Jhamin

2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

You can scroll up to see all the poses.  I did quite a mix of different ones.  My goal was less to fix them in specific poses, than to have two versions of each: one action pose and one very clear pose showing their costume.

Also, its not exactly unknown for women to want to look pretty and enticing.

You did indeed have a mix of poses, I'm saying *this* one is maybe more of a pinup than we might want for a PC heroine.

If the character is supposed to be acting enticing, cool.  If the character is supposed to be awesome and kickass.. then this doesn't work.  The art sets the tone for who you want the audience to be, especially in a product aimed at new players.  My group of Hero players is mostly women and good god don't get them started on how shitty the representation is in 75% of all RPG books.  I believe that if you have women leading with their chests as sample player characters you are communicating that you are more interested in teenage boys than women of any age as new players.

It's your product, you should art direct the way you want to art direct, but it matters.

16 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

OK Did some coloring, here's a couple of examples of what I came up with so far.

 

Dr Nope (male)

Apex (female)

 

I am not in any particular hurry to finish the art off, still waiting on one playtester and hoping against all reason and hope someone else might want to playtest this.

The poses might be an issue.  Dr. Nope is doing a generic "tough guy" heroic pose and Apex is doing a "cheesecake/pinup" pose.  If her character is all about being a model or similar (like Sapphire is a pop singer) then it might fly, but if you are actually going to try to get a teenage girl to play the game based on this art... it might be offputting.

Think of it this way, in order to qualify for the Focus limit, someone has to be able to take the foci from you.  If someone took the character you are statting out, stripped them naked & put them in an empty room then they don't have weapons of opportunity.  Every part of the multipower with that limit stops working.  If you took the limit on the reserve, then the reserve stops working and it can't power the slot.  So the whole thing stops working even if the slot you want to "turn on" didn't have the limit.  Which is why it's illegal to do it this way.

If you only want the limit on 2 of the 3 slots, you can't take it on the reserve.

Alternately, you can buy the HA separately (outside the multipower).  It costs more points, but if you want it to work differently than the reserve, you need to buy it that way.

Ok, all the limits on a multipower reserve apply to all the slots.  You aren't supposed to have limit: it's a cane and advantage: not a cane at the same time.

What are you trying to accomplish?

I also say #2.

Although it sounds like there is some general disdain for anything less intimidating, I think thats the way to go for new players.

1 hour ago, Greywind said:

The problem being the big companies have so much invested in Bruce Wayne/Batman, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Peter Parker/Spider-Man, etc. for marketing and royalties, that they won't take the chance on a living world, where Bruce Wayne dies, Grayson steps up or passes on the mantle of the Bat, and so on, where there are actual Legacy characters.

I think it's a question of audience.  Comic fans are really into continuity and progress, until something happens they don't like then they like to pretend it never happened.
On the other hand, it takes decades and appearances in multiple media to really cement a character in the public imagination.  If Grayson had been Batman for 20 years (and lets be real, even that is a stretch.  Bruce has been Bats since 1939), and about to hand it off to Damien Wayne (or someone) in the comics, that is just confusing for most people who aren't up on comics and there is pressure to revert to form for the big movie.  It's why most character reset to their "classic" configuration when a big movie comes out.  They would rather irritate comic fans than confuse people who start picking up comics because they like the movie/show.

Even comic fans tend to demand a return to form.  It really looked like Wally West was really going to be the Flash forever, but nope, it took 23 years but Barry Allen returned as the "real" Flash.

It's the same reason the Champions Universe is filled with characters right out of the 80s in 2021 (and people still miss Terror Inc 20 years later).  Once the fans develop some attachment to a character, they are eternal.

16 hours ago, foolishvictor said:

I never really understood why Scorpion needs to hit someone after spearing them in the neck and yanking them forward. 

Yeah, the part where the spear in the neck isn't that bad compared to whatever he does next does seem a little weird.

2 hours ago, steriaca said:

Leroy had to rush between various parking meters to plug nickles in them cause it takes up multiple parking spaces. 

 

Also...WTF Freddy? Your a supervillain and your afraid of getting a parking ticket?

