Design the Wiki's Avengers!

[pbemguy]

Hello, folks. The wiki is moving along slowly but surely.

 

Link: https://championsrpg.fandom.com/wiki/Championsrpg_Wiki

 

I'd like to design the wiki's main superteam, together, on this thread.

 

Proposed Guidelines:

1. We need a name for the team. We can go to a vote if necessary.

2. The team needs to be written up in 6e, at least for starters.

3. They are set in NYC, so they need an HQ location etc. (I don't think we need to design the HQ, but that could definitely be something for later.)

4. We'll need pics made in Fabrica de Herois, so if you have those skills, we need you!

5. steriaca--has been doing a lot, but I also don't think one person should set the whole tone, even though his efforts have been amazing! So, while steriaca should participate, it shouldn't be "The Steriaca Show" on this thread! (I'm ribbing you, steriaca. Your efforts are appreciated!)

 

I feel as though we should use an Avengers vibe...what I mean is, a team that is set in a building and is well-known. We're designing the #1 team in the world. (Many other teams can be added later--you could even add a whole superteam yourself--but I think this first one needs a collaborative effort.)

 

PS: Some people post frequently and some people post less often. (I'd hate to miss out on some genius ideas just because someone has RL obligations.) Let's try to slow this thread down a little. It's easy for someone to dominate with multiple posts, but I'd really like to hear many people chime in. So....anyone reading this, please help us out!  Please post your 2 cents but be mindful of others! I won't rush this thread: let's leave it until Sunday, August 23, 2020 before we move forward at all!

[steriaca]

17 minutes ago, pbemguy said:

steriaca--has been doing a lot, but I also don't think one person should set the whole tone, even though his efforts have been amazing! So, while steriaca should participate, it shouldn't be "The Steriaca Show" on this thread! (I'm ribbing you, steriaca. Your efforts are appreciated!)

Thank you. What I been contributing is basically stuff which I contribute to the bulitan board already. Many of it seems to be lost in time (especially Jet Justice). The best I can do for my efforts in the past are to link it to the wiki post.

 

And I don't think I'm monopoly this wiki. Eventually I'll run out of stuff I can recover. Which is ok. Then everyone else can catch up.

 

[pbemguy]

57 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Thank you. What I been contributing is basically stuff which I contribute to the bulitan board already. Many of it seems to be lost in time (especially Jet Justice). The best I can do for my efforts in the past are to link it to the wiki post.

 

And I don't think I'm monopoly this wiki. Eventually I'll run out of stuff I can recover. Which is ok. Then everyone else can catch up.

 

 

Thank you for realizing that I appreciate your efforts very much!

 

I have been updating your contributions--you may have seen that Mister Wicked now has his pic. 

 

I feel like people might be looking at all the great stuff you have contributed and feel like, "Well, this isn't my campaign style, so I'll not participate." But I imagine the wiki as having thousands of entries where you can pick and choose your favorites. So...get in there, everyone! My only agenda is to get it done. I try to listen to what people are saying and steer the flow. My ideas do sneak in--I see myself as a curator--but I'm trying to be more of a GM than a player in this project.

[steriaca]

Think of my stuff as a separate comic book. You can collect the characters in that comic book if you wish. Thoes characters may crossover. The writer may go 'off model' with a character when written by someone else. The character, once published on the wiki, is the property of the wiki, not myself. 

 

Wicked did have a disclaimer at the beginning of the wiki, stating that he might not be everyone's cup of tea.

[pbemguy]

42 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Think of my stuff as a separate comic book. You can collect the characters in that comic book if you wish. Thoes characters may crossover. The writer may go 'off model' with a character when written by someone else. The character, once published on the wiki, is the property of the wiki, not myself. 

 

Wicked did have a disclaimer at the beginning of the wiki, stating that he might not be everyone's cup of tea.

 

(I did put a "copyright steriaca" blurb on your pages, but we can remove that. I want to leave it for now so people can see how it's done.)

 

Yes, I see it the same way. It's just like the old Enemies books: there were characters I used all the time and some I almost never used. But it was nice to occasionally have the rare ones show up and catch everyone off guard.

