Golden Age of Champions
Role-Playing Superheroes in the 1940s

Game Review

Reviewed by Mike Dawson


By Chris Cloutier, Kim Lasko, and Robert Schroeder
Firebird Limited and Simulation Designers P 0. Box 4180, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
Released: March, 1985
Catalog No. 02
Price: $9.95
Complexity: Intermediate
Solitaire Suitability: None
****

The Golden Age of Champions might seem like a pretty frivolous piece of work. All you need is to fill the world with Axis enemies, change the dates, and start a warthere's your Golden Age! But once you read through Golden Age of Champions, you will know just how wrong that attitude is. The Golden Age of Champions is a single 94-page rules and scenario supplement to the Champions system that serves as an invaluable aid in the construction of a 1940s style superhero or spy game. It contains sections on character creation, combat, vehicles, and campaigning, as well as providing two scenarios and eight new villains. The author shows comprehensive knowledge of the war years, with the understanding of its application to the lives of the characters in the game. The section on background for heroes is particularly detailed and filled with helpful advice about such topics as the draft, citizenship, and life in the armed services. The restrictions and hardships of a war can put great pressures on the aspiring hero, and the Golden Age of Champions explains how to make sure that those pressures are best used or defused by both Gamemaster (GM) and player.

This detail is all presented in a friendly style that is reminiscent of the folks at Hero Games Inc. It shows a sense of humor and a realization that rules can be fun to read and clearly written.

Unfortunately, the artwork, also by the author, shows enthusiasm and a sense of humor, but sadly lacks the polish and experience of the text.

The author has given GMs a great source book for campaigning in the '40s. If a GM were to use all of the background material presented with the two scenarios, he would be well on the way to a prosperous campaign. The trend in that campaign would probably be toward simplicity, and perhaps oriented toward "beer & pretzels" role-playing. Good and Evil were very clear-cut in Golden Age - comics, and they are very clear-cut in the Golden Age of Champions. Don't expect characters to be doing a great deal of soul searching in a Golden Age campaign because most everyone is going to be completely convinced of his patriotic duty.

Replay value is exceptional. The reference material provides possibilities for a whole campaign, of course, and both of the presented scenarios have multiple options for side and follow-up scenarios. Where referees don't mind the monster called time travel, the possibility of a crossover visit by modern day heroes to solve some wartime paradox (the Philadelphia Experiment??) is a possibility. Modern heroes, with their more bizarre origins and flashier acts, would add an interesting and curious twist to a full-time, established '40s campaign.

Golden Age of Champions is the only currently published source of information about the '40s that would be of use for a Call of Cthulu or secret agent game set in that era. The idea of mixing Nazis and Lovecraftian monsters is horrifying; it is also a natural.

The rules included are of a less specific nature than the campaign and character information, and should prove useful for anyone who likes to have added detail for the Champions system.

The new rules add detail to such things as guns, explosives, grenades, bombs, torpedoes, depth charges, wounds, and vehicles. New power limitations and advantages allow greater flexibility in creation of gun and vehicle focuses. There are also sections on sidekicks, and a few new powers. All of them add new detail and options to the Champions system, and none of them will overbalance your game. However, they do tend to load the system down with specialized rules for specialized situations.

Both of the scenarios, included in the last section of the book, show a strong understanding of what it takes to make an adventure challenging and interesting. They are relatively soft-keyed for customizing by the individual GM, and both include opportunities for good role-playing. They also act as examples of a basic scenario design idea for any Champions game. The best way to keep mega-powered heroes challenged is to keep things fast, confusing, and too busy for the player characters (PCs) to take care of everything at once. Both of the scenarios build to climactic struggles, and based on the actions of the players and the design of the characters, the results could go either way.

The eight new villains presented here are very well done, showing more imagination than many of the bad guys previously designed. They run the spectrum from the laughable Landau Lubber to the epic evil of Dr. Qual. Even here the author displays his sense of humor with such characters as Secon Hand Rose. They will be very useful in a '40s campaign, but with two exceptions, probably not anywhere else.

Any individual section of Golden Age of Champions could be passed off as "just a little clever, but not really innovative." But looked at as a whole, Golden Age of Champions is a unique product; a synthesis of strong campaign reference material, guidelines for establishment of characters within the era, useful and complementary rules, and highly playable scenarios. In this regard, it stands alone in the field of superhero game supplements.

If you are a Champions player who is uninterested in golden age, then the minor expansions of the rules systems found here probably aren't worth your money. However, the Golden Age of Champions is an excellent buy for anyone who is contemplating the creation of a golden age campaign, or even running in one.

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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