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theron(This is my second crack at this entry. The first vanished into the aether mid-edit. It's not the same, but it'll do.)
Folks who were not alive and aware of the state of the art of rock music in 1978 invariably fail to understand the sheer impact of Van Halen's "Eruption." That one minute and forty two second burst of guitar mayhem is one of those demarcation lines -- a point where everything is defined as happening before or after it.
Champions was much the same, not just for me, but for RPGs as an art form. Even in its crudest first edition, the important elements were present: A points-based system that allowed you to build a character to your specifications, not what the dice said you were going to play; The introduction of "special effects" to explain the differences between two powers that were mechanically identical; The concept of Disadvantages, a way to give your character defects that yielded more character points, but most important, the fact that the Disads were intended to make the game play more like superhero comics was such a breakthrough that it's hard to give it enough credit.
Upon my initial read of that used first edition copy, I was hooked. Convincing my friends took a bit more effort. I had a decently little V&V campaign going, and there was a lot of resistance from my players to trying something untested. In retrospect, I don't think it helped matters much that V&V had a much slicker presentation, with vastly better art. But I persisted, and eventually won out, but before I could get a campaign of my own off the ground, we found ourselves enmeshed in a game at ComicQuest. It was my first time playing at a game store, and it introduced me to some new gamers, notably Chris Hall (the co-GM), Randall (the other co-GM) and Charles Russell (one of the players, who became a long-time friend and a stalwart member of my groups in San Antonio). Chris had just moved to SA from Phoenix, where he'd been part of a huge Champions game run out of the widely-known Flying Buffalo Games Store (the retail arm of Flying Buffalo, the publisher of Tunnels & Trolls and Nuclear War). Randall was a co-owner of ComicQuest and a noted local gamer. Chris brought the campaign premise, Randall brought the venue and local details Chris lacked.
The campaign in that form never really gelled. Chris and Randall began bickering over non-game issues almost immediately, and Randall was a bad one for holding grudges. Within a few weeks, they were no longer co-GMing and the game had moved to either my house or the home of another one of the players. Chris took over the reins and put us, The Alamo Defenders, through our paces. Eventually (I'm not sure when) I took over the GMing chores and fairly well never looked back. Overall, in the twenty six years since I first played the game, I've been the GM vastly more often than a player. It is, in many respects, my Gaming Idiom, the system I know best and work in best, even when I don't much care for it in comparison to other systems.
Over the next few years, I ran a couple of notable campaigns, for a host of interesting characters. I went to Origins in 1984 and got to play the game with George MacDonald, one of its creators, and generally hang out with the Hero Games guys (notably Ray Greer and Doug Garrett) and make a fanboy nuisance of myself. I even got up the nerve to approach Aaron Allston with a couple of questions. At the time, Aaron's Austin-based Strike Force campaign was already a legend among Champions players due to his articles in Space Gamer, and the thought of it happening just an hour or so away from us was simultaneously heady and frustrating and, in retrospect, hilarious. Years later, I got to know Aaron better and even GMed for him on a couple of occasions, so it's with a bit of wry embarrassment that I look back on being nervous about asking him about his campaign at a gaming conventions.
(As an interesting aside, it amazes me how connected the hobby seemed to be back then, in those days before the internet. I was well aware of new releases coming out from publishers and stories of campaigns in other cities were coming from...well, some source, but I can't tell you what it was. I know we spent a fair bit of time at Origins hanging with other Champions players and extolling the differences between our campaigns, but it all feels much more intimate in retrospect.)
In 1986, I finally hooked up with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and my attention was split in a serious way. The SCA fed my other interests (history and wearing armour and women, who were in far greater abundance in the SCA than in my gaming circles). It ate up my weekends. And, in short order, it killed my regular gaming. It also happened at a point where the old gang had largely drifted apart, which made gaming less of an option for all of us. Between jobs and other hobbies (a number of my gaming and comics friends had gotten into anime through the old CFO) and getting married and having kids, gaming got sort of back-burnered for a couple of years. I still had my stuff, and still bought new games, but my opportunities to play were much reduced. The SCAers I knew were mostly into D&D (and I plan on writing about their games at some point because they're an interesting study in group dynamics and expectations), and not really into superhero comics, so I found myself cut off from a source of new players. Champions largely became a solitary pursuit. Creating characters here and there and filling notebooks with partial timelines of alternate worlds that would never see play.
