What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

[allen]

Hey guys, I'm getting started on DARK CHAMPIONS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (DC: TAS, from here on out) and this is the traditional "What Do You Want To See" Thread.

 

First a little about the book....

 

The book has two goals.

 

First, to serve as a sub-genre book that covers two types of Dark Champions campaigns. (1) Non-superpowered heroes who have, to some extent, a four-color comic book attitude toward their vigilante activities (for instance, PCs with a Code Versus Killing). (2) Low-point superpowered heroes, aka street-level superheroes, like Daredevil and Spider-Man (the early years more so than lately -- back when Spider-Man fought the Kingpin, the Owl, Silvermane, and those sorts of guys on a regular basis). DC: TAS defines the differences between these two campaigns, including information on the prominent features and tropes of each, character creation guidelines, advice for the GM, etc.

 

Second, to serve as an enemy book that provides a GM with antagonists for PCs in both types of campaign described above. Toward this end the book will have approximately 40 character sheets, give or take a few. A handful of those will be heroes. The lion's share of the book will be character sheets.

 

So, keeping all that mind, I'd love to hear what you guys want out of this book....

[BobGreenwade]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

I think one thing that would make the book really handy is a way to bring DC:TAS characters into either straight DC or straight Champs game, just like Batman can work with Superman and the Justice League or with a squad of regular cops.

 

Along the same lines, it probably would be good to gear the enemies as much as possible for use in a regular Champs game. Even if you have to write them up in a particular way for DC:TAS, maybe the Campaign Use section of each character can advise the GM on adjusting for straight Champs.

 

Some sample TAS-type powers might be cool too, like some of the Super-Skills being bandied about in another thread, some Hyper-Characteristics Powers, and the like.

[MitchellS]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

In all honesty what you are describing here is what I thought the Hudson City campaign setting was all about: A dark campaign environment for trained and low-powered supers. If that's not the case then I'll probably need to re-evaluate my interest in one or the other of the products.

 

As far at the "lion's share" of the book being predominately villains write ups, again I thought that's what the purpose of Predators was.

 

I guess I'm all confused.

[Steve]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Hey guys, I'm getting started on DARK CHAMPIONS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (DC: TAS, from here on out) and this is the traditional "What Do You Want To See" Thread.

 

...

 

So, keeping all that mind, I'd love to hear what you guys want out of this book....

 

I would like to see suggestions for how a DC:TAS GM can use powers and disadvantages to replicate the genre, how it differs from straight Dark Champions in the inclusion of more four-color elements and low-end powers.

 

I would like to see detailed suggestions for how to establish a colorful rogues gallery for a costumed hero, creating memorable costumed villains with plenty of repeatable use. The new edition of Dark Champions mentioned a few new names, such as Anagram and Serpentine, and I hope to see write-ups for those as examples. But I would also like to see the return of old favorites such as Penny Dreadful.

 

But even more than that, I would like to see DarkAngel return, and for her to be used as the example for a DC:TAS sort of character and campaign. Perhaps a FRED write-up for her as a starting heroine at 250 and then a more experienced version at 350 or maybe even 450, to show ways in which she has grown and changed as a crimefighter over her career. By using her as an example, I would like to see how to weave a hero and their rogues gallery into a city's urban mythology. Does DarkAngel stick to the shadows and get treated as some kind of urban myth? Or is she more open in her crimefighting? Does she have fans, and how does fandom affect a vigilante crimefighter? Are there webpages or fan clubs for such heroes? How does the press treat her?

[OddHat]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

I think a good chunk of stuff on how to marry a DC:TAS campaign with a Mystic World and/or Horror campaign could be very interesting. John Constantine, Doctor Occult, The Shadow, and many other characters and titles opperated right on the borders between the Street Supers and Mystic genres. It's a natural fit.

[GestaltBennie]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

I'd like good villains with a 40s Dick Tracy and early Batman feel. Not just guys with guns - guys with twisted psyches, physical scars, and great motifs (some of whom had guns).

 

You should be able to take every villain in the book, port him into a Batman story, and have him feel right at home.

 

In the previous iteration of Dark Champions, Pokerface was the villain which really nailed this for me. More guys like him (with expanded hooks on how to use him), please.

[Steve Long]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

In all honesty what you are describing here is what I thought the Hudson City campaign setting was all about: A dark campaign environment for trained and low-powered supers. If that's not the case then I'll probably need to re-evaluate my interest in one or the other of the products.

