It was originally created by George MacDonald and Steve Peterson in collaboration with Rob Bell, Bruce Harlick and Ray Greer.

Points can be used in many ways: to increase personal characteristics, such as strength or intelligence; to buy special skills, such as martial arts or computer programming; or to build superpowers, such as supersonic flight or telepathy.

The Champions rulebook includes rules governing many different types of generic powers which can then be modified to fit a player's idea.

It is also common for characters not to fall into any easily defined category—these categories are simply to provide easy definition and have no impact on gameplay.

He gave the game an average rating of 7 out of 10, saying, "All the same, the occasional bout of world-saving might be enjoyable, and Champions is worth buying on this basis alone.

Swan noted that the character generation system "gives players near-total freedom in assembling the superhero of their dreams."

However, he found that the combat system "is the game's weakest features, a seemingly endless array of numbers, formulas and tables that's all but certain to discourage first-timers."

Swan concluded by giving the game an excellent rating of 3.5 out of 4, saying, "Of all the superhero RPGs, Champions remains the connoisseur's choice.

Editor Paul Pettengale commented: "It wasn't the first superhero RPG and it never had licensed links to any big-name comics – but it's still the classic of the genre.

It popularised the now-commonplace 'points-design' approach to character creation; in fact, it's probably the most flexible, detailed points-based system ever, which makes it rather overwhelming for some new players, and combat can be a little slow.

The major roleplaying games of the time involved characters stalking monsters in dungeons; the heroes in Champions delivered knockout blows to archnemeses—all while speaking the requisite inspiring soliloquies.

"[20] In his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath noted that Champions was a pioneer in two respects.

It "is the first entirely new game to embrace the idea of non-random character generation through a point-buy system, and it marks a significant expansion of the concept."