Champions: One Earth - 2024 Update

Surprise, surprise. I was able to continue my campaign up until about 3 weekends ago, when a family tragedy finally pushed me to take a break on a number of things.

I was able to pull the trigger on my take on time travel, and the Dark Future That Must Be Averted trope. Except that I seeded at least two (2) Dark Futures, and will seed a few more. One of those dark futures:

(art taken from hyperlinks in image)

(art from Marvel Zombicide game)

Yes, a dark future that combined both the Marvel Zombies & DCeased storylines. To give the PCs a chance at survival, I sent them to this dark future in a research (?) facility located in the Blue Area of the Moon, where they encountered some former heroes and villains zombified by a variant of the Anti-Life equation before hurrying back to their own time.

The other dark future was a classic that Marvel has already revisited multiple times -- the Days of Future Past future that haunts the X-comics line. This future visited their present, with different versions of Sentinels (with technology clearly traceable to a supposedly discontinued Project: Wideawake in my campaign's timeline) traveling from various futures to the present.

But now, it's time for a brief hiatus, because the power levels for PCs need to be revisited and adjusted before the next phase of my campaign.

Champions: One Earth (Adventure Sources 01)

Due to one of the inspirations for this campaign being Planetary ("Archeologists of the Impossible"), I planned for each adventure to have a bit of investigation and exploration. Naturally, for adventures like this, I looked to Gumshoe's many games for inspiration and plot ideas.

MUTANT CITY BLUES

This was the most obvious choice, because it's already in the second edition, is closely associated with my campaign plans (metahumans with police powers investigating the metahuman world).

I gleefully took the concept of the Quade Diagram (renamed it as an homage to the X-men creators), and added the ideas of predictable mutant power profiles (and common mental or physical problems associated to certain power clusters) to my world. Great rationale as to why there are so many mutants with healing factors, why strong guys tend to be tough too, and so on.

Also, the law and law enforcement structures are very easy to merge with DC & Marvel structures, and the various super-hero game write-ups across settings that tackle the same topics. And I do admit that I'm looking for a way to also add in the idea of Max-Tac from Cyberpunk / Cyberpunk 2020 for metahumans -- but that's another story.

However, since Mutant City Blues was heavily predicated on mutants (which I didn't want to lead off on in terms of adventures), this adventure source material was shunted back to my 3rd multi-session adventure instead. And I look forward to figuring out how the Milestone "Big Bang" event would tie into this as well.

Night's Black Agents

Due to the number of characters that are super-spy or super-agent adjacent in terms of character background, Night's Black Agents was also an obvious choice.

The trick, as I understood it, was to change the vampires (all the various types) into equivalent metahumans in the adventures, and I'd be home free.

On closer inspection, there were a couple of things that I realized I'd have to deal with in order to successfully convert these adventures:

1. the assumed super-spy team -- the default campaign structure in Night's Black Agents -- is supposed to be burned and on the run. No big agency with deep pockets to fall back on, no official police powers.
2. the super-spy team isn't supposed to be bulletproof, or capable of flying, or smashing through walls, or teleporting through floors, etc. The appearance of one (god forbid two) vampiric characters is supposed to vex the characters greatly, with the usual solution being evasion and escape unless they're prepared.

Naturally, a team of super-heroes, working together with proper teamwork, is more than a match for these monsters. So, some tweaking here too.

Cthulhu Confidential

Ultimately, after going through several adventure sources, my thoughts settled on one from Cthulhu Confidential -- one that I could easily tweak into an adventure dealing with monsters coming from the Kryptonian Phantom Zone.

The time period was a bit of a problem, but easily remedied by bleedover from the dimensional eccentricities of a badly opened gateway into the Phantom Zone.

The bigger issue was that Cthulhu Confidential is supposed to be a one-on-one type of game [ one GM one Player ] and having a team might wreak havoc with it. Fortunately, the adventure structure allowed for a classic JSA / JLA approach of breaking up into teams to investigate, and the presence of modern day comms allowed the team to converge on several locations at the same time just when needed.

Furthermore, unlike the Cthulhu trope of a showdown with fearful creatures causing death and insanity, the characters were happy to finally throw down and hit something after all the investigations and secrets and lies. There was some pacing that needed to be tweaked for future adventures (greater dangers and challenges to face in the pursuit of clue locations, before reaching the final showdown).

Overall, not bad. But I'll also be looking at adventures from more traditional super-hero RPGs to change things up from the investigation-heavy adventures.

Champions: One Earth (Storylines 02)

Continuing the storylines from the different timelines of the DC & Marvel Universes, here are a few more that I'm appropriating into my timeline for my combined One Earth universe.

House of X / Powers of X (The Krakoan Nation)

I found this storyline useful, because its core idea solved something for me with regards to mutants: there were so damn many of them intermingled within the fabric of multiple societies. While I could've scaled them back (there were never that many) or had some major event prune their numbers down (no more mutants, the Genosha Genocide, etc.), I liked the idea that they would form their own nation.

I also liked that there were plants that Krakoa provided that were beneficial to mankind and to mutantkind, that there would be a council that oversaw the birth and growth of the nation, and that there would still be dark futures that kept the attentions of the new 'super-power' in check: Orchis and various little known factions with great power.

There's a great summary of this storyline here on YouTube by Comics Explained.

