What books do I need?

ajanus

I was browsing some tabletop superhero rpg games and totally forgot that Champions had one. I looked at DriveThruRPG and found the 'Champions Complete' book and was wondering if that is all I need? Also, is the Champion Powers book recommended? I would prefer physical copies of the books, but Amazon has them for $200+, so the PDF versions and B&W copies will do for now, unless anyone has any other suggestions

bulgarex

Well, the answer depends on what you're looking to do. If you actually want to play the tabletop game, Champions Complete does provide essentially the full Hero System (the game-mechanic engine), as well as genre-playing advice and optional rules geared to the superhero genre. While it also provides some NPCs and scenario suggestions, it's rather thin in those areas. So, although you'd have all you need to use the system in games, you can't run adventures "out of the box" without either developing the stories and characters yourself, or using prebuilds from other books.

Champions Powers greatly simplifies creating new characters, as it has a huge number and variety of super powers already built for you, that you can just drop onto your character's sheet. If you want to create or modify a large number of characters, the Hero Designer software speeds up the process tremendously.

For opponents for your heroes, the Champions Villains trilogy (Master Villains/Villain Teams/Solo Villains) contains over three hundred villains, in a range of power levels, styles, and motivations. All those characters are also transcribed into Hero Designer format, making customizing them easy.

If your interest is in the lore of the official setting, the broadest and most concentrated source is the book titled Champions Universe. Numerous other books expound on particular setting elements in greater detail, but this one is the foundation. There are also books of "monsters," weapons and equipment, vehicles, magic spells and enchanted items, adventures, info and guidelines for other genres, source books for other eras of the official Hero Universe, more optional rules... as I say, it really depends on what sort of game you'd like to play, and what you think would best assist you.

ajanus

Exactly what I needed. Thanks, Bulgarex.