Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

[Hermit]

And if so, how is it going? I was going to run a campaign for that, but it fizzled out. Who knows, it might get going yet, but in the mean time I thought I'd ask folks how theirs was going for them, and maybe pick up a few tips or suggestions about what was working and what flopped.

 

I'm not that experienced with really powerful super heroes, normally I run a standard campaign.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

No, but I had a dream I was running one. Does that count?

 

I give a lot of consideration to running a GC game before deciding to go with my Miami Nights game. Of course after reading the Teen Champions playtest I've been itching to try a teen game too.

[Hermit]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

No, but I had a dream I was running one. Does that count?

 

Alas, no.

 

I give a lot of consideration to running a GC game before deciding to go with my Miami Nights game. Of course after reading the Teen Champions playtest I've been itching to try a teen game too.

 

Yes, so many options, so little time and cash. I know the feeling. The other thread about campaign suggestions got me thinking about my abandoned GC campaign. It made me realize one area I was totally unsure of was some storylines and plots interwoven in a campaign theme.

[Redmenace]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

The closest I've come was to have a an extended game where Mechanon 3000 was able to attack modern earth and the key to defeating him involved travelling forward in time.

 

I ran it for a group of old gamer buddies who had a good time but my regulers had no interest.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Part of the reason I decided not to run a GC campaign was the amount of work involved. Almost everything in the game would need to be created [worlds, civilizations, villains] from scratch. There's a general system of government but it's not detailed enough, IMO. It's fun to read, and it's fun to think about, but I wouldn't want that much work on my GM plate if I could help it.

[nexus]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

No, but I had a dream I was running one. Does that count?

 

I give a lot of consideration to running a GC game before deciding to go with my Miami Nights game. Of course after reading the Teen Champions playtest I've been itching to try a teen game too.

 

Off topic, but just wanted to say I'm running a Teen Game right now and its been loads of fun.

[Hermit]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Part of the reason I decided not to run a GC campaign was the amount of work involved. Almost everything in the game would need to be created [worlds' date= civilizations, villains] from scratch. There's a general system of government but it's not detailed enough, IMO. It's fun to read, and it's fun to think about, but I wouldn't want that much work on my GM plate if I could help it.

 

Well, I have Terran Empire, so that helps, but yeah, I can see what you mean.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

A few months ago I made a suggestion that Worlds of Empire be written to include characters usable for GC. That way the book could have a dual purpose and appeal to more than just Star Hero fans. Another suggestion might be for DOJ to publish a new Alien Enemies book. It could compile all the races from the various books and put them all in one place, and then include super-character write ups [hero or villain] that we could use in a Champions or GC game. I personally feel that cross-genre usability is something DOJ should be looking into more closely in these trying financial times.

[Agent X]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

A few months ago I made a suggestion that Worlds of Empire be written to include characters usable for GC. That way the book could have a dual purpose and appeal to more than just Star Hero fans. Another suggestion might be for DOJ to publish a new Alien Enemies book. It could compile all the races from the various books and put them all in one place' date=' and then include super-character write ups [hero or villain'] that we could use in a Champions or GC game. I personally feel that cross-genre usability is something DOJ should be looking into more closely in these trying financial times.

Very good point. I bought some Star Hero stuff to graft into my Champions game but they are a bit narrowly focused in Terran Empire, etc.

[Susano]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Hmm... speaking of cross-genre, I am developing a DH article for the Nehkojin (Kayli the Destroyer's race from NINJA HERO) which will base them in the Terran Empire universe, but write them up on the Galactic Champions scale.

 

So who's ready for a 1000+ point Kayli the Destroyer?

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

No, but I AM using one of the villains from the book(heavily modified) as my main master villain.

 

Rob

[FenrisUlf]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Out of curiosity, couldn't one run a 'modern day' Galactic Champs campaign? You know, the heroes as the CU version of the JSA or such?

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Out of curiosity' date=' couldn't one run a 'modern day' Galactic Champs campaign? You know, the heroes as the CU version of the JSA or such?[/quote']

Sure you can. The big difference is that the "heavy-hitters" in the modern CU tend to max out at around 750 points whereas that is the starting point for GC characters. The CU villains aren't designed to fight teams of 750 point heroes. I never ran the battle but I think even Dr. Destroyer would be hard-pressed to defeat the Champions 3000 team.

