If Champions never existed, what superhero RPG would you have played (or be playing today)?

[Mark Rand]

The first role-playing game of any kind I was in was D&D.  It was also the first RPG I GMed.  The first superhero game I was in was V&V.  I was also the GM.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 hour ago, steriaca said:

It should be noted that Hero wasn't the first point buy system. That would be Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip, which eventually morphed into GURPS. So they might still be point buy character creation systems if Champions didn't exist. 

 

Possibly, but without Champions, GURPS would probabvly resemble TFT more mechanically, and would probably NOT include Superheroes until much later, with a highly Kludgy system.... oh wait, that is GURPS Supers, today. NM.

Seriously Not sure if Point Buy would have been as influential, But I did enjoy TFT quite a bit after fleeing from the strictures of AD&D.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

I tried Marvel Superheroes and found it very clunky, simplistic, and not very well built.  Not sure why people like it so much. Unless FASERIP is a different system related to it or something.

[steriaca]

18 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Possibly, but without Champions, GURPS would probabvly resemble TFT more mechanically, and would probably NOT include Superheroes until much later, with a highly Kludgy system.... oh wait, that is GURPS Supers, today. NM.

Seriously Not sure if Point Buy would have been as influential, But I did enjoy TFT quite a bit after fleeing from the strictures of AD&D.  

Never played The Fantasy Trip myself. Have put a toe into GURPS. It didn't exactly impress me enough to buy a rules book.

[Scott Ruggels]

1 minute ago, steriaca said:

Never played The Fantasy Trip myself. Have put a toe into GURPS. It didn't exactly impress me enough to buy a rules book.

It's a very simple, and fast little game. It was perfect for Highschool Lunch Adventures, at the time, and the point buy kind of lead us into Champions in my Junior / Senior Year.

[steriaca]

19 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I tried Marvel Superheroes and found it very clunky, simplistic, and not very well built.  Not sure why people like it so much. Unless FASERIP is a different system related to it or something.

There has been various de-makes of FASERIP. Since the game system itself has fell out of private domain and doesn't have the Marvel license on it makes it fare game to modify and hang your own world upon it.

 

Which begs the question: how many game systems are now in the public domain?

[Christopher R Taylor]

  I hate to be that guy but

 

While "begs the question" meaning "raises the question" has been abused so many times and for long enough that its starting to become standard English, technically it does not mean that.

 

Begs the question is a rhetorical term which means "your argument assumes the conclusion" like "Everyone wants the new iPhone because it is the hottest new gadget on the market!"  That simply restates you conclusion as proof instead of proving or supporting your statement with arguments establishing how it is true.

[steriaca]

47 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

  I hate to be that guy but

 

While "begs the question" meaning "raises the question" has been abused so many times and for long enough that its starting to become standard English, technically it does not mean that.

 

Begs the question is a rhetorical term which means "your argument assumes the conclusion" like "Everyone wants the new iPhone because it is the hottest new gadget on the market!"  That simply restates you conclusion as proof instead of proving or supporting your statement with arguments establishing how it is true.

Ok. I stand corrected.

[assault]

9 hours ago, steriaca said:

It should be noted that Hero wasn't the first point buy system. That would be Steve Jackson's The Fantasy Trip, which eventually morphed into GURPS. So they might still be point buy character creation systems if Champions didn't exist. 

 

Superhero 2044 (originally just Superhero 44) was more or less contemporary with The Fantasy Trip. Point based and superhero themed. And practically unplayable without major house ruling.

Thinking about it, a better point based superhero game was more or less inevitable, if only as an extension of the house ruling required to play SH 2044.

And the inevitable game we got was Champions.

---
Trivia: SH 2044 was inspired by a D&D campaign, which featured superheroes. The DM was John M. Ford.

[Duke Bushido]

That is actually kind of a surprise.  Everyone here kno2s I am no fan of D&D, but Superhero 2044 was _so much worse_....

 

My first Champions GM was a superhero nut; I think I have played every superhero game he could get his hands on, including a- I think British?- one called "Golden Heroes," which had a serious lo2-budget production values (and so many games did, back then.  Remember the original Starships and Spacemen?) , but turned out to actually be pretty good.

 

I fully understand my superhero bias (anti-bias?  They don't do much for me, on the whole), but even taking extra pains to be objective, superhero 2044 was awful.  It wasnt until we tried some variant suggestions published in Dragon that it was it was even close to an RPG.

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

The thing is, when Champions first came out (not the first superhero game but the biggest and most groundbreaking) most people never really even considered superheroes for role playing.  I mean, where are the dungeons?  What would your levels be like?  What class is Superman?  You had to break people completely free from that mindset.  I'm not sure it would have really taken off much as a genre without Champions.

[Opal]

In 1981, the AD&D DMG had been out for 2 years, and the first solid "skill-based" RPG, RuneQuest, had been out for 3.

 

Still the early days of the hobby, for sure.

[Black Rose]

My first Superhero RPG was the FASERIP Marvel Super Heroes. Didn't get to play it much, but I bought a bunch of the material.

