HERO 1st times

[zornwil]

A friend of a friend whom I'm just met offered to GM Champions. I liked super-heroes so it sounded like fun, he pretty much made my character based on my description as well as his notion to mix the "real" me with the super-hero I wanted (I don't know if he ever played V&V, but that was his big thing with Champions, to make the hero based on the player just as in V&V).

 

It went pretty poorly. I ran up against Ogre and couldn't do anything effective, which I don't blame on him, but the thing was that he was a very unidirectional GM, everything had to go a certain way. Anytime I made a choice contrary to what he wanted to happen, that choice would suddenly become somehow impossible until the "right" (only) choice presented itself. He GMed a couple more times for us (different systems) but that was it. (And it was even worse than that, but that's a very long story).

 

Anyway, I liked the system itself a lot and the rules really intrigued me. It was 1983 so it was 2nd edition, and for a while we used a copy one of our roommates who worked at a copy store made. (We were REALLY poor at that point, not to justify it, but to provide context). I started GMing it for our small group, and on from there...

[KawangaKid]

Beresford Boy

 

Originally posted by Alex Raven

I've been playing with the same core group ever since 1982 with a few additions and subtractions over the years.

 

I'm a subtraction!

 

I actually played HERO 1st under Rob Batkovic, knowing that there was the regular HERO crew at an adjacent table just cause I was a part of that group. I played Quarterstaff, a Deathstroke the Terminator rip-off who had everything focused into the staff. It was built by the GM.

 

When the group dwindled down to the HERO crew, I bought a Champions 3rd Edition book from someone who (we discovered almost 5 or 6 years later) had stolen it from Acroyear. I read the rules and built my Quasi-Death Wish hero... inspired by the dude with the rope in one of the V&V books.It was named KawangaKid by Acroyear (ah, the symmetry) and it became one of my longest running characters.

[ahduval]

The year was 1988 or 1989. I was at college at Ohio State University. The gaming club met on Saturdays from 12 noon to whenever the union closed, usually around 12 midnight.

 

Since AD&D was the only game I knew, I joined a group that was playing that game. I quickly got tired of AD&D especially the typical party of the paladin and the assassin working in the same party. Wondering around to the other groups I sat in with some gamers that were a bit older (mid to late 20s, early 30s) they were playing Champions at that time. I watched the game and eventually asked how to make a character and joined them.

 

I designed a simple energy blaster. The GM ran an introductory scenario. I was guarding a jewelry store. One of the other PCs, Vector (a speedster) ran up, introduced himself, and I blew my recognition roll. To prove he was who he said he was, he phased his arm through the wall of the store I was guarding, so I arrested him. Later he tried juggling police cars. Needless to say, he was absent from the game for a while.

[Guest joen00b]

I was first introduced into Champions back in 1982. Having learned a bit of the Super Hero genre from V&V, my one worry was being Knocked Out. I always hated getting knocked out early in the fight and not being able to do anything for most the game session.

 

I talked with our GM and my first character had hardened defenses, force field, force wall... his name says it all: Barricade. Not too much of an offensive juggernaut, he had 40 STR, and a few skill levels, but his main goal was defensive and his ability to take massive amounts of punishment and shrug it off with very little damage.

 

As we were all new to the game, the first bad guy I got to face was Grond. I still have respect for that monstrosity to this very day /shiver.

[TheQuestionMan]

A late bloomer auhm I mean Gamer

 

My best friend Martin introduced me the DnD role playing games box set when I was in 1981ish . I've played several other RPG's , but always went back to DnD . In March of 1990 I discovered the University Gaming Society and was amazed to see at least one Campaign being played every DAY and not just DnD . I was invited to join in a few games , but fell into a GURPS Fantasy ( that's still running ) . I also played in a CHAMPIONS campaign with 2 GM's and 14 Players . It was wild , crazy , and fun .

 

I've been playing and GM'ing HERO ever since ( and GURPS ) .

 

I've become a born again HEROfile since HS5 .

