Cardboard Heroes for Champions?!? Does anyone have these?

[Grow-Arm-Hair Lad]

[Duke Bushido]

I have them; yes.

 

What would you like to know?

[Grow-Arm-Hair Lad]

I was just reading that the artist was roommates/friends with Aaron Allston. I was just wondering if the artist (Denis Loubet) did work for Champions, if the pics used in Enemies were the same as these miniatures. Like, it looks like Howler and Armadillo and Mechanon are the same pics used in the 3rd edition book:

 

 

I guess I want to know: did you ever use them in-game? I had a DM that used the Cardboard Heroes for Fantasy. It's just such a big part of the start of my rpg-ing.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Grow-Arm-Hair Lad

[Sketchpad]

I believe I still have them (and have had a few sets over the years). Used them for a while in one game, but lost the set and had to find another. Denis Loubet did do some other work at Hero, particularly in the original Strike Force book. 

 

Honestly, I would love to see something more like Paizo's Pawns made for Hero along with some hex bases.

[tkdguy]

I have the villain set, but I don't use them much.

[Scott Ruggels]

I know Dennis a little.  For the 40th Anniversary at Steve Petersen’s house, he brought photos and a portfolio of his work.  All of the cardboard heroes were generated new because they needed front and back views.  The colors were P. H. Martin’s vibrant watercolors.  They were done 150% scale and reduced for printing.  They were originally made for Steve Jackson’s The Fantasy Trip, but Aaron convinced Steve to make sets for Champions.  

[Duke Bushido]

18 hours ago, Grow-Arm-Hair Lad said:

. I was just wondering if the artist (Denis Loubet) did work for Champions,

 

 

As others have said (sorry; got distracted with the kids and did not get back online), Loubet did some other stuff for Champions, but his most significant contribution os the cover of Justice, Inc.

 

If you are collecting factoids on the various HERO-associated folks from the early days, my favorite bit of Loubet art is the cover of the original pocket-box Car Wars.  Yes, with the 80s strioes and the van and the dude all cyborged into his command chair-- that was Loubet.  He also did the little portrait of some contest winner as an autoduelist behind the  wheel (brown hair, bored face, small chin, red uniform, looks extremely happy to finally be behind the wheel).  It is just such a breathtakingly _emotive_ piece (you can literally _feel_ the subject's joy in the moment) to be otherwise a very simple piece.

 

I have an odd appreciation for Loubet:  I respecr his line art work and admire his skills, but it doesn'r have special appeal to me.  His paintings, however, are fantastic.

 

 

But That is probably more than you want to know, so I'm just going xome to an awkward sans-segue stop now.

 

 

18 hours ago, Grow-Arm-Hair Lad said:

 

if the pics used in Enemies were the same as these miniatures. Like, it looks like Howler and Armadillo and Mechanon are the same pics used in the 3rd edition book:

 

I remeber noting that the villains seemed,to be, where there was extant example of the characters.  They got a quick painting over the line art, giving them a sincere comic book feel: colors and outlines all at once.  I remember being a bit non-plussed that the colors were more akin to paintings- color-based shading and blending, etc- instead of comic-typical (at least at that time) solids and black for sharing-  dont get me wrong; I one hundred percent understand that this painted look was far superior in terms,of detail, etc, but after going through massive shrinking and then the dots-upon-dots printing style of the day, they were a bit less,impressive, I think, than they would have been done in a more comic-traditional coloring scheme.

 

One of my back-burner projects is to do high-res scans and pull the out the line art, resulting in black and white files I can use as-is or color any way I would like, and to see what the painting look like with strategic sections of the line art removed. I am willing to bet that, the costumes at least, are heloed considerably by this.

 

But I digress.

 

There were three sets total: heroes, villains, and "other,' which had police, bystanders and such.

 

Did we use them?

 

Well, yes and no.  Our local library had a color Xerox with all the lenses for resizing, etc.  We copied all of them and used the copies.  We used the heroes and villains once or twice as miniatures for our own characters and villains, but ultimate we too sharpies and wrote on the 'backs' of them who was who, since we never used the official universe or its characters.  Even after 4e, we only ever used two:  Foxbat (eventually) and a tweaked version of 4e's Cheshire Cat.  To this day, that is the full extent of our love for the official characters and settings.  

