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Champions Adventures Reboot


Christopher R Taylor

Champions adventure   

28 members have voted

  1. 1. What adventures would you like to see rebooted?

    • Atlas Unleashed
      0
    • Challenges For Champions
      8
    • Champions Presents
      1
    • Day of the Destroyer
      7
    • Demons Rule
      2
    • Target: Hero
      2
    • To Serve & Protect
      4
    • Wrath of the Seven Horsemen
      4

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  • Poll closed on 07/31/2020 at 10:43 AM

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The thing is, with the BBB it was easier to not include villains in a book because the BBB already had what 10? And if you needed to you could adapt a Hero to being a villain? In the normals Unbound for example they reel you that if you needed stats for Samurai (Hero) just take Seeker and swap perhaps 3 skills and rename one disadvantage. Viola! “New” Hero!

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17 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

The thing is, to play Champions in 6th edition, all you need is Champions Complete.  That's it. Period.  No three books, no extra splat books, just CC.  As a GM you will probably want the three villain books, but you can make your own.  Getting CC and a villain book or three is not exactly asking a lot; its certainly less than D&D in cost, you don't even need to get special dice.

 

So the whole "OMG LOOK AT THOSE HUGE BOOKS FOR 75 EACH!!1!1!" is just... not accurate or up to date at all.

 

Before we do, I would like to find out if you and I are going to argue about being in complete agreement again.  Let's not do that if at all possible: it's tedious, time consuming, and I am sure annoying to the spectators.   :lol:

 

 

I agree:  you _DO NOT NEED_ all the dozen or so rulesbooks.  (all caps for clarity; not for yelling)

 

I _POSTULATE_ that adventures and scenarios _SHOULD_ be written with _only_ the very core rulebook in mind.

 

I _OPINE_ than this makes such writings more attractive by providing something useful to every GM from the completionist who hasn't played since college in the 80s to the budget-minded new group that isn't dropping five hundred bucks on a game the don't know if they will enjoy until they have played it a bit to the time-crunched GM who simply _can't_ fit that much reading and referencing in to his current life of job, home, two kids coming out of diapers and two parents going into them to the GM who has very much decided that the simpler, the better and more enjoyable who is going to play games from the one or two books he already has-- the guy who is willing to throw nickels at the company for an adventure he can use, but not to throw twenties at it to get the three "best when used with" books the adventure requires him to have.

 

I _STATE_ that I do not like "must have book X, Y, and Z to pull P, Q, and R from, as you will need those / them to use this one single product."  I will, if needbe, go on to state that I find thirteen hundred pages of "core rules" ludicrous for any game, even one that I like.

 

I _CONCLUDE_  that there are _no_ resources for anyone who doesn't have or isn't willing to buy more than the one (or two) core rules books, as even this thread mentions "pull villains from X" or "refer to material in Y" and so on.  

 

I _ENCOURAGE_ that we as a fandom _stop_ replying to questions with "Oh, there is a clarification of that in this other book" or "you need to do it the way it says to do it in this Guide" or respond to a question in any way that doesn't _first_ pull an answer directly from the rules book with which the querent (small "Q"; no astrology here) is working, and only then offering material from other books.  

 

I _STATE_ that if we want to attract new life to the game or to prove that "you only need this very core set of rules," we must _stop_ starting the answers to various questions with things like "Well, according to APGII, you need to..."  and instead move to a format akin to "since you are using the 5e rulebook, check p 306 and you will see that in this case you need toX" or "Your Champions Complete book covers that on page X; according to the paragraph about Y, you should most likely Z," followed by, if you just can't help yourself but to be as complete as possible (no shame there, at least not from me) any external sources you might want to suggest "There's a character in Bricks, Brutes, and Bashers on page 398 with a build very similar to what I think you're going for.  If you have that book, you can check him out and see what you think.  If you don't have it, the store has a PDF"

 

 

That sort of thing.  Our current typical answer format is "Really?  That's the only book your have?  Piker."  followed by the helpful stuff.   Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but it seems a bit off-putting to a new entrant, and it does precious little for proving the idea that the game is just as good with only the one (or two) core books.  Rather, every time it is done, it reinforces the idea that they are _all_ core books.  If your only market is completionists, then this is certainly a way to spur them on, but it's not especially helpful to anyone else.

