Premade Campaign Poll

[Christopher R Taylor]

So... if someone were to write up campaign sets, not full adventures but the basic setting, characters, and concept with a series of summaries of adventures of a page or three each adventure as an outline... what kind of campaigns would you be most interested in seeing published?  Hypothetically.

[LoneWolf]

Personally I don’t see the value of a published modern campaign setting.  Most of the when we are using a modern setting we simply take from the real world.  Sure books with character especially villains are useful for a super  hero campaign, or a box on an organization, but that is about all.  Fantasy settings are pretty common and not that difficult to create.  Science fiction is where there is a real lack of settings.  

 

Of all the campaign settings the most under represented is probably the Post Apocalypse.  Hero system would be a perfect this type of campaign.  
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well the idea would be less "here's how to build your campaign" and more "here's the bad guys and a plot line and a bunch of adventure synopses which help you run a campaign."

[Jhamin]

I'd personally *love* to see adventure synopses and bad guys and such for hero's various genres.  I ran a Pulp Hero game a few years back & it was only really possible because Pulp Hero got an enemies book.  It was one thing to imagine the various pulpy tropes, but actually having a series of bad guys to base a game around let me put my effort into creating plotlines instead of writing up dozens of baddies.  Having writups for in-universe antagonists helped my players create PCs that worked.

As I understand what you are saying, you are talking less about an enemies book and more about a "campaign in a book" type situation, which in my mind is even better.  I think part of the problem with Hero is that it doesn't make it easy for new GMs to actually get a game running.  GMs are expected to do a *lot* of lifting compared to D&D or Pathfinder, which publish entire campaigns in a pre-made form.  (I'm not saying I want full superhero Adventure Paths, but maybe a nice 10 session arc in book form, against multiple villains, would be great!).  Right now Hero does a good job of setting up genres but outside Champions doesn't go very deep on what you should actually do session 1 or session 5.  There have been a lot of Fantasy Hero books over the years (for example) but we have never actually seen what a group of PCs should look like and what their first 5 adventures should look like.

Now to be a bit contradictory; In my mind, if this is a path you are looking down, Champions is by far the biggest genre for Hero and should continue to be pushed.  We have several published adventures, but an actual mini-campaign would be a great resource.  I know I've talked about how much easier I want it to be for new people to start a Pulp or Fantasy Hero game, but Champions needs that love too, and as it's already what Hero is known for, I'd start there.

Assuming that works, I'd love to see the same for Fantasy Hero.  Maybe a classic Tolkien/D&D style adventure or a Conan based one.

I'd like to avoid a villain game or something that requires you are already deep into Hero/Champions lore before you know what's going on.  "Agents of Viper" is pretty specific for example.

[archer]

With the CW's Vampire Dairies and The Originals segueing into the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted being featured in Legacies....

[Christopher R Taylor]

Interesting, Teen Champions school/XMen is in the lead for now.  I voted for Golden Age so maybe that looks closer than it ought to be

[archer]

9 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Interesting, Teen Champions school/XMen is in the lead for now.  I voted for Golden Age so maybe that looks closer than it ought to be

 

I think teen school is setting is hot right now because there's so much on TV about such things. There's also the high school for assassins in training on one of the premium cable channels. Many anime fans crossing over to RPGs are accustomed to a school setting as well (even if you leave out My Hero Academia).

 

If I had a second choice, I would have picked stock modern Champions campaign. I like to see how other people envision heroes fitting into a modern setting (specifically "heroes" rather than "people who happen to have powers and costumes").

[BigJackBrass]

12 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Interesting, Teen Champions school/XMen is in the lead for now. 

That certainly surprises me, but then the popularity of child and teen protagonists was something I was baffled by even as a child and a teen 😁 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I should have put a Western campaign on there too, like Oregon Trail or Range War

[Steve]

A few seem quite specific but most are much more generic.

 

I thought the VIPER campaign sounded interesting and could be spun as anti-hero versus outright villainy. Picture working in VIPER compared to agencies like PRIMUS or UNTIL as like being in Star Trek’s Mirror Universe.

[Spence]

I went for the school theme game.

 

Right now the quickest way to lose my interest is yet another villain based game.  Pretty much everything has been around a villain being treated like they were heroes.

 

If I wanted to play a villain I'd play Vampire.

 

[MrAgdesh]

Pirates for me out of that lot. I started doing some 7th Sea conversion stuff awhile back. Its a great setting but the mechanics are too Theatre of the Mind for me.

 

Other than that, I'm currently only interested in Westerns and Modern horror (a Stranger Things/Kids on Bikes game being a lighter approach to the latter).

[Ninja-Bear]

Since I mentioned  on another thread I’d like to see some love for Street Level Heroes, I voted for that.  Of course I’m referring to Powered Supers for Street level.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Looks like voting on this poll kind of died out, 24 doesn't seem like too many people

[Fedifensor]

I answered Retro Bronze Age, because I think the best thing the company could put out right now is a revamp of the Viper's Nest scenarios.  It's a good starting campaign, initially pitting the heroes against agents and gradually adding supervillains to the mix.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I think the best thing the company could put out right now is a revamp of the Viper's Nest scenarios. 

