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A Look At The Evolution of Champions/Hero


Steve Long

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Ron Edwards, with a little help from myself, has written a blog post offering his (and my) perspective on the development of Champions/the HERO System in the Eighties that might interest some of you:

 

Ron Edwards's Doctor Xaos blog

 

 

I'm currently working on a follow-up guest blog post that continues the analysis on into the Nineties and beyond, a period Ron's less familiar with. Stay tuned for more fun -- and while you're at it, check out the rest of Ron's blog posts about comics (and sometimes gaming); they're well worth your time.

 

 

(Naturally, anything said in this blog represents Ron's or my personal opinion, not any sort of official position of Hero Games. ;) )

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Good stuff. I rather enjoy the anthropological roots and influences of game design. I started on this kind of thing with musical genres, and it's fascinating to see where influences pop up (The Beatles in Green Day, Feng Shui in Exalted, and so it goes).

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It doesn't mention Superhero: 2044, which was a massive influence on the original design of Champions, both directly and indirectly. Wayne Shaw's house rules for SH: 2044 were acknowledged as the original inspiration for Champions disadvantages.

 

SH: 2044 was very much a 70s game, more focused on the campaign side of things than the tactical aspect. That, unfortunately, was taken to the point of it being unplayable on the tactical level. Hence house rules, and then other superhero games, created by frustrated players.

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Great article. Nice to see the framework of TFT/GURPS in there with Hero as they developed. There was definitely some back-and-forth there. TFT and Hero remain two of my favorite systems (not GURPS, for various reasons).

 

 Steve, have you ever had any chats with Steve Jackson about game design and the origins of the two systems?

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It doesn't mention Superhero: 2044, which was a massive influence on the original design of Champions, both directly and indirectly.

 

True, but keep in mind that the point of the article isn't to chart an in-depth history of the development of Champions 1E. It's really to look at the different design philosophies affecting HERO in the Eighties and Nineties and how those ultimately resolved. This will become much more apparent when the second blog, written primarily by me this time, delves into the Nineties and beyond.

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I have followed Hero and GURPS closely during their entire product lifespans, and the greatest source of distinction between them lay in the fact that GURPS starts with an underlying bias towards mundane reality whereas Hero/Champions starts with an underlying bias towards epic cinematicism.

 

For example, "Immune to Aging" costs 3 pts out of a starting character's 100 in Hero, whereas "Unlimited Lifespan" costs 25 pts out of a starting character's 100 in GURPS. This is because being ageless has virtually no game impact, and things are priced according to their in-game (primarily in-combat) usefulness in Hero, whereas being ageless would be every person's dream in the real world, and things are priced according to their value in the real world in GURPS.

 

Likewise, most skills have a 3/2 cost schedule in Hero because, well, skills are assumed to be of equal usefulness in the long run in a campaign, whereas Very Hard skills like Neurosurgery get more and more expensive--outrageously so from a Hero player's perspective--in GURPS because those skills are extremely rare in the real world (being so difficult to master and all).

 

I have always preferred the Hero approach because I prefer cinematic campaigns to realistic ones, and I just intrinsically believe in the notion that a character's assets ought to cost him according to their in-game usefulness, since that is a far more meaningful metric for activities that take place in an imaginary game world rather than in the real world.

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I posted this to... a lot of places, including as a response on Ron's blog.  I figure it's appropriate to post here too.   :)

I think I have figured out what the change (from 3e to 4e) was.

In Champions editions 1-3 (which I usually call first generation HERO System) the system wasn't separated from the game. Everything in the Champions book and the Champions II and III supplements, both system and fluff, was aimed at emulating the superhero comics in your game. While there wasn't mechanical niche protection, there was explicit niche support. Bricks, Martial Artists, Energy Projectors, Egoists (first-gen speak for Mentalists), and Others (anything that wasn't one of the first four) were called out. If you wanted to play a brick, the assumption was that your primary offense and defense would come from Strength, Constitution, and the Figured Characteristics based on them. For a martial artist, there'd be a few points of Strength plus Martial Arts (with cost equal to your Strength, and made your primary offenses a 1.5x STR punch or a 2x STR kick) for offense and DEX + SPD for offense, defense, and mobility. It was assumed that energy projectors would likely go with Elemental Control and/or Multipower, to pick up some of the points-efficiency bricks got with their Figured Characteristics, and DEX, SPD, and a movement power for mobility. Egoists had their niche mechanized with Ego, ECV, and the Mental Powers rules.

