Let's Read Champions 1e (pgs 52-53)

Yes, I'm going to cover two pages today and three characters, because page 52 only has one character ana piece of art that doesn't even match that character. In fact, it looks more like I would expect Starburst to look. A flying guy in a dramatic pose with a cape? Yeah, if it wasn't for the fact that I've seen future editions that included a drawing of Starburst, I would peg this as being him.

However, the character on the page isn't Starburst; it's Howler, our very first female Champions character. Like Dragonfly, Howler isn't given a civilian name even though she has a Secret Identity. She's a sonic energy projector; she can fly, has a Sonic Scream and a Sonic Shield, and her powers come from an alien amulet, Green Lantern-style. She's hunted by the FBI and the police, and she's vulnerable to bullets. She's afraid of guns and of aliens and other strange creatures. Unlike Green Lantern, she isn't a hero; her mind was twisted by the encounter, so she became a supervillain. I don't know if she made it to the 6th edition, but she did make it into 5th and ever other edition prior to that.

On the next page, we get our second female Champions character: Icicle. She's built on only 185 points, and aside from her DEX and CON she's pretty average in terms of her characteristics. Again, no Secret ID name given. Her powers are basically Iceman's starting suite, built in an Elemental Control; her three powers are an Ice Ram (EB), an Ice Slide (Running), and Ice Armor. She's hunted by a New York supergroup, and is vulnerable to fire and lasers. She's a teenage runaway whose father nearly killed her for the crime of being a mutant. So, they're going with the X-Men background in the core game. Well, I suppose. It wasn't completely overdone in 1981 the way it is today.

Ah, here we go...Mechanon. The ultimate bad guy in many campaigns, Mechanon is a robot who was originally supposed to be an LA superteam's security system until his programming went haywire and he decided that his goal in life was to exterminate all organic beings. Oops. Someone rolled an 18 on their Computer Programming roll on that one. Mechanon is a megalomaniacal robot with extreme paranoia that has tons of contingency bodies hidden away in case his current one is destroyed. And every time he is rebuilt, he is given a defense against whatever destroyed him. That's inconvenient. Anyway, Mechanon is build on a whopping 345 points, which is a lot for this edition of the game. He's got a 60 STR, 40 CON, 65 STUN, fully resistant 30 PD and ED, a SPD of 7, a 10D6 EB, flight, flash defense, and 2 Overall Levels. He's hunted by UNTIL and the supergroup that built him, and he's both overconfident and, as mentioned before, a megalomaniac.

Mechanon is built to take on an entire team of heroes by himself. It's funny to see this now, since by 5th edition, 345 points is a beginning superhero's point total (actually 350), and this version of Mechanon is a pansy by comparison. Of course, in later editions he gets plenty more points (4th edition has him somewhere around 770, as I recall, and his 5th and 6th edition versions are even more ridiculous). Still, as it stands Mechanon is probably capable of taking on a full team of 1e characters, assuming they aren't overloaded with Disadvantages to give them stupid amounts of points. I will note that Mechanon is the only character thus far that is given a special 'Villain Bonus' of points to enable him to buy all those powers and abilities without having to take crippling Disads for points. So, that is a handy device. I know we'll see it in other characters in other products, but I doubt we'll see them on the last couple of pages.

And there you have it. Two distaff villains and an uber-villain for your pleasure. Take them on if you dare. Well, the first two should be manageable. But Mechanon...yikes. See you next time.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 51)

Okay, we've got two more characters to meet today. First up: Dragonfly. He was an UNTIL scientist working on DNA experiments with insect genes, because every scientist in comic-book history was an absolute idiot when it came to doing DNA experiments. At least he didn't dose himself on purpose; an accident is responsible. Anyway, thanks to the magic of comic-book science, the experiment serum that got all over him during an electrical explosion didn't just dye his skin green or give him cancer; instead, he turned into a human insectoid with wings and an Energy Blast. He's hunted by both UNTIL and a Chicago supergroup, takes double the stun from Physical attacks, and otherwise is having a rough time of it. He ended up as a villain, to the surprise of no one. Although, in 3rd edition they actually gave all of the sample characters a 'hero option'. It didn't catch on past that edition, though. Too bad; there were some interesting ideas there.

