phydaux

And there is WAY too much sex & underage drinking for Super Powereds to be YA. Heck, the main character in Wearing the Cape can't even THINK about sex without blushing, and only drinks champagne at charity fundraisers if her Mom says it's OK. In Super Powereds the characters play drinking games in their living room "pre-gaming" before taking their fake IDs to dance club, play Truth or Dare, and many of the characters, male and female, are total sex hounds.

Resurrecting this thread to tout this. I'm half way through Year 3, and I'll polish off Corpies before I read Year 4.

It all comes down to the "crunchyness" of the Hero system. When you build your PC you know EXACTLY what your character can do. Unfortunately, you ALSO know what your character CAN'T do. For some of us, it is the reason we love the system but a lot of players just HATE being restricted in any way. I can literally hear in my mind this player taking to the GM, because I have been that GM and have had players like that talk to me: "His powers are lizard-based, so he looks like a lizard. But not SO MUCH like a lizard that if he went out in public people would notice, so he doesn't get any negative modifiers to his social interactions. But he DOES GET bonuses to his PRE Attacks & Intimidation skill rolls because he looks like a lizard. And he can be super strong. He can be just as strong as a PC who was built to ONLY be super strong. But he can ALSO be super fast if he wants to be, just as fast as a speed-based character, only he won't be AS strong then, but he can still be super fast AND lift a tank over his head if he needs to. He gets around by Super Leaping but he can ALSO Cling, AND Swing, and Glide...."

I only rarely let even experienced players run a VPP. The game gets bogged down as they try to do the math to see how many abilities they can pull off at the same time, frantically pulling meaningless power disadvantages out of thin air.

The guy, being new to the system, wants to play a "comic book" character, while Champions is a "superhero" RPG. In comics, powers are very poorly defined. This is intentional. It lets the "title" hero be very strong one month and just not quite strong enough the month after that. It also lets the title hero have whatever power that happen to need just when they need it. Think Batman '66's Utility Belt, or Superman's Super Knitting. So while comic books work that way, Champions DOSN'T.

Classic Traveller covered it all for me. Plus you've got to love a game system where your PC can die during character creation.

Reputation? Although Distinctive Feature probably does it best. Combination of the two?

In a fantasy setting you can have spells or monsters that age the character.

OK, now that I've actually READ the thread, this all sounds like the Netflix series The Good Place, where a Professor of Moral Philosophy constantly uses various arguments from ethics & moral philosophy to get Kristen Bell to be good when all she wants to do is be naughty. And IMO anyone trying to get Kristen Bell to NOT be naughty when she REALLY wants to be deserves to have chipped puppies splashed on them.

You've obviously never read about the Stanford Prison Experiment. The idea was that if well educated people with proper liberal sensibilities (like for example you're typical Stanford University student) were put in charge of a group and given absolute power, they would be less likely to abuse their authority and more likely to use it for the betterment of everyone involved. The actual results were NOT what the organizer was expecting.

In the Superhero Teen Romance novel (seriously, that's literary genera) called Wearing The Cape there is a (mostly) behind the scenes protagonist named The Teatime Anarchist, so named because when he appears he is always impeccably dressed and he has a lilting Posh accent. Think Colin Firth from Kingsmen. He is a time traveler from the not too distant future fighting against metahuman registration, regulation, and eventual internment, and the totalitarian governments that would be required to make such things happen. He does so by such means as making it impossible for a pro-registration politician to escape an awkward press interview because the limousine he wants to get into is suddenly, inexplicable, filled to the roof with jelly beans. There is also a Dark Anarchist, working to bring about global totalitarian governments only with the metahumans calling the shots and the pesky normals all put in their proper place. The Dark Anarchist's methods involve far fewer jelly beans and much more high explosives. Naturally The Teatime Anarchist and The Dark Anarchist are the same person, just from alternate time lines. I have no idea if this helps the thread. just throwing it out there.

And 6th ed, with no figured characteristics, has gone a LONG WAY toward normalizing CV, DEX & SPD. Before that it was literally a DEX war.

My campaigns have always been 12DC/60 Active points going back to the mid '80s.

And secretly enjoy it.

sigh... Bubba, you're a straight up SOB. I didn't even notice until after my post that you have a Seeker avatar. You caught me, Bubba. You caught me.

Seeker was a member of The Champions back in 3rd Ed. In fact, he was featured prominently right on the cover of the 3rd Ed rule book. He was in the place currently held, on again/off again, by Nighthawk. He was an Australian martial artist who went around in Gi pants, no shirt, throwing stars, and a pair of sais (which the source books all called "tri-irons" for some inexplicable & infuriating reason). And, famously, he had NO rPD/rED. Meaning that while he was a full fledged member of a super hero team, a single gang banger with a broken beer bottle stood a decent chance of landing him in the hospital. Thereafter he was the poster child reminding players everywhere that all PCs should have at least a little rPD & rED.

While Jessica & Luke are clearly more Dark Champions than Champions, Jessica is more Street level and Luke is more Heroic level. Neither are Supers level. That's for "That green guy and his team." On a side note, this shows why ALL my PCs have at least a little EGO/Mental Defense. And Power Defense. And Flash Defense.

This show was highly recommended to me, so I just started watching. I'm a few episodes in, and I was struck with this thought: "She forgot to buy rPD." Some people don't learn the lesson Seeker taught us all back in 3rd Ed.

THE BASICS Attack Power Defense Power (that provides Resistant PD/ED) Travel Power ALWAYS Flash Defense (Sight) Mental/Ego Defense USUALLY Power Defense Hardened PD/ED (usually not full, only 25% of total PD/ED get Hardened) Life Support - Extended Breathing (usually OIHID, often through a Focus) Infrared/Ultraviolet/Dark Vision (also usually OIHID, often through a Focus) Radio Receive/Transmit Extra Running Extra Jumping Extra Swimming (these three often get put in a small multi-power called Olympic Level Athlete) At least 60 points in various Skills I'm usually OK with ratcheting my PC down a few DCs below Campaign Norms in order to get a full complement of skills & utility powers. "Wait, you mean my PC is the only one who knows how to disarm a bomb?"

I live outside of Boston, and near as I can remember there is no official write up for any super hero group out of Boston in any Champions Universe product. So my PCs are based in Boston, and the local super team is the BHL (Boston Heroes League).

Well, the first question I have is "What are his powers?" Comics are notorious for having a character's power set be very undefined.

Before 6th, all my PCs had a 30 DEX. ALL of them. Regardless of the character type, he had a 30 DEX. Now with DEX decoupled from CV my PCs have a much more normalized DEX.

I'm fairly sure there are no Howard Johnson's either, but I didn't let that get in my way.

Thanks. I tried to throw in a lot of elements. A female NPC for a PC to try to romance, but a no nonsense one, not a "damsel in distress." And MCB a$$holes to give them grief. The "carrot" of the possible high paying contract with the sheriff's department, meaning they have to act professional. It's astonishing how many players can't run across an authority figure in game without having their character run their mouth. One thing I DIDN'T include that I totally WOULD HAVE if this was a campaign is a competitor hunter squad also going after both the PUFF money and the sheriff's department contract. Totally throw in another combat encounter - a knock down drag out brawl at the local waffle house between the two groups of hunters.

There are only two combat encounters, so I think it can be run in a four hour block.