Rather than use the heretofore unknown mutant ability of Moira MacTaggert, I'd rather come up with an excuse that it was an unforeseen tangent that united the factions of mutants under one banner, with world changing results.

Against the backdrop of a Counter-Earth with Kryptonians on it (who are allied with Earth), numerous alien races and empires growing wary of Earth's corner of the universe, and the anti-mutant technofuture alive and well, it adds an air of mystery into the older, somewhat repetitious formations and reformations of the X-men and related teams.

One wonders how the Green and its avatars view Krakoa and its sentients as well.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents

Not originally a DC property, a series came out under the DC banner sharing with us a more cohesive, more modern, and less innocent view of super-spies and super-agents in a world containing The Higher United Nations.

Setting aside questions about Checkmate, The Global Guardians, S.H.I.E.L.D., S.W.O.R.D., and the Agents of Atlas, it adds another wrinkle to the many super-soldier initiatives posited in Marvel and DC. Dynamo, NoMan, Lightning, and Raven fighting against the forces of S.P.I.D.E.R. and villains such as the Iron Maiden, and a fantastic underground nation that suggested that the Mole Man wasn't the only would-be ruler below the earth.

The super-agents had trade-offs on their powers -- an earlier version of Strikeforce: Morituri but with a super-spy flavor and slightly (?) less common incidents of death for its protagonists.

The DC series takes place some time after the original series, so the idea of legacy and old vendettas resurfacing also ads a nice potential element to the campaign.

[ NEXT UP: Batman / Captain America, All-Star Squadron, Invaders, The Liberty Legion, etc. ]

Champions: One Earth (Storylines 01)

I'd indicated that I'd be tying the storyline to initial appearances of heroes in comics, but as all comics continuity buffs know, there's just too many storylines and stories out there that contradict, retcon, and change the current continuity to make it easy to do a straight history in either timeline (Marvel, DC) without doing some pruning and editing.

My approach: lock down some tentpole characters and storylines and move forward (and backward) from there. Of course, since I'm looking at what my players are interested in as well, I have to ask them which storylines they remember and enjoyed -- then I try to find a way to make it have happened in the skeleton timeline that I have.

Ignoring the multi-versal, time-twisting events in both universes, here are a few storylines that I'm weaving into the history, based on my own interests -- we'll get to the players' interests and favorite storylines and arcs later:

Batman: Court of Owls

The existence of the Court of Owls dovetails nicely into the Earth 2 opposite number of Batman being Owlman. But even better, it sets up Gotham as a place of secrets -- some that even the World's Greatest Detective is unable to find until it's almost too late.

While Gotham may be their home base, a decades-old conspiracy of wealthy families that have surely spun their webs of influence throughout the world. Also, they have likely spent their wealth of techniques and tactics that placed them in the blind spot of Batman, making for an almost bottomless source of conspricay - crime families that would give John Wick's assassin-rich culture a run for its money.

Speaking of assassins, the Talons are a great recurring foil for some of the more agent / espionage members of the Knight Watch Red team -- regenerating, semi-undead foes that are relentless and backed by as much money as the other wealthy crimefighters in the world.

Lastly, it sets up some great mystery that the descendants of the Bat would wrestle with -- Dick Grayson? The half-brothers each known as Jason Todd (same father, different mothers)? Helena Wayne?

Invasion!

The idea of the Dominators managing to pull together an alliance of alien races to invade Earth -- in order to eliminate the threat of metahumanity (mutants, mutates, and peak humanity speciments) not only thrusts the awareness of alien races into the public consciousness, it also sets up several useful setting threads:

• aliens are real and humanity knows it;
• aliens see Earth and humanity as both a threat and an opportunity in their complex plans for peace, war, isolation, and conquest;
• alien technology scraps and fragments were left behind and reverse engineered by humanity -- and while manufacturing  capabilities and raw materials vary between worlds, the science behind the technology has led to breakthroughs in many fields;
• some alien races came to Earth's defense once they found out about the invasion (including some already living among us for their own purposes).

I'll be avoiding the worldwide effects of the gene bomb that occurs in Book Three, but I'll allow for limited exposure to these in certain areas. After all, this gene bomb could be the basis for the Big Bang that took place in Milestone Comics' Paris Island.

[ NEXT UP: The Mutant Nation of Krakoa, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ] 

Champions: One Earth (Player Characters)

PART 02

As mentioned before, I waited for the initial batch of characters from interested players before beginning to flesh out the campaign further from the general direction of the campaign. This is so I can take into consideration the characters and the directions the players want to take them.

I got the following other character pitches (which slowly evolved in play):

Agent Armstrong (Mister Elastico)

The grandson of Plastic Man, he was envisioned as as a fairly powerful, wise-cracking hero fascinated by ice cream.

Surprsingly, this leads to obvious connections to Batman and the Justice League, but also connections to the modern Mister Terrific, and the rest of the super-team The Terrifics.

Strong, tough, and capable of shape-shifting into many different forms. There's an opportunity here to explore generational heroism back to the World War II era, and perhaps some of the community of shape-shifters (human and alien) in the universe.

Agent Brightshield (The U.S. Avenger)

This one was a bit complicated in terms of legacy, because it merged two legacies: a mutant from the Summers clan (child of Cable & Domino) displaced in time who lucked into the Captain America Adamantium-Vibranium shield. He created a variant uniform of the U.S. Agent, but chose to call himself the U.S. Avenger instead.

