CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I would think that Champions 6e could certainly be expanded from where 5e was as well as being more closely formatted to latter-day genre books that have followed in its wake.

 

That's a start for "changes."

[zakueins]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

An idea...

 

Cover the major "ages" of comic books, give an idea of what the ideals and methods are, with a few comic books suggested to give players and GMs an idea of what players expect. State "(Age X) is considered the default campaign age in Champions, and all character creation is done accordingly," and make sure to note the differences in each age (i.e. the "anti-hero" age will have a lot more RKAs...).

[BobGreenwade]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I would think that Champions 6e could certainly be expanded from where 5e was as well as being more closely formatted to latter-day genre books that have followed in its wake.

 

That's a start for "changes."

Still, as Steve implies, a lot of the text from Aaron Allston writing can remain mostly unchanged. Picking out a section at random (literally -- I grabbed the book and just opened it up), the section of Superhero Archetypes can remain more or less the same, with only a few edits to match Sixth Edition terminology, and probably add a few more specific examples (to include heroes familiar in movies and TV as well as those in comics) under each archetype. That would be a change of about, oh, maybe five percent of what Aaron wrote, and even the latter alteration is more of the "helpful" than "needed" variety.

[dmjalund]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Maybe breaking things down by ages might not be the way to go, as there are too many exceptions and the like. How about breaking things into "styles" and if say a particular Silver Age comic is a good example of this style then list it in the examples.

[AnotherSkip]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

not sure what section this would go in but

 

How about a few ideas for Helping Player characters to use the trappings of the Age?

 

For example a good reason to wear a cape, and a brightly colored Super suit for Bronze/Silver/Golden age heros

 

Ie NPC's Having NND (defense is: Being an Alien, Wearing a Super Suit)

 

Cape as a SFX for a prebuilt set of defenses that could violate some of Campaign Maximums.

 

Brightly Colored Costumes that may aid Pre attacks, or provide bonuses to protecting Civilians etc...

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Well, Brightly Colored Costumes certainly sounds like a case of "Striking Appearance" if I say so myself.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

That does kind of take me back to the list of "superhero traditions" I mentioned at the beginning. Not only "Why wear a costume?" but "Why wear this costume?" The reasons behind the traditions of spandex, capes, masks, helmets, outer trunks, boots, jackets, letters on the chest, and everything else that has become part of superhero costume tradition (either old or new). Sometimes a look is chosen just because it looks snazzy, but there are things like style, color choice, symbols, and so forth that can go into why a superhero chooses the look he has.

[Steve]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

That does kind of take me back to the list of "superhero traditions" I mentioned at the beginning. Not only "Why wear a costume?" but "Why wear this costume?" The reasons behind the traditions of spandex' date=' capes, masks, helmets, outer trunks, boots, jackets, letters on the chest, and everything else that has become part of superhero costume tradition (either old or new). Sometimes a look is chosen just because it looks snazzy, but there are things like style, color choice, symbols, and so forth that can go into why a superhero chooses the look he has.[/quote']

 

Sometimes a superhero costume is a uniform, like DC's Green Lantern.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Sometimes a superhero costume is a uniform' date=' like DC's Green Lantern.[/quote']Yes, quite so -- also true of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, among others.

[Greywind]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Sometimes a superhero costume is a uniform' date=' like DC's Green Lantern.[/quote']

Then they'd all look alike. Not just similar.

Yes' date=' quite so -- also true of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, among others.[/quote']

FF are a family, more than a team. X-Men stopped looking anywhere near alike with GS #1.

[Querysphinx]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

How about breaking super types (characters and campaigns) down along geographic lines. Street Heroes/ City Heroes/ National Heroes/ International Heroes/ Global Heroes/ Interplanetary Heroes. This I tend to feel has at least as much impact on the game as the "metal-age" of the the game.

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

How about breaking super types (characters and campaigns) down along geographic lines. Street Heroes/ City Heroes/ National Heroes/ International Heroes/ Global Heroes/ Interplanetary Heroes. This I tend to feel has at least as much impact on the game as the "metal-age" of the the game.

