SCUBA Hero

I have not worked it all the way through yet but the followup idea I have for Champions Begins is "baby's first campaign" with a step by step "how to build a character using Champions Complete", then their first adventure with the new characters that they personally built, a followup session where they tweak their characters slightly after a test drive around the block (Hulk turned gray to green, Beast went from an idiot to a poetry-spouting intellectual, etc), then spend some xps, then a few related adventures following an overarching plot between several apparently unrelated adventures and end with a triumph and a parade through the city or something.   The mayor gives them the old McCallister Building to use as a base, maybe. 
 
Something roughly 100 pages but instead of a "how to walk around in the game and punch things" tutorial a basic step into what its like to play a Champions campaign.

I would recommend minimizing NPC heroes in Coastal City, including any example hero team. The PCs should be the new cadre of heroes becoming the city's chief defenders. Rather than a default official team, write up a set of heroes that players can not only use as examples, but can play themselves right away if they don't want to deal with chargen. Perhaps one of each of the character archetypes described in Champions (ten or eleven, depending on whether you include "Patriot" as one of them), which players can pick and mix-and-match as they choose, alongside any player-created heroes.
 
NPC heroes should be the type who would make useful contacts or support, but not powerful enough to overshadow the PCs when it comes to significant threats, e.g. scientist, mystic, detective, etc.

Armour weight is a weird beast in general, even in real life. There is definitely a difference between carting around a bag/box of armour and walking around *in* it. Lugging my armour chest from my trunk to a camp site might wind me pretty bad, but I could walk around in it for quite a while before I started to fatigue from the extra weight. Fighting in it is, honestly, only slightly more fatiguing than going with just a gambeson.
 
So, the idea that worn armour should have a lower cost towards encumbrance penalties jives in my head. Particularly if you are well trained in its use. I have definitely seen people sprint 20 yards in plate to exploit a break in a line, fight through, and be perfectly ready to keep fighting.
 
What it really comes down to, is what kind of effect do you want in your game? Do you want people to armour up? Do you want more cinematic blade-dancing? Do you want people to be able to negate armour penalties to represent their increased skill with the armour? I love representing armour in a more realistic way, but sometimes that isn't what I want. Tweak those dials and find what you like best.

Updating the previous rough proposal...
 
Product: Coastal City Champions (working title).
 
Purpose: Bring new players into Champions. Hopefully get them interested in broader Hero System products.
 
Method: A single book that provides a ready-to-play campaign with all the toolkit settings specified (a 'campaign+game' not a 'toolkit') plus tips on how to play, power levels, attacks and defenses, a sample hero team and villains, including an organization (Viper?) and master villain (Dr. Destroyer? Mechanon? New?), and a city setting developed enough to start a campaign (Mark Rand is considering the Pittsburgh area, transplanted to the West Coast) with a ready-to-run scenario that launches the players and GM into that city. Brief info on the larger world.  In D&D terms - Champions Complete is the DMG and PH, Coastal City Champions is the setting (i.e., Greyhawk) and MM.
 
Power Level:  Keep attacks at the standard 60AP/12d6 and defenses at the standard 20-25 to maintain parity with previously published material.  BUT:  simplify.  Maybe 350CP and 60 Complications??  The beginning superhero has (at a baseline) a single attack rather than a Multipower or a Unified Power.  Simpler builds; keep Advantages and Limitations to a reasonable minimum.  Let the characters (and players) grow into 450CP supers with Multipowers, etc. - *and* a better idea of adn appreciation for how to play and use those additional abilities.
 
Funding: Kickstarter. Start with a nice color cover and minimal B&W interior artwork; stretch goals would add more artwork and then upgrade it to color. Mention (and have) plans for future supplements: more linked adventures, a city development book; also to use Kickstarter.  Maybe have a second adventure, linked to the first, at a high enough stretch goal to fund it.
 
Staff:  Writer (Mark Rand for the setting, either Mark or someone else for the non-setting content). Editor. Proof-reader. Artist(s). Project coordinator.  There are several pro-level, accomplished Hero authors.  I am neither a writer nor an editor, but I can proof-read and coordinate.

Updating the previous rough proposal...
 
