Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

[Boll Weevil]

Greetings, Hero enthusiasts. I will be starting a new campaign in the spring, my first in several years. I’m not too worried about many of the details of the campaign as the players have told me what they want. It will start as many campaigns do, the demise of the current heroes and call to arms of the second string heroes. My question comes in two parts. First, if any of you have done this in your games please share your stories. How did the team bite it? Battle Royal or sniped one by one? I will relay the news via newspaper articles.

 

Second, I wonder if anyone would be interested in playing it out if I were to run it on Hero Central. Let’s say I use the Champions (I would add some members and make some subtle character sheet additions) in Millennium City. I would accept any characters but I think it would be fun if the players picked a character from CKC to play. I don’t mind different power levels, loners are OK. I wouldn’t really submit too much of a scenario, the players would decide how to take the team down and execute it on their own. I just play referee. I’m not saying I will do this but if a lot of people are interested how could I refuse?

[Karmakaze]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

In the recent campaign I played in with this scenereo, they'd been taken out in their base. Figuring out who was a major plaot arc. Whoever it was had teleported into the base well prepared for the fight and were able to catch most of the team unprepared.

 

It wasn't the Champions, technically, as it was not a published-setting game, but the fallen team was the local equivalent.

[Boll Weevil]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Cool. Like teleporting in and futzing with the Danger Room, replacing the Panda and Bulldozer program with Dr Destroyer and Takofanes? Eee-viilll!!!

[austenandrews]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

I did that in a campaign about ten years ago. (Not the Champions as such; I don't use CU material.) A hidden bomb blew up two members (including the one with healing capabilities) and the retaliatory attack was a trap that blew up most of the rest. All offscreen. I wanted to shake things up a bit, put the new heroes on the spot; and the Premiere Superteam in question were pretty much all distant NPCs with little direct impact on any campaign.

[Starlord]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Greetings' date=' Hero enthusiasts. I will be starting a new campaign in the spring, my first in several years. I’m not too worried about many of the details of the campaign as the players have told me what they want. It will start as many campaigns do, the demise of the current heroes and call to arms of the second string heroes. My question comes in two parts. First, if any of you have done this in your games please share your stories. How did the team bite it? Battle Royal or sniped one by one? I will relay the news via newspaper articles. [/quote']

 

In my CU, the Champions were taken out one-by-one by Mechassassin. Only Nighthawk and Witchcraft survived, with 'Hawk left permanently crippled and 'Craft emotionally crippled and what confidence she'd built up shattered. Mechassassin has eluded capture to date.

[Alverant]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

In a campaign I'm in now, we started out as novice heroes, some of us just got our powers. The city's current supergroup recently vanished. At first we tried learning what happened and establishing ourselves as a defacto-superteam. Not an easy task when the GM is throwing new things at us. Three later we only found out what happened to half the members. Plus only about half of us have the superhero mentality. The other have have different motivations. For example my character is a scientist/sorcerer first and spends more time doing research than patroling the streets. Another character has been described as having "the mentality of a 5 year old with ADD and on a sugar rush" who'd rather watch Sponge Bob and Kim-possible than almost anything else.

[Powerhouse]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

If you can find it, VOICE of Doom is an adventure that dealt with this although you might want to sub in Viper.

[Seenar]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

THE GUARDIANS PROJECT

 

Excerpt of speech given by Jeff Irons to the Joint House-Senate sub-committee on Paranormal Affairs, July 3rd, 2005:

 

We know that since September 11th, 2001 an increasing number of superheroes have opted to set aside crime-fighting in order to combat terrorism. As we know, a full 40% of supers joined the DoD’s Special Powers Force as agents of the United States Government. They have been instrumental in our current war for existence.

 

The problem is, supervillians have not left the country. There has been a distinct rise in paranormal crimes. VIPER, already adept at avoiding anti-terrorist actions by the government, has been expanding into the void left by a retreating al Qaeda. This is true for some other organizations as well. In short, ladies and gentlemen, we face a crisis here at home.

