Agent X

I think you have done a very good job at explaining a problem I also identified with the approach to the Champions Universe. The Characters too often seem written more as examples than characters to run with, either as PCs or NPCs. I love the "how to do" approach in the Champions supplements and I am happy that they recognize that every character they present is a "teaching moment," but they need to sell the character as well. Too often, I feel like Champions, and often Champions players, are trying to be clever instead of interesting.

I see your point. You know adventure modules can actually be used to provide a great deal of that kind of information. To Serve and Protect is an excellent example.

I think we will have to disagree on this one. If there is anything more tiresome to me as a player than playing "Battle against the Evil Organizations" every week I don't know what it is. There is far more to the genre than that.

I still want modules.

One of the problems I heard with Dark Champions is that they established parameters for the heroes and villains and violated them too much. When I saw the write-up for Harbinger of Justice I was horrified, horrified that he was supposed to represent the top end of what I call a street level game. He is mighty! I think he is too mighty to be properly called a Dark Champions character - at least as a PC - and I am very wary of giving too many dispensations for the NPCs that I woulnd't give for the PCs. One of my favorite adventures inspired by "outside sources" was the Strand adventure in the back of 4th Ed. Champions Universe. I added more details, included Morjok and the Alternate World group from an old Enemies book that included Gaussian and Bruiser. I also tied in the Watchers of the Dragon's Tournament with the Death Dragon and all that stuff. Finally, it included the Tempus time-travel adventure. Anyway, it was one big mess of time travel, mystic threats, alternate dimensions (including evil versions of the PCs), and more conventional story-lines. It was to culminate with the heroes and the legions of Dr. Destroyer and Tyrannon duking it out in the Temporal Nexus or some-such. I never got to finish it. There was a lot going on in my life and I had to move away for awhile and this was something that would take at least 6 months if the game had gone on every Saturday afternoon like clockwork. See, one of my favorite things is to grab a few adventure ideas and splice them together into something very different and much more elaborate. It keeps the players on their toes and is fun for me to watch how they change the dynamics of the plot.

I would say about 10% of my sessions have been based on Adventure Modules. I stare at them, fix them, change characters, add material, whatever. I have never run a module as is and probably never will - but I find they can spark my imagination at times when nothing seems to germinate elsewhere. I have most of the old Champions stuff except for Dark Champions - it never did it for me. The only Dark Champions stuff I picked up was the stuff I thought I could 'port over easily.

I hope so.

I am sure that many will disagree with what I am about to say. I readily expect to see Monolith try to hand me my head but... Having perused the products at the FLGS recently, I took my first hard look at Mutants and Masterminds. While I am not all that impressed with the system, I do admire the format of their supplements and the nature of their supplements. They put out adventure modules! One of the things that has concerned me about Champions is it seems a bit too closed up and self-referential. It seems too focused on the "rules." Now, they are the best rules I have ever seen for superhero role play but there seems to be a certain dryness to the approach to the Champions Universe and Characters in general. The supplements seem so bent on following a sober format and highlighting the rules system that it loses some of the potential fun that can be had just from reading a role playing supplement. Those Mutants and Masterminds books I have looked at are far more self-promoting in the sense of their take on characters and their universe. They do some really neat things with the way they describe characters and tie them into their universe. I am not advocating too radical a change in the way DOJ does things. I just think the game has lost some of its magic without the Adventure Modules and the reticent approach to adding "color," and I don't mean real color (cuz I'm poor), to their supplements. I miss adventure modules and I don't think I'm the only one. In fact, I plan to buy some of the Mutants and Masterminds modules and possibly Silver Age Sentinels supplements simply to fill the vacuum left to Hero by making Hero Conversions. I know they have "run the numbers" but I know there are more people out there like me who would not only like to see these products, but would buy these products. That is money Hero could be getting but isn't going to be getting.

You might be right. Since it stands up like that, it probably does provide for decent air circulation.

Nightwing is mighty! Let's not forget he ko'd Hal Jordan and was trained by the Warlords of Okaara. I don't care how badly they write him now. He was once... a Titan.

