Champions Adventures Reboot

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think there's a fair amount of interest in seeing old, out-of-print Champions adventures being re-released in 6th edition with some new art, updating to modern day, etc.  These are from adventures that I own, there are others which people might want to see rebooted.  I don't want to redo To Serve and Protect personally, I think that should be done by Scott Heine.

[Duke Bushido]

Wings of the Valkyrie disappeared rather quickly.

 

I caught absolute _hell_ trying to replace my copy.

 

Atlas Unleashed was just terrible.  Terrible.  Terribly terrible.  Leave it in whatever ditch you found it in.

[Ninja-Bear]

I voted for Demons Rule (I am only familiar with several of the other choices. The reason though is that Demons Rule has helpful advice  for a GM especially a new GM. Keep that information in it.

[Ninja-Bear]

Duke, I never heard of Atlas Unleashed. Tell me more! (And you know my taste doesn’t mind terrible 😁).

[Pariah]

Gotta be Day of the Destroyer. He's the definitive Champions villain (besides Foxbat, of course).

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Duke, I never heard of Atlas Unleashed. Tell me more! (And you know my taste doesn’t mind terrible 😁).

 

I don't know how to describe it, really-- I mean, you can sort of see what the author was going for, but every here and there he would take a turn that... Well, I think they were meant as twists, but they came off as absolute derailments: really jarringly yanking "oh, this would be cool!" into and out of the story. 

 

Best way to describe it- and I'm really trying here- was if someone had opted to try to bend genres between horror and Dark Champions (the edgelordy original version) and then thought "now, how can I use this setting to tell a Captain Planet story?" 

 

I mean it had some things, and some stuff, and you know.... 

 

Aha!  

 

It was like sitting through almost _any_ episode of I Love Lucy!  I know: she's insanely popular.  I can't watch that show; it's just an absolute cringe-fest for me.  I can't laugh at it because the situations she ends up in are so painfully humiliating or over-the-top moronic that I find myself overcome with shame on her behalf or guilt for having been witness to something from which her psyche should remain horribly scarred. 

 

That's what reading Atlas Unleashed was like for me, with The Heap thrown in for good measure. 

 

 

[Mark Rand]

Wasn't Atlas Unleashed the one that gave information about the generic coastal city?  I seem to remember the Coastal Metro Power Company, the Coastal City Museum of Fine Art, the swank Birdmore Hotel, Wayne Air Force Base, a NASA tracking station, Mayor Lois Kent, and Captain Anderson of the military, who was probably Army Special Forces.

[Duke Bushido]

Yep. 

 

Like I said, there were some things and some stuff, but the adventure itself was a disappointment.  Unless you're into Dark Champions Captain Planet Horror, of course. 

[Sketchpad]

I think they all could be reprinted in a compendium-like volume. Maybe a Champions Adventure Omnibus that updates these, and a few others like Escape from Stronghold, Viper's Nest, and others. The back end of the book could be dedicated to updating character sheets, and maybe give a few heroes that could be used.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think the worst adventures are the ones that might be the best to update and fix

[Lord Liaden]

So hard to choose! A lot could be said for several of them. I agree with Pariah that Day of the Destroyer highlights the arch-villain of the Champions Universe, and is a very well-constructed adventure. To Serve and Protect is also well crafted, and gave us the Protectors, my all-time fav NPC hero team. Challenges for Champions was written for diversity and modularity, with multiple short adventures insertable into most campaigns, the kind of thing many fans have asked for. I also have a great fondness for VOICE of Doom, with its large roster of diverse international villains, and a grand mastermind villain.

 

However, if I had to pick just one, I would choose Wrath of the Seven Horsemen, for several reasons. One, it gives us a sizeable array of colorful, distinctive, formidable villains, who could plausibly be used individually or in any combination. Two, it provides an array of plot- and origin- generating artifacts with great reuse potential: the Worm Scepter, the Stone Crown, the alien ship and its contents (both artifacts and "eggs"). Three, the ship and its "Old Ones" can easily be adapted to fit into and draw from the official Champions Universe, with its Elder Worm, Kings of Edom, and other Lovecraftian nightmares.

[Mark Rand]

45 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Yep. 

 

Like I said, there were some things and some stuff, but the adventure itself was a disappointment.  Unless you're into Dark Champions Captain Planet Horror, of course. 

Since it's my home town, I used Pittsburgh's map as Coastal City's map.  The factory-lined channel to Coastal City Bay was the Ohio River to the downstream end of Brunot Island.  The island itself is, in real life, occupied by an electrical generating plant.

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Atlas Unleashed was just terrible.  Terrible.  Terribly terrible.  Leave it in whatever ditch you found it in.

