Champions Of The North

[ghost-angel]

The Upside:

 

Champions Of The North is a setting book for the Champions Universe from Hero Games detailing Canada. The source book provides an overall look at Canada and ties it into the Champions Universe, though loosely enough that you can use it mostly as a general look at Canada with Superheroes.

 

Chapter One - A History Of Heroism. Chapter one is a history of Canada from the earliest days of European settlers to modern times. It touches on all the major events that formed the country from it's early roots, and as it reaches the twentieth century starts to tie in the pulp-adventurers and eventually true Superheroes to its past. If you're not familiar with Canada or are looking for some information to make a long standing Legacy Hero (even for a Pulp campaign) this is a good crash course.

 

Chapter Two - The Canada Gazetteer. This is the heart of the book, and provides most of the information you need to run an campaign, or even a story arc, in Canada. The first part, Canada, looks at the country itself, provinces, and cities. Each one provides major features, holidays, local people and media outlets, and a host of other details to help bring each part of the country to life. Law looks mostly at Canada's relationship with Superheroes and its various organizations, covering the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), military, UNTILs pretense, and some organized crime groups in Canada. Trade and Commerce is short but provides some information on Canada's economic state. Sports looks at Canada's past times, with a large section on Ice Hockey. Canadian Culture looks at the rest of Canada's aspects, movies, music, and others arts. The last part of the chapter looks at Canada's own mysticism, the Aboriginal World. This looks at the various First Nation (or Native American) cultures and their beliefs regarding the land and their own legends. It provides write-ups for several First Nation mythological creatures, while written for a Heroic Level game (making them perfect for Pulp or Urban Fantasy) it provides information on raising them to Super level threats.

 

Chapter Three - Gamemastering Canada. First thing this chapter looks at is Canadian Stereotypes, what they are and ways to use them without abusing them. The Canadian Campaign is some advice on where to set a campaign centered on Canada, extremely useful if you're not actually from Canada. It looks at possible locations, themes, villains, and how to use local color so it feels more like Canada. Canada Amok is an adventure scenario called The Road Trip. It's intended to get PCs outside Canada to visit the country, and provides several hooks to get the Players to do so, the Vacation, The Pursuit And Retrieval of a fleeing villain, and The Walkabout (usually involving only on Player Character and best used as a solo adventure). These three hooks are used to provide not only an adventure in Canada but to have the Player's Team meet with a Canadian Team - and in classic comic book fashion probably fight on their very first meeting, so there's a section on Hero vs Hero conflict, how to start it, how to play it out and finally how to end it with the Reconciliation Scene (either on good, neutral, or bad terms depending on the campaign). For the actual reasons themselves a group may want to enter Canada there are Ten Unusual Road Trip Scenarios For American Superheroes in Canada, which is a list of actual hooks to use the previous sections ideas and frameworks with. Ten Ways For Bad Guys To Conquer Canada is perfect for those Master Villains bent on world domination and want to use Canada as their spring board. Ten Interesting Canadian Locations And Legends is actually eleven (there's on in the side bar) places and stories you can use as the seed for an adventure lasting a session or two focused on local color.

 

With all this it shouldn't be hard to figure out a way to involve Canada, if even for a short story arc, in an ongoing Campaign.

 

Chapter Four - Canada In The Champions Universe. While the rest of the book has a focus on the Champions Universe it's presented in a mostly neutral tone to make it easy to fit Canada into any existing campaign. This chapter looks at aspects directly related to the stock Champions Universe Setting from Hero Games. The GM's vault contains more plot seeds (most of them focused on major cities and locations than people), and some behind the scenes information. The last part of the book are Canadian specific Superheroes and Supervillains. Three Solo Heroes and one five person Hero Team are presented, along with plot seeds. Several of them are tied directly to the Canadian Mystic Forces of Land, Ice, Sea and Air. These four entities (more primeval force than actual individual) are responsible for much of the lands Supers in some way or another. Canadian Villains provides a bunch of enemies for your game. The Hunter-Patriots are a Canadian villain organization that are bent on an independent Western Canada. There are three Master Villains written-up. Baron Nihil is an ex-NAZI who was transformed into an energy being and managed to conquer an alternate Earth dimension and is now making overtures at his home dimension. Borealis is a Canadian Super-Patriot (so much so he crosses over into villainy instead of Heroism), and his two lieutenants Augury and The Landsman. Necrull is an immortal being that requires fresh bodies to keep himself alive, and has created a small but very deadly organization based around his own macabre form of immortality, he's good for a much darker campaign. Lastly six Solo Villains are present, and most of these do have some tie-in to the underlying mystic conflict between Land and Ice.

