How much do you customize the setting?

[Orion]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

For Traveller, I pretty much stuck with the basic setting and have made no changes of note. For Harn using Fantasy Hero, I've made a number of changes that may be trivial or huge, depending on campaign focus. The history and people are not much changed at all, it's mostly cultural details I changed. Harn is moving in a direction I dislike, and so as time goes on, I'll have less and less in common with the canon setting. In fact, this dissatisfaction is what drove me away from fantasy and back to superheroes after being away for 17 years. I've also got another Fantasy Hero setting that is in the development stages, and is completely home-brewed.

 

For superheroes, I use most of the old (3ed and earlier) villains and select organizations from the Champions books. Most villains have little alteration, but the organizations all have significant edits. All heroes are new designs, mainly because they are so few in number. I do not use any of the CU cities. Metahumans have only been around 10 years. And while it is definitely a Champions universe, the feel is dark champions - PCs are more like soldiers than do-gooders, and killing is expected on occasion. They aren't trying to be heroes, but to defeat evil. Just given these two items, a lot of the standard stuff doesn't fit well, and so I have to pick and choose carefully, and edit a lot to use it. The campaign writeup (39 single spaced pages, and still growing!) shows influences from Alien Legion (alien races), Battletech (alien tech), and Traveller 2300 (human tech), Julian May's Metapsychic series (psionics), and stuff cribbed from campaigns I was in 20 years ago. I'm not against using the CU as written, it just didn't exist when I started creating my world. If it had, I probably would have used it with few changes.

[John Desmarais]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

I typically use a custom setting me and a couple of friends have been building - but I incorporate published Champions elements from time to time if I like them.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

Easy answer....I use what I want and ignore the rest. In truth, there is a lot of information in the CU...probably more than most campaigns will ever use. So I introduce elements that I like...and ignore what I don't like(Doc D for example). I also tend to mix in my own material and also material from earlier editions on a regular basis. Tends to keep it both fresh...and nostaligic...at the same time.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

I always create my own world from whole cloth. I use a few of the Champions characters vastly mutated is all.

[Sketchpad]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

When I used the Champions Universe, I modded the heck out of it and made it my own. Several characters were revamped, teams were reassembled and organizations were given several updates. Pretty much everything was re-drawn and many costumes were changed ... In the end, the only thing really recognizable were the names of some characters and teams

[Theron]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

It depends on how much time and effort I can put into planning the campaign in advance. These days, that usually amounts to "very little." As a result, for the game currently in the mulling over stages, I'm looking to largely use the CU as published for a starting point. But the great thing about the CU as published, I've realized, is that it's as much of a toolkit in its own right as the Hero System. It really didn't hit me until I started reading the new villain books and I realized that one could easily narrow the focus of a campaign to a single city or aspect (martial arts, high tech, mystical, street level) just with all the villains in those three volumes and have a thoroughly satisfying campaign.

 

So, that's my plan. Throw out the default CU for starters, see what the players find interesting, and advance in that direction. I'll probably use my own campaign city, because a friend and I did a fair bit of work on one for an M&M game that died young, but that's pretty much the extent of my originality at the outset.

 

EDIT: And have the campaign start in late 2008. Because there's some stuff in the timeline I'd like to inflict on my players.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

I would also strip a lot of the MMO stuff out of the current CU as written. The material is sometimes pretty good, but it feels crammed together. Monster Island and the moon are two examples. In an MMO everything needs to be simplified, with one encounter leading seamlessly into the next, so you have all these different factions hanging out within walking distance of one another. This is the video game world, and people don't question it in that context. In fact, they expect it and would be upset if it didn't work that way.

 

I don't like this for a pen and paper game. It makes willing suspension of disbelief a little hard for players. I mean VIPER, UNTIL, the Qularr, the Lemurians, Dr. Moreau, and Bureau 17 all on the same island at the same time? So to me you take that material and pick through it for the bits you like. Them you put it somewhere else in your world.

 

You forgot ARGENT and the Elder Worm. I wish I could remember and credit the forum poster who first suggested introducing the various groups depicted on Monster Island sequentially rather than all at once. I agree that having them all active on the island at the same time strains credibility; but by introducing each threat one at a time (which the sourcebook can easily be used for), there's enough material for an entire campaign based around defending Monster Island.

 

As I said the moon is similarly overcrowded. If you have access to worldships' date=' why would you have to set a permanent arena on the moon? No other reason other than that's how the MMO set it up. In my mind, the Malvan gladiators would operate out of a world ship that travels the universe looking for combatants and sending the feed back to Malva, with the best prospects going up to the big show on the home world. Sort of like AAA baseball here in the states. I imagine a combination of the plots of the movie Gladiator and that Star Trek Voyager episode where Dwayne Johnson costarred.[/quote']

 

Well, Champions Beyond almost explicitly states that the Forum Malvanum is on the Moon to take advantage of Earth's relatively plentiful supply of powerful superhumans. If you read CBY you'll note that humanity is superior in percentage of superhumans, their power level, and/or the range of powers available, to almost every other species in the Milky Way. And the Moon is a big chunk of unoccupied, unpatrolled real estate very close by, with an environment that makes escape by press-ganged gladiators extremely problematic.

 

As for the other interesting sites on Luna, they're all derived froom established Champions Universe continuity. Also keep in mind that unlike Monster Island, our Moon is essentially an entire planet, so crowding isn't nearly as much of an issue.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

Well' date=' [i']Champions Beyond[/i] almost explicitly states that the Forum Malvanum is on the Moon to take advantage of Earth's relatively plentiful supply of powerful superhumans. If you read CBY you'll note that humanity is superior in percentage of superhumans, their power level, and/or the range of powers available, to almost every other species in the Milky Way. And the Moon is a big chunk of unoccupied, unpatrolled real estate very close by, with an environment that makes escape by press-ganged gladiators extremely problematic.

 

As for the other interesting sites on Luna, they're all derived froom established Champions Universe continuity. Also keep in mind that unlike Monster Island, our Moon is essentially an entire planet, so crowding isn't nearly as much of an issue.

 

Yeah, I can see your point, but I still think having all these things on the moon is a little much. In the source material, you get one blue area on the moon, and various people live there from time to time.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like the Selenites, and would also use Revenger, with a few tweaks, I just imagine my supers universe with a little less density. The current MMO-flavored CU is like Marvel New York. It's no wonder people are always teaming up in Marvel comics, they are literally living cheek by jowl.

[Tech]

Re: How much do you customize the setting?

 

When creating a campaign for your players' date=' do you take the content from the books wholesale or do you modify large chunks of it? I'm for whatever works for you, but I'm curious as to what changes people have made.[/quote']

 

That's not a simple question for my campaign but I'll try. The campaign I'm in is my group's own. There are hints and pieces here and there of other influences but it's our own. We use most of the villains from hero games but in many cases, change, modify or rebuild them. After over 25 continuous running years and still around (and seemingly growing strength), I think this works.