Showing posts with label Champions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Champions. Show all posts

Monday, April 01, 2019

Mutants and Masterminds releases "Powered by Champions" Rulebook

[Edited Shortly After Posting -- This is an April Fool's Joke. I fell for it.]

When the Mutants & Masterminds role playing game was published in 2002, it accomplished something that many thought impossible. It created a workable and balanced superhero game that used the d20 system of the 3rd Edition of Dungeons & Dragons (link is to 3.5 edition) as its foundation and played like comic books read. Now Mutants & Masterminds is taking another wonderful step and releasing a "powered by Champions" version that will highlight one of the game's inspirations.


When Wizards of the Coast released the 3rd Edition rules set, they had created an Open Gaming License that allowed others to make role playing games and products using the mechanics of 3rd Edition without the need of additional licensing. The Open Gaming License contained all the permissions and restrictions that would apply to the new game. When Wizards of the Coast released this license, there were a number of super hero games that were quickly published by a number of independent designers. These games included, but was not limited to, The Foundation by Team Frog, Blood and Vigilance by RPG Objects, Comic Book Super Heroes RPG by Black Drink Creations, and a d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels by Guardians of Order.

These games varied in quality. All of the games were playable, but some were better simulations of comic books than others. The quality of simulation seemed to be linked with how closely the rules tried to keep to the 3rd Edition rules. The closer the system played to D&D, with classes and levels, the less the game felt like comic book gaming at the table top. In the case of a game like Silver Age Sentinels, which had an excellent system of its own in its non-d20 version, some where surprised that they would attempt a d20 version. Such was the nature of the early d20 boom that even successful games like Deadlands and Traveller, released d20 versions as ways to increase brand recognition and gain exposure to more players.

Mutants & Masterminds displaced or reimagined many of the core concepts of 3rd Edition, like class and levels, and added elements from the classic DC Heroes Game by Mayfair Games. Those elements become even more evident in the 3rd edition of Mutants & Masterminds. The influence of DC Heroes is most visible in the freeform and narrative nature of the combat mechanics. Many D&D mechanics, like flanking, are legacy "Zone of Control" mechanics from both miniature and chit-n-hex wargames. These legacy mechanics are wonderful for the use of miniatures and ensure that certain combat situations are clearly visible on the table, but they are harder to implement without miniatures. My own 3rd edition group began using miniatures (though they were Steve Jackson Games' Cardboard Heroes minis due to the low cost) because we all got tired of asking "is this creature flanking?" Mutants & Masterminds streamlined the combat system toward narrative play and modified the character creation system to be an abstract point buy system similar to DC Heroes and Champions. It was a marvelous combination that resulted in that impossible achievement noted above. It was a super hero role playing game, using a d20 based system, that played like the comic books read. Since its publication it has become one of the best selling super hero games of all time.

The super hero role playing game community is an interesting group though. They tend to collect as many games within the genre as they can and like to borrow ideas from one game and put them in another. A trend in the early super hero rpg scene was for publishers to include rules to port characters from one system to another. That is not a trend that one sees often today, but it is one that Green Ronin appears to be embracing with their latest announcement. Not only will they be providing a version of the Mutants & Masterminds game powered by the Champions RPG engine. They will be releasing a host of products using their IP and other super hero game mechanics. They announced this move today with the creation of the  System Upkeep, Collaboration, & Knowledge Exchange Roundtable.

Here is a copy of that announcement:

For far too long, we here at Green Ronin have stuck our head in the sand and focused entirely on the Mutants & Masterminds game engine, ignoring the many other superhero game systems that came before. And ultimately, that kind of myopia doesn’t benefit anyone but ourselves. Our fans deserve better. We’ve long partnered with Steve Kenson’s Adamant Entertainment to bring you Icons Superpowered Roleplaying, and so we have reached out to the creators of other amazing superhero game engines, both active and defunct, to begin the new Mutants & Masterminds System Upkeep, Collaboration, & Knowledge Exchange Roundtable. Our goal is to bring you the great Mutants & Masterminds products you love, for the systems you play! Releasing at the end of this month is the new Mutants & Masterminds: Deluxe Champions Handbook, powered by classic Champions 3rd edition! Everything you need to play a Champions-powered Mutants & Masterminds campaign, complete with extensive point-buy systems our fans already love, plus tracking END to pay for your powers, sorting your attacks in Killing and Non-Killing, and many other elements that add a much-needed authenticity M&M has always lacked. A lot of you will ask “why not use Hero System, Sixth Edition or Champions Complete?” And that is an excellent question. One which I have no answer to. Licensing is a strange mistress and the rites must be observed. 

We’ve been hard at work to fill out the System Upkeep, Collaboration, & Knowledge Exchange Roundtable line, and you’ll be seeing monthly releases to support it for the next year. After the release of the Mutants & Masterminds: Deluxe Champions Handbook this month, expect soon-to-be fan favorites like Freedom City powered by Villain & Vigilantes, Emerald City powered by Heroes Unlimited, and Rogues Gallery powered by Street Fighter the Storytelling Game!

It's great news for the Mutants & Masterminds brand and it's great news for super hero gamers.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

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.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Learning to DM, Thoughts on Campaigns, House Rules, and Rules as Written. #RPGaDay Megapost 2, Days 13-16.

Overall, I've really been enjoying this year's #RPGaDay question line up and am trying to give each question more than a single sentence answer. I love the RPG hobby and questions like these are a time to share thoughts an memories as well as to answer questions.

That's another way of saying, "give me an inch to talk and I'll take 50 miles."