 

That could be useful for recommending power levels.I'm just thinking out loud here, but I am imagining a table for such scales of influence that can readily be cross-referenced with the various ages recommended levels.

[Steve]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

That could be useful for recommending power levels.I'm just thinking out loud here' date=' but I am imagining a table for such scales of influence that can readily be cross-referenced with the various ages recommended levels.[/quote']

 

That might make for a very useful set of guidelines, since it can get a little blurry on how a Standard Superhero should be constructed for a City setting and how a Standard Superhero should be constructed for a National setting beyond just talking about overall point totals.

 

Maybe some advice on how to adjust CVs, defenses and power levels to better focus a superhero to fit into their 'ecological niche' and how to adjust them from their standard default setting into other settings. Batman in his own comic is a City setting superhero, but when he is in the Justice Leage, he gets adjusted to better fit that niche. Spider-man fights street crime, but he also has his more cosmic storylines.

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

That might make for a very useful set of guidelines, since it can get a little blurry on how a Standard Superhero should be constructed for a City setting and how a Standard Superhero should be constructed for a National setting beyond just talking about overall point totals.

 

Maybe some advice on how to adjust CVs, defenses and power levels to better focus a superhero to fit into their 'ecological niche' and how to adjust them from their standard default setting into other settings. Batman in his own comic is a City setting superhero, but when he is in the Justice Leage, he gets adjusted to better fit that niche. Spider-man fights street crime, but he also has his more cosmic storylines.

And we are starting to come full circle in the discussion.

[torchwolf]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

The Power Skill and HAPs is already covered on APG 40; I don't expect to reprint that but I might refer to it.

If the APG is going to be referenced, it would be nifty to see at least a few options in Chapter Five using the APG, maybe noted as "Optional Rules"? I can see the Mystic (or similar) Archetype using the alternative Astral Projection from APG.

[Peregrine]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

And we are starting to come full circle in the discussion.

 

Let us not "lock" the circle, then...

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Let us not "lock" the circle' date=' then... [/quote']

 

Hopefully not.

 

To stir the pot some, not only can the idea of scaling work for heroes, but it can apply just as well to villains.

 

Something that could be analyzed is that if a superhero is built for city-scale heroics then what constitutes a city-scale threat?

 

How is a city-scale villain built?

 

What do you do to a city-scale villain to demote them to a Street-scale villain, or to promote them to a state/province-scale villain?

 

I take The Joker as my example of a villain who demonstrates this as a villainous opposite number to Batman.

 

He can be a street-scale villain at times while at other times he can challenge the Justice League, where Batman is there to stop him on any scale.

 

I think that this ties into (I believe that it was Oddhat's idea) the concept of a character having multiple character sheets, but I will admit that it is a rather advanced concept that may be better off being discussed in the GM's vault section.

[The Main Man]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Sorry about the huge block of text there.

 

I'm posting from a cell phone that doesn't like paragraphic posting at night.

[AnotherSkip]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Perhaps a Point Divisor for building characters who fit within concept guidelines?

 

 

Much like the Magical Spell breaks from the FH.

 

Building a reasonable Cloak power (or using someones prebuilts, thus reinforcing a legacy idea) then getting a price break.

[megaplayboy]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Think I've already mentioned this, but a 2-4 page section on scaling up campaigns that reach higher point levels would be nice, and just general commentary on the challenges (and rewards) of running a JLA/Avengers level campaign.

[James Gillen]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

Perhaps a Point Divisor for building characters who fit within concept guidelines?

 

 

Much like the Magical Spell breaks from the FH.

 

Building a reasonable Cloak power (or using someones prebuilts, thus reinforcing a legacy idea) then getting a price break.

 

More specifically, like the point divisors for spells in The Turakian Age.

 

But getting a cost break just for concept would probably strike Steve as too much like Elemental Control.