A lot of this carried over into Fantasy Hero 1e as well. The Powers system was made into Spells, and the assumption was that if you wanted powers you were going to be a caster of some kind. There were just enough mechanical fiddly bits added so that if you wanted use-at-will powers you had to fight through the spell build system to create them. (In 4-6e terms, all Effects had Extra Time: 1/2 Phase, Concentrate: 1/2 DCV, and Requires A Skill Roll built in, for no cost break; there were Advantages to use to take those down, which increased the cost of the base effect.) Among other things, it added a bit of challenge to building magic items (mainly weapons and armor) and monsters with spell-like powers. But also, if you wanted some extra resistance against mentalists you couldn't just slap on a few points of Ego Defense; you had to engage with the spell system, even if it was just to buy around it, and there was a strong implication that it would be part of either a spell that a friendly caster would cast on you and maintain, or an item that you would either build, buy with points, or acquire in play.

The big change from 3e to 4e wasn't so much mechanical, though there was a top-to-bottom refurbishment of the system. The you're-playing-a-superhero fluff was effectively moved into a separate book, as the HERO System explicitly came into its own. Looking in the rules you weren't seeing the fluff and the niche support mixed in. I think it's important to note this: the system changes weren't as important as the notion that as of 4e the HERO System was a system rather than a game, and that you'd use it to build your games, while in first-gen it was a series of games that were all based on a house system. I also want to stress: none of this was bad, it was just different.

Also, in the first-gen games there was a lot of GM power given not just to deny but to allow; if you were playing FH 1e, for instance, the GM could say "We're using these Champions Powers as spell effects, and here's the point costs..." but the basic assumption absent that was that what you had in the book was what you had to work with. That last assumption carried over to 4e, but the difference was that in the book you had everything, and it was harder for a GM to say "These things here are not permitted, and if you want to build those things you have to do it this way." The FH book for 4e included magic system design sheets with checkboxes for this reason, but that turned out to be more paperwork.

Fifth edition went more in the direction of fourth, and I usually consider 4e and 5e to be a second generation; 5e is probably more of a "4.5 edition" as far as overall edition differences are concerned. 6e is either a third gen or a 2.5 gen, depending on how you consider the changes.

(Disclosure, if it matters: I was around for the pre-6th edition discussion, argued strongly for the decoupling of Figured Characteristics, and was part of Steve Long's "SETAC" advisory group.)

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A very cogent analysis.

 

It is also worth noting that the 1st gen rules (i.e., 1st-3rd editions) precipitated the development of the 4th ed. rules in large part because it became apparent that the "house system" underlying all the other games (Justice Inc., Danger International, Fantasy Hero, Robot Warriors, Fantasy Hero) had become used like a universal system but with genre-specific rule tweaks and, more discomfitting, different point costs for the same basic powers. Energy Blast was 5 points per die of damage in Champions, but the Blast power that you built spells with in Fantasy Hero was 3 points per die. All the heroic level games were rife with lowered point costs for what were essentially the same powers pulled from Champions. This made it very difficult to mix and match characters from different campaigns and genres, which was becoming quite vogue in the late 80s (ala Torg).

 

The 4th edition did away with the veritable Tower of Babel of rules/point costs and gave all genres the same mechanics and powers to build from. It was the ultimate concession to the reality that Hero Games fans wanted one unified system with which to rule them all.

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Yes, absolutely.  The "Hero System" (stylized that way) was the Hero Games house system rather than the unified system it would later become.  

 

I wasn't equipped at the time to make this analysis; I was in the Air Force when 4e came out, and while I had some gaming it was right after I left a regular group, and the next regular group I would get into would be GURPS.  I got back into regular HERO gaming with a group right after I got out, most of whom had started with 4e.  I didn't even realize the disconnect was there until I tried to run a heroic game for that group, and a couple of them treated the game as superheroes on fewer points.  That was about twenty years ago, and I've been wondering what went wrong for literally at least fifteen of those years. 

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Energy Blast was 5 points per die of damage in Champions, but the Blast power that you built spells with in Fantasy Hero was 3 points per die.

 

I quite agree with your overall point that there are definitely many examp[les of cost differences for similar Skills, Powers, Disads, etc. between Champions and the various pre-4th edition heroic games, but I just want to note that in this specific case Fantasy Hero (1st edition) lists the Blast Effect at 5 points per die.

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I quite agree with your overall point that there are definitely many examp[les of cost differences for similar Skills, Powers, Disads, etc. between Champions and the various pre-4th edition heroic games, but I just want to note that in this specific case Fantasy Hero (1st edition) lists the Blast Effect at 5 points per die.

 

That was also assuming RSR, Concentrate (1/2 DCV), and Extra Time (1/2 Phase) for no cost break; to buy those off were a total of +1 in Advantages, so you were effectively looking at 10 points per d6.

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@ zslane: that's fascinating regarding the different point costs. I never knew that was a thing, wide-eyed youngster and all.

