Champions vs other systems

[Katherine]

What are the pros and cons of Champions/Hero vs these other systems in your opinion?

 

Storyteller Aberrant

Mutants and Masterminds

Silver Age Sentinels

Godlike/Wild Talents

Marvel Universe Role Playing

 

I'm interested in factual things and personal opinion as well. Which system would rate as best and which would be second?

[Blue]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

The Pro: I've actually played Champions

 

 

Man, I lead a sheltered life. I haven't played a diffferent SH game since V&V, Superworld, and Heroes Unlimited.

[OddHat]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Only the ones I've GMed:

 

Hero - Powerful, incredibly easy to customize on every level, good combat system for comic books and high adventure but needs to be tweaked for "realism", well textured, very well supported, vast armies of pre-made heroes and villains on the web and in book form, OK but generic world. My personal favorite.

 

Aberrant - Fast and easy character design, mechanics are not bad, not as easy to customize as Hero, great world background with some very strange world design choices, terrible modules and poor NPC design from a mechanics POV, NPCs often interesting from a writing POV, no real support, web community is still out there but not all that vital.

 

Silver Age Sentinels - Mechanics are easy, harder to customize than Hero and not as well textured, OK world background but not as interesting as Aberrant, well supported, combat had some very odd effects and design choices, fairly good NP design but nothing "wow", very nie production values and some good licenses as far as the Authority version of the system is concerned. Easy to bring over BESM materials if you'd like. Not bad.

 

Godlike/Wild Talents - Fantastic world background, right up there with Aberrant. Lots of ideas you will use in other games, good production values, moderate support from a small company and a small but active web community, easy enough mechanically but a bit of a pain to tweak, very low powered gaming in the Godlike setting and some just annoying design decisions made to keep the players from disrupting the time-line, Wild Talents is said to be better about this but may never be released.

[nexus]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

What are the pros and cons of Champions/Hero vs these other systems in your opinion?

 

Storyteller Aberrant

Mutants and Masterminds

Silver Age Sentinels

Godlike/Wild Talents

Marvel Universe Role Playing

 

I'm interested in factual things and personal opinion as well. Which system would rate as best and which would be second?

 

Aberrant: I didn't care much for the mechanics. They were fast and open though. The setting had some pretty poor choices and was needlessly dark which seems to be hallmark of White Wolf

 

Mutants And Masterminds:Can't comment, haven't really had a chance to look at it.

 

SAS: The setting was nice. The game plays fairly fast but I had issues with character generation and I didn't like just having three stats.

 

Godlike:Can't comment.

 

Marvel:Pretty unique game mechanics I thought, but it wasn't explained well. I think it was dropped far too fast.

[Solomon]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Marvel Universe - features an unusual diceless resource allocation system. Simple and fast but somewhat flavorless and not easily customizable. Also, it's poorly written IMHO. Pros: It's Marvel. Cons: The line's dead.

 

I'll second OddHat word per word on the other games.

[Guest rbezold]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

For what it's worth...

 

Over the years, I've seen superhero games come in two flavors. Either they try to imitate Champions, or they try to make a system that is completely incompatible with any other system to encourage customer loyalty. Marvel, in particular, is notorious for this.

 

Me? I say go with the original. I mean I'm not butt kissing here or anything, but to me the Hero system is to supers what TSR was to fantasy: the eight-hundred pound gorilla with the standard nobody can match.

 

And it was the original Champions back in '84 that caused me to throw out a hundred bucks worth of DnD books and never look back. I know a winner when I see one

[Just A Guy Name]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

I own and have read all the systems you named, but the only one I have played (besides Hero) is Silver Age Sentinels. My opinions on the others should be taken as being less informed.

 

Aberrant: The background is too dark for me (as befits the source, I suppose). And I have never liked the Storyteller mechanics. This is probably my least favourite.

 

Mutants & Masterminds: I really like the background presented in the Freedom City supplement, and the game is pretty well supported by Green Ronin and it's fan community. However, due to some deficiency on my part (despite two readings of the rules), I just can't make sense of the mechanics.

 

Silver Age Sentinels: Easily my favourite in this list. Character creation is simple enough. I view the three stats as more of a feature than a limitation. Powers are reasonably straight-forward for those coming from Hero to understand. Fans on the GoO board are generally friendly and helpful, though the traffic there is lighter than here. Company support (in the form of new material) is spotty, which is kind of a turn-off. The Empire City background is, IMO, the best of any published shrpg. The Reality Storm supplement (with it's official conversion system for Hero/SAS) makes material from one system transportable to the other w/o much trouble. I agree with Oddhat's assessment that it is not as easily tweakable as Hero.

