Ravenswood Academy

[Hermit]

Darren, Steve... anybody.

 

Having just gone to see X2 last night has rekindled in me an interest in super school settings. I have Champions Universe AND Millennium City, but am curious if any further development of Ravenswood Academy is planned? Are there any future products in the works that include it?

 

Inquiring minds would like to know

[Steve Long]

Definitely some future development planned. At some point I'd like to do a Teen Champions subgenre book -- though it would probably be a fairly short tome. It would cover the Ravenswood Academy kids, some independent teen heroes like Sai and Hydro, and of course some rival super-kids that go to a school run by a villain or something. And of course there'd be some other enemies; I had an interesting idea recently for an as-yet unnamed group of superteens that'd all be grown by Teleios for his own nefarious purposes.

[Hermit]

As ever, the folks at DoJ respond quickly, thanks Steve I'm glad to hear it's in the planning stage. I'd like to learn more about Rowan and any other staff.

 

Funny you mention a villain making super heroes full grown, I had a plot similiar to that as one of my first 5th Edition Champions games. It worked well. If I had CU with Teleios at the time, I think it would have been even better

 

A villain school for a rival to Ravenswood? Could be fun. One can easily imagine the homecoming football game between the school having a very ... interesting half time.

 

Thanks again.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Steve Long

I had an interesting idea recently for an as-yet unnamed group of superteens that'd all be grown by Teleios for his own nefarious purposes.

 

I have just such a group, the PT-9, plaguing the streets of North Detroit. Its all part of a more devious plan of course, and behind it all: TELEIOS! My favorite top tier villain.

 

Hehe, as I typed that Teleios's picture popped up in the rotating supers graphic in the left sidebar. Eerie.

 

Anyhoo, here is the flavor:

 

"A gang of 9 teenagers calling themselves "PT-9" has appeared on the streets of North Detroit and are taking over blocks in a series of turf wars. They seem to be indestructible, with a lot of street stories circulating of members shot with entire clips getting back to their feet a minute later. All of the 9 seem to have superhuman physiques and to have athletic ability equivalent or superior to Olympic-class athletes. "

[Lord Liaden]

Wouldn't the natural rivals to the young supers at Ravenswood Academy be PSI? I haven't picked up Millennium City yet, but I understand that PSI has a strong presence there, and in the past they've been into kidnapping and training young paranormals.

 

That was the case for my own "Teen Champions" games. FWIW, I find Ravenswood Academy to be a little too blatantly X-Men for my taste. I based my young supers school out of Dr. McQuark's facilities from the old Blood and Dr. McQuark organization book. This kind of altruistic activity suits the Doctor's stated motivations, and I noticed that his facilities and staff were quite well-suited for dealing with young people with super powers (particularly Joann Jacobs and her stuffed animals). Plus they're a really fun bunch. I changed a few labs into dormitories, added a few specialists from Normals Unbound, and it was set to go.

 

The core of the adventuring teens was drawn from the Forty Thieves from Aaron Allston's adventure for GURPS Supers, School of Hard Knocks; Aaron provides full 4E HERO System conversions for those characters on his website. I added a few younger paranormals from various Hero Games books to round out the school: "Four-Eyes" from Creatures of the Night, Howard Brody from The Mutant File, Lucy Pinchard from Mind Games, and Patsy Conrad and "Fluffy" from Normals Unbound.

[assault]

Teen Champions games could vary a lot. Some wouldn't have X-Man style schools, and instead would have the superkids dealing with normals.

 

Others would vary depending on the size of the school. If the PCs are pretty much the whole student body, there would be a rather different dynamic than if there were a whole lot of NPCs around.

 

Just think: what would the "school bully" be like in a school for supers? Would there be a "jocks" vs "nerds" dynamic? Would there be a social pecking order based on differing power levels? What if different students had different attitudes to normals? What if a "normal" student was allowed to enrol??

 

Hmm. Robin enrols at Mutie High... I like it.

 

Unfortunately, this would be a bit of a pig to run - there's just too many detailed NPCs for the GM to handle.

 

Still, such a book would be a useful "Allies" and "Enemies" book in its own right, even beyond its use in the superteen genre. What better way is there of gaining hunteds and contacts than to have gone to school with them?

 

So, yes, I think DOJ should do something in this area. It could be lots of fun.

 

Don't forget to include Buffy and Harry Potter in your research...

 

Alan

[assault]

Designing the Original X-Men

 

Thinking about this some more...