Day 13 - Describe a game experience that changed how you play.



I imagine that for a lot of gamers, this is the kind of question that evokes a tale of the "best gaming session ever." In such a tale, the author would wax poetic about how having a DM of Matt Mercer quality changed their life forever and made them a better gamer. That is not my tale. Mine is a tale of abject failure and learning from that failure.

I'm at a point in my life where I think I'm a pretty darn good DM. My gaming groups tell me they have a good time and there tends to be great energy at my tables and our stories often go off in wild directions. Heck, my groups have even developed their own sayings over the years. My favorite is the famous Drow saying, "It's as easy as shooting a dwarf in a well." I'm not saying I'm on the same level as a GM as Tom Lommel, Jordan Caves-Callarman, David Crennan (America's DM), or Satine Phoenix, but I am proud of the sessions I run. And the reason I am a good DM today, is that I was once a terrible one.

The interesting thing is that I didn't start terrible. I was inexperienced, sure, but the early games that my friend Sean McPhail and I put together had narrative qualities to them and our characters had personality. In my late Elementary school days, I was heading in the right direction. Then came my first experience being a DM for someone who'd never played. (Dun...dun...dun...)

A friend of mine in Middle School, not the one from the Sweet Pickles Bus Wars, saw me with some of my D&D books on campus and wanted to learn to play. We arranged a sleepover at his house with a couple of friends and we did our best all-nighter Stranger Things impersonation. Except it wasn't that cool at all. I had done ZERO preparation and didn't want to use one of the modules I was familiar with. I wanted to run my own adventure to teach these folks the game. So what was my adventure? I don't remember the particulars, and I'm pretty sure that I've suppressed them because it was so bad, but suffice it to say that it started in a tavern, had a fight with goblins, and ended with the PCs going down to Hell and killing Tiamat. They would have slaughtered all the levels of Hell if we hadn't gotten so tired.

That was all in ONE night. From 1st level to high enough to kill Tiamat. It was awful. I knew it was awful at the time. I was essentially opening to random pages in the Monster Manual and having them fight the monsters on the page.

As bad as it was, and as HORRIBLE as I was, it was still fun. It was at that point that I knew the game was better than I was as a DM and this was a good thing. I wanted to aspire to be a DM who improved the quality of the game instead of one who was "saved" by the quality of the game. That night changed my approach to the hobby and I'm grateful to the friends who endured the evening and were kind enough to wait years before mocking me for it.

Day 14 - Which RPG do you prefer for open ended-campaign play?


For me, the most important quality for open ended play is that the characters start out as great at what they do and stay that way. For a game to be truly open-ended, it cannot have class levels where characters start as inexperienced and work their way up to demi-god status. That makes for a great campaign, but not open-ended gaming that can be picked up at any time and place. In my mind, and this may be different for you, open-ended play is like a never ending soap opera. And I mean that as a complement. Good soap operas tell compelling stories for decades, but they don't tend to have people go from newb to l33t. If someone is l33t, they stay that way.

Games like D&D and with its levels, or Runequest with it's path to Rune Lord, don't fit that bill for me. They are fantastic games, but not open-ended in the way I'm interpreting this question. Surprisingly, Call of Cthulhu isn't either. I've heard too many stories of players with skill ratings in the implausible range, or even with enough power to fight the Elder Gods (can you imagine? That's like my D&D story above), to think that Call of Cthulhu fits the bill.

The best role playing games for open-ended action are super hero role playing games. The characters all start out highly capable, they are super heroes after all, and in most systems the character improvement curve is very shallow depending on how you run the game. In Champions, as Aaron Allston pointed out in Strike Force, characters tend to learn new things rather than get increasingly better at the things they do. This is especially true if you are enforcing campaign wide Damage Class restrictions. Mutants and Masterminds has a similar phenomenon. But the best two games for this kind of action are Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) and DC Heroes (MEGS), and of these two I have a deep love of DC's system.

What both of these systems share is that they use experience as an expendable resource. In Marvel it's Karma and in DC it's Hero Points. In both cases, the points can be spent to have an effect on outcomes. Why is Spider-Man able to hang out with Thor in fights? Because he spends a lot of Karma in those battles. Why doesn't Thor get even more Godlike? Because increases at his capabilities are super expensive and it's easier to learn to do new tricks with your powers. Why is Batman able to hang with the Justice League, I mean seriously? Because he blows through Hero Points like nobody's business. He's constantly going for "Devastating Blows" and Pushing attacks all day. Sure, his devastating blows are in the form of "exploiting the weaknesses of his opponents" rather than haymakers, but that's the mechanic.

Batman and Spider-Man's player can play for years and only increase in power by an increment, or choose to get better at a lot of things. The stories though, never get stale. This is because the challenges are at a fixed level an stay there.

I imagine that D&D could work that way if you started at 5th level or so and just told stories at that challenge rating, but that fails to take advantage of the "I'm getting better calculus" that underlies the game. The calculus underlying Marvel and DC is "I just did something normally not possible at my power level" and that's why it feels satisfying for very long periods of time.

Your mileage may very, but that's the kind of gaming I like for open-ended campaigns.


Day 15 -- Which RPG do you enjoy adapting the most?

Image by Andrew Asplund
 
Given my love of the Savage Worlds gaming system, one might expect that I'd drop that one down right here. Nope. Not that I run it "as is," though I mostly do, but it's not the one I'm always wondering what I could do with it. Though to be honest, I have yet to see anything it can't do with a little tweaking. The game I enjoy adapting the most is 4th Edition D&D, in particular it's Gamma World variation.

