Christopher R Taylor

If the GM does that to punish the player, then yes, its awful and campaign-killing. But only a fool of a GM doesn't take advantage of weaknesses in characters to push the players to strive harder to win.

Sure, but the superhero team is just starting, maybe that happens in the future? After all, there's nothing about the Champions universe which compels us to start at a specific time frame. And like you said, dead people come back all the time in comics!

Another option is to rewrite, update, and use the Viper's Nest scenario, since its been basically dropped and from what I understand, Hero Games has rights to use the characters and such. A further option is to do the same with Deathstroke which has a great intro step by step structure.

If I can find some time, maybe I can color some of the images for this. They are pretty fun, I might experiment with making them look like 4 color separations.

I can't think of any other contemporary RPG that has 17 separate Characteristics. Depends on how you define them. D&D has a ton: main stats, AC, hit points, saves, To hit.

I think it was. Maybe he can post it again, it was a pretty good design and visually dynamic. Mine is more organized and stripped down

I can't remember who it was, but they had a Convention game they ran for Champions as an intro, and their sheet is kind of what I based mine on. Theirs was more jazzy, though; the layout was more interesting. He posted the Robin character sheet as an example.

Deathstroke is a good intro adventure as well, it builds from small scale encounters to a full blown fight. But yeah, I do like Viper's Nest a lot. The original bad guys were like Cheshire Cat, Brick, Bluejay, guys like that.

I do like that idea a lot, a pathfinder story arc. But I don't see this product as being that all-inclusive. I see it as an introductory book to help people get started with the game. Then the campaign books can take the now-knowledgeable group into a full campaign. By keeping it simple and small, we can make it free.

I think Steve Long is the only one who can really answer who has the rights over various groups and characters in Champions, and what is available for use for products. I'd prefer Viper, but Coil is a good alternate as is Terror. I'm not real fond of the recent interpretation of Demon, and konw nothing about VOICE, Argent, or WSA

I agree; we have to agree on the basic concept of the book to get started. Which is why I say we have to have a publisher and guiding vision, and that has to be one person's vision. One voice to guide and shape the final results, not a continual series of meetings.

1.5" hexes would be perfect for 2m scale but the 1" hexes, just too small for 2m compared to the figures.

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