Twenty Years of Heroism

[Pariah]

My friend Lord Mhoram, who introduced me to the Hero Boards, tells me that the 50th post is something of a transition event--a rite of passage, kind of like being told you don't have to sit at the kids' table any more. So for my 50th post I wanted to do something to celebrate the milestone, as well as something to help me develop a deeper connection with the people reading my posts (if any). So I came up with this.

 

Below is a list, as best my memory will allow me to compile, of every character I've played in a campaign setting. Some of these characters I've played for only a gaming session or two, and some I've played for years. I've been playing Champions since 1987, so the list is pretty substantial.

 

Enjoy. And feel free to post similar lists, if you're interested.

--

 

Quasar - My very first Champions character, which I shortly thereafter turned over to another player because he liked the character and I wanted to build something else. Flying energy projector, light-based powers.

 

Impulse - Telekinetic and Focused (IIF: Soul Gem) telepath. Also had a 3rd Edition Martial Arts package and some investigation skills.

 

The Wanderer - Jedi-style (complete with laser sword) alien martial artist who mistakenly ended up on Earth. Naturally he joined the first superhero team he could find--the rest of whom were all mutants. Hey, it was the 80's.

 

The Vanguard - My first truly long-running character. He started off as a Black Knight clone and was called Cavalier. The GM ran him on a lot of solo adventures (we were roommates), and he really helped me establish a back story and flesh out the character. My love of novella-length character histories dates back to this character.

 

Black Bow - Former SWAT team member who took up a crossbow to fight crime. He had the standard array of trick arrows/bolts, as well as a few normal ones.

 

Riptide - Marine biologist and engineer who developed a supersuit for undersea exploration. When the government agency he was working for cut off his funding and ordered the prototype destroyed, he stole it instead. Played as part of an aquatic campaign.

 

Ricochet - Part of a 'first supers in the world' campaign, Ric could produce two-dimensional force/energy fields that he could use as FFs, FWs, EBs, or RKAs. Based loosely on the New Universe character Justice.

 

Lotus - Martial artist with passive psionic abilities. Formerly a PSI trainee. In her secret ID, she's a pediatrician who teaches Wing Chun Kung Fu on weekends.

 

Lightning Rod - Electrical energy projector with a metal rod that gave him OCV bonuses and reduced END. His secret ID is a meteorologist.

 

Sterling - A mutant servant of the British Crown, he can change his body into a shiny, super-strong metal alloy. He was sent to the US on semi-permanent assignment to work with the American superhero populace and see what he could learn.

 

Solaris - She fights crime with the aid of the Solar Bands, a pair of bracers that allow her to construct light-based energy constructs. In an adventure with the Crimson Centurion, it was revealed that her Solar Bands may be the 'Lost Bands' long sought by the Cosmic Centurion Corps.

 

Chill - Firefighter who got caught in a chemical fire and developed ice powers--but all of them were non-ranged. So basically, a cold-based energy projector with no ranged attacks.

 

Big Jake - Jake was a fairly normal Labrador retriever who was kidnapped and experimented on by an extradimensional wizard. Now he has human-level intelligence, speech capacity, and the ability to alter his size. He still has some canine instincts, though, such as the time a suspect got away by telekinetically making a car drive down the street by itself. Jake, of course, chased it.

 

Kid Thunder - Originally intended as a short-term replacement for two characters whose players moved to the precise middle of nowhere and left the group without anyone with ranged attacks. In costume he looked like Raiden (from the original Mortal Kombat), but without the hat. He stuck around and eventually grew up into the hero Thunderstrike.

 

Jack Diamond - He saw his best friend murdered during a robbery attempt and spent the next ten years studying martial arts and criminology in order to get back at the guy. He opened a private detective agency, with Jack Diamond as the primary detective and his secret ID as one of the office workers. He later became a member of Watchtower and inexplicably became one of the leaders of the team. In addition to his inhuman speed and agility, he also has an impressive array of gadgets--some of which he's taken as trophies from bad guys he's helped bust (like the crooked former Golden Avenger's power gauntlets).

 

Pariah - Cast out of a magical secret society for advocating contact with the outside world, he was eventually exposed to mutagenic waste and captured by Genocide. When Watchtower invaded the facility he was freed and joined the group. He's a brick with a 40-point tactical magic VPP.