Not a super-soldier in anyway, but hoping to uphold the ideals of the bearers of the shield before him, he has been allowed to continue to carry the shield as a member of Knight Watch Red.

Funnily, enough I was hoping to avoid the complications of the confusing history of Cable, the Summers family tree, AND the dark future timeline where Apocalypse has conquered the world. 

However, now I'll have to do a bit of research and come up with some storylines related to these. I was thinking about a war between some dark and bright future timelines fighting for key events to take place in the present. But honestly, I'm not fond of time travel in game campaigns unless it's easy to clean up the mess of timeline changing paradoxes.

It does allow for some more "super-agent" adventures, and mutant adventures in the campaign, so it was approved.

Agent RocketDoc (Professor Strange)

Coming from the lineage of Adam Strange, he has a more advanced weaponry array (with more non-lethal options, and futuristic targeting systems), he is a classic gun-wielding action scientist.

Potential storyline from this character background pulls in the alien worlds of Rann & Thanagar, and the current possible villains from the space-faring superheroes of DC. There might also be some smattering of involvement from Marvel's space-faring races and empires.

Not sure that the Zeta Beam will come into any storylines soon, nor any echoes of the Rann-Thanagar War, nor any enemies from the rogues galleries of Adam Strange or the Omega Men. There might be some other interesting alien races that might come into one-shot adventures but am trying to keep an alien menagerie from infesting my campaign at this point.

So, this character will probably play the role of the scientist who can reverse engineer technology, act as an expert on alien races and technologies, and can fly and shoot opponents with energy blasters.

[ Even More PCs in our next installment ]

Champions: One Earth (Player Characters)

PART 01

Having learned from prior aborted campaigns, I waited first for the initial batch of characters from interested players. My weakness has been pre-plotting the direction of the campaign without taking into consideration the characters and the directions the players want to take them.

I got the following character pitches (which slowly evolved in play):

Agent 36 (The Kryptonian)

One player wanted to portray a Kryptonian from the House of El. Not a warrior, but an activist pushing for a different way of living, inspired by exposure to different cultures on Earth and the aliens that visit it.

In my universe, we are going with the assumption that Kryptonians don't instantaneously gain all the standard powers at once, but develop them in stages and branch off in different directions based on genetics and which powers are used (supported by the power levels of the Golden Age Superman when he first appeared, his forgotten ability to SCULPT HIS FACE TO LOOK LIKE ONE OF HIS ALIEN CAPTORS in one comic, the mutations in powers due to exposure to Red Kryptonite, and Superman Red & Superman Blue), this one has some basic invulnerability, super-strength, flying, some super-senses, but doesn't have the whole shebang yet.

And he works as a writer on Earth, as a known Kryptonian assigned to Knight Watch Red with the approval of the Kryptonian Council.

Kryptonian Council? Yes, the one based on New Krypton in a constructed Counter-Earth orbiting SOL, peopled by survivors of the Bottled City of Kandor, and the reformed criminals from the Phantom Zone confronting the reality of being the last survivors of Krypton in a universe populated by other races with powers and technologies that rival their own -- and who know their weaknesses.

Agent Dynamo (The Man from T.H.U.N.D.E.R.)

Another player proposed to be the latest bearer of the Thunderbelt -- the new Dynamo, in a world that has lost The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves.

While this Thunderbelt no longer has the long-term negative effects that the original belt had (which eventually killed the wearer), it still has its time limit for safe usage.

Furthermore, this Dynamo has had enough of the dirty tricks and backstabbing that his former agency life was full of, and is serving in his capacity as a strongman for Knightwatch Red in semi-retirement. His closest friends are his animal companions: Rex the Wonder Dog and Detective Chimp, who took him into Knight Watch Red after the fall of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. in a recent super-agency battle for supremacy whose effects are still being felt. They also serve as his service animals and support when dealing with PTSD. 

Hailing from the estate of Greystoke, it remains to be seen if his friendliness with animals comes from other residents of that land who've historically had close ties to the animal kingdom.

Agent Tumaco (Scion of Wolverine)

A grey man hailing from Columbia, this PC is one of the many children of the long-lived Wolverine. He has the regeneration and the Weapon X admantium-laced bones and claws of his father, and a history of violence and wetwork experience before joining Knight Watch Red.

He relies more on his martial arts and a small set of non-lethal weapons on his person in combat, as leaving behind a trail of bodies would not endear him to his new organization and the residents of his new home.

Despite his reluctance to pop the claws at the slightest opportunity, he has shown the viciousness and deadly skill that mark him as a worthy successor to the mantle of Wolverine.

That being said, he -- along with Agent 36 -- has been one of the most diligent and dogged investigators of the Knight Watch Red team in its current incarnation.

[ More PCs in our next installment ]

Champions: One Earth (Bayport Megacity)

In the grand tradition of DC locations for super-hero teams, I've chosen to base the campaign in Not-The-San-Francisco-Bay-Area, Bayport MegaCity.

Much like the TV show, Streets of San Francisco, players will investigate and adventure across the entire Bay Area (and adjacent locations thereabouts) as the campaign unfolds.