There are levels of villainy.  Just because you can live with initiating a global catastrophe doesn't mean you want to deal with traffic court.  To quote the great Doctor Drakken & Shego:
 

Shego: (reading the label of Drakken's mind-control shampoo) "Lather, Rinse, Obey." Aren't you being a little too upfront here?

Dr. Drakken: Truth in labeling laws, Shego. I'm a supervillain, not a corporate shyster.

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Oooh... that's a thought that never occurred to me. Imagine the perspective of someone romanticizing the era when Europe collectively ruled most of the world, bringing "peace" and "civilization" to the "barbarian" masses. Looking at the chaos in the world today and becoming convinced that such strong ruling hands are needed again, but this time working together under a single guiding star.

 

Perhaps that might be a change in perspective to make Fiacho and Eurostar relevant again? Uniting Europe may be passe, but uniting Europe into a force that can compel order over the whole globe?...

Wow, going back to colonialism, but from a united Europe instead of competing empires?  That is exactly the kind of comic book supervillainy I'm looking for from Eurostar.
Keep Fiacho (or replace with his daughter, I like Hermit's idea), and shift the rest of the team to not just be thugs from various places in Europe to instead be representatives of the past Empires.  English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, etc

On 4/25/2021 at 9:19 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

He could easily have built an AI suit and put his brain waves in it or some nonsense, just do voiceovers.  You know, now that they've decided Tony Stark is Reed Richards cubed or something

This is the exact origin of MainFrame from an alternate Universe Avengers that was published for a while in the 90s.  MainFrame was basically a Black and Gold Iron Man who was full robot with Stark's memories instead of power armor.  Part of his shtick was that he had dozens of spare robot bodies stored somewhere and would just keep showing up like nothing had happened when bad guys kept ripping his head off.

IIRC, they called themselves AvengersNext, and included a flannel wearing "son of Juggernaut", Younger/Hipper Thor AKA Thunderstrike, and Wolverine's Son.
They lived in the same universe as, and teamed up with the May Parker Spiderwoman a few times.

2 hours ago, pawsplay said:

So now I'm imagining him targeting Brexiters.

Probably.  That would at least make sense in 2021 for a guy who wants to rule a united Europe.

I feel like there is more nostalgia than actual examination going on here.  Eurostar makes sense in 1984.  They sort of make sense in 1994.  Every decade after that they get less relevant.  If we want to keep replaying our high school games with villains from the 80s thats cool, but if I introduced a bunch of High School kids to Champions today... these guys don't make any sense.
The EU has been a thing their whole lives, the IRA mostly stopped blowing things up years before they were born, It isn't about being PC its about being in any way modern.
That doesn't mean they have to go away, it just means they need their motives & backgrounds rethought a bit. 

In the MCU Black Widow was introduced as a SHIELD agent who used to work for a vaguely Russian/Slavic country instead of being a Communist dedicated to bringing down America (which was her original backstory).  Her powers didn't change, her look didn't change, but at no point did she talk about ending capitalism.  That version of her hadn't made sense for some time.
Exactly *which* war Tony Stark got hurt in & built his first Power Armor suit for is famously variable, but back in the day it was about defending America against the Russians.  Now it's about keeping his weapons away from the bad people who were misusing them.  If his goal was *still* to keep the Communists at bay Iron Man would make a lot less sense.

I think that Eurostar needs a similar update.  We need to keep Scorpia but drop the IRA from her background.  She should still be someone who got started as a terrorist before moving on to supervillainy, but It makes more sense that she got started with Right-Wing extremist groups fighting against immigration, assuming you don't want to recast her as someone who got started as a religious terrorist.

(I also feel like a bunch of Americans deciding what is and is not a stereotype of Europeans according to Europeans feels a bit off, but as an American I don't really know so I'll not press that)

41 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Those stereotypes of Eurostar are a stretch.  Especially the  one about Pantera.

If I've learned anything, its that you need to trust people about when something is or is not a stereotype of an ethnic group that includes them.  They deal with it more and they have stronger opinions.  Telling someone who deals with it when you don't that it isn't that bad doesn't land well.  If actual Europeans think Eurostar is a bunch of shallow stereotypes we should maybe believe them.  Just because they aren't as bad as the guys from European Enemies doesn't mean they are good.

