In the shadow of the City of the Future- Windsor's heroes

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden

BTW, the notion from CU that Canada's "official" super team keeps falling apart struck me as mildly insulting. Not that I think Steve Long and Darren Watts intended that, but I do wonder what the rationale for that decision was.

 

Well, at least it's not as bad as Mexico's team.

 

Seriously, I do wonder what the story behind that is. Perhaps the team was TOO successful, and put itself out of business when the govt decided it wasn't needed any more. Perhaps it was just a victim of political jockeying.

 

I've heard some Canadians on this board joke about how a Canadian super team would probably be the best in the world, but never allowed out of the base. Not sure what that means, but if accurate it could explain why the CU5 version disbanded.

 

For that matter, perhaps it was disbanded for the best reason of all.... it's up to a GM and his players to assemble the next generation of them.

[bcholmes]

Originally posted by Hermit

Perhaps it was just a victim of political jockeying.

 

Dunno about why they disbanded, but it's interesting that the second and third teams were formed in the same years that we had a change of government. Chretien came to power in '93, and Mulroney came to power in '84.

 

Originally posted by Hermit

For that matter, perhaps it was disbanded for the best reason of all.... it's up to a GM and his players to assemble the next generation of them.

 

Heh. That's the premise of my campaign.

[Tom McCarthy]

Canadian federal team disbands

 

I thought it might be a poke at the Canadian unity question, but quite oblique, since I imagine the issue gets (at best) tertiary coverage outside Canada.

 

The only real nod I've given to it in my campaign is to make it clear that the PCs (Canada's current federally organized team) may be subject to some political wrangling. The mysterious founder has suddenly been replaced by a more military-oriented government liaison, and the team's being assigned some politically charged missions.

 

As to that comment about the "best", it's probably a reference to the state of the Canadian Armed Forces (widely regarded as underequipped and overtrained, with a lot of misinformation regarding just how much or little they do; for example, Canada is seen as a wishy washy ally for not aiding the invasion (liberation or conquest depending on your particular flavour of rhetoric) of Iraq, yet the Canadian Navy has sent around 95% of its sea-going sailors for at least one tour in the Persian Gulf since Sept. 2001, and at times as many as 5 of our 12 best warships have been there). Australia (who manage to do a lot more fighting with about the same budget) goes out of its way to recruit Canadians to emigrate and join their forces since the Canadian training is so well recognized.

[Siberian Tiger]

Re: Americans on the team

 

Originally posted by Barton

What about the idea of US goverment teams and Canadian goverment teams doing an exchange program? Say one super spends a year in each others team. Great excuse for US in a Canadian team and vice versa.

 

Since Canada is part of the Commonwealth, there could be an exchange agreement with a British, Australian or Indian superteam (only Commonwealth nations to have superteams as per Champions Universe if I recollect correctly).

[Hermit]

Originally posted by Siberian Tiger

Since Canada is part of the Commonwealth, there could be an exchange agreement with a British, Australian or Indian superteam (only Commonwealth nations to have superteams as per Champions Universe if I recollect correctly).

 

MMm, actually the idea of some sort of "Commonwealth Superteam" is pretty darn cool. I like that one Tiger. Sadly, I am too ignorant of actual relations between the commonwealth nations to run it well.

[SirViss]

Present Commonwealth

 

This is the current Commonwealth membership:

 

Antigua and Barbuda (1981)

Australia (1931)

The Bahamas (1973)

Bangladesh (1972)

Barbados (1966)

Belize (1981)

Botswana (1966)

Brunei (1984)

Cameroon (1995)

Canada (1931)

Cyprus (1961)

Dominica (1978)

Fiji (1970 and left in 1987 but rejoined 1997)

The Gambia (1965)

Ghana (1957)

Grenada (1974)

Guyana (1966)

India (1947)

Jamaica (1962)

Kenya (1963)

Kiribati (1979)

Lesotho (1966)

Malawi (1964)

Malaysia (1957)

Maldives (1982)

Malta (1964)

Mauritius (1968)

Mozambique (1995)

Namibia (1990)

Nauru (1999)

New Zealand (1931)

Nigeria (1960 and suspended in 1995 but readmitted 1999)

Pakistan (1947 and left in 1972 but rejoined 1989)

Papua New Guinea (1975)

Samoa (1970)

Seychelles (1976)

Sierra Leone (1961)

Singapore (1965)

Solomon Islands (1978)

South Africa (1931 and left in 1961 but rejoined 1994)

Sri Lanka (1948)

St Kitts and Nevis (1983)

St Lucia (1979)

St Vincent and The Grenadines (1979)

Swaziland (1968)

Tanzania (1961)

Tonga (1970)

Trinidad and Tobago (1962)

Tuvalu (1978)

Uganda (1962)

United Kingdom (1931)

Vanuatu (1980)

Zambia (1964)

Zimbabwe (1980)

 

This site has more info about the Commonwealth:

Commonwealth of Nations

 

Gotta love Google!