Ironman Industries is taking the lead to fill the gaps cause by so many brave heroes heading abroad. We are spearheaded the formation of The Guardians Project, and organization dedicated to the establishment of superhero teams across the country. While The Guardians Project is not seeking financial support, we are seeking the assistance of Congress to expedite deployment, and ease any legal barriers. The outline of the program is in the folders you received on page 3 . . .

 

 

Formed by several large companies, the Guardians Project fills the gap left by superheroes leaving America to focus on fighting terror. The brainstorm of Jeff Irons (famed hero of Jeff Irons and the Metalmen), it has created new superhero franchises in several cites, to cover critical lack of supergroups. These various Guardian groups fall under special projection from the Department of Homeland security, and while members do not work for the government, they enjoy good relations at all of the city, state and federal levels.

 

The Guardians Project supports each Guardian group with a base and vehicle, and pays heroes for their service (if accepted). Guardian groups are expected to maintain standards, obey the laws, and otherwise behave like a normal superhero group. There is a team manager and office manager attached to each group, but the Guardians themselves decide their own leadership structure and organization. The manger focuses on PR and organizational issues, not the actions of the heroes.

 

 

GAME

 

The Guardians Project is a way to have one shot filler games when the main RPG being run is not available. Adventures would be very episodic, and limited to affecting the region in which the franchise is set.

 

Designed for rotating GM’s, the concept would be ideal with each player who might want to take a hand at being GM having his or her own franchise. The other players would then have a character for each region. Obviously, one of the players could always guest GM a slot, and the GM could simply have a character from one of the other teams visit for the adventure.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

While I haven't done away with the Champions per se, I have done something similar in one of my games.

 

I ran a group (Vanguard) for a number of years. After a significant interlude, I started up a new group of characters in the same city/universe. Instead of killing the old characters off (which would have been ruder with PCs, easier with NPCs like the Champions) I had them vanish through dimensional gates while battling one of their enemies a couple of years before the campaign started. The new Vanguard took up the legacy, without any of the specific baggage. (And later, I brought the old characters back for a crossover/campaign ender.)

 

In short, I'd say you don't have to kill them off - just have them go away. Why deprive yourself of the opportunity to use them later if you might want to? Have them disappear fighting off V'han, or go on a deep-space mission and never return, etc. MIA and presumed dead is just as good as dead for getting them out of the way. Even if they return later, the PCs will have had a chance to establish themselves in their own right, and wouldn't automatically be "second-string" to the old group, and will have enough of an identity they wouldn't want to just merge the teams.

[Blue]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

My Current Campaing (5th City) is based around this entire premise, though the hero team wasn't the Champions, it was the Sentinels.

 

-The original team was put together by the city's designer.

-Their demise is still subject of debate.

---2 Died on the scene

---1 utterly vanished (Some say he never showed up for the fight)

---1 left in shame after the team imploded to continue traveling the dimensions.

---1 was "corrupted" and subsequently changed back.

 

The team was dispatched to an office building down town that had increasingly become a nexus for odd events recently. (The subway that ran beneath had been flooded recently. An employee went crazy and stalked his office with a gun. A flock of birds flew into the windows along the south face.) This time around they had word that the people evacuated when a tremor was felt there but nowhere else in town, and a spectral figure appeared on the 18th floor. Eldritch, a time traveling mage, *may* have forseen the team's demise and not shown up for the fight. Muse, the team mentalist and empath was seemingly driven mad by some kind of evil force. Burn was crushed by an elevator that impacted at a speed greater than simple falling velocity. In a fight with an unknown assailant, Gossmyr was slain. Stonesphere was the lone fully in-tact survivor and the shame of it all drove him to leave this, his adopted plain of residence.

 

The team founder, Nolan Brisbain, died a month later from what is believed to be grief over the demise of the team and the failure of his city to become a Utopia. His heart gave out in the night.

 

This team was selected by the city council who put out the call for heroes to come and assist with their uncharacteristically high level of super-crime.

