Champions Campaign 40th Anniversary

[Tech]

It's hard for me to believe I'm saying this but come this June, our campaign will be 40 years old, along with the 40th Anniversary of the game Champions. It's actually mind-boggling to me, that any campaign could be that long. The campaign is older than my friend's marriage as well as some people in the campaign. I'm planning on buying some plastic award medals that you can put your own emblem inside of and giving them out in June. By the way, this is the same continuous campaign - never stopped or retconned. It's gone through changes over the decades and has seen players & characters come and go, but the core players are still playing some of the same characters that the campaign started with.

 

So along with saying it's been 40 years, I also want to say that it is the Champions game that is so durable and flexible that made this happen. My hat off to you, Hero Games and more specifically, to Champions.

[Mr. R]

Man, I would love to see the character sheets from those early PCs and compare them to what they are now.  This would be like Mr. Allston's treatment in the Strike Force book.

 

Also a timeline would be seriously cool!

[dmjalund]

40th is ruby anniversary

 

- so - something red?

[rjd59]

Very envious, wish I was a part of that! Congrats to you and your players! Here's to the next 40!

[archer]

I feel like celebrating when a campaign makes it through ten sessions.

 

Congrats!

 

[Dr. MID-Nite]

My campaign is 15 years old, but geez...you got me beat. Congrats!

[Jhamin]

Mine made it 25 before I retired it  But I'm now 2 years into a new game with several of the same players set in the same game world after an absence of 8 years.

So how does that count?

[Sketchpad]

I would love to see a 40th Anniversary book for Champions that had some of the old character stats (updated to 6e), and notes from the original campaigns. 

[Tech]

I'll post in brief my original character (particularly since he's so experienced). I named him Neutron. At the time, Enemies I or II hadn't even been out yet so he and Neutron of the Conquerors have had several fights just to see who keeps the name; it's been undecided. When first learning how to play Champions 1st Edition, I had some misunderstandings of how to build a good character so keep that in mind.    I should mention the campaign doesn't use 6th edition; the majority didn't want it, so it's primarily 4th -5th edition with some 1st-3rd edition thrown in.

 

I have the original sheet; I just can't find it so I'll go with my memory so here's him at creation:

10 Str        OCV: 8  DCV: 8  ECV: 3

23 Dex

20 Con      

15 Body       7d6 EB

10 Int           Flight 15"

10 Ego         

10 Pre

12 Com        Yes, we still use COM

7 PD

9 ED

7 Spd

9 Rec

40 End

40 Stun

 

Pretty simple but I was learning what power level is good and so on. Since then, he's changed quite a bit. I'll post some of him because quite frankly there's too much to post. Our campaign has several houserules so I'm not posting costs:

20 Str          OCV: 9 DCV: 9 ECV: 9

26 Dex        11d6 EB

24 Con        Flight 25"

15 Body  

14 Int          His most devastating attack:

17 Ego        10d6 EB, APx2, 10" AE with Hole in center, Variable size

30 Pre

12 Com       PD & ED are 3x hardened

27 PD          Lack of Weakness -5

27 ED          Mental Def 9 pts, 3x hardened

7 Spd

15 Rec         Classic Martial Arts

50 End        4 Combat Levels with 6 various skill levels

51 Stun       Gobs of skills

 

 

He's the leader of one of our superteams; we have 7 superteams. Needless to say, we have lots of active characters.

 

[Steve Long]

On 2/9/2021 at 4:39 PM, Tech said:

It's hard for me to believe I'm saying this but come this June, our campaign will be 40 years old, along with the 40th Anniversary of the game Champions. It's actually mind-boggling to me, that any campaign could be that long. The campaign is older than my friend's marriage as well as some people in the campaign. I'm planning on buying some plastic award medals that you can put your own emblem inside of and giving them out in June. By the way, this is the same continuous campaign - never stopped or retconned. It's gone through changes over the decades and has seen players & characters come and go, but the core players are still playing some of the same characters that the campaign started with.

 

So along with saying it's been 40 years, I also want to say that it is the Champions game that is so durable and flexible that made this happen. My hat off to you, Hero Games and more specifically, to Champions.

 

Congrats! I can barely keep a campaign going for a few months, never mind years. The mind boggles -- but in a good way.

[aylwin13]

I thought that the 3-5 year campaigns I've been in were a big thing. 40 is just awesome. I'd give a limb to be in a game like that. Actually, right now I'd just like to be in a game at all.

 

Congrats to you and your players, Tech.

[steriaca]

I miss face to face roleplaying. 

[Panpiper]

I love campaigns that last. I did once have opportunity to play in a game that lasted five years, and ended when we solved the 'great problem' and saved the universe by destroying it (long story). It was basically a demi-god level fantasy game. Dear, dear memories there. Most other games I have played last more than a few months, but rarely more than a couple of years.

 

The opportunity to have played in a 40 year campaign would have been a dream for a lifetime. Maybe in my next life build. How many points would that perk cost I wonder?