Next up is Green Dragon. He's just a bully with exceptional martial arts abilities. And he has a SPD of 7, which will definitely get your attention. This dude is fast. He bought +3" of running, giving him a base movement of 9". With a SPD of 7, that means he can, if he so chooses, move as fast as 63"/turn, or 126 m. in 12 seconds. That's Olympic sprinter speed. That's Usain Bolt's level. So yeah, Green Dragon is fast. But he's also a deadly martial artist and a master of disguise. He's hunted by UNTIL, the CIA and the FBI; not a popular guy. He's Chinese, has a younger sister that he protects (despite her not wanting to be protected), and has a tendency to go berserk in combat. Here he is called 'Aaron Chow', whereas his later appearances his name was Deng Chow. And here, he's mixed-race (Oriental dad, Occidental mom), and his parents were killed in Hong Kong thanks to a bad villain's insidious plan.

So, that's where we are with these two; they're two iconic Champions villains that have lasted through multiple editions, although I don't know if Dragonfly made it past 4th edition. Green Dragon definitely did, though. And that's it for me for tonight. Next time, I'll be doing just one character, so I might actually do two pages to get it to three characters to make it more interesting. Until then, stay strong and fight on!

Happy Birthday, Peanut!

God help me, I have two teenagers in the house now. Happy Birthday to the sweetest boy I've ever known. Autistic or not, he is a bundle of unconditional love who is very much into Lego, puzzles, and coloring. He has certainly come a long way, and he has been one of the greatest blessings in my life.

Here he was at the age of three, before we knew about his autism. Big Brother Ashton was teaching him how to run a riding lawn mower. Actually, that's a tractor with an excavator bucket on the back. Ashton has always been into that sort of thing. Garrett always had fun with Ashton; they are very, very close.

I don't take a lot of pictures of my family, but the ones I do have are precious. Garrett means the world to me, and I am so grateful he's been in my life for thirteen whole years. I used to write a daily journal for him, but unfortunately our precious dog Raven ate the flash drive on which it was stored when he was only a couple of years old. Ah, well.

Happy Birthday, Peanut, and may you have many, many more as fun as this one was.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 50)

Okay, we're into the sample characters now. Or rather, the sample villains (with one exception). As I said last time, these are iconic characters that almost all made it through all six editions of the game relatively untouched. The fifth edition versions were given more comprehensive writeups, but overall these characters are stalwarts of the Champions game.

We start off with the one non-villain sample character: An Agent of UNTIL, the United Nations Tribunal on International Law. These are the good-guy agents, the Champions equivalent of S.H.I.E.L.D. The agent is a standard one, built on a mere 50 pts with improved DEX and CON and a SPD of 3. They get Martial arts and a skill level with guns. As normals, they don't have to pay for their equipment, so they are assigned a simple 5D6 blaster rifle and a 6 PD/6 ED bulletproof vest with an Activation roll of 11 or less. No disads required, and they're done.

UNTIL is, as mentioned, the 'good-guy' agency that can act as a liaison for PCs; they have a headquarters in the UN building in New York, and they fight against international crime organizations such as VIPER (a not-so-subtle clone of HYDRA). These agents are the basic squads sent to provide backup to heroes; they're combat types. Later editions would include more detail about the organization, but all we get here is their original purpose was to watchdog countries with nuclear weapons, and it expanded to becoming the super-spy agency under the command of Paraguayan ex-freedom fighter Major Martinez. So, they're a very useful group to have around.

Now we get our first actual villain: Armadillo. Randall Gordon was a junior Engineer for a contractor on the "Armadillo" suit; he saw the suit's potential quite rapidly, and stole it for himself piecemeal to hide the theft. The armor gives him a lot of characteristic boosts (he's basically useless without the armor) such as STR 50 and CON 28, as well as an Energy Blast, full Damage Resistance, an HTH Killing Attack, Tunneling and Life Support. He's hunted by a Chicago superteam, a Canadian superteam, and the organization he stole the armor from; he takes 2x STUN from Ego and Sonic attacks, has a secret identity, and is paranoid about the suit being stolen. Since pretty much everything is bought with his armor, he gets massive cost breaks on his point totals; he's built on only 223 points total. Even his INT is boosted by the armor, which is weird. But, it's there, so we'll roll with it. His most common function in a game is as an errand boy for organized crime, and of course fighting superheroes who try to stop said organized crime.

So, that's our two characters for today. Well, one character and a representative of a whole organization. Armadillo is a bit of a twit, to be honest; as I recall in later editions, he has a tendency to announce his every move, making it easy to counter him once you know what he's capable of. Still, a 50 STR and fully resistant 24 PD and ED makes him a tough customer for beginning heroes, so be careful around him. He might just take you down.