Since my campaign is a mix between the investigation-structured Gumshoe game systems, and traditional super-hero cliffhangers and confrontations, I felt that naming it Bayport was a nice tip of the hat to my earliest introduction to mysteries and pulp adventures: the Hardy Boys. Calling it a MegaCity also conjures up the feel of an infusion of cyberpunk elements into the Northern California feel of the campaign setting -- which works with the West Coast presence of well-known DC & Marvel companies like WayneTech, S.T.A.R. Labs, Stark Enterprises, Rand Corporation, LexCorp, Roxxon Corporation, and so on.

That being said, I'm not slavishly following the naming of the roads and streets and areas. I'll be gleefully abstracting areas and renaming them for their flavor: seedy docks, colorful and mystical asiatowns, steel-and-glass skyscraping cityscapes, and all the stolen flavor of NorCal tourist spots.

GAMING RESOURCE -- San Angelo: City of Heroes

Now, the copy I have is for an older edition of Champions / HERO. This one from DriveThruRPG is actually for M&M and Action!System.

After a few of my adventures are completed, I'll be cribbing from this lovely superhero city supplements, one that feels so fleshed out that it'll hopefully bleed into my campaign and come across as an integrated & interconnecting setting. Written by Patrick Sweeney and Mark Arsenault, this setting has always impressed me by the way it communicates the feel of a lived-in superhero city.

Of course, it'll be a patchwork job with another city setting sourcebook...

GAMING RESOURCES -- Champions: Bay City Sourcebook

Yes, I did buy the Fuzion series of books. As a fan of both the Hero System and R.Talsorian's Interlock System (Cyberpunk, Mekton, etc.) how could I not pick it up?

Anyway, this little beauty sets up a series of locations and NPCs in the actual San Francisco Bay Area (slightly changed by the dangers of being in a super-hero universe), making it a joy to pick and choose locations for my players' characters -- residences, favorite restaurants, contacts, and backdrops to adventure!

It's also relatively easy to convert to the Hero System, because of the lineage of the ruleset.

With both of these, and the locations to be established by my initial adventures, the ingredients for the setting of the Bay Area MegaCity are complete. They just need to be mixed together in the course of a storyline to really feel solid.

Champions: One Earth (Broad Strokes)

Now that I've gotten a weekly rhythm going with my Champions: One Earth campaign, I wanted to share my initial document(s) in creating the campaign -- the ones that helped me define the starting point of the campaign and moved me past the hurdle of "enough world-building" to actually running games.

BACKGROUND

On this blog, I've been posting -- on and off over the years -- about a gaming universe for superheroes that would incorporate core elements from the DC & Marvel Universes. And I've finally done it, with a kind of vague, hand-wavey implementation on the setting history. Enough to allow the players to get a handle on their characters (and me to get a handle on the adventures and campaign) before I fill out the many corners of the multiverses.

Campaign Hook: Knight Watch Red

The PCs start off as plainclothes super-heroes tasked to investigate incidents (involving locations, individuals, and artifacts) of a potentially multiversal nature. If there's potential danger, they are to secure the location, individuals, and artifacts involved, contain multiversal incidents, and protect sentients and the dominant reality.

Borrowing from SlyFlourish's Six Truths approach to fantasy rpg campaigns, and applying it to my own (just enough for my players to jump onboard without having to read pages and pages of background), I came up with the following for my super-heroic campaign:

1. The world of Knight Watch Red has a single timeline from WWII to the present involving different ages of super-heroes (from Marvel & DC).
2. Super-heroes and super-villains tend to age normally from their first appearances, and have seen multi-generational legacies across heroic ages.
3. Nations, corporations, and organizations recognize the threats of metahumanity based on battles of super-heroes and super-villains across history.
4. Nations, corporations, and organizations also recognize the value of metahumanity in conflicts against attempts to conquer or destroy the Earth.
5. Organizations like the Justice Society and Checkmate evolved from fighting crime to monitoring, regulating, and cultivating the super-human societies of Earth. (edit)
6. Recent anomalous incidents suggest that multiversal incursions are weakening the fabric of reality, and must be contained to safeguard the timeline.

The combination of these Six Truths helped me establish a familiar combined universe, yet one that was also different from the ones in the current comics -- where some heroic and villainous mantles are already on their second or third generations, while others are eternally frozen in time and still hold on to their places despite their aging compatriots. It also allowed me to briefly expound on new elements of a status quo that place Earth in a universe with aliens, but have somehow placed it in a semi-static status quo that does not have an incredibly fertile mutant population with Omega-level threats around each corner, that does not have yet another alien race invading this week / month / year, that does not have hyper-advanced technology in the hands of common folk. But more on this in another post.

Of course, I added a Seventh Truth to this set, which was related to the creation of the characters themselves:

7. Each PC must be a legacy character. Whether they are related by blood to another hero or villain in the DC or Marvel universe, or they are inspired by one of them, or they have inherited artifacts, knowledge, abilities through various means, they must be tied to an existing character in these universes.

The reasons for this last one were: (a) to provide me with a handle on the types of adventures that these created characters would like to engage in; and (b) to allow me to quickly and easily grasp the backstories of these characters -- including whatever time-/science-/space-bending implications their histories and powers might have. It reduced the need for long (and potentially contentious) discussions about histories, NPCs, powers, abilities, enemies and allies through broadstrokes mentions of key figures in the DC/Marvel setting (filtered through the rough timeline and current status quo in my head). Oddly enough, it also curtailed a tendency for my Champions players to come up with the wildest character concepts executed in the most-game breaking way possible -- by giving them a chance to go through favorite character concepts and legacies and an opportunity to put their own stamp on this legacy character.

