assault

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

This brings up another point. Yes' date=' Champions does try to simulate Superhero comics. However, not all comics are published in the USA; if you count Manga (and you should) the vast majority of Superhero comics today are not American, and many of the most popular writers and artists working in American comics are not Americans. American comics may have opperated on the idea that almost the vast majority of Supers are in America, but personally I can see no compelling reason why the CU should follow that path.[/quote']

 

The real point is that the biggest single chunk of Champions players live in the US, with Canada or the UK being second. The rest of us trail along after them somewhere. That means that most of the Champions line will be geared to players from North America. It appears that most people tend to set their games in their own countries, if not their own hometowns. Going elsewhere is something done relatively occasionally.

 

For this reason, it is entirely possible and reasonable that a lot of the rest of the world can be respresented as something of a cardboard cutout. "Other supers are there, but if you don't bother them, they won't bother you."

 

Yes, there should be a nice little sample of "foreign" characters to run into, but generally speaking a fairly small sample should be enough.

 

Earlier in this thread I have made suggestions about what Australian presence I would like to see. Essentially I suggested about half a dozen characters - a couple of heroes, and a few more villains. And maybe a New Zealander or two.

 

That's it. But that would actually fill up a fair chunk of the book, and there are other countries that frankly deserve a bigger representation.

 

So however Darren deals with things, coverage is going to be really sparse.

 

Actually, and just to prove that there is a point to my ravings, I just had a thought...

 

Some characters can be used in multiple settings!

 

We've been discussing the question of national stereotyping. One of the best ways of getting around this is to represent the fact that many nations have experienced significant immigration.

 

For example, there is no reason at all why ethnically Chinese supers (for example) couldn't be found in Australia. But if a particular GM wasn't interested in using them in Australia, they could easily turn up in the US, the UK, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada or, heaven forbid, even in China!

 

Obviously you can't do this too much - you wouldn't normally expect all of a nation's supers to be members of minority ethnic or cultural groups - but there is quite a bit of scope for it.

 

And, of course, you always have the option of characters like Atlanteans, Empyreans and so on, who can be found anywhere a GM would like them to be found. But of course they're not really within the scope of the book we are discussing. They are good floating characters though...

 

PS:

For peoples' amusement: a while back I was considering writing an article for Digital Hero about "how to run a campaign set outside the Big City". While that seems to have gone the way of all my passing enthusiasms some of the ideas I suggested above came from my preparatory thoughts about "how can you justify this many supers in this small a town"?

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

I was under the impression that Australia and New Zealand were not given many heroes because 1: they don't have a huge population' date=' and so more than the listed 4 heroes would seem to get in the way of any PC heroes, 2: they are far-removed from the rest of the world and few PCs would have a reason to visit the country more than once [it's not the type of country you can get to by accidentally crossing borders from some other country'], and 3: the crime rates seem fairly low there. Everyone is too friendly [or they were when I was there].

We've probably already spent too much time on Australia already, but...

1. Australia's population is around 20 million, compared to 32-33 million for Canada. (According to the CIA World Factbook.) NZ has around 4 million.

Clearly, the two countries could potentially support more than the listed number of superbeings. Unfortunately Champions Universe implies that the ratio of supers per head of population is rather low. Since this is a passing comment that appears to contradicted elsewhere in the same source, we can assume it is incorrect, or, at least, incomplete.

It certainly is if anyone wants to set a campaign here. Any NZ game, and any Australian game that doesn't range over the whole country is probably going to have a distribution of superbeings that doesn't particularly correspond to the general distribution of the general population.

That's not a problem for Champions Worldwide, though. What I think it needs to do is to provide a comparatively small number of characters that can be used in a short sequence of scenarios, or provide a basis for creating a more elaborate local setting if a particular GM wants.

In short, the listed characters, a Kiwi hero or two, and a few extra villains would be perfectly fine. In My Humble Opinion, of course.

OK, so population isn't a problem...

2. Frequency of use: well, I'm rather unlikely to ever use any Canadian characters... This is a "it depends" question, isn't it?

Of course you can find any kind of supers pretty much anywhere the GM wants to put them. Visiting Antarctica? Samoa? Mechanon's base in the Indian Ocean? Guess who you run into! Or you can simply have them turn up in your own home town...

Regardless of which characters Darren chooses to put into the book, no GM is ever likely to use them all. Well, unless they deliberately build a globetrotting campaign around it. Which might work, and thus prove that no statement is always true, especially when it's made by me.

