The world of Champions

[Fry Daddy]

Re: How we are rolling!

 

Originally posted by BrandonBussell

 

About nationalization:

 

Anyone ever played around with a Genesis style game... where the PCs are seemingly members of the first wave of supers? OObviously the story can change at any point... revelaing old supers... but at launch these might be people dealing with new found super powers in a world where no one has had to deal with supers yet...atleast publically.

 

My current campaign's premise is that the old heroes retires in 1985 after a catastrophic disaster wiped out a city's population (and the world's supervillains) and the world's government demanded they retire.

 

Now, the players are a new wave of heroes who have been recruited by a (classic) "mysterious benefactor" to save their city from a new super-menace...

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Trebuchet

It's surprisingly easy to deal with. (all the suggestions snipped for length

 

I think the internationalization is the biggest difference from where I'm at. I do have several non-Americans coming into it, but the first part of our campaign has been local. Now the supers are going abroad more as they're a recognized super-team, so that's a good point you make as of course it's a lesser issue.

 

I think also if you're excluding high tech and magic and such from your super number, then it's a bit different than my concern. My point was that I thought your ratio represented 250 point characters, not 250 point mutant characters. That makes a big difference. So you end up with a lot more characters anyway.

 

Thanks for the points.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by zornwil

I think the internationalization is the biggest difference from where I'm at. I do have several non-Americans coming into it, but the first part of our campaign has been local. Now the supers are going abroad more as they're a recognized super-team, so that's a good point you make as of course it's a lesser issue.

 

I think also if you're excluding high tech and magic and such from your super number, then it's a bit different than my concern. My point was that I thought your ratio represented 250 point characters, not 250 point mutant characters. That makes a big difference. So you end up with a lot more characters anyway.

 

Thanks for the points.

Our team is reasonably international now. A Canadian, two Americans, a Russian, a Chinese-American Indian, a Filipino, a Frenchman.

 

I do count magic types in with the paranormals to an extent, but at what point does a sorcerer or mentalist cross over from being a schemer behind the scenes to a fullfledged supervillain? When does a heroic character become a superhero? I don't think it's just an issue of character points; I've seen 250 point Navy SEALs. If I postulate about 1000 supers, some of whom are sorcerers but most of whom are not, that still gives me plenty to work with. Figure maybe 1200-1500 people with true superhuman abilities (200+ points). You could throw totally 5 new villains every week at your players without repetition for over 4 and a half years with those kind of numbers. So it's not really all that few.

 

Two other reasons to limit the number of supers:

 

1) It makes the heroes more special, especially if at 350 points they are markedly better than hundreds of 250 point characters. (Our players got quite a kick out of having a government NPC superhero they'd just fought beside say "It's an honor to meet you. I'm a big fan of your exploits.")

 

2) With fewer villains, you have more time to make the ones you do have more 3-dimensional. They are a lot more interesting that way. Nothing wrong with occasional one-offs, but I like characters with history and personality.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Figure maybe 1200-1500 people with true superhuman abilities (200+ points). You could throw totally 5 new villains every week at your players without repetition for over 4 and a half years with those kind of numbers. So it's not really all that few.

 

This is the crux of difference in my question versus what you really meant. I thought you meant on the order of 1/10 of this number around the world of true superhuman abilities. In which case the pool is pretty small although "realistic" for some campaigns.

 

But all your suggestions/posts were pretty interesting, thanks.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by zornwil

This is the crux of difference in my question versus what you really meant. I thought you meant on the order of 1/10 of this number around the world of true superhuman abilities. In which case the pool is pretty small although "realistic" for some campaigns.

 

But all your suggestions/posts were pretty interesting, thanks.

Thanks. I've often found your ideas useful as well.

 

And you're quite right, 250 total supers would be a bit few on which to run a campaign over the long term.

 

One other good reason to "internationalize": It keeps you from having to put all those supervillains in just a few places, which keeps the density more plausible. I've always wondered why any criminals would even go near Gotham City or Metropolis when Cleveland and Kansas City are wide open?

[assault]

You don't need lots of superbeings to run a campaign.

 

All you really need is a couple of masterminds, who may, themselves, technically be normals.

 

They can churn out whatever supervillain grade robots, zombies, recreated dinosaurs, horrors from beyond, temporarily mutated humans, radioactive sludge monsters, super-weapons or actual superhuman agents you feel like throwing at your PCs.

 

Think: Lex Luthor, or the Ultra-Humanite. If that doesn't work for you, think about Dr Destroyer, Teleios or Mechanon. They can churn out flunkies on a more or less unlimited basis.

