A Look Back at CHAMPIONS 1st Edition.

With the recent announcement that Ron Edwards was teaming up with Hero Games to produce CHAMPIONS NOW, a game that hearkens back to the first three editions of the game, I thought it would be a good time to take a look at those older editions.

The CHAMPIONS super hero role playing game is one of the best super hero role playing games ever designed, and the game to which all super hero rpgs are compared.  CHAMPIONS wasn't the first role playing game in the super hero genre, that honor goes to the game SUPERHERO 2044 which I discussed in an earlier blog post.  CHAMPIONS even builds upon some of the ideas in SUPERHERO 2044.  CHAMPIONS used the vague point based character generation system of SUPERHERO 2044 -- combined with house rules by Wayne Shaw that were published in issue 8 of the Lords of Chaos Fanzine-- as a jumping off point for a new detailed and easy to understand point based system.  CHAMPIONS was also likely influenced by the melee combat system in SUPERHERO 2044 in the use of the 3d6 bell curve to determine "to-hit" rolls in combat.

While CHAMPIONS wasn't the first super hero rpg, it was the first that presented a coherent system that allowed a player to design the superheroes they read about in comic books.  The first edition of VILLAINS & VIGILANTES, which predates CHAMPIONS, did a good job of emulating many aspects of comic book action but the ability to model a character in character design wasn't one of them.  CHAMPIONS was released at the Origins convention in the summer of 1981, and it immediately captured the interest of Aaron Allston of Steve Jackson Games.  Allston gave CHAMPIONS a positive review in issue #43 of the Space Gamer magazine, wrote many CHAMPIONS articles for that publication, and became one of the major contributors to the early days of CHAMPIONS lore.

Reading through the first edition of the game, can have that kind of effect upon a person.  The writing is clear -- if uneven in places -- and the rules mechanics inspire a desire to play around in the sandbox provided by the rules.  George MacDonald and Steve Peterson did more than create a great role playing game when they created CHAMPIONS, they created a great character generation game as well.  Hours can be taken up just playing around with character concepts and seeing how they look in the CHAMPIONS system.

There are sites galore about CHAMPIONS and many reviews about how great the game is, and it truly is, so the remainder of the post won't be either of these.  Rather, I would like to point out some interesting tidbits about the first edition of the game.  Most of these will be critical in nature, but not all.  Before going further I will say that though CHAMPIONS is now in its 6th edition and is a very different game today in some ways, the 1st edition of the game is highly playable and well worth exploring and I'm glad that Ron Edwards has picked up that torch with CHAMPIONS NOW.

• One of the first things that struck me reading the book was how obviously playtested the character design system was.  This is best illustrated in the section under basic characteristics.  In CHAMPIONS there are primary and secondary characteristics.  The primary characteristics include things like Strength and Dexterity.  The secondary statistics are all based on fractions of the primary statistics and represent things like the ability to resist damage.  Where the playtesting shows here is in how players may buy down all of their primary statistics, but only one of their secondary statistics.  A quick analysis of the secondary statistics demonstrates that if this were not the case a "buy strength then buy down all the secondary stats related to strength" infinite loop would occur.  
• It's striking how few skills there are in 1st edition CHAMPIONS.  There are 14 in total, and some of them are things like Luck and Lack of Weakness.  There are no "profession" skills in 1st edition.  To be honest, I kind of like the lack of profession skills.  Professions in superhero adventures seem more flavor than something one should have to pay points for, but this is something that will change in future editions.  
• There are a lot of powers in CHAMPIONS, but the examples are filled with phrases like "a character" or "a villain" instead of an evocative hero/villain name.  It would have been more engaging for the folks at Hero Games to create some Iconic characters that are used throughout the book as examples of each power.  The game does include 3 examples of character generation (Crusader, Ogre, and Starburst), but these characters aren't mentioned in the Powers section.  An example using Starburst in the Energy Blast power would have been nice.
• The art inside the book is less than ideal.  Mark "the hack" Williams has been the target of some criticism for his illustrations, but his work is the best of what is offered in the 1st edition book.  It is clear why they decided to use his work in the 2nd edition of the game.  Williams art is evocative and fun -- if not perfect -- while the work Vic Dal Chele and Diana Navarro is more amateurish.
• The game provides three examples of character generation, but the designs given are less than point efficient and one outclasses the others.  The three sample characters are built on 200 points.  Crusader can barely hurt Ogre if he decides to punch him (his punch is only 6 dice), and his Dex is bought at one point below where he would receive a rounding benefit.  Ogre has a Physical Defense of 23.  This is the amount of damage he subtracts from each physical attack that hits and it is very high.  Assuming an average of 3.5 points of damage per die, Ogre can resist an average of 6.5 dice of damage per attack.  Yes, that's an average but the most damage 6 dice could do to him would be 13.  That would be fine, except Crusader has that 6d6 punch, and Starburst...oh, Starburst.  All of Starburst's major powers are in a multipower which means that as he uses one power he can use less of the other powers in the multipower.  The most damage he can do is 8d6, but only if he isn't flying and doesn't have his forcefield up.  Not efficient at all.  One might hope that character examples demonstrate the appropriate ranges of damage and defense, these don't quite achieve that goal.
• The combat example is good, if implausible.  Crusader and Starburst defeating Ogre?  Sure.
• The supervillain stats at the end of the book -- there are stats for 8 villains and 2 agents -- lack any accompanying art.  The only exception is Shrinker.  
• Speaking of artwork and iconics.  Take that cover.

