Champions Worlds

[MitchellS]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Hudson City, Page 6, under the heading "Hey, where are all the Superheroes?"

 

There are no Superheroes in Hudson City. There is no magic. There are no official crossovers. There is no metagame explanation for this. It is a separate setting. Some names are the same, but that is as far as it goes.

Yes, and the first words under that section are: "Hudson City is normally a part of the Champions Universe..."

 

Later on it goes on to say: "There's no official "in-setting" explanation for why this state of affairs exists [skip examples]. It's just the way things are."

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Yes, and the first words under that section are: "Hudson City is normally a part of the Champions Universe..."

 

Later on it goes on to say: "There's no official "in-setting" explanation for why this state of affairs exists [skip examples]. It's just the way things are."

 

The key word is "nominally", not "normally".

 

There are no crossovers. One world has magic and superheroes, the other doesn't. It is explicitly a separate setting, related in name only.

[MitchellS]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

The key word is "nominally", not "normally".

 

There are no crossovers. One world has magic and superheroes, the other doesn't. It is explicitly a separate setting, related in name only.

I think you've missed a lot of threads on these boards about it then, including some where Steve has commented on speculations about why that section of the CU has no magic. The intent is that it is part of the CU but can easily be removed if you want to make it a separate setting.

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

I think you've missed a lot of threads on these boards about it then' date=' including some where Steve has commented on speculations about why that section of the CU has no magic. The intent is that it is part of the CU but can easily be removed if you want to make it a separate setting.[/quote']

 

The effect is that it is a separate setting that you can easilly integrate into the CU. Even the Super Powered characters designed for Hudson City in DC:TAS are not intended to cross over into the standard CU.

 

The fact that we can't agree on something this basic when we both have the book in the room says something about our chances of agreeing on anything.

[MitchellS]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

The effect is that it is a separate setting that you can easilly integrate into the CU. Even the Super Powered characters designed for Hudson City in DC:TAS are not intended to cross over into the standard CU.

 

The fact that we can't agree on something this basic when we both have the book in the room says something about our chances of agreeing on anything.

The reason characters in HC don't cross over is covered in the statement "It's just the way things are."

 

Everythign DOJ has published to date has been part of the Hero meta-verse. The fact that you do not want Hudson City to be part of the meta-verse doesn't change the fact that it is.

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

The reason characters in HC don't cross over is covered in the statement "It's just the way things are."

 

Everythign DOJ has published to date has been part of the Hero meta-verse. The fact that you do not want Hudson City to be part of the meta-verse doesn't change the fact that it is.

 

The fact that characters can't cross over, not even "Super" characters from TAS version of Hudson City, demonstrates that it is not part of the Champions setting, except as a sort of Earth:Hudson and a third Earth:TAS. The fact that you insist on seeing it as part of the CU does not change the fact that it isn't.

 

"Nominally" in the sense of "in name only" remains the key term.

 

So, shall we go to the pure "Is not", "Is" posts?

[Lemurion]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

I personally put HC in my version (a mix of 4E and 5E) of the CU. However I do that deliberately and knowing that I'm doing a personal mod. The 4E HC was part of the mainstream CU, the 5E version isn't.

 

Anyway, got to go to work then back to combining NPCs from some 4E sourcebooks into a reference for 5E HC for my upcoming street-level supers game.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Sorry all, didn't mean to start a semantics debate; I was just looking for clarification. I'm not sure how much it really matters if HC is "officially" part of the CU or not. Apart from the possible precedent of DOJ publishing something outside their metaverse. Which is self-imposed in the first place, and therefore only a "restriction" as long as DOJ wants it to be.

 

Presumably, when we finally get Danger International, it will exist in a magic-free universe, and therefore be outside the metaverse.

[Blue]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

I'm someone who buys everything Hero, even when I don't plan to use it. But I really have no use for another Supers setting. I like the current one, which I borrow from, rather than running verbatim; I'd use the Galactic Champions if either the characters got so high in exp that I couldn't handle them, or simply as a one-off.

 

I wouldn't mind something like a remake of Champions in 3D because I love multiverse adventures, but a whole campaign book is overkill for me. I've got plenty with the existing city books.

