Champions 1e: Reflections

Alright, that completes our read-through of the 1st edition Champions game. And now, some thoughts on the game.

First of all, it's interesting to see how many similarities there are between the 1st and 4th, and even 5th, editions. The core essentials of the game didn't change at all. Converting a character between editions isn't difficult at all, thanks to the consistency. That doesn't mean nothing changes, obviously; point costs for powers, skills and disadvantages did change from edition to edition, and Elemental Controls and Multipowers changed several times in an effort to get them right. But for the most part, a character created with these rules can be easily updated to a later edition with minimal effort. That is a good thing.

There are a few things that I felt were missing from these rules. Not just some powers and skills, such as physical illusions (which would appear later on as Images), or the ability to transform something into something else; these would show up later on as well.

But I'm talking about things that, for a lot of people, would be considered essential to a superhero roleplaying game. What about a headquarters? How do you build one? Does the team have a vehicle? There are no rules for designing one in this edition, and there wouldn't be until the Champions II supplement that came out after the 2nd edition rules.

What about your character's secret identity and their job? Are you a mild-mannered reporter? If so, how good are you at your job? The skills list is quite small, and mostly covers ways to simulate Batman and other street-level martial arts heroes. But it does nothing for your secret ID. Again, this stuff would show up in later editions and supplements, but it does feel like an important oversight.

There are a couple of references in the rules to Special Effects, and a reference to a section discussing them. That section is not in this book, anywhere. Definitely an oversight that they corrected in the 2nd edition the following year. Special Effects are different from the Actual Effects of a Power. For example, Starfire can blast cosmic energy from her hands. Human Torch can throw fire. Cyclops has eyebeams. Green Lantern has a power ring that can create a huge boxing glove. Iron Man's armor includes repulsors. Storm can throw lightning. All of these function as an Energy Blast attack, but they all have different special effects. So, the description of the power explains how it works; the special effects are what it looks like. It's a very elegant way to avoid including a long list of powers such as 'lightning bolt', 'ice blast', 'fire blast', etc. They're all Energy Blasts at their core. This is a great concept, and one that really helps the game shine. In the 5th edition, there would be rules covering the different special effects and possible advantage or limitations based on the real-world way the special effect would work, but that was never really necessary. 5th edition got very, very wordy on that sort of stuff.

Here, if the section on special effects had been included, it would have made this 1st edition close to perfect. It's still an excellent way to play superheroes, and it has stood the test of time as the cream of the superhero RPG crop.

Would I run a 1st edition game? Probably not, but then I've got the 4th edition books, all of them, so I'm more comfortable running and playing that edition over any other. But this edition is a great peek at what Champions would eventually become, an embryonic form that has incredible potential. Even though some powers are not yet included, the variety of possible characters with this ruleset is just about unlimited. You could create Superman (from the golden age, or the invincible 60s-70s version, or the Post-Crisis John Byrne version) from these rules. You could create the X-Men. You could create the Justice League or the Avengers, although it would require a much larger number of points to do these characters justice. However, considering how all of these characters got started in the comics, it's fitting that you could create the earliest versions of Superman, Batman, Hawkman, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and others with relative ease from this earliest version of the game rules.

Overall, it was a fun read-through. It was different from my earlier Traveller Let's Read, simply because unlike Traveller, I am quite familiar with Champions and have been for about 35 years. So it was more a case of 'what did this game I love used to look like?' rather than 'what is the game that I've never seen before?' And it's not 80,000 words or so like the Traveller one was, simply because there was only one book here, and only 56 pages (four of which were dedications, copyright info, and table of contents stuff). So of course it was going to be shorter.

What will I do next? I was thinking of creating a few characters (other than Nightshade) with these rules just to see how flexible this early edition really is. I remember some characters I created decades ago for a different game (Villains & Vigilantes), and it would be fun to revisit the ones I remember. So, maybe I'll do some of that. Otherwise, I've got other stuff to go over as well: Book and music reviews, for example. Who knows what tomorrow shall bring?

Until then, face front, true believers, and Excelsior.