MCMaenza

My game world has its roots in stories I wrote to pass the time in study hall in junior high school (1976-1979). Those tales drew inspiration from the DC and Marvel comics I was reading at the time. The world further evolved when I started to pick up first and second edition Champions product. I picked my fav characters and concepts to incorporate into my world.

The "why" for me is a couple things: - I am long time friends with Ron (thanks to the Champions APA the Clobberin' Times) and Steve (we gamed together many times in the 90's). I support my buds. - I played mostly with 4th edition but have very fond memories of the earlier ones (much of my world was built on the early rules from 1 to 3). I did not go to Fuzion or 5th edition as at that time I moved away from RPGs. - I am startzing to get back in to RPGs again as I want to promote them via programming as I finish my librarian master's degree. I think teens (and adults) could really benefit from these kinds of games.

At the $15 pledge (or more) you do get those classic PDFs plus the new Now PDF too. That seems like a very reasonable price just for the original stuff. If your physical books are as worn from use as mine are, having the PDFs is a great thing. Consider pledging $15 just to get those.

Re: SO much new art at the Forte site! Mike, I just have to break into a course of "it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small world after all, it's a small small world..."

Re: W W Y G M D ?? What a great topic. Like other GMs, I would go a similar route - let it happen and game out the results. The key as the GM is to make sure you maintain the control so things don't totally get out of hand.

Re: Mystery Men write-ups? Love this film! My buddies (all old school Champions players) and I first saw it in the theatres during a San Diego Comic-Con weekend. We were cracking up the back row as we all got the in-jokes. Talked about that night doing a Con game along those lines. My character was going to be called Trivial Pursuit - whose power was to bring up oscure facts all the time (hopefully one would be deemed useful in a crisis situation).

Re: The Marvel Handbook online I unearthed my copy of these a few months ago when we unpacked at our new house. I realized I was missing about five of the total run (most towards the end). Still, they were cool for artist references at the time. You can bet bottom dollar though that Marvel won't make Essential volumes of this series.

Re: Supervillain Psych Lims: The Reboot I just want to chime in saying this is a great discussion. When I'm writing or GMing, I like to get inside my villains' heads as much as possible to really flesh them out. So, good Psych. Lims can go a long way to setting up some fun personalities.

Re: Was watching Superman TAS and wondered about Mxyzptlk I wrote a piece of DC fanfiction a few years back where I had Bat-Mite mess around with the Flash for a change of pace. I was pleased with Mxy's appearances in the comics and the cartoon. It was just a nice way to have Superman think his way out of situations where his powers alone couldn't do it. A good contrast to, say, a knock-down drag-out fist fight with Metallo.

Re: Sick of Wolverine I grew tired of him by around the mid-80's myself. Too much exposure. I even had to put a mandatory "no Wolverine-types" for campaigns I was GMing. The hack-n-slash characters work fine for AD&D games but not true four-color Champions campaigns of which my world was noted for having.

Re: movies/t.v. vs comic books I treat TV and movie versions of the comic books with a huge grain of salt. I have accepted (as far back as the Batman show of the 60's) that Hollywood will tweak and poke and change whatever they feel to make the piece "work" for the audiences at the time. And I'm okay with that. I don't go into these things with my comic book nitpickers hat on. I treat each of them as their own separate entity. Kind of like a parallel world version of the property. Some things will be the same - sure - they're canon. Some things might be altered. That's okay too. Grain of salt. mmmmm....salt...glaaaarghghgh....

Re: Help needed: character who causes intoxication Gang, lots of great suggestions - to add to variability and effect. I'm definitely leaning towards stuff that could affect combat - so the stuff about DCV/DEX/perceptions are definitely in there. I like some of the other things too. I am considering something along the lines of a multipower with a bit of a random factor thrown in too - ie. different effects of intoxication. That makes it a bit more fun to play, a bit more variable in how it would effect certain characters, etc.

Re: Silver Age Villains? I'd add to it that one of the elements of Silver Age villains that I love is the hokey dialogue. You know what I mean. Examples: Captain Cold saying "this'll put you on ice!" or "Chill out." Or how Egghead on the old Batman TV show from the 60's would say "eggs-terminate", "eggs-actly" or "eggs-hausting", etc.

