Essential Bad Champions

[Supreme Serpent]

In the vein of the "Essential Bad Silver/Bronze/Iron Age" threads floating around:

 

What would be the defining points of the worst Champions game/characters?

 

Some of my thoughts:

 

*Crippling disadvantages, especially those that make it hard to be a hero. Silly ones especially. "Berzerk when spoken to" 14-/8- recovery, "Protective of cheese - cannot let it be eaten or harmed" VC/Total, etc.

 

*Twinked out characters with multiple limits stacked on several power frameworks.

 

*Agents that are either too hard to stop, or explode into red mist, depending on their activation rolls.

 

*Heroes that are "superpowered" and expected to save the world, whose job would be better done by a squad of guys with automatic rifles and an APC.

[Superskrull]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

How about

Dependency -Human Spinal Fluid, sadly I can't recall the exact degree to which this was important but the player thought it was a great idea. You'd need to ask Stray Cat for particulars as he had the "opportunity" to deny that character entrance to his campaign.

[OddHat]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Agent teams designed to wipe up the foor with Superheroes, thus raising the question of why the government doesn't stop frelling around and just fund agent teams designed to wipe up the floor with Supervillains.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

How about

Dependency -Human Spinal Fluid, sadly I can't recall the exact degree to which this was important but the player thought it was a great idea. You'd need to ask Stray Cat for particulars as he had the "opportunity" to deny that character entrance to his campaign.

 

Heh. That reminds me of other "Everyman" disadvantages that have seen print - "Afraid of Dr. Destroyer", "Cautious around Explosives", "Dies when staked through heart". Heck, getting disad points is easy!

[RDU Neil]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Early Champions days... 1982-83 maybe.

 

One player, classic angry young teen, makes a character with Berzerk: When short changed at the grocery store... as well as Hunted: 14- Police

 

So anyway... this was still early in our Champions lives, so we had a team "Omega Team" which was classic Avengers style... but every week, players had new characters they wanted to try out, so the team roster was HUGE! PCs came and went.

 

This new Berzerk/Hunted PC... Phantasm I think was the name... joined the team in mid battle to defeat some villain or other... pretty typical/forgettable adventure... BUT... after the battle, he came back to the HQ with the rest of the team.

 

Introductions are going on, and one player glances at Phantasm's sheet and sees the disads. So when his character greets Phantasm, he looks at him and says, "Phantasm? Really? Are you that guy who trashed the local Kroger's, practically killed a check-out girl and is currently Wanted by Police for a whole number of charges?"

 

Every other team member turns to look as silence falls in the room. (Player's face blanches and gets really worried look... then turns all teen angsty...)

 

"F**k you guys!" yells Phantasm, and raises his force field.

 

 

 

 

You know what's coming... right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

ZARK! BLAM! WHACK! KA-BOOM! SMASH! BUDDA-BUDDA-BUDDA! BLAST!

 

Every other member of Omega Team hits Phantasm with their main attack... blows him through a wall and into serious GM-Option land... calls the authorities, turns him over and he goes to prison.

 

Character never played again.

 

Still a very fond memory!

[austenandrews]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Undefeatable villains with elaborate powers designed to show the GM's mastery of the character building & combat rules. Often a straight lift from a comic book character but with inexplicably higher defenses and a few unrelated additional powers.

 

Undefeatable GM-favorite "world's greatest hero" who routinely defeats the PCs' bad guys and/or rescues the PCs from them. Usually the GM's PC from an older campaign.

 

Obligatory weak superhero names. Fire powers? "Flame." Made of stone? "Stone." Uses a sword? "Sword." Etcetera.

 

Sexual combat threads that revolve around a character who's sexy because his/her powers have sex-themed SFX.

 

Common folk on the street who face down PCs or resist their powers as if superheroes were nothing more than rude children.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Obligatory weak superhero names. Fire powers? "Flame." Made of stone? "Stone." Uses a sword? "Sword." Etcetera.