 

Godlike: I've toyed with this system (haven't actually gamed with it). I like the semi-realistic "WWII with supers" background, although the hoops the writers jump through to ensure that the outcome does not deviate far from the historical is a bit annoying. I find the mechanics a bit clunky, though they seem playable.

 

Marvel Universe: On the positive side: It's Marvel. Write-ups are available for pretty much all the major characters in the Marvel Universe. OTOH, the mechanics are quirky to the point of obscurity. I'd say they are the weakest of these games.

[The Horror]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

I can comment on Godlike. It's been a while, so there may be some small errors which I'd welcome people to correct.

 

On the surface the system seems fantastic. Roll a number of d10 equal to your stat + skill (but never more than 10). You aim to get matching numbers. So rolling up a double of any number will constitute a success. The more matches you get of a number, the faster you succeed. So someone who rolls a triple 2 will go faster than someone who rolls a double 2. The higher the actual number rolled the better you do at it.

 

Now the entire basis behind this is that you can in theory compress every aspect of combat down to the one roll. In actual fact it is a horrible mess that leaves much to be desired. And it's time consuming. Allow me to explain.

 

In combat, matches determine initiative. So if A gets a double 3, B gets a double 5, and C gets a triple 2, then C will act first followed by both A and B. Ok, this is good so far.

 

The actual roll on the match will indicate hit location. So if you roll a double 10 you hit them in the head, whereas a double 2 will hit the legs. Ok so far as well.

 

Now here is where it all screws up. Damage is determined by the weapon used and by the number of matches you get. So if you score a double 5, you will do 2+x damage to your enemy (x is the weapon modifier). If you score a triple 5 you will do 3+x damage to your enemy. The problem with this is that the number of matches also determine initiative, meaning that people acting first will always do more damage with their attacks. There is also a rule in place which states that when you hit someone, they lose a die from the matches rolled in their set. So in the example I get above, C acted first and shot A. Player A would lose one match from his action, reducing it to one die and thereby missing. Another advantage of going first.

 

But it gets better. One of the ways to represent increased difficulty in a task is to increase the number they must roll matches in before succeeding. So for example, a guy running across an open field will be harder to hit than he was standing still. So when you try and hit him you must roll a match on your dice, but they won't count unless the match result is greater than 3. So a double 1 will miss, but a double 4 will hit. Remember how hit location is determined by that same number? Well, it means that in this example you can never hit someone in the legs if they are running!

 

Then there are the armor complications. This is a bit complex so I'll just say that different types of armor behave very differently under this system, leading to absurdities in some specific situations of combat where it becomes better to rely on a thin wood wall for protection than a thick metal one. And I havent' even gone into wiggle and hard dice yet. Actually, hard dice is worth going over for the sheer absurdity.

 

Essentially a hard die is a die you can buy for your super character that will always roll a 10, every single time. So if you buy two hard dice in coordination for example, and you fire a gun at someone, you will always get an automatic match of two dice to hit them in the head (remember, a 10 is a head hit location). But what if they are sticking their head into a sewer opening, and you have to shoot them elsewhere? Well, to get around simple dillemas like that the creators of the game made up a rule. They said that "you actually shoot them elsewhere, but you damage them exactly as if you'd hit them in the head". In other words, you kill them almost every time regardless of where you shoot them. All fine and all until your character dies because he got shot in the finger whilst climbing over a wall.

 

Note that all this is not actually much faster than combat in any other game, Hero included. Everyone must roll their dice together, and check for matches. Then as people get hit they have to keep track of matches they still have left etc.

 

The entire problem with the system is the one roll engine itself. Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stoltze did this in Unknown Armies as well, creating it's own host of problems there. Let me summarise their design philosophy for you:

 

"Steal the best parts of the systems currently in existence that dominate this particular genre of game, then funk it up a little here and there and streamline all the rolls down to a minimum irrespective of how it may screw with common sense."

 

Reading through Godlike I was amazed at how much like Hero it was. To design the powers you do the effect based thing and spend points to purchase up what you want. Only of course the system itself limits exactly what you can do, and a lot of fudging is required all over the place.

 

There is in my eyes no contest between the two games. The only advantage of the Godlike/Wild Talents system is that it appeals to people who can't handle Hero's character creation. Otherwise Hero is better in every respect, including character design and actual play.

 

 

 

The Horror

[philnicau]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Hero- Allows a very high degree of options in Character Design, and combat, but can be unwieldy and difficult to master, a lot of number crunching involved.

