Champions Membership over time

[Jhamin]

Inspired by the recent conversations about in-universe fictional replacements, I got curious about how the in-universe "real" members of the Champions changed over time in the 5e/6e Champions Universe and started digging.  Im admittedly mixing two different editions here, but they are fairly compatible lore wise, with just a bit of weirdness around Nightwind.

 

Champions Complete (among other sources) indicates that Defender founded the Champions in 2001 and the team quickly became:

Defender

Sapphire

Nighthawk

IronClad

Witchcraft

AKA: The Classic Lineup

 

Millennium City mentions that they frequently team up with Doctor Silverback, Kinetik and Nightwind who consider them allies but are not members.

 

In 2006 Nighthawk faked his own death to work undercover without letting his team know his plans and came to blows with Defender when the truth came out.  He quit the team before they could vote on his expulsion.  He was replaced by Kinetik who the Champions had worked with numerous times before. "Champions Universe: News of the World" says the Champions also added Nightwind and he helps the Champions fight Mechanon on October 15th 2006 (Book of the Machine) , but Champions Complete (the most recent book by publishing date) has a mini-recap of the events of 2006 and writeups of the characters that doesn't mention him.  So maybe?

 

So in 2006 the Champions membership was:

Defender

Sapphire

IronClad

Witchcraft

Kinetik

Nightwind?

 

The Champions 2007 chapter from "Champions Universe: News of the World" lists the team membership as

Defender

Sapphire

IronClad

Witchcraft

Kinetik

Nightwind

This is pretty much the same as 2006 but I list it as it definitely included Nightwind where as there are some questions about his 2006 status.

 

Champions Universe 6E indicates that the Champions have a set of reserve members they can call when needed.  If we assume the publishing date is the date in-universe:

Champions 2010

Defender

Ironclad

Kinetik

Sapphire

Witchcraft

 

Champions 2010 Reserves:

Dr. Silverback

Nightwind

Ultratech

Blockhead

Crusader

The first two are described in "Millennium City".  Does anyone know if the last 3 are written up anywhere?

 

It is also stated that Nighthawk still sometimes helps the team, which implies that his former teammates have at least partially forgiven him.

 

The Champions Complete book lists the membership as of 2012 as the same as 2010 but makes no mention of their reserves.  As this is a quick overview of the team the reserves may or may not exist.

Defender

Sapphire

IronClad

Witchcraft

Kinetik

 

Galactic Champions recounts Mechanon's final battle with the Champions in the then futuristic 2014 and has a very different membership:

Defender

Kinetik

Ironclad

Tekno

Deuce

Witchcraft

I'm assuming that Deuce (with her shadow form) was the same Deuce mentioned in "Conquers, Killer, and Crooks" as part of PSI's Support team who was the same Deuce who got a writeup in 4E's "Mind Games".  I kind of like that she eventually got away from PSI and joined the side of the angels.

 

I'm not sure who Tekno is?  I briefly thought Teknique from Millennium City changed her name as that is where many of the new Champions come from, but Tekno is a He and we don't get any indication that Leah Reece has any ambitions for gender transition.  Did I miss a writeup somewhere?

 

At this point our info runs out.  The 5e/6e universe used to end shortly after 2020 when a battle with Tyranon uses up the magic that made powers possible.  We know that Kinetik and Witchcraft die in the Antartic battle with Tyranon and that all supertech and metahuman powers fade completely by 2022 but we don't know who was on the Champions roster at the end or what their final fates were.  Other than that Defenders family continued to produce the heroes their ages needed for at least 1000 more years.

 

This was what my memory and a bit of reading dug up.  Do we know of any other roster changes for THE HERO system superteam in the 5e/6e timeline?

 

[Lord Liaden]

AFAICT you've covered the roster changes pretty thoroughly.   Part of the inconsistency in who's a Champion over time can be attributed to what Cryptic Studios mandated after they bought the Champions IP for their MMORPG, Champions Online. The CU 2010 and 2012 lineups are the characters Cryptic wanted. Cryptic made several changes to the official timeline and various other aspects of the CU to match their vision. Most notably, Doctor Destroyer did not make his public return in 2002; that became Cryptic's own creation, "Shadow Destroyer," pretending to be DD.

