A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Licenced Enemies Sourcebooks for Champions...

 

DC Universe

 

 

Dynamite Entertainment (Project Superpowers)

 

 

Marvel Universe

 

 

Impact Universe

 

 

Malibu Universe

 

 

Valiant Universe

 

 

Wildstorm Universe

 

 

Cheers

 

 

QM

[megaplayboy]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Licenced Enemies Sourcebooks for Champions...

 

DC Universe

 

 

Dynamite Entertainment (Project Superpowers)

 

 

Marvel Universe

 

 

Impact Universe

 

 

Malibu Universe

 

 

Valiant Universe

 

 

Wildstorm Universe

 

 

Cheers

 

 

QM

 

...preferably ones where those companies get a share of the proceeds, not a flat lump sum fee. I would point out that there's probably 10,000+ copyrighted characters, between Marvel, DC, all their imprints, Image, Valiant, and all the other indies. That's enough for 100 books!

[TheQuestionMan]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Start writing and I will start buying.

 

Cheers

 

QM

[teh bunneh]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A team of villainous super-speedsters! (What can I say? I love speedsters -- and would love to see a team, each of them with a different and unique take on the basic power set).

 

I'd like to second (third? fourth?) the suggestion of plot/adventure seeds. That's a big deal.

[phoenix240]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A team of villainous super-speedsters! (What can I say? I love speedsters -- and would love to see a team, each of them with a different and unique take on the basic power set).

.

 

The Speed Demons or Speed Freaks?

 

This could be an interesting concept to expand on. Teams of villains with similar power concepts but different takes on them. An All Brick group, all Blasters, All Mentalists (PSI might have that covered though), etc.

[megaplayboy]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A GM in a campaign I played in once had a whole team of villainous bricks. Well, the leader was a big strong "pure" brick, and the rest were brick-something hybrids(brick-energy projector, brick-martial artist, brick-mentalist, brick-speedster, etc.)

 

A whole team of energy-projectors would also be an interesting challenge.

[Orion]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

In general, I prefer a villains book to be of all the same age. They're either all iron age, all silver age, all golden age, etc. Also, I want them to either be comedic, or non-comedic - don't mix them up. While many prefer to have a wide mix of character types because it guarantees a few will be useful to them, most of the time this ends up meaning only a few are useful to me, and therefore not a good enough value to purchase. I guess what I am saying is choose a target audience and go for it, rather than trying to do a little bit for everyone.

 

Plot points and suggested uses are far more valuable to me than a power writeup. In fact, I would say a majority of the book should be devoted to this. It doesn't have to be on the page with the character - have a separate section that details how to use the characters. In fact, I'd put more value on a book of plot points and uses for the old Enemies I villains than I would for a bunch of new villains with minimal plot points.

 

If all villains are going to be newly created, give a range of power levels and types. Try to make it so that a person could run a reasonable campaign using only the villains contained in your book. Mention connections between the villains (Tiger Man (page 4) and Shark Boy (page 9) used to be teammates, but now despise each other because each wants to date Bird Girl (page 27)), but make no mention to Dr Destroyer, Prof Muerte, etc. Help make the villains feel like they are parts of the same universe, and not just randomly chosen villains of the week.

 

Give histories of each that are longer than 1-2 sentences. Tell me how many years each has been active, any groups they have been active with, feuds they have, etc. Give at minimum a paragraph of text describing how they got their powers, how the powers works, and if their powers have changed over the years. Looking at power costs tells me nothing - I want a detailed text description. Assume that many users are going to need to tweak the power level, framework, etc., to fit our campaign, and give us enough descriptive text so that we can do it and make them fit in with what we have. Think about the character write-up you'd prefer your players do before a campaign starts - I expect the same for villains. I'd far rather have 10 detailed villains that have 3 pages devoted to each than 30 villains with little more than characteristic and power costs.

[phoenix240]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

While it's not an Enemies book per se, a book with several useful battle maps would be great.

[Enforcer84]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

...And make us a sandwich!

[phoenix240]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A hot sandwich. None of that cold cuts nonsense...

[Enforcer84]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

with chips and frilly toothpicks!