• Who are these people?!  I want to know.  The only one who is mentioned in the book is Gargoyle.  It's pretty clear which character he is, but I only know his name because of a copyright notice.  Who are the other characters?  Is that "Flare"?  The villain is named Holocaust, but that cannot be discerned from reading this rule book.  If you know, please let me know.  I'd love to see the stats for that guy punching "Holocaust" with his energy fist.

CHAMPIONS is a great game, and the first edition is a joy.  If you can, try to hunt down a copy and play some old school super hero rpg.

This is an update of a post from 2012.

Four Players, a Murder Hobo, and an Inattentive Game Master

Image Source Alex Garner and Loony DM

Robin D. Laws is one of the most thoughtful writers about how to run role playing games in order to maximize the fun quotient of your group's players. Robin's pamphlet Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering sits on my DM-prep shelf right next to Aaron Allston's peerless Strike Force as one of two "go to" guides I look to when I'm facing a challenge in my game mastering. There are several other books on the shelf (technically shelves), but I am consistently impressed by how often the other volumes contain information that builds upon ideas in these two books. To phrase things another way, Robin D. Laws has influenced the way I run games more than any writer/game designer other than Aaron Allston.

It was this very admiration that led to surprise when I read his recent Pelgrane Press article entitled "Four Players and a Murder Hobo" in the most recent See Page XX. Surprise that was rooted in what I perceived to be the giving of bad advice, or at least surprise at Robin's possible characterization of a gaming phenomenon that has occurred more than once at my gaming table - more frequently at conventions than in home games. It is also a gaming phenomenon that Robin's past writings have helped me to overcome and engage with productively. At least, I thought that I had gleaned insight in the past. This conflict between my perception of a problem and how to engage with it, and Robin's most recent advice, have prompted me to write this post and respond to an error I believe Robin may be making in his analysis. In my assessment, he seems to be leaving a variable out of his analysis, but more on that later. What is this problem and what is Robin's advice.

In the interest of starting an article off in an engaging manner, Robin begins the article with the following examples of play.

“Okay, so now that the monks are locked inside the tower, I set fire to it. That’ll teach them to look down their noses at me! Burn, monks, burn!”

“As soon as it’s my turn to guard the prisoner, when I’m sure the others are all asleep, I stride over to him and slit his throat.”

“I’m tired of taking guff from the gnome king. I have my heat shield cloak on, so the confined space of this throne room? One word: fireball!”

I'm not going to spend any time evaluating the specifics of any one of these examples, the rabbit hole of that analysis would be unending, but I will say that each of these examples is reflective of a single player engaging in a style of play that is not collaborative. Robin calls it "that classic moment of roleplaying dysfunction, when one person in the group decides it’s time to cross the line from lovable rogue to psychopathic scumbag." The key issue Robin is highlighting in this circumstance is that a player is asserting an agency over the storyline, and game play, that significantly affects the logical consistency of the narrative and forces other players to suffer the consequences of the action without ever taking into account the real life feelings of those players and the GM. Phrased that way, this is a significant problem on the part of the player.

Before I move onto Robin's recommendations, and my eventual response, it is important to note that this is only a problem when it is done in a disruptive way. If all of the players expresssed wishes to shift from Consulting Detectives to Anarchist Mass Murderers, this would only be the moment the campaign shifted from heroic to villainous. It might not make much narrative sense, in a literary way, but it could be fun.

On the other hand, if it is only one player who makes the shift and declares the action then there is a potential issue here. It's what we in Political Science might call a "collective action" problem. How do you get a "murder hobo" to comply with the rest of the group's norms in order to promote an equitable distribution of a "public" good? In this case, the public good is the entertainment value of the campaign which is threatened by an antagonistic actor - not merely a free rider problem. How do you incentivize the player to participate in the norms that produce a good, when that player seems dedicated to the pursuit of a different good? This is a problem to which Robin offers a couple of solutions. He recommends breaking down the fourth wall and confronting the player via a couple of strategies. Read his article for the full analysis, but the short version is that Robin recommends confronting the player and letting the consequences of the action be known to all and possible expulsion of the player.

