I thought that was Chutes and Ladders was your favorite.

Oh, *SNAP!*

1981? Lessee, I was 24 and keeping the Moluccans out of the nuke plant.

It is impressive that anything can hold at least a fraction of the public's attention so long.

I have the 5.0 version of the Champions rule book on my shelf behind me... somewhere.
used to play 3.0 with my friends when I lived in Atlanta and had friends...

I stopped playing tabletop games years ago, when I ran out of free time. But champions was always my favorite system.

Oh, that's damn cool!

Funny you should mention:

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31446028/

a buddy of mine has a friend who used to run a Fantasy Hero campaign and was planning to re-start his campaign (admittedly 5th ed D&D rules) as one of his circle is introducing his son to the hobby and asked me to make a color map of the Western Shores setting from 4th ed. (sadly it was put on hold due to covid :P )

Ooooh I gotta show the boys this one. Beautiful work there.

Well let me know if you want a higher rez copy. I can Drop-box it for you

Yes please!

Star Hero is still one of my favorite RPGs, because I could run a scifi game without having to use the universe they foisted on you. This was especially good because the universe that Star Hero included was particularly horrible.

Technically, you could always do that. The problems were it was so much easier to use a pre-written setting and many systems are written around details of those settings. Traveller was originally written without a bundled setting; it still allows for creating personal settings. GURPS is another that offers settings but works well with personal ones, both space and many others. And of course the Hero System.

Traveller was still based on a certain assumptions about technology, and it was still based on generic type of setting. The effects in Star Hero were not wedded to any particular kind of techby alterning the point costs for certain abilities, you could simulate just about any kind of tech level. In my case, I upped the costs for computers, and tweaked the terminology to do a campaign in an alternate present (1990) as predicted by 1940's pulp sci fi.

You're right. Despite being so flexible about the worlds encountered, the technology was mostly set. The GM would have to change that to recreate some setting concepts. But at least one of the early books included a list of characters based on well-known (in SF) literature, implying they originally intended less rigidity.

Originally, yes, but with Spinward Marches, the setting began to solidify and Marc W. Miller ran with it. Now it’s a lovingly curated and documented background in five eras,?complete with a very nifty map of known space.

Star Hero, on the other hand had a loosely defined background with some aliens, and it comes across as vaguely Star Trek like.

Been years since I did any gaming. D&D and some of the Steve Jackson stuff in the 1977 to 1979 time period. A few sessions of Albedo in the 90s. Some of the White Wolf Vampire and Werewolf games in the mid to late 90s - mainly the LARPs - was playing in the Flagstaff area. Did my last D&D there - I was post grad at that time, playing with some college kids and my humor during one session was too much for them. I was running a Centaur character - long story short - usual start of game setting - a Tavern. Owner is a good looking Elven woman. One of the party asks my centaur what he thinks of her. My reply - well she has a cute face, nice body, but needs 2 more legs and a bigger ass to really interest me. One guy dropped his drink in shock. mutual friend the next week told me they didn't want me back...

Are you kidding? That's a good one, and in-character to boot!

Find a better group, I say!

Been a few decades since the incident. Last time I played

I played some of the early editions, and delighted in the powers-building system that was based on game effects instead of appearances.

Exactly. The special effects were defined by the players. The damage dealt was defined by the points spent.

I love that we have those scans. Important history!

The only thing missing are scans of my First Champions book, but it mostly fell apart from use, But I still have most of it, minus the covers.

I played Champions back at the tail end of 4th ed and into 5th ed.
It's a fantastic RP system, wholly customizable to almost any and all settings.
Alas, it can be brutally manipulated by mathematics wizards. It's helped me make many characters I've used in my writing for years.

This is why the GM hast to set hard caps on damage classes, speed, and defenses, otherwise a clever fellow could destroy the universe over time for 10 points. I ran Fantasy Hero mostly, so as to sidestep the math issues. Set spell lists also obviated the problem as well.

5th ed multiform was *SOOOOO* broken.
As was megascale. 1" leap with one tick of megascale = Hulk Flea Hop. Basic disads (uncontrolled destination, ect) made it all but free.
I built a villain who could summon cat5 hurricanes for a whopping 100 points, I was gobsmacked. So was the party - the could never find the guy.

Fifth Edition had a "revised" version, but generally I tended not to play in games past 4th Edition. 6th Edition went the other way and codified everything to tightly, with such a high degree of granularity, that making a character now feels like filling out an IRS tax form.

As for Multiform, I was one of the people that intentionally brole it for Fist Edition Fantasy Hero (roughly 3rd edition Champions), in that I had a character that for 75 points, turned into a very fearsome dragon.

"Human"
https://i.imgur.com/suLV5RV.png

Dragon:
https://i.imgur.com/TGOJuj2.png

They changed the rules a bit after that, but the charcter was "grandfathered" into the campaign so I didn't need to change much.

I love the programming schedule at that con. Games starting at 6pm that run 12 hours. Games starting at 12:01. Games starting at 2am. XD

This was how you went to a con without being able to afford a hotel room. But staying awake for 48 hours got a bit trippy.

Oh... that's. Hrm, I only pulled all-nighters for college classes, after a while I just feel like crap. I can suffer through that if there's a reason, but it's not much fun, and, I'm there to have fun.

This was higs school for us, so the deficits weren't as debilitating.

LOL actually the way I remember it, I felt like crap if i stayed up at high school age, I just put up with it. What I mean is, being a little older and wiser now, it makes less sense to put myself through a certain level of physical suffering if its supposed to be fun. Because then it's less fun.