[steriaca]

It's time to do a deep think.

 

Who exactly comes to mind when you say "Avengers"?

Captain America 

Iron Man

Thor

Black Widow 

Steed

Peel

 

Ok...if you think about it, Steed and Peel are the United Kingdom television show The Avengers, which has nothing to do with Marvel's Avengers,,,except they did a redesign of Black Widow which made her closer to Miss. Peel.

 

So...for some names.

Gentleman Jack: Think John Steed as a superhero in a costume like a British gentleman. Gadget cane and a sharp sense of humor.

 

...no, nothing like Mister Wicked's cane. Why do you ask.

 

And I'll call it a day. Let everyone else contribute something.

 

 

[Greywind]

47 minutes ago, steriaca said:

Ok...if you think about it, Steed and Peel are the United Kingdom television show The Avengers, which has nothing to do with Marvel's Avengers,,,except they did a redesign of Black Widow which made her closer to Miss. Peel.

 

...and had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

 

[steriaca]

Just now, Greywind said:

 

...and had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

 

True. I think that an artist slipped Steed and Peel into a massive group shot or two as an in joke, but that is it for them.

[Tjack]

  I know about the potential trouble with the name but if you call your own premier super team anything but The Champions you’re crazy.  
 Also using as many of the original team as you can get away with would be a good thing. Marksman is a good way to teach somebody who wants to play a more flexible version of Hawkeye and Titan is a good example of how to build Giant-Man. 
  As to a location for the base, if you’re firm on the idea of having it be a real world NYC location that everyone is familiar with you have three choices.  
1) Times Square.  Everybody knows the vague layout but nobody west of Albany has a concrete image in their minds.

2) The World Trade Center.  The depths of bad taste surrounding a Viper attack on the hero’s base astounds even me.  The same goes for the Statue of Liberty island and to a lesser extent Ellis Island.

3) The winner by default....the Empire State Building!  Famed in song and story. Hangout of giant monkeys and Men of Bronze.  And in the real world...not really doing much.  Easy to find in any tourist map of the city, instantly pictured by the average person.

 

Strongly worded opinions?  Yeah.   Snap judgements?  I’ll cop to that.    Maybe impossible to get done due to legalities?  Granted.     But tell me they don’t all make sense.

[steriaca]

7 hours ago, Tjack said:

  I know about the potential trouble with the name but if you call your own premier super team anything but The Champions you’re crazy.  
 Also using as many of the original team as you can get away with would be a good thing. Marksman is a good way to teach somebody who wants to play a more flexible version of Hawkeye and Titan is a good example of how to build Giant-Man. 

We can't use "The Champions" because "the Champions" already exist AND are copyrighted. And using copyright material is considered bad form. Kinda like biting the hand which feeds you.

 

We can, of course, mention VIPER, AGENT, Doctor Destroyer, Marksman, etc. But stat them out? No.

[pbemguy]

We're fine mentioning VIPER etc., but in my mind I think we should be aiming at designing our own villains and organizations. VIPER, like COBRA, is based on snakes. Can we make an evil agency based on something else? (I love VIPER, but the point of the wiki is to make a whole new campaign world!)

 

[archer]

Just now, pbemguy said:

We're fine mentioning VIPER etc., but in my mind I think we should be aiming at designing our own villains and organizations. VIPER, like COBRA, is based on snakes. Can we make an evil agency based on something else? (I love VIPER, but the point of the wiki is to make a whole new campaign world!)

 

If we're going to use existing organizations, we might as well be using the existing world rather than building a new one.

[steriaca]

I can easily go.back and remove certain references and exchange them with new references. 

 

As for new organizations?

 

Blackhund: A criminal enterprise NOT out to take over the world, but instead to get the leaders rich.

 

Techwind: They make hi-tech stuff for whoever pays them. They don't care about ethics, just cash.

 

The Coven: A mystical coven lusting for total control over the mystical world and to enforce the outdated mystical rulership. 

