Pariah Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 It's not hard to picture the scene. A group of older people--geezers, you might even call them--are sitting around talking about the way things were "back in the day". Now, imagine that these geezers are actually Champions players from the old school--and I do mean the Olde School. You might hear things like these: "Back when I started playing Champions, you couldn't buy new books from a gaming store. If you wanted a new book, you had to wait for some monk to copy it by hand for you." "Back when I started playing Champions, we kept track of our stats with Roman numerals. It was fun, until we had to fight the villain with the CXX Strength." "Back when I started playing Champions, we used miniature figures made of iridium. The stuff was just lying around back then." You get the picture. So tell me, what was it like back when you started playing Champions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Well, actually, when I started playing, you couldn't buy the books from a gaming store where I lived. Sorry, that's book, not books. The first three groups in Brisbane that I know of played with a single copy of the rules, and some photocopies of it which somebody had made. Unethical, but at least one of those original players is still buying Hero Games products 25 years later... Our earliest games, unfortunately, were hideous munchkin-fests. Sadly we didn't have anyone willing and able to suppress the powergamers long enough to run a decent campaign. In my case, it was partly because I wasn't all that familiar with the source material. I hadn't read comics in years at that point. My subsequent comics habit was picked up from my fellow players. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Mhoram Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Well there was one I really had happen. Back when I first started playing champions the GM griped because the fancy new big squarebound champions book didn't include the stuff from Champions II and Champions III... Yeah I can in just about the time 3rd ed was published. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted February 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Sorry' date=' that's [i']book[/i], not books. Excellent point. Repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sketchpad Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day, Hero books couldn't put you into the ER when thrown! Back in my day, we didn't need the extra 100 pts to play a superhero! Back in my day, the only house rule we needed was to figure out whose house we were gaming at! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gojira Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Hehe, third edition player here too. Hmm, let's see, back when I started playing Champions, Armadillo was cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BNakagawa Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing Champions, Mechanon was still using 5 1/4" floppies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aylwin13 Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing Champions, we didn't have laptops and HERO Designer. We made our characters on a legal pad, with a pencil and an eraser... and an abacus. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Enforcer84 Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day, Hero books couldn't put you into the ER when thrown! Back in my day, we didn't need the extra 100 pts to play a superhero! Back in my day, the only house rule we needed was to figure out whose house we were gaming at! Back when I started playing Champions we didn't have a cap on points. We didn't need them. There were 11 skills and we kicked that whiny Batman Wannabe's ass all over Rosie's Bar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." We made our characters on a legal pad' date=' with a pencil and an eraser... and an abacus. [/quote'] An abacus? We added our points up ourselves! Of course, it wasn't that hard. There were only 200 at most. ... Actually in our real munchkin games we usually played 300 point characters, and powergamed the builds. Oh well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balabanto Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing champions, there was ONE Book. Just one. There was ONE copy of it. It took FIVE hours to build characters. Back when I started playing champions, I didn't realize the potential that it had. Stories were bad. Real bad. My learning curve was bad. When I was Seventeen, I built the first stages of the world that would become Legacies. I never looked back. Twenty years later, I have three publications in Digital Hero and two more on the way. My current submissions I'm working are Foxbat For President, King of the Mountain, and Mind over Matter. Once those are done, I'm going to do my best to BRING you Legacies, in glorious, living color. Yeah, that's right, color. I don't care how much I have to pay to bring you my world in the right way. And you know something? Even if it's a fool's errand. Even if only one person likes it. Even if it tanks... It's still worth it. It always was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sketchpad Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing Champions' date=' Mechanon was still using 5 1/4" floppies.[/quote'] Meh! Kids these days with delusions of discs! I remember when Mechanon was stored on a tape drive ... and not those new fangled cassette kind either! Meh! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nexus Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day, dice didn't even had six sides, just three and if you wanted to do Body, you had to actually punch the Gm and make him bleed! Base points what's all this about base points? We started at -50 and had to EARN our way up to zero! And WE LIKED IT! