So how did you guys learn the system?

[steelwulf99]

It was a long wait (last batch of international orders) but it was worth it! My books arrived just before Christmas (and a three day trip to the in-law's family farm). Weird though - I'd got the .pdfs too as part of my purchase... I'd even printed them out and I still wasn't prepared for just how big the books are!

I originally had a conventional campaign planned for my local group, but two sessions of (still incomplete) character generation has lead me to understand that players who are intimidated by mathematics struggle to make characters for this system.

Well no problems there. They're a good bunch, I can live with them not wanting to tackle things like how to build powers in 6E just yet... but I ended up rethinking how I wanted to approach introducing the system to them.

I've decided to run "Close Encounters of the Sixth Kind" a genre-hopping collection of short stories, with no character persistence between stories. The only link to continuity I will have will be at the start of each new story in the introduction narration. Things like a PC or major NPC turning off a television showing the highlight of the last story and muttering to himself about how far fetched modern entertainment is getting (or a wizard and a crystal ball, a dream sequence, etc). Each story will run for 4-6 sessions.

I will pregen the characters, write the story, advertise it to the dozen or so local gamers I know, take the first to apply for the spots and then run the game.

It's kind of railroading but it serves several purposes:
1) I can introduce new rules in a new story, rather than dropping them into a campaign. This means I can deliberately keep the rules simple to begin with and when I introduce new rules I don't need to justify why.
2) It spares them the rigours of character generation. Lucky for them I like things like this. Lucky for me I like things like this. Lucky for the game I get the perfect party composition for the story.
3) Pregenerated characters need less building - no need to fully rationalise complications, for one. I just add in whatever seems good for the characters and write the appropriate hiccups into the story and call it done.
4) It introduces a bunch of genres. I plan to spend some time in familiar territory (Star Wars, generic medieval fantasy) as well as explore some other cool genres that some of them may not be used to.

The ultimate goal is for them to pick a genre they love and want to go back to. Then we can spend some time building people their real characters and dive into it from there... ideally at that time we'll have a bunch of players who know the system, like it and (this next one is for me) want to run a game of their own in it some day.

We shall see...

Anyway... now I've nattered about my plans, how did you guys learn? Did you have players who weren't quick at grasping rules? How did you accomodate them? Any tips? Suggestions? Stories?

[Lucius]

Well, I - and I'm sure some others - started when there was only Champions. The rules were simpler then....

I have found that a good way to learn any rules system is to create characters, but I know a lot of people would rather skip chargen, at least at first.

I LOVE your suggestion for getting started - I may decide to adapt it myself, even, when I get ready to start running again. But I can't help wondering if you can't tie them all together more - maybe by having the same "maguffin" show up in each one? Or an NPC who mysteriously seems to be the same person (or versions of the same person) in each story?

Lucius Alexander

For every world, a palindromedary

[sinanju]

I learned from reading the ORIGINAL set of stapled together Champions books. And then the supplements. And then the newer editions. So I absorbed it all gradually over many years.

I imagine that's not a lot of help....

[Narratio]

Same as Lucius, started so long ago it's hard to remember (Nurse! can I have my reading glasses please?) but the Zeppelins were darned noisy.

I came into Champions from D&D (3 small booklets in a... never mind) and I'd entered that from regular wargaming (20/25mm painted metal figures used to... oh forget it). We'd created and played a gladiatoral combat system (As written in Military Modelling magaine in... never mind) and, as part of a league we were keeping our gladiators through different games. So we started creating back stories for them. Which meant, when D&D came out, it all seemed natural... honest Mi'lud!

Why not forget the character generation and use the pregenerated charcters that come with the rules? Or download a few from Mike Surbrook? Play with those and then, with the hook set, show your players how to modify those characters via use of experience points. Then show them how to build thier own characters. Like most addictions, let it sneak up on the poor fools... Bwaaah haah haaah hah!

[lemming]

Started with first edition as well, so more and more got added on during the years. But making characters and playing a lot of games seemed to do the trick.

[ghost-angel]

I started with 4th Edition, heck I didn't even play a "Champions" game for the first year or so I was learning the system. Mostly Fantasy and Cyberpunk. As far as I'm concerned Hero is superheroes second, everything else first.

I kind of trundled along with friends learning this and that and how the game works. But I really got into stretching the system with 5th Edition, GMing a few one offs here and there to test things out.

The how of me learning Hero was a combination of playing with friends and reading a lot.

[Beast]

1986 2nd ed
a friend converted a D&D character for me to Champions
been playing with them ever since

[likwidneo]

I actually started with 5ER over a year and a half ago. It started when Penny-Arcade.com had mentioned Champions Online in one of their daily articles and how it was inspired by the PNP game. I've played a handful of sessions of DND but was never a big fan of it. It was something cool and fun to do but I couldn't get into it and make a full fledged campaign out of it. But when my GM read the article about a superhero table top game, soon him and all my friends had big stiff woodies over the idea of it. He picked up a copy of the Sidekick thinking that he'll try a more simplified rule system before diving into the full system headlong with no experience. But between his heavy experience in DM'ing table top games and me being a walking calculator, we pretty quickly realized that we would already start off ahead of the curve and that the Sidekick lacked the structure we needed. So we dove right into 5ER in a Millenium City campaign alongside the Champions and Project Mongoose, pitted against COIL/VIPER and company. Our first characters were way too broken and our group "healer" (I use the term loosely) ended up killing King Cobra in a single blow. We've played another, more balanced Champions campaign since, and one session of CyberPunk Hero which I LOVED, but fell to the wayside for reasons unknown. And now we're giving Post Apoc Hero a run for it's money in a Zombie Outbreak scenario. But the bottom line is Champions did to me what DND couldn't. It actually turned me into a PNP fan.