[aylwin13]

On 2/20/2021 at 9:16 AM, Panpiper said:

I love campaigns that last. I did once have opportunity to play in a game that lasted five years, and ended when we solved the 'great problem' and saved the universe by destroying it (long story). It was basically a demi-god level fantasy game. Dear, dear memories there. Most other games I have played last more than a few months, but rarely more than a couple of years.

 

The opportunity to have played in a 40 year campaign would have been a dream for a lifetime. Maybe in my next life build. How many points would that perk cost I wonder?

5 if you do your Complications right.

[Tech]

We celebrated the 40th anniversary this weekend. I had made medals for each player. I also made one special medal (which I kept) for all the bad character concepts that have ever been made. Do you realize that's 2080 weeks for so long a campaign? Also, my brother made a video for the players to watch before the Champions episode started. The video simply ended: "Now, let the game begin!".

[Tech]

I'll tell the the bad character concepts I remember:

 

Photogen!  The hero who can take pictures with his eyes, and pull the picture out of his stomach. That's all the player wanted him to do initially. We managed to convince him to take a light-based attack.

 

Mr. Pain! The 50 Str hero who wanted to Haymaker everything, even the unarmored agents. 😬  Eventually, I made him a villain with the reasoning that he liked inflicting pain so much he became a villain so he could do it more often.

 

Timelord  A Dr. Who rip-off who was just plain weird. Even the player could barely stand him. A one episode hero.

 

Major Ugums (a villain): A 50 Str villain who is so generic that he joined a group of other bad concepts... they don't even have a villain team name!

 

Razorback The name is taken from a wild razorback hog, he had a killing attack on his back that he had to do an acrobatic flip to land on the villain because the razor killing attack was on his back. He also had a 20 pt Code vs Killing 🤔  He only had a 20 Str to do any other kind of damage. He spent alot of time on the sideline doing nothing.

 

Amoeba Man! The all-time winner of loser-dom! He was a taxi driver who could transform into a giant amoeba. It/he could float and use a weak ego attack... because he bought so many things for his appearance he had very little points leftover for an attack. Originally, he wanted to be able to duplicate every time he was hit but Champions 2 had just come out - and we weren't going to tell him about the power "duplication".  His grand appearance went like this:  other heroes arrive to stop a bank robbery. The bank has a large glass window so people can see in/out. The taxi is driving by with a passenger in the back. The driver sees the robbery in progress, swerves the taxi and crashed through the bank window. He immediately then transforms into an amoeba and "splurps" out of the taxi, floating. EVERYONE in the bank stops and stares while the passenger gets out of the taxi and runs screaming down the street. Both heroes and villains pause to consider teaming up to attack this monster. Amoeba Man starts to attack the villains so the heroes decide to finish off the villains, while keeping an eye on the monster. After the fight, Amoeba Man (who never said a word or communicated, although he could) just floats off into the sky.

[Nekkidcarpenter]

Congratulations!  That's fantastic.  Lasting friendships are priceless.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

Happy 40th birthday to Champions!  Released at Origins on July 3, 1981. 🎂

[KawangaKid]

Happy 40th to Champions! Here's to many more decades!

[Scott Ruggels]

There was a a gathering at a Steve Petersen’s house for the old Hero Games employees. He told the story of how Champions came the be, and the mad rush to hand collate 1500 copies of that first book, and of what a disaster con registration was for Pacific Origins, and how they turned it into an opportunity, but sending their booth babe, dressed as Wonder Woman down the the lines to hand out flyers. How the had Bruce Harlick squat on the only open gaming tables inside the hotel (the rest of the open gaming was in sweaty tents around behind the Hotel.) the game was a success People would play the demo, then get up from the table and walk into the dealers room and buy their copy for $10.  From there , the rest is history. The distributors that picked up whole boxes at Origins would start selling by August. And the Distrubutors asked, so when are the supplements coming out?”  So upon their return from the con, they wrote Enemies, and The Island of Dr. Destroyer. 
 

Here are some artifacts from that first weekend:

https://imgur.com/a/0E72NAX

 

40 years later it’s still going. 
 

Scott

 

[BNakagawa]

I was so far back in the line that I didn't get a visit by Wonder Woman with flyers. I did get to talk to JD Ward, the guy who drew the Fineous Fingers strip in Dragon Magazine though. It boggled me that someone like him was stuck in line like a nobody like me, but the registration process for that con was awful.

[Scott Ruggels]

4 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

I was so far back in the line that I didn't get a visit by Wonder Woman with flyers. I did get to talk to JD Ward, the guy who drew the Fineous Fingers strip in Dragon Magazine though. It boggled me that someone like him was stuck in line like a nobody like me, but the registration process for that con was awful.

The tents in the back were awful. SJG released Killer, which we played next year at highschool, and the con was overrun with Ninjas, but still Champions was the highlight.