 

And with our current answer template being "check this book, check that book," and "the answer is plainly stated in this other book" and "Well according to Additional Book," I _PROCLAIM_ that  _yes_, "OMG LOOK AT THOSE HUGE BOOKS FOR 75 EACH!!!!" is not only accurate, but _enforced_ by a creeping egalitarianism that has infested the fandom with the idea that if an answer-- _any_ answer-- exists in print in _any_ of the books, then it is the only correct answer.  Nowhere is this more obvious then answering questions for new players or GMs:  "Well, according to the Character Building Handbook" or "in the APG, it states," etc, etc.  If we continue to reinforce that these printed rulings are the only correct-- or even the _most_ correct-- answer for these questions, we are doing _nothing_ more than we are saying "this is core rules, Bubba.  Suck it up and open your wallet.  What you derived from your one book is wrong, and you'd know that if you ponied up."

 

And finally, I _GRANT_ that this entire problem likely stemmed from the human hubris that social media has termed the "humble brag," in which the very phrasing of the answer-- Not so much the inclusion, but the opening with "it's right there in book 9," allows the poster to casually and softly state "I own that book.  I have read that book.  I have the disposable cash to have ponied up for that book, and the disposable time to have read it.  Suck it, Noob" even while loudly and publicly stating "this is the rule, and it's in another book."

 

"OMG LOOK AT THOSE HUGE BOOKS FOR 75 EACH!!!!!" is not _just_ accurate, and it is not _just_ up to date, it is the _CULTURE_ of the fandom in recent years, and while it is not a genuine physical barrier to buying a core rule book and playing a game with friends, it _is_ a physical barrier to using materials that require those other books, and it is a _social_ barrier to getting any assistance from the assembled fandom.

 

 

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

The thing is, with the BBB it was easier to not include villains in a book because the BBB already had what 10? And if you needed to you could adapt a Hero to being a villain? In the normals Unbound for example they reel you that if you needed stats for Samurai (Hero) just take Seeker and swap perhaps 3 skills and rename one disadvantage. Viola! “New” Hero!

 

 

Absolutely!  The same goes with supplements that included everything you needed to play: all the NPCs, all the locations, all the special-circumstance rules (remember drowning?  Those rules were written specifically for an adventure supplement in which drowning was a possibility.  You had them right there.  4e happened, and they got pulled into the big rules book.  As I understand the current rules for writing supplements, you can't reprint them (and please, anyone, correct me if I am wrong, or if there are special circumstances that would allow you to do this), but if someone is working from a "core rule book" that for whatever reason doesn't have drowning rules in it, he won't be able to use a supplement where they are critical to the action.  At least, not without having to buy a whole other book.  To be fair, I believe I recall drowning in both CC and FHC, but I don't think they were in Lucha, I can't remember if they were in MHI, and I have yet to find time to finish reading PS238.  Either way, I'm going to have a hard time drowning Luchadores....)

 

Yes: I think it would be ideal if supplemental material contained the needed NPCs for that material.  I'm an easy sell, though: I don't give a red-rolly crap about the "official" universe (in the long run, I think that might be good, since HERO doesn't actually own it anymore).  I never really did, and I find each reiteration of it from edition to edition to be less appealing than the last.  NO!  No, I am _not_ trying to insult _anything_.  I don't like mayonnaise or Audis, either.  Is saying that "more mayonnaise is even less appealing" somehow extra insulting to mayonnaise?  Of course not.  The "official universe" with the Guardians started out pretty close to appealing, but not quite what I liked.  Then it got further and further away from --

 

you know, there is no reason for me to have to justify not liking something.  It doesn't appeal to me; done.