When you watch stuff made in other countries and the guy from the USA  has a cowboy hat, a gun & a Confederate Flag belt buckle I personally don't take offense (I actually know those people), but it *is* a stereotype (The Guy from the USA is never from South Dakota and dresses in sweater vests).  I'm willing to bet the people who choose to write their shows that way never really think about what that says about how they think of my countrymen.

I've said a few times that I feel like Eurostar as written makes a lot less sense in 2021 than it did in 1984.  While the European Union isn't a paradise it is a long way from the cold-war divided Europe with a post-franco Spain and the Irish troubles going full-bore.  (also, while I am an American and likely don't understand everything going on, didn't the active IRA violence mostly end in the late 90s?  If so, Scorpia is at least pushing 40 and is likely older.)

Fiacho's "united Europe" motivation is pretty interesting, but it needs to evolve a bit if it is going to make sense in the 2020s.

On 4/27/2021 at 12:13 PM, Colossus said:

The fact that most of us carry a way to access the internet in our pocket means a lot of knowledge skills seem less useful, until you release two things.  Looking up an article and reading it takes tine and the articles on the internet are often wrong.  

I try to get my players to really understand how different reading the Wikipedia entry or watching a youtube video is not the same as actually having the skill.  There is a huge difference between reading a tutorial on fixing a carburetor and actually knowing what's wrong when the car won't start.  Especially if you are trying to be sneaky or quick.

I know when I talk to my buddy who went to buddhist seminary he has stuff drilled into his head about esoteric theology and obscure monks that you will *never* find on an internet search unless you already know what you are looking for.  So when the PCs find the remnants of a satanic ritual in their investigation I'm pretty willing to buy that googling "Satan Ritual" isn't going to tell them much that is useful the way "Christian Theology: 12-" will

Retro-Games are fun, but it's like 3 levels down the fractal of geekdom.  You have to want to play a non D&D genre (Supers), using a semi-out-of-print RPG (Hero), and then you have to restrict yourself to a genre that by definition ended before many players were born.  (1970s comics)

My problems are usually around getting everyone on the same page.

The thing about retro games is that *everyone* has to be on board with the same set of expectations.  As greypaladin_01 says, 70s Fantastic Four is pretty Different from 70s Doctor Strange.  And if one player straight up makes a vampire, well Tomb of Dracula was a 1970s Marvel comic but that probably isn't what most people picture off the top of their heads.

I'd say if you can get down to figuring out the genre, I'd pick 2-3 big comic runs from the era and agree that that *style* of comic is what you are going for. 
70s Spider Man?  New Gods?  70s Justice League?  Master of Kung-Fu?  70s Batman?  The Superman Family?
All would be in-bounds, but they are all-over the place in tone.

Personally, several of those sound like a ton of fun, but I know I could never get my players to play a US1 campaign (which is technically an 80s comic about a 70s trend, but I'm counting it)

56 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

and I know Hydra is the popular,go,to (and thanks to all the googling that came out of a Captain America thread, I now sort,of know who they are.   But i always thought Viper was a rip,off,of Cobra: snake motif, military structure, and absolutely,no valid reason to exist foe the first ten years or so...

Viper and Cobra are both ripoffs of Hydra.  Cobra was just featured on TV years before Hydra was so it's sort of a case of the ripoff being better known than the source.

Legend has it that Larry Hama had written up a fairly detailed pitch for a new "Agents of Shield" comic back in the 80s where the schtick was going to be that it wasn't going to be about Nick Fury, it was going to be mission impossible style ensamble comic book where each mission SHIELD would get a team of agents that were each amazing in their specialty to go after Hydra's latest scheme.  They were going to be more military & less spandex to imply a dirtier "off the books" squad.

The pitch was rejected, but supposedly, after the Marvel editors had taken a meeting with Hasbro about writing a comic to go along with the new GI Joe relaunch one of Hama's editors asked him to scratch out "SHIELD", write in "GI Joe" and then let them submit his pitch as the basis for the new comic.
Hama ended up writing most of the character profiles for all the GI Joe & Cobra characters, so although he didn't create their looks he created the "character sheets" for most of the GI Joe Franchise characters in the 80s.  In essence his attempted re-launch of Agents of Shield turned into GI Joe and his intended revamp of Hyrda (Making them less nazi & more terrorist) turned into Cobra.