 

thanks DoJ .

[Bengal]

The first time I was introduced to champions was in grade school, probably 6th or 7th grade, by a friend of mine who was an RPG fiend... and not a terriffic GM. I didn't know much about superheroes, and so he and I sat down an \d modelled Spider-Man, who I knew a little about. On 250 points, he was fairly weak, and not exactly what I wanted to play, either. I quickly decided to roll up a new, unique (I thought) superhero named Bulldog. He was a brick with cybernetic enhancements, such as a silver jaw for biting through things, and springs in his legs to make superleaps.

 

I think he would have been fun to play, except my friend was also a pretty lousy GM.

 

I didn't get a chance to play Champs much in the next few years, and I didn't have a book or anything to learn from. I bought the BBB when it first came out on the advice of the old creepy RPG shop owner, and then sliced out the pges to put in a three-ring binder, since the first few print runs had shoddy glue holding the pages together. I never had a chance to play with his group at the store, for whatever reason.

 

In 1999, another shop I went to started to have RPG nights, and I finagled a Champions night, where we played for about a year. That was a lot of fun, and I really was able to develop my alter-ego to a good extent. At the time, I mainly played a character named Nighthawk (I ripped the name from the old Defenders character... much to my suprise, so did the devs for their own superhero!), a martial artist patterned roughly on Daredevil, but without the altered senses. Since he was sometimes busy with legal wranglings stemming from his sidekick, a young woman who he had rescued from an alternate dimension and therefore not documented in this one, I had a chance to throw a few other superheroes into the mix from time to time.

 

The main thing I learned from this run, where I also took a turn GMing, is that the ideal number of players for a Champs session is neither 10, nor 2. It's probably somewhere in between.

 

The second thing I learned from this session is not to give the 650-point brick character to the powergamer. But that's a tale for another thread.

[Supreme Serpent]

Got into it through my brother's copy, probably about 1982-83. First adventure was actually me running "Island of Dr. Destroyer" for my bro and one of his friends. Highlight of the adventure was "Beast", the friend's character w/the 5d6HKA club whacking Dr. Destroyer, and me forgetting/not realizing that I should apply the good Dr.'s defenses...squish one would-be world-conqueror.

 

After that played on-and-off w/neighborhood friends for a few years along w/other games, until fell in with what has been (with various additions and subtractions) my main group ever since in '86.

[Mayday]

My best friend bought Dr Who the RPG in 1987 or 1988 and asked me to run it for him so I spent the afternoon reading the DMG booklet and threw together a plot loosely based on the Keys of Time episodes, with the Master as bad guy.

 

The game was a disaster but a fun disaster and I was hooked on gaming. When summer was over and I was back in college I found some other gamers. One wanted to run Champions and helped us make characters. I chose to convert a mentalist I'd been toying with and she became MAYDAY , the human girl with OAF: head as the source of my powers. I also brought along her pyrokinetic best friend.

 

We fought CLOWN and did the Island of Dr Destroyer where Mayday reprogrammed Dr Ds computer to nuke his own island (skills rule!), it was great fun but we moved on to D&D and I only found Champions again when I got a job and joined a new gaming group in my new town. My new GM rebuilt Mayday in a much better way, and his version is still the prototype for her.

 

[BNakagawa]

Actually, I don't even remember. It was probably at one of those bay area conventions where they would hand out stats for X-Men or Alpha Flight or Teen Titans and let them hammer on eachother for a while. A great way for complete novices to get to know a new game system because they already knew how the characters worked and what to try.

 

Addendum: I did end up spending many a Friday night at the Beresford Rec center playing almost nothing but champions. Glen and Tom ran mostly, IIRC.

[AnotherSkip]

Well I was introduced at the ripe old age of 9 to gaming in AD&D and Star Frontiers.

 

every single magical item and special weapon in those games was built by my brother(ie he built things that have never before or since existed, with science and logic behind them at full force). Ye gods if I could just tap that genius for everything I do.........