 

I wonder, has there ever been a "cost-by-genre" supplement, or anything of the like? It's one of the things that I really liked about BESM - basically different skills had different costs, based on the genre of the game being played. Everyman Skills are the closest I've seen in CC/6e, and I'm not sure that I'd want anything more than that. Mostly just curious.

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@ zslane: that's fascinating regarding the different point costs. I never knew that was a thing, wide-eyed youngster and all.

 

I wonder, has there ever been a "cost-by-genre" supplement, or anything of the like? It's one of the things that I really liked about BESM - basically different skills had different costs, based on the genre of the game being played. Everyman Skills are the closest I've seen in CC/6e, and I'm not sure that I'd want anything more than that. Mostly just curious.

 

No, there hasn't.  Part of the thinking, I think, is that since 4e, HERO is supposed to be a unified system.  We've run into that with various discussions over the years; the current thread about "how tough is a tank?" is one we've been discussing at least since 2003, and it runs into this issue directly.  

 

Fantasy Hero (not-complete, the 5e/6e supplement) on the other hand essentially gives GMs free reign to tweak and manipulate the system however they want.  One of the options there has all spells costing 1/3 of their Real Cost, but prohibiting frameworks of any kind.  Another one treats magic almost as if it were the same as weapons for which you don't pay points; you need Magical Familiarities plus skills to use them, and then you have to acquire new ones in play.  As GM you can effectively make spells cost whatever you want them to cost, but it's on you to figure out what that is.  

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Tweaking point costs and core mechanics on a per-genre basis takes the Hero System back to its pre-4th ed days in which characters from different genres couldn't be used together, and in which players familiar with the system in one genre would be faced with unlearning and re-learning parts of the game for another. It sort of violates the universality that was painstakingly built into the design, and quite frankly I'm not sure why anyone would be eager to use the Hero System if they weren't going to take advantage of that universality.

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Tweaking point costs and core mechanics on a per-genre basis takes the Hero System back to its pre-4th ed days in which characters from different genres couldn't be used together, and in which players familiar with the system in one genre would be faced with unlearning and re-learning parts of the game for another. It sort of violates the universality that was painstakingly built into the design, and quite frankly I'm not sure why anyone would be eager to use the Hero System if they weren't going to take advantage of that universality.

 

It's actually not true that characters from different genres couldn't be used together.  They wouldn't necessarily balance points-wise, but, for instance, if you had Champions, Danger International, and Fantasy Hero, you had all the rules you needed.  There was no incompatibility anywhere; OCV was OCV and figured the same way, likewise DCV, ECV, DEX and SPD, and so on and so forth.  You'd need to figure out which particular set of optional combat rules you were using (Knockback?  Bleeding?  Impairing/disabling?  Hit Locations?) but you need to do that today.  

 

As for why... that long post I posted a couple of days ago explains why.  Champions back then was a superhero roleplaying game.  Champions now is a universal system being used to play superheroes.  Different assumptions give a different feel.  Likewise with Fantasy Hero, Dark Champions, Pulp Hero, and so on.  

 

I think that turning Hero into a universal system was bad for the games.  Nothing wrong with making it a unified system, but universal -- taking one set of rules and assumptions and using it for everything -- can give you some strange results.  Like, different people coming into a genre with different assumptions.  Or a never-resolved discussion about how much DEF a tank has and should have.  

 

(Edit:  I kind of thought I was being hyperbolic about the tank discussion beginning in 2003, but I wasn't.  It really has been going that long.)

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It's actually not true that characters from different genres couldn't be used together.  They wouldn't necessarily balance points-wise...

Okay, well, the raison d'etre of a point system, or at least Hero's point system, is to balance characters against each other. I feel like if you can't do that with characters from different genres, then they are unusable at a foundational level. Everything else is just a footnote to the fact that points don't even mean the same thing (i.e., have the same valuation).

 

I think the philosophical debate over the value of universal/generic systems versus dedicated systems has been raging since the 80s when house systems became de facto universal systems and then, in some cases, became actual universal systems. Some people like the broad applicability of universal systems, even if they are somewhat bland until flavor is added by the gamers themselves, while other people prefer the benefits of having mechanics purpose-built for the campaign world. I'm actually a fan of both.

 

I love the ability to use HERO, mostly unaltered, to cover gaming in nearly any cinematic genre or campaign world, which incidentally is the type of gaming I've done for most of my RPG-playing career. But I also appreciate games with dedicated mechanics like for Vampire: the Masquerade. Anyone who tried to use the travesty that was GURPS: Vampire the Masquerade knows all too well how painful the term "lost in translation" can be when purpose-built mechanics which play an integral role in making the campaign world itself feel and function the way it does (and is supposed to), get discarded in favor of generic system mechanics.

