Golden Age Champions pdf released

[Lord Liaden]

Let me add that Darren Watts ran years-long, multi-group test campaigns for Golden Age gaming in preparation for the final draft of GAC. The advice, examples, and many of the scenario outlines he includes in the book, are largely drawn from those experiences.

[Redmenace]

 Thank you for the replies and clarification.

 

To Lord Liaden, Can I assume that you could have Allied supers operating in say Britain during the Blitz or earlier during the Battle of Britain before the majority of the US got involved? Does it effect supers from neutral countries?

 

and to  Christopher R. Taylor  How low a level would you recommend? Would Roy Thomas' Invaders retcon be about right? Do I understand right that while our heroes can't set foot on Axis controlled territory without becoming fascist supporters that the Axis supers are running around unchecked or are they deployed against the Allied supers on the homefront? The latter obviously mandating supers staying on domestic deployment and preserving the genre as it was most often depicted in GA comics.

 

Thanks again in advance

[mrinku]

The default campaign is basically the official Champions Universe history. However there's a lot of good discussion about options and doing it differently.

 

If you don't like the Roy Thomas solution, just change it. Some PC groups may simply not be capable of invading wartime Germany, making it a moot point. Or you might have sufficient Axis supers to cope with them (Roy had the situation, especially at DC, of a large cast of VERY powerful superheroes and very few established Axis villains). Or there might be a variety of individual reasons that the campaign supers HAVE to remain in America (they don't have to be GOOD reasons. Clark Kent famously got classified 4F when he tried to join the Army because he got nervous and inadvertently used his X-Ray vision to read the eye chart in the next room, failing the test). 

 

No matter how powerful a super may be on an individual basis, one limiter would be the ability to travel. Many Golden Age builds simply would not be able to cross the Atlantic or Pacific on their own, forcing them to rely on commercial or military shipping. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I'm sure the system he has in place for the book works fine, I just like to think out alternatives and how to field them.

 

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.

 

I agree, Superman, Flash, or Green Lantern each alone could have won the war.  Sub Mariner would wreck the Nazis.

 

I had a system in place where the Germans actually had more super powered beings than any other group, but were unable to use them outside Nazi control.  There was a story by David Brin called Thor meets Captain America in which he postulated that the Nazi death camps were actually necromantic power generators which allowed the Germans to resurrect the old Norse gods.  So Thor, Odin, etc were all on the Nazis side, while Loki was fighting against them, helping Americans.  I used that concept as a base for my campaign, but Loki being Loki was using Ioun Apples (the magical fruit from Asgard that granted immortality to the gods) to empower gangsters and thugs in the USA to act as soldiers for him.

 

So while in Nazi territory, the necromancy was able to power up bad guys and they could take short excursions out of of the area, but their battery ran out, as it were.  The gods could not leave.

 

The heroes in the campaign were the first real good guys with powers in the world, ever, after years of bad guys having powers and taking over NYC and other places.  Lots of golden age guys were around, but were bad guys: Batman, Shadow, etc.

[steriaca]

Another way to do it is simply have the heroes ordered to protect the home front during the war. That is the rational behind my group The Knights Of Excalibur staying in the United Kingdom. The British government thought the heroes were more valuable as propaganda to risk being killed on the battlefields.

[mrinku]

Christopher, I'm not so sure the proper Golden Age Jay Garrick Flash could have done too much, but Captain Marvel can be added to the ones who had the ability. Plus the Spectre, who's in a total class of his own and would definitely need a mystical counter to block him enacting God's Vengeance on the Nazi mass-murderers.

 

Sub Mariner in particular could have shut down the U-Boat fleet in very short order (there's not a lot a submarine can do against something that swims faster than it and can rip its hull open with his bare hands). Heck, even his weaker knock-off Aquaman could probably have done so.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Another way to do it is simply have the heroes ordered to protect the home front during the war.

 

 

That's the approach I took; there was simply too much bad stuff going on at home, America had to be cleaned up.  But they were involved in some big historical events, acting as a counter to the Nazi supers.  Eventually they were gonna have to square off against the Norse gods.

[assault]

Christopher, I'm not so sure the proper Golden Age Jay Garrick Flash could have done too much,

 

From my reading of genuine Golden Age stuff, the only real limit to his powers was Rule of Cool.

 

That makes it impossible to definitively quantify his powers. In theory he could probably have won the war singlehandedly, but he was also prone to being temporarily defeated by people who theoretically shouldn't have been able to.

 

But that was true of every superhero.

 

I'd leave him in the War Winners list.

[Christopher R Taylor]

It kind of goes in reverse in Golden Age: characters had a set concept of powers, but were prone to moments of inexplicable weakness to fit the plot.  Usually they were really dumb or overly trusting at times (Captain Marvel) which let them be defeated by trickery.

[Lord Liaden]

Yeah, I remember a GA story of Wonder Woman being knocked out by a blow to the back of the head, "an Amazon's one weak spot." Which of course had never been mentioned before the writer needed WW unconscious, and was never mentioned again.

[Nothere]

There was a Superman comic in 1940. he popped over to Germany and grabbed Hitler. Then carrying Hitler went to Russia and grabbed Stalin. Then he dropped them both off for trial at the world court. No German or Russian supers were involved.

[Lord Liaden]

Gee, would it have killed him to pick up Mussolini too on the way?

[mrinku]

Poor old Il Duce. Even Superman didn't take him seriously.

