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What Champions PNP Villain Would You Like to See In CO Next?
riverocean
Posts: 1,690 Arc User
I haven't' touched Champions PNP since the late 80's. But that game had some awesome villains... many of the names escape me (hello aging..) but I'm curious what PNP villain would any of you like to see make an in-game appearance?
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We've had discussions like this on the forums before. Paying appropriate deference to the classics, I would vote for Eurostar, still considered one of the toughest and nastiest supervillain teams in the world. Particularly since folks hereabouts have had their fill of magic-based villains for a while, and there's nary a one of those in Eurostar.
These guys are major-league terrorists, lending themselves to politically-tinged crises. As their leader Fiacho has declared, "Eurostar doesn't rob banks. We wreck economies." Although based in Europe, Fiacho hates America for its economic and cultural "imperialism" toward Europe. So it's easy enough to justify them crossing the Atlantic.
Typical comic-y supervillains.
Kinematik could be nice, but CO is more light-hearted in tone so the guy may not mix-in well, considering that he also needs IHA and their bigotry to have reasons for doing things.
Kinematik's code-name derives from his ability to absorb and redirect kinetic energy. He's been very public in proclaiming his cause and views, and has a small number of mutant followers and is constantly trying to recruit more. He's cooperated with other major mutant supervillains, such as Gravitar and Holocaust. The IHA considers him one of the premier mutant threats.
Kinematik and his followers are detailed in Champions Villains Vol. 1: Master Villains.
If we need another lighthearted villain, there's always the infamous Darkon, who can cause a blinding absence of darkness. (Light is merely the absence of dark, you see. His powers aren't "light-based" - they're based on his absorption and manipulation of darkons, the fundamental particles of darkness. And he wears a cardboard headdress. The tape shows.)
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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bad memories of Eurostar after 1 (non human) member of the group got a call from the egotist and said " Who are you? Are you supposed to be important?"
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Beyond that, EURoSTAR would make a great Rampage. as would the Crowns. I wouldn't mind Cateran as a single blade villain. Or the Skunk-Ape, though he's not so much of a villain, IIRC, but the swamps of Vibora are a unique environment.
And time travel and punching Nazis is an age old superhero tradition. And if you could throw in Haynesville, that'd be a bonus.
Lady Blue. I do like the thief-with-their-own-morals trope, and I'd love to see her approach the heroes for help with an even greater threat.
I'd be up for time travelling nazi bashing!
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From all reports this will be a big book, full not only of Golden Age heroes and villains, but also plenty of historical source material to set games in the late 1930s and 1940s. Champions Online devs have a history of tapping new PnP books for scenario ideas; for example, Whiteout came out not long after Champions Beyond detailed the Roin'esh. So I believe there's reason to hope for time-traveling Nazi-bashing in the foreseeable future.
But to seque from that point back to the topic of the thread: perhaps it's time that Dr. Timothy Blank, from the Project Stein CO mission arc, returned in his proper form from the PnP game, as King Cobra. Complete with his COIL organization and his supervillain elite, the Ouroboros.
I like the idea of themed villains - the more comic booky the better.
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If Cryptic wanted to bring Muerte and Terror Inc. back for a story arc, I'm sure they could come up with a rationale for him being alive. A couple of revivals of the Professor have appeared in published books, including one by me (not as part of the official setting, though). He would need a new set of teammates, but Cryptic has shown they like creating new characters for the game.
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Who would you like to see in the game? No supervillains, as the developers haven't got a handle on those fights at all.
Whether the developers "have a handle on" supervillains in the game is subject to debate; but that doesn't mean we can't want to see them.
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Seconded.
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or Eurostar.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
Truthfully, I don't much care what the PNP universe looks like now regarding who's dead or alive or working with who now; I played a long time ago and the PNP I know is the PNP I have to use as my frame of reference.
Oh, so-and-so's dead now? These guys no longer work together?
Doesn't matter to me.
The question is "Who would I like to appear" so my answer won't change just because of what the modern PNP looks like.
1) Wyvern and Ankylosaur
2) The Ultimates (Which I know as Binder, Slick, Black Star, Charger, and Plasmoid)
3) Genocide/Minutemen
4) Project: Sunburst (Sunburst, Ray, and Radium at least. Of course, if they have been retconned to no longer having that common origin....)
Those are all characters that should be fairly easy to fit in to the game as it is.
5) Herculan is sitting in jail in Westside wasting away. I would like to see him escape with our heroes getting a mission to track him down.
6) I would like to see them finish the Crowns of Krim storyline.
