Graph Paper Games

While the final product is theoretically about five months away, those of us who Kickstarted the quasi-retro-clone of Champions 3rd Edition called Champions Now  got the files of the old editions of the game plus the playtesting document.  Champions 3rd Edition was the first edition of Champions I owned and had a major impact on my high school gaming until I went to college and discovered the famous 4th Edition/Hero Games "Big Blue Book," which became the core of my roleplaying experiences for years. Taking another look at the third edition, I was filled with a huge sense of sentimentality, as well as a bit of appreciation for the much more simplistic rules in comparison to 4th Edition.  Gone are all the perks, talents, contacts, etc. that allowed Hero Games to be used for non-supers games (or detail supers ones).  Back was the steep Endurance cost that could leave a hero gasping for air after going full-bore for a couple of actions. But this is a time for pl...

A bit of a benchmark for the blog--500 posts about RPG's and associated topics.  It's good timing, because I'm about to retake the GM screen in my group and kick off a new campaign, namely Champions. It's been a long time since I ran this game, and a big change for the group.  My plan is to commit to doing a six-session "mini-series" as a test run for the game.  At that point I will take stock, talk to the group, and then begin to either plot out a larger campaign or change gears and go with something else. Before that, however, I'm doing a "victory lap" with the 5E campaign by running one more session of that game.  For awhile now it's been run by the other Rob, but when he wrapped up his adventure arc there was still a PC plot thread left dangling.  In the past I haven't sweated those too much, but this was a big deal for this young player (the first PC she's ever made) so I'm coming back to D&D for the sole purpo...

Does your gaming group have their own shirts? Before I get into recapping the last gaming session at my house, I have to share the joy that is having one of your players custom order shirts for the entire gaming group featuring the logo of the brewery the PC's created as part of the last campaign I ran.  The brew in question is "Flask o' Tarrasque," a proud product of The Bad News Bears Inn, Tavern, and Brewery.  This "Legendary Fortified Brown Ale" does have the disclaimer that it may be habit-forming. Anyways, I don't think I have ever had a campaign engender this much genuine fondness from my players in all my life. Once most of the players had their new shirts on, we undertook the arduous task of learning how to play Champions Complete , which is a scaled-down version of Hero Games, Sixth Edition.  Originally I had only about four people scheduled to show up but it exploded at the last minute to eight.  Some asked if I was going to preven...

So, I was in the mood for some retail therapy the last week for a lot of reasons, none of which have real bearing for the purposes of this post, but for me retail therapy often has a big impact on my gaming collection. Most of what I purchased were second-hand, used wargames (including All Quiet on the Martian Front , In Her Majesty's Service , and Field of Glory ) but I also bought two RPG's, one used on eBay and another new. The used one was the most recent edition of Traveller. I bought this on the spur of the moment because of a comment one of my players had made recently to me about how the group rarely roleplays, and by that she meant do anything that wasn't a combat action.  And she's right--fight scenes are the bread and butter of my gaming group, although that's slowly changing.  But my thought at the time was that combat in Traveller isn't quite as common, is more dangerous, and isn't the core theme of the game (being a merchant marine and...

I supported the Kickstarter for the new sourcebook detailing the history of Aaron Allston's Strike Force campaign.  This is an update and expansion upon the 96-page classic tome Aaron Allston's Strike Force  which came out in the early 1990's, and like the first book essentially outlines not only the major plots and characters of the eponymous Champions RPG campaign (which continued past the early 90's for another decade).  The campaign became a world in which multiple campaigns were spun off and included an estimated 48 players.  The core Strike Force campaign had over 260 sessions to its name. And that sounds epic, literally and figuratively.  And in that regard, while it seems highly unlikely that I could ever come close to that, there's no harm in trying to get even a fraction of that.  My longest campaign probably had about a tenth of that number of sessions.  Why not try again? It's worth noting that Allston apparently played many years twice a...

A new edition of Strike Force with new information and a physical book too?  You know I'm all over this.  And you can too by clicking here . For those who haven't read my many blog posts about the original sourcebook, it was a journal of a Champions II campaign run by Aaron Allston for years.  It included PC's and NPC's, a timeline of the campaign, and some invaluable advice for running a campaign, especially a long one. The new book isn't just a reprint of the old one, but rather features new information regarding the campaign based on notes from its participants.  Best part?  Aaron Allston's estate is getting a portion of the proceeds. This has been fully funded, so I'll let you know when the book arrives.

So, after Adam's post about the epic-length Champions game in which he played as a child, I got pretty sentimental about Champions, Fourth Edition (aka the Big Blue Book).  Rather than bring in my entire, huge group of players, I decided to start small.  So, I made PC's for both kids, Bubblegum (Champions edition) for the daughter, a guy named "Kroxigor" for the son.  For those who follow these things, Bubblegum is a low-level martial artist with Entangle and Flash, Kroxigor is a straight up light brick at 250 pts. First, Bubblegum encounters Pulsar attacking the police.  She does a good job switching between her gum powers and her martial arts. Then, Bubblegum finds Kroxigor fighting Bluejay, who is attempting to recapture him and return him to his creators.  They make pretty quick work of her. Then, back at the defunct Ultimate Posse headquarters, the pair hear that GRAB is robbing a bank.  Three villains is a lot for them to handle...

Strike Force  by Aaron Allston was a sourcebook for  Champions that came out shortly before Champions II (which incorporated many of the "house rules" from Strike Force).  Basically, Strike Force  is a journal of the campaign Allston lead using the Champions rules.  It includes sections on how to run a supers RPG, including what comic-book conventions are nearly impossible to place within an RPG format.  It also has the roster of the eponymous superhero team Strike Force and its split-off group Shadow Force, both in their initial 250-point versions and their later, post-XP award versions as well. Why do I love this book above all others?  First, it has an extensive section on Game Mastering that is still in many ways superior to a lot that is out there.  Remember that this was a pretty early book as gaming books go, and I think may have actually coined terms like "Rules Lawyer."  The discussion isn't grounded in sophistry regarding ...

Previously, I wrote about my start in gaming; fumbling around but generally gaming a lot less than you might think.  All that changed when I went to college in New England, where both I think both the population density and cosmopolitan nature of the place lent itself better.  The college I attended actually had a school-sponsored club dedicated to playing roleplaying games as a way of encouraging non-fraternity activities.  What's more, when I got there I discovered that they played a game I thought I knew, but wasn't aware had advanced three editions. I ended up playing, and then later running, Champions 4th Ed. for over three years, often more than once a week.  It's a slow game, combat-wise, especially when you've got six or so players, but this was the gaming mainstay the entire time.  And I loved it.  There was the Knights of New York, FUNHOUSE, Vanguard and its spin-off team Vanguard Europe. We were a pretty mercurial group when it came to...

Barking Alien once posted his "life of gaming," and it was such a good read I thought I would do the same myself. Plus it is my 100th Post!  Woo Hoo! My first experience of roleplaying games came when my uncle gave me a gift certificate to Sears.  Now back in the day, the Sears-Roebuck catalog was a big honking deal at Christmastime because you could look at all these toys you couldn't find anywhere else.  But even more bizarre that year was that the Sears store was selling a box set of Basic Dungeons & Dragons.  I was a huge fan of knights as a kid, not to mention Narnia and the Lord of the Rings books (admittedly I had only seen the animated movies), so I managed to talk my parents into letting me buy the box set. Despite the assertions that this game was huge, I found it very difficult to find people to game with me.  My sister was only marginally interested in hanging out with me, since we were getting into full-blown sibling rivalry (plus ...