 

Wait-  when I got the 4e GM shield with the paper minis, my then GM-in-training ran a short but fun "you play the villains" campaign that resulted in the death of pretty much all the 4e heroes and a sizeable chunk of the villains to whom we had current access, but that was really the only joy we ever got from official characters.

 

Now we used the _crap_ out of the pilicemen and civillains set, burning copy after copy of that set.

 

The best "use" we got from the cardboard heroes was inspiration.  Almost immediately after we cooied the first set, we took our remaining nickels (man, I am _old_!) and began screwing with character sheets and the xerox machines various resizing options.  (I know we can do a lot with digital imaging, but we will never be able to do it crisply and cleanly as we did with simple glass lenses).

 

Within three our four weekends, we had worked out the "perfect  formula" for reducing the character portraits on the character sheets down to the identical size as the cardboard heroes and we printed the crap out of those across the next ten years or so-  PCS, NPCs- anyone with a chracter sheet portrait.  We would print multiples of recurring characters and Pcs, and of course, it is a wonder that we disnt wear the ink off of the original "cops and such" set!      

 

Those law enforcement and civillains saw use in Champtions, Traveller, Tunnels,and Trolls, Boot Hill, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Space Master, Starships and Spacemen-- they were our go-to civilian NPCs for pretty much every RPG that had an included map, and as actual PCs during our brief foray into Paranoia (we used colored pencils on the white space around the characters to indicate security clearance.)

 

I recall a couple of the guys ponying up for a couple of packs of fantasy heroes ("they never have the perfect magic user!" was a common complaint) and I-don't-remember how many packs of monsters for fantasy.  I bought the Champions ones and the Car Warriors set (_a_ Car Warriors set?  I don't remember if there others).  Full disclosure:  I bought them with an eye toward using them more NPCs, as we never played Var Wars as anything but a tactical game.

 

I always wanted to find a Traveller-appropriate set, but given GDWs unusual choice for map scaling (15mm, more like old-school war games of the past), I guess Steve Jackson figured there wasn't enough universal appeal to risk it.

 

At any rate, we used them, but only to photocopy into soemthing we were willing to cut up, Mark on, spill drinks onto, and- in moments of triumph over a particularly difficult fiend, smash with a fist or immolate with a cigarette lighter (oh yeah...  I am going to cast one last fireball....)

 

(Unasked for aside:  none of us smoked.  _None_ of us.  For whatever reason, most of us carried lighters.  I was dating a gorgeous young lady who smoked; Robert had been a Scout his entire life (he was also the only other one that carried a knife).  I have no idea why the others had lighters.....)

 

 

 

18 hours ago, Grow-Arm-Hair Lad said:

 

I guess I want to know: did you ever use them in-game?

 

Well, I guess I jumped the gun a bit on that one; didnt I? 

 

So....  _kinda_..?  As the originals were called Cardboard Heroes and printed on cardstock, we took to referring to our xeroxed copies as "Paper Dolls."  We still do, as we still use a lot of them.  Granted, over they years, each of us has been able to buy a mini here and there for favorite characters--  and of late, pre-colored minis are available, amd that has been the most wonderful thing for me.... IF THEY WEREN'T ALL FOR FANTASY!!!  But it is still difficult to find minis for superheroes or Westerns or certain niche one-off campaigns, so paper dolls still see a lot of action at my tables.  Maybe not as much as they did at the supers table (thank you, FDW3773!), but they still see action.

 

It is wierd: when you are young and trying to pay bills and go to school, you had to be very budget-minded, especially about things that you couldn't eat.  Today, making ten times as much money as you thought you would, there is even less budget for entertainment.  Personally, I don't think cheap easily-acquired character stand ins are ever going to go away. 

 

 

18 hours ago, Grow-Arm-Hair Lad said:

 

I had a DM that used the Cardboard Heroes for Fantasy. It's just such a big part of the start of my rpg-ing.

 

 

It isn't as big for mine as it once was, mostly thanks to almost-affordable color plastic minis (but only for fantasy and either World War, so far as I can tell), but it is still a part of it.

 

 

Super Squirrel (who hasn't been here in ages) and Scott Ruggels have both posted in the past on using custom Shrink Dinks as minis.  I would _love_ to see some nice clear up-close shots of that!