 

 

That said, I do have all the Fantasy Hero setting books to date, and I don't even run FH.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Huh. I hadn't registered that Star Hero had more than one setting. I picked up Star Hero and Spacers Toolkit, saw that it was mostly too setting-specific for a setting that did not interest me, so I quit checking the Star Hero line. I figured I'm more than capable of generating my own universe out of the core book anyway. What's the one that's not Terran Empire?

[megaplayboy]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Huh. I hadn't registered that Star Hero had more than one setting. I picked up Star Hero and Spacers Toolkit' date=' saw that it was mostly too setting-specific for a setting that did not interest me, so I quit checking the Star Hero line. I figured I'm more than capable of generating my own universe out of the core book anyway. What's the one that's not Terran Empire?[/quote']

Alien Wars, which in the timeline precedes Terran Empire.

IIRC, the sequence was to be:

Cyber Hero(2020-2080)

Solar Hero(2080-?)

Alien Wars--the gritty sci-fi war genre book

Terran Empire--the quasi Star Wars book

Galactic Federation--the quasi Trek book

 

There might have been an Interstellar Hero, wedged between Solar Hero and Alien Wars:)

[Karmakaze]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

So... they're all the same universe, just different timepoints? Or are they actually distinct settings?

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

What's the one that's not Terran Empire?

Alien Wars. Same universe, but set before the start of the Terran Empire period. Not a bad book IMO.

 

[Edit: Sorry - didn't see there was a 5th page before replying. Yes, they're all different periods in the same universe. But they're different enough that they could easily be made to stand on their own.]

[John Desmarais]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

So... they're all the same universe' date=' just different timepoints? Or are they actually distinct settings?[/quote']

For the most part (the jury still being out on Hudson City), everything Hero has published has been in the same universe but different timepoints. Consider, one of the big bads in the Champions universe in Takofanes - who was also the big bad in the Turakian Age. Do you consider the Champons Universe and Turakian Age to be distinct settings? The Hero meta-setting was designed to give them time periods where they could shoehorn in any type of settings they wanted to publish. (This has, more or less, been the underlying theme to this thread: Does the meta-setting impose to many limitations on what types of settings Hero will publish? Will Hero publish settings that don't fit into their meta-setting?)

[Starlord]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

The fact that characters can't cross over, not even "Super" characters from TAS version of Hudson City, demonstrates that it is not part of the Champions setting, except as a sort of Earth:Hudson and a third Earth:TAS. The fact that you insist on seeing it as part of the CU does not change the fact that it isn't.

 

"Nominally" in the sense of "in name only" remains the key term.

 

So, shall we go to the pure "Is not", "Is" posts?

 

Sounds like a classic literal v figurative debate.

[HeroGM]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Just for the heck of it. Did the graphic a little bit ago.

 

Personally I have a 2" 3-ring binder with ideas of what alternates I want to use and how I would lay them out in my campaign using a "who's who/marvel universe" type style write up. Nothing specifici, just enough that I can grab it and flesh things out.

 

Oh and to settle the little debate about Hudson City. Taken from Hero Universe pdf that's in the free stuff

 

SUPERHUMANS AND NORMAL HUMANS

As you’ll see below, there are some periods,

such as the late twentieth century, when Superheroic

and Heroic genres coincide. For example,

most of the various forms of Champions fi t into

the timeline at the same point with the Heroiclevel

Dark Champions (and subgenres of it, such as

Danger International). And yet, those Heroic genres

or settings do not feature superhumans — even

though they’re all part of the same world.

There are several reasons for this. First, genre

considerations come into play. Even in worlds

where superhumans exist, Heroic characters rarely

interact with them. Somehow they each stake out

their own “turf” and respect each other’s boundaries,

though there’s no “realistic” explanation for

this. For example, even though Millennium City

and Hudson City exist in the same country at the

same point in time, you’ll never see a Hero Games

product where a Hudson City vigilante takes on a

case in Millennium City, or where the Champions

(or any other four color-style superhumans) come

to Hudson City to take on Card Shark. Never. What

you do in your own games is entirely up to you,

but for purposes of the Hero Games product lines,

the two shall never meet. Thus, the Heroic and the

Superheroic genres can live side-by-side without

ever tainting each other.