 

That's why you come up with kewl names like... Bludflame and Kyllstone and Bludkyllsword. Dude... don't you get it?

 

Sexual combat threads that revolve around a character who's sexy because his/her powers have sex-themed SFX.

 

Thankfully never have encountered this in 25 years of gaming, except as off color jokes around the table.

 

Common folk on the street who face down PCs or resist their powers as if superheroes were nothing more than rude children.

 

And seriously... I do remember this. It is the classic "GM expects PCs to be upstanding citizen heroes... but has the world dump on them constantly... as if adversity will somehow reinforce four color game play... and then the GM is surprised when the PCs begin acting with abandon and not caring to really be heroes. I do NOT understand this mentality, but I've seen it a lot, and can even remember slipping a couple times as a GM and doing it.

 

I think it is a hold over from child age indoctrination in the Spider-Man/Mutant angst of classic Silver and Bronze age Marvel. Not recognizing that a literary (I use that term loosely) device of putting characters constantly through the wringer/never win/serve-mankind-that-hates-them kind of schtick just does NOT translate to RPGs, where POSITIVE reinforcement is needed to get players to be heroes... not making them miserable.

[Fox1]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

30 Def M1 Battle tanks

[Fox1]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Agent teams designed to wipe up the foor with Superheroes' date=' thus raising the question of why the government doesn't stop frelling around and just fund agent teams designed to wipe up the floor with Supervillains.[/quote']

 

 

I think it may be best to restrain oneself to badness that happens in Champions but not the comics its based on.

[OddHat]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

I think it may be best to restrain oneself to badness that happens in Champions but not the comics its based on.

 

There's not much of that. Comics are full of uber characters with absurd concepts, badly written nonsensical plots, terrible dialogue, insane continuity problems, writers who hate the characters, the readers, or both...

 

The only pure bad Champions material would be rules specific.

[Fox1]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

There's not much of that. Comics are full of uber characters with absurd concepts, badly written nonsensical plots, terrible dialogue, insane continuity problems, writers who hate the characters, the readers, or both...

 

The only pure bad Champions material would be rules specific.

 

Exactly.

 

Otherwise it's all just modeling comics

 

 

Surely there's stuff that isn't done in real comics... please tell me that's the case.

[Iuz the Evil]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

GMs who make Champions Campaigns their own personal soapbox to espouse a given worldview (when that is a view not shared by one or more players at the table).

 

Superheroes (not "people with super powers") being upstaged at every turn by the vastly superior forces of "normal guy with M-16 and tank" to the tune of "no no super-mega-hyper-man, you stay here and keep the muggers at bay... we'll go stop Professor Acidophalous and his Milk-flavored death ray with our badass cruise missiles".

 

Excessive use of deux ex machina uber-supers who upstage the players on a weekly basis, leading to "why the hell are we doing this again?".

 

Players or GM yelling at the other participant and being generally abusive.

 

Repetitive and/or boring plot hooks (um... he's robbing the bank again? Really?! Didn't we kick his a$$ here three times last month?).

 

Not enough food and/or drink for the people playing the game (munchies... bring me munchies!)

 

...those are a few that spring to mind.

[Blue]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Hunted: Everyone, 14-

[Lightray]

I think it may be best to restrain oneself to badness that happens in Champions but not the comics its based on.

You never played with the original VIPER sourcebook, then? Viper teams were more feared than Dr. D, and with good reason.

 

My favorite Champions moment is the "comic character clone" PCs:

 

- the guy who's suspicously like Wolverine (regeneration, claws, animal senses, no CVK, etc., etc., etc.)

 

- the guy who's supiciously like Spiderman, but an altogether different insect bit him.

 

- the gal who's supiciously like Phoenix, down to the telepathy & telekinesis, "phoenix effect", and red hair.