Shocking! I know.

It's just that the game can do pretty much EVERYTHING. It makes the basis of a very good super hero game. It's easy as pie to make Rocket Raccoon using the rules. You can be the characters from freakin' Phoenix Wright!

For what it's worth, I find that the Gamma World iteration and Essentials are all you really need. Once you realize that the game is really an effects based game and that you can rename powers whatever you want, it opens up endless possibilities. Coming from a super hero background, as I do, reskinning powers has never been an issue for me and I think this game can do anything...at least in a one shot setting.

Day 16 - Which RPG do you enjoy using as is?



Truth be told, I play most games "as is." I don't have a lot of time to spend creating house rules for games I'm playing and changing them up. I'd rather write adventures than tweaks to a magic system. This isn't to say that I don't do any house ruling, but I do tend to try to give the designers respect when I sit down to play. For example, a lot of people feel uncomfortable with Savage Worlds' initiative system when they first read about it. "You mean it uses CARDS? And you reshuffle a lot?" But the fact is that it's a fast, furious, and fun way of handling initiative that has a lot more give and take that it might seem just reading the rules.
Clearly from my previous statement about reskinning 4e like crazy, 4e isn't the game I play "as is." No, that honor goes to Champions 4th Edition...still the best edition in my mind. The fact is that Champions is extremely well designed and well balanced and any tinkering I want to do is filled up with making characters and not house rules. The 4th edition of the game stretched the rules to as granular a level as I like to play. 5th edition got a little too "engineering" based for me and the players I gamed with started to fall too much into the "if it's not on your page and paid for, you can't do it" camp for my liking and that seemed to be a trend with 5th edition. The 4th edition started down that path, but was only beginning. Like GURPS and 3.x/Pathfinder, this is a rules set that tries to have a rule for everything to ensure that you have a fair and consistent answer for every question. The underlying math is sound in the game, though Wayne Shaw did make an argument for a change in the skill system on my Geekerati podcast that I agree with.

If only I had 4 weeks to teach people how to play and make characters before starting up a campaign. I really miss playing this game, but it's not one that's easy for players to pick up and play. There is an initial learning curve, particularly if you are making your own characters. But God is it a great game.




Tuesday, August 01, 2017

What Published RPG I Wish I Was Playing Right Now -- #RPGaDAY 2017 Day 1

For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of Super Hero role playing games. My entry into this particular gaming milieu was Hero Games' excellent Champions 2nd edition role playing game. I happened upon a copy and was amazed that game designers had even attempted to capture super heroes using game mechanics. At the time, I was only familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, Star Frontiers, Tunnels & Trolls, and Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks. I had played all three of those games and their mechanical foundations did not prepare me for what Champions offered.

Unlike the other games with which I was familiar, Champions did not have randomly created characters and instead allowed players to build whatever they could imagine. The only limit to the character you could design was the number of points available at creation (100 points with 150 more possible if you took Disadvantages). Other than that, it was all good. During my initial Champions experience, I didn't have anyone to play the game with and spent all of my time making characters and doing some solo battles. My character builds were heavily influenced by the sample characters in the rule book and thus were typically of 200 total character points (100 and 100 from Disadvantages). This included my personal write ups for the X-Men. I was content with my view of the game, but this view was to be shattered in short order.

A couple of months after I discovered Champions my family moved to a new city, I finally encountered a group of gamers who played the game every weekend. Given that this was the Bay Area, and the game company was a Bay Area company, I soon discovered a rich and vibrant Champions community. I also discovered that how I interpreted character adaptations to the game was very different from others. Some of that difference, I maintain to this day. I personally believe that too many gamers inflate the stats of their favorite characters out of love for the character, rather than an examination of benchmarks and mechanics of the game. But these are things that can only be understood through play, and that was something I had not yet done with Champions. In playing the game, I learned how some combinations worked better than others and I learned that other players were much more likely than I had been to "grab" the "Obvious and Accessible" items some characters used in combat. Not that I designed a lot of those kinds of characters, I didn't, just that I had expected gamers to behave more like the characters in comics than like "tactical gamers" and that the rules treated gamers as tactical gamers while allowing them to behave like characters in comics.

Long story short, I learned that you can only truly judge the quality of a game by playing it. I still love Champions and think it is one of the top 3 or 4 super hero games out there, but my view is now grounded in experience of how the game works and how when some character building norms take over the game can slow down significantly and lose some of its charm.

Eventually, my love of super heroes and super hero games led me to purchase Villains & Vigilantes, Marvel Super Heroes, and DC Heroes, all of which have there charms. At one point in time, not that long ago by some standards, I could claim to own a copy of every super hero rpg published (at least in one of its editions). With the explosion of pdf based publishing, that is no longer the case and I'm sure I'm missing out on some great games, but I also have a HUGE backlog of games I'd like to play...see how I'm pulling this back to the question of the day?



Among that backlog is Jay Harlove and Aimee Karklyn/(Hartlove)'s early Supergame. It wasn't the first super hero rpg published, that was Superhero 44/Superhero 2044, but it was one of the first and predates Champions. Both the first edition and revised edition came out in 1980. I discovered the game as a "real" thing and not just something mentioned in old gaming magazines, when I moved to Los Angeles after graduating from college in 2000. I was looking for gaming stores and found a long standing game store in Long Beach that had a copy of the 1st edition. Later searches on the internet have shown me that I got a significant bargain on it, as I did with copies of Warlock and a couple of other games originally designed by the Southern California gaming community.