Late summer 1989 saw the release of Champions 4th Edition, AKA the Big Blue Book (or BBB). When I saw it on the shelf, I was no longer as connected to the gaming world and had thought Champions a dead product line. Instead, here was a thick hardback with cover art by no less a luminary than George Perez. It was huge, and glorious and brought the game into a new generation of clearer, better rules. It also signaled the rebirth of the product line and an amazing period of releases followed. Ninja Hero, Classic Enemies, Mystic Masters, it seemed like a month couldn't go by without a new outstanding product landing on the shelves. I was re-energized and inspired. Though I still lacked for steady players, I'd made a few inroads and ran a few games here and there, though nothing particularly steady.
In 1993, I found myself engaged to a young lady who DID like comics and DID find Champions interesting. She also owned a computer with a modem on it. One night, on a whim, I dialed in to the Red October BBS, an Austin-based BBS that was, purportedly, the unofficial crossroads of the Hero Games universe.
Sweet Zombie Jeebus. Everyone who was anyone associated with the game hung out and posted there. Suddenly, I found myself in regular online conversations with Hero authors and editors. I learned almost everything I know about netiquette from Red October. Fortunately, it was a well monitored-board even back in the day. I also began learning about computers, because RO was a long-distance call, and we were poor. I learned how to use pkzip and pkunzip, and how to configure SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) in order to cut my online time down to a minute or so each way. I learned how to configure the modem and how to use Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3 (for DOS, no less) in order to create campaign write-ups and character sheets. When we got Windows and Office, I learned to use Word and Excel trying to duplicate the formats of published products and create self-calculating formatted character sheets.
A year later, those skills landed me a job in Houston making twice what I'd been pulling down in San Antonio. Improving those skills brought me new ones, which ultimately brought me to where I am professionally today. It's not much of a stretch to say that I owe my career in IT to Champions.
As Houston merits its own entry, I'll leave this off here for now.
Folks who were not alive and aware of the state of the art of rock music in 1978 invariably fail to understand the sheer impact of Van Halen's "Eruption." That one minute and forty two second burst of guitar mayhem is one of those demarcation lines -- a point where everything is defined as happening before or after it.
Champions was much the same, not just for me, but for RPGs as an art form. Even in its crudest first edition, the important elements were present: A points-based system that allowed you to build a character to your specifications, not what the dice said you were going to play; The introduction of "special effects" to explain the differences between two powers that were mechanically identical; The concept of Disadvantages, a way to give your character defects that yielded more character points, but most important, the fact that the Disads were intended to make the game play more like superhero comics was such a breakthrough that it's hard to give it enough credit.
Upon my initial read of that used first edition copy, I was hooked. Convincing my friends took a bit more effort. I had a decently little V&V campaign going, and there was a lot of resistance from my players to trying something untested. In retrospect, I don't think it helped matters much that V&V had a much slicker presentation, with vastly better art. But I persisted, and eventually won out, but before I could get a campaign of my own off the ground, we found ourselves enmeshed in a game at ComicQuest. It was my first time playing at a game store, and it introduced me to some new gamers, notably Chris Hall (the co-GM), Randall (the other co-GM) and Charles Russell (one of the players, who became a long-time friend and a stalwart member of my groups in San Antonio). Chris had just moved to SA from Phoenix, where he'd been part of a huge Champions game run out of the widely-known Flying Buffalo Games Store (the retail arm of Flying Buffalo, the publisher of Tunnels & Trolls and Nuclear War). Randall was a co-owner of ComicQuest and a noted local gamer. Chris brought the campaign premise, Randall brought the venue and local details Chris lacked.
The campaign in that form never really gelled. Chris and Randall began bickering over non-game issues almost immediately, and Randall was a bad one for holding grudges. Within a few weeks, they were no longer co-GMing and the game had moved to either my house or the home of another one of the players. Chris took over the reins and put us, The Alamo Defenders, through our paces. Eventually (I'm not sure when) I took over the GMing chores and fairly well never looked back. Overall, in the twenty six years since I first played the game, I've been the GM vastly more often than a player. It is, in many respects, my Gaming Idiom, the system I know best and work in best, even when I don't much care for it in comparison to other systems.
