Age of Dark Champions

[trent_shipley@yahoo.com]

I have been considering running cold war, contemporary state on state, and war on terrorism espionage one shot adventures or campaigns.

 

1) Although Dark Champions was highly praised in internet reviews, it was published in 2004. I am concerned this may be too old for adventuring in contemporary settings. Does Hero Games have any plans to publish another edition of Dark Champions? Would Hero Games allow fans to cooperate to produce an updated edition? What kind of work would be involved in researching and adapting material for one's personal campaign set after 2004?

 

2) What supplements, settings, and adventures are available for Dark Champions? What generic or other game system resources could be adapted to Dark Champions?

 

3) What fiction and non-fiction sources would be good background a preparation? My interest in espionage roleplaying  is relatively new.

 

Trent

[Nolgroth]

Dark Champions is still pretty relevant today. You might have to tweak something here or there, but it should have aged pretty well. Be advised that it is NOT a standalone game. It was written for Hero System 5th Edition, but almost all of the concepts should be easily transferred over to 6th. You would have to ask Hero Games if you could write an updated edition. There is also a lot of fan material out there for many genres, so I don't think that there would be too many issues with creating a fan site. For personal campaigns, the vast majority of what you would have to update is flavor text for information technology systems. Most of the rest can be used pretty much as is. If there have been new firearms produced since 2004, you might have to build those in terms of power constructs, but Dark Champions is a love letter to the gun nut in all of us.

 

Hudson City: The Urban Abyss is your surest bet for supplements. It can range in tone from Gotham City to hard fact police procedural. Predators ( a villains book) is also pretty useful. Again, the stats inside Predators is for 5th Edition but should be readily adaptable to 6th. There are also some adventures written for Dark Champions, but I cannot comment on those as I did not purchase them.

 

I cannot help you with number 3. My interest in Dark Champions comes from a quasi-reality basis and served more as the underpinnings for a near-future Shadowrun game (that sadly never was). I'm sure somebody will be along to help out with a myriad of suggestions. Here is one after a quick search: http://www.tomclancy.com/book_display.php?isbn13=9780425188316

 

Good luck.

[Tasha]

I have been considering running cold war, contemporary state on state, and war on terrorism espionage one shot adventures or campaigns.

 

1) Although Dark Champions was highly praised in internet reviews, it was published in 2004. I am concerned this may be too old for adventuring in contemporary settings. Does Hero Games have any plans to publish another edition of Dark Champions? Would Hero Games allow fans to cooperate to produce an updated edition? What kind of work would be involved in researching and adapting material for one's personal campaign set after 2004?

 

2) What supplements, settings, and adventures are available for Dark Champions? What generic or other game system resources could be adapted to Dark Champions?

 

3) What fiction and non-fiction sources would be good background a preparation? My interest in espionage roleplaying  is relatively new.

 

Trent

I would think that Tom Clancy would be a good start though a bit dated. Ian Flemming would also be good also dated, but good for tradecraft. TSR's Top Secret can be mined for scenarios as can pretty much any spy thriller out there. Mission Impossible (TV show) again is dated, but a good resource for a ensemble spys kind of game. The later movies of the same name are more up to date and are also good for that. The show Legends while law enforcement related can be a good resource too (for deep undercover stuff). Aaron Allston's Boarder Crossing Adventure for espionage is also a good game adventure (Though written for very old edition of the Hero system rules).

 

The hard part is finding stuff that includes multiple main characters and not just a single individual.

[Nolgroth]

Legends was pretty awesome. It's too bad that it didn't last. Seconded. I'd even go for Blacklist or 24, but those are a touch on the cinematic side. A good cop procedural would probably serve you well, in terms of balancing reality versus drama. Castle is NOT a good police procedural for that purpose.  NCIS is probably pretty good (especially early seasons). There is a new show on, that I can't remember the name, that deals with cyber crimes on a fairly realistic basis. Again, it is all about balancing the drama of the events versus the hard core reality.

 

EDIT: Mr. Robot is the cyber crime show that I was referring to.

[Hyper-Man]

You might also want to look at even older HERO books like the 4e line of Dark Champions as well as the 1-3e Espionage! and Danger International stand-alone books.  While the latter are clearly outdated they might have more relevant cold war material than the 5e Dark Champions book.

 

HM

[freakboy6117]

Person of interest is a fantastic show that might make for an interesting take on this type of campaign. While the premise is built around smaller scale issues stopping individual murders the themes of the show cover ubiquitous surveillance what is ok to do to protect people who should be saved that's before it gets into a war between Super intelligent AIs