Supergame, like Superhero 2044 which predates it and Champions which comes after it, has a point based character creation system. It also has an interesting skill and combat system that I think has a lot of potential. Some of the stats are odd in how they are presented. For example, if a character has an Agony score (similar to Stun for Champions fans) of 10 or more they suffer no penalties to how they move or act. Given that scores start at 0, and that some sample characters have 0s in other stats implying that a score of 0 is sometimes the "average" score, it seems odd that a person has to spend points just to be a normal person in some areas and not others. Why not just have stats start at "average" and let people buy them down later? Or why not have Agony start at 0 with no penalties and allow negative scores to cause impairment? It's a small complaint, and there are a number of neat features like different defenses against different types of attack (pre-Champions remember). A thorough reading of the rules, both editions, and the supplements has convinced me that I need to play this game to evaluate whether the designed characters are effective at all in a way that would be fun. There are far more characters who have an Agony of 10, or a Physical (like Hit Points but with those with less than 10 being hurt), which means that if they suffer just 1 point of damage they will be impaired.


 I think there is a very good game buried in the Supergame rule books, but I think it is a game that needs a lot of play testing and rules tweaks to bring out that game. I applaud Jay an Aimee for their hard work on the game and their ability to get a game like this published in 1980, and this is definitely a game I wish I was playing right now. I have so many questions I'd like answered and I'd love to house rule this game into a more complete system.




Friday, October 14, 2016

Hacking the Black Hack using Zak's FASERIP System the Cypher Way -- Some Initial Thoughts

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/177913/Faserip?affiliate_id=86991

Readers know that I have long been a fan of Superhero role playing games. There was a time when I could claim to "own every Superhero RPG in print," but those days have long past. I still own a very large selection of Superhero RPGs that ranges from Superhero 2044 to DC Heroes to The Super Hack, but there are so many Superhero games out there that it is hard to keep up. I've read all of the games I own and have played most of them, but there are a few that stand out as able to withstand the test of time. Among those games that I return to again and again is the Classic Marvel Superheroes Roleplaying Game which uses the FASERIP system. The system isn't perfect, but it is very flexible, has quite a few "genius moments," and is great for getting people gaming quickly. It's a system that I want to use, but I want to use in a modified form and I've recently come across three resources that have inspired me in what I think will be a fruitful direction.

The first of those resources was +Zak Sabbath 's Character Generation Guide for his "Everything is Terrible" FASERIP campaign. In that post, Zak proposes a d20 based mechanic intended to replace the Universal Table that so many of us have used but which fewer of us have memorized. The Universal Table tells players what they need to roll to get a basic success (green), a substantial success (yellow), and a critical success (red). The division of success into different categories is one of the "genius" moments of the game, but needing to look at the chart to see if you've hit the next color (for those who haven't memorized the chart) can distract from game play.

Zak's proposal takes the categories on the chart and assigns them a Target Number. Players roll 3 Twenty-Sided Die against that target number. If only one die is a success, it's a Green result, two successes means Yellow, and three means a Red result. I recommend that you look at Zak's post for a detailed breakdown of the Target Numbers and his thoughts on the topic. They are worth your time. 

I took some time to do a quick breakdown of the basic probabilities of Zak's system in order to compare them to traditional FASERIP probabilities.


Looking at the basic Universal Table, you can see that a person with a "Shift 0" ability in something still has a 35% chance of achieving a Green result. When it comes to lifting weights, this works very well when one includes the "Intensities" rules from Advanced and Revised Marvel. In a fight, this means that a person with Fighting of Shift 0 still has a 35% chance of hitting his/her opponent. This somewhat high level of success seems to match with the heroic nature of Supers gaming. The same person has only a 6% chance of some level of improved success.


Looking at a table showing the probabilities resulting from his 3d20 system, we see some interesting results. The first is that Shift 0 really sucks. The second is that at the higher end, the probability of getting a Red result are close to those of the traditional FASERIP system. There are some notable differences at the low and mid-ranges, particularly with regard to Green results. In traditional FASERIP, a character with a Remarkable Fighting score has a 30% chance of a Green result and has a 44.36% chance in Zak's system. Scores lower than Good characters are less frequently successful under Zak's system and above Good they have are more frequently successful. I'm fine with that. It makes the "Street Level" heroes more impressive than they are under the regular system (when facing thugs) and the distinction between tiers continues.

To see how nicely Zak's quick Hack simulates the old FASERIP system, while requiring significantly less memorization, I compared the White results from FASERIP with those of ZakHak.

As you can see, the first four Shifts have a lower probability of success under ZakHak, you have a slightly higher probability of success from Excellent to Shift X, and the final two columns are essentially the same [Note: the percentage above is the percentage of 'failure' so higher numerical values equate to lower levels of success.]