3. Crime rates: Bite Me.

Re: The Legion Thread

But... Invisible Kid *did* die!

Yeah, but it was a case where his Combat Luck didn't apply. He wasn't just zapped by some random mook.

Or, come to think of it, maybe his Combat Luck did apply, and he died anyway. After all, he was fighting *Validus*.

In Mike's writeup: is his martial arts legal? Aren't you supposed to buy a minimum of 10 points of maneuvers?

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

7) Atlanteans (and Wanambi Man' date=' so there, nyahh) turn up in Hidden Lands. [/quote']

 

Curses, foiled again!

 

On the general point of national distinctiveness: it might be worth checking out the superheroes that have actually been published in various countries.

 

I've already posted two links to the International Superheroes site, but that's because it rocks...

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk

 

Of course that still shouldn't take away from an emphasis on the characters that have already been named.

Re: Viperia: Less Pow Than Champions??

The easiest way for the Champions to beat Viperia is to introduce her to Hostess Cup Cakes.

At least, it works that way in the ads.

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

I forgot two essential Australian character types:

the swashbuckling ninja

and, of course, the "Australian" hero who was originally from New Zealand.

A surprisingly large proportion of internationally prominent Australians are "really" Kiwis. I think this deserves a homage.

A slightly more serious alternative to the swashbuckling ninja might be the outback crocodile hunter type. It's a hideous stereotype, of course, but there's inherently nothing wrong with that. It's not, after all, much dumber than Captain Australia.

An even more serious "bush" character might be a bit like this guy: http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/j/jackaroo.htm

On the other hand, serious might actually be the wrong word for him, since many of his stories are distinctly tongue in cheek.

Speaking of "bush" characters: Australia is an overwhelmingly urbanised society. Most Australian supers would be city based.

Re: Let's Talk CvK

A character with CVK will also tend to rely on non-damaging attacks of they have them (Entangles' date=' Flashes, etc.). Also, a character with CVK wouldn't be okay with leaving people maimed, battered and/or in a coma. Sure, it's not killing, but that's only because the character got lucky and the player can see the dice. A character with CVK should believe in critical hits and death blows, and be afraid that any heavy attack might cause one.[/quote']

 

So, no CVK for Batman, then?

 

This seems a little funny, since he pretty much was the first character to be given one.

 

(I still like the original, non-CVK version, though. And killer Robin, too.)

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want?

1. Captain Australia. I loved both of those characters (from HSA1 -- for those not familiar with them, they were a brother and sister with mystical Superman-like powers; he was the original, and she took over after he received a crippling injury). They definitely deserve to still exist.

 

...

 

3. Antarctica.

...

I also agree completely with MitchellS' recommendation that the named-but-not-statted characters be the first source for ideas.

1. No Captain Australia!!!!

3. The Empyreans are in Antarctica.

I agree with the emphasis on named but not statted characters. Of course, a few new ones would be fine.

I guess, since I object to Captain Australia, I should suggest that Harrier and Brigade should be statted. To me, Harrier sounds like "a guy with wings", kind of like this character: http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/crimscom.htm

Brigade isn't as obvious, but he might be a duplicator - a "one man army brigade". Perhaps with a touch of Agent Smith from the Matrix films... Duplication isn't a power that gets used much, so this might be a good excuse.

I guess these guys would have to be a bit tougher than starting points, since they would presumably usually operate more or less alone.

Please feel free to ignore Walkabout and Wanambi Man.

Some Australian and New Zealand villains might be nice.

Oh, and some Atlanteans would be good, since they can be used anywhere that there is a coastline.

Re: Aquaman: WTF?

It makes about as much sense as Namor being able to fly because of those little wings on his ankles.

The Golden Age - love it or leave it.

Re: Need help with Teen Heroes

A thought about campus politics:

I would expect Stanford to be pretty quiet in 1963, but as a comparison, Berkeley was the scene of a big Free Speech Movement in 1964.

It seemed to have come pretty much from out of the blue, although the political clubs that formed its organisational backbone were well established. This seems to have been the beginning of Berkeley being the "radical" campus. I gather Stanford lagged behind.

So I would imagine a fairly conservative crewcuts-and-ties atmosphere. Even the "radicals" would look pretty straitlaced by todays standards!

On the other hand, Stanford was co-educational from the very beginning. It has a website: http://www.stanford.edu/home/welcome/

Re: WWYCD: Toy Recall!

Assault can't fix it himself. If he had found out about it before the toys were distributed, he could have.