 

:lol:

 

Getting back on course:

 

Yes:  I agree with N-B, and I think that a product that has everything you need is always going to be better.  Throw in those bad guys and good guys, at least the ones you need.  I think it's a good thing for the company if you throw in some "official universe" replacements for these characters as well, and even note the books in which they can be found.  I also think it's better for the players if you were allowed to include those official characters in the product, and contrary to the popular thought that it "precludes the need to buy these NPC books!" I think six official universe characters across two or three supplemental scenarios might _encourage_ sales of those books, but I have only the anecdotal evidence of myself to go by: I do _not_ buy character books.  I don't.  I have enough characters, and I can make more easily enough.  Toss in "I really don't like the official setting and most of the official characters" and the end result is .... I don't buy character books.  Wierdly, I have all or most of them thus far ("Duke, is there anything you would never buy for yourself?"  Sure: Character books.  "Happy Birthday!  We got you a character book!"  uhm.... Thanks.....!   -- then there is the obligatory scanning of the index, picking three characters, and dropping them into an adventure to 'prove' I read it and love it  :rolleyes: )

 

The couple of character books I did buy, on purpose, were Enemies and Enemies II, and I did it on the strength of the little booklet of characters included with Viper's Nest.  I used the crap out of those villains until our own universe began to take shape and we needed more villains to capture.  I don't think I ever used anyone from Enemies II, as by then we had our-universe-tailored villains showing up, but still: those character books were bought on the strength of the "official" characters packed in with a product.  I can't be the absolute only person to play this game who works that way.  I might be the only one on this board, but I can't be the only person playing this game.

 

 

 

 

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The thing is, with the BBB it was easier to not include villains in a book because the BBB already had what 10?

 

Yeah, Champions Complete is the same way, it has 14 pages of heroes and villains, plus a couple page of regular people (plus vehicles, AI, bases etc).  Where 4th edition was superior was the adventures in the back which gave GM's a kick start on running a campaign.

 

But again, D&D has always worked, and worked very well on the paradigm of "here's your books" giving you 3 base ones to start with and nobody blinked at having to get all three to be a GM.  Nobody cared if the adventure module would just refer to the other books without writing up everything in the book.  That's how it works: you get the adventure with references to the other books.  Adventures didn't have to give a write up  of every treasure, because a +1 sword was in the GM book.  They didn't have to explain what an orc was, because it was in the Monster Manual.

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Ok folks. Pre Champions Complete you needed these books to play Champions.

 

HERO System 6ed Part 1.

HERO System 6ed Part 2.

 

Ok. Those are only two books. But let's assume the guy never picked up a comic book in his life AND has no idea about a setting. We'll add...

 

Champions. 

Champions Universe. 

 

That's four books. Now he doesn't feel the need to write everything up. We'll add...

 

Champions Powers.

Champions Villains Volume 1, 2, and 3.

 

That is 8 books. Now us gronards can just ignore everything but the two HERO System books (and perhaps add the APGs for us), but an average person new to our hobbie is going to faint at the sight of 8 hard bound books that are highly recommended but not 100% needed to play the game.

 

I actually like the idea of only needing one book as a core book. Doctor Destroyer might not like the fact that newcomers to the Hero System don't actually need to pick up VV1, but then he should of snuck his stats in Champions Complete.

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3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I _STATE_ that I do not like "must have book X, Y, and Z to pull P, Q, and R from, as you will need those / them to use this one single product."  

 

This exactly.

 

When I had money to buy products, I expected the products I bought for a game system to be playable with the game rules plus that product alone unless it stated in large print on the outside front cover "Not playable unless you have this list of other products as well".

 

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

But again, D&D has always worked, and worked very well on the paradigm of "here's your books" giving you 3 base ones to start with and nobody blinked at having to get all three to be a GM.  Nobody cared if the adventure module would just refer to the other books without writing up everything in the book.  That's how it works: you get the adventure with references to the other books.  Adventures didn't have to give a write up  of every treasure, because a +1 sword was in the GM book.  They didn't have to explain what an orc was, because it was in the Monster Manual.

 

You can play D&D perfectly well without a Monster Manual. The game was around for years before the first MM was printed in 1977.

 

I can't say how every group did it but in the boxed set there was a Monsters and Treasures booklet. When I needed something new, I reskinned it and changed its behavior a little bit. Even after the first MM was printed, many of the monsters they printed were re-skins with their stats tweaked a bit. I was so used to reskinning by the time I had access to a MM that I reskinned most of their monsters so that players who had access to the MM wouldn't instantly identify everything.