[Tjack]

11 hours ago, steriaca said:

We can't use "The Champions" because "the Champions" already exist AND are copyrighted. And using copyright material is considered bad form. Kinda like biting the hand which feeds you.

 

We can, of course, mention VIPER, AGENT, Doctor Destroyer, Marksman, etc. But stat them out? No.

  That would of course be the “potential trouble” that I was referring to.  Although it may be the name is only copyrighted as pertains to use in a comic book. Not for use in a wiki for a role playing game.  

[pbemguy]

1 hour ago, Tjack said:

  That would of course be the “potential trouble” that I was referring to.  Although it may be the name is only copyrighted as pertains to use in a comic book. Not for use in a wiki for a role playing game.  

 

I think we could possibly use "Champions" for the superteam name. We/I could look into that. But....let's see what everyone thinks first. It's not a bad name, and I understand the spirit of it, but it might not be where we're heading.

 

My feeling is that, given the nature of this project, we would be able to use it. But there's also a good chance that it won't be the name chosen by this thread. I'll personally investigate if it's looking promising. Still, there seem to be some moments where we're veering back into using things that already exist. My feeling is: we should avoid that anyway, not for legal reasons but just for the sake of being creative. VIPER is awesome. Dr. D is the bomb. But we're building something new here!

[grandmastergm]

This is a cool project. Are you currently running this campaign?  

I'll be happy to add a few characters from my campaigns but not sure how often I can participate. 

[pbemguy]

5 minutes ago, grandmastergm said:

This is a cool project. Are you currently running this campaign?  

I'll be happy to add a few characters from my campaigns but not sure how often I can participate. 

 

You're in! ;)

 

I'm not currently running this campaign, but once it gets up to speed (i.e. 75+ characters or so) I will probably run a Play-By-Email in this setting.

 

Note: This world is wide open at this point development-wise. I set design parameters sometimes (e.g. this thread) but I try to only referee and just let the campaign setting develop a life of its own.

 

(I set the parameters so that people can comfortably participate. I decided to use Marvel's Avengers as somewhat of a template to give people a starting point. I'll probably set another thread that says something like, "Design the Wiki's Teen Titans" at some point if this one works!)

[unclevlad]

Hmmm.  For this team, how about the Knights Errant.  The building name's pretty open;  one can incorporate Tower, Castle, or Keep with whatever concept you like.  Castle and Keep might be off in Westchester or out on Long Island;  Tower can be Manhattan easily enough.

 

Some other team ideas...

 

--The Valkyries, an all-female, perhaps all-flyer team.  Their base might be the Valhalla Building.

--Daoine Sidhe, or Seelie Court...could raise some hackles in the game world, so I don't like it as the major team's name.  A central aspect?  Everyone has to either be gorgeous (I wouldn't require Striking Appearance but it'd help) or connect in some way to Celtic myth.  

--IIRC, in one of the superhero novel series, the major European team calls itself The Pantheon.  Kinda over the top but in an Avengers-style "world's mightiest heroes" mode, why not?

--Fire Watch?  The PR is kinda built in.  Avoids Watchmen and Night Watch, which I like but will have a fair bit of player baggage...not necessarily in-game, but metagame.  Note that this could be a very nice complementary team;  less about combat powers, more about detection/intel/tactics.  A similar vein...especially if these heroes aren't worried about small, local threats very much, might be High Watch.

[unclevlad]

One more.  This comes with the team's origin story.

 

Life was normal until the day the first Xelarian ships were spotted as they passed inside Mars' orbit, inbound towards Earth.  Their introduction of choice, as they entered Earth orbit?  Tidal bombs, into the Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean, and South China Sea.  The resulting tidal waves killed millions, and did trillions of dollars in damage.

 

Surface-based nukes, even the secret satellite nukes...useless.  Blown away long before they could be effective.

 

Scattered groups of heroes tried.  They failed;  several died.

 

Finally, one elite group managed to work past their differences, their egos.  They formed a strike force unlike anything before.  Where lesser teams' weaknesses could be exploited by the Xelarians, this team worked together so that someone had a counter.  In a matter of weeks, the Xelarian force was obliterated.