My next "superhero RPG" was GURPS Supers. I was, among other game systems, a GURPS junkie in the '90s and early '00s.

I suppose my third was White Wolf's Aberrant, because another system I was into in the '90s and early '00s was "anything White Wolf is putting out... that isn't Werewolf, Wraith, or Changeling". So... Vampire, Mage, and Exalted, also Aberrant.

Then Champions: New Millennium, but that doesn't count because it doesn't exist.  I only picked it up because I was getting the Fuzion Bubblegum Crisis book, and then realized I had bought an old HERO 4e rulebook second-hand years ago, couldn't make sense of all the acronyms, and promptly went back to GURPS.

I dabbled with Mutants and Masterminds very briefly back in 1e (one game), then again in 3e. I both really like, and am greatly frustrated by, the simplicity of the system. I prefer the crunch of HERO.

 

I would probably have enjoyed V&V back in the day, but I just don't like random character building anymore. Almost every new Superhero game I see today seems too simplified in character building. I could be wrong.

[DreadDomain]

On 6/9/2022 at 1:17 PM, Strand said:

I think the better question would have been what would you have played if D&D didn't exist because other games existed after it because they didn't like how D&D worked.

In this alternate universe where everything else  is being equal, I would have started my RPG life with l'Oeil Noir first edition, then moved on to Pendragon and thereafter to RuneQuest, Chaosium and Stormbringer. While trying a bunch of other games, HarnMaster, Talislanta, WFRP, Bushido, Rêve de Dragons, Empires et Dynasties, Rolemaster and more I forget at the moment, RQ3 would have remained my go to game until I would have discovered GURPS and then HERO. Both games would come to dominate my gaming life for 2 decades until BRP would come forward once more with Mythras, Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest and join GURPS and HERO as my go to games.

 

I guess this alternate universe wouldn't be much different than this one after all. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I didn't like the world setting much but the Runequest system did appeal to me in a lot of ways.

[SCUBA Hero]

14 hours ago, Black Rose said:

I would probably have enjoyed V&V back in the day, but I just don't like random character building anymore. Almost every new Superhero game I see today seems too simplified in character building. I could be wrong.

 

Mighty Protectors (V&V 3.0) now has a point buy for character building (as well as still having the random tables).  It's much more organized and unified than the previous editions.  I do miss the old quirky combat table where you compared the specific attack against target defense(s) to get the to-hit number, though.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I loved the old Champions III random superpowers tables, be fun to have something like that again.  Wonder if that could be worked into a Campaign book somehow.  It makes sense to have both options, for people who can't come up with a tight concept or are just in a hurry.

[Joe Walsh]

Those old tables are fun, and the Champions cards do a good job of providing a nice randomization option, but they do require that you have a set on hand.

 

Maybe new tables could be made based on them?

 

[Ndreare]

I have never been a one system person. Our groups has over the last 30 years bounced around a lot. When we first came across Champions I think it was the second edition and did not appeal to us. Then Champions 4th edition came along with that big hardback blue book. It was attractive and we grabbed it. Our GM back then started running it as our default system for his fantasy games.

Then we stuck with it as out default system until 2016 or so. Bouncing around between it and other games. Mostly Palladium, Fuzion, and GURPS. When Rifts for Savage Worlds came out our whole group migrated to Savage Worlds and we have been playing ~75% of our games in Savage Worlds since then. But it always bugged me as not being as consistent as Hero System and I am happy my group is coming back to Hero.

 

So long story short, I think we would be playing whatever random system appealed to us at any given moment. Hero System is the only system we always return to, even if this last time it has taken 6 or 7 years. No other system is so internally consistent IMHO.

[Spence]

2 hours ago, Ndreare said:

I have never been a one system person.

 

I think that would apply to a lot of us.  As for Hero, while it is my favorite system, except for a stretch in the 80-90's I have actually played other games far more.  

Since about 2005ish games like CoC and the Gumshoe games have been my meat and potatoes.  Recently the 2d20 games have pulled me in, they are pretty good.

 

Unrelated comment.   Sedro Woolley!  That isn't actually too far from Marysville.  I've been thinking of trying to start something at Docking Bay in Mount Vernon since I work on Whidbey and drive through MV everyday. 

Are you planning on going to Dragonflight in August?

[Ndreare]

2 hours ago, Spence said:

Unrelated comment.   Sedro Woolley!  That isn't actually too far from Marysville.  I've been thinking of trying to start something at Docking Bay in Mount Vernon since I work on Whidbey and drive through MV everyday. 

Are you planning on going to Dragonflight in August?

We ended up buying a house in Mount Vernon (I guess I need to update my profile).

I don't know about Dragonflight. It has been about 3 years since I went to a con.

 

 So as not to derail the thread if you want to send me a pm and we continue chatting.

[TCArknight]

V&V was my first big Superhero game before Champions (I think 1.0...) . Along the way I found Hero Unlimited, Mutants and Masterminds, and recently Savage Worlds Super Powers Compendium....