Dark Champions

[sbarron]

The Harbinger of Justice thread got me to thinking about the Dark Champions genre/setting a bit. Reading the description from the Our Products page, Dark Champions is no longer low powered supers. Now it is "...modern-day action-adventure genre — everything from vigilante crimefighting, to espionage, to technothrillers, to special forces, to cops and robbers."

 

Nothing about that makes me think supers will be mentioned at all. Maybe some really low grade super abilities, but that's it. And quite frankly, I hope that's the case. The super genre has been pretty well covered by Hero products so far. I'd like to get more info on playing the genre's listed above. Not toned down supers, and not agents from a superheroic setting. Something closer to the "real" world.

 

The HoJ thread reads like Hudson City will be the Gotham to Millennium City's Metropolis. But the modern day action adventure, espionage, technothrillers, special forces, and cops and robbers genre's don't have superheroes. Vigilante crimefighting obviously could, but it doesn't have to. Is Dark Champions intended to cover the low powered supers setting, and also cover the other genres it lists in it description? Or will it only cover the genres it lists, and leave the low powered supers to its Champions line (this is my hope)?

 

Will Hudson City be like DC's Gotham, meaning a setting for 4th Ed Dark Champions (e.g. low power supers)? Or will it be a city outside of the Champions Universe, where there are no superpowers and no superheroes?

 

And what does that mean for Predators? Will it contain a bunch of Batman type villians? Or will it be James Bond, Bruce Willis character, and Tom Clancy type baddies?

 

Lastly, what are you hoping for from Dark Champions?

[Edsel]

My Dark Champions campaigns have always been intended for, essentially, non-superpowered player characters. I hope for a truely street-level supplement. I agree that the superpowers genre is covered pretty throughly by Champions. Checkout my Omega Teams Campaign logs thread if you want to see an example of one of my Dark Champions campaigns.

 

I have always been partial to horror as well and Dark Champions and horror seem to mesh very well. I hope that a new version of Horror Hero will be released as well but who knows how far off that it. I am very eager for Dark Champions and I checkout Steve's News each Friday looking for the first mention of it.

 

The old 4th Ed. Dark Champions was great but just a little too high-powered. Fortunately it was written in a manner that allowed it to be easily scaled and I expect that the 5th Edition will be similar.

 

What I want to see in Dark Champions is a good coverage of modern real-world equipment. Modern real-world criminals, terrorists, and settings. A good rewrite of Hudson City would be wonderful though I believe that this is to be subject of a settings book.

[Monolith]

Re: Dark Champions

 

Originally posted by sbarron

The super genre has been pretty well covered by Hero products so far. I'd like to get more info on playing the genre's listed above. Not toned down supers, and not agents from a superheroic setting. Something closer to the "real" world.

I agree that the superhero genre is covered well by Champions but DOJ must publish books which sell. We've already seen that the scifi genre is a dead fish. Iron/bronze age street-level superhero material has always been popular within the Hero community, and popularity leads to sales.

 

As I said in the other thread, the Dark Champions book will be a genre book which covers many aspects of street-level crime, but I really don't expect to see DOJ publish a SWAT book, for example, in the near future. The demand just wouldn't be there.

 

The HoJ thread reads like Hudson City will be the Gotham to Millennium City's Metropolis. But the modern day action adventure, espionage, technothrillers, special forces, and cops and robbers genre's don't have superheroes. Vigilante crimefighting obviously could, but it doesn't have to. Is Dark Champions intended to cover the low powered supers setting, and also cover the other genres it lists in it description? Or will it only cover the genres it lists, and leave the low powered supers to its Champions line (this is my hope)?

My understanding is that DC will cover it all from lower-powered supers genre to SWAT teams. The sub-genre books will break it down further. Hudson City is the lower-powered superhero sub-genre. Something else will be the "espionage" sub-genre, etc. This is the same as saying The Turakian Age is a sub-genre for "classic" fantasy while the The Valdorian Age is a sub-genre for dark fantasy.

 

Will Hudson City be like DC's Gotham, meaning a setting for 4th Ed Dark Champions (e.g. low power supers)? Or will it be a city outside of the Champions Universe, where there are no superpowers and no superheroes?

Hudson City is part of the CU. It is listed as existing in the CU on page 80 of Champions Univese in the sidebar.

 

And what does that mean for Predators? Will it contain a bunch of Batman type villians? Or will it be James Bond, Bruce Willis character, and Tom Clancy type baddies?

My guess is that Predators will be low-powered, street-level villains to be used with Hudson City. Some of the other books will be describing other things. Looking at the potential future books we see:

 

The Cagliostro Project (subgenre book)

Danger International (subgenre book)

Dark Champions: The Animated Series (subgenre book)

The Evil That Men Do (crime and organized crime sourcebook)

Fell's Point (setting/campaign book)

The Man On The Street (normals book)

SERAPH (organization book)

 

As you can see, The Cagliostro Project and Danger International will be other Dark Champions genres. DOJ just chose to go with Hudson City first due to the popularity of lower-powered supers. My guess is that SERAPH will be for Danger International (very Bond-like) and The Evil That Men Do will be usable for multiple genres.

 

It doesn't appear that the military genre will be covered too quickly, but Steve did mention he wanted to do a book on that when he was cutting the information from Alien Wars, so it is forthcoming eventually.

 

Lastly, what are you hoping for from Dark Champions?