 

Magnetite - When Elizabeth fell off the parallel bars and sustained a severe concussion at an international meet in Paris, she lost her chance to make the US Olympic gymnastics team. Sometime shortly thereafter, she discovered she had gained the ability to control magnetic fields and manipulate metal. She served with Watchtower for several years before leaving with teammate Phoenix (no relation to Ms. Grey) to join StarGuard. Her current location and activities are unknown.

 

Fang - A world-renowned immunologist who accidentally infected himself while trying to discover a cure for lycanthropy. His treatment allows him to make the transformation voluntarily (except under a full moon) and to keep his human intellect. He was a bald-faced ripoff of Hank McCoy, although I don't believe Fang ever said, "Oh, my stars and garters!"

 

Desperado - What happens when a self-absorbed professional ski racer finds that his floozie of the day is actually a demon? He escapes with his life--just barely!--and becomes part of a group of interdimensional operatives working to preserve the cosmic order. He's ridiculously quick and athletic, plus he has ice powers. For now. His power set seems to change without warning from time to time.

 

Knight Owl II - The grandson of Francis Krill, the original Knight Owl from Word War II. He uses his grandfather's newest invention, a suit of powered armor, to fight crime in San Angelo. Inspired by/ripped off from Batman Beyond. Called "Egg Boy" by his teammates because of the egg-shaped grenades he uses.

 

Alexander Kamensky (aka Enigma) - He spent nearly ten years as an officer in Air Force Intelligence, specializing in cryptography, translation, and electronic surveillance. When he was diagnosed with an incurable disease he volunteered for a government test program, survived the experiments, and gained super strength. He worked briefly for a US Government black ops unit before becoming a free agent.

 

Morningstar - On her way home from a party she'd been told not to go to, she saw her parents murdered by Genocide. She discovered her superpowers shortly thereafter. Upon turning 18, she was released from a state foster home and joined the New Champions. She's a flying force field projector with a mace. Tactically, think Hawkgirl from the Justice League cartoon.

 

Knight of the Scarab - An ancient warrior with mystical weapons who found himself lost in time and space, only to emerge in present-day San Francisco. He was eventually retired from the Meeb campaign because he just wasn't bizarre enough to hang with the rest of the team.

 

Wild Card - An archaeologist who discovered a set of magical playing cards made for Napoleon as a weapon. Each card value (Ace, King, etc.) has a different combat effect; so does each suit. (Built as two linked Multipowers.) Unfortunately, he never knows what he's getting until he actually draws a card. Good thing he also has a Savate package to rely on. NOT a ripoff of Gambit, thank you very much.

 

ColdFire - A computer science student who was kidnapped from a seance by something from the Other Side. An Ice Demon Lord named Fomri took her with the intent of transforming her into someone he could mate with and sacrifice the child to establish a permanent gateway to Earth. She was transformed, but escaped before he could, uh, consummate the deal. Or so she thought. She has cold-based powers that look like blue-white flame.

 

Amethyst - A member of an ancient mystical secret society (The same one that booted Pariah? Nobody knows.) who's spent her whole life preparing for an extradimensional invasion she knew would come in her lifetime. Now it's here, and her organization has recruited a number of heroes to help fight it off. Magical powers centered around Telepathy and Telekinesis.

 

--

And as far as I can remember, that's it. Twenty years of heroics. Thanks, Hero System!

[teh bunneh]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

Congrats on #50!

 

Dragon Master: The first character I tried to create. Badly, badly mangled. IIRC, he was a medieval knight/sorcerer with a pair of black dragons.

 

March-Hare: My all-time favorite character. A mutant with a screw loose; he had the "incredible" power to jump really far (also kick really hard). He was also insanely lucky – just about every scheme he tried, no matter how nuts, worked in one way or another.

 

L.T.: A government super-soldier with a by-the-book attitude. He was the leader of a group of misfit heroes in the early Image universe.

 

The Templar: An ex-Special Forces soldier who "saw the light" and became a Catholic priest. He was recruited by a secretive religious order to become the defender of the faith. He wore magical armor and carried a quarterstaff (since he refused to kill). Based loosely off the St. George character from the comic of the same name. I hardly had the chance to play him.

 

Bullet & Target: A mutant brother and sister team. Bullet (the sister) could fly and project energy beams. Target (her twin brother) was a brick who could absorb energy, which made him stronger.

 

Hardball: My Casey Jones (from TMNT) homage. A slightly crazed vigilante who used baseball bats to beat the tar out of thugs. In way over his head when he was recruited into a group of people with genuine powers – but still a lot of fun to play.