 

Clearly, this subgenre doesn't work unless you can design "reasonable facsimiles" of such classic characters as the original X-Men, the original Teen Titans, and the New Mutants. (Well, omitting Kid Flash from the Teen Titans...)

 

I had a look at the Champions genre book, and it suggests a 40 active point limit (and, implicitly, 250 point characters) for this subgenre. This doesn't quite work if it is applied mechanically.

 

The most obvious problem lies with the original X-Men. These are teen heroes of a fairly classic variety, and can be reasonably accommodated by the guidelines above, but there is at least one small problem. His name is Cyclops.

 

Iceman is a fairly average character. He is a good example of the kind of character the 40 active point guideline works for. He has a nice set of powers that just beg to be stuck into an elemental control. With the 40 point limit, he would have an 8 dice attack.

 

Cyclops should have a bigger attack than Iceman's. In addition, his attack should be 0 End, and always on, with the latter disadvantage bought off through a focus. This sucks up a lot of points.

 

This is fine. This is his single initial power: exactly the kind of narrow focus a teen super needs. Unfortunately, it violates the 40 active point limit.

 

In this case, the active point limit is wrong, and should be waived for the character.

 

Unfortunately, once you start doing this kind of thing, other players will start wanting to do the same kind of thing. This means that the GM will have to say "no" a lot. This can be a problem.

 

The more general problem with the teen heroes subgenre, however, is that it isn't really a genre suitable for teen players!

 

Let's face it: to be successful, a teen super game should be heavy on the roleplaying, and light on the "cape-waving". It's not a game for rules-abusing powergamers, combat monsters, and so on. Unfortunately, most very young players (including me, at the time!) have at least some degree of attraction to these things, and would, in most cases, be happier with more powerful characters. The people that would be happier with the subgenre, in most cases, would be people who are actually outside the age group of the characters. Once we get to veterans of the first edition of Champions, we are dealing with people _well_ outside the age group, who have only dim memories of what is like to be a teenager, and, in some cases, have teenage children!

 

On the other hand, playing young characters can be a nice break from the kind of cynicism age tends to bring. Playing a character my age, for example, has its amusements, but it mainly works if you have younger characters around for whom you can be a foil. (Or fool, in some cases.)

 

To sum up:

Playing teen supers can be a stack of fun, but it is, or, ideally, should be, a fairly challenging roleplaying exercise, where the combat scenes are only part of the story. The latter are also likely to be influenced by the characters not quite being as powerful as the "standard" 350 point characters. As such it needs to be handled skilfully, and shouldn't be played by groups who would be happier with "full-powered" characters.

 

Character designs can be tricky, but with a bit of care, and a firm but flexible GM, can be accommodated reasonably well. If the campaign is roleplaying heavy, different power levels in combat shouldn't be too much of a problem, anyway.

 

Alan

[Hermit]

Not for Supers only

 

If I recall, part of the Ravenswood setting includes a 'normal' school, with the school within a school just for the learning your powers part. That being the case, it doesn't strike me as too much of an X-Men rip off(Though, as pumped as I am on the movie X2, I wouldn't care right now if it was*S*).

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Not for Supers only

 

Originally posted by Hermit

If I recall, part of the Ravenswood setting includes a 'normal' school, with the school within a school just for the learning your powers part. That being the case, it doesn't strike me as too much of an X-Men rip off(Though, as pumped as I am on the movie X2, I wouldn't care right now if it was*S*).

 

Your recollection is accurate, Hermit , but that "school within a school" concept is something that concerns me. While there would be some possibilities for roleplaying inherent in mixing normal and super children together (keeping from killing the schoolyard bully with your powers, nosy classmate prying into your secrets, etc.), on a practical level I think that this would be too limiting for the purpose that Ravenswood Academy is supposed to fulfill. All the powers training would have to take place in the secret lower levels, which could be quite limiting for fliers and speedsters. The super children would always be hiding what they could do from the normal children - they would rarely be free to "be themselves", which is one of the aids to becoming well-adjusted that Xavier's school provides. Kids being kids, someone would inevitably show off or get into a fight which could hurt some of the normal children, open Ravenswood to a massive lawsuit, not to mention blow its cover. And if some supervillain or evil agency did discover the Academy's true nature, large numbers of highly vulnerable young people would be put at risk - good for a hostage or "save the bystanders" scenario, but highly restrictive to an interesting superfight. IMHO making the school "supers only" would be more practical from a game-world standpoint, and make it more useful and interesting from a long-term gaming standpoint.