 

The whole source book is a good presentation of Canada for use by those who don't live there, giving enough information run at least stories in Canada, if not whole campaigns.

 

The Downside:

 

There are only a few small things missing from this Champions source book that are found in most others. Usually a setting book includes parts like The Espionage World, The Mystic World, The Mercenary World, The Martial World, and similar that provides collected information on the common subcultures in the Champions Universe and most games. While a lot of that information is present in this book it is mostly scattered throughout (for instance there's a small section on Criminal organizations under Law in Chapter Two, but doesn't cover possible mercenaries operating out of canada).

 

One of the coolest underlying themes in the book is the conflict between the ancient entities of Land and Ice. While it gets a lot of cursory information, especially when Champions Universe specific aspects are mentioned, I think more could have been done to tie this fictional but very cool concept into the history of Canada itself. After all a real world history can be found in books, but a fictional history for use in a Superhero game is harder to come by.

 

The Otherside:

 

Given the books mostly neutral overtones in using Canada as either the center of a campaign or in the campaign in more detail I can easily recommend this for anyone wanting a little more information on Canada, even if you're not in a Superhero Campaign.

 

It's an excellent source book over all and does an awesome job of bringing the Great White North to life. If you're looking to make Canada more than "just that country above the United States" this is the source book you want.

[Spidey88]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

I got the book yesterday, and I like it.

 

I was slightly disappointed that there was no mention made of the fact that my hometown's (Edmonton) slogan is "City of Champions", but you can't have everything!

[nexus]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Got it yesterday and Liked it. Could have used more villains, IMO but the ones presented were well done over all. I thought the art was better then in some other recent books.

[tribe]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Thanks for the review, Ghost Angel. Can't wait to read the book when it arrives - and hopefully use it as a model to play around with other country sourcebooks (or semi-sourcebooks).

 

Oh, and reading your reviews is actually one of my favourite things to do each week, so please keep them up (although you might run out of products soon!)

 

** Must spread rep around... **

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Did it include a bit where all Canadian characters must take Incantations as a limitation on their powers?

 

Must say "eh" after everything, -1/2.

[assault]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Thanks for the review' date=' Ghost Angel. Can't wait to read the book when it arrives - and hopefully use it as a model to play around with other country sourcebooks (or semi-sourcebooks).[/quote']

 

My thoughts exactly.

 

** Must spread rep around... **

 

Got him for you.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Did it include a bit where all Canadian characters must take Incantations as a limitation on their powers?

 

Must say "eh" after everything, -1/2.

 

That didn't take long. p66 Stereotype #5

 

... part of my job has me talking to Canadians on a regular basis. We do have one tech that does say "eh" about every third sentence. We have another Canadian tech that makes fun of him too.

[MilkmanDan]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

That didn't take long. p66 Stereotype #5

 

... part of my job has me talking to Canadians on a regular basis. We do have one tech that does say "eh" about every third sentence. We have another Canadian tech that makes fun of him too.

 

Hey, I grew up in Northern Minnesota on the Iron Range. We ALL talked like that. Living in Iowa years later, I saw the movie Fargo in the theater. Everybody kept laughing at the accent. I wondered what the big deal was; didn't everybody talk that way?

[tribe]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

That didn't take long. p66 Stereotype #5

 

... part of my job has me talking to Canadians on a regular basis. We do have one tech that does say "eh" about every third sentence. We have another Canadian tech that makes fun of him too.

 

Reminds me of Fargo and the conversation at the bar which had a lot of 'yar', yah? Yar.

 

And that's North Dakota I think.

 

And Australians are sometimes at fault using 'mate' all the time.

[tribe]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Hey' date=' I grew up in Northern Minnesota on the Iron Range. We ALL talked like that. Living in Iowa years later, I saw the movie Fargo in the theater. Everybody kept laughing at the accent. I wondered what the big deal was; didn't everybody talk that way? [/quote']

 

Oops. I jumped in on the Fargo thing without reading this. Sorry MilkmanDan.

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Thanks for the Review Ghost Angel. I want to ask scott about the missing section you mentioned. Specifically the Law Enforcement World, The Espionage World, and the Military/Mercenary World. I guess I should have sent Scott more of my work.

 

 

Thanks again.

 

 

QM

[ghost-angel]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Well, some of it is definitely in the book, some of it isn't. But what's there is scattered throughout, not in the nice stand alone sections I'm used to seeing in CU products. It was kinda odd.