 

Myrmidon: An engineer and scientist who was tasked to help the government rebuild a suit of alien power armor they discovered. While he was taking the armor out on an unauthorized test flight, the government decided to "disavow" the project and blew the entire secret base to kingdom come. He took the armor and became a very public superhero (reasoning that the only reason the government was able to kill those people was because no one knew who they were).

 

Blur!!: A hyperactive teenage speedster (there's an oxymoron in there somewhere). Very fun character – when I really got into it I found I could talk so fast the other players had to ask me to repeat myself on many occasions.

 

Spade: A street-level sorcerer. He was sent to hell as a child, grew up there under the tutelage of the devil, and managed to escape back to earth where he became the protector of his ghetto neighborhood.

 

Chevelier: A French Savatiste and weapons-master. Very joie de vie bon vivant type character. I only got to play her briefly, so I created:

 

Batroc ze Fightaire!: A French Savatiste and weapons-master. Very joie de vie bon vivant type character. The daughter of Georges Batroc (Captain America's old enemy) and a member of the New Thunderbolts.

 

Arachne: Daughter of Spider-Man. A teenage spaz. Currently an NPC in the Avengers: The Next Generation game I'm running on HeroCentral.

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

First off Pariah - congrats on getting 50, and I hope you have a long stay.

 

 

To respond to this, I'm reposting my post from my 2000th post (the first time, before the board rules changed about post count and NGD).

 

 

For my two thousandth post here on the HERO boards, I'd thought I'd post something I put on my blog - This is a discussion of my journey in and through the game called Champions. Think of it as a bio of me, when I was not me.

 

 

The first game in Oregon:

 

Microchip was a standard Marvel-esque telepath/telekinetic. Mutant, whose powers were activated during a computer explosion that embedded a microchip in her forehead. The character was built by someone else. Played a little bit, but got tired of her real quickly. She was the character I learned about PRE attacks with, albeit without intent; a character blasted me three times with his most powerful attack, and in each case my TK FF stopped almost all of it so I looked at him and said, in a very condescending voice"Is that the best you can do?". .The GM that's a Prescence attack" . Me "œokay....what's that" .

Shellhead a big bruising brick with lots of enrages and berserks. Turned out a lot like the hulk. First character I built. Didn't understand the rules, so I went with a whole bunch of points and basic character design (althought I wouldn't have phrased it that way then). Got board of him quickly- was enraged too much.

Gemstone she was a sport Model brick. Flight, some martial arts (and this was under third edition, so that was rare for a brick - she had focused/hero id str, and bought the MA on her normal STR), and other stuff. Cheaper than Shellhead, I had discovered the wonder of Foci. The character ended up in prison because she stopped a zombie summoning by the Zombie Master who had a permit for his fire, and his zombies. I pretty much got hosed by the GM.

Meeb was interesting he was a brick with stretching and other stuff. (I started with bricks a lot, figured out later that I got bored with them too easily). Meeb came about because I asked the GM what SFX could justify 75% damage reduction, and he answered an amoeba. Next session I had meeb. Meeb was an alien, with a 40 ro 50 STR (do not recall which) stretching, clinging, form only shapeshift reduction and armor. At one point we were all falling and I hit first, and reached out with my stretching and caught everyone. The GM said "œIf you want to do that again you need to buy area affect on your strength" . I had a lot of saved XP so I bought Explosion on my STR. Another player (who was not there for the previous bit) later looking at my sheet asked about that, and hatched a plan. So we conconcted the "œOrganic Grenade" . He (the team brick) would toss me into the mass of villians and I would explode out with lots of little psuedopods and smack everyone, and cling to them all.

 

 

 

The next Game: Utah (Lesslie's or how I met my wife)

 

When I started my next champions game I brought over rebuilt version of Chip, Gemstone and Meeb. Chip was the only one I really played much- I was starting with my disaffection for standard bricks. I joined this campaign just as it moved into a post apocalyptic future.

 

Dave was a supersuit, and a rebuild of a character that my best friend in Oregon had (I asked permission). Dave had a sidekick, his helmet. Dave had a speed 5, the helmet had a 3. The helmet was named HARV (hueristic articulate responsive visor - sheesh). Harv had a funky lim on his MP (harv was an EP, Dave was brick with a huge amount of Enhanced senses with usable by other for harv). Sort of an activation roll, but on a 17 he blasted a teammate, and on an 18 he blasted Dave. He was uppity. I named the hero what I did so Harv could say, when getting uppity and Dave trying to turn him off "œDave.... don't do that Dave." My first supersuit. That archetype will appear many times.

