Question about what HEROdom would like to see

[dsatow]

At some point, just for personal edification, I'd like to try and publish a HERO supplement.  I have no idea if I'll succeed but I figure its as good as any other New Year's resolution.  Given that, I have a few ideas that keep hitting my brain and I'd like to see people's response on the subject.

 

 

[Nolgroth]

Not much of a Champions gamer so of the choices, the UNSS Champion sounds right up my alley.

[IndianaJoe3]

I picked UNSS Champion because it's the one that I'm least likely to write myself. 

[Mister E]

A friend of mine used to be stationed on the USS Champion.

[DreadDomain]

Unfortunately, they all look interesting to me

[dsatow]

So far UNSS Champion seems to be in the lead.  So, I'll start gathering the stuff and put it into a usable format.  Given I am not a writer and this is my personal New Year's resolution, I approach this with a bit of trepidation.  I like to thank everyone who has voted so far and those who will vote in the future for your input.

[steriaca]

I voted for Babylon City, but like the others, all of them seem good.

[mrinku]

CAPES for me. Teen heroes usually means lower points and unbalanced (because immature) builds. Grown up supers tend to be Omni-competent; kids have big holes in their life experience and often make for much more interesting storytelling.

[dsatow]

FYI: You can vote for as many as you would like. While I selected it when making the poll, i noticed it doesn't really say in the polls.

 

In a surprising turn around, CAPES has passed UNSS Champion.

 

Just some more background stuff if it helps you decide.

 

UNSS Champion is the story of the crew of the United Nations Star Ship Champion helmed by Captain Harmon in the year 20XX.  Its a destroyer class vessel and patrols Alpha and Proxima Centauri, Barnard's Star, and Luhman 16.  Players can start as ensigns or bridge officers as the ship encounters a set of adventures involving autonomous rogue hunter killer ships infected with the Mechanon virus, space pirates, ELFs (engineered life forms), civil war, and megacorp politics.  The crew can also seek out new life with the final encounter would be with alien life forms with options for them to be either antagonists or protagonists.

 

CAPES is a setting within the California Advanced Powers Education System.  It is the fourth school in the United States and specializes in turning those teenagers with special abilities  into productive members of society.  While superhero training is possible, the school tries to keep their students away from such actions, instead trying to make them productive citizens instead of superheroes and supervillains.  Of course, the teenagers have other ideas.  Adventures would be permutations on school life and teenage movies such as the big game between the four super schools, christmas break, summer break, the prom, dating, gang problems, drugs, sneaking out, recruitment into various organizations both nefarious and noble, etc.  It would be based off several games I've run at conventions.

 

Babylon City is an idea to recreate a complete city like San Angelo, complete with supervillains, notable people and places.  It would be designed to be dropped in anywhere in your campaign world and geared for about 8-12d6 supers.  One unique idea toyed with this supplement would be to date the city in the supplement and then hopefully build something like the pathfinder society for the adventures in the city.  While the city setting would be relatively easy to design, this idea of an adventurer's club in Babylon City to work like the Pathfinder Society would be a little more challenging.  This supplement is the least developed of the four.

 

Beneath the City is the first adventure in my current campaign which involved a mystery of mutants in the sewers the players needed to figure out.  It would need to be tooled a little bit for a generic group of supers, but it was a hit with the players and could be an interesting module for beginning champions players.

[Ninja-Bear]

On 10/29/2017 at 7:16 PM, mrinku said:

CAPES for me. Teen heroes usually means lower points and unbalanced (because immature) builds. Grown up supers tend to be Omni-competent; kids have big holes in their life experience and often make for much more interesting storytelling.

I like the reasoning. However, why must Low-powered equal Teen super hero? I would like to see low-powered.

[mrinku]

27 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I like the reasoning. However, why must Low-powered equal Teen super hero? I would like to see low-powered.

It doesn't have to by any means. It's usually done that way to allow the youngster to grow and because often some of the teens are sidekicks (the original Teen Titans are your prime example there...), but there are counter-examples. Silver Age Superboy is a special case - he's lower powered than Silver Age Superman, but that hardly crimps his power level at all (same goes for Supergirl). Franklin Richards is off the scale before he even attends school. The New Teen Titans (1980) are definitely on par or better than average power level (their mentors are still more powerful and experienced - but founding members of the JLA are at another level!).

As far as non-teen low powered... sure. But it's not just the reduced power levels that attract me to teen stories. Teens and young adults are still working out life and have a lot more options. A school context is a nice sub-genre.

[Spence]

Of the choices I picked Capes and Babylon with a qualification.  One thing that, in my opinion, Champions suffered from was it never had an actual playable campaign.   We had an overwhelming cornucopia of individual pieces that could be plugged into a campaign. But no actual campaign. 

If Capes and/or Babylon contained the standard what and wheres are what 99% of the "campaigns" out there, but also included an actual campaign.  As in a series of plot's, encounters and coherent playable story.  Pinnacles' Plot Point system is a good example of this.   I'd snap it up in a heart beat.   But if they were just another "setting" book, meh I have 5 playable cities and as of last week 4 teen superhero school/academies. 

I don't need additional "settings".  I need a pre-fab Campaign.

Correction, I need a pre-fab superHERO Campaign.  No dark conspiracy, no mutant "fill in the blank" hunted hate'o'verse, no "semi-redeemed mass-murderer/psychopath just saving the world, no dark loner hitman vigilante with a soft spot and not even remotely a superHERO type game. 

A good old fashioned "the good guys" saving the city/academy/world type of game.

[dsatow]

So I in case anyone is curious, I am going to try to do UNSS Champion for my new years resolution.

 

I am astonished by the response to CAPES and Babylon City.  I had figure one or the other might be favorable to people but not both.  Given the new clubs tab, I might try setting up an open club for Babylon City idea and then post possible plots monthly to it.  I'll need to think about how to implement it right.