Lots of the really early Cobra characters like the Baroness, Major Bludd, Destro, etc actually work surprisingly well if you think of them as Hydra "personalities" that would have been rivals of Zemo or Struker.  I think Destro & the MCU Zemo might even enjoy one anothers work.

I think there are 2 main issues with the Hero "Stat Block"

1) It doesn't flex well between genres.  Some games are all about the skills, others about the powers, others have "super skills" that should be right next to martial arts (which should or should not get their own section depending on genre).

2) It is always presented with a singular graphic design.  The "Blue Bars" I see in your example works great for supers, maybe OK for Space Hero, but doesn't seem right at all for fantasy hero, pulp hero, & so on.

The "one size fits all" template ends up working against the flow of information.

3 hours ago, Opal said:

Eurostar wanting to unite Europe sounds a little out of date, given how integrated the EU has become, but there could be political parties in the member states seeking greater unity, either in general or issue-by-issue, and they could coordinate efforts with Eurostar, offering political European-unity solutions to problems Eurostar highlights or manufactures through their attacks.

I made a similar point in another thread about Eurostar's "Unite Europe" goals being dated in this day and age.  In 1983 that seemed like a quixotic goal, especially with the cold war going on.  In 2021 it's more or less accomplished.  If Fiacho is still upset that the various members of the EU aren't doing enough to work together I maybe could see that but its not as good a "big goal" as it was in older editions.

One interesting variant on what Opal mentions is for Eurostar to become the self-appointed, psychotically violent "defenders" of the European Union.  Every time someone chooses to put their own needs above the Union or a member state passes a piece of law or a treaty that isn't sufficiently Pro-EU, Fiacho starts blowing stuff up.  The legitimate governments of the EU want nothing to do with this, but Eurostar would probably have sympathizers.

If you did want to bring modern politics into it, Eurostar is probably going after anyone and everyone publicly in favor of Brexit, trying to intimidate anyone else thinking they may want to leave the EU and punishing the UK for having the temerity to go it alone.

36 minutes ago, steriaca said:

In general, it is whatever the GM wants.

I cut your specific responses but I did read them all.  I think we are talking past each other.  I understand everything you say, I'm asking if it is important that all these bits are part of his character.

Sure, how he treats his minions shows how he will treat the world, but we haven't gotten much about how he will treat them and less about how they feel about it.  If that part of his character isn't being developed, why include it?  This is the difference between a comic book villain and a comic book game villain. 

I think most Hero players are super good at doing what they want & we all understand the GM controls it all.  We aren't playing our 3rd game of D&D here.
This is a discussion about what is presented for us to digest.  I don't want to Rule Zero/GM's choice the main Big Bad of the setting.  If I have to do all the work I may as well home-brew.  I buy villain books so that I can use them & I don't want to decide what Destroyer's ultimate goal is.

Lets boil Destroyer down to his essence and maybe give PCs a reason to care about him other than as a generic dude in armor with a cape to stop from taking over the world.  Right now Mechanon the Kill-Bot has more personality than he does.

Fiacho hates how divided Europe is & doesn't care who gets hurt putting it together.  That generates adventures.

Black Paladin is an evil knight from the days of King Arthur who believes himself to be honorable & is obsessed with his dead lover.  That generates adventures.

Foxbat insanely believes he is living in a comic book.  That generates adventures.

Doctor Destroyer is useful as the go to "guy with a volcano lair and a death ray to conquer the Eastern Seaboard" but we don't know why he cares other than he thinks hes awesome and he is too powerful for the PCs to actually defeat.  There isn't much to actually do with him.  Dr Evil from Austin Powers and his out of touch "ransom the world for a million dollars when his front company is worth billions" at least has some role-playing potential.

42 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

My problem with Doctor Destroyer isn't his concept, or any "cluttering," but that as a character he's very superficial. You can summarize him in three words: power, intellect, arrogance. That's it.

This seems fair.  He has a lot of stuff going on but no real indication as to *why* he does any of it or how he got there. 
I say he is "cluttered" because there are so many moving pieces with him but we don't know how any of them go together or why he bothers to maintain them.