Champions: One Earth

Short post.

Surprisingly, I have begun running a Champions campaign in my Earth 641 setting.

It's a superheroic campaign where DC & Marvel Universes have merged, and I'm busy coming up with rationale, pruning, and GM's fiat that justifies why the power levels are low, and why the multiple threats to Earth, The Universe, and Everything haven't emerged and haven't driven the populace insane.

I'll post in the future about how I've been trying to translate all this "Session Zero" stuff for super-heroic campaigns into my own setting and universe -- and how I'm actually taking some of the adventures from other RPGs (super-heroic and non-superheroic) and translating them into my campaign's adventures.

I did a lot of writing and thinking about the campaign, because I really wanted to get the types of adventures and the type of campaign clear in my head, before I started. But I also had to avoid the trap of over-prepping for the campaign, because I wanted to leave space for the characters my players build to carve out their own stories and backstories in the universe.

Am also relearning building characters in HERO, and have been negotiating with my players which of our preferred versions of the rules to use, and it's mostly 5th Edition HERO with some carry-over rules from 4th. So, we shall see!

DriveThruRPG Top 12 Review (17 Apr 2021)

 

There are a number of items here that catch my attention, while others -- well, my gaze & attention just slides off them.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

In the Number 01 spot, as expected, we see Dune: Adventures in the Imperium published by Modiphius. I have been eagerly awaiting this, though I'd probably have to dive into the novels once more to get back up to speed on the setting feel. Have picked it up and will review it when done reading.

In the Number 02 and Number 06 spots are Sine Nomine's offerings Worlds Without Number and Stars Without Number respectively. I already own Stars Without Number and started creating characters until I realized that did not actually have a gaming crew who'd play it. It's on the backburner while I wait for my current GM duties to slide back to a Neo-Clone (OSR) area of interest.

Speaking of current GM duties, that would by Cyberpunk RED by R. Talsorian. A former top of the lister, it has slid down to a respectable Number 04 on this list. Setting, Art, and overall rules are excellent -- streamlined for speed of play in this modern gaming culture. Though, tactically, it does raise eyebrows to this veteran of the Interlock & Hero Systems, including their mad, forgotten love child Fuzion.

Whitehack 3rd Edition is in the Number 09 spot, and I've also picked this one up -- and immediately afterwards I realized that this was a completionist impluse buy from my days of collecting these types of rulesets. Still, when I finish it, I'll see how it fares against the other F20 rulesets (modern & neo-clones) as I try to find my preferred one to run a Mystara campaign.

Number 11 is The Company of the Dragon for RuneQuest (Community Content) which hooks my interest only because I have yet to finish reading and creating a character for the latest edition. Someday, RuneQuest, someday!

Number 12 is Arc Dream Publishing's Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes. Which I am tempted to pick up once I pick up the new Delta Green set of rules and either choose to run it myself or find / convince a gaming group that wants to run it.

That's it for this week! Which ones caught your interest?

Star Hero: Terran Empire Tactics

Rather than diving headlong into my gaming group's homebrew campaign, I decided to make a quick visit to one of the official Star Hero settings -- closest to what we're playing, I guess -- the Terran Empire!

The reason -- I don't really want to go into the details as to how we built our own weapons and our own races and so on. At least if you're already an owner of this book (or want to pick it up for $10 on DriveThruRPG), you can follow on your own and come up with your own scenarios & tactics.

Initial Framework

We'll need to establish a squad comprised of several characters (therefore, character sheets are needed), and put in the general logic of the build of the characters (alien race and various MOS packages, plus extras) and the composition of the team in terms of 'roles'.

Then we go into the three components of each scenario -- the opposition, the terrain, and of course the equipment you've been assigned! Now there's a standard loadout (we're going for a military group that gets standard equipment), but can request for specialized equipment as well, depending on organizational pull of the team's leadership and the nature of mission itself.

And then we'll talk about how the combination of these might play out in a given situation; how to make decision making and running combat smoother without sacrificing the combat options, and so on.

Hero System as a Gaming Engine

Been playing a lot of Star Hero, and with some other new Hero System campaigns potentially spinning out of that regular play -- it's time to capture some thoughts about the system.

We're fond of playing in a mixture of roleplaying scenes and some hardcore, dangerous combat situations -- currently under the flavor of a principled, militarily influential, star nation in another galaxy.

The Hero System is really something akin to a computer game's physics engine. Not only does it handle a lot of environmental effects with internal consistency, it also allows you to model almost any effect you want (given its roots in a system that attempted to simulate the bonkers physics of a super-heroic universe). And like any toolkit, there's usually more than one way to build something.

We've used it to create a reality where more militaristic, but no less powerful "jedi" run through the battlefield wielding beam sabers (Old Imperial tech). Their weapons do massive damage, and make for interesting combat against hordes of crazed HTH aliens AND impossibly powerful powered armor suits with area effect weaponry.

Multi-armed aliens with infantry training wield squad support weapons and HTH weapons when fighting off crazed hive-mind drones. Crystal-shaped telepaths (with telekinetically controlled 'hands') wield standard issue military rifles.

