What does a Champion campaign really looks like ?

[1corpus christopher]

I like what you all are saying about Champions and your role-playing experiences. I am not sure if the question is being answered, but I’ll put my input into it anyway: 

 

I was kind of a late bloomer to rpgs I guess, I didn’t play my first sit-down pencil & paper rpg until 19. I had a friend who had collected several different games, i.e. D & D, AD & D, Gamma World, GURPS, Star Trek and Champions. This friend ran me and a couple other friends through all these games back in that year.  

 

Now mind you I liked Star Trek a lot at the time, both the series and the game. 

 

I just didn’t like it when my ensign 1st class science officer character took one hit from a Klingon disruptor and was dead immediately. Just gone man. 

For some reason I zeroed in on Champions as my favorite and I’ve stayed loyal to this cause ever since. 

 

I never took to liking the fantasy realm all that much. I learned to enjoy comic book heroes and villains a lot more. Dealing with the problems we know of in our world and we see on the T.V. and other media; and problems we may have experienced ourselves personally, but with awesome special powers to help us save the day, just appeals to me for some reason. 

After I ran a few campaigns in the supe genre I was hooked on it. I’ve used a lot of legacy stuff from Hero- and yes, it is everything and all the blam, blam and then some in my adventures. 

 

I like bar fights, bank jobs and bar hook ups for my PC’s. Various government and underworld agents can contact my players for employment or other plot devices. Aliens or dream-masters or gods; and multiverse of mayhem.  

 

Years ago, one scenario had the zombies of Morjok (from Challenges for...) swarming just 2 of my 5-player hero team of that campaign while they were at their HQ. After his comrade had fallen unconscious- deep, under negative 20 stun- and the player knew that the horde was going to overtake him too, he fell back to the armory and grabbed a handful of concussion grenades. As 20 or more of the zombies surrounded him and a hundred more were behind those, he pulled the pins on the grenades and roared, “Goodnight stinky dead!” We all howled at his honorable demise.  

 

And actually, he knew his defenses would survive the blast. The zombies were after an item in the base, and he was out of stun and options to stop em. He might as well blow 15 or 20 more of them to bits as he went night, sweet knight. 

 

Your Hero Game is what you wanna make her, him or it. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

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I'm having the  hardest time wrapping my head around this, but I can't for the life of me imagine what a Champions campaign looks like in action.
I'm coming from D&D 5e where there's a clear path, clear maps, there's a dungeon and if not, at least the party sticks together...

But I can't see this working with super heroes.

 

 

I keep trying to figure out a way to turn this into a broader forum with more of an audience to discuss and help people see.  Because I think a lot of newer players have this problem: how do you do superheroes??  I mean its one thing to watch a movie about heroes and see what they do, but making this work with a game is going to be a new leap for many, especially those who play D&D and like games.

 

The answers are easy as people have been showing here for over 4 years now, but its something that new players need to learn about to expand their horizons and see something new and amazing.

[Lord Liaden]

I put some of the blame on the decline in comic-book reading. That's where all the conventions of the genre were laid down. Movies, and even TV shows, can't provide the depth and breadth of understanding that comes from growing up reading a range of superhero comics, living with the characters and their adventures.

 

Mind you, I don't think would-be supers players would benefit if they actually read the majority of dreck being published today.  😖

[Hugh Neilson]

To LL's point, there are lots of reprint compilations out there.  What would we recommend potential Champions gamers read?

 

Old Justice League, where there was limited or no continuity, they all spoke with one voice, and they split up for mini-team scenarios before reconvening as a group?  Later (late '70s/early '80s) Justice League where they generally worked together and had individual voices?  Avengers?  Teen Titans? Fantastic Four?  Doom Patrol? Defenders? X-Men? I'm missing plenty, even if I restrict the search to Marvel and DC super-teams.

 

So, thoughts?  Good source material for getting a sense of a Champions campaign?  Which team, and which era?

[Joe Walsh]

For me, a big influence was crossovers. Not the giant events that ended up being annual sales pushes and were therefore driven into the ground by the demands of publishing rather than those of the story. I'm talking more about where you might have, say, Cloak & Dagger run across various supers while going about their own adventures: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, etc. And maybe end up having to deal with a villain or two borrowed from those comics such as Kingpin in addition to their own unique villains. And then C&D show up as guest stars in a few of the bigger comic books. Stuff like that.

 

In my days of heavily running Champions campaigns for years, it was nice when I could replicate that feel of a real comic book universe with stuff going on all the time just outside the heroes' range of vision, occasionally impinging on their stories and giving them a chance to help out a more well-known and/or more-powerful hero, or help a hero who's just starting out, or maybe even set some misguided fool on the right path after the fool nearly causes a disaster while trying to play hero. That's how I ended up with binders and expanding files filled with character sheets, campaign write-ups, notes, maps, and so on.

 

I haven't read many post-90s mainstream comics, but if there's something out there like those 80s Cloak & Dagger series and even their back-of-someone-else's-book pages and their occasional guest appearances (the poor sods always seemed to be an afterthought for Marvel), I'd say take a look at that stuff. On the one hand, you have intensely personal and unique stories for Our Heroes, but on the other they are definitely part of an established universe and are therefore both constrained by it and given opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have.

