Christopher R Taylor

Its only 18 points to sell them down to zero, so you're not exactly breaking the game. I wouldn't sell down DMCV unless you are doing it based on character concept, though.

Its possible that the MMOG guys own viper now, I do not know. If possible I'd like to do Microfilm Madness/Viper's Nest as an adventure for the Champions Begins book but who knows.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, we can add in Wonder Chick, Batmanuel, and so on to the choices as well as, say DaringDude, Spider-Fellow, and others. Options that seem familiar to a broad group of players.

Hex maps had too small hexes to properly represent 2m anyway. Just treating them as 1m and voila, figures fit better in them.

I think having some original builds to show off what Champions could do is a fun idea but for a beginning set of characters, getting too weird might be too complicated for starters. It might be done, though. The principle of using the Avengers is to make a quick, familiar, and easy jump off point for new players.

That's how I see it as well, Massey. The first session should be as simple a basic event and fight as possible, staging into more complex mechanics each adventure until the full ruleset is well understood by players and GMs. I keep coming back to the concept of a tutorial, and that's what this would be: an RPG tutorial for GM and players. I'm willing to do the part of the publisher and do some art, writing and character design if needed. Here's my vision for the overall themes of the product and structure: The way I see it we need at least double the number of possible characters as usual players. 6 seems like the most a gaming group can reasonably be and not give the GM ulcers, so 12 characters at least, 15 maybe. I think we need at least 5 stages of an adventure, preferably 1 session each until the final climactic which can be several parts. Each adventure should be a classic superhero scene. We don't need to worry about cliche because that's part of the reason we play these games (to do the stuff in comics) and players are likely unfamiliar with the old comic book cliche's anyway, and have likely never played Champions before. So: the hostage, the bank robbery, the poisoned reservoir, etc We should avoid big, epic themes and focus on smaller, street level stuff for the adventure, so players don't feel underpowered or like they are cheap versions. Starting characters aren't the cosmic world-saving Galactus beaters. Useful, I think, would be a book of basic "how to play" in super simple terms and layout for players to see. It might feel like we're treating players as children or imbeciles, but that is the approach that seems to go over really well with modern readers and if you make it funny and ironic, they won't feel condescended to. I think Cracked Magazine's layout of some text then a goofy pic with a funny caption works. Lots of bright colors and images. The GM should have full built character sheets for each character. The overall theme of the adventure should be fun, heroism, introducing the system and concept of heroes, and bright and explosive

The shift to meters didn't bother me at all but the Growth thing was, in my opinion, a failed experiment. Smaller, more incremental bits are more useful than big chunks I think.

Yeah that's my guess too, playing his dad. Great choice. If I made movies, I'd put him in every one. I have a list of guys I want to make a western with if I could, and he's one.

Not a gun, but a ghastly weapon. No real use for that but killing but nasty as heck. Curious how to build that in hero, though. Extra bleeding effect? Maybe damage and a DOT after.

Every movie is better with Kurt Russel in it.

If we're going to do this, we need to do it, or drop it. Anyone willing to commit?

There are a couple yeah Floating and fixed locations allow you to "prepare" a spot you know well enough to pop to safely. Detect "safe landing spot" with lots of telescopic lets you find a safe spot to jump to every time. You can teleport blind and hope for the best, its usually not too awful. You can teleport to open air, then down to a spot you can see; best to have the adder that removes velocity for this one, though.

The reason I came up with Vulcan was because: mythological deity with hammer and energy projection (fire rather than lightning but hey). That keeps him in really familiar territory without being a direct copyright conflict. Plus it opens up some interesting conceptual ideas. And I'm not 100% wedded to the idea that every character must be swappable with genders. But I'm not determined to use the idea, as long as we can come up with something fun, easily playable, and that will do the job of feeling familiar and Avenger-y

I have some talents built that let players ignore common limitations on spells up to a certain power level (like incantations on up to 50 active points). Magic items that do that are pretty cool too: I don't have to concentrate to cast my spells any more!