 

 

 

[BigJackBrass]

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Loubet did some other stuff for Champions, but his most significant contribution os the cover of Justice, Inc.

 

You're thinking of Danger International, I believe. The cover of Justice, Inc. was by Brian K. Hamilton.

Edited April 23, 2023 by BigJackBrass

[Barton]

I purchased THREE copies [two on deep discount]. Use them all the time in my games. Wonderful collection, even includes Wild West minis.

 

[Duke Bushido]

1 hour ago, BigJackBrass said:

 

You're thinking of Danger International, I believe. The cover of Justice, Inc. was by Brian K. Hamilton.

Ah; you are right, of course.  I was picturing one and naming the other.

 

Apologies all around. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I love Denis Loubet's work, especially his Fantasy Hero illustrations.  Him and Zircher were the top of the line, to me, of Hero art, akin to Trampier for D&D.

[Joe Walsh]

On 4/22/2023 at 6:42 PM, Grow-Arm-Hair Lad said:

I guess I want to know: did you ever use them in-game? I had a DM that used the Cardboard Heroes for Fantasy. It's just such a big part of the start of my rpg-ing.

 

Back in the day, I was a die-hard metal minis guy. Yeah, nothing like spending your formative years handling lead figures! 😂

 

I only owned a few cardboard figures -- the ones that came with the original GURPS Basic Set and the ones that came with the 4e Champions GM Screen. Didn't use any of 'em in play.

 

Oh, wait -- there were the ones in TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, too. Those we used for a while. And same for Indiana Jones, too, I believe.

 

Anyway, these days I've come around on the subject. Partly because I'm not able to paint figures like I used to, and partly because I don't want to have to keep a billion metal minis on hand just in case we might need them.

 

I think it was around the time Savage Worlds came out that I switched. I went back and bought all the Cardboard Heroes I could get in PDF format and printed what we needed, eventually supplementing with printables made available on DTRPG. All of a sudden I had a use for the pennies in the coin jar!

 

(I may go back to dimensional minis if I ever get around to getting a resin printer (and accessories...). I've had decent results with my FDM printer, but I'm not sure it's worth it.)

[BoloOfEarth]

We used the Champions cardboard heroes / villains for years and years, as well as a number of the Steve Jackson Games ones.  Along the way, I made a template in Word and pasted in pics of homebrew characters (usually pics downloaded along the way and used as inspiration for my own characters), with the character's names on the back. 

 

Only recently have I begun collecting and painting minis.  Also purchased a bunch of second-hand DC and Marvel HeroClix figures, removed them from the too-large HeroClix bases, and glued them onto smaller bases bought online.  I probably have a good 200 of those, and for any given adventure i might pick out ones that are close enough to the characters in play that we can all tell who's who.  

 

However, the cardboard characters have a special place in my heart.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Also purchased a bunch of second-hand DC and Marvel HeroClix figures, removed them from the too-large HeroClix bases, and glued them onto smaller bases bought online. 

 

We did that with a few of them as well, they have some nice figures but the base with the click mechanism is too huge.  Its a pretty fun game on its own with the clicks but yeah.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 4/23/2023 at 1:48 PM, BigJackBrass said:

 

You're thinking of Danger International, I believe. The cover of Justice, Inc. was by Brian K. Hamilton.

Dennis did the cover to Aaron’s Lands of Mystery. So I can see where the confusion is. Brian K. HAMILTON’s painting is hanging safely in Steve Petersen’s living room.  

[Scott Ruggels]

On 4/23/2023 at 11:47 AM, Duke Bushido said:

Super Squirrel (who hasn't been here in ages) and Scott Ruggels have both posted in the past on using custom Shrink Dinks as minis.  I would _love_ to see some nice clear up-close shots of that!

 

Oh gosh. I’d have to make something new, from scratch maybe Bob still has his Centurion figure. But I don’t have a lot of the art from those days, and what I do have, was used in the Champions Begins project last year. 

[greypaladin_01]

For the longest time I only had the pack that came with the 4th Edition DM screen.  But those were SO helpful with my champions games... I used them for years.   Once HeroClix started to appear I transitioned over to a mix of Cardboard and Clix for use at the table.   Since then I found the full Modern Heroes pack but I have not cut them apart yet.   Sadly my Table gaming days are in decline for a long while now, most of what i do being online with things like discord chat.  But still have very found memories of these figures.