I think Zak's system is intuitive and works and I'm likely to use a modified of it as I move toward adapting The Black Hack to the Superhero genre. There are a couple of previous attempts at Black Hat Supers (The Super Hack and The Powers Hack), but neither of those rules sets are as complete as I would like for a rules set intended for campaign use. What I want to do is take a the "roll under" system from The Black Hack as the base (this is as easy as taking the complement of Zak's value in a base 20 system) in order to have higher stats mean better results and have stats and results be the same number. I'm also contemplating adding the "roll x or y and add an interesting effect" rule from the Cypher System to the superhero game. The x or y will be yellow or red FEATS and they will allow the automatic use of some reality bending Power Stunt. I might event do a straight up mix of Cypher's 1 - 10 difficulty range and "pool expenditure" system, since I think that would mix with FASERIP's Karma system nicely.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be flushing out a full system but I will be using ZakHak as the base of whatever system I end up with.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy in D&D Gamma World: Rocket Raccoon



Like most geeks, I am extremely excited about Guardians of the Galaxy. The latest Marvel Studios film is a brave leap into the lesser known characters of the Marvel-verse. Until Dan Abnett, Keith Giffen, and Andy Lanning's run on Annihilation the Guardians -like Alpha Flight - had been an acquired taste of a small niche of comic book fans. Abnett and Lanning populated the new Guardians with a strange group of characters - otherwise comical characters - and put them in extreme circumstances. Following after Tolkien's model, the Guardians' narrative within Annihilation is that of the "common man." Sure Rocket and Groot are a competent pair, and Drax has been a Marvel heavy hitter in the past, but none of them match the cosmic might of Firelord, Silver Surfer, or Nova.

It made for compelling stuff and now that same band of misfits - and not those who bear the power cosmic - are going to be featured in the upcoming film.

I asked my friends in the Social Network-verse what game system they would use to run a Guardians of the Galaxy campaign and received some very good answers. Some would run it in Hero System, others in Savage Worlds, and still others in Bulldogs!. I am intimately familiar with two of those systems, and almost chose to create statistics in Savage Worlds, but in the end I chose Wizards of the Coasts' excellent D&D Gamma World as my game of choice. As I was thinking how to stat the characters in as simple a fashion as possible, the ideas just leaped out at me. Groot was a "Giant Plant" and that's all I needed to know to stat him. I'll likely attempt a Savage Worlds conversion in the future...and a Marvel Saga and Marvel Heroic as well as purchase a copy of Bulldogs!...but for now, I'm using D&D Gamma World. It should be noted that all characters will be 10th level as most Gamma Supers should be.

My first entry is none other than my twin daughters' - History and Mystery - favorite Guardian...

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

A History of Superhero RPGs Game by Game (Part 1): Superhero 2044

Some material in this post was originally published in June of 2010. Since that time, the excellent Age of Ravens blog has written a series on the History of Superhero RPGs that gives brief synopses of these games through the ages and James Maliszewski has published an essay by Superhero 2044 creator Donald Saxman. The Saxman essay, along with my June 2010 post, were included as additional materials in the 2010 reprint edition of Superhero 2044.

As you will read in the discussion below, I  was nicely surprised by Superhero: 2044.  It is a clear demonstration of the wild creativity of the early RPG community, but also an example of how hard it is to create games in a chaotic environment. This series will attempt to review and discuss most of the major superhero roleplaying games, and a couple of key supplements, that have been published. Given that I own the vast majority - though sadly not all - of the superhero games that have been published to date, this should be a fun exercise. I will be blogging about the games in the order they were published, so Villains and Vigilantes (1st Edition) and Supergame will be the next games in this series. 

 

According to Heroic Worlds by Lawrence Schick and Steve Perrin in Different Worlds #23, Superhero 2044 by Donald Saxman is the first commercially available superhero themed role playing game. Saxman's game was publishedin 1977 under the name Superhero '44. The game wasn't entitled Superhero 2044 until the game's second edition, when it was by Lou Zocchi's Gamescience Inc. later that same year. While I am a huge fan of super hero role playing games, and a student of the history of rpgs, this game sat on my bookshelf for years without a complete reading. Its lack of a list of itemized superpowers, and the mechanics of how they worked, was one of the key reasons that the game languished for so long on my shelf without a thorough examination. Apparently, Donald Saxman intentionally left a formal list of superpowers out of the book in order to respect the copyrights of various comic book publishers -- though that didn't stop artist Mike Cagle from providing a cover illustration filled with characters who bear an uncanny similarity to many popular comic book characters.



Donald Saxman was inspired to create Superhero 2044 when he was a player in a D&D campaign run by science fiction and fantasy author John M. Ford.  Ford's game featured an adventure in which, "the party of magicians and swordsmen met Batman and Doc Savage, and ultimately fought Doctor Doom and Darkseid with the help of Luke Cage and the Phantom Stranger." From that short bit of description of Ford's campaign from the Superhero 2044 rulebook, one can see how this kind of high concept mashup could inspire players to design all kinds of things. With the help of his friends, and nearly two years of design and playtesting, Donald Saxman created the Superhero 2044 role playing game. While Lawrence Schick states that the game was influenced by D&D in Different Worlds, a close reading of the game shows that few if any of those influences were mechanical. Saxman writes that one of his chief influences was GDW's early rpg En Garde and that he made a conscious effort to avoid being influenced by D&D.

The Game

Superhero 2044 begins with a description of the game universe. The majority of game play will take place on the island of Inguria, a city that is kind of a cross between Macross City and the future cities of the Legion of Superheroes. There are a number of creative influences on exhibition here and the combination results in one of the game's biggest assets, a rich world in which to play.

Like many games being released around the same time, Superhero 2044 features a point based character build system where players have 140 points to spend on a number of character attributes (Vigor, Stamina, Endurance, Mentality, Charisma, Ego, and Dexterity). While some of these attributes share similar names, they do have different functions and one- Stamina - would have benefited from a different name as it represents hand-to-hand fighting ability and overall physical capability. Players also ten pick one of three archetypes (Ubermensch, Toolmaster, and Unique), each of which modifies starting attributes accordingly.

