Forty years ago, Champions: the Super Roleplaying Game was inspired by off-the-leash newsstand comics full of weird and headstrong creators. No one knew where a story was going, and what “heroic” meant changed constantly. That’s why it was the first role-playing game to hand you and a few friends a creative studio, rather than a constructed genre package.

This book presents an exploration of those first-generation texts as envisioned and redesigned by Ron Edwards, long-time Champions player, co-founder of the Forge, publisher at Adept Press, and author of diverse role-playing games. It contains all of the rules you need to create and play any hero and villain you can think of, procedures for the Now so your play-experience is a cutting edge rather than a railroad; and a nonstandard, in-depth examination of superhero comics informed by professionals and insiders.

Like the original game, this one isn’t a setting or a quantitative breakdown of a genre. It’s for your own superhero comics experience. However you want it! Silly or not silly, cool or not cool, retro or contemporary, appropriate or inappropriate, safe or edgy, relevant or not relevant. Never mind what some franchise pays for, what a fanbase demands, or what the experts pontificate about.

This is your studio. Let’s see what you make with it!