IMHO part of what makes Mechanon work is having "Kill all Organic Life" as his motivation.  You understand why he feels that way, It's concise, the heroes are almost certainly against it, and it gives him a lot of room as to how to do it (which means there are a lot of stories he can be involved with)

I can go either way on the Nazi/WWII connection, I mention it because its one more "thing" about him.  I think there is some dialog from him from way back in "Day of the Destroyer" where he himself says people worry too much about it and Nazi Philosophy doesn't really have anything to do with him.

Is it important that he is as old as he is?  Is his struggle with his mortality important to who he is?

What about his hidden valley of followers?  Why does he care about them?  Does he care about them?  They are a convenient handwave for where he gets all those troops and guys in jumpsuits that work in his lairs, but we never really question where Viper recruits all those guys.  Has anything actually been done with the people who worship him?

He keeps a bunch of super powered enforcers.  What do they enforce?  Why?  What are they protecting him from that his armor can't handle?  I get that minions are helpful to take care of stuff when you are busy but with all the drama that they seem to engender why not use robots?

IMHO his power level is problematic.  In-universe he fights dozens of superheroes and kills them while he walks away with some damage to his armor.  Any PC Team built to campaign guidelines is years of play away from being able to actually survive 6 phases against him let alone actually beat him.  Its fine to have those characters running around, but it does raise the question of why he keeps hatching all these plans if he can just smash the heroes without much to stop him.  At least with Takofanes he has an alien way of thinking so you don't really know why he does what he does.

I always wanted to know what Dr. D planned on doing with the world once he conquered it?  Why does he care?  Lots of people want to rule the world, why is his version of conquest better or worse than (say) Istvatha's?

Part of what is so great about Thanos is his mentality.  Thanos' plan to kill half of all life in the universe is actually motivated by altruism on his part, he believes everyone will thank him in the long run.  It is insane, and doesn't make sense if you look at the details, but thats why he is a supervillain.  I also thing it's fascinating that he has demonstrated that if he succeeds he will give up ultimate power, retire, and live quietly.  Doctor Destroyer is such a blunt instrument compared to that.

I'm not familiar with the source material being discussed, does the character just duplicate when they take body or do the duplicates actually get weaker each time they divide?

Derek's build works, but so does Duplicate: Creates 1 Duplicate every time body is taken (-1) and each duplicate can have that same power, potentially making it infinite but involving way less housekeeping.

I file worlds where the fantastic exists alongside humanity in a different category than Urban Fantasy.  I suppose technically it's all the under the same umbrella but vampires openly existing (and running for the Senate) or Wizards hosting game shows seems designed to minimize wonder.  Such stories are usually either about remembering that this is all actually pretty cool or telling a more conventional story but with superpowers.

Urban Fantasy the way I think of it usually tries to evoke some mystery and wonder around a hidden world living right next to our own.  The protagonists usually spend some energy solving whatever plot they are dealing with while simultaneously protecting the magic from the world or the world from the magical.  There is usually something going on that makes it a little hard for the secret to randomly get out but the events of the story usually threaten that and keeping the secret from getting out becomes a requirement of the plot.
 

On the "Protect the world" side we have Agent K:
"There's always an Arquillian Battle Cruiser, or a Corillian Death Ray, or an intergalactic plague that is about to wipe out all life on this miserable little planet, and the only way these people can get on with their happy lives is that they DO NOT KNOW ABOUT IT!"

On the "It's important to keep it quiet" front we have Cain from The Sandman:
"I keep telling you, it's the Mystery that endures, not the explanation... Nobody really cares who-done-it. They'll peck you to pieces if you tell them... [but] a good Mystery can last forever."

7 hours ago, Opal said:

WoD, the way the monsters were kept out of the limelight was front and center of each game:  Masquerade, Delirium, Paradox....

I was a fan of Changeling (the Dreaming, not the Lost).  They had the Mists.. basically if you were too grown up to believe in Faeries you would forget what you saw.  Thing of it was, the people who were most like that were literally spiritual poison to the PCs, so there were many reasons to stay away.

26 minutes ago, Opal said:

People are products of their time.  Moving them around in time either changes who they are, or what they represent in the new context.