And that's it for now. Tomorrow, we have more characters, both with a dragon motif.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 49)

We're oh so close to the end of this, but first...Design Considerations. Back in the day, this was an important topic for some people, I suppose. Everyone who picked up a fistful of dice dreamed of creating their own RPG someday, so stuff like this was fun to read.

So, obviously comics were the primary resource for the game's inspiration. The powers were designed to enable players to emulate the comic books they read, and the characteristics were selected to give more opportunities to differentiate the heroes from the average people around them. The basic rule of thumb was that a 5-point bonus to STR or an additional die of damage was twice as powerful as the die before it. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, though; 6D6 damage isn't twice as powerful as 5D6, after all. Maybe they just didn't word it the way they meant to.

Finally, there's a section on changing the game. Designing new powers is an obvious way. While the powers listed in this book are pretty comprehensive, and with Advantages and Limitations almost any comic-book trick can be duplicated, there are still a few things that GMs and players might want to do that really aren't covered. So, GMs might design new powers to compensate for those gaps. The rule is that 50 points in a power is pretty good, while 100 points is wonderful. I would say 'excessive' myself.

The idea is to build powers around the 1D6 per 5 pts. principle, and that powers should be more open-ended to allow for variations and nuances. If you don't think the power should be all that common, boost its minimum cost. Finally, any offense should have a corresponding defense that is much cheaper to buy.

Other ways to change the game (much simpler than just creating new powers) are to start with a higher point base. A 200-point base plus Disadvantages will create a much tougher character than a 100-point base, so this is more for the higher-powered heroes like the JLA or the Avengers. Of course, people have been converting those teams to Champions pretty much since the game was invented. I've seen Superman write-ups built on 2,000 points. Even Batman is over 1,000 points in some of the more ridiculous versions. You couldn't even do Iron Man with these rules without giving him gobs of points to cover all the things in his armor. So, higher base points will give tougher characters, but they still won't match up with the true heavy-hitters of the genre. And that's okay. The most popular characters were usually the mid-level characters like the Teen Titans or the X-Men, so that's what most people would consider playing. That, and Batman clones. Because everyone wanted to be Batman.

Finally, there's an option to just ditch Endurance costs altogether; all powers are automatically at 0 END without any cost breaks. Well, it's an option, and considering just how much END gets used in these earlier editions, it's not a terrible one. 4th edition changed the END cost from 1 per 5 pts. to 1 per 10, which made the END usage much more manageable, and characters weren't dropping from exhaustion fifteen seconds into a fight. In this edition, the 0 END option might be helpful, although it will ensure that fights will be much harder-hitting, since no one will be worried about conserving END.

Well, this entry is wordier than the page I'm reviewing. Yes, that's all there is on this page; the bottom half of the page is reserved for a very nice drawing of an Iron Man clone. So, we've now covered all the rules of the game. What's left? Sample characters, of course. And oh my, these are classics of the Champions game. I think they've all made it through every edition of the game thus far. I might be wrong about some of them, but there are definitely a few that have lasted forty-four years now. We'll start on them next time. Until then, may your dice ever roll true.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 48)

When last we met our dastardly villains, we were discussing their penchant for not killing heroes outright but rather sticking them in inescapable deathtraps that the heroes would then escape from before valiantly defeating the bad guys. The most important question about deathtraps is: Why?! Why put them in a trap that they are sure to escape from instead of just doing the smart thing and finishing them off right then and there?

Well, there are a few reasons. First, the villain may be grandiose enough that he truly thinks that the deathtrap will suffice to end the hero, and he wants to revel in his own genius. Of course, that one never works out well for the villain. Second, he might want to get a better idea of just what the hero is actually capable of; if he can't get out of the trap, so much the better. But if he does...the villain might have learned something about the hero's capabilities and weaknesses. Third, hostages are a tried and true villain tradition, too. Use the captured hero as bait to get more of them. Sidekicks are, of course, the ultimate hostage bait. Hi, Robin.

There's another reason that villains might not want to just execute the heroes; it tends to irritate the other heroes around, and having several teams of heroes looking to take you out because you killed one of their own is a good way to get yourself way in over your head. Sure, you can take down one mid-level hero, but when the Avenging Crusaders get wind of it, they'll be after you in full force.

Villains tend to be solo operators, not doing well in groups. Most solo villains should be a little bit tougher than normal, since they've got to be able to stand up to multiple heroes at once. Unless you're running a solo game, of course, with one hero taking on the underworld by himself. In that case, don't overpower the villains. Think of Spider-Man's rogues' gallery, or even Batman's. The villains are tough enough to challenge the hero, but not usually too much for him to handle alone (or with a sidekick).

