Doctor Agenda

I'm trying to come up with a snazzy alternative word to 'supers' for a new campaign about weird superheroes and mindbending horror. Supers are a recent (late 90s) development, but costumed crimefighters of the Watchmen (or Tick) sort have been common since the mid-eighties. I want something distinctive to call supers that will also make my players think I'm clever. Supers is the generic term. DC often uses the word Meta, and Marvel sometimes calls them...Marvels. The Wild Cards novels called them Aces or Jokers, depending on their looks. The Aberrants game calls them Novas, and the Defiants game calls them Deltas. Here are the ideas I've already come up with, which don't quite do it for me: Avatars--I like it, but I'd prefer one less syllable. Ultras--Is this what they call supers in the Ultraverse? Warps--Appropriate, but sounds kind of insulting. Comments, suggestions, cute remarks?

I'm pretty sure the Captain Nice TV show spawned the comic book. The vampire detective in Forever Knight was Nicholas (Nick) Knight. Mr. Terrific was on TV?

Modern Marvel Western Heroes Marvel has several supers that maintain a Western feel to them and were at one time in a group called the Rangers...some of them were created for the first appearance of the Rangers, some had been around for awhile. Texas Twister...I think he first appeared as a Shield super agent. Shooting Star...created for the group, I believe, turned out to be a demon, but maybe there's a real Shooting Star out there somewhere. Red Wolf...the quintessential Native American Western superhero. Phantom Rider...a guy possessed by the ghost of one of the previous Phantom Riders. Some other Marvel Native American supers are Black Crow, Puma, and American Eagle. Also, props to DC's Jonah Hex, who is definitely a super level fighter.

Pigeon Man? I am terribly, terribly old and was a child at the time so my recollection is inexact, but I remember a TV Series featuring Pigeon Man or Captain Pigeon, who could fly by flapping his arm-flaps. This was probably in the mid or late sixties. Like Captain Nice, he took drugs. I also remember a TV Movie featuring a Captain Chameleon who had a holographic suit given to him by a wannabe hero, the Parakleet of Justice. The Parakleet died and the would-be sidekick wound up being the main character. I can't remember the name of the movie, though, unless it was Captain Chameleon.

My group is doing a round-robin dimension-hopping superhero game where one of the characters is a mage from a fantasy world where Camelot has endured. In that world technology has only progressed to 13th century levels because of magic and a conservative and powerful church. Grimoire was a member of the Champions of Camelot (because wizards cannot be knights), a group of supers with fantasy trappings, many with connections to famous people from the age of Arthur. The adventure in that world was very much like supers in any low-tech setting, except you never knew when you would run into someone as powerful or more powerful than you. The Champions of Camelot kept powerful individuals and monsters in check, providing for a stable society in a medieval world of supers. If that didn't work, at least all sides had their own super-types...powerful humans are rare, but Fey Creatures are distressingly likely to meddle.

Turakian, Valdorian, and so on Two words: Mole Men. I'm not sure which age is what, but either way there should be some of those Lemurian Mole Men running around in the deepest caverns. In other words, tie in some Champions Universe timeline stuff. Although I'm sure there won't be enough room for all my favorite fantasy critters from cultures around the world, some suggestions on using writeups to represent different critters would be welcome, of the Oni is equivalent to a Yaksha is equivalent to a Giant Hag variety.Options for customizing always welcome.

Thanks, Starlord, it certainly sounds like the cover art is the source of my confusion. I did run it by my girlfriend, who should know, and she thought Quantum was a white woman, or, and I quote: "light enough to pass". It was an honest mistake on my part, sorry to have led the thread so far off-track.

I like Hermit's curse idea. Our current Chicago campaign features a new team, Justice Watch (yeah, I know there's only supposed to be one team, you can guess how long that lasted--at least we've got a Chicagoan attitude about justice). The GM is using the original Champions Universe as history. So, the Freedom Squad is an example of the curse: they lost two members and disbanded years ago. The Peacekeepers aren't doing that well either, apparently. The GM hasn't revealed the membership of the Peacekeepers yet beyond their acting leader, but two NPC heroes have joined them so that's one way of filling up their ranks and recycling discarded heroes (the Peacekeepers being kind of like that island for broken toys and misfits). Leftover Freedom Squad members that aren't too geriatric might be in the Peacekeepers as well. Will the curse hit our team too? Maybe I shouldn't share this curse idea with our GM.