 

The new team is wildly eclectic, featuring a Brick Rodeo Clown, a brain-sucking alien, an ex-bodyguard Martial Artist, Time-traveling steampunk scientist, Judge with Mental Powers, an ex-criminal vagrant, an egyptian avatar, and a disfunctional teenage pistoleer, among many others.. Their benefactor is Audra Blue, who owns rights to the superbase but does no adventuring (she's a shut-in hacker).

 

Sounds like a recipe for insanity, but it works because everyone plays their character well and all see the common goal.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Cool. Like teleporting in and futzing with the Danger Room' date=' replacing the Panda and Bulldozer program with Dr Destroyer and Takofanes? Eee-viilll!!![/quote']

 

Anyone who has an unsecured danger room deserves what they get!

[Terrapin]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Our current campaign began with the "all established major superteams are mysteriously vanishing" plot kicker; it gave the PCs a reason to step up and band together to form a new team, and also gave them a mystery to solve while coping with the problems springing up from the sudden "supers shortage".

 

I was once in a "Champions 2018" campaign in which we played a group of fresh heroes who revived the Champions name ten years after the original team disintegrated.

 

Sapphire didn't die; she left. She had begun, briefly, to date Defender in his Secret ID, and began spending time with his family. Corrie hated the way James Harmon IV's parents regarded him as a disappointment and a spoiled playboy, and at a critical point, after hearing more than she could endure, she became exasperated and told them exactly what kind of a hero their son really was. When he found out, James was extremely hurt and upset; they had a tumultuous argument and Sapphire resigned from the team. Afraid that other hero teams might ostracize her (since spilling your teammate's Secret ID is something Just Not Done in the paranormal crimefighting community), she took leave from full-time heroism and focused on the performance career and, increasingly, on mutant rights and other social justice issues. By 2018, she was being tapped to run for office, and during the campaign became Lieutenant Governor of California.

 

 

Ironclad died while fighting Firewing, by Diving For Cover into the path of a lethal Flame Blast which would otherwise have struck a passenger jet full of people. This incident struck a deep moral blow to Ariax Thone's conceptions of honor, causing him to be plagued by ever-worse dilemmas of conscience and to behave erratically. Years later, as our team progressed from fighting the Crowns of Krim (our original nemeses) to gearing up for an eventual confrontation with a resurgent Takofanes, we were confronted with the Undying Lord's new servitor, Experienced Zombie Ironclad! Experienced Zombie Ironclad was Sourcebook Ironclad plus about a hundred points of upgrades plus the Zombie Package (Does Not Bleed, Takes No Stun, Does Not Breathe etc.). He was unbelievably tough to stop, but he also introduce another plot hitch: Firewing was infuriated by this "desecration of the memory of a true champion of the arena", and decided to join the fray against the Undying Lord and his minions. We were in the middle of a hopeless-seeming battle at the time, and being Unexpectedly Reinforced By Firewing, while confusing, went a long way towards tipping the scales back.

 

Nighthawk became disillusioned with the idea that whacking Mechanon with a billy club was really a meaningful way of combatting lawlessness, chaos and disregard for life. His frustration grew, not only with his teammates, but with police, the courts, politicians, agencies and all theose who were supposed to be imposing a measure of decency upon the world. Lured by a chance to become a far greater force for order in the cosmos, he became Consort-Martial of a Billion Dimensions and now targets the multidimensional forces of Chaos directly, commanding the covert arm of the V'hanian military.

 