 

Feel free to make counter-arguments, though, if you think I've missed a point.

[PhantomGM2602]

new Teen Heroes

 

Originally posted by Steve Long

Definitely some future development planned. At some point I'd like to do a Teen Champions subgenre book -- though it would probably be a fairly short tome. It would cover the Ravenswood Academy kids, some independent teen heroes like Sai and Hydro, and of course some rival super-kids that go to a school run by a villain or something. And of course there'd be some other enemies; I had an interesting idea recently for an as-yet unnamed group of superteens that'd all be grown by Teleios for his own nefarious purposes.

say Steve, If you want some background for any independant Teen Hero campaigns for your book look no further than Champions High school,which BTW is still in the playtest stage in two versions,4th ed and FreD in yahoo groups. Why not visit them sometime? the URLs are:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/championshighschoolpt2

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ultimate_ChampionsHighSchool

 

there are other groups including a fuzion version which is inactive.

[Hermit]

Not for Supers only (More thoughts)

 

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

 

Feel free to make counter-arguments, though, if you think I've missed a point.

 

Who's arguing? I just like hearing to myself talk...uhm, type

 

Just that I thought one of your complaints was it seemed too X-men like, and thus, I brought up the difference that stood out to me: Normal kids walking among them. By that example, the students of Ravenswood would be more like the White Queen's Hellions than Xavier's New Mutants.

 

Still, you're right in that part of the fun is 'cutting loose' and being free to be themselves. Two things come to mind there. 1. The CU describes the underground facilities as 'elaborate', which I intend to translate as 'Frigging huge' After all, this isn't merely a place for mutants. There maybe mystical staff that can pull such stunts as portals that lead to whole new wolrds "We'll be training today kids, in what we've grown to call lovingly "The Danger Dimension!" " (Or "Plane of Peril" if you want to avoid Copyright infringement)

2. Field Trips! Good for both finding 'isolated spots' where they can be alone together, and possible adventure seeds.

 

I'm not saying that all super school is worse, just saying they might make it work. Other thoughts that came up to me...

 

The 'hostage' scenerio that could occur in a raid situation does seem troublesome, even grim in what others might see as a 'light hearted' setting. That's why I would want notes on the Staff. I would not be surprised (And would definitely make it so as GM if it weren't official) if we didn't have some teachers with very formidible powers to protect their charges (super and non super alike). We're talking a place founded by heroes. Good luck getting past Professor Clara Bently, aka "Delphi", the Precog. (Okay, I made her up)

 

Interaction with "normal" kids would also help the supers in training learn control, and would be a great way to bring a non powered sort in. Imagine a nosy young man, very athletic, seeks excitement but martial arts aren't enough. He spies on a group of students, sees they are practically super heroes.. well, will be. He wants in, and busts his hump to prove he can hold his own.

 

I believe someone referred to wanting to see Robin attempt to attend "mutant high"? Well, there we go, kinda sorta

 

These are just thoughts though... frankly, I think if they do an entire supplement dedicated to 'Teen Heroes' then they might want to have an option to Ravenswood of it without any normals at all. Much like some hero write ups come with a villain option.

[Peregrine]

If you put Robin (and I assume you are referring to the current bearer of that mantle, Tim Drake) in such a school, the rest of the super kids will be busting their humps to keep up with him. Ditto for a younger Dick Grayson. The folks in the Bat Family are Intense, Driven, and Focused to the Nth degree.

[Hermit]

Was speaking more of character motivation than actual character performance. Not for Robin himself, but for someone similar to since someone had brought that example up earlier (Hence the 'Kinda sorta' qualifier). It is BECAUSE Robin (And the other Batfolks) are so driven that he would bust his hump ie do his darndest

[Lord Liaden]

I'm with you there, Peregrine. The Robins wouldn't be able to shoot lightning bolts, lift cars or run faster than a jet, but in having all the skills and the savvy and determination to use them, they'd likely be far ahead of the other teens, not to mention the natural leaders. Comes from being trained by the best.

[William Bushway]

You could always go the X-Men: Evolution (the most recent X-man animated series) route: The students attend normal high-school, but live at the Xavier Institute and take "supplemental" courses there That way, you have the secret IDs, the place where they can be themselves, and the excuse why sometimes they get to take fieldtrips the other students don't. They also get socialized among "normal" kids, which is pretty important - if you're at a supers-only school, you stand a chance of losing touch with normals. By the same token, they're still somewhat alienated from the "normal" kids because they're all in the "gifted" program.