[Peregrine]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

I did run the battle, or a similar one, in a Dimensional Empire Imperial Guard campaign (yes, V'Han's Empire...) that I just started up. The PCs are 1000 points each, GalChamps-style. Two of them took down a Destroyer clone (I used the CKC stats verbatim) in less than one turn.

[Wolfjack]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

But basic character creation of Galactic Champions guidelines aside, isn't this all a matter of scale? It seems to me that the only main driver for the drastic increase in point levels is in using the Legion as a model for comparison. There are others, such as The Omega Men and The Guardians of the Galaxy that are much more in line with "standard" Hero point levels.

 

I'm not sure the argument should be that standard heros couldn't compete with GC level villains. That's obvious - its whether the scale is appropriate to the game you wish to GM and how comfortable you are with it that is of more importance.

 

After all, one could easily use the GC point levels to create parts of the DC Universe accurately. Actually, 'could' should be a 'would' if you are talking Superman and with the Legion, Mon El and Superboy are certainly of equal stature.

 

The other point I thought that was very well made in this thread was regarding the versatility of the supplements. Being a marketing/ad guy, its the exact argument we use to maximize profit/market share. It would certainly get me to pick up the Star Hero supplements, otherwise I'd stick to my old tried and true Space Opera books.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

No, but I had a dream I was running one. Does that count?

 

I give a lot of consideration to running a GC game before deciding to go with my Miami Nights game. Of course after reading the Teen Champions playtest I've been itching to try a teen game too.

Run a Legion of Superheroes campaign...

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

I'm not exactly sure most of the Legion of Superheroes were that powerful. Yes, Superboy, Mon-El, and Ultraboy had some power but most of the DC Heroes write-ups had the Legion members in the 10-15 AP range [which basically converts to 10-15d6].

 

I don't believe GC was trying to emulate the Legion. I think DOJ made a conscious choice to present a high-powered campaign for the players to enjoy and chose GC as the platform for that. DOJ justified this by saying magic is more powerful in the future, and so super-powers are more powerful as well. Fans wanted rules for high-powered games and so DOJ gave it to them in GC [in much the same way Teen Champions represents low-powered play].

 

One of the big turn offs to the meta-verse idea has just been that I need to own so many books to get the complete picture [and even after owning almost everything I still don't have the complete picture]. I'd much rather see books written in a way that makes them useful to multiple campaign worlds [WoE usable for TE, AW, and GC] then to see individual books that I probably will never buy. It seems to me that too many pieces are scattered across too many book. That's great for DOJ if you can get the fans to buy them all, but it doesn't appear as though they are.

 

I'd rather see $30.00 250 page books which can give me information I can use to play in several related genres then $25.00 160 page books which don't give me enough information to easily play in one genre. GC could be a great genre to play in. As it is right now though I need too many other books just to get basic information [like race templates] to play the game, and it just requires too much work on my part to get even a basic game started.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Run a Legion of Superheroes campaign...

If I were going to do that I'd probably just use MEGS. I have all that material already.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Run a Legion of Superheroes campaign...

I am running a LSH campaign, so yes I suppose I am running a GC campaign. And to answer Hermit's question, it's going quite well!

 

And to MitchellS -- there's always going to be a lot of debate about how various characters from the comics should be written up, so the point totals derived by different people ary going to vary wildly.

 

Here are some samples of point totals for Legion characters that I wrote up:

 

771 Blok

 

616 Bouncing Boy

 

743 Brainiac 5

 

996 Chameleon Boy

 

658 Colossal Boy

 

783 Cosmic Boy

 

508 Ferro Lad

 

699 Matter-Eater Lad

 

500 Phantom Girl

[proditor]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

"Tenzil Kem for the Defense!"

 

Sorry, couldn't resist. I haven't run anything that high powered in years though, not since 4th ed. when we had a group of PC's all in the low 800 point range.

 

Basically, after I lost the group I knew I could implicitly trust with that level of responsibility (One of them had a 200 point Cosmic VPP) I basically just went back to more tightly controlled games.

[shaunclinton]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

I ran a game, but it didn't last all that long... we ended up switching to Dark Champions (the old style one, not the depowered version) as the PC's weren't quite experienced enough and it was a hell of a lot of work.

