Reading through some new-old books (Giant No. 3), and I had a thought.

What happened to F.I.S.H.? They seem to have the same mission as C.H.E.S.S., and since Death Duel with the Destroyers was the first adventure module, it's possible that it was actually written before the idea of C.H.E.S.S. was put down in writing.

For now I am assuming that F.I.S.H. was simply absorbed by C.H.E.S.S.

Which brings up another question...
What adventures have a lot of C.H.E.S.S. in them?

I am looking for illustrations and history/timeline

Thanks guys!

Ironnerd wrote on May 11^th, 2012 at 11:14am:


From my take on the Monkey House website, FISH didn't get absorbed into CHESS. Bill Willingham of the Destroyers created FISH as one organization and owns the creative copyright to that organization whereas Jeff Dee and Jack Herman created CHESS and they own the copyright to that content they wrote. It's like merging Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia. I guess it is up to each campaign to see how they want to resolve it.


I don't think there is a "history" of CHESS from the "old school" adventures.

Jeff and Jack renamed what CHESS stands for in the 2.1 rulebook. From what I understand, they gave information about CHESS there and In Broad Daylight. I never did much with CHESS as an outfit because I thought it overshadowed the heroes too much as written by the rules.

Maybe you could ask Jeff or Jack on their Monkyhouse website for more details about the organization too. It looks like they are posting more behind the scenes info about the characters they created over there.

What I really need is an illo of CHESS powered armor. All I can ever find are head-shots.

And I will have to get DoD --- and Penticle Plot (and a few others)

Secret of the Swamp I think uses a sprinkle of CHESS...

Good call ... I forgot all about Jeff's artwork of the fight with Dr. Yeti.

I always pictured it looking like this.


Then HALO came along 

Yep 



Everything about that picture screams CHESS to me.
(Disclaimer: I don't play video games, so I have little knowledge what all that is suppose to be)

Ranger wrote on May 31^st, 2012 at 11:32pm:



My girl is a big Halo fan, as far as my knowledge the game hat that image comes from takes place before the main Halo story line with the Master Chief or what not. And in the pic is a pair of drop ships with what amounts to their version of a SEAL team. Heavy gunner up front, leader guy in blue, scout/token chick behind him and standard fire support guy jumping off the boat in the back.

I never thought CHESS was particularly inspired or interesting. Seems like the chess and zodiac themes are way, way, way overused and cliched. I use a homemade organization called ICICLE, the Independent Commission for International Cooperation in Law Enforcement, inspired by "The Man from UNCLE." They don't have super armor; that's why they need help from superheroes with the bigger menaces!

Ironnerd wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 6:12pm:


From what I saw in counters in Great Bridge for the look of the gear, your direction is already going to a good place. I'm sure Kanonfodder will do something sweet for it. 

Kap wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 1:08pm:


I felt the same way. Probably moreso about Zodiac than about CHESS. The Zodiac team was already an institution at Marvel by the time Champions came out with their Zodiac supplement in the 80s. Even if a superhero game is inspired by comics, it doesn't have to be derivative.

Well, with a zodiac theme there aren't a lot of options unless maybe you're clever and literate on an Alan Moore level...he could probably have found something new when he was in his prime.

Ahhh C.H.E.S.S.

First off... Homer Grimsby was very benevolent towards heroes in my campaign.
Alexandra Huntington was not as trusting. She was a bit more critical and she felt the heroes should be indoctrined in some manner with C.H.E.S.S.

Like Imperial,  Meganaut, Telecomm, Vortex, Molecule Man, Trickshot, Steel (Frank Kimlik the former 1st Stigmata), Epsilon and Starlight (rulebook chara p 25 and back cover).

There was a falling out with the Crusaders after the Mass incident and some heavy destruction in New York.
Huntington approved an invasion of the Crusader Citadel and it was blocked by an alert from TEACHER who summoned the team. Who consequently defeated the agents and four of the Government heroes of the Guard.
Homer Grimsby came and diplomatically settled the matter freeing the Queen, agents and the three heroes (fourth was Meganaut who left summoning Grimsby).

It was the first time and only time I used the limited power armors from C.H.E.S.S.

Agents, virtually all friendly came and went.

Devil's Domain cemented the Crusaders role in regards to C.H.E.S.S.

They were fun to deal with, especially the prison stuff they ran.
I had made them only mildly more powerful than the police and less powerful than Intercrime.
I never wanted them to outshine the heroes. Governmental or otherwise.
But where I decided they were almost always successful was tactically.

They are fun.
-----------------------------------
C.H.E.S.S. and the whole deal here with comparing these organizations with comic book one is that to run a group of that manner and size in game terms is wholly different.

I applaud the effort of the game in making both C.H.E.S.S. and Intercrime.

I see a ton of things in a lot of the GMs games here that emulate things in various comic worlds.

I applaud those as well.

It takes real effort to design these game factors to help speed up game play or to give GMs ideas to spring board from.

It's a game about comic worlds, of course it is going to emulate what is most popular in comics... That's what it is made for.
Silly rabbits!

*wink*

Ramble wrote on Dec 21^st, 2014 at 5:21am:


  Dude I would hope so. Thirty-five years of comic and rp history to draw from gives one a distinct advantage compared to a couple teenagers at the dawn of the gaming era. 

Guardian7 wrote on Dec 21^st, 2014 at 10:36pm:


I'd love to see how you do this with Game mechanics.  I've been winging it for years, but never seen any kind of rules for danger rooms or natural disasters (other than under water or outer space survival).

In order to see it you'll all have to wait for me to purchase a lap top in the next month or so.

Though I have it right now in front of me and I'm looking at it.

System is still good. Just some refinement.

I would also roll up 8 good attacks in advance for each character in case using The CSR (combat simulation room)  came up.

I will say the room's attack was based on movement. Meaning a d8 roll determined when the room would attack...
So the chara could move between 1"-8" and in those steps attack/s would occur.
As soon as the attack ocured another d8 was rolled and so on.

The room had 20 different attacks 1 of those attacks was actually 8 types of obstacles

It's not perfect... But it's functional.

The only way characters could gain experience was if it was set at 4th lvl.

But the division of XP was quite low. It still allowed characters to experience power usage and figure out ways to use they're powers in a safe environment.

It's okay and worked for my needs.

I think my players tricked the horseman Death into the combat room and thumped on him. It was like Blizzard and a badly weakened Thunderstar.
It was great fun, though it memory serves, War came in and tore the room apart trying to retrieve Death., well he did a lot of damage.

Dreamweaver using her illusions to hide Death and put an illusion over Titan of Death... Suffice to say War missed his save, Titan knocked him out.

So danger rooms have a lot of uses.

Everybody has a bad day and the written word does a horrible job of conveying the tone of voice and body language that would have signaled the light hearted nod of respect to Jeff and Jack that it was suppose to have conveyed. No offense was intended and none is taken.

Indeed happy new year to all

At some point I really want to see a CHESS source book.