My First Game of Champions!

[FTJoshua]

circa 1989

 

Sitting in Matt's room, the smoke so thick you couldn't see the guy next to you (we never opened a window for some reason). After school one day. I'd just finished writing up my character, Felix, loosely based on Vincent from "Beauty and the Beast." This is my first scenario ever: chasing down bank robbers. (Prior to creating the character, I'd asked, "So, this is basically just like D&D?" This was met with icy stares and a firm, friendly, "No.")

 

Me: What do I do?!

 

GM: What do you want to do?

 

Me: ...Punch him!

 

GM: So punch him!

 

Me: How do I do that?!

 

GM: Just say, "I punch him."

 

Me: I punch him!

 

Other veteran players: Yeah!

 

Me: Now what!?

 

GM: Roll to see if you hit.

 

Me: Huh?!

 

GM: Roll three dice. You want to roll 13 or less.

 

Me: (rolls) Eleven.

 

GM: Okay...

 

Me: What does that mean?!

 

GM: It means you hit him!

 

Other veteran players: Yeah!

 

Me: So now what?!

 

GM: Dude, calm down. Roll your damage.

 

Me: (surveying all the dice nearby; pointing) These?

 

GM: (rubbing forehead) Yes.

 

Me: (rolls about ten dice) Now what?!

 

GM: Count them.

 

Me: Okay. One, two three...four...five, six, seven, eight...nine, ten...eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen...

 

GM: Um, dude.

 

Me: Shh! Fifteen, sixteen...seventeen...

 

GM: Dude. Count by tens.

 

Me: Huh?

 

GM: Group your dice in sets of ten. Like sixes and fours, or fives and fives.

 

Me: Oh. OH! HOLY CRAP! THAT'S BRILLIANT!

 

Other veteran players: (sigh)

 

Me: Okay, so, thirty points. What happens?

 

GM: You rocked him, but he's still up.

 

Me: ...that sucks.

 

Then the bad guy hit me, and I got mad and kicked the crap out of him...from then on, I was hooked.

 

Felix is now about 18 game-years old. He's since given up the chain-mail vest and metal numchucks -- please don't ask, and don't mention "Commando" -- and become a soft spoken monster of some 7 or 800 points.

 

So what was your first day like?

[Manic Typist]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I was two years old.

[clsage]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

So what was your first day like?

 

Well.....

 

Circa 1983 - Urbana, IL

 

It's a bit foggy as to who first found a copy of Champions

at the local hobby store (with it's single rack of gaming

materials shoehorned in next to the public access slot car

track) in nearby Champaign. I had read a review of it in

The Space Gamer so I had a solid idea of what sort of

character I wanted to build: a power armored dude.

I think we were building on 150 point base and up to 50

points in disads (memory is a bit fuzzy there). So huddled

around a single copy of the rules, we all cobbled up chars.

My char, ACI (advanced combat infantryman), had him being an

alien gladiator tapped to do battle with some species

that was invading his home world as his pre-game

background. While in battle, the aliens zapped him with a

strange beam which in turn deposited him in the middle of

Memorial Stadium (the football field at University of IL: Urbana-Champaign,

where most of us were students).

It was night-time. Dark. As he began to work his way out

of the stadium, a police car drove up.

 

"Halt" say the officers.

 

Playing to his Psych Disad: Totally Unfamiliar with Earth

he fails to respond. The officers again order him to

halt and draw their sidearms. I make the needed roll

to determine that they are acting in a combative

manner, which is something that as a gladiator he understands.

So he lets loose with an energy blast, which strikes the squad

car and does sufficient damage to cause it to explode.....

 

Can't exactly recall how he ended up getting captured. ..But

he did and ended up getting sentenced to serve as a "public

guardian" in the Champaign-Urbana area, thus his becoming

a "superhero type".

 

That particular campaign went along in fits and starts till

the release of Espionage, which fit our gaming group of the

time a bit better. So we let go of our superheros and started

up as freelance secret agents who, unknown to us at first,

were working for an alien spymaster. Which then led us to

some adventures meeting the Phychii, the Ylem and various

other alien species in several off world encounters......

 

As I said, my memory of the first session itself is a bit unclear.

But there was always one clear thing: I was hooked.

