Champions: The Super Role-Playing Game

George MacDonald, Steve Peterson, Rob Bell

Did you know that the number one reason people buy fast food is for the convenience, not the taste? This is why the really good restaurants are never the top competitors. This is also why AD&D is one of the most popular role-playing games, and why Champions isn't. What Champions is, however, is a mind-bogglingly exhaustive work which allows you to custom build your character from scratch. Any character, from any genre. There's a multitude of statistics, die rolls that can number in excess of 30 at once (six-sideds), and a lot of number crunching involving fractions. This game is not for the mathematically timid. But if you want to play a super-hero game that allows you to invent your own powers rather than use pre-established ones jammed down your throat, this is the game to do it. Marvel and DC alike tried (DC Heroes was closer) to keep the flavor of their heroes and offer their powers too, and ultimately failed. The concept of a hero-genre has rapidly eroded and dissolved into a bunch of other genres (science fiction, fantasy, dark fiction, etc.) and a game that is not flexible enough to encompass them all is doomed. Champions succeeds, so long as you have a calculator to do it all for you. Making modules for the game are horrific (my game master was a master of numbers), but playing it can be entertaining once you overcome the massive numbers. The biggest problem revolves around tuning characters to modules and each other. Sure, you can make whatever character you want, but if you want him perfectly tailored to your tastes, you may find his gigantic gun shoots pellets and his super armor is just for show. The way my GM handled it was to simply let everyone make their characters as is, and those who exceeded a the points allotted had their points on loan. They had to pay them back through adventuring. Points accrue at an incredibly slow rate, and to enhance your powers costs a LOT. It's a tough system to learn, but the only other system that comes close to perfectly tailoring your character to your needs is GURPS. T7