 

There's homage, and then there's ripoff. I've played with a "Solar Sailor" (Silver Surfer, complete with sailboard - with no sail), and "Lupus" (Wolverine-wannabee, who got the "RDU Neil treatment")

 

We also had one player whose characters were always disabled to take the Physical Limitation points -- blind or mute or deaf (nothing too disfiguring). And, of course, we still tease one of my players that she chopped off her character's arm to get some more points...

[nexus]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

You never played with the original VIPER sourcebook, then? Viper teams were more feared than Dr. D, and with good reason.

...

 

 

And the original Genocide agents. Ye Gawds!

[Fox1]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

You never played with the original VIPER sourcebook' date=' then? Viper teams were more feared than Dr. D, and with good reason.[/quote']

 

Oh I played with them. Thing is, I think they a good representation of some comics I've read.

 

 

My favorite Champions moment is the "comic character clone" PCs:

 

Given all the comic companies and all the comics, its very difficult to come up with something new.

 

Back in the day we open a brand new copy of V&V 1st edition, and sat down with a bunch of people with passing knowledge (yeah, I read one or two of those things) and one owner of comic store. The attempt to come up with a new concept or even name started.

 

An entire day later, no one had managed to come up with something that wasn't a) lame, or already done.

 

Which is why I just run a Marvel based game, so we have a player running Phoenix. Solves that problem.

[Guest taustin]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

I ran Kool-Aid Man for a while. Berzerked in the presence of frozen food. (It nearly mattered once, too. The fighted ended just as he was going down the stairs to the school cafeteria.)

 

I recall one guy who liked to put his characteristics on an activation roll. Not just the increases, but all the way down to zero. GM ruled that when he inevitably blew the 14- rule, the character ceased to exist.

[Southern Cross]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

I've heard this one before.....

[Superskrull]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

Heh. That reminds me of other "Everyman" disadvantages that have seen print - "Afraid of Dr. Destroyer"' date=' "Cautious around Explosives", "Dies when staked through heart". Heck, getting disad points is easy! [/quote']

 

Heck, I guess I wasn't clear enough. He needed OTHER PEOPLE's spinal fluid.

Yummy.

[Rick R Mortis]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

"+30 STR, Only when enraged"

 

"Enraged: When angered or annoyed, go 14-, Recover 8-"

 

"Psych Lim: Short Temper, angers easily."

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

I knew a GM who let one of his players take "Addicted to oxygen", "Addicted to nitrogen" and "Addicted to carbon dioxide" for his character, on the grounds that if they didn't constantly get their "fix" of the required substances, they'd quickly die...so they were obviously addicted.

[Wanderer]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

And seriously... I do remember this. It is the classic "GM expects PCs to be upstanding citizen heroes... but has the world dump on them constantly... as if adversity will somehow reinforce four color game play... and then the GM is surprised when the PCs begin acting with abandon and not caring to really be heroes. I do NOT understand this mentality, but I've seen it a lot, and can even remember slipping a couple times as a GM and doing it.

 

I think it is a hold over from child age indoctrination in the Spider-Man/Mutant angst of classic Silver and Bronze age Marvel. Not recognizing that a literary (I use that term loosely) device of putting characters constantly through the wringer/never win/serve-mankind-that-hates-them kind of schtick just does NOT translate to RPGs, where POSITIVE reinforcement is needed to get players to be heroes... not making them miserable.

 

#9 Commandment of the Good GM: "Never assume PCs will be saints if their writeup doesn't say so".

 

Superheroes corollary "Any sufficiently harassed PC will eventually turn and blast lynch mobs".

[David Blue]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

GMs who make Champions Campaigns their own personal soapbox to espouse a given worldview (when that is a view not shared by one or more players at the table).

Ah, yup.

 

Superheroes (not "people with super powers") being upstaged at every turn by the vastly superior forces of "normal guy with M-16 and tank" to the tune of "no no super-mega-hyper-man, you stay here and keep the muggers at bay... we'll go stop Professor Acidophalous and his Milk-flavored death ray with our badass cruise missiles".

 

Excessive use of deux ex machina uber-supers who upstage the players on a weekly basis, leading to "why the hell are we doing this again?".