 

In addition, of course, there are plenty of other possibilities for one-off superbeings and rampaging critters.

 

The only "permanent" supers you need are the ones that you are going to use more than once. Any others you create are scenary.

 

For that matter, you can run scenarios that don't involve supers other than the PCs themselves. Mystery scenarios are straightforward enough - just lift them from other genres, or detective fiction. Telepathy and certain enhanced senses can be a problem, but you still know where and how to use them. And once you track down the malefactors, you might just discover that they have hostages, or they have planted a bomb somewhere, or they may get the drop on you with some unexpected trap or super-weapon, or they may just have already escaped, or be an innocent dupe. Or they may just be one-off crooks, who will get the justice they richly deserve.

 

You can keep your players sweating without pitting them against Spandex-Clad Clown #461. And if they do want to end up in a big fight, Clown #461 and his friends are easy enough to acquire from your friendly local branch of ARGENT or similar.

 

Over time, you can build up a suitable rogues gallery from the villains you actually like, and discard the ones you don't want cluttering up the scenary. You don't need to create a whole world full of characters you will never use.

 

One idea I am toying with is to allow each PC to have a single arch-enemy, who may or may not be a superbeing. This will give me a starting stock of superbeings, which I can expand as I see fit. I'm not quite sure how this will work out.

 

Finally, Columbia is the district in which the capital of the USA is located. Colombia is a country in South America. Sometimes being pedantic is necessary...

 

Alan

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by assault

Finally, Columbia is the district in which the capital of the USA is located. Colombia is a country in South America. Sometimes being pedantic is necessary...

Ummm, my campaign exists in a parallel universe where spelling is different. Yeah, that's the ticket...

 

This is all good advice, and I've done "non-super" adventures a couple of times, usually as solos. One time I had neo-Nazis shoot down the helicopter our team's leader Cyberknight was taking off in in his secret ID, with a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile. When the helicopter crashed, the character was grabbed by the bad guys who "inadvertently" left behind the briefcase containing his powered armor...

 

He woke up on a ship in the North Sea, without access to his usual array of superpowers. So he had to figure out how to escape from a ship in the middle of an ice-cold ocean without his armor.

[assault]

Originally posted by Trebuchet

Ummm, my campaign exists in a parallel universe where spelling is different. Yeah, that's the ticket...

 

This is all good advice, and I've done "non-super" adventures a couple of times, usually as solos.

 

Nah. The supervillain who took over was the one who decided to change the spelling.

 

I suspect that "non-super" adventures work best with small groups or single characters, rather than larger groups. I haven't tried with large groups. Some powers also make things difficult.

 

Still, I think they are definitely something I am going to explore in more depth. Apart from anything else, they are definitely in genre for Golden Age settings. Golden Age supervillains were relatively thin on the ground.

 

Of course, they are a little harder to run, and play in, than relatively straightforward combat-heavy scenarios. One of the keys is to not make them too difficult, and ensure that there are some rather glaringly obvious clues lying around. Presumably non-superheroic genres would be a useful source of suitable scenarios, and if they already have Hero System stats they would be a breeze to convert. Dark Champions scenarios would be a particularly obvious source, but in some cases the "Dark" flavour might be a bit too strong. The problem is, though, finding enough such scenarios.

 

Pulp scenarios would be useful too.

 

I think I may go for a little tour of the other genre forums once I post this message, in order to see what is lying around there...

 

Alan

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by assault

Of course, they are a little harder to run, and play in, than relatively straightforward combat-heavy scenarios. One of the keys is to not make them too difficult, and ensure that there are some rather glaringly obvious clues lying around. Presumably non-superheroic genres would be a useful source of suitable scenarios, and if they already have Hero System stats they would be a breeze to convert. Dark Champions scenarios would be a particularly obvious source, but in some cases the "Dark" flavour might be a bit too strong. The problem is, though, finding enough such scenarios.

 

Pulp scenarios would be useful too.

Our game is very "Silver Age" in feel, but I like to run occasional scenarios that are different just to keep my players on my toes. Dark Champions is a good source for such adventures. Justice, Inc and Danger International scenarios are also potential sources. A few years ago I ran a pseudo-Dark Champions scenario for my Silver Age team which Mentor's wife (not an RPGer) described as "downright gothic." The story was so dark that if I'd done it as a comic it would have been in black , gray, and white like a graphic novel.

 

The Champions scenario I'm currently working on for our next run in two weeks is deliberately so "pulp fiction" in feel that a friend has already told me he intends to steal it almost verbatim for a pulp hero game at an upcoming con. (He'll just have to tone down the villains a bit.)