AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Champions by Richard H. Williams, Denis Loubet, Steve Peterson ISBN: 0915795507 Publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises Pub. Date: June, 1986 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.54

Rating: 4
Summary: Champions: The Fourth Edition is the Best Yet.
Comment: Champions is a wonderful game to start role-playing with. As a 16 year vetran of role-playing games, I have seen my share of superhero RPG's. Champions is one of the best I've ever seen. The system is designed to be flexible with beginning characters starting at the suggested 250 point level. Essentially, you would have 250 points in which to build your character, for those who are new to role-playing games. You would then "purchase" Disadvantages to balance your powers and skills.

You can purchace any sort of power from those of Spider-Man to those of Superman. Even characters as complex as The Batman can be built using Champions' seamless character generation system. By purchacing the proper Advantages and Limitations virtually any sort of superpower can be purchaced.

Champions is seamless in most places. However, Champions suffers with some serious rules inconsistensies. For example, a character with Growth (a superpower) who could stand 26 feet tall, has a base move of 6" (which is about 36 feet; each game inch is 6.5') could still only run 36 feet despite being larger than a normal man. By comparison, a normal sized man has an identical movement of 6". This does not, however detract from Champions' playability. The rules are full of these little inconsistensies and should not, or would not, even be noticed by the casual observer. From personal experiance, I've played this game since 1987 and have found it to be one of the best on the market.

Champions is a complex system to master. The various rules (particularly the combat rules) can be very confusing to newer players. This complexity may drive newer players from the game, but the rules benifit from this complexity in most cases.

For those unsure of what the superhero genre entails, Champions includes a section on this very subject. With a detailed look at what makes up a good superhero campaign, the genre book covers everything from Morality to Technology to Classic Villain Bits. The entire genre book tries very hard to detail just what a new player or gamemaster needs to know to start a new campaign.

Champions is a rewarding game to play and can provide hours, if not years, of role-playing enjoyment.

Rating: 5
Summary: Possibily the Best Role-Playing Game System Ever
Comment: I've played just about every major role-playing game system there is, and I can safety say I'll never play anything else but this again.

Champions is a super-hero variant of the Hero Game System. The HGS is a system that is a universal system of rules, regardless of what genre you are in. There is about 6 pages of good points I could make about this game, but for brevity...

The one thing I'd point out to those considering it is that Champions/HGS lets you create a character the way YOU want (s)he/it to be! It helps create balanced, fun characters. In a battle, it's not just hack and slash, the rules encourage creativity and there are a lot of options.

The only weak spots is that mass combat (10+ characters) can get a bit slow, and there isn't as much source material as say, DC or Marvel Heroes.

Other than that, this system blows everything else out of the water. You do have to be intelligent as some math is envolved, but any mature player will greatly appreciate this system!

Oh, yeah, and another perk is the system uses six-sided dice only! No more scrounging for that d14... =)

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent game dynamics - a great role-playing game
Comment: Champions is an excellent role-playing game of the comic book/superhero genre. The game is easily played and the rules are very clear. Overall, I think it is a good system to play by.

The best aspect of the game is the great flexibility in the creation of characters. There is an almost limitless number of characters and powers that can be created through a system of naming base powers that are very simple, and adding varying effects to them. Almost any superhero from any comic book can be recreated using this system.

The downside to this system is that charcter creations takes a good deal of time because characters are allowed a certain number of "character points" and one needs to balance the powers with the points which involves a bit of math.

However, once the game gets role the system is very playable. The book has a number of optional rules that can make combat either very simple or a bit complex, depending on how you like it. All roles in the game involve six-sided dice (it would be good to have ten to twenty on hand).

The book is laid out decently, though a lot of the combat rules takes some cross-referencing in other sections. It takes a decent-sized initial investment in time to get all the rules down, and the authors didn't make it easier by supplying and handy list of charts.

Overall, I would say that after making the initial investment of time, the game more than pays itself off in hours of enjoyment.