 

-Carl-

[Rubric]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Interesting subject. Here are a few things I remember from early games. This would be late 1981, or early 1982. I was young teenager at the time. I remember fishing loose change out of my pocket at a convention, in order to come up with the full 13 dollars it was going to cost. One of the guys at the booth said "Now that's a dedicated gamer", as I literally started counting pennies.

 

Anyway:

 

1. My younger brother made a character called "The Acrobat", who was blind. He was basically a Daredevil knock off. At one point, he wanted to jump off a building and land on a bad guy that was walking past. Obviously that's a move-through, but at the time I was completely stumped as to how to handle it. I couldn't even figure out the Endurance cost. My brother wanted it to be zero endurance, since he was basically just "falling off a building", but I insisted on charging him 1 endurance. He was so upset by that 1 endurance that he nearly quit playing.

 

2. One of my friends made a character called "Power Fist", who was a knock-off of Colossus, except that he got his powers from special gloves that he wore. We played a short scenario where he had to stop a bank robbery. He picked up one of the robbers, and wanted to throw him at the other bank robber. Again, I was completely baffled as to how to handle that. I don't remember what happened, but I think I had him roll the damage one time, and then I divided it among the two robbers.

 

3. The first big game I ran was the Viper's Nest scenario that came with the original game. This was the first time I had more than one player. The game ran pretty smoothly until one of the heroes tried to grab Brick and teleport with him. The player said he wanted to leave Brick in the non-dimensional space between the teleport locations. I was like, "Ummm, yeah, that should work. Okay Brick is gone."

 

 

I also recently took a look at some of the early characters I made. Oh My Gawd!!! Captain Gravity, indeed. I won't go into it, since that's basically a different subject. But let's just say most of the characters I made were just X-men with different names.

[jkwleisemann]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

First Champions game?

 

Here's the fun part - I was the GM at the time.

 

It was... interesting. Fortunately, I had some experience with other games, had been poking away at the Hero System for a while, and had several characters under my belt.

 

I except the game played with my bro and his character, Sciberwulf, since it never really got much of anywhere (though I do wish he'd revive the character sometimes... she had potential, I thought.)

 

The first one that actually deserved being called a game though... ah my.

 

That game was with my local gaming club at school, middle school to be specific. Most of the characters were... well, let's just say that only one of them was really memorable, and not necessarily in a good way. I'd gotten into Champions with them to get them *out* of D&D, after the last game had ended in scandal, shame, homicide, suicide, and blasphemy... all of the characters, thankfully, but there was temptation... ah yes, there was temptation....

 

Anyways, for some reason I let myself be talked into a Champions game that was mostly notable for the introduction of one character... Muffy. I'm going to have to update him for 5th Ed. one of these days. But he was an NPC brick of the truest sort. By which I mean that he could suck down pretty much any attack thrown at him long enough to get . Fortunately he was usually on the good guys' side... except for Radar. Radar's player was a strange hybrid of mad slasher, combat monster, and born Malkavian, and his hero had managed to find his way into jail, where he met Muffy, and had his tail firmly handed to him when he tried to make trouble.

 

Muffy went on to make subsequent appearances, generally winning the heart of everybody who ever met him. Maybe because he's just so loveable... maybe just because of his penchant for giving spankings to people who aren't nice... like the local Destroyer analogue.

[Enforcer84]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I tried to roll characteristics.

I also bought down DEX and SPEED (expensive) so I could increase STR and CON.

Once I actually started playing, I used Enforcer (the original E haqs little in common with the most recent).

[Theron]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I don't remember a lot, to tell the truth. My sense of the chronology is kind of vague. At the time I discovered Champions, I was running a regular V&V campaign. I was a bad one from jumping to newer and neater systems, never finishing games I'd started, so when I first got it and decided I wanted to convert the game over, there was a certain degree of...resistance. Most notably from my best friend who insisted on converting his V&V character over on exactly 100 points, because "He doesn't have any weaknesses in V&V, why would I want to give him one in this game?"

 

As I recall, I eventually got him to understand how Disads worked and we got together at my folks' house (I lived at home). I ran him and another player through a bank robbery scenario. Good, in the form of Mechanix (an Iron Man clone) and The Cat (a human/panther shapeshifter), triumphed.

[FTJoshua]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I tried to roll characteristics.