While there are no "strict" minimum values to the stats, there are effective minimums in order to avoid penalties. One requires a minimum of 20 Endurance, 11 Vigor, and 6 Dexterity in order to function at a normal level. Given that the Toolmaster starts with -10 points to the starting value of Endurance, a player would have to spend 30 points on Endurance to avoid penalties. It might have been better to have the statistics start at base values and allow players to buy them down if they want to represent some disadvantage. One could, for example, have started characters with those minimum statistics and only 103 statistic points. One might also have created more uniform base values for the statistics. All three of these concepts quickly enter into superhero rpg design, for point based systems anyway. Once the points are spent, the players are allowed 50 bonus points to add to one of these in special circumstances in order to emulate some power. The example given is 50 extra Endurance vs. Bullets and some recommendations are made to base super powers on weapons and gadgets contained in the game.

Though there is a point based system for the purchase of attributes, there is no such system for super powers. Donald Saxman had intended to write three books for he Superhero 2044 system in which one of the later books would provide such a system, but those books were never published. This doesn't mean that no power design rules were ever published. Wayne Shaw - who I interviewed on the Geekerati podcast - wrote an extensive super power design rules set in Niall Shapero's excellent The Lords of Chaos fanzine and Shaw offers some ideas in the insert to the 2010 reprint of the game.





Because of the lack of a super power design system, the game sat on my shelf for some time. When I did read the book, I found it to be much better than I expected. While I would argue that without Wayne Shaw's additions in The Lords of Chaos issue 8 the game would be challenging to run,without Superhero 2044 modern super hero role playing would not be what it is today.  The game had a significant influence on the super hero games that came after Superhero 2044 and if it hadn't been written there would be no Champions, Supergame, or Golden Heroes. Each of those super hero games lifts a concept out of Superhero 2044 and structures a game around that concept.

Superhero 2044 is more than the first super hero role playing game, it is the foundation upon which many games followed.

As I mentioned earlier, it was the first superhero game to include point based character construction. Though the point expenditure was limited to the building of a character's "attributes" and were not a part of "power design." This innovation, and at the time of Superhero 2044 this was a significant innovation, is one of the major design starting points for a number of super hero role playing games -- not the least of which is the Champions game. The Champions first edition rule book mentions the influence that Wayne Shaw's character creation rules had on the game's early design, but the influence Superhero 2044 had on Champions reached beyond the character design system.

Influence on Champions' Combat System

In addition to being inspired by the point based character design of Superhero 2044 it is evident that Champions melee combat system was influenced by Donald Saxman's game as well.

In Champions combat is resolved by taking a character's "Offensive Combat Value" and subtracting an opponent's "Defensive Combat Value." The result of that subtraction is then added to 11 to find the number required to hit an opponent on a roll of 3 six-sided dice. Champions combat system is one of the best on the market and the fact that it uses a comparison of combatant's effectiveness, and a bell curve resolution system, are among its chief strengths.

In Superhero 2044, you take a character's "Stamina" and subtract his opponents "Stamina." The difference between these two numbers is compared to the Universal Combat Matrix which gives you a number between 3 and 18 that the character must roll on 3 six-sided dice to determine if the character hit his opponent. It should be noted that this combat system is only used for "melee" combat in Superhero 2044, where it forms the foundation of Champions combat.

The Champions version is more elegant, as the result of the initial comparison is the modifier to the 3d6 roll, but it is the same system. It is as if the designers of Champions playtested and refined the Superhero 2044 melee combat system. Champions combat has some significant differences overall to Superhero 2044, but one can see that one echoes the other.

Influence on Supergame

Like Champions, Supergame was influenced by Superhero 2044's point based character generation system. Given its own 1980 design date, and the fact that it was a part of "California Gaming Culture," might hint that Supergame itself also influenced Champions. One sees the underpinnings of Superhero 2044 is in the purchase of a character's starting attributes.

Both systems feature something that many modern gamers might consider odd. All of a character's attributes start at zero and can be increased -- this itself isn't odd to the modern gamer. What is odd is that both games have attribute levels where the character is suffering from a disability. In Superhero 2044, if a character has an Endurance of less than 20 that character is "fatigued" or worse. In Supergame, a character with an "Agony Score" of less than 15 "may either move or attack, but only one per turn." There are similar penalties for "Vigor" in Superhero 2044 and "Physical Score" in Supergame. The names of the attributes and the level of effect are different, but one can see the similarities. Most modern systems would start a character with a base number of points sufficient to not be fatigued or incapacitated, but both Superhero 2044 and Supergame allow for the possibility.

But it isn't the point based character design where Supergame bears the most similarity to its predecessor. Supergame includes rules for building specific powers -- though not as robust the later published Champions -- that are themselves an innovation over the state of gaming at that time and a step beyond what were offered in Superhero 2044.

The area where Supergame most reflects Superhero 2044 is in its ranged combat system. In Superhero 2044, ranged combat is decided by rolling a six sided die and adding/subtracting to the die total applicable modifiers. This sets the target number that must be rolled, or higher, on a second roll of a six sided die. For example a character with a 20 Dexterity (-1) shooting an opponent at point blank range (-3) with a shoulder weapon (-1) rolls a 6 on a six sided die. This gives a modified result of 1 (6-1-3-1=1) and means that the character hits if the player rolls a 1 or better on the second roll. This system, with some differences in modifier values, is the system used in Supergame.


