churd

Re: Mystic Champions is Coming

Re: M&M: this is a Nightmare? I picked up M&M about a month ago. Over the years I think I have owned just about every super RPG put out - from V&V back in the day to the recent SAS. I have never seen any game I even considered playable, let alone a viable alternative to Champions. I have to say though, looking over the rules I think M&M looks really good. Having said that, I am not sure how much of a direct substitute it is for Hero. Champions is much more detailed and flexible, but it can also be cumbersome and clunky. M&M is much more simplified, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Personally I find it somewhat tiresome that EVERY Hero character now has a Multipower AND an EC AND about a half dozen martial manuvers. The sample character write-ups in M&M take up only half a page - the last time a Hero character was less than a page long was 3rd edition. Still, I see most Hero players using M&M in addtion to, not as a substitute for, Champions. Although they are both superhero genre games their approach to the rules is dramatically different, and I think M&M will draw more from the general d20 audience than from Champions players.

Re: What superhero character concepts are you tired of seeing? Personally I sick of characters who are motivated to fight crime because their [parent/ spouse/ dog / uncle ben] was killed by criminals. Doesn't anyone want to use their powers for good just because it is the right thing to do anymore? Think about it. Did millions of Americans put thier lives at risk in WWII becuase Nazis had killed their parents? Yet many players seem to think they need to give their character some over the top motivation in order for their actions to be 'realistic.'

I think that is Sugoshin (sp??) who appears in Champions Universe.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE avoid the hordes of brother agents with the standard issue 'blaster wands' and 'protective amulets.' DEMON has always been distinguished from Viper and other generic agencies by their use of magic instead of technology, but what makes magic distinctive is that it is NOT uniform, mass produced product like tecnology is. When you take this aspect away from magic, it loses its flavor and seems just like tech. Agents with a 10dd EB and 6/6 armor feel very much alike, wether you call it a blaster or a rod of hellfire. In the past DEMON has emphasised the individuality of the Morbanes, and I think this needs to extend to the cannon fodder level characters as well, since they are the ones players interact with the most. In my campaign the grunts that a Morbane uses are indivdually tailored: An transmuter might devolve his followers into super-strong beastmen, a necromancer has zombie hordes, an demonologist uses packs of hell hounds, an enchanter has golems and magical constructs, etc. One agent tends to be very much like another no matter how much a GM tries to give them their own flavor - but throw some mystic gargoyles at your players and they WILL stand out.