Best _Champions_ Role-playing moments.

[Harry Canyon]

Hi folks,

 

Thanks for the info so far on role play vs. combat. This got me to wondering...

 

What was your best Champions role-playing moment?

 

Thanks!

 

Harry

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Well, the moment where my mentalist character, The Living Ego, had his climatic battle with the man who "killed" him, Anklosaur, was a defining moment for my character. Basically, Anklosaur, killed off my character early in the campaign, but we had him come back by having his mental essence occupy another body. Eventually, I caught up with Anklosaur. despite some justification, i didn't kill him. Instead, I psuchokinetically tore apart his armor and then used my psionic powers to make him forget his criminal past. In essence, I DID kill him, but in a humane way.

 

Rob

[Agent X]

I don't know if it's my best but it was recent: I played Cheshire Cat in a bad guys one shot. Through greedy duplicity, flattery of Pulsar, the promise of food to Ogre, and the framing of Blowtorch; I was able to steal all their starting pay and keep it for myself. I was greedy, you know.

 

BTW, Cheshire Cat is a blast to role play!

[BoloOfEarth]

My first GenCon, I played in a game (Minutemen / China Doll) where all of the players were so intent on figuring out the mystery that, if China Doll had turned herself in to the police, we would have continued investigating just to figure out why she was doing what she was doing. The climax was pure role-playing -- no combat at all -- as we talked her out of shooting the guy who effectively destroyed her life.

 

As a GM, it would probably be the time a player talked Icestar out of killing Ravager, who had apparently killed Icestar's teammate Gargoyle. (Background: in my world, one hero team in NYC was known as the Guardians, made up of the characters from the cover of Champions II and, I believe, the Champions comic books. The PCs, also based in NYC, were out of town on 9/11 and most of the Guardians were killed trying to stop the second plane or saving people from the twin towers. Gargoyle was left in a coma, and Icestar was guilt-ridden over his teammates' deaths.) Ravager had drained the remaining life essence from Gargoyle, and Icestar was out for blood. I made the player work to talk Icestar out of committing murder.

 

To me, the best role-playing tends to remove the need for combat...

[Brandi]

Irving, the NYPL Lion who I posted here, was a great source of non-combat roleplaying oddities. In his writeup I mentioned the Xeno's Paradox discussion with Armadillo, but there was also the time when trying to stop a riot of Road Kill fans (the team had already taken out the band proper and were leading them away) he ended up first getting their attention by roaring into a mike (and blowing out some speakers) and then attempting to captivate them with the spookiest, most Hell-laden imagery he could think of (our group imagined Road Kill as something akin to Marilyn Manson or one of those Swedish black-metal groups)... Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

 

It didn't really work.

[CorpCommander]

Sparky the Wonder Dog

 

This one is easy. This goes back to Champions III days...

 

The champions were on a flight to investigate a clue on mystery island. A 'mystery beam' shot down the plane and the non-flyers in the group (i.e. most of us) ended up in the drink. We all crawled up on a piece of floating wreckage and had to deal with waves attempting to dump us in the ocean again. At one point a really large wave came in. 6 heroes and one DNPC, my side kick Sparky the Wonder Dog (incompetent NPC) all made skill/dex checks to make sure we stayed on the wreckage. When the wave past the only one left on the make shift raft was of course Sparky the Wonder Dog!

[tmutant]

My powered armor brick Sentinel (way back in 84) was trying to stop the evil Doctor Demento. He sent Sentinel's DNPC mother against him, grafted into cybernetic armor that Demento controlled. It also disguised her identity. Sentinel defeated her, ripped off her helmet, and watched her die. Definitely character altering.

[Rage]

Well there was the time when my character beat up everyone and tottally kicked ass. as you can see I don't have roleplaying moments everything is combat and that is all i can talk about. No wait... there was one roleplaying moment.... No I was beating up that character and just said somthing witty: "DIE BAD GUY DIE!" haa HAA HAAA HAA

 

 

this post makes sense if you understand irony.

[RevHooligan]

Mayhem, our resident mentalist, had been having difficulties with a NYPD detective who was a real hard case. After being dragged downtown for yet another bright-light-in-the-face interrogation, Mayhem mind controlled the detective to stand on his desk, drop trou, and loudly sing "I'm a sexy man!" all the way to early retirement. 18 months real time and years game time later, the detective crashed Mayhem's New Year's Eve fancy dress wedding and got his revenge... by punching out a different character who thought it would be funny to dress up as Mayhem.

