Champions (role-playing game)
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DescriptionChampions, first published in 1981, was the first role-playing game in which character generation was guided by the player's imagination, as opposed to random dice rolls. A player decides what kind of character to play, and designs the character using a set number of "character points", often abbreviated as "CP." The limited number of character points generally defines how powerful the character will be. Points can be used in many ways: to increase personal characteristics, such as strength or intelligence; to buy special skills, such as martial arts or computer programming; or to build superpowers, such as supersonic flight or telepathy.Emphasis is placed on development of the character. Players are required not only to design a hero's powers, but also the hero's skills, disadvantages, and other traits. Thus, Champions characters are built with friends, enemies, and weaknesses, along with powers and abilities. This approach tends to make Champions characters more well balanced than those of other RPGs. Players are motivated by rewards of character points which are then used to increase the power of their heroes. While Champions is the name of the game, "The Champions" is also a team of superheroes provided by the publishers in the fourth and fifth editions of the game as a model of a balanced team dynamic, a ready-made team of non-player character allies, or pre-created characters to allow players to skip the lengthy character creation process. The systemWhat has made this system so enduring is its flexibility. Instead of requiring characters to choose from a menu of abilities, the player can design just about any superpower imaginable. The Champions rulebook includes rules governing many different types of generic powers which can then be modified to fit the players idea. While this flexibility is amusing and powerful in a gaming environment, first-time Champions players often find the rules confusing and complex. It also lends itself to some abusive min-maxing, such as buying only strength with character points or buying a super-powered suit for an incredibly weak character. This allows players to simulate situations found in superhero stories. Like most comic book heroes, characters and villains are frequently knocked out of the fight but seldom killed. There are special rules for throwing absurdly heavy objects, such as aircraft carriers. A drawback is that some mundane dramatic props require complex construction to simulate in the rules with a major example being small spheres (like marbles) which are placed on the ground to make a victim lose their footing. Unfortunately, this results in a system where simple conflicts can take hours and can make gameplay incongruous with a comic book pace, where conflict is often resolved in a couple of pages that takes minutes to read. History and revisionsThe Champions system was adapted to a fantasy genre under the title "Fantasy Hero" (the first playtest edition of Fantasy Hero appeared before Champions was published ), with similar advantages and disadvantages to the original Champions game. More recently (in 1984), Champions was incorporated into a generic role-playing game system called the Hero System. Champions now exists as a genre sourcebook for that game. Books for other genres have also appeared over the years, including Star Hero, Dark Champions, Pulp Hero, Ninja Hero, and others. The most basic mechanics of Champions (the cost of attributes, the OCV/DCV system, and so on) have remained largely unchanged since the first 1981 edition, but many subsystems have been radically altered and significant material has been added. Martial Arts, for example, has changed radically, evolving from a simple system where a player could purchase access to a fixed set of special 'martial' combat moves to a complex system where the moves themselves are created via a point balancing system. Many powers have seen radical changes in costs or effects. The addition of ever more options has led to a constant 'point inflation', resulting in more powerful starting characters -- from 200 points in the first edition to 350 points in the fifth. The degree of change over the period is less than that of Dungeons & Dragons, about on par with GURPS, and somewhat greater than Call of Cthulhu. + The Champions rules mechanics have remained largely unchanged from the original 1981 edition, though its current version is much more detailed and expanded. Other popular role-playing systems have gone through several major revisions during this time. The creators of the Hero System have tried to make character creation as flexible as possible, as well as allowing for balanced game play and exciting action sequences. Over the years, they have worked players' suggestions into newer versions of the game, building up a loyal fan base. - Champions is one of the most complex games which has a thriving player base. While new players are often intimidated by the complexity, it is considered a feature by the game's fan base. Hero ComicsStarting in June 1986, a comic mini-series was published by Eclipse Comics based on characters from the first Champions campaign. After the initial mini-series a regular series was published by Hero Comics (later Hero Graphics). Like the Villains and Vigilantes comic mini-series, the early issues printed character sheets which allowed readers to incorporate characters used in the comic books in their own Champions campaigns. Strangely, this was even true for characters packed in with the core rules, such as Icicle, Pulsar and Mechanon. AwardsThe Champions product line has won some awards for its adventure books:
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