Drones zip ahead of the squads, and the team's combat armor allows for active sensor arrays to gather intelligence on their opponents -- who may just have the right combat tech to counter ours.

So, I suppose I'll be generating a series of posts that highlight some combat tactics that we like to follow (based on our training packages and our equipment) to showcase the capabilities of the Hero System -- to reward combat tactics with more than just simple bonuses to hit or cover. It really has a depth that rewards teamwork, planning, using the environment to your advantage, and so on, without abstracting to a simple advantage or disadvantage to a roll.

Gaming with the Kid

I wanted to get my kid into gaming. Not only is it one of my favorite forms of recreation -- I believe it taught me a great many things due to the nature of at-the-table game play, and all the reading and preparation between games.

And I had a plan.

Pokemon Investigators in Spaaaaaaaaaaaace!

He had demonstrated an interest in Pokemon... well, okay. He's a recovering Pokemon fanatic with near-encyclopedic knowledge of Pokemon up until he stopped following them. And he's still thrilled when we play Pokemon Go on occasion.

Plus, he really likes the Space Mice series from the Geronimo Stilton mega-franchise of books. To keep things simple, I decided we should play...

Ashen Stars meets Mutant City Blues, except instead of superhuman police, we have Pokemon Trainers-turned-Investigators sent out on Lazer-like missions, with a twist towards the Bubblegumshoe creation of a Solar System "neighborhood"!

But then I realized the work involved, and came to my senses.

Then he started asking me about how the Cartoon Network heroes might be able to take down Superman or any of the other DC animated heroes and I began to look at Hero 6th Edition. And that's where I am now. Figuring out how the decoupled HERO System, which I've never played, might be the gateway for my son's gaming interests.

Hello, old friend.

Canon & the Multiverse

There's a Teen Titans show out on TV, movies from characters in the DC Universe, and a steady stream of other DC TV shows (live action and animated) out.

And there's yet another iteration of the DC Universe out in comics (I lose count).

My POV on continuity is a complicated thing, one that I may put together blog posts or a podcast on in the future. But this blog is about gaming and RPGs -- so what does that give me?

Well, I've always had my own take on how the DC multiverse and timelines should be. My headcanon -- and thank you to the blogosphere for this term -- is one that still believes in a particular kind of continuity. That there is a universe where the events of the primary timeline matters, and all the elseworlds and splinter timelines are just echoes.

And I've always wanted to set superheroic RPGs in this shared universe, one where:

• the big names are known heavyweights, but there's still space of newcomers
• the other superheroes and teams are constants (after a fashion) but are still constantly adventuring and in flux (out on a mission, missing, changed powers, etc.)
• the villains and heroes occasionally get weird team ups
• major crises periodically (and hopefully sparingly) pull everyone together into adventures allowing for many cameos and easter eggs for comics fans.

I guess what I'd like to do is to put together some ideas and toolkits for creating sandbox superheroic adventures in an established universe (well, a combined one, picking and choosing from the plethora of Marvel / DC / other comics lines and their continuities) that players would have no problem sitting down and playing in one week and disappearing the next -- but one where GMs also can juggle the storylines of present and absent players and PCs.

Time to put on the hot cocoa and think a bit before returning to the Armchair Gamer study for some setting writing. See you soon!

Things I Learned from Champions: Keep Some Surprises Under the Hood

Much of the superhero genre is steeped in secrets and misdirection. The heroes themselves were referred to mystery men and women, so a surprise or two from them was to be expected.

I'd argue therefore, that the 'classification' of superheroes into narrow categories (in other words, representing them as rigid classes) in an RPG runs counter to the spirit of the source material. Fortunately, many of the early superhero RPGs avoided this, despite the influence of D&D.

TSR's Marvel Super-Heroes may have had types of origins in the random generation of characters, but they didn't shackle you into 'mage' or 'fighter' or 'speedster'; that tended to be a function of the powers you rolled up. Mayfair Games' DC Heroes RPG and Hero Games' Champions, as point-buy systems, sidestepped this entirely -- your combination of purchased stats, skills, and powers crystallized the type of character you were playing.

And while the was a shorthand on the types of builds you had (Brick, Martial Artist, Energy Projector, etc.), there were always different kinds of each, and certainly mixes of several builds, as was often seen in the source material.

So, we used this to our advantage, in-game.

What you see isn't necessarily what you'll get

One of my characters was a martial artist had a grappling hook that he used to attack the enemy, ie up the enemy, and so on. The obvious build was to use Energy Blast (for the ranged attack) and Entangle (for tangling up the enemy) -- but I didn't go that route. It was built as stretching, bought on a focus, and I used my Martial Arts for Strikes, Throws, and Grabs at range. And while I could therefore take damage from damage shields, it also allowed me to type at long distance, feel the texture or warmth of things far away, etc... chalking it up to mastery of my weapon. It helped with that element of surprise when playing under good GMs (or perhaps more adversarial GMs who forget the builds that they approved, and just go by your character art).

But building in surprises -- like a woman whose costume shouts martial artist, but is really built as a brick ("My kung-fu makes my body impervious to bullets!"); or an item that seems to be a focus (like a power ring) but is bought straight ("I summon it back onto my finger via sheer willpower!"); or building a martial art that allows you to Full Move with every manuever; or combat skill levels that only work when you're fighting by yourself ("I just didn't want my friends to think badly of me, when they see what I can really do.") -- but using them sparingly, does add to the mystique of your character.