In addition to a nice stock of 10-15 pre-made characters, we need a basic adventure. My preference is a single arc that tells a story, with these features: A way of making each character feel like they need the group, as if they won't be able to do it solo A way of emphasizing heroics, even overemphasizing it: save the kitten, rescue the hostages, stop the bad guy. The heroes save the day, triumph over bad guys and have a clear, bright line between good and bad Each adventure moves toward a solution of the reason the PCs come together, so its their story and their team's existence is very important. The resolution leaves them with all the essential tools of a superhero group (contacts, base, vehicles, etc). What I want to avoid is the way movie villains have been so often, where the PCs were the reason for all the bad stuff that took place. I also think that while more morally murky and conflicted stuff is fun and useful eventually that too many modern players need to be taught what a hero is and get really stark, clear good/evil choices and nudging so they understand the role of a superhero vs a fantasy character. What do other people think?

Here's what I figure it should look like, a sheet I built based on some ideas from other people: The filled out version would have really simple info like rolls for skills, all Combat Value slots filled in with the (OCV+11)-3d6 roll (so an OCV 8 has a 19- roll in the combat value slot) and no costs anywhere. Powers are listed in the simplest terms - damage, name. The idea is to give the players as minimal info as they can use to play with and no more. Plus, the color coding allows the GM to say "your stats are in the green section!"

Well I leave that up to the "publisher" and the person creating the characters. I was just thinking about the guidelines and principles we build them around: recognizable but not too close in name and image, with simple builds and backgrounds someone can plug just about any gender into (and, for most at least, any ethnicity. Why can't Iron Person be Brazilian?).

He's a good writer for a certain kind of film, not so much for others. Batman, fine. Superman? Not so much.

The Black Widow character doesn't need to be female any more than the Thor character male, if we're trying to make them non gender specific

Steve Long could answer this better, probably, but I think "Thunder" might be nudging up a bit too closer to copyright. Especially if you give them a hammer and divine origin.

I'm hoping Deadpool makes a kajillion dollars so they figure out you can make superhero movies fun. I about slit my wrists watching the latest trailer.

Yeah I think ideally what you want is a character name and background that can go either way, so people can have their rule 63 Captain Ironman or whatever. Rather than locking them in as female or male, wherever you can. Some might be tough (the Thor alternate, for example) but the rest, I mean Iron Man is just a suit so it doesn't matter.

Well we have to be careful nudging up too close to the rabidly defensive and litigious Disney properties. So something that people understand is the Avengers but without being so close its worth their time to drag Hero into court over. The first few sessions of the game, players don't even need to know about limitations or how things are built, just get used to the way combat works and get into the concept of a superhero game. Then you can start giving them more details and a more complex character sheet. The sequence and how to do that I think is worth discussing and working out.

I liked the concepts in Mystic Masters (and the campaign). Lots of interesting variants on magical types in a champions game leaning heavily toward Dr Strange.

IN terms of character design I'm thinking fairly cheap/low point to start with, but each adventure gives big chunks of powers. That way you can have really simple stripped down characters, and then build them up quickly. My and massey's idea of experience is to give the players blocs of powers to choose from, stuff that fits the character. Take the "Vulcan" idea with a strong tough guy that has a hammer, maybe flame blast, and combat with the hammer or his fists. Then with experience you can start to add more complex ideas, like "fix item" (cosmetic or minor transform: broke to fixed), create item (transform again) for simple concepts a blacksmith could make, flame blast from any fire source, etc. The idea is to start bone simple, then add complex bits of powers in more expensive blocks but adding each block the player interacts with the GM on how it works and what it means, rather than dumping it all on them at once with a character. By starting cheap you can give big important chunks of character abilities all at once instead of little pieces that build up. That way after a few adventures, the characters reach full Champions power level, but feels like a comic book/TV show/tutorial where powers are revealed until the PC is fully capable. Ideally, the power blocks could be from a picklist, so that the GM and player can sit down: which would you rather have, the flame blast, the fix-it power, or the make things power? Thus giving the player input over how the character develops but in a simple controlled way that won't intimidate new players.