Golden Age Champions

[John Desmarais]

Re: Golden Age Champions

 

What I did not like about the 4th edition GAC was that (apart from the artwork ...) even the goofy characters were WAY too powerful for my taste. I always thought that aprt from maybe the Spectre and to a certain degree Superman and captain marvel the rest were comparatively low-pwered. I would prefer to have more "old-Standard 250 pointers with some powerhouses thrown in and that goofy characters are build with some kind of a VUL or "glassjaw" (like high PD but quite low ED' date=' high Speed, low DCV etc.) that they don't kick the PCs *** just by even using their powers in the most unimaginative way (like Yellowberad and his GROSSLY OVERPOWERED PSYCHIC PARROT!).[/quote']

 

Kind of depends on what Golden Age actually means to you. When talking to a lot of comic fans (I used to work in a comic shop) about golden age stuff what I notice is that while many people think they are thinking about stories published during the Golden Age (1938 - 1949 or so) what they are actually remembering is recent comics (from the 1970s and 80s) set in that time period (and usually written by Rascally Roy Thomas).

 

In recent set in that time period, the character's power levels don't seem to be particularly different from that displayed by modern characters - but they seem to have fewer disads.

 

In the stories actually written during that period, there was an extremely high number of non-powered or barely-powered Mystery Men, plus a small number of really powerful heroes at the start of the period; but by the end of that period many of the grossly powered had been calmed down a bit (probably due to the writers more narrowly defining the characters) while many of the non-powered and low-powered ones had been buffed up a bit.

 

All in all, I thought the previous edition of GAC did a fairly good job in emulating the "recently written comics set in the Golden Age" type of comic. (My memories of the first edition are too hazy for me to comment on it).

[lurkerabove]

Re: Golden Age Champions

 

There's not a thing in the world that would prevent you from playing a character from another nation, but the 5E GAC will be more or less just as America-centric as previous versions. We're American and the vast majority of our customers are American, so that's what we know best and what's in the most demand. We simply can't provide the same depth of coverage to every single nation of the world.

 

That being said, we are broadening the scope where it's reasonable and easy to do so. For example, in discussing the Military Rank Perk, the outline says to cover all the major combatants, not just the US and Germany. That's easy enough to look up and put in a table.

 

Now I need a little smilie waving Old Glory. __________________

 

That having been said I appreciate the fact that your target market is American I was hoping for some infromation on playing an SOE character for insatnce or a few NPC heroes from occupied europe

[assault]

Re: Golden Age Champions

 

I'm not particularly bothered about the absence of non-US heroes. If I need them, I'll make them up, or lift them from other sources.

 

One thing I would like to see though is at least some coverage of the post-war period. Of course this eventually gets into the territory that would be covered by Silver Age Champions, but still...

 

Funnily enough, most of the Australian Golden Age superheroes seem to have been post-war.

[Redmenace]

Re: Golden Age Champions

 

Steve Jackson Games have several WW2 Gurps supplements that cover non US forces and while they are more skill heavy than Hero, service packages should translate across just fine. They haven't done much with the super angle but the real world stuff is there.

 

Godlike probably covers some of the same ground.

[st barbara]

Re: Golden Age Champions

 

Steve Jackson Games have several WW2 Gurps supplements that cover non US forces and while they are more skill heavy than Hero, service packages should translate across just fine. They haven't done much with the super angle but the real world stuff is there.

 

Godlike probably covers some of the same ground.

My copies are fairly old but parts of "Gurps Supers" cover characters from the war period. I don't think that it is much more than a list of names and a quick description of powers mostly. (I do however like their name for the WWII U S team "The Psycho Squad")