Influence on Golden Heroes

While I was intrigued by the way that Superhero 2044 influenced the design of American super hero role playing games, I was amazed at how it had influenced a British one. In White Dwarf magazine issue 9, game designer Eamon Bloomfield reviewed Superhero 44 -- Superhero 2044's first edition -- and wrote the following:

"Each character fills out a weekly planning sheet indicating whether he is patrolling, resting, training, or researching. This...show[s] how many crimes of what type he's stopped this week and at what damage to himself; without actually having to play the event...Overall good fun and realistic and a welcome addition to any role playing fan's collection. Certainly as a postal game it has a great future."

The weekly planning sheet is one of the most intriguing aspects of the Superhero 2044 game and the most playable aspect "out of the box."  The game includes weekly planning sheets that provide a number of "activity blocks" to which players assign particular tasks, like fighting crime or resting. Golden Heroes, Games Workshop's super hero role playing game, featured a campaign system that bears no small similarities to that of Superhero 2044. Games Workshop was, and still is, the publisher of White Dwarf magazine and so it is easy to believe that this game review sparked some discussion of "planning sheet" style campaign play.

Golden Heroes features a campaign system that heavily relies on something very similar to Superhero 2044's weekly planning sheet. They have a system that uses something called a "Daily Utility Phase" or DUPs. The game describes them as follows:

The scenarios played in each week occupy a certain number of DUPs for the characters involved. Any remaining DUPs can be devoted to other pursuits such as training, improving powers, developing scientific gadgets, etc.

Thus at the end of each scenario, you must inform the players how many spare DUPs their characters have. Preferably then, or at worst at the start of the next game session, the players must tell you how their characters have spent those DUPs.

The player's allocation of DUPs is compared to various campaign ratings, something vary similar to what Superhero 2044 calls "handicaps," in order to determine what events happen to the character and how much the character is able to improve over time. Both systems are dynamic and change as characters interact with the game world. The Golden Heroes system is more developed and is a part of a more complete system of mechanics, but it is unarguably a descendant of the Superhero 2044 system.

Closing Remarks

I wish I had read Superhero 2044 much sooner than I did. It is a definite diamond in the rough. While it would be difficult to play RAW, it has a large number of innovative mechanics and ideas. The fact that it contains enough ideas to influence no fewer than THREE super hero role playing games in their design is a significant achievement in and of itself. One cannot truly understand the development of the hobby without reading this game.

I think I will try to play the game itself soon, though I don't know if I will try to design a comprehensive powers system or use an existing one to supplement the game, as the campaign play system still stands out as something that has some depth and would be useful in a number of games. Given the abstract nature of the campaign planning system, one could easily adapt it to another game for use.

The game also features a detailed setting for super hero play. The setting lacks the microscopic detail of modern settings, but for the time the game was written it is quite intricate. Like the game itself, its setting is one that inspires addition and extension rather than provides a complete painting.

Donald Saxman has created something pretty special here and I'd love to see someone take this system and make a modern edition out of it. It would take some work, but it would be worth it.

It would be a dream come true for me if both Wayne Shaw and Donald Saxman would agree to work with me to run a Kickstarter of Superhero 2044 Second Edition that incorporates some of Shaw's changes while keeping the basic system as is. Such an endeavor would be a truly OSR adventure and one that I think would be worth exploring. What would a more developed version of the game look like? I hope we get to find out.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Simulation vs. Playability: The Background Discussion for a Blog Series



Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be discussing how some games balance their desire to simulate a certain activity with the need for a game to be playable. Most of the posts will be dealing with role playing games, but I might wander into wargame territory from time to time.

Let us take as a given for the purposes of our discussion that, with the exception of purely abstract games, most games are a simulation of some central conceit.

For example, both Chess and Men of Iron are to one degree or another simulations of medieval warfare. Men of Iron has what Elias, Garfield, and Gutschera (2012) would describe as higher "intensity" of the medieval warfare conceit than Chess, but both do share that central conceit. On the Elias, Garfield, and Gutschera "Scale of Intensity for Conceits," Chess is rated a 3 (Very Light Conceit) while Men of Iron would likely be rated around an 8 (Simulation, but with many sacrifices to gameplay).  As a further illustration Tic-Tac-Toe rates a 1 (Purely Abstract) and Squad Leader ranks a 10 (Full-on Simulation).  This might make one wonder where Advanced Squad Leader would rank, but I digress.

I understand that there are those who may disagree with the initial premise that "all non-abstract games are a simulation" either as a mere tautology, and others who completely disagree with the premise as an a priori. I believe it will prove useful for the series of discussions I hope to have about role playing games as simulations of the various subjects they address.

The framing of games, and in particular role playing games, as simulations should not be confused with Ron Edwards' GNS (Gamist, Narrativist, and Simulationist) system of game play analysis. As I interpret GNS Theory as a theory of play that can inform design and not a theory of system deconstruction and design. As Ron states in the above linked essay, "These terms, or modes, describe three distinct types of people's decisions and goals during play." These are player goals toward which games may be designed, but in my opinion a "Simulation" is not the same as a "Simulationist" game. 

To illustrate, the excellent Narrativist game The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a simulation of storytelling as the good Baron himself might engage in it. It is not a simulation of the Baron's adventures, though James Wallis considered making a game where players could enact those adventures, it is instead a simulation of storytelling in a particular style. Another example of a game that is a simulation of storytelling is Tales of the Arabian Nights. Both Baron and Arabian Nights simulate the activity of storytelling within their conceits differently, but in the end the game play of both are best described by the stories created within the rules of the game. There is a reason that Wallis calls these kinds of games "Story-Making" games. So it's possible to have simulations of storytelling that results in story-making which in the end results in storytelling when the results with game play are shared.

