Golden Age Champions pdf released

[specks]

Fight the Axis baby!!!

 

   

 

Its good!!!

 

http://www.herogames.com/index.html/_/store-items/new-product-golden-age-champions-pdf-r215

[Nothere]

It's where?

[Nothere]

Ah. For those who usually just check the forums and want to find it. Just click on news.

[specks]

Fixed with link above.

 

Enjoy

[mrinku]

I shall pick that up when I get home tonight, I think

 

Good work!

 

One question, not listed anywhere I can see - how many pages?

[Lord Liaden]

318 pages, counting the front and back covers.

[Christopher R Taylor]

No mention of adventures  When will they learn?

[TheQuestionMan]

It is time for HEROphile GM's to introduce their own Adventures.

[Lord Liaden]

GAC has no full adventures, as in multi-page plot details, maps, adventure-specific NPCs, and the like. However, it does describe a series of "plot seeds," some of them pretty detailed, for scenarios set in various periods in a WW II campaign, which would not be difficult for a GM to expand. I counted fourteen seeds, as well as many other brief mentions of incidents from the real WW II that could be turned into scenarios with a little work and imagination. The plot seeds use NPCs written up in GAC, or who can be filled in with one of the many generic normals templates from various Hero books.

 

Keep in mind that GAC is also a source book for Golden Age campaigning, so has to fit in a lot of historical and cultural reference material

[Christopher R Taylor]

However, it does describe a series of "plot seeds," some of them pretty detailed, for scenarios set in various periods in a WW II campaign, which would not be difficult for a GM to expand.

 

 

That's good.  There's no mention of it in the summary and promotional stuff though, and that's a mistake in my opinion.  One of the really great details in the 4th edition book was the host of adventure ideas, plots, and short writeups.

[Armitage]

I'm sure it's too late to be anything but errata, but the Condor is missing from Rick Royce's write-up on page 209.

 

42        Vehicle: “The Condor” (See Below)

 

 

...and there's nothing below.

[mrinku]

Picked it up this morning. Looks pretty good so far!

[Lord Liaden]

I'm sure it's too late to be anything but errata, but the Condor is missing from Rick Royce's write-up on page 209.

 

42        Vehicle: “The Condor” (See Below)

 

 

...and there's nothing below.

 

Yeah, I noticed that too. Disappointing in that the Condor is supposed to be the biggest part of how that character contributes to the King's Men. But I'm not sure its omission wasn't an editorial decision. We don't actually get any full vehicle character sheets, only stat summaries for vehicles from the era. Even the Ghost Cab is statted like a character (and Darren explains why in the book).

 

Various extra materials are going to be included in the separate GAC "Secret Files" -- maybe the Condor will be in there.

[mrinku]

One thing I noticed reading it is that the text columns are left justified, not fully justified.

 

But this appears to be normal for 6e, and when I checked the one 5e product I have (Dark Champions) it was the same there.

 

Anyone know why that standard was adopted (presumably for FRED)? Looks untidy to me.

[Lord Liaden]

No idea, but all the Hero Games books since DOJ bought the IP have been done that way. Personally I never really noticed, and it doesn't bother me.

 

I will say that fully-justified text frequently displays visibly different spacing between the letters from line to line, which does distract me a bit. I guess everyone's aesthetic sensibility is different.

[bubba smith]

I tried reading my pdf no luck

[mrinku]

Okay, just finished reading Chapter two and am sorely disappointed that Australia and New Zealand have been left out of the Rest of the World descriptions. All credit to the South Africans and Canadians, but we were actually under invasion threat and Darwin did get bombed. Australian troop numbers were close to a million, not far behind the Canadians who were about 1.1 million. 

 

India gets short shrift too, though they technically fall under Britain in that chapter, I guess.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Australia,_1942%E2%80%9343

[Lord Liaden]

Check Chapter Three, p. 46, "The Former British Empire." Not the only reference to Australia in the book, but the largest. India is also mentioned there and in a few other places.