 

Funny you should mention that...

[Christopher R Taylor]

nudging this hoping for more responses

[Derek Hiemforth]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

nudging this hoping for more responses

 

My initial instinct was a Retro 80s/Bronze Age Champions game, but then I realized... that's what the original Champions material essentially was, so Champions has kind of covered that ground already.  Then I realized that was true of most of the options; most of them have been covered already by some Hero System setting, at least to some extent (even the school angle was already covered -- from a slightly different angle -- by PS238).

The only ones I don't think have really been covered much in other Hero System material are Street Level/Cops/low-powered supers, Pirates, and Bronze age fantasy. Out of those, I don't have any interest in the street level/cops setting, and the bronze age fantasy seems like it would cross over a lot with The Valdorian Age and S&S.  So of the list, I voted for Pirates.

Overall though, I'm not especially interested in Pirates, really.  What I'd really like to see is one where the characters in the setting (PC and NPC alike) come from a mix of genres. Like a "crossroads of time and space" kind of deal, where starships might fight dinosaurs, and fantasy wizards might meet superhero scientists, and old west gunslingers might rescue fairy princesses, or whatever.

 

I think this kind of cross-genre setting would really allow the Hero System to shine, and would be uniquely suited to it.   

On 3/8/2021 at 7:31 PM, MrAgdesh said:

Modern horror (a Stranger Things/Kids on Bikes game being a lighter approach to the latter).

 

The Stranger Things/Kids on Bikes idea is actually more appealing to me than the "School for Gifted Students/low-end supers" angle. 👍

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well what I have in mind is less a "campaign book" full of how to run the game and such than an actual campaign: a series of adventures in a setting for a GM to run as a campaign.  So less Horror Hero/Pulp Hero etc and more something not actually published since, I dunno, Champions in 3d

[Derek Hiemforth]

25 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Well what I have in mind is less a "campaign book" full of how to run the game and such than an actual campaign: a series of adventures in a setting for a GM to run as a campaign.  So less Horror Hero/Pulp Hero etc and more something not actually published since, I dunno, Champions in 3d

 

I gotcha.  However, I do think you're going to find you'll need at least some information about how to make characters that fit those adventures, and about the world those adventures take place in, etc.

[Spence]

1 hour ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

My initial instinct was a Retro 80s/Bronze Age Champions game, but then I realized... that's what the original Champions material essentially was, so Champions has kind of covered that ground already.  Then I realized that was true of most of the options; most of them have been covered already by some Hero System setting,

 

Yes and no, Hero has published products in many of settings.  Most heavily the Champions super setting. 

 

But they have never actually published a Campaign. 

No series of adventures tied together into an exciting multi-session arc of ADVENTURE!

 

A lot of prep and background work, no actual campaign.

 

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Well what I have in mind is less a "campaign book" full of how to run the game and such than an actual campaign: a series of adventures in a setting for a GM to run as a campaign.  So less Horror Hero/Pulp Hero etc and more something not actually published since, I dunno, Champions in 3d

 

Ding Ding Ding...we have a winner.

33 minutes ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

I gotcha.  However, I do think you're going to find you'll need at least some information about how to make characters that fit those adventures, and about the world those adventures take place in, etc.

 

  The Plot Point format works great.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, I do have to conditionally disagree with Derek's assertion. DOJ/Hero published two 5E multi-adventure collections, Champions Battlegrounds and Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds, and while the adventures in them can all easily be run separately, there's a metaplot provided for each one linking them together if a GM chooses to use it.

 

There's also Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, which offers three separate, lengthy scenarios for Champions revolving around the rise of King Cobra and his COIL organization. None of these comprise a full campaign in themselves, but they do represent multi-adventure story arcs.

[Spence]

25 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Well, I do have to conditionally disagree with Derek's assertion. DOJ/Hero published two 5E multi-adventure collections, Champions Battlegrounds and Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds, and while the adventures in them can all easily be run separately, there's a metaplot provided for each one linking them together if a GM chooses to use it.

 

There's also Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth, which offers three separate, lengthy scenarios for Champions revolving around the rise of King Cobra and his COIL organization. None of these comprise a full campaign in themselves, but they do represent multi-adventure story arcs.

 

I'm not Derek.  But I have played parts of Battlegrounds and still want to run StaST again.  This time being able to finish it.

But a true campaign would still be great.

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Yes, I apologize for my misreading in my haste. It's actually you I disagreed with, Spence.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There are a couple different kinds of campaigns that can be done.

 

One is just the "lets play Champions" kind that needs lots of adventures to give the GM plenty of fodder for a game to have fun with.  No overarching story, no mega plot, just "ideas for adventures"

 

Then there's the huge story arc, the one big story with at least one minor story behind it.  Chuck Dixon advises doing this kind of thing in serial writing with a 3-plot structure: the main big plot, the ending of the last minor plot, and the beginning of the next minor plot each scenario.

 

While I know its kind of trendy now to have the One Big Story in TV shows and games, I wonder if that's a long term strategy or just trendy now?