Okay, we're continuing with some notes on running Champions games. Normals are pretty much all non-superpowered people. And they have a tendency to get caught in the middle of super-battles. Normals are quite fragile in comparison to supers, so players have to be careful when they are between the heroes and the villains. Of course, the villains might be totally fine with normals being on the battlefield; it gives them lots of targets or hostages. It's up to the GM how to handle this; do they all flee from the area, or do they mill about with their cell phones to take all the video they can?
Unbalanced characters can be a problem in Champions. Since players can create their characters any way they want to, it's entirely possible that you have a player whose character is basically a glass cannon: Awesome firepower, virtually no defenses. This can be an issue for some players, since they are trying to create balanced characters, and the unbalanced one can take all the spotlight due to their 20D6 Energy Blast that takes out pretty much every villain in one shot. Remember, all the players are there to have fun, not just one of them.
Some scenarios will be one-off adventures, one-and-done that are quickly forgotten. Others will be part of a long-running campaign. Campaigns are more like the comic book series in which there are many adventures, but there are consequences that carry over into future issues. Again, it's up to the GM to decide how games will be run; some campaigns will be extremely serial, with one overarching plot that carries the entire story. These are fine, but better as mini-series within a campaign rather than expecting the one plot to carry a long-term campaign. Still, as the game progresses, the heroes will meet NPCs, form relationships, gain long-term enemies...just like the comics. And that is a good thing.
Okay, so how do characters improve? This is where experience points come in. Every adventure, the characters will gain one or more experience points. Why so few? After all, other games collect XPs by the hundreds or thousands. Why does Champions have such low XP numbers?
Because, True Believers, in Champions, every experience point is an brand-new power point that you can use to buy more powers, characteristics and skills. You can increase your Energy Blast or Strength, buy a new Omni-Gun, or learn martial arts as your character gains experience. The question, then, is how many experience points to give out? Well, there's a helpful list of situations that can earn (or even reduce) XP for a session. Tougher opposition gains more points; longer adventures will tend to earn more points as well. Playing in character within your character concept is worth additional XP, while playing outside of it can actually reduce your reward. For example, if Spider-Man spends a session brooding and fighting like he's Wolverine or the Punisher, that would be out of character (unless he was really pissed off). Likewise, Batman bouncing around the battlefield dropping quips and pantsing mooks would definitely be out of character. If you're going to be Batman, be Batman.
A final note about XP: Each character earns their own XP in an adventure; it's not a party pool divided evenly. So, some characters may gain more than others depending on how they played.
Alright, the next part of the book is our example scenario featuring the characters we were introduced to earlier during character creation: Crusader, Starburst, and Ogre. It covers nearly three pages, so I'm going to give that its own separate entry next time. And so, once again we say farewell, until we meet again.
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