Jarring is a good word for it. From other comments I can only conclude that the copies that were sent to my city must have been printed differently, because all I can make out on Quantum's skin is a light tan, nothing like the dark brown used (I hear universally) for black people in comics, especially if its so obvious. Definitely not a Luke Cage, Misty Knight, Bob Foster, or T'challa skin tone. I've been known to read a comic or two and am familiar with the commonly used coloring. Since my opinion on NM's Quantum was apparently based on a badly-colored batch of the product I withdraw it, since I don't think anyone could mistake what's on mine for dark brown. I am aware of the exceptions to the rules...black people can have very light skin, naturally straight hair, eye colors besides brown. White people can have black kinky hair and dark tans or swarthy complexions. There is a lot of variation and a continuum between the various races. Many people are not easily recognizable as a member of a particular race. Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to inform me about these things, I can understand why someone might assume I don't know. The thing about comic book characters is they look the way they do on purpose. Unless the printer messes them up.

On the Champions race thing, that idea for making Nighthawk or Defender a minority would be a cool twist, maybe if we got a better look at them there could be a suprise inside . I like Kinetic, if they had actually put him in the Champions I wouldn't have opened my pie-hole on the subject. I looked at NM Quantum closely and while she could certainly have dyed it blonde, it looks like wavy soft hair to me, not straightened. Plus she just doesn't look like she has African features. I'll take the 30% estimate on blonde dye-jobs for black women in the 90s as exaggeration for effect. Maybe someday the artist will grace us with a clarification, but it's not so important I can't be content to let it remain a mystery (except to Starlord, of course) until then.

New Millenium Quantum: Militaristic yes, but IMHO, not black. That was one of the things I didn't like about her. Why change her race? She looks like a blonde, tan, California beach body builder with a mad-on to me. Conceivably her race is ambiguous, but I prefer the 4th Ed Quantum who was drawn as what she was, no mistaking it. I also didn't care for her being replaced with a Latino in the 5th Ed. Did someone think the old Champions was too minority-heavy with BOTH a black woman and a hispanic man or did they not have the rights to those characters so had to replace instead of update? If the latter, why not make one of the other characters black? I don't expect the Champions to be the League of Affirmative Action Heroes, but in 4th Ed there was more than a token minority.

Hermit, I like that idea! Hey, I just noticed I'm standard now. Hurray for me.

The trend on this discussion seems to be that yes, we old timers ARE nostalgic about the old characters, whether 4th ed., 3rd ed., or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. In a few years the new or revised characters may grow on us. DoJ made a decision to have a major revision, and since legal rights to old characters are involved we may never see official 5th ed writeups/updates on many of them. Unoffical writeups and updates on the other hand....

Name recognition is pretty much what makes it feel like a campy takeoff.Tarantulaman gives you name recognition, too. I don't stand by my ideas for names because they were off the top of my head, but "Five Americans, entering space in a homemade rocketship, ...." tells me who this entry is supposed to represent. You could call them anything and with that description I know who they're supposed to represent, without any extra page space needed. I LIKE homages, I just prefer a notch less blatancy. If the Fantastic Four means something to you, you can spot them without a sign hanging around their necks. We're far into the realm of personal preferences, though, and I'm happy to move on. Back on the main topic, which I've taken us away from, I'm with Hermit on Zorran...I want to use him but he cries out to have the heroes wind up in Lemuria, which Hero will probably publish something about eventually that I'll want to use but will contradict whatever I may have already done. And we've been given much, much more about the Lemurians than their main enemies, the Empyreans.

Some of the published characters rub me the wrong way, but it's the comic book rip-offs (excuse me, homages) in the timeline that get me. The Fabulous Five? The Secret Crisis? Why not throw in Tarantulaman and the Bulk while they're at it? I think Foxbat adds enough camp to the setting all by himself. I'll make an exception for the Lemurians and the Empyreans because I LIKE the Deviants and Eternals sort of thing, and names DO make a difference. Call the Fabulous Five something like Star Force and the Secret Crisis something like The Event, and that extra bit of differentiation does the trick for me.

Jhamin, you nailed me. I am one of those Champions fanboys who has everything Hero ever published except maybe some of those e-books they were doing in the lean years. I'm not sure I agree with the logic of throwing however-many of us were still USING the original universe in our campaigns into limbo, but I can understand the legal reasons for changing some of it and the economic reasons for not just going with something completely different (less irritating than mixing it up IMHO). There's nothing you can do about the legal reasons, so there had to be some changes...you can't even kill off characters you don't have rights to. I can't even really argue that they would have been better off to start over from scratch, since I'm going to buy everything they publish anyway. I can't help feeling a little cheated though...I didn't get a revitalized Champions Universe OR an entirely new and novel setting.