[Captain Obvious]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

The self-contained universe idea is pretty good, IMO. Link the villains to each other without linking them to established characters. The book is useful not only as a basis for a campaign, but also as the setting for one of those parallel universe type adventures, where the PCs pop out of the wormhole into a super-battle, and have to decide which side is the good guys and which is the bad guys before they can effectively start fighting/helping out. If a GM wants to use it to add villains to his Champions Universe campaign, it's not hard to add in a few connections to established characters later.

 

And a sandwich sounds good too.

[Ranxerox]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Well, Vesper could be considered rather "verminous." While SARGON's armor is particularly well suited to large-scale destruction; in fact his first use of it was to destroy a building, and his Personality/Motivation section says he loves doing just that.

 

 

I'll grant you Vesper, but SARGON likes his destruction a little too large in scale to be my idea of a vandal. Breaking some windows, tagging, defacing art, these things are vandalization to me. Destroying buildings is more demolition. YMMV.

[mattingly]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

I gamed with Watson for years, as a player and as a GM. He knows his Champions villainy.

 

I would like to see a book' date=' or at least a section of a book, devoted to themed groupings of "agent" level adversaries that are designed mechanically to work together, including descriptions of their coordinated tactics and potential weaknesses.[/quote']

 

Michael Satran's upcoming Imaginary Friends will cover some of this by detailing SPIDER, a VIPER/COBRA/HYDRA-like organization.

 

...will the book presume to be in the CU?

 

That would be tough to do, but not necessarily impossible. We did get the license for a Foxbat-themed book, but tying a bookful of several CU-based characters might be trickier, especially with the various corporate changes as of late.

[quozaxx]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A villain using the 25% Duplication, and a villain using the 50% Duplication.

 

I've seen exact duplicates and 100% Duplicates, but I don't think there are ANY at the 25 or 50% levels.

[wcw43921]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

A villain that is a bit like Dick Dasterdly. His plans are doomed perhaps to fail but he has style.

 

Sounds like Foxbat, but there's no reason there can't be someone else like him.

 

Something different for an American Villain. A Unionist pledged to destroy the South once and for all. It's usually the Confederates doing the South Will Rise Again so this is the opposite side of the coin.

 

Perhaps an African-American character who's studied the history of civil rights and come to the conclusion that every Southerner is secretly a Klansman--or perhaps a blue-stater who's convinced the red-state right-wingers are the enemies of freedom in the United States, and intends to destroy them once and for all.

 

IMO' date=' most of the villain books have had a shortage of foes at the power level of starting characters. So a number of villains at about 400 points would be nice.[/quote']

 

Indeed, not to mention that players can take a character, change the name, the labels on the powers and the Complications, and tell the GM, "Hey! Check out my new PC!"

 

(What--none of you have ever doen that before?)

 

Lawnmower Boy mentioned a time-travel-based villain--I was thinking someone from the far future, who was a devout admirer of:

 

1) Napoleonic France

2) Imperial Germany

3) Nazi Germany

4) Fascist Italy

5) Imperial Japan

6) Any other political entity that lost a war and ceased to exist as a result

 

Determined to help his favored ideal triumph, he builds a one-shot time machine and steps in with a double armful of his era's technology, only to arrive in this era instead. Forced to change his plans, he instead seeks to recreate the "glories of the past" in our time.

 

Here are a few other ideas I had--

 

A Robin Hood type who steals from other criminals and criminal organizations, giving the money to charities he feels deserving. He refuses to trust anyone who represents the law, which puts him at odds with the PC-heroes. Perhaps he has a terminal illness which leads him to risk being severely punished should he ever be caught by the bad guys.

 

A vampire who discovers that by drinking the blood of superhumans he can gain their powers, either temporarily or even permanently. (Think Sylar meets Dracula.) If the former he could keep several superhumans prisoner in his hideout, drinking their blood as needed to make himself super-powerful, if only for a brief time. If the latter then the PCs have to stop him before he can collect enough powers to make himself invincible.