Product: Coastal City Champions (working title).
 
Purpose: Bring new players into Champions. Hopefully get them interested in broader Hero System products.
 
Method: A single book that provides a ready-to-play campaign with all the toolkit settings specified (a 'campaign+game' not a 'toolkit') plus tips on how to play, power levels, attacks and defenses, a sample hero team and villains, including an organization (Viper?) and master villain (Dr. Destroyer? Mechanon? New?), and a city setting developed enough to start a campaign (Mark Rand is considering the Pittsburgh area, transplanted to the West Coast) with a ready-to-run scenario that launches the players and GM into that city. Brief info on the larger world.  In D&D terms - Champions Complete is the DMG and PH, Coastal City Champions is the setting (i.e., Greyhawk) and MM.
 
Power Level:  Keep attacks at the standard 60AP/12d6 and defenses at the standard 20-25 to maintain parity with previously published material.  BUT:  simplify.  Maybe 350CP and 60 Complications??  The beginning superhero has (at a baseline) a single attack rather than a Multipower or a Unified Power.  Simpler builds; keep Advantages and Limitations to a reasonable minimum.  Let the characters (and players) grow into 450CP supers with Multipowers, etc. - *and* a better idea of adn appreciation for how to play and use those additional abilities.
 
Funding: Kickstarter. Start with a nice color cover and minimal B&W interior artwork; stretch goals would add more artwork and then upgrade it to color. Mention (and have) plans for future supplements: more linked adventures, a city development book; also to use Kickstarter.  Maybe have a second adventure, linked to the first, at a high enough stretch goal to fund it.
 
Staff:  Writer (Mark Rand for the setting, either Mark or someone else for the non-setting content). Editor. Proof-reader. Artist(s). Project coordinator.  There are several pro-level, accomplished Hero authors.  I am neither a writer nor an editor, but I can proof-read and coordinate.

Updating the previous rough proposal...
 
Product: Coastal City Champions (working title).
 
Purpose: Bring new players into Champions. Hopefully get them interested in broader Hero System products.
 
Method: A single book that provides a ready-to-play campaign with all the toolkit settings specified (a 'campaign+game' not a 'toolkit') plus tips on how to play, power levels, attacks and defenses, a sample hero team and villains, including an organization (Viper?) and master villain (Dr. Destroyer? Mechanon? New?), and a city setting developed enough to start a campaign (Mark Rand is considering the Pittsburgh area, transplanted to the West Coast) with a ready-to-run scenario that launches the players and GM into that city. Brief info on the larger world.  In D&D terms - Champions Complete is the DMG and PH, Coastal City Champions is the setting (i.e., Greyhawk) and MM.
 
Power Level:  Keep attacks at the standard 60AP/12d6 and defenses at the standard 20-25 to maintain parity with previously published material.  BUT:  simplify.  Maybe 350CP and 60 Complications??  The beginning superhero has (at a baseline) a single attack rather than a Multipower or a Unified Power.  Simpler builds; keep Advantages and Limitations to a reasonable minimum.  Let the characters (and players) grow into 450CP supers with Multipowers, etc. - *and* a better idea of adn appreciation for how to play and use those additional abilities.
 
Funding: Kickstarter. Start with a nice color cover and minimal B&W interior artwork; stretch goals would add more artwork and then upgrade it to color. Mention (and have) plans for future supplements: more linked adventures, a city development book; also to use Kickstarter.  Maybe have a second adventure, linked to the first, at a high enough stretch goal to fund it.
 
Staff:  Writer (Mark Rand for the setting, either Mark or someone else for the non-setting content). Editor. Proof-reader. Artist(s). Project coordinator.  There are several pro-level, accomplished Hero authors.  I am neither a writer nor an editor, but I can proof-read and coordinate.

Maybe  use Lord Liaden's Rule of X? criteria? Starting points, is a good baseline, but there has to be a  mention about Defenses, Maximum DC, Highest allowable speed, and that sort of thing. Maybe disallow powers like Clairvoyance, or Megascale Teleport? Again, because there is no class system, power level kind of has to be back calculated.  The Original Adventures were made for 250pt. Heroes and 10DC for the adventures up to 4th Edition.
 