 

As far at the "lion's share" of the book being predominately villains write ups, again I thought that's what the purpose of Predators was.

 

I guess I'm all confused.

 

I think the descriptions from the "Our Products" page cover the three books pretty well:

 

Hudson City: The Urban Abyss: Situated on the southern coast of New Jersey, Hudson City is a gleaming, modern metropolis - and a cesspool of crime, corruption, and evil. Hudson City: The Urban Abyss details this setting for Dark Champions, from its prominent citizens, to the criminals who run empires of vice and blood on the streets, to its scenic (and often dangerous) locations.

 

Dark Champions: The Animated Series: The first subgenre book for Dark Champions takes a look at the less grim side of vigilante crimefighting: caped crusaders with vigilante attitudes but an unwillingness to kill; low-powered superhumans who fight street crime instead of world-threatening supervillains; "theme" villains with clever costumes but psychotic minds. It's a perfect blending of Champions and Dark Champions!

 

Predators: Criminals prowl the streets of Hudson City, always on the lookout for their next victim. This enemies book for Dark Champions describes these predators. It includes grotesque crimelords like Diomedes and the Kyphotic Man, cold-blooded assassins like Satan's Kiss and Andres Panthanatos, mercenary villains like Guillotine and Jackknife, vicelords like Caligula and Cleopatra, wily thieves like Chiaroscuro and Dagger, and serial killers like Siddhartha and the Shrike. Whatever type of Dark Champions campaign you run, this book has just the villains you need.

 

 

IOW: Hudson City is a setting book. It's primarily aimed at vigilante crimefighting and law enforcement games -- no powers involved, particularly, and that's certainly the default as the setting's presented. However, as a setting you could put many types of campaigns in there if you chose.

 

Predators is an enemies book to accompany the setting. It, too, generally won't feature "powered" characters, though there may be a few with really low-level "paranormal" abilities.

 

DC:TAS is a subgenre book that covers, in part, the "low-powered street superheroes" subgenre of Dark Champions, as described on page 11 of DC itself. As such, it's the book that's going to present things like superpowered characters you can use in the Hudson City setting. They're not part of the "official continuity" per se, because they're overtly superpowered -- but that's the whole point of a subgenre book, to show different takes on a genre and ways to play games in it.

[Tom McCarthy]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Well, it's Allen Thomas writing it, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

Pulpy villains, even stereotypically so. The time of crimebosses who are scary and crazy enough to kill underlings for failing them. Preferably with strange motifs and themes (video games, clowns, mimes, opera, romance, playing cards, monocles, top hats, umbrellas, riddles, puzzles, confectionery and pastry, baking, eggs, snakes, scorpions, spiders, jetpacks, airplanes, postage stamps, lumberjacks, boomerangs, colours, you name it). Giant props would be good too (robot dinosaurs, oversize coins, giant typewriters, 40 foot lottery machines).

 

Strong jawed heroes with a CvK and the kind of PRE attack where punks just crumble and talk. The kind of heroes who have strong psych lims about doing the right thing and at least one mental hangup or flaw that makes you think 'this guy is mentally damaged' (dead parents are good, dead sibling hasn't been seen as much, ailing parents and sibling are promising, too). Oh, and they should be uninterested in material wealth; maybe they're rich or maybe won't accept rewards.

 

I want to feel an emphasis on style over detail. If you've studied the Shadow, you know about the fire opal ring, the magnums, and Shangri-La. But you also know that all this unfolds slowly, only seen in glimpses. Digital Hero had a nice article on the importance of style in TAS campaigns.

 

I want grandiose schemes. Blackmailing someone is a crime, but it's rare that it impacts a TAS hero. Blackmailing the city, cornering the drug market, stealing a unique artifact or radioactive isotope, these all qualify. They all scream out that something unique is happening here, and it needs a special hero to stop it.

 

If you've got the space, a CU:TAS section might be good. Note how Nighthawk and Nightwind fit well in DC:TAS, as does Shugosin. In a limited way, Solitaire might, too.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

DC:TAS is a subgenre book that covers' date=' in part, the "low-powered street superheroes" subgenre of Dark Champions, as described on page 11 of DC itself. As such, it's the book that's going to present things like superpowered characters you can use in the Hudson City setting. They're not part of the "official continuity" per se, because they're overtly superpowered -- but that's the whole point of a subgenre book, to show different takes on a genre and ways to play games in it.[/quote']Maybe you could split the difference, and create another community near Hudson City where these characters could properly fit in...?