 

That works for D&D because the monsters for the most part are infinitely replaceable. It doesn't really matter whether you're using goblins, orcs, or kobolds. Or whether it's an ettin, ogre, or troll. 

 

Even inexperienced players and DM's have enough experience with pop culture to know what a goblin, ogre, or troll does and can fake making one if he doesn't have access to an official one.

 

 

But is there a cultural consensus on what a Firewing is and does? Would Oculon be a suitable replacement for Dr. Destroyer in an adventure or should I go with Ankylosaur because he too has an armored suit?

 

You could get away with not including the bad guys in a Western Hero adventure because a human with a gun is pretty much a human with a gun, with the difference being how hard the GM works to bring his character to life.

 

But for Champions? I'd argue that there's far too much variation for a person with his new purchase in hand to be able to guess right in what bad guys to use, if he has no access to the suggested ones.

 

 

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You can play D&D perfectly well without a Monster Manual. The game was around for years before the first MM was printed in 1977.

 

I can't say how every group did it but in the boxed set there was a Monsters and Treasures booklet. 

 

 

Until stuff like that, monsters were printed in stat box form for adventures and some were listed in the rules (basic ones like dragon, skeleton, goblin, etc).  But the D&D while somewhat popular in small groups didn't really take off until AD&D came out.

 

AD&D came out with the three core books 1 2 3 in order from 1977 to 1979 (starting with the monster manual), and nobody had a problem with the concept of getting the monster book for monsters.  So when someone puts out an adventure about a cave full of monsters, they only have to name them "this room has six rot grubs in it" without needing all the stats.  Some included a block for just for ease of use, and most had HP listings for creatures (because it varies) but they just assumed someone had the monster manual.

 

Champions you can do the same thing.  I put out an adventure, say "Grond, Bulldozer, and Rainbow Archer are in this room" and the various enemies books has that info.

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7 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah, Champions Complete is the same way, it has 14 pages of heroes and villains, plus a couple page of regular people (plus vehicles, AI, bases etc).  Where 4th edition was superior was the adventures in the back which gave GM's a kick start on running a campaign.

 

Another drawback Champions Complete has is that the villains included are weird.

 

They may be good for demonstrating that "you can build anything", but they mainly aren't the kind of characters useful for a starting campaign. 

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3 hours ago, assault said:

 

Another drawback Champions Complete has is that the villains included are weird.

 

They may be good for demonstrating that "you can build anything", but they mainly aren't the kind of characters useful for a starting campaign. 

I wouldn’t say weird as much as at 400 CP, it’s too much at first for beginner players/GMs. IMHO naturally.

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  • 4 months later...

Looking over the Champions adventures in order of release, the first three are

 

The Island of Dr Destroyer

Escape from Stronghold

Deathstroke

 

And while the first two are very simple and even incomplete in some ways, Dinapoli really knocked it out of the park with Deathstroke.  Its a complete multi-part adventure with some clever adversaries, several different kinds of encounters and events, and a great climax that doesn't go the way anyone plans.  I could write an update and tweak it some, but honestly it doesn't really need any changes.  So while I want to reboot Escape from Stronghold (with actual escapes!) I think that's all that I want to tackle in terms of reboots.

 

Someone else is supposedly working on Justice Inc and Danger International the two other books I might have considered rebuilding, so that's great.  If I can get Stronghold rebuilt and released, then I think from then on I'll be focused on new content.  I wanted to get Stronghold out this year, but the Champions Begins project intervened and that took most of the year to get through.  Champions Begins is a bit of a risk business wise, since its going to be given away for free, but its my fantasy that people find out about it, try it at their game store or with their gaming group and decide Hero is their slice of cheese and buy more books.

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    I’m not sure how this will be received, and it is in no way a shot at the wonderful work done by so many people I respect on this board.  But....

    When I was gaming and GM’ing, adventure books weren’t really much use to me.  They were a great read and lots of fun but I couldn’t really run any of them.  I was part of a group that had been gaming far longer than I had and any book I was going to pick up and use was already owned by somebody else and had been read by everybody else. Besides even if I was the sole possessor of an adventure, that was only a few nights of play.