[assault]

Re: Designing the Original X-Men

 

I wrote:

Cyclops should have a bigger attack than Iceman's. In addition, his attack should be 0 End, and always on, with the latter disadvantage bought off through a focus. This sucks up a lot of points.

 

This is fine. This is his single initial power: exactly the kind of narrow focus a teen super needs. Unfortunately, it violates the 40 active point limit.

 

In this case, the active point limit is wrong, and should be waived for the character.

 

Well, not for the first time, I was wrong. It is perfectly simple to build Cyclops without violating the 40 active point guideline. Well, without technically violating it anyway...

 

What you do is build _two_ Energy Blasts.

 

One is a small Always On one - about 4 dice. Buy off the Always On along the lines of the example on page 18 of the Champions genre book.

 

The other would be the main attack - about 8 dice - focussed (literally!) through his visor/glasses. Without his visor, then, all he can use is his less powerful Always On attack. It's not quite "right", but I'm only trying to build "reasonable facsimiles" here, as examples of the kind of junk characters you might come up with.

 

I said that this wasn't a technical breach of the guidelines. In fact, if you combine the two attacks (see p.234) you can actually sometimes do a bit more damage than just a normal 8D6 attack. This makes Cyclops' attack just a bit tougher than Iceman's, which is good. It's also technically a circumvention of the 40 active point guideline, but not a hideous one.

 

A nastier option would be to replace the Always On EB with an Always On RKA.

 

Anyway, it's possible to build a lot of characters with a 40 active point limit.

 

On Robins: of course I meant Jason Todd.

 

Seriously, though, because I was thinking about the early Teen Titans as an example of a teen team, I was actually thinking of Dick Grayson. In fact, of course, any non-powered "Sidekick Boy" would face similar issues, and many wouldn't have had quite as good training.

 

It would be fun to play though, wouldn't it? School Bully Boy would probably have a bit of an attitude about normals, and here is one "pretending" to be a super...

 

Alan

[The Malachite]

Having a 9 year running campaign, a Ravenswood Academy type school is fun and a near necessity at times. It was a foundation of our campaign to help young meta-humans. From the batch was:

 

Torment (Mind Games)

Chime (Kingdom of Champions)

Force (Mind Games)

Impact a.k.a. Nitro a.k.a. Atomic Kid (Allies)

Flower (Villany Unbound)

Stalwart (VIPER)

and Zephyr (European Enemies after I fixed the math )

 

Yet part of the fun is watching these characters, even though outside of your core group, grow and develop. Champions has almost been a comic book universe with self-participation. Torment just woke from a coma, Chime was killed in the Hzeel/Tharlok invasion that destroyed Detroit, Force and Zephyr married and moved to her home dimension, Flower and Impact married and Impact joined the Champions and Stalwart helped found an "Outsider" type team that one of our PCs founded.

 

I can't recommend using Howard/Hal Brody enough as a character and a plot hook. Other kids that are usable from other suppliments:

 

Blackout (Mind Games)

Displacer (Mind Games)

Hy-Tek (Next 8 from New Champions: Alliances)

Sticker

Trance

Thrasher

Brother X

Magus

Iceflame

Avatar

Kawaii (Villany Unbound)

Megeara (Enemies: Assemble, the most underrated suppliment ever)

Phobia (San Angelo: City of Heroes)

 

Hummingbird as well. And converting Fuzion doesn't give one the nosebleeds that converting other systems does.

[Thirdbase]

One of the GM's I play with has a version of Xavier's/Ravenswood. It has an almost exclusive paranormal student body. The only exceptions are the non paranormal children of paranormals. Since are campaign world lacks the anti-paranormal problems in Marvel, the school is publicly known as being for paranormals. The staff are all paranormals and we constantly joke that it is the safest place in town. The area around the school is considered to be a sort of neutral ground as there are children of both heroes and villains there.

[JmOz]

Cyclops:

 

Number 1 his powers would not be o end/always on

 

His powers would be fed by a End Reserve that only charges in sunlight (As he has aged he has no doubt bought 0 end)

 

Some rules waving will be required to allow always on to be taken on a power that can run out of juice, further more, my opinion, that goes against some "official rulings" is that his powers should be bought with "VarLim"

[Peregrine]

Re: the Robins

 

Sure, anyone who was a trained superhuman (is that the current term in the CU?) but didn't have the specific background of the Bat Family wouldn't necessarily be as driven. However, if such an individual was similarly driven, it would provide a definite contrast to the 'regular teen with powers' that most of the other students would likely resemble.

