A Whole New (Super) World...

[steriaca]

OK folkes. We have admit that with the Champions IP being owned by someone else, that DOJ cannot publish superhero material as offen as we like. So, what would YOU like to see in a new superhero IP?

Remember, I'm just a fan and amateur creator, and not a part of DOJ/Hero Games.

[bubba smith]

more super-heroics less soap opera

[Tasha]

Soap Opera is the glue that keeps comics from becoming one big boring fight from week to week. It's driven the best Champions games that I have even been in. YMMV, but IMHO you are missing something important if you aren't forging the relationships between PC's and various NPC's and between the PCs. Heck Soap Opera elements is what really made Marvel comics of the 70's and 80's so radically different from DC's offerings.

[TheQuestionMan]

Full Stories, to many products cut to many corners leaving the buyer/reader confused/frustrated.

 

IMOHO

 

QM

[TheQuestionMan]

Use the margins to add GM Notes, Resources, and reminders.

 

If enviromental dangers factor into the Adventure/Scene use the Margin face to reference page numbers for things like;

Secondary Fire Damage

Falling Damage

Cover Modifiers

Object Durability (Alblative Cover)

No Map add Battleground description with notes for different Movement Powers (Leaping from street to rooftops, accross streets, Swinging and Gliding possibilities.)

Abridged NPC's Vital Stats SPD, DEX, etc...

[steriaca]

I ment what would you want to see in a new world, not in new books.

[Grailknight]

A balanced universe, the CU should be warring states divided by various villain factions.

 

Some villains who can be respected for their goals if not their methods. 

 

A consistent worldview toward power groups. i.e. Public/Secret Magical world, Supertech availability, Attitudes toward Supers

 

Deal with How Supers have changed the World

 

Minimal alien contact. Non-hostile alien contact would change the world more than the advent of supers, failed invasions would pretty much destroy the current political structure and international relations.

[TheQuestionMan]

A new Superhero Campaign Setting using Hero System.

 

Brave New World - Superhero.

Godlike - WWII Superhero.

The Incredibles Universe - Monologuing Bonuses

Invincible Universe - Robert Kirkman.

City of Heroes/Villains Universe - MMORPG to Table Top RPG.

 

 

Hmmm...

 

 

QM

[Enforcer84]

Just flesh it out. Never worry too much about being correct, shoot from the hip and make fun personalities. 

There should be something for each audience. The everything to everyone approach rarely fits but compartmentalizing cliches does ok.

 

Make it something you enjoy writing and detailing so it doesn't become a chore. 

 

Oh and capes are cool. I don't care what a bespectacled diminutive fashion maven says. An absence of capes lead to the pouches and big guns accessories eras. And that was terrible.

[Tasha]

Just flesh it out. Never worry too much about being correct, shoot from the hip and make fun personalities. 

There should be something for each audience. The everything to everyone approach rarely fits but compartmentalizing cliches does ok.

 

Make it something you enjoy writing and detailing so it doesn't become a chore. 

 

Oh and capes are cool. I don't care what a bespectacled diminutive fashion maven says. An absence of capes lead to the pouches and big guns accessories eras. And that was terrible.

Pouches impossible guns, and thick necks were all one crappy artist aka Rob Liefield. How that guy keeps getting art jobs is beyond me.

[Greywind]

On his knees?

[massey]

An overall bronze age feel.  I do not want to see a deconstructionist take on a superhero universe.  There's a very, very solid chance that the person writing the game supplement is not Alan Moore, so please don't try to write like him.

 

Build a world that will not disintegrate on itself.  If Dr. Destroyer can shoot 10D6 RKAs then there needs to be a hero who can take a 10D6 RKA.  The villain's evil master plan cannot be "stroll down Main Street and kill waves of heroes with my standard attacks when they show up to stop me."

 

I'd like to see at least half a dozen named hero teams with fleshed out characters.  The Champions are in New York (show character sheets), the Guardians are in L.A. (show character sheets), the Liberty League operates out of Philadelphia, etc.  Each character should have a writeup as a starting character and as an experienced character.  So we would see the 350 point Defender as an example character, but then we would see the "real" Defender who is 514 points.

 

Villains who have ties to the universe and who are scaled appropriately to the characters they interact with.  Ultron fights the Avengers.  He was created by Hank Pym (tied to the universe).  He created the Vision (tied to the universe).  It takes the entire team of the Avengers to defeat Ultron, because he's specifically written for them.  Mechanon (or whatever new equivalent) should be likewise tied in and scaled appropriately.  The Teen Champions (all written on 250 points, we'll say) would have their own villains scaled for them.  Sabretooth fights Wolverine, he does not wander into New York and pick a fight with the Fantastic Four.  So we should have "Villains to Challenge 250s", "Villains to Challenge 350s" and "Villains to Challenge 450s".  We kind of have that now but I think there needs to be more focus on giving GMs lots of villain encounters for different power level heroes.

[bubba smith]

grailknight and massey ha both have the right idea

[bubba smith]

don't forget th one thing super=heroes need most IMHO a SECRET ID

[Alewis478]

Dystopian.

 

Something like the Steelheart novel. Realistically, if humans started getting super powers we'd be 99% villians. Being a good guy should be hard. Outnumbered.

 

Most material I see tries to recreate the classic comic book feel. Nothing wrong with that but I'm not much of a comic book guy. I'd like to see something else.

[Tasha]

If there is going to be powerlevel teirs, they need to be way more detailed than just saying 200, 300, 400, 500pts. It should be DC 8, 10, 12, 14 etc. with the average powerlevels spelled right out for Players and GMs to understand. The Villains need to be written up to meet those powerlevels. One great thing from both Book of the Destroyer and Machine was the writeups for the Mastervillains at different powerlevels in their career. Also, a discussion about how to take an average character which IMHO is usually a Energy Projector (Blaster) and making the other Archetypes that don't overshadow the powerlevel of the campaign.