Re: Golden Age Champions Steve, man, I totally forgot about the Flying Ninja. Or, as we affectionately referred to him as "the Frying Ninja" (damn those L's). With our latest move to Hickory, NC, I finally got a place to unpack all my boxes of gaming stuff. I ran across my old APA's where I did updates about Lizard's campaign. I need to pull those out some night and have a read. Ah, those were some interesting times...

Re: Help needed: character who causes intoxication Nice ideas, guys. Keep them coming! Oh, and Bloodstone, I'm not reading "the Freshman". I actually had this character idea in my gameworld (via some fiction I started back in the early 90's) for quite awhile - just might be doing a revised write up and wanted some hardcore gamer opinions.

Re: Golden Age Champions I'm a big fan of this original supplement too. Even played in a Golden Age campaign along side Steve Long in the 90's (ah, Lizard's gameworld...). For awhile, I was working on some characters with some other folks for a GAC update. I don't think that project ever came to completion. I'm curious about this new GAC book too.

Hey, gang. I'd like to ask for a little help. I've got a character in my gameworld whose power is to cause the feeling of intoxication in others. Now, my thinking is his power would be something along the lines of a combo Drain - on DEX and INT (since people tend to get uncoordinated and a little stupid when they're drunk). What do you think? Is there a better way to go? All suggestions greatly appreciated.

Re: George Perez & Champions Ah, yes, remember them well! Loved that Perez did a number of covers across the 4th Edition. I'm proud to have those in my collection.

Re: What happened to the Champions? Okay, I'm showing my age. First thing I thought of when I saw the subject line in the topics list was: Flare has been showing up in her own comic relaunch for the past few years, along with Marksman, Giant, Icestar and a renamed Rose. I guess to me the 1st/2nd edition Champions will always be the first Champions I think of - not the 4th edition guys. Then again, didn't Marvel's team featuring Iceman, Hercules, Ghost Rider, Angel and Black Widow come first?

Re: DC Suckverse? I'm a hardcore DC fan from as far back as the mid-70's when I first graduated up to super-hero titles around the age of 8 or so. I had no problem with multiple-Earths concept. DC used the first Crisis to clean house and get folks excited about their books again. It worked! But in the past 20 years, things have stagnated and started to sour again. Characters were killed off only to be returned again when their predecessors failed to spark the same interest. Now, with Infinite Crisis, it's time to shake things up for a whole new generation. I'm okay with that - now entering my 4th decade as a comic collector.

Re: Reality TV For Superheroes I too recommend the "WildGuard" series. The first mini was very much a reality TV show based thing - and the continuing series has a "Real World" feel to it in parts as well. I think the idea of "Who Wants To Be A SideKick?" could work out as a lot of fun. Not very good for a group game though unless the players are competing to be the sidekick. Not sure how "Survivor" would map well into a good game setting. Most of the fun of that show is the internal double-dealings, back-stabbing, broken promises or half-truths - and any good super-hero worth his salt doesn't do that kind of stuff.

Re: Running an Epic Battle Aren't most Hero System battles long, drawn out events? Sorry, couldn't resist. When I'm doing something with a lot of combatants for me to run as a GM, I tend to pre-roll a lot of dice tables (randomly generated and printed on a sheet works). That way I can breeze through what I need to for the grunts and then have more time to focus on the other aspects (the players, the major villains, the mood, narrative, etc.).

Re: Comic Geek in need of help I haven't heard of a prior "ShadowPact" either. I bet the new ongoing series will eventually reveal who was in this former group.

Re: Ben 10 My ten year old son and I watched it this morning. It had a kind of "Dial H For Hero" feel to it to me. Still, a fun show.

Re: Essential OHOTMU: worth it or not? I bought the 15 volumes of the official handbook (which came out in Essential format last week) and the deluxe format run (which begins its Essentialization with one of three volumes in March - I think those will be spaced out through out 2006 though vol 2 and 3 aren't on the schedule yet) back when they first came out. I still have them. That being said, I was happy to plunk down the money for the Essential handbook last week because a) it is all in one volume, I don't have to dig through my comics for a quick reference, and c) it does do some good power analysis. This first volume is kind of slim on "history" of characters. It gives a brief origin. The Deluxe Handbook, I believe, did a bit more in the history area. Relating it to Champions, when I first was making Champs characters back in the early 80's, I often used my Official Handbook to borrow some pose pictures for my character sheets.