 

My first martial artist (another archtype that will appear over and over again) was Warrior. Warren Hirihito Romanovich. He grew up in the gangs of the destroyed NY, and had Ch'i, but not as normal people had it, he could access multiple lifetimes worth of training, and could do just about anything. He was also my first character with Code vs Killing. I gave him a full CaK, because I decided that if I was going to play a character with this limitation, I would go full bore.

Warrior became one of my most successful character. Played for almost a decade before his story was told and I retired him (he ascended to the next vibrational plane of existance). His philisophy was a mishmash of Buddism, Jonathon livingston seagull, starwars and Christianity. He had a student as an NPC that became a GMPC, then later full bore PC in a reincarnated version. Warrior's order kept getting reincarnated, and they would remember bits of thier past lives, and that is how they had thier "œsuperchi" . With Warrior I didn't build a new PC for months if not more - something very unusual for me.

Propane ne'e Enigma. My first basic Energy projector. I wanted something different from Warrior, and she was it. I was bored within 6 session. I don't like basic energy projetors. So I suffered a bit, and then dumped her points into a cosmic pool (a 50 pointer) and played her that way for a while before retiring her.

Moonstone - A basic speedster with a really nasty combo attack. There weren't really DC limits, so he had a lot of running, a decent ST and an EB (this was before HA or that is what it would have been) that added to his punching damage. One time he pushed all three. KOed the bad guy and himself as well. Always wanted to play him more.

New Knight - Tanith. A Jedi. Played her for a few months (mostly solo) and retired her. She had a short life, but was one of my favorite characters. She had a short career - but her story got told, so I retired her. She ended up in camalot, and ended up the mother of Galahad, and had twins later (she was a Jedi after all). She ended up the guardian of the Holy Grail.

 

Balrog - a brick / other. He was a high strength demon. He didn't want to be one, but was transformed into one. After the supermage cleaned up the messes, everyone else who had been changed was normal, but him. So he could do a "œhulk" and change into Balrog. He ended up in a new mutants kind of school trying to understand his powers. Played for a decent amount of time. When he went on the shelf I didn't mind.

 

Penumbra was built after I saw the first Batman movie, and had to play a clone. He had very minor light manipulation ability and a nifty gadget belt, detective abilities, martial abilities and a cool motorcycle.

 

Peregirne was a teen super. Archer (Rainbow archer was her aunt, and she picked up her equipment from some that were spilled when RA was beat in a fight). She got some armor and a hoverboard and was off. She was fun, and started dimension hopping. She made yuppie a curse in a middle ages setting. When I first read snowcrash, I thought that Stephenson stole my character due to his telepathy... Peregrine was very much YT.

 

Superstar - a teen brick with some energy powers - HS football star. My wife built his sister a cheerleader and EP. They could join hands and do a really nasty area effect attack. Played only for a few sessions.

Surge. A martial artist with a small cosmic pool. Played for a while in my wife's campaign, but not enough. Then this campaign ended- It had been running almost 13 years.

 

The Rocky Mountain Avengers:

A game that was run by a friend of ours, Brian, that was a player in the Wife's campaign.

 

My first character was Black Cat a darkforce enhanced martial artists. I never got solid campaign numbers from the GM, so I kept layering her defenses. She ended up with more than the Brick in the game. She played for a while, but I wasn't getting the kind of play in with her that I wanted. She did end up with a scale from Godzilla due to an AVLD that she had that actually did him damage, and made a shield out of it, and got her training from Captain America.

 

Dragonstar Red Used a visual traced from Rocket Red in the JLI. He was a supersuit. The GM and I were looking over one of the enemies books (international I think) that had a character with an EB with an RKA linked to it. He said that this was ugly as you could spread the EB and get the OCV bonus with the RKA. And DR was born. He had a breakable unbreakable focus. Mechanically it was unbreakable, but the suit granted +30 bod, no figured characteristics. So I had a lot of his powered systems either downpower or shut off completely depending on how much body he took. Played him for a great while. Really like him. A good deal of his style and power ended up in a later character - ballistic.

 

Afterburner my last character from this campaign. He was another attempt at a strait MP. He had desolid physical only (he turned into full flame), and rather large pool only for advantages on his EB. (this predated variable advantage). He could also get extra dice with the pool. He was johnny storm's sun with a quickened aging metabolism.

