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Guardians of the Galaxy: Champions or Star Hero?


Michael Hopcroft

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A quick question -- if you wanted to run a campaign based on, or inspired by, the film version of Guardians of the Galaxy, which genre set would be a better fit -- Champions or Star Hero?

 

Points for Champions: the core group of the Guardians have some pretty impressive abilities physically, mentally, or technologically. If you're building characters like them, you might want to build them as supers.

 

Points for Star Hero: the Guardians live in an expansive universe. The technology, though impressive, is about par for the civilized part of their galaxy (though it's supertech by earth standards, it would hardly raise an eyebrow in Nova Prime). The characters who are not technologically augmented, while powerful, are about as powerful as someone of their species would be expected to be if they were experienced adventurers or had trained extensively.

 

It's not so much a question of building characters in that setting -- it's pretty clear that these characters would be built using the Supers rules and pay character points for their main equipment and cybernetics. The question, rather, is one of tone. Do you necessarily want to center your game on dealing with powerful people like Ronan the Accuser, or would you rather deal with a charming-but-deadly scoundrel like Yondu as your antagonist? Would you set out to protect civilization, or would you rather stumble into heroism while simply trying to make a buck? Would you prefer your game cosmic or comical?

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Rocket, Gammora, and Starlord are pretty much Star Hero material. Dax it would depend on his strength and skin toughness. I've never seen him in the comics so I can only go by the movies. He went toe to toe with Ronan who has gone toe to toe with FF and the Avengers so super. Groot Super. So they could work either way. For a Champions campaign you'd just have to up the first three's damage. For Star hero you'd have to cut down on Daz's strength and remove some of Groot's ailities.

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I think of comic-booky space opera as being "space pulps."

 

Starlord as presented in the movie isn't that different than Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon.

Given Buck Rogers' traditional origin story that is an incredibly valid perception. The main difference is that Buck and Flash were intended to be altruistic Champions of Good, while Starlord is a fast-talking opportunist trying to survive a dangerous galaxy and make a few bucks in the process -- and if he CAN help some people in the process, he's not averse to that either.

 

I wonder now if even Starlord should pay for his equipment. The Milano isn't all that special as small starships go in the setting; the government at Nova Prime was able to rebuild it from scratch with off-the-shelf parts. The rest of his technology isn't that much better than the tech of the rest of the setting, just specialized and used more resourcefully than the average user could manage. If he were to need to replace, say, his guns, he would buy a pair (if he has money) or steal them (if he doesn't). His space survival/HUD/mask helmet is the one thing I see him using that might be a significant advance, but he didn't build it -- it might just be something Ravagers use and he happened to secure one for himself.

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I wonder now if even Starlord should pay for his equipment.

I would run it as a heroic game and give him his gear for free.

 

Dax could be built with 25 Strength and a small amount of rDEF.

 

The only problematic character -- in terms of points -- is Groot, IMO.

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