After Sapphire left the team, Defender and Witchcraft finally began to express their feelings for each other. Their love blossomed over time and they became engaged, but meanwhile the forces of Takofanes were stirring, apparently seeking out the future Archmage in order to prevent his/her rise to power. The Trismegistus Council insisted that Witchcraft was in terrible danger and needed to get out of sight. She agreed, but first she and James were married, with family and friends in attendance. Then the two of them went into hiding, combining their considerable talents to conceal their whereabouts. Two years later, their bodies were found in the rubble of their small home, apparent victims of Kal-Turak's Spell of Soul-Reaving. It was assumed that Takofanes had killed Bethany to prevent her from becoming Earth's new archmage, and that James, despite being caught out of his armor, had characteristically tried to save her. Fourteen years later, we the PCs were to realize that this was not the complete, true story. While investigating mysterious Takofanes-related events surrounding a band of young supers, we began digging into the background of their leader, a boy hero named American Owl (a young mystical patriot with casual, dark-haired good looks and brilliant green eyes). We discovered that the Trismegistus Council had concealed from the mundane world the existence of James and Bethany's son, who at the age of fifteen months had somehow survived the wrath of the most powerful evil sorcerer ever known. Although up until this time we had been beleaguered by the oppressive notion that we would never actually have a way to beat Takofanes for good, we eventually learned that if we, the destroyers of the Crowns of Krim, could destroy the Dragon Crown which rendered Takofanes invincible, and keep the kid alive so that he could claim the Sceptre of the World Mage and learn to use it to counteract the Sceptre of the Undying King, and show him the true meaning of heroism so that he would never succumb to the lure of dark power, then Takofanes would finally meet his fate at the hands of James Harmon V, the Boy Who Lived.

[OddHat]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Defender: Tragic jet boots accident while not wearing helmet.

 

Sapphire: threw out hip while gyrating on stage, fell into crowd, eaten alive by rabid fans.

 

Ironclad: Caught out in rain, rusted. Oiled by teen girl, arested on morals charges.

 

Nighthawk: Took good hard look at himself in the mirror one day, came to his senses. Grew beard to hide minor cosmetic problems. Now owner/manager of a comic book store in Springfield, Il.

 

Witchcraft: Moved to New Hope PA to run aroma therapy and crystal healing salon. Organizes most popular annual Samhain Prayer Circle and Therapeutic Orgy in region.

[Ragdoll]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Defender: Tragic jet boots accident while not wearing helmet.

 

Sapphire: threw out hip while gyrating on stage, fell into crowd, eaten alive by rabid fans.

 

Ironclad: Caught out in rain, rusted. Oiled by teen girl, arested on morals charges.

 

Nighthawk: Took good hard look at himself in the mirror one day, came to his senses. Grew beard to hide minor cosmetic problems. Now owner/manager of a comic book store in Springfield, Il.

 

Witchcraft: Moved to New Hope PA to run aroma therapy and crystal healing salon. Organizes most popular annual Samhain Prayer Circle and Therapeutic Orgy in region.

 

/collapses onto the floor in loud, uncontrollable laughter.

 

Oh. my. god.

 

So rep'd!

[Kristopher]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

Our current campaign began with the "all established major superteams are mysteriously vanishing" plot kicker; it gave the PCs a reason to step up and band together to form a new team, and also gave them a mystery to solve while coping with the problems springing up from the sudden "supers shortage".

 

I was once in a "Champions 2018" campaign in which we played a group of fresh heroes who revived the Champions name ten years after the original team disintegrated.

 

Sapphire didn't die; she left. She had begun, briefly, to date Defender in his Secret ID, and began spending time with his family. Corrie hated the way James Harmon IV's parents regarded him as a disappointment and a spoiled playboy, and at a critical point, after hearing more than she could endure, she became exasperated and told them exactly what kind of a hero their son really was. When he found out, James was extremely hurt and upset; they had a tumultuous argument and Sapphire resigned from the team. Afraid that other hero teams might ostracize her (since spilling your teammate's Secret ID is something Just Not Done in the paranormal crimefighting community), she took leave from full-time heroism and focused on the performance career and, increasingly, on mutant rights and other social justice issues. By 2018, she was being tapped to run for office, and during the campaign became Lieutenant Governor of California.

