Steve

As a thought experiment, what might be the effect of superhumans on the economy of the world? I was thinking about this today and thought I’d throw it out for discussion.
 
The main comic book universes tend to try to keep their worlds relatively close to “real life” when it comes to your average person, but what if such restrictions were removed? What if the Champions Universe saw the release of tech breakthroughs by superhuman geniuses that our world can only dream of? Would it warp a campaign beyond the point of fun or believability?
 
Energy production?
Materials production?
Food production?
Medical treatments?
Space and undersea exploration?
Artificial intelligence?
 
And the list goes on and on.
 
 

In fact, per Champions Villains Volume Two p. 124, The Fox of Crime is the secret patron of the super-thief team, GRAB, in current official continuity. Per his history in that book, the Fox was active during the Seventies and Eighties, but age diminished his teleportation and physical abilities, forcing him to retire. GRAB lets him stay "in the game" without risk to himself. The members of GRAB still don't know who their mysterious backer is, but their crimes are smoother and more profitable than ever, so they don't complain.

OK I am going into history back.
 
The Fox.  A teleporting thief.  He's basically Danny Ocean (Ocean's Eleven) with super powers.  He'll form a crew to rob something, but usually try to be non violent.  
 
Also Thunder and Lightning.  A husband-wife duo who were caught, outed, forced to serve as law enforcement, and now that they have done their time, find a normal life impossible.  They commit crimes just to maintain a middle class life style.  Basically Blue collar criminals.
 
Finally I am going to go out on a limb and say Firewing.  Yeah he wants a good fight.  Yeah he'll throw down just to prove himself tougher.  But on the whole he's not a conqueror, and can even be persuaded to fight on your side IF you can appeal to his sense of honour!

The Submariner would be similar to Magneto, in that it depends on the presentation. Sometimes a hero and sometimes a villain. I vaguely recall his more antisocial episodes had some kind of biological explanation for them offered up in a past storyline.
 
I was really focused on the types of “villains” like Lady Blue and Foxbat, who are on that side of the fence but don’t really do anything all that bad.

The Champions Universe has quite a few of them: the whole teams of the Cirque Sinister and GRAB (in it for the money, try not to hurt anyone); likewise Arachne, Cateran, Cybermind, Lady Blue (who actually does the Robin Hood thing), Lash, Lodestone, Signal Ghost, Vixen; zany goofs like Bulldozer, Foxbat, El Salto, or Zigzag. (You'll find the first two in Champions Villains Vol. Two, and the rest in Vol. 3.)

For some reason, I'm fascinated by the inland Sea of Mhorec, from Hero Games' Turakian Age setting. It's a freshwater "lake" which by my calculations is at least half the surface area of the Mediterranean Sea, somewhere in size between Hudson Bay in northern Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico. The idea of a freshwater lake as big as a major sea is just compelling to me.
 
That prompted me to research the largest lakes in real-world history, with the record going to the Paratethys Sea, which formed about 12 million years ago. Covering much of what's now Europe and the Near East, this mega-lake was a little larger than the Mediterranean. It was generally shallow, although with much deeper basins within it; but it still held ten times the fresh water of all today's lakes combined. It also supported a thriving ecosystem with unique species of life.
 
Here's a map of the Paratethys, with an outline of the region's modern geography superimposed:
 

 
This shows that there's ample precedent for a more diverse and distinctive hydrology in a fantasy world than most of us tend to think of. And it proves you don't need some cataclysmic global geologic upheaval to produce drowned or desertified kingdoms, or unusual sea creatures. Merely enough of a change in climate to raise or lower water levels, or a shift in local geography, for a sea to be cut off from direct access to the world ocean, as with the Paratethys.

So many strongly held opinions about magic!  Although that is pretty normal--in the fantasy fiction discussion groups I frequent, "hard" vs. "soft" magic systems are always a topic of lively discussion. Naturally that would carry over to RPGs.
 
My preferences tend to come down on the "soft" side of the spectrum, i.e. mysterious and poorly understood.  I find that more well defined systems, in fiction, are uninteresting--being fully understandable, they become esoteric.  In some cases this also leads to some strange inconsistencies with the setting.
 
As others have mentioned, mysterious-and-poorly-understood magic is tough to do in any RPG that attempts to be balanced.  Hero manages to at least sort of address the subject with skill rolls, Side Effects, and other disadvantages.  Other systems, like Ars Magica, address it by leaving a certain amount of wiggle room in the effect.  Or in the more lightweight systems, almost not having a system at all.
 
What really sets Hero apart is that its flexibility allows it to cover multiple magic systems.  You can have the wizards of the Fire College go up against the Wild Pool Magicians with the assistance of the Vancian Amnesiacs.  After four decades of fantasy gaming I have yet to see any other system that can really do this.  Usually the best they can do is have you pick spells from a different list.  But the point is that Hero can really do both hard and soft magic, and I'm frankly astonished that no other game system has really tried.
 