You make a very strong argument, and as I think about it there are several Champions "Iconics" that make more sense in 1985 than now and suffer from the movement.

I do think some characters are more mobile than others.  You are very correct on your look at Iron Man, and I feel like every take on the Fantastic Four that severs them from their cold war origins has weakened them.  I'm pretty sure the new Superman TV show starts with Clark Kent getting laid off from the daily planet because journalism isn't really a stable career anymore.
Spiderman's "Geeky Kid with a responsibility complex turned hero" has aged pretty well, although the specifics of that that look like have changed a lot over time.  They even transferred the character concept to Miles Moralis while changing most all of the details and dammit if he isn't a great Spider Man too.

To bring this back to Champions, I think it makes sense whenever they do a "7th edition" Champions Universe to leave some of the characters modern while leaving others in the past as "historical" characters.  Maybe even have them as the suggested villains for various "ages" of Champions if books like "Silver Age Champions" or "Bronze Age Champions" ever come out to exist along side "Golden Age Champions", which manages to have pretty era-appropriate villainy.

Baddies like Black Paladin, Bulldozer (toxic masculinity is pretty "with the times"), Leech, Ogre, Shrinker and many others aren't particularly tied to a time and could work just fine in the 2020s even if they were written in the 80s, assuming you adjust anything incongruent about their backstories.

On the other hand, Eurostar seems a bit dated in the era of the EU and Sunburst is way to tied too nuclear weapons & the cold war to really work in the 2020s.  Both make great "Silver Age" villains if you move them back to the 70s and 80s.

Mechanon is a great villain for most eras, and could straddle several.
I think Doctor Destroyer has suffered from some concept bloat over time.  He is the big bad of the Champions U, but he also has WWII German Origins, a hidden valley in not-tibet filled with loyal followers, island bases, space stations, and in actual play his power level sort of requires you treat him more like Thanos than Doctor Doom (complete with superpowered followers that are more powerful than most heroes).  He can work in most eras but is sort of all over the place and might benefit from a trim in concept.

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

'Floating time' is a tool for publishers, not GMs at the table. (Though they can do it too, if they feel like it.) But it assumes the publisher is supplying bits of setting for GMs to assemble into their own world, not a chronicle of a world that is presumed to have any existence separate from particular GMs -- or that GMs are expected to adopt in entirety.

I tend to agree with this.  I used to actually run White Wolf games back when their meta plot started dictating that certain PCs were either no longer "canon" or were the last of their kind because of what happened in this book or that book.  I ended up having to ignore more and more of their world building as it was interfering with the games I was running.  Then they ended their setting in a choose your own apocalypse... while my PCs were still playing every week.

I really like the cohesiveness of the Champions Universe, and I would *love* an update that said who was doing what where, but at this point with all the dates given in the various 6e books it would start to be a list of everyone who retired and on what date.  The part where Amnesia from Cirque Sinister was born in 1982 means she is Pushing 40 and may not feel the thrill of matching wits with the police anymore, and the fact that Howler was already an archaeologist working in the field in 1991 when she got her powers means she would be in her 50s at minimum and may be at least 60 by now.  (I'm still not sure what timeline Red Winter makes sense in?)

A floating timeline in the published material would have made a lot of stuff like this easier to handwave.  When Stalker shows up in your game for the first time he is a Vampire who rose from his long slumber 8-9 years ago instead of having gotten out in 2001 and been around for over 20.  He can always have defeated and almost killed the Black Mask 4-5 years ago instead of in 2005 (and because the Black Mask's age is also on a slide, he will always have defeated Black Mask X (Jennifer Ward) instead of Black Mask XI (Amy Woods) who really should have taken over by now or Jennifer Ward's son  Benjamin who logically should already be Amy Wood's teen sidekick assuming he isn't in college yet.

I like 4A & 5th.  I agree with those who say 5th feels very GI Joe, but I see that as a feature instead of a bug.  With all the "Tactical Cosplay" we see in real life survivalists and revolutionaries something military themed with a scale motif feels right for the kinds of people Viper is often stated to recruit (washed out Military, underemployed thugs, and people who think they deserve more then they have).

You need your troops to feel badass, which I think the helmets, vests, and sidearms help with.