 

Other than that, it was the indie stuff that had the most influence on me. Mostly stuff with a tinge of humor. I've been wracking my brain for years trying to remember a B&W indie supers comic that had a superman type who just wanted to be left in peace to read Anne of Green Gables, but the villains just wouldn't leave him alone. His best friend was named Apache Joe as I recall. I'd love to pick up a copy of those someday, but I can't for the life of me remember the title of the comic. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of 90% of my comics 20+ years ago.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think the Byrne run on Fantastic Four is a great example.  Its pretty obvious that the game was mostly based on X-Men and Avengers comics from the 70s and 80s though.  Justice League and Legion of Superheroes were another good source for ideas, in the 80s and onward.  Most of the team comics by the 80s had a good Champions feel: good guys working together to face dangerous and difficult challenges.

 

As the movies and TV shows go?  Almost none of them really show the team hero effort.  Way too much splitting up, infighting, and solo focus.  I mean its easier to make a movie that way, but it doesn't reflect a game very well.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

To LL's point, there are lots of reprint compilations out there.  What would we recommend potential Champions gamers read?

 

Old Justice League, where there was limited or no continuity, they all spoke with one voice, and they split up for mini-team scenarios before reconvening as a group?  Later (late '70s/early '80s) Justice League where they generally worked together and had individual voices?  Avengers?  Teen Titans? Fantastic Four?  Doom Patrol? Defenders? X-Men? I'm missing plenty, even if I restrict the search to Marvel and DC super-teams.

 

So, thoughts?  Good source material for getting a sense of a Champions campaign?  Which team, and which era?

 

I started collecting comics seriously during the Bronze Age, 1970s-80s, and I still maintain that's when the medium really came into its own. Characters with heroic ideals, but also personal issues and conflicts. Stories that were overall positive and hopeful in tone, but with some failures and tragedies mixed in. Also a willingness to experiment and try out new things. Something for the adult to appreciate while appealing to the kid inside.

 

For inspirational reading material, from Marvel I'd choose the Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne run on X-Men and Byrne's Fantastic Four. Jim Shooter's and George Perez's stories from Avengers in the 1970s were very good, but Perez and Kurt Busiek's Avengers from this millennium was also excellent, absorbing elements of Nineties deconstruction of the genre while maintaining the classic superhero feel. I'm not as familiar with DC, but Marv Wolfman's and Perez's long run on Teen Titans/New Titans, and the Great Darkness Saga in Legion of Superheroes by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, stand out for me.

[Scott Ruggels]

IF you are doing street level,  some 80's Daredevil, from the Frank Miller/ Ann Nocenti run would give you an idea of what can be done to the protagonists and also how deeply they can get involved with the NPCs and villains. I second the  nomination of Marv Wolfman's run on Teen Titans, with George Perez.  Verrrry soap opera. 

[dean day]

On 11/4/2019 at 1:20 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Its a bit complicated but basically necromantic energy from Nazi death camps were used to wake up the old Norse gods and put them on the side of the Axis.  Except Loki, who is for whatever side the other gods are agin'.

 

So he stole some of the Iðunn Apples which grant the gods their everlasting youth, and began distributing tiny slices to thugs, mugs, pugs, ruffians and Methodists of all stripes, creating supervillains.  Some of them got more power than others (a bigger slice, etc).  Through a case of mistaken identity, the heroes ended up being offered the power, but before they could decide... Thor shows up in the skies to take the apples back.

 

Now, none of them have any idea this is Loki or for that matter what the heck is going on, just that the sinister looking charmer at the table suddenly went pale white and rushed out side, then there's this big flashing thunderstorm and explosions in the sky.  Mjolnir hits Lokis bag of apples in the fight and blammo, pieces and whole apples are showered all over the globe, and the people at ground zero -- the PCs -- all gain superpowers.

 

If you've ever played the computer game "Freedom Force" the apples were going to act like Energy X cannisters, once in a while someone could find one for a temporary powerup, heals, etc.  Plus, they were the reason for superpowered people popping up all over the place.

 

I got the inspiration for the Norse Gods thing from a short story, I cannot remember who by, that had the same essential premise (minus the apples).

I have to say that is one of the most original and cool scenarios for sudden super heroes and villains I have ever heard! 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Thanks I borrowed part of it from a short story by David Brin called Thor meets Captain America.  Parts of it were adapted from the computer game Freedom Force.  Parts of it I just dreamed up to make everything fit together.

[BNakagawa]

If you zoom out enough, it'll end up looking a lot like the run of MHA/BNHA the anime series. 

 

Many campaigns will omit the origin story bits and training arcs and just launch into the portion of the storyline where every PC is a fully functional superhero. YMMV. In any case, the usual champions campaign is going to start with stopping a bank heist and introduce them to existing hero organizations, law enforcement, villains and NPCs.

 

After some intervening run ins with recurring villains, PCs will eventually start picking up clues about something really big brewing. Often some aspect of their origin story or power source is going to have some resonance or even catalyst like effect on this BAD THING which sort of puts them squarely in the spotlight in trying to shut down this potentially existential crisis.

