Tjack

Small, dense, hard, brilliant energy.....Diamond?

Again, look to the Pathfinder and D&D business models. Neither of their free versions include more than one or two adventures and only a few hand out characters. Let potential new players jump in right away to adventure and the fun of role-play. After they’re interested is the time to show them the complexities of the game. When you’re selling a sports car you get them in for a test drive first before you tell them about the cost. When I first started playing a buddy ran off a version of his Champions 3 book that had maybe 15 pages. It served me well until I bought my own version of the Big Blue Book. I didn’t need a lot to get started and back then there was only one store in the city of Boston (a pretty good sized college town) that sold Champions stuff. Now as a company you have the option of selling directly to the public in ways that the old days couldn’t dream of. With Fantasy Hero you’re fighting not only the “new hot game” in Pathfinder but the brand name of the game that started it all in Dungeons & Dragons. Why swim upstream? Your core game is the best known in the genre. A genre which is in fact on freaking fire! Comic book companies are struggling certainly, but MAJOR MOTION PICTURES, TELEVISION & ALL FORMS OF COMPUTER GAMING are knocking themselves out bringing Superheroes to the public. You once led the parade, it’s now time to jump back on the bandwagon. If you want to move this conversation to somewhere more appropriate just let me know where.

If the question gets something positive started you have my permission/blessing/utmost thanks to move it. But it was in response to something posted by someone higher on the food chain than my most humble self. The point itself however does stand. Can we as a group come up with a real world implementable way to bring in new people on a larger scale than putting up a sign in a comic shop or an occasional game at a convention? Again I invite the heavy hitters, the people who created this all in the first place to chime in. There has to be a way to do a comparable on-line version of a Champions players starter kit like the ones created by WotC and Pathfinder. I may be saying it in the wrong place, but I’m yelling “Iceberg off the port bow!” as loud as I can. Can anybody hear me?

So if this idea of trying to keep this game, which we are all fans of keeps coming up, why is it the only products coming out from the company are MORE complicated, MORE insular and MORE cutting into thinner slices of an ever shrinking pie instead of trying to get some new warm bodies into the ranks? Instead of discussing variation after variation with very limited appeal (Western, Space, Pulp) why don’t we try to come up with a way to keep this ship afloat, because at this rate in the next 5-10 years there won’t be a Champions game anymore. I’m sorry if this is kind of a drag, but this game has given me some of the best times and friends of my life and I’m getting damn tired of watching debates on the placement of deck chairs instead of using this well of experience to turn the ship away from the damn iceberg. Any chance of hearing from the folks at the top of the pole on this?

So, why not (steal) borrow WotC’s business model? Come up with a free downloadable EASY version of the rules, some characters based on the Avengers/Justice League/X-Men. (Since they’re the archetypes your potential players want) Toss in some easy to understand villains and a bank robbery or Viper raids the Govt. laboratory episode, and there you go. For good measure include a discount code for a Players Handbook from the website.

I don’t know....Maybe I’m just an evil GM, but the idea of a sociopath pretending to be possessed and then beating the possession so that the heroes let them go is just too sweet and creepy an ending to resist. Also there’s the episode of Angel where a demon possessed a child and when it was removed it was glad because the kid was even more cold and evil than the demon. Whichever way the story went I’d make sure that when the heroes left they always had that thought in the back of their heads. “What if we just got played?” In the words of Bugs Bunny “Ain’t I a stinker?”

Yeah, because religious beatings are good for making children LESS psychotic!!!!!

I need an emoji of a baseball bat with which to hit you.............🏏 CLOSE ENOUGH!!!!!!!

In response to Jhamin’s sig line; Does that mean Princeton has Marilyn Monroe’s brain?

The main thing about a costume for your character is how does it make YOU feel. Do you look at it and feel that little thrill? Does it let you imagine? All the fashion tips and costume ideas in the world are all well and good but YOU are the final judge.

No, Batman was a NPC run by the GM and Robin was a low powered handout for players who were just trying out the game or who would only be there for one night. This happened for a long time and the character accrued some points. Then somebody decided to use him for backstory, re-wrote him and called him Nightwing.