Okay, enough of the metaphysics of games being simulations. Let's move forward please -- ed.

Games are also about fun, and to be fun games must be playable. This is as true of role playing games as it is for any other kind of game. As Robin Laws says in his masterwork Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering, "Roleplaying games are entertainment; your goal as GM is to make your games as entertaining as possible for all participants." 

The key part of that statement is "as possible for all participants." Because players come to a gaming table with different "ideas of fun" as highlighted in Edwards' GNS theory, roleplaying game design must make decisions between the level of depth of simulation and the playability of the system. Some players find granular verisimilitude and accuracy of representation entertaining. For these players reading Chapter H of the Advanced Squad Leader rulebook is as much fun as actual game play. Other players might enjoy quick systems or systems that foster the creation of narratives.

Historically, one of the conflicts that has resulted from the attempt to design "good" games is a tension between "realism" and "playability." In Issue 8 of MOVES magazine (1973), Victor Madeja argued that "Commercial wargames fail to accurately represent modern war. Although no game will ever recreate the confusion, horror and destruction of war, we should at least expect a wargame to partly simulate the decision-making process involved in actual battle. Instead we have chess-like caricatures of reality. What semblance of realism we were led to expect is sacrificed on the altar of playability" (Emphasis mine). For Victor, there was a clear distinction between realism and playability and he thought that games at the time leaned too much toward playability and not enough toward actual simulation .

You can purchase access to the first 60 issues of MOVES magazine for the very reasonable price of $19.95 at Strategy and Tactics Press.

By Issue 14 of MOVES (1974) John Hill, the eventual designer of SQUAD LEADER, addresses the conflict by stating, "One of the hardest problems facing any war game designer is the careful balancing between playability and realism. Actually, any reasonably competent wargamer could probably design a realistic 'simulation,' but to design a good game is something else. As an example, 1914 was an excellent simulation of corps level fighting of that era, but as a game it was worthless -- it couldn't be played." John Hill would eventually go on to become an advocate of what he called "abstraction." This was a controversial game design philosophy in which the designer cared less about "what actually happened" and more concerned with the "effects" of what happened and how to model those effects. So, for Hill the fact that gunfire affected morale was more important than modelling the specific physical effects of bullet trajectories. Examples of "abstraction" designs in role playing games include D&D's "hit points" and the "effects based design" of CHAMPIONS.

The tension between simulation and realism is one that has been discussed in role playing games since the origin of the hobby. In the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE, Gary Gygax writes, "Of the two approaches to hobby games today, one is best defined as the realism-simulation school and the other as the game school." -- You can see in this discussion the origins of Edwards' GNS theory. -- "AD&D is assuredly an adherent of the latter school. It does not stress any realism (in the author's opinion an absurd effort at best considering the topic!). It does little to attempt to simulate anything either. ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS is first and foremost a game for the fun and enjoyment of those who seek to use imagination and creativity...As a realistic simulation of things from the realm of make-believe, or even as a reflection of medieval or ancient warfare or culture or society, it can be deemed only a dismal failure...Those who...generally believe games should be fun, not work, will hopefully find this system to their taste."

In his paragraph on design intent, excerpted above, Gygax clearly puts himself in the "abstraction" design camp. His discussion of Hit Points in the DMG also makes this clear, whereas those who criticize hit points or how armor "makes it harder to hit and doesn't stop damage" fall more into the simulationist camp. I would like to say that I disagree with Gygax that his game "does little to attempt to simulate anything." I would argue that it is simulating heroic fantasy, but it is doing so from an abstractionist position. It's a small distinction, but not an unnecessary one.

As an aside, most gamers or designers are a combination of abstractionist/simulationist. Ken St. Andre, the designer of one of the most abstractionist rpgs I have ever played, doesn't like armor class systems because they don't simulate what he wants. This is the case even though his TUNNELS & TROLLS combat system sacrifices specificity for playability and speed of play.

When it comes to the tension between "simulation" and "playability" there is not a procedural definition of what is right or wrong. What is right or wrong doesn't even depend on what is being simulated. What determines whether it is better to favor simulation or playability is how that decision works within the rules set and the goals of the game itself. Sometimes it is important that a game be a good simulation of what it is trying to represent. CHAMPIONS is very much an "effects based design" system in character creation, but its combat system simulates the panel to panel flow of comic books extremely well. VILLAINS & VIGILANTES has a random character creation system that favors simulation -- though it also includes GM "rulings over rules" -- over abstraction as it defines specifically what Flame Powers and Ice Powers do and how they work rather than define effects and have you decide what matches what. Both are good games.

In the coming weeks, I'll be looking at some games and how they address the Simulation/Realism vs. Playability/Abstraction conflict. I'll be starting with VILLAINS & VIGILANTES and how it emulates Force Fields and Telekinesis in its simulation of super heroic conflict. While I think that the V&V system overall is quite good, I believe that the designs of these two powers demonstrate good "simulation" on the one hand and "awkward" simulation on the other.

I'd like to leave this conversation with two quotes for Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball from their Things we Think About Games.


1) Theme and gameplay are two different things.
2) Balance is not the same thing as fun.

Elias, George Skaff. Garfield, Richard, and Gutschera, K. Robert (2012), Characteristics of Games. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

[Vintage RPGs] CHAMPIONS 1st Edition -- A Blast from the Past

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 -- 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 by which a player could 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, as I have been doing the past week, 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.

  • 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 thinks 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"?  Someone once told me the villain's name was Holocaust, but that could just be a Bay Area rumor.  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.