 

(Just a suggestion.)

[Tom McCarthy]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Didn't Chris Avellone have community just down the coast (on a peninsula, I think) from Hudson where there were actually low-powered superheroes fighting DC style campaigns ? I thought it was the setting for Widows and Orphans and New Bedlam Asylum.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Yeah, it was Fells Point. I wonder if that might work for this.

[JmOz]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

I know the answer is no: BUT PLEASE CHANGE THE NAME, it sounds to kiddy.

 

Maybe something like: Dark Champions: Angels of the Steet? I don't know, I just think TAS sounds dumb

 

(my original idea I still think was best: Dark Champions = Action Hero; DC:TAS=Dark Champions)

 

Other sugestions: despite the name, these heroes have to deal with death more often, talk about it (Bats just lost another robin)

[The_Hero]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

The only reason I'd want to see a name change is fear of Hero being sued by Batman the Animated Series guys

 

 

Incorporating theme villains would be cool...

 

Designing cheap equipment would too, esp as there was talk of an everyman equipment pdf awhile ago...

[MitchellS]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Not that there's a lot of activity in the DC forum but this thread could probably use a "sticky" just as the WDYWTS: Hudson City has to keep it from falling below the radar.

[Steve Long]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Fell's Point is way too dark and grim for what we have in mind here. I do hope to get Chris to do an FP sourcebook at some point, but that's a separate animal.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Fell's Point is way too dark and grim for what we have in mind here. I do hope to get Chris to do an FP sourcebook at some point' date=' but that's a separate animal.[/quote']Okay, that sounds about right now that you mention the darkness. I never actually went through the original Fell's Point material in detail, but I did see a few excerpts and you're more than right.

 

Still, putting the DC:TAS material in a community near Hudson City would (IMO) be a nice touch, for all the reasons already mentioned.

[assault]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Okay, that sounds about right now that you mention the darkness. I never actually went through the original Fell's Point material in detail, but I did see a few excerpts and you're more than right.

 

Still, putting the DC:TAS material in a community near Hudson City would (IMO) be a nice touch, for all the reasons already mentioned.

 

The bit of Fell's Point stuff I saw reminded me of the darker Batman graphic novels. DC:TAS characters can do that stuff too, but it isn't all they do.

 

I think that DC:TAS needs to be set in a pretty big city, in order to get the proper Gotham/NYC feel. While the Question and Green Arrow have both been based in smaller towns, most of the source material is firmly big city. And that suggests that the DC:TAS material would have to be in Hudson City itself, because "big cities" don't just grow on trees.

 

Besides, it seems wasteful not to take advantage of all the neat stuff Steve is working on for us.

 

All Hudson City really needs is a few warehouses full of giant props and it's perfect.

[Koshka]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

A discussion of running CvK heroes against non-CvK villains.

 

If you're running standard Champions, and your heroes are going against Foxbat, they can feel relatively confident that he's not going to use nerve gas on the hostages. In this subgenre (if I'm on the same wavelength as Allen and Steve), your CvK heroes could go against someone easily as bonkers as Foxbat, but who doesn't have any objection to killing. Even if the heroes do everything right, there's going to be a good chance of hostage fatalities if the guards have machine guns covering those hostages instead of tasers. How does a GM run these types of encounters, keeping the villains in character, but not dumping piles of corpses on the PCs' consciences when they didn't do anything wrong to deserve it?

[Steve Long]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

In this subgenre (if I'm on the same wavelength as Allen and Steve), your CvK heroes could go against someone easily as bonkers as Foxbat, but who doesn't have any objection to killing.

 

Oh, sure, absolutely. The obvious examples in the comics would be the Joker or Two-Face (and even the Penguin or the Riddler, in the hands of some writers). Many of the foes a DC:TAS hero with a CVK faces are going to have absolutely no compunctions against killing -- heck, that would even include a lot of street gang kids, sad to say (though they're not exactly Foxbat-style "bonkers").

[00Machado]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

Hey guys, I'm getting started on DARK CHAMPIONS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (DC: TAS, from here on out) and this is the traditional "What Do You Want To See" Thread.

 

First a little about the book....

 

The book has two goals.