I would have liked an updated Champions Universe in the first place. The previous one was 1993, they could have done much of what they did for the new CU without throwing the old continuity out: gotten rid of old characters, brought in new ones, a world can change alot in 10 years. Many characters could have become older, more mature, retired, become handicapped, died, found a rejuvenating formula, etc. It would have been more interesting to me to see what happened in the last ten years than to go through another New Millenium style pastiche of old and new.

Hero Teams: Southguard (which later became Earthguard) Redeemers Earth Force Storm Dragons Justice Watch

I am transforming my humble attempt at guessing what an Empyrean (CU) character would be like into a Superman type. He started off as a legacy-type hero: he accidentally absorbed the persona of a 10-year veteran vigilante, knocking the original into a coma and becoming Talion II. I found he had too many layers of secrets and wasn't comfortable playing someone so violent. After a villain he had decided had to be killed escaped to murder again (he felt he could have successfully captured him, it was trying to kill the Menton wannabe that gave him the opportunity to escape) he decided to find a way to restore the original Talion and get him out of his mind. Now calling himself Valiant, the only secret he's hiding is the existence of the Empyreans. He's a medium brick with psionic powers and Life Support who has decided to try to live up to the implied Heroic Code and eventually (over centuries perhaps) master being a superhero the way other Empyreans have mastered building or music. Not the standard for power in this campaign, but a good shot at the standard for heroism if I play him right. And yeah, I'm a bit over forty. Used to be a boy scout, too!

I didn't post any powers to get rejected, but I like the idea of super intelligence powers. I understand the standard of not using "non-power powers" for the USPDB, maybe these more subtle powers will someday find an official home. I'm not too leery of the Perfect Planning idea...if the guard shows up it WAS in the plan and you can use your Overall Levels to hide or take him out quickly...success is not guaranteed...if you can't get past the guard successfully, maybe he WASN'T in the plan. This power is no worse than any other explanation for giving people 5 Overall Levels temporarily except it doesn't state when the 5 levels are over and it needs 0 End (+1/2) and Persistent (+1/2) instead of Indirect (+3/4). The bonus ends when the Plan Goes Awry (-1/4), which could be when someone fails a roll even with the bonus or just when it becomes obvious than no contingency could cover the situation (except retreat!).

They (we) give it our all every time, only holding back if there is a special reason to (fighting unarmored gangbangers, for instance). Our battles tend not to be too short. Remember it takes about 7d6 normal damage (24.5 Stun on the average) to reliably punch-out (to dazed) a normal person with 20 Stun and 2 PD in one shot. It's dangerous, you're going to do 5 Body to the guy on the average (maybe a broken bone) and there's a remote chance (less than one in a hundred) that you'll take his Body down to below zero on a high roll. If you've got a GM who thinks Stunned Normals will be out of the fight you can be a little more restrained and still look tough and not waste precious segments fighting the mooks when someone's about to press a Doomsday button. To one-punch someone reliably with a 10d6 normal attack, their combined Stun and Defense have to be less than 35, say 4 PD and 30 Stun. We're talking about a guy with a 50 Str having to use it all to have a good chance of knocking out a Skilled Normal. Someone with an 80 Str could one-punch (on the average) someone with a combined Stun and Defense of 56, say a not-too-tough villain with 40 Stun and 15 PD. A 10-12 DC attack would have to succeed about twice, an 8 DC attack would have to succeed about three times to do the same thing. It's all about how the GM sets things up, the players will have their characters do what they think they need to do to win, if restraint is not rewarded somehow even someone who would like to play a character with more restraint will probably start pulling out the stops eventually. If combats are too short (I can't remember the last time I heard that complaint about a Hero game) and you want to lengthen them by having the heroes pull their punches out of fear of hurting someone, try using hit locations to give them more options for ways to defeat their opponents and have the mooks (agents ore whatever) die if they take a disabling shot to a vital area (head, chest stomach, vitals). One way to encourage them to take aimed shots is to allow half damage if they fail to hit the location but would have hit their opponent if not for the location penalties...just because they don't hit just right doesn't mean they couldn't have hit SOMETHING. You can also use the very realistic method of having Stunned NPCs think very hard about getting up in a hurry to get hit again...it would be nice if once in a while at least they would play dead or run away or take a couple of recoveries. Adding more opponents is also a good way to stretch out combat and gives that "we beat the odds" feeling. As far as those villains going down so quick, remember the Bell Curve: most of the time your damage rolls will center around the average, not the maximum, and this is more true the more dice you use. A 16d6 attack will usually not do more than 60 points of damage so a 30 Def Brick with 65 Stun will probably be able to soak up a couple of hits without too much trouble. And with a 16d6 attack on the hero's part you're talking about a high or very-high powered game. If your villains are going down too quick the best option is probably to give them more Stun. You can also have them fight cleverly, using cover, range, bystanders, minions, and scenery to advantage. If you haven't tried out those villains yet, you might want to have a practice combat with your players to see how it goes, you don't even have to tell them their opponent's real name, just change the look and name. If your bad guy goes down too easy in practice you can tell what he needs to be more challenging when you really use him. I just started using this trick, had my players go up against a woman with the same stats and abilities as Firewing only with an Electrical theme to see if Firewing could stand up against them okay in a fight. They saved the day with some effort and when I used the "real" Firewing I had him back up and use his powers from a great enough distance that it was a real challenge for SouthGuard to capture him. I hope you found something to use in all this.

