ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

[paigeoliver]

Anybody ever notice how error ridden the ICE era Hero stuff is. My group is running Invaders from Below right now, and I get the feeling that the villians weren't playtested very well.

 

I haven't bothered adding up any point totals, but I have noticed quite a few things that make no sense.

 

Several of the villians have multiple killing attacks at different point totals. While not illegal, it doesn't make too much sense. HKA switches back and forth from listing the total with strength and not listing it. Some characters have HKA with 0 end cost, most don't, but zero end is written next to all of them in the end column.

 

Several villians have basically unusable combat skill levels, like Crystal with her range skill levels on a "no range" power, or rumbler with +1 OCV levels on an area effect power that also has no range (HA).

 

Crawler has desolidification listed on his character sheet with absolutely no mention of it in his description, nor any special effect listed. Impossible to even guess one since his schtick seems to be AD&D troll.

 

Minotaur casually has a 6d6 total HKA slipped in which is completely hiding since the character sheet only lists the pre str total.

 

I love the look and feel of the old stuff, but it seems like it is ALL chock full of stuff like that.

 

Which is why I have started (finally) ordering 5th ed stuff, even if I am going to keep using the 4th ed core rulebook.

 

Can anybody else point out some good mistakes? Other than European enemies?

[Netzilla]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

There was a thread about this very thing about 2 or 3 years ago on the Champions Mailing List. Some folks decided to fix some of the write-ups in various books. Other than the affore-mentioned European Enemies, I recall the Zodiac Conspiricy being done.

 

If you go the the list's home page and dig through the '01-'02 archives you might dig a few of them up.

 

I had thought some of them made it to Surbrook's site, but the only one I could find was for fixes of EE. I think the Zodiac stuff had to be taken down due to the author having rights to the characters (rather than DOJ) and not granting permission for whatever reason. What else there may have been I don't know.

 

BTW, if you're interested in the Zodiac Stuff, send me a PM. I've got some 5E conversion notes for my own campaign that you can look at.

[Susano]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I had thought some of them made it to Surbrook's site' date=' but the only one I could find was for fixes of EE. I think the Zodiac stuff had to be taken down due to the author having rights to the characters (rather than DOJ) and not granting permission for whatever reason. What else there may have been I don't know.

 

Basically, DOJ was only going to let me host the EE stuff since they have NO intention of doing anything with that. I'd love to host the old Zodiac stuff, but sorry, not going to happen. I will admit, some of the ICE stuff is very suspect -- look at ENEMIES: THE INTERNATIONAL FILE, for example.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I did the Zodiac debug. Although the characters can't be posted, perhaps the change documentation and notes alone would be be useful. Check out http://rhinobunny.com/derek/champions/zodiac.html.

[Blue]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I found a lot of errors specifically when I was putting Invaders from Below into Hero Designer for my own benefit.

 

(At the same time I got rid of most of the psych limits about being psycho killers. For an adventure with a Fantastic Four parody cover, it sure went Iron Age in a hurry. If I ran it out of the box there would be tons of deaths.)

[Rapier]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

That old stuff is hella awful.

 

However, I never really minded. My first step when preparing an adventure like that was to put the character into an online format (back in the day, that was a Word doc character sheet, these days its HD). While I would be doing this I would tinker so that the villains will fit my campaign (and power level of the heroes).

 

I think that is part of the reason ICE did so poorly with the franchise. While some of the plot devices etc were pretty good (and very genre) that execution was horrenduous. It's very, very doubtful that any of it was proofread, playtested or edited.

 

With HD, its pretty cake to make the appropriate tweaks to a character as you input them into the system.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

Anybody ever notice how error ridden the ICE era Hero stuff is. My group is running Invaders from Below right now' date=' and I get the feeling that the villians weren't playtested very well.[/quote']

 

At the time I was playing ICE-era Hero stuff, I was also playing White Wolf stuff. The ICE stuff benefited from the comparison. (See PAGE_XXX).

[Kristopher]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I'm not sure how one could catagorize most of WW's material as sloppier than the examples of ICE HERO material given in this thread.

 

(Of course, the new "Red Book" Vampire stinks like dead fish, but that's another discussion entirely.)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

IMO, yes. Its pretty crappy stuff overall. That's why I always made my own settings and populated them with my characters.

 

It may not have been any better, but it least it was mine

 

Im generally pretty happy with the DOJ era Champions, though Im not a fan of the The Mystic World or Arcane Adversaries, or the artificial timeline trying to link the different genre lines together.

[Rapier]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

Im generally pretty happy with the DOJ era Champions' date=' though Im not a fan of the The Mystic World or Arcane Adversaries, or the artificial timeline trying to link the different genre lines together.[/quote']

I was pretty pleased with MW and AA, but that is the kind of game I'm currently running. Plus, I take it as a given that any purchased characters are going to take a couple of tweaks before they get to pound on my players.

 

I was also a little "HUH?" about trying to tie the Turakian, Plavakian, Durapian ages all together within the CU. It leaves me with that same kind of feeling as when a new guy takes over your favourite comic book and starts retconning. I would have just split them up into seperate dimensions and spent a (VERY) brief amount of time describing how all the different dimensions actually co-exist (leaving the room open for more of Champions in 3D type products later on). But that's just me.

[Haerandir]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I'm not sure how one could catagorize most of WW's material as sloppier than the examples of ICE HERO material given in this thread.

