Re: Just Picked Up Champions Worldwide
About stereotyped characters: Well, I don't have a prpblem with tah. But I agree with our Brazilian co-gamer: The question is not first and foremost "Does the character have an exotic foreign name?" but is the character believable or not. I don't own Champions Worldwide but glanced through it in a hobby-store. My impression regarding the German characters is: Der Schwarze Tod is a great name - actually there is a very popular German horror pulp-series by the name of "John Sinclair" that features Der Schwarze Tod as one of the main Super-Bad-Demons. The name has a good ring and would sound believable in a super-Germany. Der Bogenschütze is a boring name - as boring as Archer would be or Bowman. A color would have been nice (Der Grüne Bogenschütze e.g.) and a better ring to my Teutonic ears.
If you want to have a German NAzi as a villain, then by all means stay as cheesy as you can - and some! Reason is not my strong anti-Nazi-feelings but reality: Them ***** give themselves all kinds of embarrassing nemas that sound oh-so-cool - IN REAL LIFE! So go crazy with ARISCHER KRIEGER (Aryan Warrior), GERMANENSTOLZ (Proud of the Teutons), KRISTALLNACHT, RASSENWÄCHTER (Guardian of the Race) etc. If you want to German hero or ordinary villain as German name is as likely as an English - actually I would think it is more likely to see THE WATCH (as in: Watchman) flying over the Barndenburg Gate than DER WÄCHTER. Which comes to the next problem: Bad English names by German heroes. Ads, commercials and the German language are full of English words nowadays that DO NOT EXIST in English - it's a mixture of fad and loss of fantasy (or too much of it). Example: The "German" word for mobile phone is "Handy". Most people in Germany think that "handy" is an English word (correct) used for carry-along-phones. The German word Mobiltelefon is seldomly used. So I would guesss that you should encounter quite a few German Heroes and Villains in the Champions Universe with no PR-agent, a half-*** education in English and an "English" name that would give them a blank stare, a head shaken in disbelieve or a plain good laugh in the US or UK ...
AND AN THE INITIATIVE, A SURPRISE BONUS TO OCV AND A SPECIAL STUN ONLY ATTACK whenever they utter their names to English speakers!