[Panpiper]

I first learned the system back in the days of first edition Champions. The rule book was substantially less than a half inch thick back then. That shortness of the book also however meant that there were loopholes and shortcomings in the system that could be exploited by power gamers. Figuring out those loopholes was a game of brinkmanship so they could be foreseen and plugged prior to an unscrupulous player unleashing all manner of headache upon a GM. Learning the game was a game in and of itself, as one 'gamed the system'.

Nowadays I would suggest that the best way to learn the game is to build two characters and then, on your own, resolve a fight between them. Many new understandings will become glaringly apparent doing that. Take what you learn from that and do it again. It will not take long to learn the system that way, and you will after, have a good handle on both character creation and the strategies in combat.

[Bloodstone]

I built a lot of characters and played a lot of 5E. I read the books, several of them multiple times. I read lots of forum posts by people more experienced than myself. I asked questions of GM's and players that had been involved with the game for decades. Eventually, I started running my own games.

I still have players that aren't the best with the rules and I'm ok with that. Heck, I still have to look things up from time to time myself.

End of the day, the rules are just the framework on which we buiild our stories together. They guide us from one moment of awesome to the next! If the occasional rule is bent, broken or outright trampled in the name of a good time, no one in my group is going to complain overly much

[AmadanNaBriona]

Like most of the other old timers, I started WAYYY back in the days of 1st ed, but I thought I'd chime in an say that I think your idea has merit.
A similar approach I've used before is to start a scenario off with a fairly simple objective and pre-gen characters, throw them right into the action, play out the simple short scenario, then have the created PC's come in later to be the "real" heroes of the story.
The Pre-Gen characters are the "action teaser" before the movie gets started, so to speak... you know, the ones who get mauled by the bad guys before the opening credits. Any of the pre-gens who make it through the intro can show up later as NPC's, ones the PC's will be predisposed to trust.

[gojira]

Anyway... now I've nattered about my plans, how did you guys learn? Did you have players who weren't quick at grasping rules? How did you accomodate them? Any tips? Suggestions? Stories?

We all picked characters out of the back of 3rd ed. I picked Armadillo, and we went from there.

Well, I - and I'm sure some others - started when there was only Champions. The rules were simpler then....

Yes, this. The amount of verbiage in the current edition dissuades me. And despite the "all the rules in one book" advertisement of 5e, I've nevertheless bought those rules 3 times now. Sidekick, 5er revised, and PS2348. It'll be four times when I pick up Luche Libre.

I'm not sure that needing a rules light version is the mark of good planning, but you might want to consider the Basic Rules book. It's at least shorter, and you can embellish anything that seems too skimpy for a given character design.

A laptop with a spreadsheet will eliminate 90% of the math. It's not the math however, imo, which really isn't that bad, but the number of options. Too many ways to fit all the pieces together. Cut down the options and you'll cut down on the player angst.

[KawangaKid]

Started with the 3rd edition rules, my first character was actually pre-built for me by my gaming group then... he had everything focused into his staff.

Then I eventually shifted gaming groups to another gaming group that actually played Champions most of the time (in Beresford Rec Center in San Mateo) and they took apart my character, but invited me to build a new one. I bought my own Champions rulebook from a guy at high school (who said it was his, but really just stole it from someone who was in the group I was joining) who said he didn't play no more, learned how to build characters on my own, and tried 'em out at a game. It helps not only to build characters, but to look at other folks characters and learn about their builds, their philopsophies, etc.

[snotnose]

Very Odd. So even though I (and most of my group) has been playing since the 4 color, 1st-ed Champions Book, our plans to step back into Champions using the 6th edition (after having been away since 4th edition) is to do almost exactly what you are proposing.

Pre-gen characters
Several short runs

The slight twist is that the PCs actions in these short runs will have an effect on the world. Starting with a run in the 1940s and then as many as 1 run per decade until modern times. Is the world anything like our modern world or has it taken some good or bad turn somewhere? Only time will tell.

Whatever you do, make the adventures actually be part of your world so that while the players learn the system, they are also learning what the world is like from multiple viewpoints. Perhaps some viewpoints can be heroes and some villains. Your choice as to whether any of the sessions will have an effect on the ultimate adventures (and whether you will allow your players to create villains).

Good luck!

EDIT: Whoops...teach me to not read your entire post. Now I see why you aren't doing things set in the same genre for each run...

[Rapier]

I got my start with 4th Edition back in uni circa 1991. It was mostly Champions but we then went from D&D to Fantasy Hero to test the system.