I am suffering from "magic fatigue" as much as the next guy, but some of these guys are out there and others are hinted at.
They are established in the lore with roots extending way back, so yeah, go ahead and move that story forward.
Just not until some of the other stuff gets put in.
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There are more. Hideous, Monster, Ogre, Beamline, Panda and Raccoon, AVAR-7, Thunder and Lightning, and many more could be brought in.
There is a lot of room for "real" super villains to be added.
I think that they should pore over the villains that they do own, decide which ones are most visually distinct and otherwise most interesting, and build new stories around those villains.
No, it won't happen over night, but why not spend some time developing the list? Not all of them can be first but they need to also not throw away those characters on lesser things.
They make a big story dealing with Eurostar? Great, but that doesn't mean that they should throw the Ultimates away or use them as monor muscle in some other mission.
Other villains, ones that aren't really suitable for driving a major story, could be used as alert/custom alert/rampage villains or as hired muscle in missions involving some other organization.
Maybe Arrowhead could work with the Purple Gang, for example. He was a mob enforcer and the Purple Gang is as close to "the mob" as CO has, so why not?
I think it's certainly an upgrade over fighting "Tommygun #47".
But also important is to make these characters' backgrounds available for view either in the game or in some database connected to these boards.
Because most of the villains to a great many players are nothing but what they see when they fight them.
Some players might use alerts for all of their leveling and never even get what background is offered in missions.
It's hard to care about Hrodegeir the Unending or Cairngorn Stoneblood when there is no place readily available for the players to find out who they are.
It's like with us being able to write up a detailed background for our various nemeses, yet if anyone else tries to read that background in game during a nemcon or nemesis alert, they see nothing.
*Edit: I listed Slick as a member of the Ultimates twice but left out Plasmoid
Yup, we already have a few Crowns of Krim in the MMO, so bringing in the rest would be reasonable. They're magic-based, true, but at least they're a genuine supervillain team.
The Monster and Ogre are official in the setting, and nearly unchanged. Hideous was replaced by Grotesk, very similar but with a different origin. AVAR-7 has been revised with a Gadroon origin, but is now a flunky of Mechanon. At least some of the others are probably no longer part of the IP. Absolutely no argument from me. The Champions Villains trilogy collecting the majority of current official villains in three categorized volumes (Master Villains/Villain Teams/Solo Villains) contains over three hundred villains, over a wide range of motivations and power levels, with full color artwork. I've never really understood Cryptic's reluctance to tap into all that. I know that when the IP sale from Hero Games to Cryptic Studios went through, both companies visualized the other as a resource for their own games, i.e. the MMO would introduce players to these characters, and hopefully interest them in finding out more about the setting, extensively detailed in the PnP books which they would then be motivated to buy (hopefully). But I realize many CO players don't want to pay for the tabletop game books to learn about these characters.
Things like the Champions Online Wiki were intended to help address that desire, but even that limited resource is still pretty restricted.
Mark Williams owned his Gargoyle character so they would have to get his permission to use it in their artwork, for example, and since he has passed (never mind the whole revamping of the Champions team over the years) I am sure that Gargoyle will never be a part of this game.
But if someone wanted that character to appear as a hero somewhere then they want them to appear. The legalities mean less to them than whatever memories/attachment they may have had to that character. When you get the "Prison Break" mission, he's in the cell block where Green Dragon was being held if memory serves.
He's in one of those cells along with Scalpel and another villain from the lore... A PSI-related character who's name escapes me right now. It's been a long time since I played Champions; Not since my time in the military.
Still, I would like to have some of the more recent source books.
Two things, though:
1) I like physical product. Not a fan of buying just a download.
2) I really do not have the money to buy something as expensive as these books can be, especially if I am not even playing the PnP game.
And it certainly doesn't help that so few of the villains are in the game in the first place, and those that are are often used in some minor role and forgotten.
In comics a hero/team will fight a number of the same villains over and over, dealing with various plots and schemes and what have you, but here the only time that really happens is with our various nemeses, but the nemesis system has been pretty much abandoned at this point.
I would love for the devs to make a wider variety of adventure packs/comic series available using some of these classic villain, and not just for one story.
I would like to see so many different stories that we could fight Eurostar or the Ultimates five different ways.
Even if it was a "plug and play" thing where we had a number of different stories where a super-villain team was doing something and then we could pick from between 3-5 different villain teams which would change the dialogue and possibly even add some slight changes to the missions themselves.
Sort of like the training room in the powerhouse only better.
The Doctor on the PDB
Fahrenheit on the PDB
The Doctor on the PDB
Fahrenheit on the PDB