[Cassandra]

Remember all Golden Age Superheroes have Vuln: Ambushes/Treacherous Attacks, 2x STUN (Very Common) [30 Points] as they fight fair an tend to fall victim to a cowardly attack from behind.

 

Contortionist is highly recommended as well.

[Cassandra]

There was a Superman comic in 1940. he popped over to Germany and grabbed Hitler. Then carrying Hitler went to Russia and grabbed Stalin. Then he dropped them both off for trial at the world court. No German or Russian supers were involved.

 

The Justice Society of America joined the military right after Pearl Harbor.  

 

Hawkman joined the Army Air Corps, and defended San Francisco from a Carrier Air Raid and invasion.

 

Sandman joined the Marines and landed on Wake Island, and used a captured Japanese Mini-Sub to board and capture a Japanese Aircraft Carrier.

 

Atom drove a Tank in Burma.

 

Wonder Woman ended up a Nurse in the Philippines and in her spare time broke up Japanese Army attacks.

 

They Retconned these events were illusions created by Brainwave in an issue of All Star Squadron.

[mrinku]

I'm well into the character write-ups now and I have to say I'm bloody impressed with the product, minor gripes in regards to layout aside (and which are the same as things that annoy me in many 6e products, like not having the character illustration on the first page of their writeup, and unjustified text). My previous grumble about Australia not being mentioned under "Asia and the Pacific" still stands, but as Lord L pointed out there is a reasonable amount of mention of us in other parts.

 

I've spotted a few minor typos and occasional random blocks of text that are bold for no reason, but those can be cleaned up and don't affect play. A few odd large blocks of white space that could probably do with an illustration (or more text) as well.

 

I seriously like the characters. The sidebar detailing what happens to them later in the Champions Universe is a superb touch. Otto Skorzeny as a major opponent is a brilliant move! And much as I loved the previous editions of GAC, I must admit I never much took to Chris Cloutier's cast. Some of these ones I will definitely use.

[Lord Liaden]

Of the many things I appreciate about the characters in the book, one of the coolest for me is that mention of what happens to each character following WW II, including their children or successors taking up their identities in later eras. That adds so much depth to the setting, and suggests uses for the characters in a Silver or Bronze Age game. Most of all, the relatively large number of "super" descendants of the Morimoto brothers and General Zima. For someone running a modern-day campaign with a Golden Age super history, this is fertile ground for creating PCs following a family legacy of heroism with a distinctive cultural flavor. At the same time, the  characters' backgrounds imply that members of these families need not manifest any of the same powers as their ancestors, so there's plenty of room for customization.

[Lord Liaden]

And I just have to say: GAC's Adolph Hitler...

[mrinku]

General Blut did it for me - every time he gets destroyed he gets built into a bigger, badder vehicle. Tank->Zeppelin->Fortress->Spaceship->PLANET (well, large moon...).

 

That is grade A lunacy

 

Not bothered by any lack of Australian characters (that would be asking too much) but it got me thinking about what the heck we might have had in comics at the time, and it turns out to be VERY interesting. Basically the Australian comic industry was largely reprints of US and UK ones prior to 1941, but after that point the import art dried up and the local industry took off until about 1959, when import reprints took hold again as the Silver Age took off. (I well remember that my superhero comics as a lad in the 70's were pretty much black and white DC reprints with colour covers. Plus The Phantom, of course). The timing could not be better from a GAC campaign's point of view if you wanted to develop Australian mystery men and bizarre heroes. i.e.:

 

 

(They do tend to be more Atomic Age/Cold War than WW2, though. And that Captain Atom is from 1948, well before the 1965 US one of the same name)

 

Now I've got a new project to source some of these Golden Age Aussie books!

[Lord Liaden]

General Blut did it for me - every time he gets destroyed he gets built into a bigger, badder vehicle. Tank->Zeppelin->Fortress->Spaceship->PLANET (well, large moon...).

 

That is grade A lunacy

 

General Blut is another high point for me, as well. I find it interesting that the German superhumans in the book don't really include any "honorable" types that PC heroes can respect. Some of the other supers opposing the Allies are basically heroes put in that position due to patriotism or coercion; but those serving Germany directly are either willing to go along with the Nazi regime, including its more reprehensible practices, out of self-interest; or are out-and-out monsters of malevolence and madness.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I understand the reasoning behind that kind of approach (fear of being seen as Nazi-friendly and keeping things as black and white morally as possible) but it leaves out the possibility of the heroes turning that reluctant villain into a hero or at least retiring from the Axis super job.  Which also is a Golden Age theme and very rewarding for players.

[Lord Liaden]

I agree; although as I mentioned, some of the other Axis supers in the book are of that sort and can fill that role; as well as one or two "home front" villains who aren't directly involved in the war. But the GM can always create such a super fighting for Germany, or adapt one from another source, if he or she wants to do that specifically.

[steriaca]

I understand the reasoning behind that kind of approach (fear of being seen as Nazi-friendly and keeping things as black and white morally as possible) but it leaves out the possibility of the heroes turning that reluctant villain into a hero or at least retiring from the Axis super job. Which also is a Golden Age theme and very rewarding for players.

Nothing says you can't create your reluctant Nazi.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Nothing says you can't create your reluctant Nazi. 

 

 

Not everyone fighting for the German military was Nazi.  In fact, almost none of them were, the greatest majority were just fighting for their country.

[Clonus]

Gee, would it have killed him to pick up Mussolini too on the way?

 

He was specifically "arresting" the leaders of the two nations that had invaded Poland.  The Italo-Ethiopian war was over by the time Superman made his debut.