Champions

Champions is a role-playing game by George MacDonald, Steve Peterson, Bruce Harlick, and Ray Greer, of Hero Games designed to simulate and function in a four-color comic book world.

Champions was the first role-playing game in which character generation was guided by the player's imagination, as opposed to random die rolls. The player decides what kind of character she wants to play, and designs the character using a set number of "points." The limited number of points generally defines how powerful the character will be. Points can be used in many ways: to increase personal characteristics, such as strength or intelligence; to buy special skills, such as martial arts or computer programming; or to build superpowers, such as supersonic flight or telepathy.

What has made this system so enduring is its flexibility. Instead of requiring charcters to choose from a menu of abilities, the player can design just about any superpower imaginable. The result is a role-playing game that runs very much like a comic book. Like most comic book heroes, characters and villains are frequently knocked out of the fight but seldom killed. There are special rules for throwing absurdly heavy objects, such as aircraft carriers.

The system is also very conducive to role-playing than some other systems. Emphasis is placed on development of the character. Players are required not only to design a hero's powers, but also the hero's disadvantages. Thus, Champions characters are built with friends, enemies, and weaknesses, along with powers and abilities.

The Champions system was adopted to a fantasy world under the title "Fantasy Hero", which has similar advantages and disadvantages to the original Champions game. More recently, Champions was incorported into a generic role-playing game system called Hero System. While these systems have been successful, many believe the concept is still best suited to a comic book world.

The Champions rules have remained essentially unchanged from the very early 1980s. No other popular role-playing system has been as enduring without a major revision. The reason given is generally that the system is extremely flexible for character generation and combat, and is very well balanced. On the other hand, the complicated character generation system requires time to learn, and the high degree of autonomy given to the players demands lots of creativity.