Clerical magic is a whole other ballgame, as it directly involves the theology of the setting.  It's hard to be an atheist when priests are slinging flame strikes and blade barriers.  At that point, religion becomes less a matter of faith and more one of devotion and adherence.  It's a weird side effect of D&D video game magic, and to me it smacks of football teams granting magic powers to its craziest fans.  I have toyed with the idea of requiring clerical spells (prayers?) to be bought with Invisible Power Effects, just to make it a teeny bit less obvious to onlookers that The Gods Walk Among Them.  That only works for certain effects, but it does maintain a lot of the mystery.  Arcane magic might benefit from the same.

I've been watching the entire X-Men movie franchise in like 2 weeks, and it really made me think about this... in the movies, there are no other supers, just mutants.  In the comics, the "mutant panic" didn't feel so real because there were so many other supers... "Cap'n America and the Avengers and that sorcerer dude are the good guys, but them damn muties, they need to be locked up!"  It's a lot more believable when it's just "damn muties" and _none_ of them are considered heroes until the shift in Dark Phoenix.
 
So I really think this kind of focus can mean a lot if you want to explore something like "mutant panic" without diluting it.  Or like my cyborg game, CHROME... the whole focus was megacorps and misuse of technology and using people as tools.  (Because the cyborgs are all "owned" by somebody.)  I was reading some commentary on the Gestalt universe, and how Bennie diluted the concept by giving players so many options to have powers without being a gestalt.  And this is one of the dangers of such a narrow focus... you really need all your players on-board with the concept.  Because either you're pushing them into a concept they didn't really want to play, or you're diluting the world concept by letting players create exceptions.  And I've learned when you let players create exceptions, over half your players will want to be an exception, because so many players are looking to be "more special" than the other special people.  (I once had 5 players agree, with no objections, to all play wood elves from the same village with no contact with the outside world... exactly 1 player gave me what I asked for.  I got an outcast who was not allowed to interact with the village, one raised by humans not knowing they were an elf, one who had left the village to apprentice to a human fighter, and a human who wanted to be an elf.  They were all interesting concepts, but they broke the fundamental nature of what the campaign was supposed to be about.)

Its not enormously grandiose but one of my favorite scenarios Hero published was in the 4th edition Viper book, and it goes like this.
 
A celebrity who has a chain of restaurants* opens one in The City.  Viper comes over with a powerful flying ship and uses gravity control to rip the entire building, including all the dignitaries and celebrities inside, and hang it in the air.  Then VIPER demands all of them pay a ransom or they will drop the building.  Obviously destroying or damaging the ship will cause the same result.
 
*They clearly meant Planet Hollywood and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but had to file the serial numbers off, but I used them in my campaign.
 
It was a good time for all, including a Hero who was inside the restaurant with his family.
 
This is the kind of Champions adventure I love.  Does it make sense?  Kinda?  Is there any real chance that VIPER could get away with it?  Nah.  But its fun and exciting and requires more careful thought than "punch the bad guy" with real dramatic challenge but not too depressing or deep.  This is the kind of VIPER I like, not terrorists, not super serious spy masterminds, but comic book bad guys who do comic book crimes.

The last truly grandiose plan I dreamed up was a riff on the follow up to Age of Ultron. There's a giant vibranium spike sitting under that lake in Sokovia, along with the wreckage of several antigravity engines.
 
My villain wanted to collude with the Sokovian government and repair enough to make a floating orbital platform the size of a large stadium and from there begin an elevator, orbital ring and asteroid mining. Naturally, world governments would not agree but once launched it would have missile defense arrays and kinetic bombardment capability and it's own team of supers on hand.
 
A very grandiose Thunderbolts plot and for the kicker the villain offers to allow all heroes to join him and share in the leadership of the platform. He really does want to lead mankind to a brighter future but feels we needs a strong guiding hand to steer us there. He'd even be willing to step down for a Superman or captain America type to take over if that would build trust.

One use I could foresee would be as sleeper agents. If they have programmed directives beyond hiding their true nature, reproducing and infecting more humans, quite a bit of intrigue could be built up.

The only magic systems that I’ve ever seen approach this would be Ars Magica and Mage: The Ascension.

Don't know if this is grandoise but Foxbat had a list of things he was going to get, for his collection of course. Two of the unusual items were: a heroes costume (or part of it), and the mayors Toupee'. He managed to get a glove and the mayors toupee. Surprisingly, the battle turned into a keep-away game with the toupee bouncing from hand to hand. He almost got away with the heroes glove but a superspeedster nabbed it at the last moment. Poor Foxbat.

The "most grandiose crime" scenario I ever personally ran was back in my 4E Champions GM days. My group's penultimate encounter with Dr. Destroyer was over his attempt to blackmail the world with a universe-breaching weapon which could cast entire cities into alternate universes. Initially sneaking into, then fighting their way into DD's base, the PCs managed to reverse the weapon and bring back Cleveland, Ohio, before Destroyer arrived. DD had regained control of it and was kicking their butts, when one of the heroes shoved her whole belt of grenades through a rent that had been torn in one of the weapon's control panels. The resultant blast caused the weapon to dimensionally implode, and Destroyer appeared to be obliterated with it; but none of the players believed that.
 