That means that he is going to have to seek assistance.

There are two options:

(1) the magical one

(2) the scientific one.

Assault has a rather difficult relationship with the Mystic World, but there are a couple of "trenchcoat" mages he gets along with well enough. (They don't actually wear trenchcoats much, because the weather here is usually too hot). A brief trip to visit Santa might be in order.

Failing that, it's off to see the local gadgeteer. I actually wrote up a gadgeteer version of Assault once, but I've never actually played him, so I guess he would have to visit his pals Professor Plott and Doctor McGuffin.

What could they do? Well, it might just turn out that Black Harlequin was thoughtful enough to externally synchronise their attacks, or have some kind of data link with the toys so he could enjoy watching them play. If this connection worked both ways, it might be possible to remotely disable them.

But Assault would mainly just be a spectator during all this. I suppose he would probably wind up leading the team that has to take control of the ground station (or the satellite!) the toys' communications are run through.

Both plotlines would work, wouldn't they? The Santa one is definitely sillier. I guess you would go with the one that best fits your mood.

Or there might be some other way of stopping the toys. Presumably the GM will have placed clues pointing to it.

If there isn't some way of dealing with the situation, however, then the GM is a jerk, and there is no point playing in their game. And, of course, that "some way" should be some way available to the PCs that are actually playing the game. It should not be dependent on powers, skills or contacts that the PCs don't have.

And come to think of it, it shouldn't really be dependent on the players being all that competent, either. They should be able to muddle through, short of being total fools. The alternative is lots of imaginary dead kids, which isn't really what the game is about.

Re: WWYC Want for Christmas?

Assault would like an invulnerable flying puppy too.

It would fit in with his ideal superteam: a dog, a gorilla, a robot and a small boy.

Re: Do you use the official Champions Universe?

I'm one of the "the official CU is a handy source of spare parts" brigade. Option 3, in other words.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

A belated thought on Hermit's story:

This whole setup has "Darkseid" written all over it.

Or, more generally, "mastermind supervillain". Say, Ultra-Humanite, the Red Skull, Kang, or someone of that sort.

Sure, it might just be an outbreak of premature Iron Ageishness, but my character would start looking for Hitler's Brain. It's got to be around here somewhere...

Re: Party!

Not so much a what would your character do' date=' but whats DOES your character do, specfically for fun? Most of us seem to put alot of thought into our character fighting style, code name, costume, background but what do they do to relax and burn off stress? Whats the guy under the costume like when he lets his hair down?[/quote']

 

Assault drinks Scotch and Ground Glass.

 

Because he can.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

IRL' date=' it was the first and only HUAC broadcast that basically killed it, or so I've read.[/quote']

 

McCarthy was a Senator, and head of a Senate committee. HUAC was a committee of the House of Representatives, which continued operating well into the 60s, although with diminishing political effect.

 

McCarthy was hosed by a combination of being broadcast on television, plus running up against the prestige of the Army.

 

Most supers figure it's a good idea, and they go "under the radar." A few, of course, don't, but the impression with most people is that supers are mostly gone. This lasts until about the mid-60s, when social activism comes back in a big way, and the new supers decide they don't want to hide their light under a bushel. And thus, the new age of supers begins.

 

Well, I prefer the Silver Age to begin in the mid-50s, but otherwise, yeah, that would work.

 

My own explanation would include an emphasis on how rare supers are to begin with. If there are no more than a couple of dozen heroes, many non-powered, then the problem can go away very quickly.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

During the late 40s and 50s very little was known about what was actually happening and what life had been like under the Communist regime. We know now but people didn't know back then. Television was only just in its infancy and radio was still a main source of news.

...

It is feasible that supers of the period could be communists and believers in the system without knowing what is being done in Russia and Eastern Europe.

A lot of what was happening was known. At least enough to get a feel for things.

People can find excuses for a lot of things. Fascism was real, and so was counter-revolutionary terrorism. No, they don't justify all the Stalinist crimes and nonsense, but the threshold is a lot higher than is often appreciated.

In addition, a lot of leftist sentiment was actually related to opposition to things like racism, support for anti-colonial struggles, and things like that. Stalin's antics were actually irrelevant to that. The CP was one of the few political organisations to regard African-Americans as human beings. That, deservedly, earned them credit that no amount of nonsense overseas could entirely take away.

Finally, there were, of course, the Trotskyists, who to a large extent were the people who had actually blown the whistle on the Purges in the first place, way back in the 30s. They were communists explicitly _despite_ the crimes of Stalinism.