[mrinku]

Yes. That's all very well, but how come Canada and South Africa, who are politically in exactly the same boat, get specific mentions in their "rest of the world" section? Canada I can understand as deserving special attention, but South Africa's size and role was much smaller. They didn't even have a significant navy, while Australian ships fought alongside US ones at Java Sea, Coral Sea, Savo Island, Leyte Gulf and Lingayen Gulf, many of them suffering serious damage or being sunk.

 

What really stings is that p52, where you would expect some mention of Australian and New Zealand under "Eastern Asia and the Pacific" has about thirteen lines of blank space after it.

 

Poor form.

 

Spotted a silly error on p106 - "Princess Elizabeth II marries the Duke of Edinburgh". The event is right, but she was just Princess Elizabeth until she became Queen (no "II"). Only monarchs get a number, and she wasn't one until 1952. I'd probably not point it out but I'm annoyed by the ANZAC oversight

[Lord Liaden]

Honestly, I'm not seeing much about South Africa in the book -- the total text devoted to it is less than Australia, and the WW II timeline makes frequent mention of the battles Australian troops contributed to. I think Darren's decision to put most of the specific mention of South Africa in the section about Africa in "The Rest of the World," was purely because it's located on that continent. Australia having already been dealt with under "The Former British Empire," also adding it to "Eastern Asia and the Pacific" probably seemed redundant.

 

I can understand why you would have preferred more coverage of Australia and New Zealand; and I can also appreciate if you would have preferred the editorial choices in organizing what material about them was included to have been different. However, I don't see what we got as being quite as imbalanced as you do. YMMV.

 

EDIT: If you don't want to read the whole book first, might I suggest searching the PDF for references to Australia? That's what I did before posting the above.

[mrinku]

Oh, I know I'm being a bit parochial. It was the large unused white space on p52 where a few lines could have been written that mostly irked me. 

[Redmenace]

 Back in the day when this book was being discussed it was to be set exclusively in the U.S. Is that still the case or are the Allies able to send supers into axis controlled territory without the Axis taking control of them?

[Lord Liaden]

The book is definitely not set exclusively in the U.S. However, it does adapt the concept that Roy Thomas invented for DC's All-Star Squadron WW II-set series, of a magic "anti-powers shield" over Axis-held territories, which in this case harms super-powered enemies of the Axis who enter it. The way Darren Watts has set it up, is that the superhuman heroes protect the home front from Axis spies and saboteurs (who are much more pervasive and dangerous in the comic-book world than they were in real history), while the non-powered "mystery men" (skill- and gadget-based heroes) operate behind enemy lines.

 

However, after D-Day the anti-powers shield starts to collapse, and the superhumans can join in the push toward Germany and Japan.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think golden age should allow for superheroes to be active in the European theater, if the campaign is designed for that.  I had them be involved a couple times for significant events in my golden age campaign (bismark sinking, dunkirk) but I kept them in the USA mostly because the country REALLY needed heroes then.  If you're going to run a golden age game in Europe, I suggest low powered characters, definitely.  If they're too powerful, they will mess up the arc of history and ruin the feel of the campaign, so why play golden age at all?  Unless you just want an alternate history game "what if Superman fought Nazis?"

[Lord Liaden]

Personally I'm inclined to agree with you; but there are balance issues to keep in mind. Roy Thomas's intention in developing his shield in All-Star Squadron was to keep the large number of godlike heroes in the Allied countries -- Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Dr. Fate, Captain Marvel, the Specter FGS -- from just walking over the Axis in the first days of the war, as they were well capable of doing.

 

Not every Golden Age setting has comparable characters, of course. In GAC the Champions Universe supers actually tend to be less powerful on average than those in books set in the modern era. However, just from a population standpoint, considering the British Empire/ Commonwealth, and particularly after the United States enters the war, one would expect a much larger number of superhumans to be available to the Allies than Germany and Japan could field. Bringing them all in early in the War could strain credulity in it lasting as long as it did historically.

 

But a GM who wanted to jigger the situation to make the numbers and powers of supers available to both sides more balanced could certainly do so.