 

 

Ironclad died while fighting Firewing, by Diving For Cover into the path of a lethal Flame Blast which would otherwise have struck a passenger jet full of people. This incident struck a deep moral blow to Ariax Thone's conceptions of honor, causing him to be plagued by ever-worse dilemmas of conscience and to behave erratically. Years later, as our team progressed from fighting the Crowns of Krim (our original nemeses) to gearing up for an eventual confrontation with a resurgent Takofanes, we were confronted with the Undying Lord's new servitor, Experienced Zombie Ironclad! Experienced Zombie Ironclad was Sourcebook Ironclad plus about a hundred points of upgrades plus the Zombie Package (Does Not Bleed, Takes No Stun, Does Not Breathe etc.). He was unbelievably tough to stop, but he also introduce another plot hitch: Firewing was infuriated by this "desecration of the memory of a true champion of the arena", and decided to join the fray against the Undying Lord and his minions. We were in the middle of a hopeless-seeming battle at the time, and being Unexpectedly Reinforced By Firewing, while confusing, went a long way towards tipping the scales back.

 

Nighthawk became disillusioned with the idea that whacking Mechanon with a billy club was really a meaningful way of combatting lawlessness, chaos and disregard for life. His frustration grew, not only with his teammates, but with police, the courts, politicians, agencies and all theose who were supposed to be imposing a measure of decency upon the world. Lured by a chance to become a far greater force for order in the cosmos, he became Consort-Martial of a Billion Dimensions and now targets the multidimensional forces of Chaos directly, commanding the covert arm of the V'hanian military.

 

After Sapphire left the team, Defender and Witchcraft finally began to express their feelings for each other. Their love blossomed over time and they became engaged, but meanwhile the forces of Takofanes were stirring, apparently seeking out the future Archmage in order to prevent his/her rise to power. The Trismegistus Council insisted that Witchcraft was in terrible danger and needed to get out of sight. She agreed, but first she and James were married, with family and friends in attendance. Then the two of them went into hiding, combining their considerable talents to conceal their whereabouts. Two years later, their bodies were found in the rubble of their small home, apparent victims of Kal-Turak's Spell of Soul-Reaving. It was assumed that Takofanes had killed Bethany to prevent her from becoming Earth's new archmage, and that James, despite being caught out of his armor, had characteristically tried to save her. Fourteen years later, we the PCs were to realize that this was not the complete, true story. While investigating mysterious Takofanes-related events surrounding a band of young supers, we began digging into the background of their leader, a boy hero named American Owl (a young mystical patriot with casual, dark-haired good looks and brilliant green eyes). We discovered that the Trismegistus Council had concealed from the mundane world the existence of James and Bethany's son, who at the age of fifteen months had somehow survived the wrath of the most powerful evil sorcerer ever known. Although up until this time we had been beleaguered by the oppresive notion that we would never actually have a way to beat Takofanes for good, we eventually learned that if we, the destroyers of the Crowns of Krim, could destroy the Dragon Crown which rendered Takofanes invincible, and keep the kid alive so that he could claim the Sceptre of the World Mage and learn to use it to counteract the Sceptre of the Undying King, and show him the true meaning of heroism so that he would never succumb to the lure of dark power, then Takofanes would finally meet his fate at the hands of James Harmon V, the Boy Who Lived.

 

I like those.

 

The last one...seems so familiar...can't quite think of which famous book and movie series character's backstory that reminds me of.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

I like those.

 

The last one...seems so familiar...can't quite think of which famous book and movie series character's backstory that reminds me of.

Charlie and the Chocolate factory?

 

 

[Enforcer84]

Re: Campaign cliche: The demise of the Champions

 

I thought of having Nighthawk go the "Crazy Batman" route, devise ways to deafeat his fellow champions, including as much personal info as he could find and then having a villain who is tough enough to give the team a tussle and vile enough to want to kill them, get this info, extrapolate it to lethal levels (Nighthawk only wanted to defeat, not destroy), and then off the Champions one by one. Finally, the villain confront's Nighthawk, beats him about the room so he can't follow, thanks him for the advice on how to kill his friends, and then goes on a violent crime spree in Millennium City.

If this is an Iron Age story (and it sounds like one) Nighthawk commits suicide.

If this is a hard edged Bronze Age story, Nighthawk either returns to crime fighting with a new team of Champions (the PC's) or if his injuries were too severe, puts the team together and acts as trainer/mentor.