 

Kismit was a luck based semimaritalartist. I've thought about ressurecting her with a new build. She only played a few times.

 

 

Salt Lake Goofyness

 

Now Brian and I would drive to Salt lake for another Champions game. The GM there was inconsistant and stingy with XP but we wanted to both play so...

 

I played Afterburner again. Same powers and personality different background.

 

Now this GM would sometimes noshow with no warning so Brian took on GMing when the other guy didn't show up (we all commented about how the GM had an activation roll). It was a semi-comic campaign. I played Powerhouse a brick that was a trucker. When he transformed into super ID, his cap spun backwards, his Tshirt became bright white, his jeans became clean and he got a little PH symbol on his shirt. He had a dog Splotch (to ugly to call spot). He was goofy and fun.

 

My game

About this time I started my campaign (which ran nearly 11 years). I built some characters to be GMPCs that Lesslie would run solo for me.

 

Dragonfire was a martial artist with fire generation, but it took a lot of energy, so he didn't use it much. He ended up getting depowered and became the team trainer when I got tired of him.

 

Pheonix was a energy projecting sidekick to Lesslie's patriotic The Marshall.

 

White Tiger was a supersuit martial aritsts (eveyone had supersuit bricks and EPs why not MAs). She had samurai and ninja training and a little magic. Her suit was techmagic. She was also filthy rich and ran a chain of department stores. Really cool character, and I never got to play her enough. She was one I intended to bring back, but in a lot of ways she and Cat (see Tempest ahead) were similar, and I was already playing Cat, so I just kept her on the shelf.

 

Tempest:

A new player in our game was getting ready to start his own game (and we played them concurrently)

 

For my first character I played a variation of Surge. Trouble was with his pool, he overwhelmed the GMs plots, and I voluntarily retired him.

 

My primary character for the decade long campaign was Black Cat. She ended up getting depowered after a while (150+ XP) and became a strait martial artist. I played a possessed by her powers go evil, get depowered, go to jail, get marital insight, get pardoned plot with her.

 

While Cat was in prison I played Moonwalker. An alien bounty hunter with a huge selection of gadgets. He was a blast to play - my favorite of his dodads was a gelsack that hit and caused a funky alien energy discharge and the target was hit with a 2d6 end drain each phase for 2 turns. He was efficient and intense.

 

Now the team was getting pretty powerful, so the GM decided to add some newer lower powered characters. I brought in a chain smoking annoying little twerp that was a cyber telepath and machine manipulator. He had a bunch of stolen Foci that he used, and later shaped into a cybersuit. I was never satified with playing him (partially I think because he was so annoying). He went by Alter Ego.

 

Then he got married and moved to Salt lake and we stopped his campaign. Wahhh.

 

Now back in my game,

 

I brought Surge back, when Lesslie brought back Psyche (the two were a love story originally so when she brought back the one, I had to get the other). Third time was a charm, and as he was a GM PC his pool never got in the way of my plots.

 

Eric was the love interested of Warrior's student Jennifer (so he was originally an NPC for an NPC/GMPC). When my wife decided to play Jenny as a PC, I decided to play Eric as one as well.

 

Ballistic was my most successful supersuit (the way Cat and Warrior were my Martial artists). He was an excop who flew the suit, but didn't design it. As he played he started learning how to build it (and later had sort of a funky expand his brain kinda psi accident that gave him a lot of that right away). But after 75 or 100 XP I was getting sorta bored, and I had recently read the Ultimate Supermage, so I replaced his particlebeam mutlipower with a mage multipower, and he was almost a sacrifice for an alien sorceror, and it brought up his magical potential.

 

 

Short games, games that died or never really took off.

 

A game where we were the first with superpowers, I played a character with a bunch of little psi powers. Some telepathy, mind control, prescience, telekenesis, and a little energy control. However these powers hit a kid who was 17 and a total star wars nut, and so he thought he turned into a Jedi (his energy control was a "lightsaber"energy out of his hand). He called himself Padawan. He was a blast to play. He was the irritant of that group. He kept quoting Star wars. Another character "I'll try" . Padawan "There is no try, only do. Or do not."

 

Another lower powered game where the characters were just learning thier powers I built Tempo. He was a muscian (drummer) who got speedster powers. This game died within a month but I loved the character, and, dang it, I still hadn't played a speedster the way I wanted.

 

I played Amanda who was a telepath, although she started as a housewife. Ended up an interdimensional agent, and a really nasty telepath.