 Agreed. to make the editing easier, we will need a set of guidelines. What structure thought?  Comics?  Television? Movies?  Sandbox?  What? 
 
 
In other projects I have worked on, and also the book covers I have worked on as well, has set "cover dress".  They are a set size.  and are usually made, and provided from  The Art department, and are set up so that it makes pre-press easy for the printers, and for the artists to keep things within spec. These will usually contain the cover graphics, a space for a title, with a font specified, and a place for the ISBN Bar code, and/or the Price.  These REALLY Help for layout. 

Inside the format should be specified. One  or two column.  Illustration size. illustrations border, or borderless,  fonts, and numbering.   In broad terms a format for presenting the material should be worked up, as well, so that authors can work from an outline, and then fill it out. I suppose follow a Paiso-like approach once again, as that seems to work.

But the page count needs to be very limited, again to keep things short and expenses low. Sound good?
 
I guess in out case was that the GM would not allow buying up attacks, or defenses. If we saved our XPs, we could buy another power, or buy off disads, but 10 dice was 10 dice.. But getting more skills was very helpful as was buying more and different defenses.

I started down that road: a one-book-complete-to-play idea, but now I'm thinking Champions Complete plus a new campaign book would draw more new people.

*Have to* have?  No.  Why are they often used?  Familiar tropes.  Orcs - primitive, brutish, violent.  Dwarves - underground, mining, obsessed with material things.  Just like human tropes - Vikings, Romans, Horse Nomads.  You have a good idea of where they fit in to the world with little explanation needed.

No offense taken. 🙂  You and me, we don't have a problem. 👍

*Have to* have?  No.  Why are they often used?  Familiar tropes.  Orcs - primitive, brutish, violent.  Dwarves - underground, mining, obsessed with material things.  Just like human tropes - Vikings, Romans, Horse Nomads.  You have a good idea of where they fit in to the world with little explanation needed.

Ah; I see.
 
Thank you, Sir.  I had totally missed that.
 

 

I started down that road: a one-book-complete-to-play idea, but now I'm thinking Champions Complete plus a new campaign book would draw more new people.

It looks to me like just a low end Life Support vs poisons (minor food poisoning) as you say, maybe 1-2 points.  Not enough to save your life from strychnine, but able to survive eating that half-chewed coyote you ran across in the plains after starving a week.
 
 
Well to me that's more of a setting rule than an individual thing.  Either characters run out of bullets in this campaign, or they don't; everyone.  Because no matter what you price it at (more on that in a moment), every player but the big boxer character who uses his fists or the slick knife fighter is going to buy it; if its available why they hell would you not??  Six shots is a pretty severe limitation on firepower in a gun battle, its why cops bailed on their wheel guns in the 80s no matter how reliable and trusty they were.
 
This is the biggest gun anyone is likely to wield in the game:
Enfield Pattern 1853   3d6+1 RKA (50 active points) 6 charges, recoverable: -¼ limitation (10 points) "it shoots through schools"
 
The Maxim is even worse, but it has so many rounds that it doesn't even get a limitation from charges, so it wouldn't cost anything.  Plus, good luck running into one.
 
The M1857 12-pounder is a cannon, not even a crew served gun so it doesn't count.  Unless you're that giant from the Harold Lloyd film carrying a gun around on your back, I guess.
 
So if you really wanted it, 10 points is probably a decent price.
 
So decent, like I said, everyone would just buy it.

After further consideration, I'm not sure that a new version of Champions Complete is a good idea... the store shows 29 physical copies left in stock (is this something that can feasibly be re-printed?)  I'm going back and re-reading it; if a new, edited version were made, what would be the major differences?
 
As for the rest of it; yes, I'm thinking a new city (possibly the one Mark Rand is considering) with explanation of where all the levers are set (a playable game, rather than a toolkit) and ready-to-play scenario or two, with enough to transition into a longer-term campaign.  Then thin adventure books.

As far as Walkabout, do we have any Australian Herophiles?  They could probably come up with good write-ups and backstories.
 