And helps when your opponents stereotype you and your capabilities.

The joy of Champions is that it allows you to do all this -- after all, points pay for the effect; the special effect is up to you.

All Under HERO: Thoughts on Magic Systems of the Known World (Part 1)

The Magic-User Archetype (for Karameikos)

Karameikos was crafted to be the stereotypical D&D fantasy realm, and as a result has primarily stereotypical D&D wizards. As a result there's no shortage of ways to build this magical system in HERO. The classic magic system is known for:

• verbal (Incantations)
• somatic (Gestures)
• material components (Foci and/or charges)

Also, you need to re-learn / re-select what spells you can cast each morning via spellbooks that is basically the list of spells you can learn and cast. You have newer spells that arise out of research (or learning from scrolls, other mages, or from acquired spellbooks) added to this spellbook.

However, given the HERO points-based, non-class philosophy -- not every mage will be shackled into these exact set of restrictions. In fact, the concept of a magic school or tradition may help very well here.

Magical Learning: Academies or Apprenticeships?

We know that there is an official school established in Karameikos, just as there schools elsewhere (Thyatis, Glantri, Alphatia, etc.), so there's no doubt that well-traveled mages and adventurers will be able to guess where a mage picked up their skills not only by the spells, but by the limitations and advantages open to them. There will be a certain rigor and breadth of knowledge and understanding of magical theory and history, even if they turn out to be not-so-great as students.

And there might be some rivalry between schools from a given academy, or between different academies as well.

However, there could also be apprenticeships. Depending on where the master or tutor learned his/her magic, the student could have strengths and weaknesses that academy-trained mages lack. And there could also be greater dangers associated with them as well, assuming that part of the approach of the larger academies is to teach magic that works for ALL students, rather than customizing curriculum for each student. Therefore the apprenticeship style of learning could have a more eclectic selection of spell, or a more specialized approach toward things.

And of course, depending on the build, some fighters and thieves may have picked up a minor cantrip here or there...

All Under Hero: HEROic D&D

Mystara has been a setting that fascinates me, due to the long-lingering influence of the Gazetteers on my fantasy gaming life. One of the reasons I attempted, years ago, to do a "HEROic" conversion of D&D (see the following old links), was partially due to the setting.

HEROic D&D - Part 1
HEROic D&D - Part 2
HEROic D&D - Part 3
HEROic D&D - Part 4
HEROic D&D - Part 5

Someone asked my why I would attempt such a thing, given how well HERO does fantasy, and the fact that I was obviously a HERO fan, and knew Fantasy Hero. I answered the following:

"to convert various NPCs, PCs and monsters into HERO characters and then play straight using HERO rules. 

It's not REALLY a system re-creation, but two things:
(1) primarily a way to rationalize in my head how these conversions would be done;
(2) very secondarily, a way to explore how HERO deviated from the original ruleset -- as I think I've hinted at here by how I handled stats."

Looking back, I would have to say that it was probably more of a combination of the first sentence, and #2 of the last paragraph.

To be honest, it seems to me that #2 of the last paragraph was a major part of it -- I wanted to explore why the ruleset of HERO resonated so strongly with my own mental model of how the world works, as opposed to my occasional hesitations when remembering the abstraction choices made in D&D rules (like the abstract Armor Class approach, which combines difficulty in hitting someone with the ability to penetrate armor / do damage).

At the same time, I also felt that Mystara had hidden depths that I could best express in HERO system (which I think echoes in my own explorations of magic systems elsewhere on this blog). I wanted to have a depth and breadth of fighting builds for characters, and a way to express how different magical / mystical systems could be realized in the world -- and why those differences matter when recognized by players.

That being the case, I'm returning to this project with a different perspective, perhaps to ground my explorations more. I'm going to begin building components for the Mystara / Enigmundia world in HERO to see where they bring me in terms of the ideas for the setting.

Fantasy, Super-heroics, and Science Fiction

Dark Corners of Calidar

I do enjoy the potential of Calidar, and I think I shall try to begin converting many of my old Mystara posts to Calidar.

There will be some adjustments to those old posts (and I'll probably link back to them), but the full backstory of Calidar can certainly be tweaked to fit better.

The swashbuckling feel of Calidar's fiction, for me, needs to be roughened up a bit. Perhaps darkened and expanded more than a little bit. I do enjoy the promise of the second Kickstarter, and hope to see it when it comes out.

In the meantime, I'll begin perusing the old posts for consolidation and rewriting.

West Coast Champions

As the Kickstarter for Aaron Allston's Strike Force draws to a close at the time of this writing, I suppose I must embrace the gravity of my nostalgia and my mental synergy with many of the principles of the Hero System, and my love for the super-heroic genre.

Just not sure what posts I'll be posting here. Right now, I'm leaning towards a setting -- West Coast Champions -- that builds upon a trio of cities I was quite fond of: San Angelo (from Gold Rush Games), Bay City (under the Fuzion imprint), and Night City (yes, it's from Cyberpunk 2020, but it's such a fit for the Dark Champions genre).

Right now, I think that it's a matter of figuring out what it will be, because I'm currently focused on the series Things I Learned From Champions.

It's an exploration of the system, really. And a realization that it's a deep well, some of which is very geeky and tightly focused in terms of fandom, and not as general as I've been posted in the past.