 

 

I was intillectually trying to come up with a two character fusion character (a la firestorm) and built Sift a mage with the skills that both her secret IDs had. I played her in a short play be Email game, and then resurected her for my most recent just starting game as a GM PC in the mystic squad.

 

The New Game.

I am in the process of starting new champions world, with multiple teams that I can bounce around with. I'm using bits of the long running campaings I was in as part of the background, so it is a sequel campaign, and this allows the players to play some of thier older, more powerful characters. Sift is on the mystic squad. Ballastic and Black Cat are in the legacy team (think JLA or Avengers)

 

Currently playing in a team that ended up being the "Teen Champions" is Terminal Velocity. Another teen speedster.His mother was Shrike from European Enemeis, and his father was a superhero. Dad's wife found out about his stumble from matrimony and set him up to be killed by Eurostar. She left the team they were on, and thier son hunts me.

 

The Other new game.

On of our new players got bit by the GM bug again, and as I have been having problems with my depression I bowed out of GMing my fantasy game to let him run his Champions - and we will likely have our first session this week. I am playing an update to Meeb.

 

 

Updated from 2004.

My Legacy game dies a quick death after the first major adventure. I went a little Iron Agey for a big adventure, and the PCs reacted in a fasion I couldn't cope with, so I ended up cancelling the game. *sigh*. I think I was still a little burned out at that point.

 

As other posts on the board have shown - I've been playing Meeb.

 

Other new characters -

Pariah started a game with the PCs being special people that are fighting off an Alien Invasion. For that I build Smokeater. Again with the Enegy Projector. Only this time, at the suggestion of the GM, I added a ranged MA package. It gave me the versitiliy I always found lacking in that archtype. He's an ex Firefighter. With Ballstic being an Excop I now have to play an Ex Astronaut, just so I complete the classic three "What I want to be when I grow up" professions.

 

The GM of the "teen Champions" is also running Vibora Bay campaign. I brought Sift back out, dusted her off, rebuilt her some, and am actually getting to play her.

 

Another character I forgot was in a agent type game where we had superpowers. I was running an ex CIA assassin, who also had animal powers. This is the "Burned down half of Oakland" team. Don't recall his name.

 

A solo cahractger I built started as I was minmaxing a D&D dharacter and thought about putting a half demon template and a half celestial template. Then I thought about the likely origins of such a a character and moved it to Superhores where Genetic Engineering could do it's thing. That was Angelfire - large pool for quick angelic and demonic attacks, full LF, solid defences, high stats.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

Here I go!

 

Enforcer: Artificially created bodyguard/boytoy from an alternate dimension. Fights the good fight and plays lethario to many many superpowered women. ...What?

 

Mantis: Martial arts master from San Fransisco. Ch'i oriented abilities to go with nigh superhuman physical prowess, rival, redeemer, and brother-in-law to Green Dragon.

 

Purple Haze/Powerman: Contact with a portion of an alien artifact gave Brian the ability to surround himself, with a glowing, purple energy field that gave him strength, life support, flight, etc. Later the field changed color and "Red Haze" sounded dumb.

 

Captain Blaster: Fourth Rate Telekinetic, first rate genius. made battlesuit and fought crime. His suit was more Guardian/Vindicator than Iron Man, and supplimented/augmented his natural abilities. It was virtually unknown that he had superpowers of his own.

 

Mammoth: Mild Mannered architect who was transformed into a rampaging monster by DEMON. Caveat here being his rampage was limited to their lair. He joined three different superteams, retired to being a designer of superbases.

 

PsiQueen: Daughter of a diplomat, "Herald of Galactus" style mentalist. Very powerful, very arrogant.

 

Valiant: Captain Marvel (Shazam) knockoff who was killed in his first adventure. He came back even more powerful as the magical transformation was made permenant via "divine" or extradimensional energies.

 

Captain Tempest: Heroic clone of the CU's Thunderbolt. Created by Malachite but rescued by the WestGuard hero team. Fought his "Brother" on several occasions.

 

The Protector: British super sent to America to study, superlative detective and tactician; martial artist with gadgets. Superhuman resistance to disease/Mental attacks/magic, but only slightly tougher than highly trained martial artist, low-level natural resistance to killing attacks.

 

Vanguard: Alien Brick who was trained with other "Contacts" at the METE spacestation. Fought the good fight for two different alien campaigns, died in battle.