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Okay, well, the raison d'etre of a point system, or at least Hero's point system, is to balance characters against each other. I feel like if you can't do that with characters from different genres, then they are unusable at a foundational level. Everything else is just a footnote to the fact that points don't even mean the same thing (i.e., have the same valuation).

Sure, but they don't really do that right now, in any more than a very rough, vague sense, and often not even that. You still need to look at genre (including optional combat rules - Hit Locations vs. 1/2d6 STUNx, Knockback, Impairing/Disabling/Bleeding), CV's, DEF, damage, and other things.  This is mostly why, in fact, Active Points, DC, and DEF are generally given different limits.  

 

I think the philosophical debate over the value of universal/generic systems versus dedicated systems has been raging since the 80s when house systems became de facto universal systems and then, in some cases, became actual universal systems. Some people like the broad applicability of universal systems, even if they are somewhat bland until flavor is added by the gamers themselves, while other people prefer the benefits of having mechanics purpose-built for the campaign world. I'm actually a fan of both.

 

I love the ability to use HERO, mostly unaltered, to cover gaming in nearly any cinematic genre or campaign world, which incidentally is the type of gaming I've done for most of my RPG-playing career. But I also appreciate games with dedicated mechanics like for Vampire: the Masquerade. Anyone who tried to use the travesty that was GURPS: Vampire the Masquerade knows all too well how painful the term "lost in translation" can be when purpose-built mechanics which play an integral role in making the campaign world itself feel and function the way it does (and is supposed to), get discarded in favor of generic system mechanics.

For me, going back through Champions 3rd edition has been an object lesson in how much changed.  I'm finding I prefer Champions the RPG over Champions the HERO System genre book.

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As for why... that long post I posted a couple of days ago explains why.  Champions back then was a superhero roleplaying game.  Champions now is a universal system being used to play superheroes.  Different assumptions give a different feel.  Likewise with Fantasy Hero, Dark Champions, Pulp Hero, and so on.  

 

I think that turning Hero into a universal system was bad for the games.  Nothing wrong with making it a unified system, but universal -- taking one set of rules and assumptions and using it for everything -- can give you some strange results.  Like, different people coming into a genre with different assumptions.  Or a never-resolved discussion about how much DEF a tank has and should have.

 

For me, going back through Champions 3rd edition has been an object lesson in how much changed.  I'm finding I prefer Champions the RPG over Champions the HERO System genre book.

I've long felt that the "Hero System" was best for super heroes, even pre-4th Edition. I had my own house system that I started in '78 for non-supers. Not that I didn't play other genres using Hero, and numerous other games as well.

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[snip] in this specific case Fantasy Hero (1st edition) lists the Blast Effect at 5 points per die.

 

That was also assuming RSR, Concentrate (1/2 DCV), and Extra Time (1/2 Phase) for no cost break; to buy those off were a total of +1 in Advantages, so you were effectively looking at 10 points per d6.

 

Very true - even if the base cost per die was the same between FH and Champions, the default magic system assumptions in FH made it more expensive to have a FH spell that worked just like a Champions power, which is part of the whole pre/post 4th edition change in feel being discussed.

 

(For the sake of accuracy, though, in 1st edition FH, the Advantages Easy, Fast, and No Magic Roll are all x1/4 multipliers, making a total of x3/4 in Advantages [8.75 points per die] to make Blast work essentially the same as Champions' Energy Blast.)

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I've long felt that the "Hero System" was best for super heroes, even pre-4th Edition. I had my own house system that I started in '78 for non-supers. Not that I didn't play other genres using Hero, and numerous other games as well.

 

I never felt that it was better for supers than for any other genre, or worse.  My group rocked it hard for everything we played, pretty much.

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Very true - even if the base cost per die was the same between FH and Champions, the default magic system assumptions in FH made it more expensive to have a FH spell that worked just like a Champions power, which is part of the whole pre/post 4th edition change in feel being discussed.

 

(For the sake of accuracy, though, in 1st edition FH, the Advantages Easy, Fast, and No Magic Roll are all x1/4 multipliers, making a total of x3/4 in Advantages [8.75 points per die] to make Blast work essentially the same as Champions' Energy Blast.)

 

Ah!  I'm usually all about the accuracy, but somewhere I had it in my head that one of those was a 1/2.   :thumbup:

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I much prefer the Universal system, because I tend to play a lot of different games and genres and I reeally dont want the mechanics to change much at all when playing something different.

 

I just want a game system which can act as the "laws of physics" for the games I run, which does things in the way I want them done, without having to learn new game mechanics each and every time we switch genres.

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