 

The elimination of this force clearly could not be interpreted as a defeat of the Xelarians.  Perhaps they wouldn't return...but that was a risk no one, even the least aggressive, was willing to risk, most particularly the heroes who had defeated them.  Thus, they vowed...never again.  And in the process, created the team we all know...

 

The Starguard.

[unclevlad]

One of the aspects here is that teams hardly existed before the Starguard.  Partnerships?  Sure.  Small groups of friends, even...but the link was the friendship, and in general these tended to be 2nd- or 3rd-tier supers...highly useful for smaller-scale threats, but not up to major threats or disasters.

 

This changed with the Starguard.  More strong teams formed.  Unfortunately, it wasn't just the heroes that saw the value;  whereas before, the villains' egos, generally FAR more indulged than heroes, led them to run solitary, or in a pyramidal approach with subordinates and minions, in the aftermath the first villain groups started to form.

 

------------------

 

Sp we get a history where...who knows how far supers went back, it's not been mentioned.  But we're talking mostly 40's style JLA/JSA power levels for a lot of them;  that's my thinking.  Yeah, some high-power ones existed, but probably they weren't really exploring the higher-level aspects.  A general fear of supers?  That's always plausible.  It's pretty easy to say people were parochial about it.  But after this, the visibility, the influence, and the impact of supers all skyrocket.

[Molotov]

I have an idea that takes the Avengers prompt one step further. I want to base this team on the Avengers but flip the genders of the team and shove in some JLA references. (By the way, could we use "The Guardians" as a team name? That would be a nice hat tip.)

 

Anyway, my proposed team:

 

a female archer

a female brick

a goddess (with a shield) *

a woman with power armor

a non-powered male superagent**

 

*This one will do triple duty: inspired by Captain America and Thor, with a dash of Wonder Woman

**Inspired by Black Widow, but with a dash of Nightwing/Batman

[Clonus]

I developed an ersatz set of Avengers once for a different game system

 

Quicksilver Girl:  An artificially intelligent mass of nanotechnology with stretching and shapeshifting powers which prefers to turn into a young woman when not in combat.  Superhumanly strong.  Also able to control computers.  Created to spy on the Squad by an enemy she decided she liked them and joined the team.  

 

Kid Chaos:  Quicksilver Girl's boyfriend he has luck themed powers as in he can give people and things crippling bad luck and he's quite lucky himself.   

 

Able Archer II:  Gimmick archer.  Legacy hero his father was an assassin who became a vigilante after he lost his CIA job in the wake of the end of the Cold War.   Able II carried on the name but developed gimmick arrows so he could be less lethal in in his crime fighting.     

 

Solar Max:  After a weird solar flare left him the sole survivor of a solar observatory in space, Max found his own body generating an increasing energy buildup and had to build a suit of powered armour with himself as the power source to bleed off the energy before he exploded.  

 

Gossamer Wing:  A literal fairy Gossamer can grow to human size.  She can also sing sonic attacks.  

 

Spriggan:  Gossamer Wing's sometime boyfriend, he can grow from dwarf sized to a super-strong giant.  

 

Valiant:  Another legacy hero, his father, Legend, is centuries old.  Both are vulnerable to the philosopher's stone/red mercury that originally gave Legend his powers.  They are bog standard flying bricks.  

 

I never thought of a good shadow for Captain America.  

 

 

[pbemguy]

UPDATE: We'll give this a couple more days. What we need is a complete team, including 6e write-ups and pics. I think the superteam has to be submitted fully to qualify. Because: based on my experience with the wiki thus far, people will only work on their own characters. What I mean is, if we pick a team name and describe the characters only, no one will step in and build the chosen characters.

 

This is not a complaint. It makes total sense. My experience with Hero players is that we want to do it all: the character concept right through to the build. No one wants to build someone else's concept, no matter how highly voted.  

 

So, basically, if you are the only one to submit a fully completed team on this thread, it will be the campaign world's superteam!