I'd like to offer another alternative for Robin and other Game Masters to consider. It still likely involves breaking the fourth wall, but it shifts the focus of analysis from merely the "single deviant player" and looks at a host of variables. If having fun during a role playing game can said to be a measurable dependent variable. Not to descend too deeply into the world of felicific calculus, but let's imagine that we can call this fun RPGh - the h is for hedons - and that this feeling of enjoyment has several contributing variables that include the Rules set (R), the Setting (S), the Players (P1, P2, P3, P4) the Murder Hobo (MH), and the GM. In Robin's analysis, it seems that he is leaving out a couple of variables. He leaves out of discussion the Rules set and the GM. While he technically also leaves out a Setting, his discussion of verisimilitude includes an understanding of their importance. Robin also assumes that all four of the non-Murder Hobo players have similar goals and commitment to RPGh and that the Murder Hobo no longer does. If I was to represent the pleasure arrived at in this game, I might represent it this way:

Image Source Philosophical Examinations

RPGh = R + S + 1*P1 + 1*P2 + 1*P3 + 1*P4 + (-x)*MH

At first glance, this is kind of ridiculous. I've artificially reduced the amount of fun a gaming group is having to a baffling and almost incoherent equation. Who do I think I am, the Jeremy Bentham of RPG Theory? No. I'm only doing this to highlight my point. That point being that Robin's article has either assumed, or stated outright, that each of the variables above has been a positive contributor to the entertainment experiences of those involved with only one exception. That exception is the Murder Hobo. In Robin's argument, narrowly construed so that only one player wants to be a Murder Hobo otherwise the Murder Hobo hedons (damn you Bentham!) would be the Dependent Variable, and that the group desires play that incorporates "fantasy of action WITH social constraint" whereas the Murder Hobo has advocated one without social constraint. Unstated, but also implied, is that the Game Master wants a play that engages in "fantasy of action WITH social constraint" as well, otherwise there would be no need for intervention.

But none of Robin's article touches on several questions that might be central in this discussion because he leaves out analysis of the Game Master in his essay. This is surprising given his emphasis in Robin's Laws on the importance of the Game Master, his Rule 0 is "Roleplaying games are entertainment; your goal as GM is to make your games as entertaining as possible for all participants." If the GM is so important, that leaves the following questions unanswered by Robin. The first question is, "how well did the Game Master understand the players?" A second question might be, "did the Game Master provoke the Murder Hobo into this action?" Finally, there is the question of "why is the Murder Hobo a part of the group in the first place?" 

Given that each of the examples that Robin gave, and without going down the rabbit hole of individual analysis, seems to include a disconnect between what the Game Master is offering the Murder Hobo player and that player's "emotional kick" it seems that the Game Master did not understand the playing group sufficiently. For example, one might imagine that the Murder Hobo player is what Robin calls "The Butt Kicker" in Robin's Laws. If this is the case, did the Game Master understand this and incorporate sufficient mayhem to satisfy that player. Is there an imbalance in the group of "Method Actors" to "Butt Kickers"? If there is, it is incumbent upon the Game Master to acknowledge this and set campaign norms that satisfy as many players as possible. Maybe the descent into maniacal mayhem was avoidable had the Game Master maintained sufficient attention to the various player's emotional kicks.

Additionally, in any situation of a player acting out, the Game Master must consider whether he or she is in fact the source of the problem. During a heavily Role Playing oriented section, did the Game Master not so subtly over snark the player's character in order to get the action back on target? I know that I have been guilty of this from time to time, less now than when I was younger, but I'm human and have sometimes mildly antagonized people who annoyed me during/before play. In this case, the Game Master is the problem and needs to address that issue. The breaking of the fourth wall in this case may require an apology on the part of the Game Master because the Game Master was the one actually reducing RPGh. Given how much work Game Mastering is, some players are willing to tolerate a lot of lapses into poor GMing in order to just get on with the gaming. While it may or may not be the case, a Game Master should whether he or she contributed to the rebellion and if so what can be done about it.

Lastly, the Game Master needs to ask why the Murder Hobo player is gaming with the group in the first place. If it's because it is a convention game, then more abrupt tactics might be necessary to engage the player because of the need to ensure the other players are having a good time. If the person is a close personal friend then there are other considerations. Partly this goes back to the answer to the first question, but adds another layer. In this case it isn't just whether the Game Master has a proper understanding of the player, it's also whether the player had a proper understanding of the group's norms. It is incumbent upon a Game Master to convey to new players the group's norms before play event begins. Is your game more role playing heavy? Is it more combat heavy? How much player agency is there to affect the world? How realistic are the settings the group prefers? These are all things that the Game Master should be trying to inform all players of from the beginning. One cannot assume norms across the hobby. Reading early issues of Alarums & Excursions quickly disabused me of the notion that all gamers played anything I would have recognized as fun, though it also demonstrated to me that I would have had a great time with the right group in that era.

I highly recommend reading Robin's article at Page XX, but I wish that he had focused not merely on "the Murder Hobo as wrongdoer" and looked at the issue more holistically. Hopefully, this essay will provoke some discussion of the issue and provide me with even more information I can add to my DM-prep shelf...and hard drive.