 

Used base points of 800 with up to 600 disadvantages. Got a fair mish-mash of characters back in return. Had a 3500 point version of Doctor Destroyer and a 2800 point Mechanon kicking about. It was a modern day GC campaign (well, near future) and humans only recently had half decent space technology but there were plenty of alien races about.

 

Characters Involved:

 

Obsidian: Astronaut who was in an experimental ship that collided at lightspeed with a sentient alien vessel containing a singularity power source. It rebuilt his body out of the remaining living metal of it's hull and transferred it's conciousness into this receptacle, only to find his personality was present and more powerful. So he basically became Mr. Living-alien-metal powered by a singularity with the ability to control gravity and the like. He was hunted by Mechanon who wanted to steal his singularity (it was in a shiny metal sphere buried in his chest) as it was the greatest known power source. Think it was a 3500 point END reserve with a 200 REC and a slew of limitations. He was kinda like Superman, right down to the fact that the radioactive living metal destroyed in the spacecraft was pulled back to earth in his gravity wake and affected him pretty much like kryptonite. He was probably the most interesting of the bunch as the others weren't very memorable.

 

Speedster: Can't recall his name! But he was able to transform into a light-based energy form which could move at incredible velocities and perform a whole bunch of speed-tricks. He didn't have any energy projection abilities to start with but he had the ability to spend a fair amount of time intangible to physical force and still affect the real world to a degree. Pretty powerful if a little bland. His origin was fairly Flash-esque.

 

Payback: This guy didn't get into the spirit of things at all. He refused to play a traditional super-hero type and wanted to basically be a kid who lucked into incredible power. Chose kinetic energy control as his 'schtick' and didn't expand beyond that. Refused to take more than about 75 points of disadvantages as he thought they'd be used against him and basically ended up with a guy who was virtually immune to physical damage, but went down like a sack of potatoes at the first energy-projector to show up. He couldn't survive in space unaided or anything. Very poor for GC, but otherwise not that bad I suppose.

 

Fate: An incredibly powerful mystic with an inscrutable origin involving amnesia and demons and gods, which would unfold as a major theme in the campaign. Basically had Spectre-ish magical powers, but with a fairly fragile (compared to standard Galactic Heroes) body behind them. Actually quite decent in most respects.

 

Legend: An ancient Greek hero who demanded immortality to be told that he could have it if he performed 4 impossible tasks involving the 4 elements (I won't go over them as it's fairly long winded but involves deepest ocean, highest mountain, etc.) and managed to do so. However, the God's betrayed him and although they were forced to grant him God-hood they forced him into a slumber beneath the earth. When the last of the Greek God's was destroyed in the late 20th century the magicks binding him where at last released and he was free to enter the modern world, possessed of the courage and nobility of a hero and the powers of a God he became a super-hero. He was basically a mega-brick in the Hercules mold with plenty of fighting prowess, but he had the ability to transform into four different forms, one for each element... an energy projecting fire form, a whispy immaterial air form, a super plus plus brick earth form and the shapechanging water form. Each had vastly different abilities and this made him fairly versatile. I remember he had some ludicrous elemental vulnerabilities/susceptabilities involved ice from Pluto, fire from the Sun, etc. Pretty cool guy all in all. A nightmare build though!

 

Anyway, we got through about three fairly large adventures... one involving a vast alien armada, another concerning an Earth-2 style dimension where Mechanon had taken over and was exterminating Earth's populace and the third was about Cosmic Destroyer trying to gain ultimate power.

 

It was a lot of fun, although combat took a long time to run and the high points total meant PC's covered a lot of bases (well, most did!) But I'd like to try it again some day.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

I am running a LSH campaign' date=' so yes I suppose I am running a GC campaign. And to answer Hermit's question, it's going [i']quite[/i] well!

 

And to MitchellS -- there's always going to be a lot of debate about how various characters from the comics should be written up, so the point totals derived by different people ary going to vary wildly.

