Hopscotch

Re: Name for a fictional city Just because it is Cape have does not mean that it needs to be costal. Cape Gerardeau is in Missouri after all. I know that I am biased, but the Mississippi Delta in western Mississippi is an economic disaster. It would be easy to get property there and many people would generally flock to a new development. Tunica County blew up when the casinos moved in, and it was once the poorest county in the nation. Yeah, I know, I have a lot to be proud of... But at least we have moved to 49th in infant mortality!!! But at least we are inthe birthplace of the Blues. Hopscotch

Re: "Super" Cities- How many is too many? My campaign has no "Super Cities." we do have several fictional cities, that, like Otaku's world, are located in place of real world cities. If it is a campain city, it is made up. Our main city is New Aukland, Va. located in place of Norfolk. It was origionally called Norfolk, but the name was changed in the 1850's. New Aukland also has a sister city accros the James river named Wellington. Wellington replaces Newport News. New Aukland has a feel very much like that of Starman's Opal City. We ran a Dark Champions game in Langley, OH. replacing Cleveland. In addition we played a short time in our New Orleans replacement, Crescent City, LA. Our parties have had dealings with some real world places such as Los Angeles, Aimes, IA., Juno, AK., Chicago, and Huntsville, AL. Hopscotch

Re: Have you ever noticed? We can make up whatever in-story reasons we want, but the real reason that characters get powerful when they go bad is that it make for a better story. The newly bad person HAS to be powerful enough to take on everyone or there will be now challenge in taking them down. Villians in stories need to be more powerful so that we feel a grater sense of triumph when the heroes succeed. For much the same reason, the newly reformed loose power because they now need to be the ones overcoming the odds. Hopscotch

Re: Need some name suggestions please How about The Black Hand I dunno, I just like the sound of it.

Re: Goofy hero names that you still love I always thought that my character name, Hopscotch was a little girly for an ex football lineman, but I like it anyway. It fits what he does. Hopscotch

Re: Learning from mistakes Someting very much like your situation happened to me a couple of years ago. My campaign has been going on for about 15 years, so none of the origional members of the team live in the same state anymore. We all got together at DragonCon in '02 and decided to have a big blowout Champions game that would tie up a loose thread that dated back to the first days of the game. We combuned the origional members of the team with the current members of the team, plus a couple that had been members along the way. We had, I think, ten players, some of whom had never played together before. During the climactic battle with the "Big Bad," two of the players, who had never played together before, combined their powers in such a way as to make short work of the opponent. I was VERY anticlimactic. We discussed it later and decided that the GM (I was not GMing this one, though I helped design the session and was "Playing Dumb") sould have kept the villian standing for annother round or so as to let everyone "get a lick in." No one would have been the wiser and everyone would have felt much better about the whole thing. As with you, we have decided that it was a live and learn type of moment, and something that I will never let happen again. Hopscotch

Re: Character Transformations Yeah, I have had this happen twice in my fifteen years of GMing. The first was a PC names Skitzo. He was a multiformer built on fourth ed rules. He had four forms: His base who was a telekenetic, Maniac-a hoverboarding martial artist, Bruiser-a fancy tea swilling brick, and Prodigy-a ten year old gadgeteer. The Idea was that he was a latent mentalist who was also a sci-fi writer. After a car accident caused brain damage, some of his creations could manifest by taking over his body. All four personalities had a time share as it were. After a while, the player decided that he did not like being a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none type and wanted to settle on one character who was a powerful as the rest of the party. So he transformed, for good, into Guage, a super gun weilding super agent type. He liked that much better. The other was a water-based PC named Wavefront. We had taken a couple of years off of playing Champions and when I wanted to get restarted the player sayed that he wanted to try something new. We came up with a pretty cool story about him getting captured by our main evil organization called CHESS and being stripped of his powers. After a year or two, and a series of unfortunate events he managed to steal an experimental "Stealth Suit" from annother evil organization. He became Glide, the invisible shootey guy. To be honest, I don't really like this sort of thing, but I do want to keep my players happy. Thus, I would most likely let it happen again if someone wanted. Hopscotch

Re: Help with team name ok just to empty out this thread... I too the suggestion of letting the press start calling them different names. Knightwatch, Aegis, The New Angels, and some that you guys had suggested. This spurred them into taking some action on picking their own name. They pretty quickly settled on Southern Star. Not what I would have picked, but kinda nice. Tonight was a wierd session, but lotsa fun. sometimes a party takes a completely different direction from what you expect... Hopscotch

Re: Help with team name Yeah, my group really liked Checkmate...Utill I told them that it had been taken by a DC Government agency. Hopscotch