The USMB is a great supplement for USM or a Horror Hero game, but of course we always want more! There is an Indonesian critter called a Sundel Balong (sp?) that appears to be a beautiful woman (heard that one before), but they have a hole in their back that they cover with their hair or clothes. Sounds like something else I heard of called a White Lady? They lure a man into a private place where they castrate him. Sounds like an urban legend sort of thing with the moral of don't go off with strange women (especially prostitutes, I would think). I've used a Yaksha in my Horror Hero/sort of Buffyesque campaign, but it was just a thinly-disguised D&D Ogre Mage, which in turn is a thinly-disguised (for what reason I do not know) Oni. Still, it was novel and a bit of a surprise (everyone remembered that episode of Kolchak and thought it was a Rakshasa that could be killed with a crossbow bolt). Looking forward to your finished product, definitely something I'm interested in getting.

A Middle East book has my vote. I've always had a thing for Mesopotamia. One of my favorite Hero lines was the Mythic series (Mythic Greece, Mythic Egypt--my fave!-etc.), I was even considering doing a Mythic Mesopotamia, and I'm not very ambitious when it comes to writing (as witnessed by the fact that I never actually did it...). In short, Middle East Monster Book, yay.

There is an Indian creature called a Yaksha, a sort of shapeshifting ogre that runs the gamut from divine messenger to hopeless romantic to baby-eater. They form the army of Kobaru (?), a god associated with the treasures of the Earth, but are also encountered on their own. This creature and the Oni seem like they may have been inspirations for the D&D Ogre Mage.

I personally like the idea of a Champions timeline distinct from Star Hero, et al. No varying chicken-or-egg relationship between magic and "scientific" powers. There are so many periods that lend themselves to superheroes in one form or another that you shouldn't have to give up (of course you don't HAVE to, but we're talking about source material) superheroes because its the wrong time period. Victorian superheroes may be "Extraordinary Gentlemen" with fewer points than Captain Ultra, but they fit like a glove into a superhero timeline. So do Arthur's knights, the Greek heroes, and so forth. I'm hoping the Valdorian Age and that other Fantasy Hero supplement whose name I can't recall will give plenty of room for a superhero option. If it's in the Champions timeline, it should have Champions. A straight fantasy setting doesn't need to be in a timeline that connects to a modern setting, IMHO. It makes sense that before modern technology and with fewer chemical/radiation triggering events that superhumans should be rarer, but not absent. I prefer this approach when I want to use the official timeline: supers exist, they've always existed, but they don't always have a high profile. For example, the Terran Empire has rumored Omega Psis, easily as powerful (maybe much more powerful) as Champions heroes, but rarely seen and many people have never heard of them. You can run a campaign in the Terran Empire setting without them ever being a factor if you want to. In my Terran Empire people with non-psi superpowers also exist with an even lower profile, but they are there if I ever want to trot them out. If they're on the same point level as the other characters I might even allow a person with beneficial mutations or other "science-based" super powers. I'm not sure about magic, but I've already divorced the science powers from magic, so maybe the magic level has gone down, or is even more underground (or lost) than science powers. Certainly a lack of magic hasn't slowed the published Terran Empire psis down much. I'm thinking of running a Champions game in the Terran Empire setting, as it is interesting and I don't want to wait a year for Galactic Champions. Conversions are a chore, but it's not like I'm trying to do Champions in Palladium's Rifts setting. THAT would be a REAL chore.