Paraphrased from seanbaby.com re: Apache Chief of the Superfriends: Now that I mention it, I don't think he was Apache or a chief.  His name doesn't make any sense.  That's like putting a Caucasian on a team of Native Americans and naming him 'Minnesota President'.  'Hey, I'm not from Minnesota, guys.  I'm a plumber from Texas.  I'm not President, either.' 'Shut up, you're Minnesota President!'
 

Yeah, its one of those rules that breaks down very quickly at high power levels because of the doubling effect of lift in STR.  Technically "half your strength" is 5 points less.  That's half your lift

Sounds very dark.  Two different evils, both justifying themselves.  If I ran a campaign like that, I'd make the player part of a third group that was trying to create Steam without expendable workers and Agriculture without slavery.  A 'new beacon' or 'shining light on a hill'...
 
Perhaps Lincoln would be a founding member.
 

I like the 3E Encumbrance rules - you wear heavy armor, you're easier to hit and fatigue faster.  Keep in mind that I started role-playing with The Fantasy Trip rather than D&D.  TFT has a 'heavier armor absorbs more damage but makes you easier to hit (and harder to hit someone else as well).
 
Casual STR has always bugged me.  It should be a straight -x to your full STR.  STR 10 normal human goes from 100 kg to 50 kg, while STR 60 brick goes from 100 *tons* to 1,600 kg!  Wha? 🤔
 
Especially since if characters combine their STRs you add their individual lifting capacities and then determine the combined STR by the sum of those capacities.

Harn is being run on the Hero Discord Server, using Hero, 8pm Eastern, on Saturdays.

Despite my habit of hanging around the CO forums to answer Champions "lore" questions, I haven't played it in quite some time. New content is thin, old content is in need of revision and updating, and the overall direction of the world and adventures for the past several years doesn't feel like comic-book superheroes to me. More like fantasy with spandex.
 
It just doesn't excite me any more.

And just as a corollary to Duke's recommendation (which I heartily endorse), almost everything published in the past for Talislanta -- and there's a lot of it -- has been made available by the setting's creator and IP owner in PDF form for completely legal FREE download: http://talislanta.com/talislanta-library
 
BTW a new edition of Talislanta has been announced which will be dual-statted for DnD 5E, as well as Tal's more traditional system: http://talislanta.com/
 
And the page with the announcement proudly proclaims in big bold letters: 35 YEARS LATER... STILL NO ELVES!

Here's the abstract for the campaign I described above, in case anybody is interested.
 
"In 2022, the shining metropolis of Millennium City stands as a beacon of determination, resilience and the power of community. Thirty years ago, the city of Detroit, Michigan stood in that same spot. But old Detroit was destroyed in the titanic clash between the most powerful supervillain who ever lived, the aptly named Doctor Destroyer, and the virtual army of heroes who stood against him. 
 
Today, Millennium City is the most technologically advanced - and many would say, most enlightened - city on Earth. It is also at the center for the superhuman community and the headquarters of many of the world's most important corporations and organizations. Millennium City is the proverbial phoenix, risen from the ashes. 
 
But that's not your city. Your city is the aged, gasping old hound that was put to sleep by the Battle of Detroit. Your city is the Detroit that grew up at the crossroads of ancient trails and far-reaching waterways, at the heart of the land that would someday be called North America. She grew up fighting for scraps as ancient peoples and mighty empires fought over her. She's been taken by one power after another for centuries, and she's been used hard until she's been all but used up.
 
Nobody's fighting over her anymore. The Arsenal of Democracy and the roaring engine of the US automobile industry is sputtering, on its last fumes. The rich and powerful climb over the less fortunate on their way out of the pit that they've dug.
But that pit is your Detroit.
 
It's the beginning of 1988 and it's the beginning of the end for Detroit. If nobody else is going to fight for this hollowed-out city of the desperate and the scavengers who feed on them, you will."

I haven't played recently, but was actually thinking about last night. I agree about the costume designer - I sometimes use it get portraits/tokens for my VTT campaign. I also agree that you should check it out before buying it. 

I still play this but just not as much as I used to. Whether it's worth your time or not is something you'd have to decide. However, many people in CO have said it's got the best costume designer in any game, and I have to agree.  Upgrades? If you mean life-time, I'd suggest you try it first.