 

I'm not aware of any write-ups for Blockhead, Crusader, or Tekno; their mention on Champions Universe p. 89 is the only info I can find about them. However, there was another previous user of the name "Crusader," a "sword-wielding" solo vigilante active in New York during the 1980s (CU p. 15).  There's no indication of whether they're connected. I've also been operating on the assumption that Blockhead is depicted on the cover of Champions Universe, i.e. the concrete-looking fellow in a suit in the lower left corner.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

The grey looking guy reminds me more of the art for Ironclad. 

[Lord Liaden]

The grey guy with the sword is the Cryptic-revised look for Ironclad. Subsequent Champions books render him the same way. I suppose Cryptic wanted a more "gladiatorial" appearance for an ex-gladiator.

[Duke Bushido]

You really shouldn't find any 5 or 6e write-ups for Crusader.  Sam died in the 90s (the 4e / Fuzion era).  It was part of a published adventure with a "Dark Champions" overtone, but at the moment it escapes me as to which one it was.  Anyway, he was mortally wounded, made it to his girlfriend's apartment, lived long enough to spill everything to her, and died.

[Lord Liaden]

Very true. However, there was another Crusader written up for the Champions: New Millennium setting, completely different: a semi-immortal warrior born centuries past, wielding a magic sword. It wouldn't be hard to adapt him as the 1980s Crusader mentioned above, if desired.

 

The New Millennium books utilized many characters from previous editions of Champions. Some were mostly the same in terms of background/history, but many were modified to a greater or lesser extent to fit the new continuity. OTOH no few characters and concepts introduced for CNM filtered into the 5E/6E CU in some form. The through-line over the whole history of the game is very clear.

[Jhamin]

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

You really shouldn't find any 5 or 6e write-ups for Crusader.  Sam died in the 90s (the 4e / Fuzion era).  It was part of a published adventure with a "Dark Champions" overtone, but at the moment it escapes me as to which one it was.  Anyway, he was mortally wounded, made it to his girlfriend's apartment, lived long enough to spill everything to her, and died.

 

He died in the narrative parts of "Underworld Enemies" for 4th edition.  It was an enemies book but in universe the various characters were supposed to be entries in Crusader's files.  There was an experienced Dark Champions version of Crusader along with Crusade the 90s anti-hero that killed him so he could replace him (which was treated as a BAD thing) and a 1 page adventure overview where the PCs get pulled into these events.  Thing of it is, that whole plot-line became "old cannon" with the release of 5th edition.

 

As Lord Liaden says, there is a different character going by the name "Crusader" in later books (I think New Millennium and 5th edition each had one).  I feel like later books felt free to take what they liked from pre-5th edition material but didn't feel bound too it, and would often ignore things if there were new ideas the later authors wanted to explore.

 

From what I can tell:
- 4th edition encompassed pretty much everything published up until that time, with some retcons and revisionism thrown in like a good comic book universe.  There was a fair amount of overlap and redundancy when multiple books re-invented the wheel.  (Like PRIMUS/SAT/UNTIL all being the skilled agents that the government sent to stop supercrime)

- 5th Edition was a moderately hard reboot of the Champions Universe.  We got a new Champions team and numerous characters published that has been fixtures of the Champions Universe in 1st-4th edition more or less vanished.  Those who remained were rebooted themselves, usually starting their careers much later.  On the upside, the 5/6ed universe(s) are pretty internally consistent, so you can have a lot of fun hooking plots onto various threads. 
          *Lots of characters that had full writups in older supplements were sort of in a "grey zone" unless they were mentioned in a 5th edition product.  In practice lots of folks used older books freely (I know I did) but lots of characters never officially made it forward.  The CyberKnights (for example) were a fixture in my games but never made it into the 5th/6thed universe

- 6th Edition was a "soft" reboot.  A lot of the 5th edition continuity remained, and you could generally rely on 5th edition lore being intact, but new re-writes of various characters often tweaked details.

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I really prefer the original 4th edition lineup, it felt good and was interesting without being too obviously built for forced diversity or some template of how to make a group.  The fact that it changes every single edition is kind of annoying to me, some consistency between editions would be nice.

[Lord Liaden]

I remember some of Steve Long's posts about the 5E Champs lineup, that he nearly kept Solitaire, but ultimately decided she didn't work well as an example character because she straddled both the Mentalist and Mystic archetypes. But of course Witchcraft is a very similar character, who also brought along the classic Evil Twin.