Of course, some villains do run in packs. Maybe it's because they share an origin, or they're tired of getting beaten up by the hero and decide to work together to take him down. The first group tends to stay together longer than the second group, especially when egos get involved. But a well-coordinated supervillain team can be an absolute nightmare for a group of heroes. They compensate for each other's weaknesses, coordinate their attacks, and can form bonds as tight as hero groups under the right circumstances. Groups like this can be a great part of a campaign if done right.

So, that covers the villain stuff. Next up we have everyone else, the common, non-powered people that populate the game. In some cases, there will be just one or two of these people; for the longest time, the only civilians in Batman's life were Alfred and Commissioner Gordon. Superman had Lois Lane and George Taylor at first (Perry White's predecessor as editor of the paper); Jimmy Olsen came along later.

On the other hand, Spider-Man has almost as many civilians in his life as villains. Aunt May, Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Flash Thompson, J. Jonah Jameson, Robbie Robertson, Liz Allan...the list is lengthy, to say the least. But Spider-Man is usually a solo act, so having a strong supporting cast helps flesh out his stories. In a Champions game, DNPCs and (sometimes) Hunteds will be the source of these supporting characters. These people can be reporters, police officers, younger siblings, elderly relatives, or whatever comes to mind. They are invaluable to a Champions game because they will give the setting a more grounded feel. Not everyone is a super; ordinary people are important, too.

Finally, a game shouldn't be static. The world exists outside of the PCs, and the game should reflect that. Things happen that don't involve the PCs but still make the news; let them know about these things. They can provide hints for future adventures, or just background noise to make the world feel more alive. Either way, it's a good practice to have.

Alright, that appears to cover the rules of the game, but we still have more to go in the book and on this page. And what do we have her? The Origins of Champions! That's right, George MacDonald is going to tell us how this game got started. Turns out it got started because he was bored in class. I can relate to that, but unfortunately I didn't design an award-winning RPG when I was in college. Too bad for me.

Anyway, George fleshed out the basics of combat and characteristics, but developing the point system took time and a second person, Wayne Shaw. His system inspired George, although the system we saw in the previous 48 pages isn't much like Wayne's work at all. Still, Wayne gets a shout-out for his efforts, which is nice. It took a couple of years of development and playtesting for the game to finally see print. Several people get mentioned as being important in the game's development, including Ray Grier, Glenn Thain, and Tom Tumey among others.

There's a partial paragraph remaining on this page, but I'm going to save it for the next page since it's tied to what's on page 49, and it isn't a full page anyway. So, that's it for this one. We're nearly through to the end, which is exciting. Stick with it, folks; it'll be worth it.

Happy Birthday, Honey Bunny!

It's a day late, but we were out late yesterday celebrating my wife's birthday. So, I wanted to simply drop a quick note that Dannielle is the greatest wife, mother, friend, and woman I've ever known, and I am eternally grateful to God that He brought us together. I can't imagine what the last eighteen years would have been like without her, and I'm glad I'll never have to know.

She doesn't like to have too many pictures taken of herself, but I do have a few saved, so here are some of our favorite memories over the past few years.

Prepping for our first pigs, Aug 2022

At the playground with the kids, Sep 2016

Leaving port for our fifth cruise, March 2017

I really don't have a lot of photos on my computer, which is unfortunate. But I've certainly got a lot of memories. Again, I am totally grateful that I get to be her husband. And we're even growing old together. But not that old. She's still young and beautiful.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 47)

Let's continue with the World Building, shall we? The next note is that while many campaigns will be set in a single city, there's a fun variation where you can have multiple GMs in a group, and they all run their games in a different city in the same country. So, you might have one GM running a team in New York, a second on in Miami, and a third in Washington DC. This enables characters to easily transfer between campaigns; Mega-man's secret identity is working for a newly-elected Congressman, so he leaves the New York team and joins the DC team instead, still in the same campaign world but with a different GM. Villains and organizations can be across multiple campaigns, and the GMs can come up with a common background to fill in more detail than a single GM could accomplish. This can be a great way to run a set of games, although the GMs do have to ensure they don't do anything that will disrupt the other games (the New York team tries to stop a massive flood but fails, meaning Miami is inundated...the other campaign will have some serious problems to deal with based on someone else's game, which isn't good).