I'm not a big fan of the DC genre itself. I have more use for low-powered supers (converting to Champions) than I do Danger International. I never could understand how DI worked in a group basis. It always ended up seeming to Mission: Impossible-like for me. I wouldn't mind seeing more information on organized crime, but that's really about it for me.

[misterdeath]

I would like to see Dark Champions become Danger International. Concentrating on Modern Times Adventuring. Spies, Mercs, Super Agents, horroresque monster hunters, perhaps even a modern magic setting, would all fit into this.

 

I'd then like to see Dark Champions become a separate book, dealing more with "gritty dark age" comics, using Hudson City as the backdrop. Maybe just make it in a bigger Hudson City sourcebook.

 

Not lower powered per se, but more gritty. Perhaps to some degree "more realistic".

 

IMX, Dark Champions supers characters were a lot like regular Champions characters, with slightly lower active point costs (1 60 point, a bunch of 40ish pointers) and lower defenses (resistant ones definately). Maybe lower Dex and Speed, but not so much so.

 

(since, in 5th edition, there's been a move to lower Defenses anyways, I don't know if there's a need to drop them any more.)

 

But, I'd like it to be possible for the Champions to go to Hudson City and work with the local supers on a meaningful level.

 

D

[misterdeath]

Of cource, it occurs to me that I'm not sure how well stand alone "modern" type games do.

 

I've seen lots of them come and go, in various sub-genre's.

 

The attempt by DOJ to link low levels supers with the modern genre might be an attempt to get market share from both groups, rather than publishing two separate lines of stuff, and having neither sell.

 

D

[RDU Neil]

Old debate...

 

When the original Dark Champions came around, we had some of these same discussions. With the word "Champions" in the title... I still thought supers, but with a focus on crime fighting, not world saving. What I found was that it could be that, but it was also a replacement for the beloved Danger International... the Spies, Mercs, PI, modern adventurer genre.

 

To me, they are different. I love DI level stuff... but those are "normal" people, and deal with "realistic" plots... no supers, magic, etc. Dark Champions to me, was still supers and the paranormal... just dark and gritty. To Monolith's point, it was the supplement to support a more Iron Age approach to comics.

 

Unfortunately, Dark Champions seemed to be perceived as "Kiler Vigilante: The Role Playing Game" more than anything. This bugged me. I thought a Daredevil or Batman type (Detective Comics, not JLA) was a perfect Dark Champions character...crime fighters not world beaters, but the bias was toward the "World of Punishers" which I thought ridiculous.

 

The new Dark Champions seems to be trying to do the same thing. It is like it's own Sub-genre, in a way. You can use it for DI, or crime fighers or to add flavor to a full fledged supers campaign... and that is cool for us who don't use published settings... but I think it is a real mistake to publish a setting like Hudson City as this crime and vigilante ridden place that exists alongside Millennium City. I don't buy the Gotham/Metropolis dichotomy in the comics, either. It's such a false, contrived and forced separation, that it makes no sense. Spoils the verisimilitude of the Champions Universe (or the DCU for that matter) for me.

 

If you noted my thread on my current game... Secret Worlds... that to me is an attempt at my "perfect" Dark Champions world. It has "over the top action" and "more than human" characters, but only JUST over the top, and just a LITTLE more than human. It is a cross between the "realism" of Danger International... with the wilder stories and easier to accept high adventure feel of low (very low) level supers without the conventions of costumes and code names and secret IDs, etc.

 

That is what I want from Dark Champions.

[assault]

Yeah, it's all standard arguments...

 

Danger International was originally the product that covered modern "non-super" roleplaying. (Actually, there was Espionage before that but...)

 

Dark Champions covered different ground.

 

Now DC seems to be covering DI's territory too. That's fine - it may be a good economic decision, if modern day non-super games don't sell too well - but, of course, it also should cover the street level superheroes adequately.

 

So, with that proviso, I'm over my original resistance to the concept.

 

As for the original DC: unfortunately the "World of Punishers" idea was heavily supported by the "guns and stuff" emphasis of the products. "Idealistic" campaigns were explicitly mentioned, but weren't the mainstream. It rather quickly became clear that characters like Batman, Daredevil, the Question or Green Arrow (Black Canary, Black Widow, the Huntress or Catwoman) were going to be swamped under a tidal wave of gits with machineguns.

 

Hence I never played Dark Champions.

[GrooveD70]

Hmm... Metropolis and Gotham

 

I like the Idea of Millenium City and Hudson being like Metropilis and Gotham. Id throw money in that direction. But it seems like that could be accomplished in a book similar to Millenium City with the addition of a section on running a low powered gritty supers game. But I never played the original DC...

[Lowly Uhlan]

I think it's great that DC will involve low-powered supers. I've missed previous editions and had Draedevil-Spawn-Punisher stuff in mind for the characters, It would be great for the players to fallin with the 'wrong crowd" and run afoul of UNTIL!

 

I'm really looking forward to it.

[Eosin]

I am a little more towards the modern paramilitary along with some super flavoring and paranormal slant. I like Cardshark, DEMON, PRIMUS, and the like being involved with Hudson City but a Silver Avenger is a little too butch for most DC games.

 

I am all for the Daredevil, Batman, etc...type approach but tone them down enough that street crime is still a challenge. I think the appeal is that you can do a "just over the top" type of game or you can do an "X-files" type of game or even a "Nightwing Comic" if you like and all of them work equally well.