Champions Introduction

This is the introduction I'm giving my players for my upcoming Champions mini-adventure.

Coming up in a few weeks, I'm going to run three weeks or so of Champions: The Superhero Role-Playing Game. This system uses the Hero System rules, fifth edition.

Basic intro to Hero System (It's big due to some spot illustrations)

Hero System Combat Summary

Cheapest (slightly abridged) rules manual: Hero Sidekick (example vendor)

The full rules manual is Hero System 5th Edition (first printing or Revised), which is a $40 hardback.

What Is Superhero Role-Playing?

In Champions, you play a superhero, like Superman, Spider-Man, or Wonder Woman. You are gifted with powers and skills far beyond those of ordinary people. You use these powers to save people, fight supervillains, and unravel criminal conspiracies that threaten the very world, while dealing with the soap operatic complications having these powers causes in your personal life.

You work in a team with other superheroes (the other PCs); your team is like the X-Men or the Justice League.

When you're not out busting heads, you're in your secret identity (like Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne), dealing with your job, your nosy neighbor, the guy who's always trying to steal the girl you can't work up the nerve to ask out on a date, or the kid down the street who's always getting into trouble.

Setup

I will provide a set of pregenerated characters; these characters are archetypical, by which I mean, generic. You'll be able to pick your superhero name. All of you together will have to pick a name for your superteam.

If we go to campaign, I'll give you the opportunity to continue using these characters or devise your own character.

Setting

The setting is basically modern-day America. However, there are a few differences:

• There have been superheroes and supervillains growing in number since 1997, led by the Voyagers, a Fantastic Four-like team of superheroes in San Francisco.
• There were a couple of previous ages of superheroes, the "Gilded Age" of the late 19th century and the "Dark Age" of the Great Depression.
• Political history is slightly different.

The campaign is set in the town of Port Wilcox, Delaware, basically a larger version of Wilmington. You are sponsored by a retired Silicon Valley billionnaire named Woodrow "Woody" Wilcox, who has stocked a wing of his mansion with desirable superhero artifacts, like science labs and flying cars.

Your team debuted a few short months ago on the snowy Thanksgiving weekend of 2004, when you helped the PWFD fight a series of fires in the waterfront district and ultimately captured a pyromaniac supervillain that the newspapers uncreatively dubbed the "Firebug".

Expectations

You are superheroes.

• You are self-sacrificing, noble, public-spirited. You help people because it is the right thing to do, not for the reward or the glory. Well, maybe a little for the glory.
• If you see somebody getting mugged or a bank getting robbed, you stop it. You rescue kitties from burning buildings. You help a paperboy with a flat tire deliver the newspaper.
• You are, unless otherwise specified, reluctant to kill. Many superheroes are completely opposed to killing under any circumstances.
• When you defeat a supervillain, you knock him out and he gets sent to jail. Eventually, he'll escape and you'll have to defeat him again.
• Sometimes supervillains escape. Please don't fight this too hard; you won't be penalized if they do. Stopping the supervillain's plot is a greater victory than capturing them.
• This isn't D&D; you don't kill critters and take their stuff. In general, in a fight, you can pick up somebody's fallen blaster rifle and start using it, but you shouldn't expect to keep it beyond the end of the fight.
• The campaign will be episodic, mostly multipart stories, with some continuing plots.
• The mood is generally light; the heroes win the big battles and only lose some of the little battles. It is usually easy to tell who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
• The tone and general structure of the campaign most closely resembles DC and Marvel superhero comics from the late 1960s through the mid 1980s.
• Characters who ask questions, dig into the campaign world, and help build the campaign world get rewarded.

In addition, a couple of promises. These are bedrock campaign premises that I will not violate.

• There are no ongoing secret evil government conspiracies, because ongoing secret evil government conspiracies are cliché. However, any three of the adjectives plus the opposite of the fourth, those are fair game.
• Government officials, particularly of America and her allies, are admirable, trustworthy individuals of proven ability and sincere desire to make society better. Stop laughing.

Nothing these days makes me more pessimistic about a comic book than reading about an ongoing secret evil conspiracy led by an untrustworthy government official.

Posted by Greg at April 19, 2005 2:11 PM