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Mhoram Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day we didn't have Disad maximum values , we could take as many as we liked and we were happy about it... even if after 6 you didn't get any points for them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Pfah I remember when he was just INTERN Destroyer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aylwin13 Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Pfah I remember when he was just INTERN Destroyer Don't you mean ORDERLY? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." I don't go that far back, but I do recall Muerte, R.N. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pariah Posted February 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." When I was Seventeen, I built the first stages of the world that would become Legacies. I never looked back. Twenty years later, I have three publications in Digital Hero and two more on the way. My current submissions I'm working are Foxbat For President, King of the Mountain, and Mind over Matter. Once those are done, I'm going to do my best to BRING you Legacies, in glorious, living color. Yeah, that's right, color. I don't care how much I have to pay to bring you my world in the right way. And you know something? Even if it's a fool's errand. Even if only one person likes it. Even if it tanks... It's still worth it. It always was. I've never even seen it, and I already like it. Repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SSgt Baloo Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing Champions, Mechanon was still using 5 1/4" floppies. That's nothing. When I was first startng out in Champions (1st ed.), Mechanon didn't have internal drives and only had 2 kilobytes of RAM. His vocabulary was limited to three words: "Crush! Kill! Destroy!". Each word was stored on its own 10" vinyl disk. He had to change needles every few months, or you wouldn't understand him. Mechanon Mk 1.0 was steam-powered and ran on blocks of paraffin. One time we tricked him into using blocks of plastic explosive that we'd labeled "paraffin". That was a blast! Later, he converted to electrical power, but we'd just unplug his extension cord. Originally Mechanon was programmed with paper punch cards. You could defeat him by opening his access panel and grabbing a handful of them. Later, all of Mechanon's programming was stored on audio cassettes. Right in the middle of combat he'd have to stop to change cassettes. While he was doing that, we'd substitute the Village People for his program tape and then laugh as he danced to "Y-M-C-A". I wonder if that's why he hates all organic life? Anyway, things started to go downhill when he finally figured out how to weld himself shut. Back when I started playing Champions, we didn't have laptops and HERO Designer. We made our characters on a legal pad, with a pencil and an eraser... and an abacus. Dice were hard to come by, too. Each one was hand-carved out of a 1-ton block of marble. They cost 50¢. Each. That doesn't sound like much, but that works out to just about $47.20 in today's dollars. When we couldn't get dice, we'd have to pay a soothsayer to sit in on the game and tell us what our dice rolls would've been. If you slipped him a beer every so often, you'd get better rolls. Not too many though, or you'd start getting wierd results like a roll of pi on a 5d6 damage roll. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vestnik Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back when I started playing Champions' date=' we didn't have laptops and HERO Designer. We made our characters on a legal pad, with a pencil and an eraser... and an abacus. [/quote'] When I started playing, writing had not yet been invented. The rules were memorized by sages and passed down from generation to generation as a form of epic poem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clsage Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." .......So tell me, what was it like back when you started playing Champions? **One of the GM's in our group programmed his Commodore 64 to serve as a dice roller. **Any commercially available supplements had about 18 pages total, with villain descriptions taking up half a page each (including the character sheet and illustration). **Mechanon's origin was a clear homage to Ultron (he was built by the commercially available NPC heroes group for use as support at their base/etc...). **Foxbat had his own advice column. Written on a typewriter repaired by Plasmoid. **VIPER bases were hex shaped. And so was Stronghold -Carl- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chimpira Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day, we didn't need the extra 100 pts to play a superhero! Repped. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Warpcore Breach Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." I remember having only one Hardback gaming book. And it was all we needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mojo_bones Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." Back in my day, we didn't need the extra 100 pts to play a superhero! True story. The first time I played Champs we did not realize we got the 100pt base. All of our "superheros" had 4-5d6 attacks and no real movement powers. A few runs in, we realized our mistake and reworked all of our characters. WOW, What a difference! And yes, this would be before Champions II and III came out. And yes, I have a bunch of those 20 page supplements with each villain taking up half a page. Ah, how times have changed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucius Posted February 14, 2007 Report Share Posted February 14, 2007 Re: "Back when I started playing Champions...." When I started playing' date=' writing had not yet been invented. The rules were memorized by sages and passed down from generation to generation as a form of epic poem.[/quote'] They'll Stun you when the damage rolled is more Than Defense plus your Constitution score. They'll stun you even though you are a Hero, Your Defensive Combat Value drops to zero Lucius Alexander From "Everybody Must Get Stunned" copyright Palindromedary Enterprises. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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