or hero teams. These would be good for color-adding encounters or jurisdictional conflicts with American supers. Probably best to use countries with whom such conflicts are likely to occur: Mexico, Canada, Russia, China, Middle East, etc.

You might also consider "corporate heroes" who work for a particular company and protect its interests (like Zen Team), or villains who pretend to be heroes to mask their nefarious activities - these are always good for interesting encounters.

Your "Supertemps"-like group sounds good, but you should probably dump your plans for PRIMUS; that territory looks to be officially ceded to Shelley Crystal Mactyre, who's already put out one PRIMUS sourcebook and several Digital HERO articles on it. My suggestion would be to develop a high-tech private security firm, like Starguard International from the old Super Agents book or World Security Services from HERO System Almanac 2. Because their priorities are often less altruistic than a lot of "pure" heroes, such organizations can be allies or enemies, as desired.

Hope that helps.

[Monolith]

Zakueins, your stuff does not sound bad, but much of it will not fit into CU continuity. Now if you are doing this for Hero Plus as a pdf then I say go for it, but if you actually wanted this published, I do not think you will be able to make if fly. Much of it is too far out of continuity.

Also keep in mind that it is entirely possible that DOJ does not own the rights to many of the characters in Allies. If you try and duplicate them you could be dealing with copyright issues from the original authors. I do not know this to be a fact, but I do know that Hero Games did not buy many of the characters used in their books during that time period.

[zakueins]

Like anything, it's all in the details.

If there's a problem with continuity, we'll thresh it out. If it's a problem with copyright, I'll toss in and pull out groups and characters to get them to fit the theme, but not be violiating somebody's intellectual property.

One thing that I've always wanted to have as a "fill out" item is a bunch of characters that aren't villians, aren't quite heroes, but are super-powered and fill a niche. That's why it's called Allies and Associates.

Hey, they might reject it anyways, then I'll figure out some use for all the characters that I've created.

(Hm....perhaps we can pull the Redeemed out and put in VA-Villians Anonomyus, working their twelve steps, one good deed at a time... ).

Originally posted by Monolith
Zakueins, your stuff does not sound bad, but much of it will not fit into CU continuity. Now if you are doing this for Hero Plus as a pdf then I say go for it, but if you actually wanted this published, I do not think you will be able to make if fly. Much of it is too far out of continuity.

Also keep in mind that it is entirely possible that DOJ does not own the rights to many of the characters in Allies. If you try and duplicate them you could be dealing with copyright issues from the original authors. I do not know this to be a fact, but I do know that Hero Games did not buy many of the characters used in their books during that time period.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by zakueins
If there's a problem with continuity, we'll thresh it out. If it's a problem with copyright, I'll toss in and pull out groups and characters to get them to fit the theme, but not be violiating somebody's intellectual property.

I was just thinking of your example of a SF superhero group. CU already has 2 hero groups in SF, so saying both teams are defunct and a new team has formed does not really sit will with continuity. The same goes for your team in England, which already has 3 superhero teams.

I would also look carefully at your Angel of Vengeance and support team. CU seems to have a few predefined concepts of how magic works. Magic is important to CU due to the fact that it is the basis of all super powers.

One thing that I've always wanted to have as a "fill out" item is a bunch of characters that aren't villians, aren't quite heroes, but are super-powered and fill a niche. That's why it's called Allies and Associates.

I like the concept of characters which fall in the middle.

Hey, they might reject it anyways, then I'll figure out some use for all the characters that I've created.

You might want to do an article for DH with a few of the lesser characters. That would give DOJ a better idea of your writing ability and help you get your foot in the door. I'm all for new product as long as it easily fits into my current CU campaign (I hate doing recons or rewrites ).

[Enforcer84]

This sounds interesting. I really liked Allies. I don't mind the books of NPC's especially when it adds to the establisehed universe. I mean the Champions Universe needs to evolve over time, old heroes and villains fade as new ones come to the fore. Since the game simulates comicbooks they tend to be trapped in the present with the same group, but DOJ has set the scene for change, Destroyer is old and can't seem to fix that; in a few years he may simply die of old age. Think of THAT power vaccuum. Eurostar lost some members, Menton left destroyer, Terror Inc. was destroyed from the inside. They managed to do away with "overstock" power types (yet another Powered Armor Master villain, or flame weilder, or Electricity weilder) while not just saying they never existed. I think that an allies book would be welcome, as would a Watchers of The Dragon type, which is still one of my favorite books Hero in any incarnation put out. If a book can give me another piece to the universe I' enjoy it. Heck I am adding to my unverse at breakneck speed. And I don't have a problem adding more.

[zakueins]

Heh, I'm just about finished with one of the independents that I'm going to put in Allies&Associates. Digital Hero, here it comes.

And, the universe does need some more rounding out-which is what this product is for. My biggest complaint about UMA (Ultimate Martial Artist) is that there aren't sample characters, running the gamut from "normal human MA" to "ultimate metahuman MA".

Originally posted by Enforcer84
This sounds interesting. I really liked Allies. I don't mind the books of NPC's especially when it adds to the establisehed universe. I mean the Champions Universe needs to evolve over time, old heroes and villains fade as new ones come to the fore. Since the game simulates comicbooks they tend to be trapped in the present with the same group, but DOJ has set the scene for change, Destroyer is old and can't seem to fix that; in a few years he may simply die of old age. Think of THAT power vaccuum. Eurostar lost some members, Menton left destroyer, Terror Inc. was destroyed from the inside. They managed to do away with "overstock" power types (yet another Powered Armor Master villain, or flame weilder, or Electricity weilder) while not just saying they never existed. I think that an allies book would be welcome, as would a Watchers of The Dragon type, which is still one of my favorite books Hero in any incarnation put out. If a book can give me another piece to the universe I' enjoy it. Heck I am adding to my unverse at breakneck speed. And I don't have a problem adding more.

[Superskrull]

Originally posted by zakueins
Like anything, it's all in the details.

If there's a problem with continuity, we'll thresh it out. If it's a problem with copyright, I'll toss in and pull out groups and characters to get them to fit the theme, but not be violiating somebody's intellectual property.

Well, if it helps, Scott Jamison is one of the members here on the boards, under the handle of SKJAM!, so you could just email him and see what he says.