[assault]

Default Bronze Age is probably the most useful for the most people. It can be darkened up for those who want it, or lightened up for those who prefer it that way.

 

As for dystopian: I don't agree that "Realistically, if humans started getting super powers we'd be 99% villians" (sic). More likely, there would be conflicting agendas, since there's far from a consensus as to what "Being a good guy" entails.

 

But more importantly, that's a single style, which not everybody prefers. There are plenty of cool products out there presenting such settings, so there's apparently a market for them, but I'd rather something less sub-genre specific as an alternative "Champions Universe".

[steriaca]

Assault is right. I would really like the 70's and early 80's Marvel Comics, and the universe should reflect that. Also, in those comics, superheros fight all the time. It ranges from 'I don't know you...you must be a villian', to 'hahaha...the master villian disguised himself as the other hero, did a crime, and sits back to watch superheros kill each other', to 'I don't like you...'.

Then again, I grew up around that.

[Lord Liaden]

Veteran Hero Games author Dean Shomshak requested to post his input on this topic, since computer problems currently impede his ability to post here. I quote him below:

 

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"I agree that more guidance about power levels might be a good idea. Massey also has good points.

 

I too would like to see a “Bronze Age” feel: Recognition of social issues and that heroes and villains have personal issues; but not the facile cynicism of the Iron Age.

 

OTOH I want a new CU to acknowledge that this is not 1980. Emphasize the conflicts and issues of today: Geopolitical conflicts between super-powers are out (China and the US are frenemies); Jihadism and other non-state or rogue-state conflicts over worldview are in.

 

Most importantly, the modern world is a lot wider than it was just a few decades ago. The New CU should give greater weight to the world beyond North America and Western Europe. Consider that CV1 has more master villains from other dimensions than from the entire non-Western world! For instance, can we have at least one Master Villain from India?

 

(My own new campaign has Professor Proton from India, the robotic Monad strongly associated with China, Tiamat from the Middle East, the Mahdi in North Africa, Negatron from Japan, and the warlock Maladomini from South America. Not that North America and Europe do without master villains.)

 

Necessarily, a new CU needs to adapt familiar tropes and types from the Marvel and DC Universes, since that’s what most people want in their Champions campaigns, but I don’t want to see simple imitation. Don’t just copy the Eternals and rename them as Empyreans, or copy Sentinel robots and call them Minutemen: The designers need to bring something new to the characters, organizations, and settings.

 

(I think the existing CU has a hint of this in its mutant master villains. Instead of being oppressed minorities, Holocaust, Gravitar and Menton come from wealthy, elite backgrounds, suggesting a possible subtext of mutants as a symbol for unearned, inherited power and dumb luck. This might be developed further.)

 

The New CU should show an unstable world where meaningful, large-scale choices are possible. Earth-CU should still be recognizable as our-world-plus-supers; but it should also be clear that it might not stay that way much longer (and not just from being conquered by a Master Villain). The possibility of major technological, social or political change gives motivation for factions, conflicts and stories that go beyond “Bad Guy Does Crime.” (See the Devil’s Advocates and their Dark Renaissance as an example.)

 

Finally: It might be a small point, but I want the Champions Universe to be the *Champions* Universe. No crossovers with Fantasy HERO or Star HERO, please. The superhero genre thrives on a kitchen-sink approach, but the design requirements for a good supers setting differ from those of a good Fantasy setting or a good SF setting. The New CU can have aliens, but they are aliens designed for a supers setting, who can be absurd for even the wildest SF setting. Likewise, heroes and villains can have connections with Atlantis, Faerie, whatever, but these are designed as Fantasy extensions of the CU rather than as settings in their own right. The attempts to link the existing CU to the Turakian Age and Terran Empire feel awkward to me. The new CU shouldn’t try to smoosh everything together into one meta-setting.

 

Dean Shomshak"

[rjcurrie]

OK folkes. We have admit that with the Champions IP being owned by someone else, that DOJ cannot publish superhero material as offen as we like. So, what would YOU like to see in a new superhero IP?

Remember, I'm just a fan and amateur creator, and not a part of DOJ/Hero Games.

 

This is somewhat a false premise. I suspect overall poor sales of all Hero products has more to do with the lack of new Champions material than the fact that Cryptic owns the IP. 

[Lord Liaden]

I must concur with my fellow Canuck above. DOJ had a pretty ambitious publication program mapped out during the Cryptic Studios era, including upcoming Champions-related material -- Golden and Silver Age Champions, Profit And Purity, The Martial World, and a Millennium City update -- before financial realities necessitated cutting back. From the posts I read by Steve and Darren, DOJ had little difficulty getting Cryptic's permission to publish new Champs material.

[L.Craig]

id love to see a new universe. just a standard super hero universe would work for me.

[SteelCold]

Something more along the lines of Heroes, Push, Unbreakable, Chronicle, Jumper. Seeing Kickass 1 and 2 made me realize colorful costumes ain't going to cut it if you're the only one dressed as a circus clown while the normal clothes wearing criminals are looking at you laughing with their iPhone cameras sent to YouTube. Powers be damned.

[massey]

Something more along the lines of Heroes, Push, Unbreakable, Chronicle, Jumper. Seeing Kickass 1 and 2 made me realize colorful costumes ain't going to cut it if you're the only one dressed as a circus clown while the normal clothes wearing criminals are looking at you laughing with their iPhone cameras sent to YouTube. Powers be damned.

 

That's exactly the type of game I don't want to play.  I think the market for that type of pseudo-realism is limited. 

[bubba smith]

I have to agree with massey there