Over the next few years, I ran a couple of notable campaigns, for a host of interesting characters. I went to Origins in 1984 and got to play the game with George MacDonald, one of its creators, and generally hang out with the Hero Games guys (notably Ray Greer and Doug Garrett) and make a fanboy nuisance of myself. I even got up the nerve to approach Aaron Allston with a couple of questions. At the time, Aaron's Austin-based Strike Force campaign was already a legend among Champions players due to his articles in Space Gamer, and the thought of it happening just an hour or so away from us was simultaneously heady and frustrating and, in retrospect, hilarious. Years later, I got to know Aaron better and even GMed for him on a couple of occasions, so it's with a bit of wry embarrassment that I look back on being nervous about asking him about his campaign at a gaming conventions.
(As an interesting aside, it amazes me how connected the hobby seemed to be back then, in those days before the internet. I was well aware of new releases coming out from publishers and stories of campaigns in other cities were coming from...well, some source, but I can't tell you what it was. I know we spent a fair bit of time at Origins hanging with other Champions players and extolling the differences between our campaigns, but it all feels much more intimate in retrospect.)
In 1986, I finally hooked up with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) and my attention was split in a serious way. The SCA fed my other interests (history and wearing armour and women, who were in far greater abundance in the SCA than in my gaming circles). It ate up my weekends. And, in short order, it killed my regular gaming. It also happened at a point where the old gang had largely drifted apart, which made gaming less of an option for all of us. Between jobs and other hobbies (a number of my gaming and comics friends had gotten into anime through the old CFO) and getting married and having kids, gaming got sort of back-burnered for a couple of years. I still had my stuff, and still bought new games, but my opportunities to play were much reduced. The SCAers I knew were mostly into D&D (and I plan on writing about their games at some point because they're an interesting study in group dynamics and expectations), and not really into superhero comics, so I found myself cut off from a source of new players. Champions largely became a solitary pursuit. Creating characters here and there and filling notebooks with partial timelines of alternate worlds that would never see play.
Late summer 1989 saw the release of Champions 4th Edition, AKA the Big Blue Book (or BBB). When I saw it on the shelf, I was no longer as connected to the gaming world and had thought Champions a dead product line. Instead, here was a thick hardback with cover art by no less a luminary than George Perez. It was huge, and glorious and brought the game into a new generation of clearer, better rules. It also signaled the rebirth of the product line and an amazing period of releases followed. Ninja Hero, Classic Enemies, Mystic Masters, it seemed like a month couldn't go by without a new outstanding product landing on the shelves. I was re-energized and inspired. Though I still lacked for steady players, I'd made a few inroads and ran a few games here and there, though nothing particularly steady.
In 1993, I found myself engaged to a young lady who DID like comics and DID find Champions interesting. She also owned a computer with a modem on it. One night, on a whim, I dialed in to the Red October BBS, an Austin-based BBS that was, purportedly, the unofficial crossroads of the Hero Games universe.
Sweet Zombie Jeebus. Everyone who was anyone associated with the game hung out and posted there. Suddenly, I found myself in regular online conversations with Hero authors and editors. I learned almost everything I know about netiquette from Red October. Fortunately, it was a well monitored-board even back in the day. I also began learning about computers, because RO was a long-distance call, and we were poor. I learned how to use pkzip and pkunzip, and how to configure SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) in order to cut my online time down to a minute or so each way. I learned how to configure the modem and how to use Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3 (for DOS, no less) in order to create campaign write-ups and character sheets. When we got Windows and Office, I learned to use Word and Excel trying to duplicate the formats of published products and create self-calculating formatted character sheets.
A year later, those skills landed me a job in Houston making twice what I'd been pulling down in San Antonio. Improving those skills brought me new ones, which ultimately brought me to where I am professionally today. It's not much of a stretch to say that I owe my career in IT to Champions.
As Houston merits its own entry, I'll leave this off here for now.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 04:32 am (UTC)-Jeff