 

Modi: Thor's "other" son. (Magni was taken by the GM to be a villain )

Wore Belt of Strength and Gauntlets of Thor. Had his own enchanted hammer that let him command the Earth and stone. Wore earth tones

 

Redstone: Heroic Demon, escapee from Tartarus. Brick/Fire Projector. Talked like Marvel's Thor.

 

Journeyman: Son of the Wrecking Crew's Bulldozer, Asgardian physique, studies magic and alchemy with a leaning towards developing magical items. Wears an enchanted toolbelt and carries many trinkets. Brick and mystical gadgeteer.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

And here's to 20 more years.

 

{Lord Mhoram's "my character was the child of SHRIKE from European Enemies" always suckers me in to posts}

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

And here's to 20 more years.

 

{Lord Mhoram's "my character was the child of SHRIKE from European Enemies" always suckers me in to posts}

 

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

My list of Champions, over 20 years of playing, are:

 

FIRST EDITION CHAMPIONS:

 

Gregory Ichabod (GI) Jones: My first attempt at a superhero, with a GM that understood the rules only a little better than I did. For instance, GI Jones had an M-16 that the GM found in the book listed as 2d6K (6d6) Autofire, so we thought it was 2d6 Killing damage, with 6d6 knockback. I hit Ogre with 5 shots, so we rolled those 6d6 five times to calculate knockback; sent him through two buildings and into a third. My favorite misinterpretation of the rules ever.

 

Bolo: Yes, my namesake. An electricity-controlling pseudo-Spiderman clone, he would cling to walls, wrap people in his tethered bolos, then zap them with an NND. He could swing, but preferred to teleport and glide. Fully American, but for no explainable reason his costume features a huge Union Jack on it. (Well, it looked cool.) Somewhere along the way he became an anglophile.

 

Temporis: Your typical time-traveler from the future, with various futuristic technology for attacks, movement, and sensors.

 

SECOND / THIRD EDITION CHAMPIONS:

 

Plastique: Okay, imagine some guy in a green jumpsuit wearing skates and carrying several large chemical tanks on his back. Hoses from the tanks to spray nozzles strapped to his wrists. He could spray a fast-drying plastic sheeting (entangles both individual and for walls), occasionally mixing in an explosive chemical triggered by the kinetic energy released when the target breaks out of the entangle.

 

Luminary: A fast-as-light energy projector (12 SPD, Teleport, FTL). Created for a campaign that never got off the ground.

 

Epee: Swashbuckling swordsman with a high-tech flying “steed.” Acted like a modern Zorro, so he didn’t exactly work within the law, which actually caused a massive rift in the group he joined. (That game didn’t last long.)

 

FOURTH EDITION CHAMPIONS:

 

Justin Nicholas Thyme: An actor from the present day who pretended to be from the mid-to-late 1800s trapped in our time courtesy of a dying time traveler. The dying time traveler part was true, and was where Justin got his time-warping pocket watch, as well as 1800s period clothing treated with 23rd century technology to be bulletproof.

 

(Most of my 4th and 5th Edition time was spent as GM, so the remaining are NPC heroes I created to screw with, I mean, interact with the PC heroes.)

 

Electro-Lad: Self-appointed sidekick to Will-o-Wisp, he was basically a normal with an electrified whip. Also 3d6 Unluck.

 

Street Legal: Corporate-sponsored vigilante with a Knight Rider-inspired AI-driven motorcycle. He kept showing up to interfere with anything the heroes did involving his host company (which, of course, was far from ethical).

 

Snafu: Basically Spiderman’s Black Cat with a twist. She was a bad-luck girl who started off as a villainess but fell for one of the heroes and eventually became a superheroine before running away because she was causing bad luck for her hero boyfriend. Snafu carried and threw round Christmas ornaments filled with glitter to make people think her bad luck powers, which were completely natural, actually required foci to work.

 

John Doe: A perfect normal (all characteristics at max normal limits) with amnesia and the ability to see all known info about all targets in the area (powers, vulnerabilities, pressure points and weak points, etc. – Lots of KS plus an AOE Find Weakness). He could also wield any mass-produced or historic weapon. Actually created by Malachite to infiltrate the hero team and learn all of their weaknesses, then at a trigger word attack them.

 

Hotshot Former PRIMUS agent and love interest of a player’s superheroine. When the superheroine was seemingly killed by a supervillain team, he was tweaked by a mentalist to kill those supervillains in PRIMUS custody. Cleared of murder charges due to the mentalist’s influence but still forced out of PRIMUS, he became a superhero after the heroes stole and modified the battlesuit formerly used by one of the now-dead supervillains.