 

While I don't dispute your assessment, Duke, I did like the concept from the book of Prometheus, a sort of armed Peace Corps bringing humanitarian aid to the innocent victims of conflicts or natural disasters, whether the local government wanted it or not. To that end I modified the backgrounds and personalities of most of the Atlas villains for my own game to be more idealistic and heroic, and designated "Atlas" as the code-name for the "superhero" unit of Prometheus, backing up their agents when more force was needed to do their jobs.

 

That version of Prometheus made a few appearances in a past campaign.

[Duke Bushido]

That version probably would have helped the original story, too. 

 

 

Well done. 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Of the ones listed, I'd definitely pick Wrath of the Seven Horsemen. The "horsemen" troupe is classic. Among the others, To Serve and Protect and Champions Presents would be my choices.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Sad to see Target Hero getting no love, I really liked that module

[Lord Liaden]

Lots of good stuff in those old adventures. But if there's only one choice, IMO there are better modules than Target Hero.

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Sad to see Target Hero getting no love, I really liked that module

 

Going to be fair:

 

There was nothing inherently wrong with Target: Hero.  I thought it was pretty good.  However it wasn't one of my favorites. 

 

It relied too much on GM skill: the GM was expected to be able to work this lengthy backstory and build up into his campaign.  If he didn't have at least a weekly group, it was going to take a long time, during which other plots would tend to present themselves.  Alternatively, the GM could do an info dump and retcon it in, but doing a "story so far" dump to the players robs them of the mystery and even some of the chance to play detective _unless it handled carefully_.  Not all groups have time for the long road, and not all GMs have the skill for the shortcut. 

 

As examples, when Jim ran us through it, it was _great_!  Years later, I tried to run a group though it. Unlike Jim, I hadn't had the module for six months before running it (when Jim left, he gave me all his stuff.  I took over "our" group as GM, but I also had a second, less regular group at that point). 

 

I also didn't have a group that played twice a week to include weekend marathons.  I couldn't just work the story in the way he had, and I opted to shortcut it. 

 

The first time was awful. I'll spare you the details; suffice it to say that it turned into "well since we know everything, let's just go find the guy and get him." 

 

Four or five years later, I did the same thing with a different group.  I had a lot more practice then, and spent three sessions brining key characters (a Batmunch wannabe and a boyscout-type with a police contact) up to speed with different bits of knowledge, then having two hits (well, one hit and one attempt) in-session, whereupon the two "in the know" characters announce something along the lines of "this is just like that case I'm working on...." and the game went onward from there.  That time around it went a lot like I had hoped it would the first time. 

 

The difference was, I believe, GM experience.  That's my only complaint with Target: Hero; if you don't have a very regular, ver involved group, you'd better have an extremely seasoned GM with a light touch, and while the module suggests you can run it either way (long game or just do an info dump), there isn't any solid advice in there for just how to handle either one (how do you keep something else from becoming the focus of the players' attentions if you're playing the long game, for example?) 

 

Man. 

 

That was longer than in thought it would be.   

 

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Man. 

 

That was longer than in thought it would be.   

 

Have you never met yourself?

[phydaux]

You forgot Island of Dr. Destroyer

[Lord Liaden]

12 minutes ago, phydaux said:

You forgot Island of Dr. Destroyer

 

Probably the best "one-shot" adventure ever written for Champions. Direct, linear, headlong action. If that's what you're looking to play, it's a great choice. But other modules have more depth of character, and complexity of plot.

 

But Christopher did mention that the choices he offered were the ones he has.

[Sketchpad]

The problem with To Serve and Protect is if it were updated, I'd love to see Scott Heine do it and give more info on the Bay City setting he'd ran his games in. 

[Lord Liaden]

If he agreed that wouldn't be a problem, that would be awesome!

 

A lot of years ago several parties posted updates of the Protectors to Fifth Edition to these forums, or rather a past incarnation of the forums.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

You forgot Island of Dr. Destroyer

Well... there's a reason for that 😁

[Duke Bushido]

30 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Well... there's a reason for that 😁

 

 

Hey!

 

Didn't' you just say that the bad ones could most benefit from an update?     

 

Seriously, though-- I don't really care for that one. It's really much more heavy on tabletop wargaming than I care for in an RPG, with a serious military bent to it that-- while I don't mind it in most other things-- just doesn't jibe well with supers _for me_.

 

Though you _could_ take "Escape from Stronghold" and rework it to include an escape from Stronghold.  Or any actual adventure at all, really.  It was really nothing more than "here's this super-prison idea we had, and some random thoughts how you could maybe use it in your campaign, if you want."

 

I realize that this was the early days of RPGs, but at this point, there were even third party publishers who could put together actual adventures.