Confederation Chronicles

A return to the twice-interrupted attempt at a complete-ish SF setting temporarily labeled Confederation Chronicles. It was originally meant to be implemented in the Stars Without Number system, and I am now equally tempted by the D6 system and by the OSR-based White Star in concert with the original Stars Without Number system.

Star Wars and Star Trek and Andromeda and a bit of Battlestar Galactica -- and all of the treasured source materials I've collected for the genre over the years.

A Welcome Diversion

But I'll be honest, it's all meant to de-stress and distract from the stress of many things going on in life right now.

Classic Enemies Cavalcade!

Theron "My Dice Are Older Than You" Bretz has written a series of reviews / rumination on the various teams and solo villains if this classic Champions supplement -- one that provided many a GM with powerful opposition (and the occasional useful mort) to bedevil his players.

Here's my reaction to one of my faves in his series of posts:

The Ultimates!

While it's true that Binder, Plasmoid, Blackstar, Slick, and Charger offer varying degrees of well-roundedness, lameness, and complexity in build -- I think that when they worked together as a team, they were pretty devastating.

Binder (with his various glue gun attacks), along with Slick (and his friction-reduction attacks) tended to hamstring the heavy hitters of the hero team. With their mobility, they can stay out of reach while their teammates run interference and take out the immobilised heroes.

There's a pretty tough physical attacker in Blackstar, a pretty dangerous ranged attacker in Charger, and a devastating area effect / energy projector in Plasmoid.

If the Ultimates have their teamwork down, they have a rough fight ahead of them.

Fun With The Hero System: Tricks You Can Do With ENDurance

Folks unfamiliar with the Hero System might not know the purpose of a (formerly) figured characteristic known as Endurance (END).

In the Hero System, END is based on your CONstitution, and is a measure of how much personal energy. Your personal END reserve enables you to

• exert your STRength in useful ways like lifting a car over your head or punching the baddie into next Wednesday;
• use active Powers like Energy Blast or Killing Attack (depending on how you build them, of course);
• other active heroic stuff.

Here's a short explanation from +Ron Edwards 's Doctor Xaos blog:

"Which brings me to Champions the role-playing game, first published in 1981, and examining a crucial rules change for its 1989 fourth edition, written by a different set of authors.

In the earlier editions (1-3), the rule is that for every 5 points of strength or power used, you lose 1 point of Endurance. Granted, that value starts pretty high – typically 40 or more – but consider that one is typically slamming away with 50 or 60 point powers, or as a strength-based fighter, an equivalent amount. Just hammering away like that can drain you, and at 0 Endurance, further effort comes off your more crucial reserves and can knock you right out. There’s a periodic recovery during fights, and one can use actions to do it too, based on a value called Recovery, sensibly enough. In a relatively standard Champions fight of the early days, heroes had to strategize their heaviest hits against their energy reserves, ducking to recover every so often."

Of course, doing all this stuff means your spend your END like a resource. When you're down to zero, you can still exert yourself, but now it starts doing STUN damage to you, meaning you can knock yourself out by overexerting yourself.

The obvious downside to this kind of simulationist (or whatever) modeling of getting tired is the extra bookkeeping -- which is made even more fun with rules that deal with Recovery (I'll tackle that in other post).

However, there are a few reasons -- off the top of my head -- that my friends I used to put up with this extra in-game work (which becomes second nature after a while, anyway):

1. Pushing: There's this rule that you can push STR or any Power that Costs END up to 10 points maximum, but you have to spend extra END in addition to the normal exertion. That means that you can get extra damage or extra movement, but trade in rapid exhaustion (or even knock yourself out) redlining your abilities. Very comic book-y.
2. Pushing Stats: Did you know you can buy up abilities like INTelligence or COMliness with the limitation Costs END? Then means that if you choose to use these stats at a higher level, you gotta spend END to do it (special effects: activating alien secondary brain and sucking in your gut, respectively). But, because the rules say you can only push powers or abilities that cost END -- you can effectively burn END to become hyperintelligent or incredibly good looking for as long as you can pay the END (or endure the STUN damage once you've run out).
3. "Free" Cost Discount: the END cost of a power used to be Active Points / 5. When 4th edition came about, this rule was revised to END cost = Active Points / 10. This halved the END cost, and immediately prompted my group to buy all their powers at 2x END cost, because they were already used to the spending of END at the old rate; instant reduction in power costs!
4. Power Batteries: It's a nice way to model things like a battery of some kind: by creating something called an END battery (sort of an external END stat) that gets used up faster if you use it at full power.
5. Nova Blasts: There are certain types of powers that will wipe you out if you use them -- maybe even cause you damage. Sort of like a wave motion gun for a super-hero, you can't use most of your powers after doing it. In HERO, you can buy that 'beyond normal campaign limits' power at 10x END cost or something similar (making sure that using it doesn't inadvertently kill you when you use it) -- it helps convince the GM that you won't use it that often.
6. Temporary END Boosts: sometimes powers of heroes, villains, or the environment in a super-hero setting can boost your total END reserve, or increase your rate of END recovery. This means that you can operate at a higher power level for a short while (taking advantage of things like #1, #2, #4, and #5 as needed), but within certain limits. 

But that's just me, and what I remember us doing -- what about the other HERO mechanics out there? What builds have you put together?