 

First, to serve as a sub-genre book that covers two types of Dark Champions campaigns. (1) Non-superpowered heroes who have, to some extent, a four-color comic book attitude toward their vigilante activities (for instance, PCs with a Code Versus Killing). (2) Low-point superpowered heroes, aka street-level superheroes, like Daredevil and Spider-Man (the early years more so than lately -- back when Spider-Man fought the Kingpin, the Owl, Silvermane, and those sorts of guys on a regular basis). DC: TAS defines the differences between these two campaigns, including information on the prominent features and tropes of each, character creation guidelines, advice for the GM, etc.

 

....

 

I think that I'd rather see the book lean more toward the original Dark Champions book, focussing more on comic books level street heroes, as opposed to heroic normals.

 

However, in light of design goal #1, my preference for what I'd like to see in terms of this type of material is advide for how to run something that involves altruistic normals without it getting cheesy and devolving into sort of an A-Team no one ever gets shot type of game. So, maybe enough info to be able to build a 10xbetter version of an A-Team, or other type of TV show, where heroic normals, who are misunderstood, maybe even hunted, fight the good fight.

 

Also, various scenario/adventure/ ideas and event schticks to be used since I may have trouble thinking up very many TV episodes for my heroic all stars. Speaking of TV episodes, an overview of the type of TV episodes that one might find in such a TV series would be cool, to kind of help give a capmaign along those lines a TV show feel. For example:

The character episode - focusses on one characters role in the team, something from their personal history

The homage to the team episode - focussing on how the team gels and gets along. Maybe a throw away mission where you know they'll succeed, everyon'e special abilities gets highlighted, and it's just kind of a fun jaunt through the various "bits" of the campaign

The series opener - introducing all the characters and abilties, etc.

The someone gets hurt episode - Oh no, BA's been shot! You get the idea.

 

It would also be nice to see some sample premises, or advise of building the premise for why the heroes aren't just goody goody heroes. Why are they "Dark Champions" heroes. What are all the angles I can go with on that? A-Team is one, but I'd like to book to help me figure out, or even just hand me plenty of others.

[KA.]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

One thing I would like to see is a section on how to make things "gray" without making them too "dark".

 

Examples:

 

Dark - Police are nearly always brutal, corrupt, racist, and do more damage to "law and order" than many criminals do.

Gray - Police are nearly always tired, frustrated, suspicious, overwhelmed, but are trying to do the best job they can.

 

Dark - Villains leave "clues" by planting them on the dead bodies of innocent people. These people are already dead, and more will keep dying until the criminal is caught.

Gray - Villains leave "clues" that include threats against innocent people, or are part of something (time bombs, death traps, etc.) that could harm innocents, but the heroes have a chance to intervene. People are in danger, and will be in danger until the criminal is caught.

 

KA.

[zornwil]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

One thing I would like to see is a section on how to make things "gray" without making them too "dark".

 

Examples:

 

Dark - Police are nearly always brutal, corrupt, racist, and do more damage to "law and order" than many criminals do.

Gray - Police are nearly always tired, frustrated, suspicious, overwhelmed, but are trying to do the best job they can.

 

Dark - Villains leave "clues" by planting them on the dead bodies of innocent people. These people are already dead, and more will keep dying until the criminal is caught.

Gray - Villains leave "clues" that include threats against innocent people, or are part of something (time bombs, death traps, etc.) that could harm innocents, but the heroes have a chance to intervene. People are in danger, and will be in danger until the criminal is caught.

 

KA.

Hey, great and specific examples. I think this is a thread-worthy thing itself. I do much more gray than dark, that's for sure, and I think "guidelines" would be of interest to many. I'm stealing this for a thread...

 

PS - but over in Champions, as I do super-hero stuff a lot more than "Dark Champions"

[Blue]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

This is exactly where I'd like to play my primary low-powered Hero, Anthem, so I'm looking forward to this book.

 

It sounds like there's already what I'm generally looking for. For locals, I'd like an Arkham-style facility, and likely a more conventional prison, a few gothamish low to medium powered supervillains, a detailed take on government corruption (Which judges and officials are in the bag).

 

How about a villain base or two. City Sourcebooks often point out a location and say, "here there be villains", but I think an actual amp of the local crime kingpin's illicit drug warehouse, a crazed supervillain's deserted carnival of terror, or some other such base would be a nice include rather than just a dot on a city map.

[JmOz]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

As a series of sidebars: how to fit characters such as this into Millenium City, Viobra Bay (sp), and Hudson City (I know this one was planned already)

[Publius]

Re: What Do You Want To See?: DC: The Animated Series

 

I would like to see more low-powered superhero stuff rather than skilled normals myself.