 

HA! Yes. Priceless. Old habits died hard. But now I reckon I'd search in vain for the OCV of a first level fighter ... whatever that means anymore.

[Rubric]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

HA! Yes. Priceless. Old habits died hard. But now I reckon I'd search in vain for the OCV of a first level fighter ... whatever that means anymore.

 

 

Ha ha, yes.

 

I remember when I first got the book, I flipped through the powers looking for "Fireball". When I didn't find it, I thought "Okay, this game is stupid."

 

Then I figured they have to have Lightning Bolt, because Storm sometimes shoots lightning bolts. *Flip* *Flip* *Flip* Let's see.... No lightning bolt??! Dumbest game ever....

[Rubric]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Oh, and then what's this about "inches"?

 

Once I finally figured out that Energy Blast is actually your Fireballs and Lightning Bolts, I couldn't quite understand why you have to stand so close....

 

Let's see, my 60 point energy blast has a range of... 60 inches? That's like 5 feet....

[FTJoshua]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I seem to recall looking for Magic Missle...

 

Ah, inches. Yes. It's amazing any of us survived this long, isn't it.

[Theron]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Ha ha, yes.

 

I remember when I first got the book, I flipped through the powers looking for "Fireball". When I didn't find it, I thought "Okay, this game is stupid."

 

Then I figured they have to have Lightning Bolt, because Storm sometimes shoots lightning bolts. *Flip* *Flip* *Flip* Let's see.... No lightning bolt??! Dumbest game ever....

 

Real conversation I had with a friend of mine who was trying to make his first character:

 

Him: I want him to have a chainmail shirt.

 

Me: OK. How much defense do you want it to provide?

 

Him: Well, how much defense does chainmail provide?

 

Me: How much defense do you want it to provide?

 

Him: However much defense the rules say it provides.

 

Me: How much defense do you WANT it to provide?

 

Good times. Good times.

[Sketchpad]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Hmm .. think it was '85 ... I made a character called Cat based off a Champions/Supers mini the group I was playing in had. I remember the character generation well:

Me: "So my guy wears an armored suit that gives him protection, speed and claws."

Ken (GM): "Like a Cat?"

Me: "Yes! Yes .. like a Cat. In fact, that's his name ... 'Cat'."

Ken: "Okay ... why's he called that?"

Me: "He's a ... Cat-Burglar that found this stuff and put it together."

Ken: "So he's smart."

Me: "Umm .. sure."

Ken: "Okay." "How about Disads?"

Me: "Whatcha got?"

Ken hands Champions I over with the disad section open.

Me: "Hmm ... How about Hunteds? Good heroes are hunted."

Ken: "Sure ... by who?"

Me: "Who ya got?"

Ken (sighing): "Umm ... UNTIL, Viper, Deathstroke, etc."

Me (looking through the book): "How about Viper 14- and UNTIL 14-?"

Ken: "Viper and UNTIL?"

Me: "Yup."

Ken: "One's SHIELD and one's Hydra."

Me: "COOL!"

Ken: "Oookay."

Two months later

Ken: "Cat ... you return home and find a Viper Squad waiting for you, what do you do?"

Me: "Run!"

Ken: "Run?! Run where?!"

Me: "Umm ... the cops!"

Ken: "The cops? Are you sure?"

Me: "Yup ... the rest of the group might be there."

Ken (rolling dice): "Oookay. You get to the police station and run smack dab into some UNTIL agents asking about your activities."

Me: "@#$$%#$!"

Ken (chuckling): "What do you do?"

Me (looking over my sheet while the rest of the group saddles in for a show): "Ummm ... take out the UNTIL agents!"

Ken: "What?!"

Me: "There's less of them ... and I might score points with Viper in the process."

 

[Sketchpad]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

My second character was a guy named Gladiator ... again based off a mini (this time from Battlemech/tech). My GM (Ken again), sent us on a mission to take out some vampires. I get down there and start blasting away at the fiends with my 10d6 E-Blast.

Ken: "Okay ... roll damage."

Me: "Okay" "46 Stun and 10 Body."

Dave: "Damn! That should hurt!"

Ken: "Nice ... wait, what kind of energy is that?"

Me: "huh?"

Ken: "What kind of energy is the blast? Cold, heat, etc..."

Me: "Umm ..." "Solar powered ... the blast is raw solar energy that he absorbs into his system during the day."