There is a way but it’s a LOT of work for the GM. Have the training sequences involve interesting NPC’s. A player wants to learn Martial Arts...give them Chuin from the Remo Williams movie (“You move like a baboon with two club feet!” “The seasons move faster!”) or Ping Hai from Kill Bill. If they want to learn “thief” skills give them either a Cary Grant ex-cat burglar or a Baldrick from Blackadder looking second story man. You get the idea, make the introduction of the teacher and the training of the student part of the tapestry of the game. Perhaps the mad scientist obsessed with the power of Steam who ends up instructing a player in the sciences also tells them of other scientists who have mysteriously disappeared. These NPC’s can become great storytelling devices. Have episodes open on a teaching sequence with one of the players just to set the mood “ You’re all in the gymnasium watching Bertrand spar with Master Chuin... This will be a lot more fun in the long run than just them endlessly repeating “My character trains for three weeks and I spend my points.”

Doesn’t that just make it a model of the battleship Yamato?

I GM’ed a team based out of Los Angeles (Let’s hear it for the Hollywood Knights!) that was supported by a mysterious billionaire, and I gave them a special mag-rail car that traveled the seldom used subway system and thru the drainage canals to get them where I needed them. The look of the car was from those Planet Earth pilot movies Gene Roddenberry did in the late ‘70’s and the drainage canals were the type from the Terminator 2 motorcycle vs.truck chase scene. I as GM used them like Roddenberry did the Transporters in Star Trek. A fast way to get the characters wherever I needed them to be and if I wanted them to find another way “Oh well, the tram doesn’t go there.” If somebody wanted to pay EP’s for their very own Batmobile I wouldn’t have stopped them but I never encouraged it either. If you want or need for game mechanics to control the teams travel just make sure to have your alternative easy and fun for the players and they won’t want to spend their own points on something else.

No joke here, what is horchata? I’ve seen the commercials for some booze that’s a blend of horchata and rum.

I’m not a big fan of cinnamon but I do like ginger ale mixed half & half with either iced tea, or lemonade.

Agreed, but that’s the world we live in. A GM has to adjust to the times. What’s Hudson City like during the COVID shutdown? Just because having people get around the country easily may interfere with the episode you want to run doesn’t mean a GM can or should ban the use of airplanes and cars in a modern day campaign. If you don’t want to deal that stuff than set your game in the ‘70’s. There’s a very interesting new trailer for a Batman animated movie that’s basically a ‘70’s Kung Fu flick. Bats, Richard Dragon, Lady Shiva, and Bronze Tiger go out to avenge the murder of their Sensei by the League of Assassins. Hell somebody should run that as a mix of Ninja Hero & Danger International.

I was flipping thru the Bureau 13 sourcebook last week. (The good one w/ the Phil Foligo artwork) circa 1980 and a lot of the super-tech available to the players you can now buy at Walmart. GPS, cellphones, cell phones with cameras. My I-Pad has more processing power than the computer in their mobile base. You don’t make players pay for wearing pants or having a normal amount of cash on hand, don’t sweat the small stuff.

‘Cause I’m like her MANAGER, big daddy! NOW GIMMIE MY MONEY OR FEEL MY PIMP HAND!!!!!

Yeah, generally you have to pay extra for that.

O.K. let’s give this a try. Music; CD Box sets of all the music of The Beatles Soundtrack for the TV series: Jazz Harry Chapin: Greatest Stories:Live Best of Broadway w/ all the Tony Award winning songs Soundtrack for The Big Chill TV Shows; West Wing Deep Space Nine Firefly w/ Serenity movie Babylon 5 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Books; The Many Colored Land (aka Pliocene Exile) series by Julien May The unabridged version of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein The Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series by Spider Robinson The Encyclopedia Britannica (I like to browse) A set of the great Noir Novels. (Maltese Falcon, My Gun is Quick, The Dain Curse etc.) Movies; The John Wayne box set of Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo & Rio Grande The box set of the Mission Impossible movies Casablanca The box set of the Rat Pack movies. (Ocean’s 11, Robin & the 7 Hoods, Sargents 3 & 4 for Texas) The box set of the original Star Wars trilogy

Doing a real list now. Do book series that make up one story like the Amber series by Roger Zelazny (5 paperbacks each around 180 pages) or the Game of Thrones novels count as individual books or as one story?

This reminds me of an episode of Law & Order. I believe the name was Killerz, but I might be wrong. The detectives found that the murder of a six year old boy was done by a ten year old girl named Jenny. Then the psychiatrist told the D.A. that she was basically a serial killer in embryo and thought that she was beyond hope. You can’t keep her in jail because juvenile offenders are automatically released at 18. You can’t try a ten year old as an adult because the law won’t allow it. I remember it so well because of the chilling ending and the performance of the young actress. I don’t know if Cygnia ever watched this or probably she and the writers saw the same true crime reports.

Uncommon Valor. And as to Pariah’s new logo..... A Happy “No L” to you as well.