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CO Lore Document
canadascott
Posts: 1,257 Arc User
I've shared this link elsewhere, but I've been a little hesitant to let this out into a wide audience. This is a compendium of some of the baseline lore behind the game, along with a lot of advice for role-playing in CO. There have been numerous requests over the years for game lore to be more widely available, hopefully this helps fill that informational void a little.
As I mention in the document, this is *NOT* a substitute for the commercially available books. If you like what you see here, please consider purchasing from Hero Games. That said, the document covers a fair bit of territory, so if Hero or Cryptic feel it's an infringement, it will be taken down.
The link is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHmfdC4jXPpOXNPQW5NZ1o2SzA/view?usp=sharing
Please note that anything labelled "Opinion" is just that, and not canon. Furthermore, people should feel free to ignore the information as they see fit, this is not meant to be a straightjacket. Much of the book is intended for an audience of Champions Online RPers, and can be ignored by non-RPers who are merely interested in the setting.
If you have problems with the link, let me know. I've had trouble with links on Google Drive in the past.
As I mention in the document, this is *NOT* a substitute for the commercially available books. If you like what you see here, please consider purchasing from Hero Games. That said, the document covers a fair bit of territory, so if Hero or Cryptic feel it's an infringement, it will be taken down.
The link is here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHmfdC4jXPpOXNPQW5NZ1o2SzA/view?usp=sharing
Please note that anything labelled "Opinion" is just that, and not canon. Furthermore, people should feel free to ignore the information as they see fit, this is not meant to be a straightjacket. Much of the book is intended for an audience of Champions Online RPers, and can be ignored by non-RPers who are merely interested in the setting.
If you have problems with the link, let me know. I've had trouble with links on Google Drive in the past.
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Post edited by canadascott on
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As Scott says, this document doesn't replace the Champions PnP books as a lore source. It's really only a survey, but a broad and well-organized one. If you don't know much about the world of Champions Online but want to know more -- either out of curiosity or a desire to anchor your characters to the setting -- this is a very good introduction.
I'd also like to point out that Scott Bennie has excellent qualifications for writing this primer. Not only is he a veteran of Champions Online, and has over three decades of experience with the Champions tabletop RPG; he's also one of the longest-standing and most prolific authors of Champs PnP source books, and other RPGs. No small amount of what you see in CO is derived from his work.
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For anyone who has questions about the lore of the Champions setting, please keep in mind that this Champions Pen and Paper sub-forum is an excellent place to post them. CO draws from the PnP tabletop game for its background, and the two versions of the setting are at least 90% in synch with each other; but the PnP vastly expands on what you see in the MMO.
Those like myself who are familiar with that lore will be happy to answer questions, within the bounds of Fair Use in transcribing the IP. At the very least we can refer you to source books detailing the subjects you're interested in.
I would gladly appreciate any lore you can tell me about so I can edit my characters accordingly so that I do not cause any loop holes within the PnP and CO universes.
Handle: @drgmstr
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Give your players a quick and dirty explanation of the setting.
Feel free to post a thread, or send me a Private Message.
Lore Question: Is Dr Yin Wu and Hi Pan the same person?
I've also noticed a lot of discrepancies between lore in the online game and in the books...like is Arvad reallly good or evil?
Dr. Yin Wu and Hi Pan are most emphatically not the same person. Yin Wu is a thousand-year-old Taoist sorcerer, one of the most potent spell-casters in the world, with an army of supernatural Chinese monsters in his service. He's also a fervent enemy of the Cult of the Red Banner, the group Hi Pan serves.
The Champions tabletop RPG existed long before Cryptic Studios purchased the IP. Cryptic did change a few details from what was printed in the earlier books, most of which were incorporated into Hero Games publications after the purchase as subjects warranted. However, a very few major additions Cryptic made to the setting and timeline, such as the Lemurian civil war, post-date the in-depth treatment of their subjects in books dedicated to them. In other cases, such as Monster Island, Cryptic hadn't fully settled on how they wanted to proceed when the books were written, so the books don't precisely match what finally appeared in CO. Then there are the differences based on what works in a tabletop game not always working in an MMO, and vice versa, like Menton's appearance. In a few such cases Hero Games asked Cryptic to exempt them from matching the MMO.
In all cases, what Hero Games published post-IP sale was approved by Cryptic beforehand. I would say that today the two versions of Champions match up about 90%. For the back-history of the setting pre-2002 (the date of Shadow Destroyer's first appearance on Champions Earth, which was originally the true Dr. Destroyer's return in the tabletop), the two histories are very nearly identical.
As for Arvad really being good or evil, that's a question a lot of people in the setting ask, including Arvad's brother Hazor, king of the Empyreans. As presented in the book Hidden Lands, Arvad was as evil as they come, and had been for a long time. The background to the Lemurian civil war asserts that Arvad's rule of Lemuria has changed him, that he actually came to care for them as his people. But is that real, or just an act to get help? If Arvad gains the upper hand in the war, would he return to his old ways? Your guess is as good as mind, but obviously not as good as the CO devs'.
Kudos on an excellent primer that gives just enough info to really get into the setting and make characters that fit it well, without just giving away all the really juicy awesome stuff in the Hero Games books that RPG players [especially GMs] would need.
Even though it was written nearly a decade ago, The Mystic World is mostly relevant to the current setting, and by far the best source for info about CU occult cosmology, major players, and ground rules for that major subset of the setting. Champions Beyond does much the same thing for the space/cosmic side of the universe, is more contemporary, and also provides in-depth info about a number of alien races who are appearing in CO now: the Gadroon, Qularr, Malvans, and Elder Worm.
Beyond those books the info becomes more specific, and/or deals with things which either haven't yet been introduced into CO, or have to some extent been superseded by events in the MMO. What you would find useful would probably depend on what you're interested in.