 

Some neutral characters might be interesting as well, like a costume/gadget-maker who will supply anyone, hero or villain, with the outfit or device they need--for the right price. Or a documentation specialist who can provide the paperwork needed to establish an unbreakable cover identity--just the thing for infiltrating an organization or making a fresh start with a new name. Or a superpowered individual who wants nothing of costumed heroics or villainy, but uses his powers to mundane advantage--like a mind-control artist who is neither greedy or power-crazed, but uses his powers for free food and modest lodging, or a speedster or teleporter who works as a lightning-fast deliveryman, or someone with invisibility who hunts down celebrity gossip items for a national tabloid.

 

Hope those help.

[phoenix240]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

I'll grant you Vesper' date=' but SARGON likes his destruction a little too large in scale to be my idea of a vandal. Breaking some windows, tagging, defacing art, these things are vandalization to me. Destroying buildings is more demolition. YMMV.[/quote']

 

Isn't Avante Garde in that book? He might count.

[hawkfu]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Hello,

 

Zodiac types for sure.

 

More bad guys with minions - as an example: Mr Freeze always has his henchmen. Not a Dr Destroyer level villain, but a regular villain and his minions.

 

Hawkfu

[quozaxx]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Something to represent the 7 deadly sins?

[Ranxerox]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Isn't Avante Garde in that book? He might count.

 

You're right. He counts. I thought he was in another book.

[The Main Man]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

More bad guys with minions - as an example: Mr Freeze always has his henchmen. Not a Dr Destroyer level villain, but a regular villain and his minions.

 

Brings be back to the idea of Minion Templates that can be added to a generic template. Champions 6e could provide the basic sheets that they modify with the Agent, Soldier, Zombie, etc.

[steriaca]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

Humm...what do I want in an Enimies book?

 

1) I have tons of ideals for enimies. Like, for example, Orochi (a group of Japanies agents and 8 tech base supers who thinks that Japan needs to go back to being an isolated country and back to the Shogonate). Groups or related villians and agents are nice to do. And, what is Orochi's reasion to leave Japan at times? Why, thay attack Japanies companys which do buisness outside the country, and forien companys which do buisness inside Japan.

 

2) Duos. We haven't had any good twosomes in years (like Lighting and Thunder, Panda and Racoon, Radar and Sonar).

 

3) Lots of 'starting' villians, with low Villian Bonus (if any).

 

4) A homage to Carman Sandiago would be nice. ("Where in the world is Ryouga Hibiki, Ryouga Hibiki, where in the world can he be? And what's this black pot-bellied pig doing here?") Homages are always welcomed.

 

5) An evil 'Magical Girl' team would be nice.

[BoloOfEarth]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

What I want to see is not a specific character or even a character type. I'd like to see characters that have fun-to-play quirks or personalities, that the players will enjoy playing against. For instance, having two female players meant that any appearance by Bulldozer was bound to make for a fun time. The older-edition Oculon was a whiner, which made him distinctive from other villains he teamed up with. A fellow GM's villain character (Dr. Discus) whose fanatical devotion to his pet theory (the Theory of the Universal Discal Constant) somehow pissed off one of my player characters to no end.

 

I'll second steriaca's suggestion for at least one Duo.

[The Main Man]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

What I want to see is not a specific character or even a character type. I'd like to see characters that have fun-to-play quirks or personalities, that the players will enjoy playing against. For instance, having two female players meant that any appearance by Bulldozer was bound to make for a fun time. The older-edition Oculon was a whiner, which made him distinctive from other villains he teamed up with. A fellow GM's villain character (Dr. Discus) whose fanatical devotion to his pet theory (the Theory of the Universal Discal Constant) somehow pissed off one of my player characters to no end.

I'll second that. a villainous NPC is much more fun with a distinctive personality, especially one that can getty hammy.

[Balabanto]

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

 

I gamed with Watson for years, as a player and as a GM. He knows his Champions villainy.

 

 

 

Michael Satran's upcoming Imaginary Friends will cover some of this by detailing SPIDER, a VIPER/COBRA/HYDRA-like organization.

 

If you talk about an organization in at least two of the last five adventures you published, you should probably actually stat them out for people and publish them. I've been planning this for a long time. )

 

BWAHAHAHAAAAA!

 

Sorry. Anyway, I hope you like it when it's done. And yes, it will have maps. I'm working on that now.