 

anyways for years I stumbled around with D&D and other gaming stuff untill i hit college and was introduced to 3rd Champs then the BBB. the game was very very exciting for me, i truly enjoy superheroes, sadly none others I have met have the same lust for superheroes that i do.......

 

and i still play V&V. it does almost everything in 48 pages what FREd does in 400, in some cases in more, in others less (things like skill system it does much much less)

[ZenStorm]

I've been a gamer since I was about seven years old. (That's approximately twenty years.) I'm always the GM/DM/ST.

 

Started with D&D in the red box, progressed (in this order) to AD&D 1st ed., 2nd ed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robotech, Rifts, DC Heroes, Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Mage: the Ascension (an all-time favorite), Marvel Superheroes (excellent genre/horrible system), Changeling: the Dreaming, Aberrant, DnD 3rd ed. and later 3.5 (an all-time most-hated system), and Exalted (the other of my two all-time favs.)

 

I found Hero... roughly three weeks ago.

 

That's right, just recently. I haven't actually 'started' gaming in the system yet, however. So, I guess I could accurately say that I have yet to truly discover it. So far, I've been reading through the core book. Just after reading the first couple of chapters I was sold on the idea of a Champions game. I think this /could/ become a third all-time favorite game, assuming that it plays as well as it reads.

 

Until recently, my favorite comic-genre game had been Aberrant. Recently, White Wolf publishing made the decision to transplant Aberrant onto the d20 system. Faced with the decision between suicide and simply finding another supers game, I opted for the latter. Champions has really opened my eyes to how narrow Aberrant is in terms of concept and theme. Oh sure, it /is/ technically true that you can create anything from any genre, time-period, setting, etc. with /any/ rpg system. The difference isn't that Hero allows you to do it. The difference is that Hero allows you to do it without having to make vast, sweeping modifications to the system, without having to compromise on 50 to 90% of your idea(s)... in short, the difference is that Hero allows you to accomplish Universal Adaptability WITHOUT simultaneously forcing you to cope with a plethora of gigantor pains in the ass.

 

There are a few things I still think are kinda silly about the system. I still can't get over the fact that you need to spend precious END to use your characteristics, of all things. And I think that more than a few things about the setting are way too hokey for my tastes (the names tend toward ultra-dorky-man, etc.). But, all of these things are easily modified away.

 

All in all, I think it's one of my favorite systems out there. I hope that continues to be the case as I venture into running it.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

Well I was introduced at the ripe old age of 9 to gaming in AD&D and Star Frontiers.

 

every single magical item and special weapon in those games was built by my brother(ie he built things that have never before or since existed, with science and logic behind them at full force). Ye gods if I could just tap that genius for everything I do.........

 

anyways for years I stumbled around with D&D and other gaming stuff untill i hit college and was introduced to 3rd Champs then the BBB. the game was very very exciting for me, i truly enjoy superheroes, sadly none others I have met have the same lust for superheroes that i do.......

 

and i still play V&V. it does almost everything in 48 pages what FREd does in 400, in some cases in more, in others less (things like skill system it does much much less)

 

What do you feel V&V does better than HERO? Just interested, I have the game but never played it, it looks interesting enough.

[AnotherSkip]

the powers are easy to use and difficult to master.

there is the possiblity for infinite power as well as minimal power.

 

even in the same team.

 

with a point based system you get a slew of x pointers with some semblance of balance.

 

but not necessarily in a random system, sometimes you get a single low power and other times you get a slew of "better' powers, for a roleplayer either one can be fun.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

the powers are easy to use and difficult to master.

there is the possiblity for infinite power as well as minimal power.

 

even in the same team.

 

with a point based system you get a slew of x pointers with some semblance of balance.

 

but not necessarily in a random system, sometimes you get a single low power and other times you get a slew of "better' powers, for a roleplayer either one can be fun.

 

Thanks, as stated just wondering. Good points.