And then there are anarchists, social democrats, left liberals and so on - people who would simply be swept up into a single bucket by the witchhunters.

In other words, leftists in the real world in the 40s and 50s were not fools, not dupes, not ignorant, and not monsters. They were sane and often quite superb human beings.

It's rather a shame that their counterparts in a superhero roleplaying universe are the Bad Guys. But they are, usually.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

I most definitely stand corrected.

Seriously, though, assuming a relatively even statistical spread of powers, and a fairly small population of supers, it's pretty likely that there would have been very few leftish supers in the US in the 40s and 50s. They would have been a minority of a tiny minority.

At this point we can also ask, "where are the black supers?", and so on, but I'll pass on that at the moment.

I've been thinking about the supposed socialist/communist hostility to the "individual superman". There's a couple of things involved.

First, in the real world, they are an ideological construct, not an actual phenomenon. That probably makes some kind of difference.

Second, while Stalin, in particular, might have problems with powerful supers potentially posing a threat to him in the Soviet Union, that doesn't have much to do with "Red Masks" in the US.

Third, well, plenty of leftist writers, filmmakers and so on have managed to create stories with heroes. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to for them to do one with superpowers.

As I've already suggested, leftist pulp writers like Dashiell Hammett churned out plenty of good action adventure yarns. It wouldn't be too hard to put Sam Spade in a mask, particularly if labor racketeers wanted to discuss certain matters with him...

And then there is the mutant metaphor. The late 50s were the heyday of the Civil Rights movement, and the Klan were doing their best to stop it. It wouldn't be hard to work up a superheroic reflection of that kind of conflict.

Who would be the natural political allies of mutants? The same people who supported the Civil Rights movement, of course.

That would be more a factor in the 60s, of course, once the Mutant Scare gets going....

Re: Dark Galactic Champions

The old DC L.E.G.I.O.N. 89/90/whatever series would be a good source, too. It covered every power level you could mention, from non-powered normals right up to Lar Gand and Lobo.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

I think that the concept of the superman is pretty much antithetical to socialism and communism. There'd be a few' date=' but I think they'd be at least as rare as supers who have religious themes.[/quote']

 

First of all, if powers are distributed randomly, political opinions wouldn't be a factor.

 

But assuming they aren't, there are some fairly obvious options for leftist superheroes:

 

First of all, the original version of Superman was a social activist.

 

There are leftist strands in the "hard boiled detective" genre. This is the genre that underlies Batman style crimefighting. DC have explicitly specified that the Crimson Avenger fought (briefly) in the Spanish Civil War. He, and other pulpish types such as Slam Bradley are perfect candidates for having leftist leanings.

 

Mystic types like Dr Occult, on the other hand, definitely aren't going to be socialists.

 

You may have noticed something about the examples I have used: they are all from 1938 or before. G*ddamn pinkos were there from the very beginning!

 

The flagsuits were the imitators.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

My personal preference for why Superheroes become less active after World War II is quite simple. Most superheroes in WWII were motivated to fight a war for the defense of their nation(s) and a defense of liberty. They aren't so motivated to fight crime' date=' so many retire after WWII to do what they did before it.[/b']

Yeah, that works. The main problem is why weren't more of them able to be mobilised to fight the Cold War.

In many cases, age would do the job. Being a superhero is at least as physically stressful as being a champion professional athlete.

Others probably did the "get married and settle down" thing. With greater private responsibilities, their chances to go swashbuckling over rooftops probably diminished. The less motivated thrill seeking types would tend to be vulnerable to pressures of this type, even if the obsessed vigilantes weren't. And guess what? Batman was one of the characters that didn't retire.

Another issue is: what happened to the kid sidekicks? They would have been becoming adults just as their mentors were becoming less active. Why didn't they take over?

Personally, I'm working on a timeline that has the first supers appearing in the 50s, not the 30s. Good old Earth-1, cut down to a manageable size, and with the serial numbers filed off. And yes, there will be an Earth-2...

Re: 2004, another world thankfully not our own

This does get to be a touchy subject because facts are in dispute. Some folks look at McCarthy, have never heard (or don't trust) Vernona and are disgusted. There are even some who have never got the word on communism that a lot of folks have, i.e. massive death and starvation, fear, secret police. It is always "well, the Russians just did it wrong. When we get in power, things will be different" etc. etc. etc.