 

(Of course, the new "Red Book" Vampire stinks like dead fish, but that's another discussion entirely.)

 

Do you have a first edition copy of Werewolf: The Apocalpyse? If you do, go through it and check out all the missing page references (the infamous Page XX bug mentioned by bblackmoor). That's a pretty egregious printing error, even in the extremely dicey history of RPG publishing.

 

The rest of the early WW line was pretty sketchy in the editing department, but that particular error has probably given them a worse reputation than they actually deserve.

[Sketchpad]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I thought the old ICE books had some great ideas ... but I always modified everything ... which is pretty much what I do in the modern era as well

[SSJ Archon]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

(Of course' date=' the new "Red Book" Vampire stinks like dead fish, but that's another discussion entirely.)[/quote'] I'll second that.

 

I think a good metarule is "Like a 64' chevy, tweak before use."

[Agent 13]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

Do you have a first edition copy of Werewolf: The Apocalpyse? If you do' date=' go through it and check out all the missing page references (the infamous Page XX bug mentioned by bblackmoor). That's a pretty egregious printing error, even in the extremely dicey history of RPG publishing.[/quote'] There's also the small matter of the fact that while I still have my ICE era material - scuffed but still intact - every White Wolf book I bought at the time disintegrated in a matter of months.

[PhilFleischmann]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

The Turakian Age book has a "See Page YYY" in it. I don't remember where offhand. I remember some characters from ICE-Age books that actually hade stats missing from their sheets.

 

But you should have seen the Pre-ICE-age books! Wall-to-wall typos! Plus we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways. You were lucky to have books with errors in them. All we had were a bunch of random scraps of paper jumbled together loosely, with no page numbers so there was no way to tell what order they were supposed to be in, and we had to bind them together with chewing gum! And if we wanted a GM screen with conveniently arranged tables and charts, we had to tattoo it on the inside of our eyelids! Dice? If we wanted to generate random numbers, we had to stab ourselves and count the number of blood drops that fell to the floor! And we were thankful to have that!

 

Sorry.

[Black Rose]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

There's also the small matter of the fact that while I still have my ICE era material - scuffed but still intact - every White Wolf book I bought at the time disintegrated in a matter of months.

 

While mine haven't disintegrated... yet... I seem to have lost one page per major book. And the Werewolf first edition's layout was done by crack-addicted spider monkeys. And not normal crack, either, but the green glowing crack. I mean, I get that you want the flavor text first, then the character creation stuff, then the crunchy setting info. But this was just sickening in its "hunt through the book for just what your Breed Gifts are, foolish gamer! Ha ha, hunt for me little Homid!"

[Kristopher]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I wasn't thinking of the first edition stuff, honestly. I didn't really get into WW stuff until about the time 2nd Ed Vampire came out.

[Susano]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I was also a little "HUH?" about trying to tie the Turakian' date=' Plavakian, Durapian ages all together within the CU. [/quote']

 

I have to agree here. I think this really restrains the official setting. My biggest beef is that if you use the official setting, you can't have any long-lasting impact. As supers, you can't change the world for the better. Just think, all the good the Champions do is wiped out in 2020 when the magic goes away and all their work is for naught as the slide in the the dark future "CYBER HERO" age begins. Might as well turn villain and enjoy it while you can.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I have to agree here. I think this really restrains the official setting. My biggest beef is that if you use the official setting' date=' you can't have any long-lasting impact. As supers, you can't change the world for the better. Just think, all the good the Champions do is wiped out in 2020 when the magic goes away and all their work is for naught as the slide in the the dark future "CYBER HERO" age begins. Might as well turn villain and enjoy it while you can.[/quote']

Exactly. And more importantly, I really do not like the "Magic is the source of all super powers" idea. Not one bit.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

While mine haven't disintegrated... yet... I seem to have lost one page per major book. And the Werewolf first edition's layout was done by crack-addicted spider monkeys. And not normal crack' date=' either, but the green glowing crack. I mean, I get that you want the flavor text first, then the character creation stuff, then the crunchy setting info. But this was just sickening in its "hunt through the book for just what your Breed Gifts are, foolish gamer! Ha ha, hunt for me little Homid!"[/quote']

 

Ummmm....Bane Toxin....ummmmm

 

Hawksmoor

-Yep...All of the 1st and 2nd and Revised Werewolf Products...it's like art after a while you just like it!

[Kristopher]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I was also a little "HUH?" about trying to tie the Turakian, Plavakian, Durapian ages all together within the CU.

I have to agree here. I think this really restrains the official setting. My biggest beef is that if you use the official setting, you can't have any long-lasting impact. As supers, you can't change the world for the better. Just think, all the good the Champions do is wiped out in 2020 when the magic goes away and all their work is for naught as the slide in the the dark future "CYBER HERO" age begins. Might as well turn villain and enjoy it while you can.

Exactly. And more importantly, I really do not like the "Magic is the source of all super powers" idea. Not one bit.

 

Well said, all of you.

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: ICE Era hero stuff sloppy?

 

I have to agree here. I think this really restrains the official setting.

 

It's a framing device. Or, if you prefer, a marketing device. Either way, ignore it. It's not like anyone actually uses the default Champions setting as-is. I've never played in a group that used it as anything other than source material and inspiration.