[MilkmanDan]

Originally posted by William Bushway

You could always go the X-Men: Evolution (the most recent X-man animated series) route: The students attend normal high-school, but live at the Xavier Institute and take "supplemental" courses there That way, you have the secret IDs, the place where they can be themselves, and the excuse why sometimes they get to take fieldtrips the other students don't. They also get socialized among "normal" kids, which is pretty important - if you're at a supers-only school, you stand a chance of losing touch with normals. By the same token, they're still somewhat alienated from the "normal" kids because they're all in the "gifted" program.

 

Depends on how you want to play it. IMO (and I assume in most people's O), it's a godawful show. They should have just called it X-Men: 90210 and gotten it over with.

 

The teen years were awkward for many, many people. If your focus becomes day-to-day existence in school, trying to live with developing powers, it's gonna be very real-world in a possibly very annoying way.

[TheEmerged]

Originally posted by Squid

The teen years were awkward for many, many people. If your focus becomes day-to-day existence in school, trying to live with developing powers, it's gonna be very real-world in a possibly very annoying way.

 

I've always loved Tony Campelo's take on that -- paraphrasing. "You got a school of 6000 kids, the system works for maybe three dozen of them. For at least 2000 of the rest, it's state-mandated torture."

[assault]

Originally posted by JmOz

Cyclops:

 

Number 1 his powers would not be o end/always on

 

His powers would be fed by a End Reserve that only charges in sunlight (As he has aged he has no doubt bought 0 end)

 

Probably. It's been a Real Long Time since I was reading the X-Men.

 

In any case though, it doesn't matter. My main concern was to test the suggestions in the Champions genre book for teen supers campaigns. The main feature of that was the good old 40 active points limit.

 

It kind of works, but it's a bit draconian in some ways, IMHO.

 

In particular, of course, some groups might simply not be all that interested in playing low powered characters, but might still be into the "teen supers" roleplaying side.

 

As long as the characters are designed with that in mind, there is no good reason that I can think of that a teen supers game necessarily needs to have PCs that are built on fewer points, or with more formal limits, than any other game. I would still go for relatively limited characters, but their powers could still be _very_ formidable, even if they don't quite know how to use them, or if their powers are still developing...

 

A lot of this subgenre is a case of setting and roleplaying attitude, rather than strictly of character design, IMHO.

 

So, Steve L: the previous is my suggestion for the subgenre book that you (or someone else) absolutely _must_ write. So there.

 

(Thinks: Robin, Speedy, Kid Flash (martial artists/gadgeteers/speedsters/yawn), Wonder Girl, Aqualad (bricks with limited ego powers/yawn). Gosh the Teen Titans are generic lame-oes... You could build them all as variants on two generalised templates. Well, I did, anyway.)

 

Alan

[JmOz]

Titans are only generic because the characters they are based on (Batman, flash, Green arrow, etc...) are all from the golden age, kind of hard to be generic when you are the first, for that matter of the five titans mentioned two of them ARE golden age characters (Robin and Speedy), I know Kid flash is not, but suspect the other two might be as well

[Nuadha]

Regarding the comment that Teen heroes require better roleplayers:

 

I have run a couple of successful teenage hero games. I also ran a Changeling: The Dreaming game once where the characters were high school kids. I've found that playing characters that age encourages better roleplaying out of your players, because everyone knows how a high school teenager thinks. We were (generally) all one at some point, so we understand the emotions involved. We don't all know what it's like to be an immortal Samurai from Feudal Japan or an alien from planet X, but we've all been teenagers. We understand the feeling of wanting to belong. We all understand that weird time when you want to be an adult but your still living with your parents.

 

Identifying with these emotions, it's easier to get in character.

 

I have to agree, that the teenage hero campaign is not for a hack-n-slasher as plots will deal a little more with relationships, but I think that most groups could rise to the occassion if you give them a chance. The first teenage game I ran was for my high school Heroes Unlimited group (before I discovered Champs) and they were not the best roleplayers I've known by any means. This campaign brought out some of the best roleplaying I think they ever did. I think they were more interested in playing out the interpersonal relationships and conflicts than they were fighting bad guys.