[Redmenace]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

the powers are easy to use and difficult to master.

there is the possiblity for infinite power as well as minimal power.

 

even in the same team.

 

with a point based system you get a slew of x pointers with some semblance of balance.

 

but not necessarily in a random system, sometimes you get a single low power and other times you get a slew of "better' powers, for a roleplayer either one can be fun.

 

 

He is right, that happens in V&V, mostly if you roll for your powers, and I'd be the first to admit that it reflects 4 colour comics accurately. However any random power generator could do the same for any system but being the guy who gets only two powers like Cosmic awareness and Enhanced charisma on a team of big leaguers can be difficult. As he says a roleplayer can make it work but it may give newbies a bad feel for the system.

[The Cometeer]

I think I was about 10 or so when Champions came out. A friend of mine had it and he gave me a character sheet and told me to make up a character (w/o the rule book mind you!...remember we were 10). So I drew a picture over the template, filled in some numbers that sounded good to me and wrote down some powers that sounded good.

 

When a closer friend and I finally got our hands on the rule book we immediately misinterpreted the rules for buying Characteristics, and thought that the start value was actually the number of characteristic points you got per what you spent. In otherwords, we thought you got 10 pts of STR for 1 pt., 10 pts of DEX for 3 pts., etc. So of course my first character had a 100 STR!!!!! Why not, if it was so cheap. His name was Black Panther (I was unaware at the time of the Marvel hero by that name). When the Enemies book came out we were really perplexed by how they were calculating the point costs for characteristics, until finally it dawned on us....oh shit!

[The Cometeer]

I think I was about 10 or so when Champions came out. A friend of mine had it and he gave me a character sheet and told me to make up a character (w/o the rule book mind you!...remember we were 10). So I drew a picture over the template, filled in some numbers that sounded good to me and wrote down some powers that sounded good.

 

When a closer friend and I finally got our hands on the rule book we immediately misinterpreted the rules for buying Characteristics, and thought that the start value was actually the number of characteristic points you got per what you spent. In otherwords, we thought you got 10 pts of STR for 1 pt., 10 pts of DEX for 3 pts., etc. So of course my first character had a 100 STR!!!!! Why not, if it was so cheap. His name was Black Panther (I was unaware at the time of the Marvel hero by that name). When the Enemies book came out we were really perplexed by how they were calculating the point costs for characteristics, until finally it dawned on us....oh shit!

[The Cometeer]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

[and i still play V&V. it does almost everything in 48 pages what FREd does in 400, in some cases in more, in others less (things like skill system it does much much less) [/b]

 

Wow...I'm glad to hear it. I have a real soft spot for V&V. I played it a lot as a kid. I still like pulling it out and making up some random hero/villains to get the creative juices flowing. There is something really refreshing about the ease of character creation as opposed to HERO. Also, you often hit on power combinations that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. Plus, I love the artwork.

[loraxxx]

Originally posted by pinecone

I still remember my quote..."How could this Possably be as good as Runequest"....

 

my only memories of RUINED-QUEST involve my character being trapped at the edge of a raging river by a pack of hungry wolves, slowly going blind from rabies (because we were too low level to fight off a swarm of rabid BATS) knowing that any attempt to cross said raging torrent would almost certainly be fatal, as i was the only character who had made a sucessful swimming feat roll, givnig me a skill level of 6%....

 

the fact that in CHAMPIONS you begin by playing COMPETENT characters is one of the reasons i still play today....

 

but i digress--back in '82 i was a member of the metro detroit gaming center--a club of like minded role-players, and board gamers who were drawn together in the bonds of our fillial attachment to the rolling of multiplanar dice--the club having 50+ members provided one with the opportunity to play in just about anything being played in the gaming community at the time....

 

at the time i joined the were not one, but two CHAMPS GM's running at the center--DON, who ran a pretty silver age campaign, and JERRY--who didn't....!