Ken: "What?! No it's not!"

Me (turning around the sheet to show the words "Solar Powered" written near the EB): "Yup ... it is."

Ken: "You just added that!"

Dave: "You didn't say we had to define it."

Me: "Yeah!"

Ken: "$@@%%^!$%**()#&%@$%#!!! FINE! But from now on everyone defines their powers ... got it?!"

Group nods, all smiling.

Ken: "Okay ... so you did 92 STUN and 20 Body to the vampire."

I'm speechless from the sound of that.

Dave: "Everyone behind Gladiator! Do it dude!"

Me: "I blast again!"

Ken (sighing and almost ready to throw the whole group out): "Fine ... roll damage."

[Psybolt]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

I'm not sure the year... it was around 1991 or 1992. My first Champions character was a mentalist known as Psybolt. My friend was the GM and we had a small group of three or four. I remember being fairly successful with the mentalist, though I really didn't know what I was doing. My standout memory was one of the villains involved had a major transform that could change the PCs into a variety of things. One of the players were hit by the attack and was changed into a daisy. The best part was... he insisted on taking his turn every time it was his move. He would say "I'm a daisy" every time it was his turn. That became one of the most repeated phrases for the next years worth of gaming.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

First one I remember was me running for my brother and a friend of his. Island of Dr. Destroyer.

 

Don't remember my brother's character, but his friend's was called "Beast". Had a big club that could do something insane like 8d6K.

 

They made their way onto the island, got past the defenses, got past the flunkies, made their way to the climactic showdown with Dr. Destroyer, terror of nations, himself to try to keep him from launching the dread Hypnoray satellite.

 

Beast gets up to him, whomps him with the club. Check the damage against Dr. D's BODY score. "Well, he's dead."

 

Forgot about little things like his defenses...

[Enforcer84]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

First one I remember was me running for my brother and a friend of his. Island of Dr. Destroyer.

 

Don't remember my brother's character, but his friend's was called "Beast". Had a big club that could do something insane like 8d6K.

 

They made their way onto the island, got past the defenses, got past the flunkies, made their way to the climactic showdown with Dr. Destroyer, terror of nations, himself to try to keep him from launching the dread Hypnoray satellite.

 

Beast gets up to him, whomps him with the club. Check the damage against Dr. D's BODY score. "Well, he's dead."

 

Forgot about little things like his defenses...

Nice

I had a guy who I forgot to buy any resistant defenses for. He was shot by a thug in the first adventure and almost died.

 

Then a cyber crocodile bit him...

 

He bought armor asap...

[Arkham]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Newer to the system than most... It was the distant year, 2002 or so, and I figured that for the test drive, we would open her up and see how fast she could go. So we started at 700 points and a DC 'cap' of 'whatever'. Players played totally broken builds, power armor built as vehicles, characters built as AIs inside vehicles, and a dragon with a 10d6 RKA breath weapon. The first session involved an NPC developing powers hazardous to herself and those around here. So everyone who could help joined together, calmed her down, took her somewhere where they could teach her how to use her powers, instead of blowing up (literally) whenever someone touched her.

[Fireleaper]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

If you wanted the first roleplaying game I was in that would be when I was 5 or 6 and had borrowed dads D&D books and ran my sister through a very childish version of the game my dad was running.

 

I am still playing my first game of champions, however I was curious enough about the system to generate a character beforehand. I believe my fist session was like:

Me: Bored, hey what are you guys playing?

Weldun: Explains the setting

Me: Hey could I join in, I have a character concept that could fit with only a bit of tweaking.

Sundog (GM): Sure.

And that is how Orca came about.

[Manic Typist]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

That game was with my local gaming club at school, middle school to be specific. Most of the characters were... well, let's just say that only one of them was really memorable, and not necessarily in a good way. I'd gotten into Champions with them to get them *out* of D&D, after the last game had ended in scandal, shame, homicide, suicide, and blasphemy... all of the characters, thankfully, but there was temptation... ah yes, there was temptation....

 

 

That sounds like a heck of a story!!! Care to share?