[DocMan]

Two favorite role playing moments come to mind.

 

First, was a bit more combat than role play, but it works. I was playing my Mentalist Psi Lord. Our trio of heros had gone into combat against a group called the Gemstones. Psi Lord has a mad-on about mentalists who turn to crime, so he was going after Opal, the enemy mentalist. After a few mental exchanges, they'd pretty much determined that the two of them could hurt each other, but it would be a battle of inches. The rest of the team was outnumbered and wasn't fareing well...

 

So Psi Lord switched to his backup plan. He flies at Opal, with his arm cocked to throw a punch. Opal goes, "Oh, please! What are you gonna do? Hit me? Hey, why is your hand glowing like..." WHAM! Psi Lord uses his TK Boosted punch (a few dice of HA w/ Double Knockback), and send Opal flying into the wall. The metal corrugated wall is pounded out flat in a boom that rattles the entire warehouse. The entire battle stops as everyone turns to look at Psi Lord. He turns to the rest of the combatants and says, "Ok, that's one."

 

At least that's the way I remember it...

 

 

[DocMan]

The other one was when we were trying to deal with a group called The Circle. They were led by a guy who called himself The Admiral and thought that he was a great mastermind. My character was Moleculon, a brick/shapeshifter.

 

The Circle had been sending clues to the newspapers, then pulling off robberies based on the clues. The Admiral's way of making us look bad. I think the whole thing was a series of 8 or 10 cryptic clues. The Circle themselves were a heirarchy of agents who pulled off these crimes in power armor. After the second robbery, while our group of heros was puzzling over the clues, I said, "Look, we don't need to figure all of these clues out. We just need to show up at the next robbery, smash a few heads, capture one of their guys and I'll take his place and fly back to their base, giving you directions the whole way."

 

Knocker, a glorified cop in power armor, looked at Moleculon and said, "You can do that?"

 

In answer, Moleculon activates his Instant change, any outfit, and shifts into an exact duplicate of Knocker's armor, except his lights don't work.

 

Knocker turns to the GM and says, "Can he do that?"

 

Doc

[Guest zarglif69]

Roleplaying? what's roleplaying? me brick. Roleplaying too complicated for me. All I know is smash person, throw car.

[umbra]

My favorite moment was when I was playing a "thief turned reluctant hero" and our group attacked a drug lords house in South America somewhere. While my teammates where outside creating mayhem and basically blowing up all and sundry, I was sneaking around the mansion looking for "clues". I found the clues, and quite a haul of bearer bonds, and a Picasso painting I cut out of the frame (well he WAS a bad guy). I then sold the painting on the black market (she never really liked that painter anyway) and used the cash to put out a hit on the teams arch-enemy (unbeknownst to the team). To prove the job had been done, they had to deliver the cybernetic eyes of the arch-nemesis to my character. It turned out the hit failed, but she did eventually end up with those eyes as dilly bobs for her car's rear view mirror.

[murdoch]

The characters: my character, a reformed "conqueror of the world", now "good guy." Goody-Two-Shoes hero, believer in goodness, justice, little puppies, and all that's nice and sweet. Another character, the Ninja Master, a secretive martial artist.

 

The setting: In the control room of a bad guy's ULTIMATE WEAPON orbital platform, the effect of which is to render all weapons inoperable (remember, folks, this genre allows that.)

 

The argument: What we should do with the ULTIMATE WEAPON. Goody-Two-Shoes wanted to use it to stop nuclear war. Ninja Master stated that it was ill-advised; I announced I agree with the use of the weapon, since this would allow us to Take Over the World (so maybe my character wasn't quite as reformed as all that.) Goody-Two-Shoes protested angrily, saying that the purpose was to stop war and make people peaceful. I shrugged and insisted that if it were used to stop war, we would be de facto taking over the world; and besides, people would then use conventional weapons to kill each other. Goody-Two-Shoes said we'd dial it to eliminate conventional weaponry. I agreed again, stating that this would take us further down the road to World Domination, but that also people would start using knives and rocks at any rate.

 

After Goody-Two-Shoes stomped off in a huff, Ninja Master and I agreed to just blow the damn thing up. After all, it was better than having Goody-Two-Shoes in charge of the world.