It's a... Aw, crap - we're out of metaphors for flying things

Yes, here's yet another superhero RPG character sheet.

I'm posting this sheet because, at this very moment, I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of an original-shrink-wrapped, NM condition Champions second-edition box set, and original-shrink-wrapped copies of Champions II and Champions III. I wasn't introduced to this game until later in my role-playing days (around '89, IIRC). As regular readers will no doubt already know (a cookie will be awarded to anyone who actually knows this without going to find it in my blog archives) I'm a Villains & Vigilantes guy first and foremost. And anybody who's been around the superhero RPG circuit for a decent length of time knows how well Champions players and V&V players usually get along.

I only played the game once - in fact, I spent about three times as much time making my character as I did playing him. I don't blame the game, though - I blame the GM. He threw a Champions FNG (yours truly) up against a super-munchkin villain whom the poor FNG's PC had zero chance of even scratching. Add to that the fact that the poor n00b (me again) knew zip, zero, zilch about how the system worked, and had zip, zero, zilch assistance from the GM or any of the other players who did and you have a surefire recipe for a failed game session.

That session, even more than the daunting character creation, turned me off Champions for a long, long time.

I tried the game again several years later, this time from the GM's chair, in it's fourth-edition form, as a mid-campaign replacement for a game I was running for my good friend Terry. (Sorry, I guess that's "Theron" now.) Unfortunately, his character, "Aegis," hinged on certain V&V powers that didn't translate well into Champions. The V&V atmosphere didn't seem to translate, either.

Strike two.

So, here we are again. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to grab these pieces of superhero RPG history. Even though I've personally had bad experiences playing and attempting to run the game, I still recall warmly and fondly the time I spent looking through Terry's (Sorry, I guess - well, you know...) Champions characters and listening to his anecdotes of his favorite character's ("Mellow") exploits. I still recall the awesome illustrations Terry came up with for Mellow, and just looking at pictures of these old books takes me to a warm, fuzzy, nostalgiac place. I'm hoping that the "third time's a charm" idiom holds true when I run this game for my family.

Wish me luck, dear reader.

Anyhoo, with the impending arrival of these pieces of history, I decided to dust off a character sheet I created while on a superhero kick a few years ago (inspired by the inspirational-but-not-very-playable Marvel Universe Role-Playing Game). This sheet is based on 4E Champions, so I hope it'll work for my 2E babies when they arrive. (I never even used this sheet to play 4E Champions, so I hope there are no glaring inaccuracies within...)

As always: enjoy!

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