About a year later (game-time), the PCs were contacted by the Bogeyman, the nightmare-creating monster from the Dreamzone, whom they'd previously fought. (See Champions in 3-D.) This time the Bogeyman had come to beg their help. It turned out Destroyer had been cast into the Dreamzone, enslaved its native Dreamshadows, and built them into an army per his twisted imagination. He was now on the verge of opening a portal for his army to enter the waking world.
 
The heroes had to trek across the Dreamzone, which DD had reshaped into a literal totalitarian nightmare, to confront him and his assembled army. Since awake beings physically in the Dreamzone have power to shape it to their will, the PCs focused their combined wills on taking control of the Doctor's portal device, using it to trap him in a pocket-Dreamzone in which he believed he'd succeeded in conquering the world.

Less, in fact.  Software engineers would be like wizards isolated in their towers, conducting bizarre rituals and never interacting with the real world.  Whereas cloud engineers would be hedge wizards, knowing a hodgepodge of random spells that actually get things done.

Seeing this make the rounds on FB...

An update on Strike Force Organizations. I have emailed Jason and we are in discussion. I have asked him about either including Cult of the Beast, Carousel (et al), Wanderers, and Yooso, or creating a second book. I have been given the OK to create a stand-alone Aaron Allston's Martial Arts Styles as a Surbrook Press PDF product.

One way to spice up solo play is to run a monster vs. monster combat. In my campaign, rocs and griffons are natural enemies, so when they meet they fight to the death. I just ran a such a battle. The roc was winning for most of the fight, but the griffon got in a few good hits afterwards, and won initiative in the last round. I allowed the roc a dying blow, and the griffon survived with 2 hit points remaining.

And what a slog it was to grind two or three dungeons to earn enough coin to raise a dead companion, after dragging him halfway across the know lands...
 
Uphill....
 
In the snow....
 
 
 
So you generally looted his corpse while he rolled up a new guy.
 
And Iron Array.
 
And no Feats every time you gained a handful of EPs
 
 
And starting out at level 1.
 
Or zero.
 
 

Yes, old school D&D, where characters' lives were nasty, brutish, and short. 
 
The way it should be. 

Had a villain once that had the ability to completely alter reality. He decided that the world was too bad a place and decided to transfer everything into cartoons. He managed to turn most of the city into cartoons including half the characters. Players actually enjoyed it as it was a rather serious and dangerous campaign, but when turned into a cartoon you couldn't die or kill anyone.

The 4th Edition Champions Adventure Day Of The Destroyer had a particularly grandiose--and horrifying scheme in which Doctor Destroyer announced that he would kill nine out of every ten people, stating that with the population much reduced, there would be less damage to the ecosystem and more resources available for the survivors.  Not unlike the first Kingsmen movie, in which Samuel Jackson's tech genius character wanted to use a mass mind control system to make everyone in the world beat each other to death, thus saving the planet from humanity, and the James Bond movie Moonraker, in which Hugo Drax would wipe out all humanity with some sort of biological agent, enabling him to repopulate Earth with his own race of genetically superior beings.
 
I've always figured that a mass human extinction scheme would bring much more harm to the ecosystem than help.  First, you have all those billions of corpses and no way to completely dispose of them--and as they decay they become incubators for disease organisms, which would spread unchecked through the surviving humans.  Second, there would be an explosion in the vermin population as all the rats, mice, insects and scavenger beasts would suddenly have an overabundant food supply--and as they fed, they would breed all out of proportion of their predators' abilities to keep them in check.  And once the supply of dead bodies is consumed, those vermin would then turn to the living to survive--and that includes surviving humans.
 
Hope that helps

From the February 2024 issue of Scientific American: The world uses enormous quantities of sand, construction to silicon chips. This makes illegal sand mining one of the biggest rackets in the world, far exceeding other forms of illegal mining. Since this is Scientific American, much of the concern is about the resulting environmental damage -- but the big money in sand mining can corrupt governments at every level and fund other unsavory activities. Googling "sand mafia" turns up many other articles for further research.
 
Illegal sand mining might be difficult to work into the usual urban vigilante Dark Champions game, but you might fit it into an international espionage game. Imagine a James Bond-style mastermind who uses sand mining to fund his terrorist scheme, coup plot or diabolical weapon. The death trap for captured agents should be obvious.
 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sand-mafias-are-plundering-the-earth/
 
Dean Shomshak

Okay, so here is the latest Strike Force Organizations update.
 
It's done.
 
Okay, maybe not totally done, but ALR, Blood, and Circle are done. Total count is 72,982 words. I have taken the contents of the two Org books, added in what I could from Aaron's digital files, updated everything to 6e, and added new content and characters. I have sent an email to Jason outlining what i have done and what we may want to do next.
 
I have asked about adding the Cult of the Beast, Carousel/the Reapers, and the Wanderers. I have also mentioned the Wanderers as a stand-alone product. I have also asked about releasing Aaron's suite of martial arts styles as a Surbrook Press PDF-only product.