  The books I found most useful over all were the settings books like Stronghold or the character books like The Blood & Dr. McQuark.  I could mine those books over time for episode after episode. They gave me a springboard from which to create my own adventures.   A straight adventure book wasn’t as useful back then as a stack of old comics, and I could get those cheap.

      Sorry again, but it is the truth.

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From memory, there was no reason why the villains in Deathstroke would bother attacking the PCs. Perhaps they might have bothered if they had had a connection to VIPER, and the PCs had played VIPER's Nest. Then it could be payback.

At times I have thought that the Island of Doctor Destroyer would work better as the Island of Doctor Draconis. There would need to be a time lag, and possibly an Escape From Stronghold, that would let Doctor D (pick which one) set up their base to be a proper threat with a proper Master Plan.

Hmm... so I've just described a campaign based on the earliest published Champions adventures. There needs to be at least a few months stuck in the middle though.

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I like Dr Draconis a lot, he's a forgotten and I thought very interesting villain with a lot of potential that simply disappeared.

 

Quote

What!? That is the first I hear of this. Can you point me somewhere with more info?

 

Just some rumors and mentions in comments I've seen.  It might not get anywhere but at least it might.  JI and DI were two of the best games Hero ever put out.

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10 hours ago, Tjack said:

Sorry again, but it is the truth.

IMO nothing to be sorry about.

 

My take is somewhere between. 

I think a good group of pre-made adventures are critical to an RPGs success.  But not all adventures.  IMO there are 4 broad types of pre-built adventures. 

 

1) short one or two session, designed generally so they can drop right into an existing game.  It should include all significant NPCs to allow the scenarios to be " played out of the box".  But the NPCs should fit standard tropes so they can easily be swapped with an existing campaigns NPCs.

 

2) short one or two session adventure specifically tied to specific NPCs to the point that substitution is virtually impossible.

 

3) a campaign that is designed using NPCs and threats that follow common genre tropes and written to allow easy substitution.  General background is loose enough to readily fit into any world. 

 

4) a campaign designed using a very narrow and specific group of NPCs and world back history requiring a full rewrite to use outside the setting.

 

Type 1 and 3 are adventures that promote a game.

 

Type 2 and 4 are adventures that will see very little use. 

 

Heroes curse (5th and 6th edition) is that their products are over-built.  Their adventures are usually so detailed that they can only be run as written and are very very difficult to run in any setting that is not the published setting. 

 

Shades of Black is one of my favorite adventures that I have never run.  It requires specific villains with specific histories with the Heroes.  Running SoB requires you to run a pre-campaign to set things up for the adventure. 

 

The early 2 thru 4 edition adventures are playable.  Demons Rule and Blood Fury can just be dropped into any campaign. 

 

For the Deathstroke adventure mentioned above.  It runs well as is, but how easy is it to substitute parts?  I haven't read it in a very long time, so it may be one of the earlier adventures that are self contained and short drop ins.

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12 hours ago, Tjack said:

    I’m not sure how this will be received, and it is in no way a shot at the wonderful work done by so many people I respect on this board.  But....

    When I was gaming and GM’ing adventure books weren’t really much use to me.  They were a great read and lots of fun but I couldn’t really run any of them.  I was part of a group that had been gaming far longer than I had and any book I was going to pick up and use was already owned by somebody else and had been read by everybody else. Besides even if I was the sole possessor of an adventure, that was only a few nights of play.

  The books I found most useful over all were the settings books like Stronghold or the character books like The Blood & Dr. McQuark.  I could mine those books over time for episode after episode. They gave me a springboard from which to create my own adventures.   A straight adventure book wasn’t as useful back then as a stack of old comics, and I could get those cheap.

      Sorry again, but it is the truth.

Like Spence said, no need to be sorry. I think though you are in a minority. 

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I like the idea of doing a base adventure setting, then having lots of small adventures that can be run in it like you guys have been talking about with Stronghold.  Like, Escape from Stronghold has the prison, then an adventure in it... and then we could release several like 99 cent or 2 buck short adventures, 1-2 run bits to use in Stronghold.

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