Apart from North Korea, the "communist" states that still exist are very different from the way they were back in the 50s. I have friends living in China, Vietnam and Cuba, and it's quite clear that these societies have very little in common with the Soviet Union under Stalin, or even with themselves during the same period.

Even China, the most repressive, has changed massively from how it was even as recently as the early 70s.

If we look back at the French Revolution, it seems as though "massive death and starvation, fear, secret police" etc seem to be functions of revolutions as such, rather than of "communism". After all, the goal of the French revolution was to establish _capitalism_.

This post is a fine example of the inflammatory nature of threads like this. I probably should delete it. But I won't.

Re: 2004, another world thankfully not our own

I've been playing with Hermit's little bit of fiction as a potential parallel universe. Here are some of my thoughts:

There's "thousands" of supers out there: that's a lot. More than naturally exist in most universes. Either most of them are very low-powered or someone is creating them artificially, or both. There also seem to be enough members of certain groups to warrant them being given distinctive names: Ultra is an 'eye'. Presumably there are 'ears' and so on....

The distribution of powers doesn't seem to be completely random. That supports a program of deliberate creation, as, of course, does the implication of active recruitment in "The American League grew and grew, by necessity".

How powerful are these deliberately created supers? If they are as powerful as "naturally occurring" supers, then, well, there's a whole lotta of powerful supers out there! If not, then the American League's power is most likely to be concentrated in a fairly small proportion of its membership.

Of course, the "created" supers may all share a common weakness. Identifying that might potentially represent a way to take them down en masse. Or, if they aren't that powerful, they might be able to be handled by lots of non-powered insurgents...

Either way, a rebellion against the American League would require a cadre of superbeings of its own. And that's where PCs come in.

It would also help if the opposition had some decent organisers. I always get annoyed by sloppy rebels.

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

Thank you for reminding me why I'm not reading this thread.

 

Why not take the McCarthy-worship to NGD or http://www.freerepublic.net? I'm here to learn more about Champions.

It's potentially a very interesting thread, if flame wars can be avoided.

The main flame risk is, of course, from the barking mad McCarthyites. If we could convince them to go away and leave us alone, we could actually get on with exploring an interesting aspect of Silver Age settings. But they won't leave us alone.

Anyway, yesterday I outlined my "Blue/Black/Red Mask" schema. What do people think?

I can give some examples of characters that would fit into each category, drawn from those being published during the period:

"Blue" - Captain America (, Commie Smasher), Superman, Wonder Woman, Vigilante.

"Black" - Batman, Aquaman

"Red" - Johnny Quick, Martian Manhunter, Captain Comet, Green Arrow (see below).

Obviously, since this is a slightly tongue in cheek schema, these divisions are somewhat arbitrary. This is particularly true of the "Red Mask" category.

I'll explain the latter:

Johnny Quick: in the only contemporary (1953) JQ story I have read, Johnny reveals an undue concern for prison reform. And he wears red.

Martian Manhunter: A mind-controlling monster from the Red Planet, who pretends to be one of us. 'Nuff said.

Captain Comet: Another liberal in a red costume. He ends up defecting to "space". Yeah, "space". We believe you, Captain Commie.

"Red" Arrow: OK, this is a result of backdating his 70s liberalism back to the 50s. You caught me. The "real" 50s Green Arrow was a bland Bat-clone, but the one from the 70s, and, of course, The Dark Knight Returns, is an obviously blacklistable "hero".

I haven't included any female characters. There weren't that many around to choose from. We can safely bet that any Commie "heroine" wears a revealing costume, and is probably a lesbian. Hmm. Kind of like Wonder Woman, really. And she's not really an American, is she? I can feel a subpoena coming on...

Yes, this is all nonsense. Your point is?

Re: I Have In My Hand A List...

The whole idea that McCarthy and The Red Scare "saved the US from the Commies" is...

 

nevermind, I'm not going to get into that here.

Yeah. I sat around for over half an hour trying to write a few sentences that weren't going to start a flamewar.

rbezold's suggestion for a change of focus is probably a good idea.

One idea I have toyed with in the past is to divide supers of this period into "Blue Masks" (that is, Red, White and...), "Black Masks" (unsanctioned vigilantes doing their business regardless) and a very few "Red Masks" (who mainly just maintain unfashionable ideas about social justice, although a few of them probably do have some communist sympathies). Obviously the different groups are prone to clash, although some of them probably maintain strained social ties across the categories...

Hmm. Assault would have been a "Red Mask" if he had been around then!