 

Storyteller Aberrant never played

Mutants and Masterminds never played

Silver Age Sentinels Similar in feel to Champions (in fact reminds me very much of it), slightly less generic, and lacking support material, but has a lot of potential.

Godlike/Wild Talentsnever played

Marvel Universe Role Playing TSR System- a fun system with quick character designs, and some novel ideas (power stunts, karma pools) unfortunately no longer produced.

Heroes Unlimited -IMO the best semi-realistic superhero game available, especially if you want to do a highly skilled normal, or a low powered hero, encourages creativity in players.

DC Heroes (mayfair games)- another fun system but unbalanced towards high end characters, but you could do a very good green lantern, and never did get the gadgetry rules working, also no longer produced

[Chimpira]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

The Pro: I've actually played Champions

 

 

Man, I lead a sheltered life. I haven't played a diffferent SH game since V&V, Superworld, and Heroes Unlimited.

Man, you are taking me back to the good old days of cold pizza, cheetos, and Mountain Dew.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Hero: longevity, consistency and a steady player base--it's basically been around for over 2 decades, has thousands of devoted fans around the world, lots of source material, and the basic mechanics have stayed largely the same--most of the changes have been big improvements. it's the most refined system for supers out there. On the down side, it may be the most complex and a little intimidating for some new players

 

I don't really have an opinion about the others...

[kloster]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

What are the pros and cons of Champions/Hero vs these other systems in your opinion?

 

Storyteller Aberrant

Mutants and Masterminds

Silver Age Sentinels

Godlike/Wild Talents

Marvel Universe Role Playing

 

I'm interested in factual things and personal opinion as well. Which system would rate as best and which would be second?

 

You forgot Golden heroes (The worst I've ever seen), the several aspects of Marvel (each by TSR, with a very simple one, a more complex, 'advanced' version, and a SAGA one, each one discontinued), DC heroes (with it's pure logarithmic system, +1 is a doubling, also discontinued), several GURPS suplements (Wild cards is a very good one),...

 

Regards,

 

Kloster

[phydaux]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

I've only ever played Villians & Vigilanties (I REALLYdidn't like the random character creation) the old Marvel system ("What do you mean 'Shift X' isn't the highest anymore?") and GURPS Supers (Champions does it this way, and it makes sense doing it that way, so we'll do it a DIFFERANT way..").

 

I play Champions for Supers and GURPS for everything else.

[philnicau]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

mentions of Superworld and Villians and Vigilantes now that takes me back,

Superworld was fun in that you basically generated a normal then gave him Superpowers, in fact some of its ideas seem to have found there way into 3E champions (endurance 1 for 10, endurance reserves)

 

Villians and Vigilantes a system where you had to worry about rewards and your secret id, and a quirky random generation system which could produce a great (we still talk about the Amazing Clam-man bitten by a radioactive clam which had be bitten by a radioactive spider) or an unplayable pc (i once had one who had 4 hps he could have been killed by a punch in the nose).

now they where the good old days.

[paigeoliver]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

The only hero game I could ever imagine playing anymore other than Champions is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness.

 

Not because that game had a great ruleset, just because it had so much flavor. Sure you can play mutant animals in Champions, but this game had all sorts of random charts for creating them and stuff, just plain awesome.

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Mutants & Masterminds: Some of the best iconic characters I've seen. They just look and feel cool. I like this d20 system better than SAS d20, and it does a good job of presenting a particular style of Supers. It's not as comprehensive as HERO, but it does handle a variety of powers in a fairly balanced manner. I haven't played it all that much, as I prefer HERO, but it is pretty solid. I can see why they have such good support from the fans and some of their licenses because it is a solid d20 product. By eliminating hit points and providing a standard effect mechanic that applies to all effects, damaging and non damaging alike, they provide a consistency and flexibility that is lacking in many d20 system implementations. The end result: a super hero system that plays fast, is fairly comprehensive, and uses a d20 for resolution. For all the flak they took from making it very un-d20 I think they made the right choice.

 

Necessary Evil/Savage Worlds: Best way to play HeroClix ever. Handles super heroes very well, although in a lighter fashion. If you like rules-light, but tactically crunchy systems... this is it. If you haven't seen Savage Worlds, give it a look. The full rules are online in their Test Drive. You can model most supers in the system, although I don't think it handles cosmic level that well (have to wait for the book to arrive).

[Legendsmiths]

Re: Champions vs other systems

 

Oooh, and SW would be perfect for TMNT.