[JmOz]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Fargo is in ND, I should know, so am I

[tribe]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Fargo is in ND' date=' I should know, so am I[/quote']

 

Yar?

[JmOz]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Yar?

 

Actualy the hardest thing for me to get use to living up here (originaly from CA) was them calling Soda's "pop", when I hear someone say "they want a pop" I think "Why do they want to get hit"

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Actualy the hardest thing for me to get use to living up here (originaly from CA) was them calling Soda's "pop"' date=' when I hear someone say "they want a pop" I think "Why do they want to get hit"[/quote']

 

"Pop" for "soda pop" is a Canadianism, probably flowing south over the border from Winnipeg.

 

(How's that for a backdoor way back on topic?)

[rjcurrie]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

"Pop" for "soda pop" is a Canadianism, probably flowing south over the border from Winnipeg.

 

(How's that for a backdoor way back on topic?)

 

I grew up in Eastern Ontario, and I remember always referring to "soda pop" as "soft drinks" although certainly if any one said "soda pop", "soda", or "pop", most people would know what they were talking about -- although I usually heard "soda" being used to refer to "soda water".

[rjcurrie]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

I'm looking forward to seeing Champions of the North and I am sure that Scott did a great job with it. However, I suspect that there will be things in there about Canada that I disagree with simply because Scott is from British Columbia and I am from Ontario and people from the two provinces often have different views on the same subjects. Plus, I bet he couldn't resist getting at least one dig in at my beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

I want a liter of Cola!

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

I just picked up my copy of Champions of the North.

 

Review Pending

 

QM

[nexus]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

"Pop" for "soda pop" is a Canadianism, probably flowing south over the border from Winnipeg.

 

(How's that for a backdoor way back on topic?)

 

Really? We've always called it pop here (I live in Central Ky). As I said earlier, I like the book and it mostly avoided things that, had they appeared in a book on the US would have been called "arrogance" or being thin skinned. There were just a couple of things but I freely admit I could be reading into them.

[Pental]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

"Pop" for "soda pop" is a Canadianism, probably flowing south over the border from Winnipeg.

 

That actually sorta makes sense as to why people in Cleveland, OH call it pop...its the proximity to Canada.

 

I had to be retrained by my "cool" new friends in Cleveland when I moved here from Pittsburgh in 1987.

(I wanna soda...*bang* No, you wanna POP!)

[Steve Long]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

As y'all now know, there's a section in CotN debunking the traditional stereotypes of Canada. For fun I have rewritten that text for greater accuracy:

 

The Great Canadian Stereotypes include:

 

1. All Canadians Are Neat, Fastidious, And Incredibly Polite

 

Fact: It’s well-known that the strongest curse-word in the Canadian vocubulary is “darn.” Try as you might, it’s hard to rile a Canadian... or make him stop cleaning the place up.

 

2. There’s Snow In Canada In Summer!

 

Fact: Well, duh — it’s Canada. The second you set foot over the border you start to see a few flakes in the air; within a mile or so snow covers everything. Canadians long ago abandoned the common car for the snowmobile.

 

3. Canada Is Socialist!

 

Fact: Canada is, in fact, socialist. Possibly even communist. Why else would all those liberal hippy pinkos have fled there to avoid the draft?

 

4. The Canadian Dollar Is Worth Half As Much As The American

 

Fact: The Canadian dollar is worth 1/10 of the American.

 

5. All Canadians Say “Eh”

 

Fact: No doubt about it, eh.

 

6. Canadians Like To Call Each Other “Hoser”

 

Fact: Untrue. They actually like to call each other “Betty.”

 

7. Every Canadian Has Tim Horton’s Donuts And Shops At Canadian Tire

 

Fact: I thought every Canadian dressed like Red Green. But whatever.

 

8. Quebec Separatists Are Terrorists!

 

Fact: Absolutely. Anyone who likes French that much is clearly of questionable morality and mental competence. Even if they’re not terrorists, Quebeckers should be shot on general principle.

 

9. Canadian Superheroes Would Be Government Pawns!

 

There are superheroes in Canada? I didn’t know any Canadians wanted to get that involved.

 

[nexus]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

As y'all now know, there's a section in CotN debunking the traditional stereotypes of Canada. For fun I have rewritten that text for greater accuracy:

 

 

 

 

 

And here I thought Canada was actually ruled by a small boy with vast psychic powers....

 

(Of which they are all quite fond!)

[name_tamer]

Re: Champions Of The North

 

Way off topic:

 

The Pop vs. Soda Page