[assault]

Originally posted by Hermit

MMm, actually the idea of some sort of "Commonwealth Superteam" is pretty darn cool. I like that one Tiger. Sadly, I am too ignorant of actual relations between the commonwealth nations to run it well.

 

I can't see it myself. The old British Empire is long gone, and the residual links aren't particularly strong.

 

I can see British supers being made available to defend some of the former colonies, and I can definitely see Australian and New Zealand supers operating in the Pacific Island states, and I can see some of these cooperating, but I can't really see a "Commonwealth" team. The closest thing might be if supers from India, Fiji or somewhere were to train and operate with supers from richer nations.

 

Frankly, it would be as likely for supers from many commonwealth nations to operate with American supers than with supers from other commonwealth nations.

 

Alan

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Originally posted by assault

I can't see it myself. The old British Empire is long gone, and the residual links aren't particularly strong.

 

I can see British supers being made available to defend some of the former colonies, and I can definitely see Australian and New Zealand supers operating in the Pacific Island states, and I can see some of these cooperating, but I can't really see a "Commonwealth" team. The closest thing might be if supers from India, Fiji or somewhere were to train and operate with supers from richer nations.

 

Frankly, it would be as likely for supers from many commonwealth nations to operate with American supers than with supers from other commonwealth nations.

 

Alan

 

Yep. A 'Pacific League' would make sense, but really, the commonwealth is a 'barely there' tie for this kind of thing.

 

I'd say *more* likely to work with Americans actually; at least IRL you get more involved than anyone else.

[Hermit]

Thanks Sir Viss, for the list.

 

As I said, I'm very ignorant of the Commonwealth (less so, after SirViss' help) so I concede the idea may not be realistic. Then again, UNTIL strikes me as pretty unrealistic in a lot of ways, and we accept that

[Zed-F]

The original proposal was for a commonwealth hero exchange program. That still seems reasonable to me, even if a commonwealth superteam is out of the picture.

[bcholmes]

Re: Re: Americans on the team

 

Originally posted by Siberian Tiger

Since Canada is part of the Commonwealth, there could be an exchange agreement with a British, Australian or Indian superteam (only Commonwealth nations to have superteams as per Champions Universe if I recollect correctly).

 

In our campaign, one of the PCs (Captain Sorted) is a member of the British super-soldier program on long-term loan to Canada to help them get the latest version of the Northern Guard up and running.

 

The Canadian government has started to suspect that Captain Sorted is... uh... not the British Army's favourite member of the super-soldier program.

[rjcurrie]

As for Scott Bennie's comments about me working on a Canadian supplement for the new Champions Universe, it is true that I did submit an initial proposal to Steve and he asked for an advanced proposal on the book. Unfortunately, other projects have caused me to not yet submit this proposal. I will try to get it done in the next couple of months and where it goes from there is up to Steve.

 

As for the national team having had 3 different incarnations, I believe this was more of a reference to the different incarnations of Alpha Flight in the Marvel Universe, but I could be wrong.

 

Personally I can see several reasons for a national team breaking up:

 

1) The members or the government officials in charge of the team decide that is impractical for one team to cover all of Canada. Later teams might think they have solved this problem but find out they are wrong.

 

2) Funding cuts.

 

3) Any of the standard reasons that cause a team to break up.

 

As for Windsor, specifically, I'm not sure that it would have any more than a single hero or two -- I suspect that the Champions and other Millennium City heroes handle a lot of the overflow crime. Unless there are specific reasons, I see it as being "in genre" for the Canadian government to allow U.S. superheroes to act in Canada.

 

Rod Currie

[Siberian Tiger]

Commonwealth

 

Looking at the Commonwealth website , it appears that a lot of its work is spent promoting democracy, health, human rights and social transformation - all things that a superteam could be involved with.

 

Thirty-two of the Commonwealth’s 54 members can be classed as small states. They have populations of less than 1.5 million and are characterised by their vulnerability in the areas of defence, environmental disaster, limited human resources and economic resources.

 

The Commonwealth has played an important brokering role in recent events in Fiji, The Gambia, Solomon Islands and Sierra Leone

 

All of this suggests that the CU Commonwealth would probably be interested in its own superhero team. I imagine it would perform the following functions

1) Defend smaller states from super-powered aggressors and terrorists (ties in with the post entitled Viper Rebellion)

2) Help states that have experienced environmental disaster

3) Promote health and democracy - using superhumans as spokespersons for various causes

4) Train and develop superhumans from smaller states - either a training academy or an exchange programme with hero groups from Australia, Canada, Britain or India