[casualplayer]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

My first game was in 1983, freshman year of high school, and my only player was my buddy Jason. He made a character based on Marvel's Wendigo, an ex-pat Canadian mistakely cursed when the spirit was exorcised from a previous deserving person. His occasional berserker rages made it so the game had to be a roadshow, never staying in one place for long. I plugged his character into Crisis at Crusader Citadel from V&V. He and Bull took an instant dislike to one another when they stumbled across one another in downtown Detroit, started an epic brawl and Wendigo followed the wounded Bull back to the Citadel to finish him off. Wendigo went through the Crushers like bacon through a goose and, I'm sad to say, ate Marionette like a popcorn shrimp after a bad Berserk roll. The Crusaders didn't offer him membership after he saved them, the ingrates.

[Theron]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

The first campaign I played in was hosted at ComicQuest, a funnybook store I frequented in San Antonio. It was a weird situation. Basically one of the guys who hung out at the shop had recently moved from Phoenix, where he'd played in a rather massive campaign run out of Flying Buffalo's store after-hours. However, one of the owners of ComicQuest also wanted to run Champions, so they decided to be co-GMs on a shared setting. The guy from Phoenix imported the campaign he'd played in out there and moved the basic premise (corporate-sponsored superheroes*) while the local guy basically fleshed out the superhero scene in San Antonio.

 

Which would have totally worked, if the two of them had been on the same page about, well, just about anything. Phoenix guy liked putting the PCs center stage and doing stuff along the lines of X-Men and Teen Titans (the two big sellers of the day). Local guy liked showing off his uber-powerful NPCs, who were inevitably female, seductive, and minimally dressed. Which might have worked if local guy was, y'know, a hawt gamer chick, instead of a rotund, sweaty, ball of paste with a crew-cut and Drew Carey glasses who insisted on playing said female characters to the hilt. Poorly.

 

The players were also the sort you end up with when you have open recruiting at a game store: a wide range of maturity levels and interest in the genre. We had a sixteen kid who just wanted to blow stuff up, but who got a pass because another one of the owners was dating his mom, a couple of comic book addicts, and the Guy-Who'd-Actually-Sold-A-Story-To-Marvel-Even-Though-They-Never -Published-It who decided that conventional superheroics were passe and wanted to be the cop with low-key superpowers.

 

The game as it existed at the store didn't last too long. The co-GMs had a falling out pretty quickly (local guy was very temperamental on top of his other redeeming traits), and the game moved to my house with the out-of-towner continuing as sole GM, until I eventually took over.

 

Fifteen years ago (), I dusted off the campaign notes and started working on a "From the Ashes" type game built on the remains of that game. When I moved to Houston, it was the first campaign I ran; it lasted about sixteen sessions, I think.

 

God, I've been playing this game a long time.

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

Nice

I had a guy who I forgot to buy any resistant defenses for. He was shot by a thug in the first adventure and almost died.

Seeker?

[FTJoshua]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

"The players were also the sort you end up with when you have open recruiting at a game store: a wide range of maturity levels and interest in the genre. We had a sixteen kid who just wanted to blow stuff up, but who got a pass because another one of the owners was dating his mom, a couple of comic book addicts, and the Guy-Who'd-Actually-Sold-A-Story-To-Marvel-Even-Though-They-Never -Published-It who decided that conventional superheroics were passe and wanted to be the cop with low-key superpowers."

 

 

= priceless. I wish I could shake my head and say, "Huh? What's he talking about?" Alas...

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: My First Game of Champions!

 

circa 1990

 

Wandered into the Rotunda at Simon Fraser Univerity looking for the Gaming Club called the Gamester's of Triskelion. Found 3 tables with about 6 people each and learned they were all playing in the same Champions Campaign. I waited patciently and watched. One of the GM's Kelly Phare (aka The Mighty Pinchus) noticed me and asked if I wanted to play.

 

QM: Are you kidding me?

 

Kelly: Nope

 

QM: We get to play Superheroes?

 

Kelly: Yep

 

QM: Sign me up!

 

Kelly: What kind of character do you want to play?

 

QM: A homage to Starman (Will Payton), DC Comics Characters.

 

We sat down for a couple of hours and worked out my character, his background (something new and alien to me at the time), and he improvised an introduction and superbattle. I was impressed by the GM and the game really clicked with me. I played Sunburst for 2 semesters before the game ended. He has been remade, revised, and replayed several times.

 

I learned a lot from a lot of GM's and Players. I think I still have a lot more to learn.

 

QM