 

JG

[JmOz]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

That could be useful for recommending power levels.I'm just thinking out loud here' date=' but I am imagining a table for such scales of influence that can readily be cross-referenced with the various ages recommended levels.[/quote']

 

I don't know if I agree with it being that tied to power levels.

 

Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel title in thre 90's) was a definate intergalactic story but the characters never struck me as all that powerful (about on par with the avengers who would be international level). While on the otherend of things anyone want to debate on Batman being near the top of the power level game?

 

For what it is worth I think that this is more about HOW the points are spent than how many they get...

[Steve Long]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

There's been some discussion of and requests for some mini-settings in the book. So I wanted to think out loud about that a bit.

 

If I finish the Superhero Gallery in Chapter Five this week (giving me a couple extra days next week before the day or so needed to wrap the manuscript up and send it to Fred), and if I feel like writing up some mini-settings, what sort of mini-settings would you like to see?

 

Keep in mind some key points:

 

1. I don't have time to flesh these out, so they would very much be mini-settings. To use PAH as an example, they'd be more like Tobacco Road or Mechanon Triumphant at best, not Amrica, After The Blast, or the Moonshattered Earth.

 

2. Because these would be late additions to the book, they won't be illustrated. At all. Period.

 

3. Since the book already does a great job of discussing "typical" Superhero campaigns of various sorts, the mini-settings would need to be in some way unusual or distinctive.

 

Some ideas I'm considering:

 

--The Golden Hunters: Some of you have heard me discuss this setting before -- ultra-powerful Malvan warriors versus ultra-powerful Elder Worm sorcerers for control of the Galaxy 500,000 years ago. Definitely not your typical Superhero setting. Unfortunately I couldn't do much more than present the basic idea; I won't have time to really delve into it as it needs (though I still hope to, somewhere, someday).

 

--School Spirit: A mystic-oriented quasi-Teen Champions campaign in which the PCs are all students at Millennium City University. (Go Vanguards!)

 

--A Plague Upon Thee: A "unified source" campaign in which all superpowers result from some sort of disease, which (a) limits the types of powers characters can have, and ( makes supers feared by most of the populace, even when they're heroic.

 

--Avatars: A relatively high-powered campaign in which the superhumans are all avatars, incarnations, manifestations, or children of mythological gods and similar beings.

 

--Voyagers Of The Infinite: In which the PCs aren't superpowered per se, but have super-tech, and use it to explore the Multiverse, fight bad guys, solve mysteries, and pick up alien chicks.

 

I'm sure more will occur to me, but those are some that I'm thinking about. I probably can't go more than 3-4 though.

 

So... what ideas to you have? Please try to keep your descriptions generic but specific -- ya gotta leave me some work to do, after all.

[ghost-angel]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

I like the idea of A Plague Upon Thee - that'd be cool.

 

Some ideas:

 

Third Tier - Playing low (or even normal) powered Supers in a world where there are 1-2 big powerful, nearly omnipresent Super Groups, getting all the press, doing all the deeds. Regular Heroes coping in the shadows of others.

 

Villains Rise - (alright, the premise is far from original these days) The worlds heroes are gone, vitims of an alien invasion. The invasion stopped, the worlds villains are left squabbling over who should rule, some are just selfish and are running amok... but some villains, see that the balance is off - and in their own ways set about to become the next heroes.

[BobGreenwade]

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See?

 

A sort of "historical champions" setting like Marvel's 1602 (DC has done a couple of them as well) would be a good addition. Its name would depend on what historical period you choose; I personally like the idea of dropping superheroes into a King Arthur setting and calling it "Knights of Power."

 

On another note (same topic, different discussion), you could also present these as ideas for "alternate universes" that PCs from a more conventional superhero world (or the Voyagers of the Infinite setting) could visit. If nothing else, just mention the possibility.

 

And for another note, you could also do one- or two-paragraph descriptions of any mini-campaign ideas that you think sound good but you don't want to take the time to flesh out.