 

While in DON's game your characters might come up against DR. DOOM, or MAGNETO, in JERRY's game you cheif nemesis was....JERRY--oh, it may look like DR DESTROYER, or THE SLUG, but don't be fooled--you were going up against JERRY, and he played to win--there was no greater sin in JERRY'S eyes than a character that did not make efficient use of his god-given points....

 

anyway, because of their differing styles DON and JERRY were always at odds with each other.

 

one day they were engaged in a vigorous debate in the center's common gaming room--DON was trying to show JERRY the error in his point-pimping approach to CHAMPS--showing JERRY some tricked out monstrosity that could shrink down to the size of an ant and retain the full strength of the HULK--JERRY was ignoring him, or counter-gesticulating, both of them going on, and on, and on--and it struck me that i had to know what game this was that had these two so worked up!

 

within a week, i had sat in on both their games and within two, i had my first champions character....

[loraxxx]

Originally posted by projecktzero

....We were going to switch from Table Master(er..Rolemaster) to Fantasy Hero when it came out, but I don't remember if it ever happened.

 

i believe the proper misnomer is RULE-MONSTER....

[Stephen Mann]

I discovered the Hero System right after the Secret Service raided Steve Jackson Games. I had found Gurps after several years of suffering with AD&D, and thought it was the perfect gaming system. Of course, it had problems with really powerful characters, and Gurps Supers had umpteen dozen Energy Blasts (Ice, Lightning, Laser, Blaster, etc, etc) that all did the same thing....

 

Well, anyway, when the SJG BBS went down, a temporary replacement BBS recommended Red October, the main Hero BBS, for those addicts like me. The system, the RO guys were talking about sounded cool, so I bought the book.

 

I didn't actually play the system for a number of years, but eventually ran a four color supers game. In fact, the only times I've played (rather than run) is once at a convention and a Fantasy Hero campaign that didn't last beyond two sessions.

[rjcurrie]

My best friend and roommate at the University of Waterloo in the fall of 1982, Charles, was a real superhero fan and was always on the lookout for a superhero RPG. He had run both the first and second editions of V&V as well as the original Superworld (from the Chaosium boxed set Worlds of Wonder). Then one day, he discovered and purchased a copy of the second edition boxed set of Champions at the local games store. However, being busy with school and other activities, he set it aside and didn't really look at it. A few weeks later, as he headed out to do something on a Saturday night with a different group of friends, I asked him if I could look at his copy of Champions. Well, that evening, I read the whole thing cover to cover (not hard -- it was only 80 pages) and I just got it. Unlkie any role-playing system, I had read before, pretty much the whole thing just made sense to me.

 

I started immediately making a few characters (that I never really used) and learning more about the game in general. And first thing Monday morning, I headed out to the game store to pick up my own copy -- along with the original Island of Dr. Destroyer and Enemies I and II. But I didn't really want to run it -- I had very little experience as a GM (I had run about a half dozen Traveller adventures). However, I did talk up the game among friends and a few months later, we actually did try out the rules with a few mock battles between Tachyon (Charles' character), a flying energy blaster and Endpoint (the character of another friend, Ronald), a Wolverine clone. But of course, I still didn't have the confidence to run a campaign.

 

Around that same time, another friend of mine but not part of my regular gaming group, Jim, borrowed my Champions rules and liking it, put together a campaign. While not a regular part of that campaign, I made a few appearances as Professor Plasma, a version of an old V&V character I had played.

 

Finally, in the fall of 1983, Charles, I, and several other gaming friends rented a large house together. Living in a house full of gamers (with several other gaming visitors) was too good of an oppurtunity to pass up. I finally decided that it was time to take a crack at running a Champions campaign. And lo, and behold, it acually worked. In fact, within a few months, I was running two Champions campaigns and Charles and another friend in the house were also running their own Champions campaign. In addition, there was my friend Jim's campaign which was now alternating with yet another Champions campaign run his by friend John. Eventually, several other people in those campaigns also ran their own Champions or other Hero System campaigns.

 

So, to make a long story short (too late!), that's how I got started as a Champions player and GM.