These can be combined for extra obnoxiousness. "Being upstaged by the vastly superior forces of "normal guy with M-16 and tank" is a good start.

 

Then you may get to meet the gamemaster's favourite action movie heroes (eg. Eraser) as you-get-no-say-about-it government liaisons: he is the one with the personality (that interests and impresses the gamemaster), you're the one with the powers; but yet with just some government-issued firepower and resourcefulness, he certainly can hold his own, can't he? The power of the human spirit is a marvellous thing.

 

Then you get Genocide Agents with potent weaponry (DEX 20, levels, and double autofire killing attacks, at that time +8 to hit and twice as many shots as normal) displaying always on area effect team telepathy and always holding actions.

 

Action-holding battles are "essential bad Champions" in my view. Endless holding (and minute exploitation of the rules) simulates absolutely nothing in comics, but it can and often does drag out and dominate Hero System combats.

 

Then you get "Major Tim". "Major Tim" takes your heroic personae firmly in hand. He has government issued foci that surpass any player character by a wide margin in every department (a rocket backpack 50% better than any winged flight, government-issued wrist-blasters handsomely superior to any mutant energy blast, a government-issued force-field belt better than - and so on) and he's a rough, tough, take no back-talk, hard-charging natural leader, quite a lot like the gamemaster on way too much steroids. If the government has a mission for you and you don't feel up to answering your country's call, "Major Tim" can set you straight, any time, anywhere.

 

In general, I find campaign morality-enforcer NPCs, especially but not only with the government telling them to do whatever they/the gamemaster want to do ... superfluous to my personal requirements for complete bliss. (I was delighted when a later gamemaster had our official we-get-no-say-about-this Government Liaison (spy/plant) be a Mister Lackey, who was in fact just a bureaucratic lackey and left the heroics to us. Yayy!)

 

Admittedly, you also had the Avengers suffering a problem like this - but their government contacts didn't have GI (Government Issue) gear that made them far superior to any Avenger.

 

The unbeatable NPC "campaign boss" morality enforcer is a classic bad Champions bit, not a classic comic bit.

 

Players or GM yelling at the other participant and being generally abusive.

Relatively harmless minor variations:

(a) Players quoting rules at the gamemaster. He made a call, OK? Drop it.

( Players not letting go of (a) all through the afternoon and into the wee hours of the morning. I don't want to know, he's the gamemaster, it's his call!

© Someone spitting out the answer while you're trying to count and total your dice - and generally moving brusquely on to their phase of complicated action-holding if-then statements.

 

Not enough food and/or drink for the people playing the game (munchies... bring me munchies!)

Variation: three more players than there are chairs, or room for chairs. This combines "nicely" with play that is alway going to end at midnight no matter what, this time, and reliably extends to 3am of a Sunday, or worse a Monday morning because of a really big, exceptional, one-off (fight) adventure. Which can make getting knocked out at Sunday 8:30pm or so a blessing, even if it didn't seem that way when it happened.

 

I suspect a lot of horror stories about what violent and evil things player characters did in Champions should add: "This happened at 1:30 am before a working day, and the player, who was red-eyed, hungry and had not sat down properly for hours, prefaced his homicidal actions with a bloodshot stare and the words: "Right. Let's just finish this. ..."

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

 

The unbeatable NPC "campaign boss" morality enforcer is a classic bad Champions bit, not a classic comic bit.

 

While not unbeateable, it could be argued that Prof. X for the X-men, Captain America for the Avengers, and Superman/Batman for the JLA could be filling this role depending on the writer. I think Prof. X especially is a classic "GM's character".

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Essential Bad Champions

 

"+30 STR, Only when enraged"

 

"Enraged: When angered or annoyed, go 14-, Recover 8-"

 

"Psych Lim: Short Temper, angers easily."

 

Heh. We ran into a recurring villainess who flew off the handle a lot. We joked that she probably had a long list of Enrageds and "Berzerk when Enraged."