[HeroGM]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

wow, I killed the conversation

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Oh and to settle the little debate about Hudson City. Taken from Hero Universe pdf that's in the free stuff

 

We've all read that. It doesn't settle the "debate". Hudson City is only nominally (in name only) part of the CU; it is a separate setting, where Supers and obvious magic simply don't exist and have never existed. Champions characters officially don't interact with Hudson City, Hudson City characters officially don't interact with Millennium City characters, and DC:TAS characters are off in their own world. There is no meta-game explanation for this. Pretending that the three settings are part of the same world is asinine.

 

The main reason that HC was made into a nominal part of the CU is to maintain the illusion of a single coherent time line.

[Sketchpad]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

wow' date=' I killed the conversation[/quote']

Glad it was someone other than me for a change

[HeroGM]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Pretending that the three settings are part of the same world is asinine.

 

The main reason that HC was made into a nominal part of the CU is to maintain the illusion of a single coherent time line.

 

Look at DC & Vertigo. Both happen in the same world, both hardly cross over. To me it's the same thing.

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Look at DC & Vertigo. Both happen in the same world' date=' both hardly cross over. To me it's the same thing.[/quote']

 

Vertigo titles like Books of Magic, Constantine, Sandman etc made it very clear that they were taking place in the same universe as the Justice League et al, though I can't speak for what they've done in the last seven years or so.

 

See it as you like; I doubt anyone's mind is going to be changed on this.

[Susano]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

Personally, I don't care for the metaverse aspect of the CU as I think it is too restrictive as is. By that, I mean the CU states supers arrive in 1938 due to a Nazi spell, so technically, I can't have someone like PS 238's Mr. Extraordinary running around in 1920 fighting crime. It also gets into such sticky situations as asking me to accept people basically forgetting supers existed within about 100-200 years, while we still talk and write about people like Shakespeare, Columbus, and Eric the Red hundreds of years later. And since all the supers die out in 2020 (or thereabouts), there goes any long-term plans for supers changing the world.

 

The one big benefit it does have is providing a single source for most everything DOJ puts out. Thus, there is one big coherent cosmology to base everything, and once you know one setting, the others tend to mesh together.

 

That said, the DOJ metaverse doesn't bother me, because I ignore it. If I'm going to create a world, it's going to be my world, and will only borrow some elements from the CU if I find something I like. This is also why I don't feel strongly about DOJ producing more supers settings, although a 5th Edition version of Strikeforce would be nice, if only as a source of Aaron's creative character designs. I will agree with RJCurrie, though, much of what made the first Strikeforce so unique is now much more common place. In fact, 4th Edition started the process of incorporating some of Strikeforce's neat new elements as well as the GMing advice.

[OddHat]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

The metaverse aspect bothers me for a number of reasons, but that has been endlessly rehashed in other threads. I do see the advantages to having a unified timeline for a setting (I use one myself); I just don't find the CU timeline attractive. So, I don't use the CU myself, though I do borrow from it.

[assault]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

That said' date=' the DOJ metaverse doesn't bother me, because I ignore it. If I'm going to create a world, it's going to be [u']my[/u] world, and will only borrow some elements from the CU if I find something I like.

 

Exactly.

 

There's a saying on the Traveller Mailing List: "Canon is for writers".

 

In other words, the only people that have to worry about all the stuff that's been written before are writers, and editors and all the other people who are involved in producing products set in the offical setting. For everyone else, anything goes.

 

Funnily enough, this has never stopped Traveller players from arguing over minute differences of interpretation of their official setting's canon.

[Lemurion]

Re: Champions Worlds

 

"Cannon go boom"

 

I don't follow the CU timeline either, and when I do take elements from it my version contains elements of both 4E and 5E. Having said that, Hudson City is the best setting for a street-level supers game I've ever seen, and so I'm using it for that (adding in NPCs from the 4E version, Normals Unbound, and possibly some from San Angelo as well).