I wouldn't worry about it if you have the 4th edition. It should be easy enough to update.

Re: RE: Nighthawk I think Seeker's origin had a great deal to do with the mocking and Nighthawk is his replacement. On top of everything else, he has that silly hood/hat. The headgear invites danger. It has to be hard running in the forest or in buildings having to dodge limbs and the tops of doorways, light fixtures, etc.

Wow! That soon huh?

Re: Local Heroes There are always some NPC Heroes, at least nationally. If there are any in the setting that could be interacting with the Heroes, I anticipate how they will interact with the other "clusters" in my game along the timeline as if the PCs weren't there. Then I wind it up and let the PCs bounce off of these and have the NPCs react to the new developments. I don't want the players to get the "dreamtime" sense where everything they do is an isolated event. I like the sense that I get as a player when the changes I make are actually significant so I assume my players do too. As to your other questions, it depends on the campaign.

Re: large story small parts I think our approaches run along a parallel course with fundamentally the same view of how to keep the flow of the game going.

Re: i guess its fly by the seat of my pants for me Do you think in terms of episodic adventures? I think in terms of "clusters" of activity that the characters can interact with. I don't bog down too much into detail but I have a timeline of a basic description about what each "cluster" will be doing if the heroes don't get involved. It isn't as complicated as it might sound and the players seem to enjoy knowing that the "world" is constantly "in motion" even when they take a detour.

That is so sad. Maybe you are on to something though. Perhaps if we could come up with a laminated card game that could be played in bathtubs where soap is used instead of stones or whatever...

Re: What would your Character Do? I would protect innocents first. Once his armies were subdued I would attempt to save Dr. Destroyer. If he died, I would solemnly, though not regretfully, acknowledge his passing. Now, that's in character. If a guy that murdered that many people was having a heart attack near me, for real, and I could legally get away with it I would help his heart fail.

Any of my characters who would have respected the law enough to play prison guard would trust the law to exonerate him - so he would cooperate.

I have taken it as a source of pride that I have never had to stop the game to figure out the ramifications of a character's actions. I have left a meaningful pause for a player to reconsider a stupid action and have stopped a few campaigns in their early development when I realized too many of my players did not respect the campaign or me or both. Those disasters usually happened at game stores with people I didn't know very well.

I think I would go so far as to say that those suggestions in the margins of the books give player benchmarks as much as guides on design. That is always useful. Sometimes I quibble about the benchmarks you are setting but then I just "cheat" on those and change them. It is handy for the guys who walk into the store to score a game with new people and they tell them that "everything is pretty much like what it suggests in the books" or "we go a little higher on effect than the books do." Benchmarks are good.

Well, I guess the ref didn't use the area effect. Lucky me. Yeah, Viperia is a babe. I like Viperia. I think there should be more characters on scale in the game. When I saw that Lightning Bolts were supposed to do 4 to 6 dice of killing damage in 4th Edition I immediately was annoyed that in the description of a basic campaign you couldn't have a character who could throw a bolt of energy equivalent to a high-end lightning bolt. What comic books has everyone else been reading?

I try to build up a series of villainous networks and a few other phenomena that I have though out what would happen independently of the heroes, kind of like a wound up clock. So, I have a loose timeline about what the villains and other NPCs would be doing over the campaign arc. Then, I set up the initial adventure for the heroes and react to their decisions. As they affect the campaign, I re-evaluate what the NPCs would be doing. It makes for a very unpredictable game that flows really well, tells a good story, and challenges the players. It also is a great deal of work to prepare but then it is smooth sailing.

Mystics are the nastiest. They can justify so many powers. If you ignore mystics it has to be mentalists but mystics often are mentalists with more cool stuff.

My character, Thunder Dragon, just blocked her attack and then his counterstrike damage shield was set off. Didn't do much to her but she was so frustrated she focused on him and got hammered from behind by a descending move through. inches of velocity doubled for descent, velocity divided by 3, + STR damage. I believe the character had 30" of flight and a 60 Strength but it has been a long time. That would be, oh, 32 dice.