 

The big finale is the final push to putting a stopper in the big bads trying to bring their master plan to fruition. How much filler your insert between the start and end is up to you and your table.

 

If your PCs have a united element of their origins or background that can be leveraged to craft the ultimate plan of DOOM, so much the better. If you have an extremely random assortment of PCs, it will take much more creativity in involving everyone equally so it doesn't seem like any one PC is the focus of the campaign.

[megaplayboy]

There's a lot of different "flavors" of superhero campaigns.  The three most common, I think, are 1) First Heroes, where superbeings are just now appearing, 2) 1st Decade of Heroes, where superbeings have been around for a little while and a culture has emerged. 3) Great Lore of Legends, where superbeings have been around a long time and there's a ton of backstory.  So, "how long have supers been around?" is one element.  Another is scope--How "big" or "small" does the story start out at?  Street heroes barely better than tough guys in masks fighting local criminals?  Cosmic heroes facing off with world destroyers?  Or somewhere in between?  

Another consideration is "serial" vs "episodic" vs "hybrid".  In a serial campaign, think of each phase as a chapter in a novel, and the end of that as a transition to the next novel.  Maybe the first story arc deals with a local crime boss, and the 25th deals with a galactic warlord and his crew.  Every session develops the central story line, with subplots revolving around individual PCs and their backstories.  In an episodic campaign, it might well feel like they're facing the "villain of the week", and perhaps more time is spent on the PCs backstories and character development than some central storyline.  A hybrid approach mixes the two, so your central storyline is interspersed with unconnected one-off stories that might explore another aspect of the PCs or the campaign universe.  

Outlook is another element--this can range from "lighthearted and optimistic" to "grimdark and cynical".  Basically, what is the overall "mood" of the setting?  Can the PCs make a difference or not?  

Low level supers are like action heroes with just a little bit "extra"--stronger, faster, smarter, etc.  Similar to low-mid level fantasy characters.

Mid level supers resemble the typical movie superheroes--clearly beyond human but not immeasurably so.  Similar to mid-high level fantasy characters.

High level supers are akin to demigods and archangels--their capabilities are staggering and many of their challenges are non-physical in nature.  Similar to high-epic level fantasy characters.

 

Instead of "the heroes meet at an inn/the local guild hall", you get "the heroes meet at the scene of a crime in progress/supervillain rampage".  

 

Most superhero campaigns don't go heavy on killing villains, so you get a fair number of recurring enemies, including archnemeses.  This is a nice opportunity to develop a rivalry without having to throw it in the trash after the hero chops off the villain's head.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One thing I was trying to do with the Golden Age campaign was to set up a reason for the heroes to exist, team up, and fight for good.  I wanted them to be capable and interesting on their own, and to be in a world that needed them.  I also wanted to avoid the lame "the villains never would have showed up if there weren't heroes causing troubles" theme that is all too common these days; "I'm concerned about escalation."  I hate the "I'm just a dark reflection of you" crap.  No, Joker isn't naughty Batman.

 

So by having the villains already in place and active years before the heroes arise, all that is swept aside, and the heroes are living in a world that really, really needs someone to fight back.

[Lord Liaden]

In the Golden Age, the reason for the heroes to be active is clear-cut, the near-universally-loathed  Nazis, who frequently have their own supers. TBH the first I ever heard of the "heroes cause escalation" trope was in the movie, Captain America: Civil War. In the long history of comics, the supervillains exist and cause harm all on their own, as per human nature. They have to be stopped, and superheroes are usually the only ones with the power to stop them. It's true that one supervillain can become fixated on one superhero, e.g. Joker and Batman, and may create trouble aimed at the hero that sometimes causes collateral damage; but that's been the exception. Yin and yang, not cause and effect.

Edited April 14, 2023 by Lord Liaden

[Christopher R Taylor]

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In the Golden Age, the reason for the heroes to be active is clear-cut, the near-universally-loathed  Nazis, who frequently have their own supers

 

This campaign started before the war, Americans weren't all that aware that Nazis are bad guys in 1938.  Plus, the campaign specifically was meant to be domestic, so they don't take away from the heroism of the soldiers who actually fought the Axis.  They were involved in pivotal moments (Bismark sinking, Dunkirk) but only to oppose German supers.

[Scott Ruggels]

I would have given the Supers one “on the ground” campaign against The Nazis, but it would be a failure for the supers, simply because of the weight of numbers plus other factors, so that The Supers and the Generals would be in agreement that most overseas operations would be advised against, except against supervillains. The Invasion on Norway and the mess that turned into would be a prime allied failure, or it drew too many resources from France, leaving France to fall in the following month.  The players may want that one chance to wade through waves of Wehrmacht troops, so then give them one and traumatize them! (Says the GM that wargamers agents against supers so there was never a clean win). They will talk about that and adjust their goals accordingly for the remainder of their campaign.  Having Supers are like having a handful of untested, one off, weapon prototypes where they have undoubted capabilities, but are just one item. Chase them back to Allied territory where the odds are more in their favor. But give them that one fight they ask for, and bloody their metaphorical nose.