Alright, so the next section is on the Superhero Rationale. Why do they do it? What pushes a person who gains (accidentally or deliberately) superhuman abilities to put on a colorful costume and fly around helping people? The answer to that question goes a long way toward helping to define the character's personality. And a team of heroes can have different reasons, but the motivation ends up in the same place: Helping other people. Maybe one hero is seeking revenge on a supervillain who harmed a loved on; another one had a wise uncle who told him that with great power comes great responsibility. And some of them are doing it because it's fun, or because it's an ego boost to be the idol of millions. We also get a paragraph on the unwritten 'hero code'. Be better than the villain; capture them, not kill them. Of course, that leaves the possibility of villains escaping (which they do with depressing frequency). However, most law enforcement and even other heroes will generally respond better to the 'good guy' persona rather than the Punisher-types.

Speaking of other heroes, it's possible that you are running a game where the PCs are the only superheroes in the world (as in the latest Fantastic Four movie, First Steps). However, if that isn't the case, then you're going to have to populate the campaign with other heroes. You can certainly use Crusader and Starburst as NPC heroes if you want, but you're probably going to need more than just the two of them. The key to using them is to not let them overshadow the PCs; having Black Widow show up to help with an investigation is great; having Thor show up and pummel the villains that the PCs aren't strong enough to fight themselves is not. Let Thor fight his own villains, and make sure that the PCs at least have a chance against the villains they fight.

Another good thing about NPC heroes is that when they are put together as a team, they can serve as an example of what the PCs should be doing. Maybe the Philadelphia Patrol have a snazzy headquarters that the PCs would like to emulate, or the Dallas Dream Team are the standard by which all others are measured. Alternatively, you can have a team made up of PC and NPC heroes. This both gives the GM a chance to get in on the action, and allows him to have some subtle input into the direction the group takes in a scenario. This has to be done carefully though, so as to not make the 'correct path' too obvious through NPC fiat.

Agents and agent groups are a staple of comics. Everyone knows Hydra's motto: Cut off one head, two more take its place. Well, they are great opponents for heroes, especially lower-powered ones. But organizations might be looking to add some super-powered muscle to deal with those pesky heroes. Agent groups are usually normal, average characters with weapons and occasional special devices. They can be given more points to make them more competent (or give them a bigger gun), but this shouldn't be overused; if agents are too tough, then what makes the supers super? The occasional 50-pt agent would be a challenge, certainly, especially if played smart by a competent DM.

Last on this page we have Supervillain Rationales. Like the heroes, the villains have a tendency to have reasons for what they are doing. These are mostly covered earlier on pages 41 and 42, but this is less about what they are doing, and more with why they are doing it. Then we get the age-old question: Why doesn't the villain just kill a captured hero instead of monologuing and deathtraps? Good question. Maybe they hate the hero so much that a quick death isn't painful enough. So, into the Death Trap they go.

This section continues on the next page; we'll get to it next time. Until then, may all your dice roll high when you need them to.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pg 46, cont.)

Alright, now that we've learned how to play, it's time to discuss World Building. This is the last section of the book before we get the rest of the sample characters and the end of the book. This is less than half the page, but it's important stuff.

So, the first decision the GM has to make is where the campaign is set. Is it a major city, like New York, Los Angeles, or Toronto? Is it across the ocean in Tokyo or London? Is it even on Earth, or is it out in space? The possibilities are pretty much endless, so it's important to think about this before you do anything else. This includes not only where, but when the game is set. Maybe you're playing a steampunk superheroes game set in Victorian England (or the Gilded Age prior to the First World War). Maybe it's a Legion of Super-Heroes game set in the far future. Or you're going back to where superheroes began, to the Golden Age and World War II. Again, the possibilities are endless. Just remember that the farther from the current time you go, the less players will know about the setting, and the more work you will have to do to set up the campaign.

For this reason, contemporary campaigns are the easiest to set up and play in. Other than the existence of supers, you can basically assume that the world is the same as ours, and current events can play into the scenarios you create. You can also link character backgrounds to recent events, such as 9/11 or the financial crash of 2008.

Next up is 'how big will you go?' A Fantastic Four-style game can go all over the world, or even outside of it; in their first few years, the FF went to the moon and much further into space, as well as all over the world. Meanwhile, Spider-Man spent most of his time in New York, rarely expanding his adventures beyond the city that never sleeps. Smaller is easier, and requires less additional prep on the part of the GM. On the other hand, world-spanning superheroes like the Avengers and the Justice League might not do too well when confined to a single city, even one as big as New York.

