Two huge Champions 4E Bundles of Holding

[james_davis_nicoll]

Champions 4E Essentials: The BIG BLUE BOOK and its most important rulebooks and supplements

Champions 4E Universe: CHAMPIONS IN 3-D and three dozen more supplements and adventures

Comments

[jcfiala]

Woo!

Yeah, I already bought both bundles. So much great stuff that I've got packed away in boxes in storage, which now I can pack away on my hard drive!

[elf]

Potentially worth noting: Champions/Hero is currently up to 6th edition, and the changes between 5 and 6 are drastic. The entire point-cost system got overhauled - the short version is, there are no longer figured stats; you pay for those from base value. To compensate, the core stat prices that affected figured stats have dropped.

Power structure and costs have changed as well, but not as much - the restructuring will be intuitive to long-term players; it's a matter of streamlining costs so that similar abilities cost the same amount.

But the stat costs means older character sheets no longer work, and the point levels of "low/medium/high-powered games" are all different (and higher; you need more points to do the same things).

I love Champions; I had most of the books from this set already, and I am endlessly annoyed that it's almost impossible to find a group to play with. The system overhaul doesn't make it easier, since old-time players would need a lot of time (and money, if they don't have a friend with the new core book) to get caught up.

[thewayne]

And what you describe is the reason why I'll probably never buy 6th edition. I started playing Champions in the early '80s, in fact some of the people in my original group when I was working at Flying Buffalo played with the original Hero team when they were at a California convention. I'll probably be sticking with 4E from here on out. While it's not perfect, it's pretty darn good, and I tend to play a little fast and loose with the rules in favor of better story telling and game flow.

Plus, I flat-out don't have the money to buy all of that! I suffer severe sticker shock when I look at RPGs today, along with the low likelihood of getting to play or run them.

[elf]

I don't blame you; I started back then too. And while 6th does streamline a number of areas, it's not so much an improvement as bringing disparate descriptions under the same vocab and structure - long-time players who were comfortable with the original-through-5th rules don't need it. (New players will have an easier time with 6th; it's less scattered.)

There are, of course, a few bits of the streamlining that would really help earlier editions - clarifications of powers that prevent certain loopholes, and adjustments to make some exploits less exploitable. (I don't remember details off the top of my head; just remember noticing, huh, that would've been a nice way to stop That Guy from doing That Thing, Again.) But any player who's been around for a while already has ways to deal with those loopholes or exploits, whether via house rules or "you're not allowed to take that power."

I bought 5th ed in paper (the "hex book"); I bought some 6th ed PDFs but have no intention of paying the current prices for paper editions.

[scott_sanford]

Back when I was looking at Champions (4th edition, the book pictured), it was pretty clear that this was what all other superhero RPGs were converging towards...and that to a certain kind of player any sufficiently advanced superhero game was nothing but a wonderful interconnected matrix of loopholes and exploits.

[elf]

I've recently funded Wearing the Cape: The RPG; it looks fun. It's based on FATE, so there's not much in the way of loopholes; it's heavy on narrative keywords and light on numbers. (I have fond memories of "Loophole: the infinite-point character," made with Champions 2 rules that were closed in Champions 3.)

I haven't played FATE, but have been looking at it, and it looks like it'd be impossible to pull off some of the common superhero exploits - the exact range of one's abilities are subject to GM accepting the description as part of the storyline.

OTOH, there's a whole lot of openings for "GM's friend gets away with anything; everyone else gets screwed, and there's no recourse to the rules as arbitrator." But I think the narrative-focused games are built with the premise, "if your co-players are gonna be douchebags, find different co-players."

[thewayne]

I also backed Wearing the Cape. I downloaded the early release but haven't dug in to it yet. There's a basic problem with our group and Fate/Fudge: player agency. EVERYONE in our group is age 50+, most in the lower end of that scale but many creeping up and a few above 60. While I love the concept of player agency and getting to take a little more control of scenarios, and to give players more control when I'm running games, it seems that most of the people in our group just don't appreciate it. And we've been playing together for 35 years or more.

I was accused of being a mini-maxxer when it came to my designing Champions characters, but it was never done on purpose. I had specific design objectives, and the characters were accompanied with 3-5 pages of background story. I was never a munchkin, I just wanted a well-established character. I still design superheroes even though I haven't gotten to play in about a decade.

[avram]

Yeah, no set of published rules can protect you from your GM being a jerk.

[rfrancis]

Oh, man, the nostalgia. (I won't be buying one, because I already have my 4th Ed book and a pile of support books. But still.) My brother passed away recently (no need for remarks on that, it's just meant as context here) and the strongest memories I've been processing have been, when I was in college many (many) moons ago, going to his house every weekend to play Champions 4th. I miss the game, but I acknowledge in no small part because I miss him and I miss being young and carefree or whatever. But really... it was a fun system.

[viktor_haag]

I was originally interested in the notion of a HERO/Champions 4 big bundle, but the minute I actually went to the pages and started reading, I became less interested. Really, the only book I'm interested in amongst the offerings (and there are lots of books in the bundles) is the core Hero System Rulebook (not the big-blue-book, but the rules-only HSR).

And then I considered: if I were to play Hero with one of my groups again, would I actually use any of these books? And I had to say, no, not even the HSR.

If I played the game again, I would almost certainly use the fifth edition (and probably the core rulebook only), although the "Champions Complete" and "Fantasy Hero Complete" books, based on 6th, look interesting because they're one-book-and-out games.