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Steve Donohue
United States
Allen Park
Michigan
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The cover actually says "Aaron Allston's Strike Force" but it could just as easily say "Aaron Allston's Tour de Force". On the face, Strike Force is s campaign supplement, kind of a combined book showing the heroes, villains, and places of the Strike Force campaign. That alone makes it unique among Champions supplements.
What really makes it shine though is the first 17 pages, the material devoted to Campaigning and Campaign rules. Sorry, getting ahead of myself. Okay, here's the table of contents:
Contents
3 Introduction
4 Campaigning
14 Campaign Specific Rules
18 The Teams
22 Strike Force
42 The Shadow Warriors
52 Independents
57 Villains and Neutrals
73 Headquarters
85 History of the Campaign
92 Crisis of Champions
So let's take it in turns with the important stuff.
In the introduction, Aaron basically tells you that his is one of his geek dreams come true - his campaign world is becoming a published setting. He then goes through and tells you what the various sections are about and explains why some characters have a couple of different character sheets.
In Campaigning, he drops game-changing ideas on every page, from gamemastering advice to campaign suggestions. Don't forget, this book was published in 1988, the year Monte Cook became a gaming professional. It predates Robin Laws by a few years and Jason Morningstar by a decade.
Some specific advice in this chapter involves developing your campaign by understanding the players and their characters, establishing ground rules for the game, some specific things to avoid, and my all time favorite top ten list: How to Ruin Your Campaign. If I'd paid the sticker price of $12 for this chapter, I'd have gotten my money's worth.
Nearly all the advice in this chapter is system-agnostic. It's not about running Champions or a Champions campaign, it's about running any campaign and doing it well. I still use Aaron's list of player types when I think about the people who are in my game group and where they're headed. I sometimes remind other GMs (and ask them to remind me) when we're heading down one of the dark paths in How to Ruin Your Campaign.
Next he tosses out some advice on blue-booking - using those testing books we all had in college as a combination personal journal and one-on-one role-playing tool to help ensure each player in your game is happy with where things are going. He rounds it out with some ideas on keeping your campaign fresh as it ages.
The next chapter is on specific changes he made to the rules for his Champions game. Some of them are so simple you feel like an idiot for not thinking of it yourself. Others set the stage for some of the most popular supplements in Champions. Here we see for the first time the martial arts system from Danger International ported over to Champions and given new meaning. There are specific power examples, specific suggestions for other powers and the concept of point shaving to allow characters to slowly pay for things they might not be able to afford as starting heroes, like group equipment and a base.
From here it treads into more standard fare as you get the history and layout of the Strike Force campaign over the years. The characters and villains are interesting with fun powers and great backgrounds. What really strikes you though as you read it is the rich tapestry which has been woven by these characters. It is inspiring for any player or GM to read, it really shows what a long-standing campaign can become.
At 60 pages, the specific character and locations sections comprise the bulk of the book. They are also interspersed with suggestions and ideas that can be used for other characters and campaigns.
Following that we get a history of the campaign. The history really covers both the history of the characters and some insight into the players as they move along. It once again includes some sound GM advice, this time with concrete examples of it being used to help keep the Strike Force Campaign alive and vibrant for the players. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that his friends still try to get him behind the screens when they can.
The last section is a short adventure aimed at letting GMs use the characters from the Strike Force campaign in their own games without having to use the entire Strike Force continuity.
As a Champions supplement, this is one of the best. The sections on heroes, villains, locations, and campaign history provide a great background for a campaign. The Champions-specific advice on limiting powers is probably a little dated (this was written for second-edition) but is till good.
As a GM advice, this is the best I've read in this few pages. You might find some with more details or better explanations, but this one is short and sweet and very, very good. It is worth the price of admission just for those few pages.
If you're still not convinced, take a look at the ratings here on RPG Geek. There are 5 ratings for this game. The lowest one is an 8. The people who've rated it own, on average, 800 rpg items each (and 1 of those 5 says he only owns 1; if you ignore him since he probably hasn't entered his collection, they average about 1000 items each) and are some of the most active people on RPG Geek.
I rate this 10 of 10. It changed the way I ran Champions and every other game I've ever run since.
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Lowell Francis
United States
South Bend
Indiana
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Agreed- one of the first Champions supplements that didn't feel thrown together. It felt like coherent advice and material from a skilled GM using the system.
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Bruce McGeorge
United States
Lawrenceburg
Indiana
Hey you kids, get off my Avatar!
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I completely agree... Strike Force is one of the truly forgotten gems of our hobby.
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Steve Donohue
United States
Allen Park
Michigan
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Remember those five raters? That's two of them checking in. Only two left to go.
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Jeff Johnson
United States
Harrisonburg
Virginia
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edige23 wrote: Agreed- one of the first Champions supplements that didn't feel thrown together. It felt like coherent advice and material from a skilled GM using the system.
Based on his articles in Space Gamer, Aaron Allston must have been a full-time GM back in the 80's. His champions campaign notes evolved practically into a magazine of their own.
"Among the eight or ten gamers I game with, some thirteen Champions campaigns are being prepared or run (not to mention one TFT, one Rune Quest, and two D&D.)" -- Space Gamer #61.
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