Then you get technology questions. How close is tech to what we have now? In a society that's had supers for a few decades, it's likely that there will be higher levels of technology available simply because of all the Tony Starks and Lex Luthors out there that are always coming up with new gadgets and inventions, many of which would certainly hit the consumer market at some point. If your supers go all the way back to the Golden Age, it's even more likely that ninety years later, tech levels would be higher than anything we have today.

But it's not just modern tech to consider; there might be ancient tech buried in lost cities, or even low-tech stuff like swords and armor. And magic is a possible substitute for technology in some cases, depending on your preferences (and possibly the kinds of heroes your players come up with). Regardless, the GM will, of course, have the final say, not only in available technologies, but also character choices; you don't have to approve every character concept the players hand you, especially if they don't fit. For example, you're running a super-science style game and one of the players wants to play a supernatural ghost that possesses people. If it doesn't fit the game you want to run, don't allow it.

Alright, that's a short entry for today, but we'll get to more world-building next time. See you then.

And I just realized that this was my 600th post on this blog! Milestone reached! Next target...700.

Let's Read Champions 1e (pgs 43-46)

Alright, it's time for the example of play, which takes up quite a bit of space. It's a quick scenario that teaches the basic rules and gives examples of all the important concepts. All this in less than four pages. It's got an interesting beginning: The first thing the GM asks is 'what are your secret identities?' This actually makes some sense; if you go back to the character creation examples, you'll see that while both Crusader and Starburst have the Secret ID disadvantage, but they aren't actually defined or given names. In this case, the two players define their character's jobs, but not their names. Starburst is a scientist; Crusader is a newspaper reporter.

So, the scenario starts with Crusader's secret ID making a deposit at the bank; Starburst is just bored at work, so he's flying around. Sure, why not? Needless to say, he just happens to be near the same bank that Crusader is in. Just as coincidentally, Ogre shows up with three henchmen intent on robbing the place. The action starts with Crusader ducking into a glass-enclosed cubicle to change into his heroic identity. Meanwhile, Starburst is flying by just in time to see the idling parked truck outside the bank and hear the glass breaking in the bank.

At this point, the GM goes to combat time and uses the Speed Chart. Crusader has a SPD of 6, Starburst 5; Ogre has a 4, and his henchmen all have 2, being treated as normals with average stats. This is done mostly to save time; henchmen really don't need a lot of detail or complicated character generation. Crusader is the only one to go on segment 2, and flips over the cubicle and punches the nearest gunman (Martial Punch). He makes an Acrobatics skill roll and catches the gunman by surprise, reducing his CV to 2 and giving himself a 17 or less to hit. He knocks the gunman out with a single punch, because that's what superheroes do to normals.

Next segment, Starburst flies in and does a Move Through on Ogre from behind. He hits him and does 7D6 damage, which works out to 26 STUN and 8 BODY; Ogre's defenses are enough to reduce that to a mere 3 STUN. Ogre responds by throwing a table at the impertinent hero, which stuns him (he takes 24 STUN after his defenses, which exceeds his CON). Well, that didn't work out well, did it?

Meanwhile, Crusader continues to mow down defenseless henchmen. Before anyone else can react, he takes out two of them with a single kick, knocking one into the other and stunning the second one. Martial Artists are great at taking out mooks, aren't they? But there's still the big guy to deal with, and Crusader turns his attention to Ogre. His attack is about as effective as Starburst's was. Fortunately, he's more nimble than Starburst, and avoids the counterattack. An old lady with a purse knocks out one of the gunmen who is recovering from being stunned. Well, not everyone runs away when the fight starts.

Starburst tries to blast Ogre, which is more effective since the villain's ED is lower than his PD. But it doesn't knock him out, of course. Ogre is a tough cookie. Ogre throws another table, but misses. Realizing how tough Ogre is, Crusader pushes his STR to hit Ogre as hard as he possibly can; he then waits for Starburst to attack so they can strike simultaneously. The tactic works, and they knock Ogre into next week with a two-pronged attack; Starburst likewise pushes his Energy Blast to maximize his damage potential, so the attack is pretty tiring for both of them. But it worked, so who cares, right?

After a snappy quip on the last henchman, the cops show up and the two heroes bask in the glory of the adoration of the press. And they get 2 XP each for the brief scenario. Not a bad bit of work, is it?

So, that's the scenario example. It's a standard one through the first few editions of the game, updated for the changes to the characters over time. But it gets the point across, and has plenty of action to explain the rules. So, it's definitely a good way to introduce the game.

And that will do it for now; I'll be back next time with the rest of page 46, which is about World Building. Stay tuned.