 

Here are some samples of point totals for Legion characters that I wrote up:

 

771 Blok

 

616 Bouncing Boy

 

743 Brainiac 5

 

996 Chameleon Boy

 

658 Colossal Boy

 

783 Cosmic Boy

 

508 Ferro Lad

 

699 Matter-Eater Lad

 

500 Phantom Girl

Point totals really weren't my issue. I was more concerned about damage levels and defenses. How many of those Legion members you wrote up have 18d6+ attacks or 35+ defense? My guess is probably not too many. The C3000 team have 5 members who do 18d6 or more and 6 of its 8 members have one or both defenses at 35+. GC is just high-powered, and that's fine. It's just too much work for me to come up with 50 high-powered villains who can give them a run for their money.

 

In a Champions game Dr. Destroyer is a god. In a GC game he's Foxbat.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Point totals really weren't my issue. I was more concerned about damage levels and defenses. How many of those Legion members you wrote up have 18d6+ attacks or 35+ defense? My guess is probably not too many. The C3000 team have 5 members who do 18d6 or more and 6 of its 8 members have one or both defenses at 35+. GC is just high-powered, and that's fine. It's just too much work for me to come up with 50 high-powered villains who can give them a run for their money.

 

In a Champions game Dr. Destroyer is a god. In a GC game he's Foxbat.

 

Unless, of course, he brings along Gigaton and an army of his Black Talon mechs. And/or prepares his VPP with gadgets tailored to the heroes' weaknesses. Dr. Destroyer used to his full potential is just the sort of villain to pit against a team of 700+ point heroes.

 

Conversely, the GC-class heroes help balance out the megavillains in the contemporary CU. I've been using GC as a source of high-powered characters for my current-era campaign, and the Earth-derived members of the Champions 3000 team (Defender, Firedancer, Thalya and Bulletproof) can be inserted into a modern day game with little alteration to their backgrounds. Star*Shield is also easy to use as the template for the 21st Century Star*Guard. (My campaign has also adopted versions of Sentinel and Red Phoenix slightly modified from Reality Storm, plus a few of the Fourth Edition CU's heavy hitters.)

[Agent 13]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

As I've worked on my Villains & Vigilantes concordance, I've been considering what the V&V "Universe" would look like twenty years on. The final V&V module is #2028, Dawn of the Devil, which destroys most of the Earth about halfway through using an ancient evil and his space pirate armada. But everything gets better through a deus ex machina after the PCs defeat the Big Bad and his 8-million+ Hit Points.

 

A couple of things never really clicked in my mind about the background of this module -

1. The heroes travel over a year and a half through space to find the dxm.
   
2. The dxm sets everything back the way it was, but doesn't turn back time.
   
3. Everyone everywhere remembers everything that happened.
   

This means that not only does the entirety of humanity remember the razing of the Earth, but some 90% remember their own deaths, while the rest remember a year and a half of the apocalypse. Couple this with a massive of infusion of advanced technology (salvaging the pirate armada, plus a number of other pieces of supertech scattered throughout the module) and the discovery of some ancient relics in the possession of both "the Devil" and CHESS, and something has to change in the setting in a major way.

 

It could all go a number of ways -

• Squabbling over the remains of the space armada and the other plunder could lead to World War, and then it's Apocalypse earthling-style, with superheroes and lots more mutants in the ashes of the Earth.
  
• The human race goes all far out space nuts, builds their own armada, and goes out into space to find strange, new civilizations... and kill them.
  
• Most everyone having gotten their own personal taste of Armageddon, humanity gets its act together and straightens things out (mostly), and begins space colonization and exploration with the help of some of our extraterrestrial pals. Voila, Galactic Champions campaign that you don't have to travel a thousand years for.
  

There are other outcomes, but those are the three that pop to mind. I prefer door number three, myself. One of these days I'll sit down and try to pull together my notes for V&V: Welcome to Tomorrow into a more cohesive product.

[Alverant]

Re: Is anyone running Galactic Champions?

 

Matter-Eater lad at 699 pts? Is there any way you can send me/post the character? I don't know much about that incarnation of LoS, but his main power in the next-to-current (I stopped when they reset everything ... AGAIN) his main power, eating anything, can be defined in less than 45 pts. Life support (does not eat with limitation of must eat something) and a 1 or 2 DC of HKA with 0END and NND Does Body (defense is energy force field).

 

How far does their equipment go towards the point totals? From what I've read, a few of them are cosmic level, but the rest are standard heroes, if that. A few may violate established campaign limits by the concept of their power (Triplicate has 2 duplicates which may have more active points than allowed).