 

Rubicon: A street mage carrying a staff featuring a large and powerful mystic ruby. Still shows up in my current game as a mystic resource, since none of my players ever want to create a magic-based character.

 

FIFTH EDITION CHAMPIONS:

 

Max Extreme: Copied the concept off a character from a Spiderman comic (I seem to do that a lot). He was a football player wearing a battlesuit with a jetpack. Move-throughs were his specialty. Control wasn’t. Personality-wise, the heroic equivalent of Foxbat.

 

Sandstone: Brick with sand powers. Created for Dave Mattingly’s first BYOB (Bring Your Own Brick) game at GenCon a few years back.

[Pariah]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

....so the remaining are NPC heroes I created to screw with' date=' I mean, interact with the PC heroes.[/quote']

 

Now THAT's my kind of GM. Repped.

[Theron]

Re: Twenty Years of Heroism

 

Cool thread.

 

I've been playing since the Spring of 1982 (before Mechanon had Life Support,) so I'm coming up on 25 years. I've mainly GMed, but I've had my share of PCs along the way:

 

Projectile: A brick with a jet belt. He was a Move-Through specialist. I don't remember much else about him except that his character sheet ruined a bunch of my old notes when it got filed away in a folder. Apparently, the

"crayons" I used to color his sheet were actually oil markers.

 

Spectrum: My longest running PC, through a number of campaigns and editions. Professor Sam Curtis, nuclear scientist, was caught in a reactor accident which granted him powers over the light spectrum, as well as flight and the usual blaster suite. It also rendered him highly, poisonously radioactive, forcing him to wear a bright yellow containment suit in public. I have a custom mini of him a friend made 20 years ago sitting on my PC.

 

The Mighty Mongoose: No relation to the Mongoose from the early Enemies books (in fact, they were arch-rivals,) TMM was a bit of a loon, who had a smattering of 1st edition Martial Arts and force field gauntlets that enhanced his punches (and led to massive arguments with the GM over whether an EB could target PD or not.)

 

Infiltrator: A stealth and espionage expert; the ultimate SAS-man. He was created for a character building contest at my local comic shop and played briefly in a super spies game a friend ran.

 

Black Dragon: A pure martial artist. We decided that since there was a Green Dragon and Dragon Master, that there were Dragons of other colors as well. Black Dragon turned against his evil counterparts and fought on the side of the good guys.

 

Thus followed a long hiatus from playing. Lots of GMing and world building. If I played in those days, I tended to dust off Spectrum or Black Dragon.

 

Since moving to Houston, I've played the following characters:

 

Lodestone: Archaeologist Damien Ravenwood used the mystical Lodestone Rod to fight the Nazis in WWII. In the closing days of the war, he was locked in a mystical slumber, only to awaken again in 1995, in a strange new world still in need of his powers.

 

Nemesis: The Invincible Kid: Blessed with super strength and invulnerability since birth, Nemesis cast aside his childhood identity of Kid Power, got a new agent, a new handle and costume, and went forth to kick butt. Unfortunately, he still had a lot of growing up to do and spent more time in the hospital than most bricks ever should.

 

Atlas: A size-changing scientist who briefly graced the scene in San Angelo.

 

Troubadour: Warrior. Poet. Lover. More-or-less washed up and failed superhero at the start of the Fair City campaign, he grew into my favorite PC ever. Starting off as a somewhat dissipated womanizer with good intentions but poor follow-through, he grew into the world's premiere martial artist, a capable leader, and even found true love. Last seen riding off into the sunset on a Harley "To find America -- the real America."

 

Delta Dimension: A former Astronaut who gained tremendous size and density alteration powers. He could shrink to under an inch or grow to sixty feet and alter his density between insubstantiality and adamantine at any size. Neat idea, but a real pain in the butt to play, so I chucked him after a half-dozen sessions.

 

Spectrum: Revived in 5th Edition form for Fair City. He picked up Fallout, the Atomic Dog, as a sidekick.

 

Thus followed another multi-year hiatus from playing Champions.

 

My most recent PC, who I've only used once, two weeks ago, and am playing again, is Negasonic Teenage Warhead, a name I happily cribbed from Ultimate X-Men and the Monster Magnet song of the same name. He's a skate punk with sonic powers in a near future Cyberpunk/Teen Supers game run by HoustonGM.