 

I personally prefer Obsidian to Ironclad. For some reason the alien prince motivated by noblesse oblige feels more compelling to me than the alien ex-soldier/gladiator. I suspect Steve didn't want entire superstrong races like Obsidian's running around the Milky Way, gumming up the non-super sci-fi future settings he planned. For my own game I sort of blended the two characters, making Obsidian a mutant member of the royal family of Ironclad's people, the Dorvalans/Perseids.

 

Quantum's description as "the Lucy Van Pelt of the superhero set" won me over compared to Sapphire, aka Mutant Jennifer Lopez.

 

Nighthawk's origin seems rather odd. His change in personality and motivation was really extreme compared to the magnitude of what happened to him. I would suspect that VIPER attack of leaving him with undiagnosed brain damage. But it still makes a lot more sense than Seeker's.  😛 But Nighthawk doesn't seem like a good archetype example, having aspects of both Martial Artist and Gadgeteer archetypes.

 

[Jhamin]

18 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I personally prefer Obsidian to Ironclad. For some reason the alien prince motivated by noblesse oblige feels more compelling to me than the alien ex-soldier/gladiator. I suspect Steve didn't want entire superstrong races like Obsidian's running around the Milky Way, gumming up the non-super sci-fi future settings he planned. For my own game I sort of blended the two characters, making Obsidian a mutant member of the royal family of Ironclad's people, the Dorvalans/Perseids.

 

Quantum's description as "the Lucy Van Pelt of the superhero set" won me over compared to Sapphire, aka Mutant Jennifer Lopez.

 

Nighthawk's origin seems rather odd. His change in personality and motivation was really extreme compared to the magnitude of what happened to him. I would suspect that VIPER attack of leaving him with undiagnosed brain damage. But it still makes a lot more sense than Seeker's.  😛 But Nighthawk doesn't seem like a good archetype example, having aspects of both Martial Artist and Gadgeteer archetypes.

 

 

Pity about Solitare, I enjoyed her "innocent in the world" personality. I wonder how it would have worked to just remove the PSI aspects of her powers during the transition to 5th?  I can understand why Steve woudl have decided that changed her to the point that replacing her with Witchcraft made more sense.

I agree on Obsidian.  His personality and background was just plain more compelling to me than Ironclad's.

 

I'm kind of 50/50 on Quantum.  Her personality was good and I *liked* that she was a hothead as well as explicitly a mutant and had to deal with all the comic tropes that includes.  Sapphire's musical career is a thing, but not unprecedented in comics.  I kind of wish it figured into her lore more, it is usually treated as something she does off-screen.  Her more experienced writeup mentions that she actually has lots of solo adventures while touring.  I wish we saw more of that.

 

Nighthawk seems a little too on-the-nose as "not-Batman" and as you mention has archetype issues.  Replacing him with Kinetik later makes a lot of sense.

 

I do understand why Nightwind seems to have been forgotten in the transition to Cryptic, he rarely was listed in the rosters even though he was official and his mystic Yengatao abilities are both expensive and take him away from being a "classic" martial artist.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The only characters who were somewhat problematic in 4th edition Champions were Seeker because "lets combine two hot trends and make something silly" never worked for anyone, and Solitaire's build was a somewhat complicated with the focus boosting crystal that was/was not an NPC.  But complaining she was something of a psi is an odd complaint, it sounds more like someone not very familiar with fantasy, magic, and the capabilities of typical mages: using mind-affecting powers is incredibly common.

[Ninja-Bear]

The one thing that C:NM did which I thought was neat was having combat displayed as a comic and then it described both the action the characters were taking and the mechanics too.

[steriaca]

I would add ex- VIPER guy Duke Red to the list of backup Champions members. Mostly because of Nighthawk originally. I'm sure he becomes the person which the Champions become a there parole officers.

[Lord Liaden]

Do you mean "Duke Steel," from Nighthawk's anti-VIPER "Project Mongoose" team? (In Champions Universe: News Of The World.) If so, it's not at all clear whether or not Project Mongoose is still operating (Signal Ghost has gone back to theft, for ex), or if Duke matured into a true hero or fell back into criminality.

[steriaca]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

Do you mean "Duke Steel," from Nighthawk's anti-VIPER "Project Mongoose" team? (In Champions Universe: News Of The World.) If so, it's not at all clear whether or not Project Mongoose is still operating (Signal Ghost has gone back to theft, for ex), or if Duke matured into a true hero or fell back into criminality.

I keep on mixing Duke Steel with the guy from Metropolis anime.