Re: Help with team name Ok, some more information as requested. Three of the party members are in college. 22, 21, and 21, I believe. the other is 17, and obviously still in high school. They got together for a couple of reasons. Sigma and Chinook are recently married both in the game and in real life. (A month ago yeasterday) Obviously, they have a reason to work together. They all have had run-ins with my big, bad, Viper-like group called CHESS. They agreed to band together because they had come out on the loosing end of all of their early encounters with the group. In addition, an NPC (My old character-Hopscotch) organized them together in the first place, after having watched them work as individuals. He provides them with a base and advice just as annother older hero did for my origional group fifteen years ago. Their main goal right now seems to be to make New Aukland a better place for everyone and to find out what CHESS is up too. They are also looking to help the cause of the local homeless population after an encounter with a group of homeless supers called the Outcasts, with whom they have established friendly relations. Also personality wise: Sigma is a Physicist who also loves asian history and is a practicing Taoist. He is more concerned with right and wrong than the Law, and han no trouple bucking the system when he thinks it better. Sigma's powers come from a lab accident while working on dimensional transportation device. As a result, he can fold the mass of his higher dimensional selves into his third dimensional body. Sigma is the math symbol for summation, so he thought the name appropriate. At first, this player was not big on the idea of taking a Code vs. Killing, but after almost killing two CHESS agents, has vowed never to take a life. Chinook was visiting family in Washington State, and they decided to go to a local Native American tribal demonstration that is usually aimed a tourists. The tribal performers demonstrated an ancient wind ritual that was supposed to summon the air spirits and ask for their aid in the comming growing season. A spirit did indeed come, and for some reason was bonded to the player's body. The wind spirit allows her to turn her body into air and command the air around her. The Spirit also talks to her from insider her own head, which can be very distracting at times. Headgame is a mutant who can control the pain a pleasure centers in humans. He can disable his opponents by wracking them with pain from nowhere or let his allies literally feel no pain. He managed to take out a stray CHESS agent early on and steal his armor, and jump boots, which he has painted and modified for his own use. He is the Mechanical tinkerer of the group. Nightspike is a teenager who, while attending a gaming convention found a very nice trenchcoat in the lost-and-found box at the convention hotel. He decided to take the coat and quickly found that it was not like any other garment that he had ever seen. He discovered that he could summon forth a cloud of darkness from the inside of the coat. He could also reach in and produce semi-phisical weapons made of "Shadowstuff." Right now he can produce shadow knives that do not cut physically, but cause tremendous pain, and shadow chains that can bind people for a time. Nightspike also has the ability to teleport by folding himself into the shadow dimension and coming back out somewhere else. He also found, the hard way, that if the coat is not being worn and is left in the dark, sometimes large demons made of shadowstuff come out and kill anyone they find. He is now VERY careful about what he does with the coat. That is a little more detail on the party. One of the main reasons that they are having trouble with a name is that they seem to hate old school group names. Aegis was the most promissing contender, but ended up not being accepted. Hopscotch

Re: Truely Alien Races The Uplift books by David Brin are great about this kind of thing. Yeah, they have a few near human races, but plenty that are nothing like us Earthlings. The G'Kek (sp?) are a race of thee foot tall WHEELED slugs. That's right, wheels. The Jophur are eight foot tall gelatinus masses that communicate by smell. And The Tandu are the classic insectoid race. They are a great read if you have not read them already. Hopscotch

Re: Help with team name The Campaign is located in New Aukland Virginia, which is located where Norfolk should be. Don't ask me about the name. It sounded good when we were eighteen, but we have had to come up with a VERY convoluted story as to why it was called New Aukland. Thanks for all of the ideas that we have already. I have decided to let the local press name the team. You know some hotshot reporter throw out a name and have it stick. Any Ideas along those lines? Thanks Hopscotch

Hi Guys, I have a new party playing in a well established world and city. All of the players are new to Champions. The party is having a great deal of trouble naming their group, and I would like help. A little background: We use in this game (and all of the games set in this universe) a convention that is a holdover from my old V+V days in Junior High. The players play themselves, just with super powers added. The main superhero team in the campaign city has almost always been called Avatar. There were three distinct teams that took this name over a period of eighty years. (In fact the new team's base is in Avatar II's refitted digs.) The group would very much not like to use Avatar as their name in order to assert their own identity. The Four members of the group are: Sigma- A density increasing brick Chinook- An air-based heroine posessed of a Native American wind spirit, also married to Sigma. Headgame- Mentalist who can directly control the pain an pleasure centers in people's brains. Nightspike (yeah, I know)- 17 year old who can pull 'Darkmatter' out of his coat. Can create darkness fields and teleport. We might also be getting a fifth member named Cobalt who is, more-or-less, a Green Lantern clone who needs no ring. Anyway, I would love any ideas you good folks might have. Hopscotch

Re: 'Empire': a cliché? I think that you should stick with "Trust." I like the idea that that particular word might take on slightly totalitarian overtones. I understand that the central government that you have developed is not totalitarian, per se, but I think "The Trust" works very well. Joe

Re: Need help with some goofy villians Vendor: The Ice Cream Man. Can turn anything to ice cream, but can't control the flavor. Butt-Head and Heinous Anus--Duo that head-butts you and then gasses you