It seemed more balanced than V&V. It's strange that I was worried about balance back in High School, as we played AD&D without any concept of "Point Buy", so some lucky rolls could certainly do you good. Ah, who am I kidding, AD&D was roll 5d6 6 times (keeping the best 3 dice outa five) and rolling 6 characters to choose from. Balance wasn't an issue, as we were all over powered, but I digress).
What little I remember of V&V (besides the ads in Dragon) is you could roll some really stupid power combinations, whereas Champions allowed one to create the superhero of their dreams, or at least close to it. Champions was my first experience with "point buy", which I think works better for supers anyway.
I never ran a game, tho I played in a few sessions. Then I played some Marvel supers. I've stayed away from supers pretty much since. Not bad games, just no made for me.
Still, I've looked at how far the Hero System that is the engine of Champions has come - and it scares the crap outa me. My lord but it looks like one hell of a crunchy and heavy system those days.
I think Hero 4e was my favorite overall. Fantasy Hero for 5e was a gorgeous piece of work, though, and full of references and background information and inspiration.
ReplyDeleteSixth... not so much, sadly.
All that said, I love HERO System for its engineering, and I think it a great toolbox (I've used it for examining balance on game elements, for example -- it can actually be a pretty good fit to D&D if you do it right), but I've never much liked actually playing it.
For what it's worth, Mutants and Masterminds 3e has a random character generator included with the GM Screen that is actually pretty fun and still generates logical combinations.
ReplyDeleteMy friends were still too concerned to use it, however, due to bad memories of Marvel Super Heroes characters that could fly and talk to corn.
Most of my gaming career has involved supers. And as I've gotten older, I've gained more fondness for the "random powers" thing.
ReplyDelete