Digital Hero Materials in your Champions Campaigns

[Hermit]

No pretense, much of my interest is purely self absorbed as I've been fortunate enough to write some for this product. However, though most of the stuff is unofficial, it also has valuable stuff from both Steve and Darren that is. Even if you're only interested in Champions, the issues are often very useful with settings, adventures, and NPCs (Heroic or villainous) for that genre aplenty. Still, everyonce in a while I run into some one here who hasn't even heard of the DoJ's electronic magazine, and not just the newcomers to the boards either.

I can understand prefering hardcopy or budget considerations (and in honesty, my current subscription is a gift so I can't throw stones) but stumbling onto fellow posters here who never heard of it got me wondering just how used the resource is. For those of you who do subscribe, purchase individual issues, or even just glean the free samples (Which really don't look as nice as the actual polished write ups) do you use them in your Champions campaigns? Which ones are working well for you?

What would you hope to see and what would be useful to your champions games and make it even more useful to your campaign? Are you hoping for another setting, more villains, more heroes, small adventures, girly pinups with Witchcraft? :)

Thanks for your time and (hopefully) your input.

[proditor]

I can only speak to what I've used in the past or my own proclivities for stuff I write up on my own. In that case, I get the most mileage out of things like the Euroguard and the stats on the Silver Age heroes that Darren wrote. I got a lot of use from Susano's future soldier article and I intend to get a lot use out of his esoteric aircraft one as well.

What I write-up for my own games: Detail the world. The three paragraphs on Monster Island in CU was just enough to make me go "Hmmm, I want to know what else is there..." and then proceed to write 30 odd pages about it. :nonp: The same applies to some other ideas I had concerning relations with Atlantis and the old WW2 Sub-refueling base that serves an embassy in my world. Basically, I like there to be a lot of interesting and non-conflicting "cool stuff" that will make the PC's at least pause for a moment and go "Hey, that's neat." I get a lot of that in the City books (Millenium, Vibora Bay, etc.) I just want to expand it to whatever section of the world I want to play in today. ;)

That's for a core Champions game and I find that more esoteric stuff is cool because even if it doesn't fit into a continuing game, it can either be A) A weird wacky time travel/dimension hop adventure. B) A one-off game

I have this idea concerning a very bizarre take on the long hallowed WW2 Supersoldier program that I really need to write down at some point.

But that's it in a nutshell. Gimme cool places, stuff and people to use in the game. Hopefully with minimal work on the part of my lazy butt, I can just drop them in wholecloth and be off to the races.

[Enforcer84]

No pretense, much of my interest is purely self absorbed as I've been fortunate enough to write some for this product. However, though most of the stuff is unofficial, it also has valuable stuff from both Steve and Darren that is. Even if you're only interested in Champions, the issues are often very useful with settings, adventures, and NPCs (Heroic or villainous) for that genre aplenty. Still, everyonce in a while I run into somone here who hasn't even heard of the DoJ's electronic magazine, and not just the newcomers to the boards either.

I can understand prefering hardcopy or budget considerations (and in honesty, my current subscription is a gift so I can't throw stones) but stumbling onto fellow posters here who never heard of it got me wondering just how used the resource is. For those of you who do subscribe, purchase individual issues, or even just glean the free samples (Which really don't look as nice as the actual polished write ups) do you use them in your Champions campaigns? Which ones are working well for you?

What would you hope to see and what would be useful to your champions games and make it even more useful to your campaign? Are you hoping for another setting, more villains, more heroes, small adventures, girly pinups with Witchcraft? :)

Thanks for your time and (hopefully) your input.


The last one :D

I found the "Expanded Champions Universe" articles from Darren to be the coolest. Also the MC8 was a joy. I love Surbrook's Stuff (:) ) and his articles have been a joy. I also liked Euroguard alot. I tend to get less mileage from the non-Champions stuff, but that's me. I like the "You gotta have character" a lot. Simply for the breadth of the persons presented the depth that they go into their histories is great and you can easily throw a couple of those factoids in your time lines when creating or updating a gaming world.

[Redmenace]

My tastes and uses are all over the place.

Leah Watt's the "OSS Toybox" is my favorite article and was often used during my WW2 campaign.

The recent adventure with the Tsunami went into my "don't have time to write an adventure this week" emergency binder.

Bill Keyes' miniature articles have been a highlight for me and I print those.

etc.

What I'm looking forward to the most is supplementary material such as the cut material from Villainy Amok and what ever pulp material we'll see.

[Manchine]

No pretense, much of my interest is purely self absorbed as I've been fortunate enough to write some for this product. However, though most of the stuff is unofficial, it also has valuable stuff from both Steve and Darren that is. Even if you're only interested in Champions, the issues are often very useful with settings, adventures, and NPCs (Heroic or villainous) for that genre aplenty. Still, everyonce in a while I run into somone here who hasn't even heard of the DoJ's electronic magazine, and not just the newcomers to the boards either.




DoJ's Electronic Mag????


See I am a newbie. I am not suppose to know what it is. As an old dog now you get to point me in the right direction LOL.

:D :D :D <----- I love the Green Smilie

[Hermit]

DoJ's Electronic Mag????


See I am a newbie. I am not suppose to know what it is. As an old dog now you get to point me in the right direction LOL.

:D :D :D <----- I love the Green Smilie

Happy to do so!
http://www.herogames.com/digitalHero/

[Kirby]

What would you hope to see and what would be useful to your champions games and make it even more useful to your campaign? Are you hoping for another setting, more villains, more heroes, small adventures, girly pinups with Witchcraft? :)
I know it's not what you're looking for, but I have a strong distrust of anything requiring the purchase of "credits" or "points" or something similar. I personally would rather have something hardcopy that I can take with me, not digital and reserved for one computer only.

[Manchine]

Happy to do so!
http://www.herogames.com/digitalHero/

Thank you very much!

:D :D :D

[Hermit]

I know it's not what you're looking for, but I have a strong distrust of anything requiring the purchase of "credits" or "points" or something similar. I personally would rather have something hardcopy that I can take with me, not digital and reserved for one computer only.

Well, I try to print mine out when I can as well, but I know that can be a bit of a pain to say the least (and not an option for some). Still, yeah, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm more wondering that if you WERE Interested in purchasing Digital Hero, what would you want to see in it, yadda yadda etc etc. :)

[Hermit]

Thank you very much!

:D :D :D
Welcome.

Cool webcomic btw.

[rjcurrie]

I know it's not what you're looking for, but I have a strong distrust of anything requiring the purchase of "credits" or "points" or something similar. I personally would rather have something hardcopy that I can take with me, not digital and reserved for one computer only.

DH is not reserved for one computer only. Once you have purchased an issue you can download it any time you want on any computer you want. You can also freely copy the issue (it's a PDF file) from one to another without problem.

[Kirby]

I'm more wondering that if you WERE Interested in purchasing Digital Hero, what would you want to see in it, yadda yadda etc etc. :)
Well, if I WERE Interested, I'd want to see short adventures with write-ups of people. Something akin to To Serve and Protect which had an adventure along with the base and members of the Protectors, Wrath of the Seven Horseman, which had a mini-adventure, the villains and a Swedish heroine, Target Hero which had a good "Demon wants to sacrifice an NPC hero." That's the kind of stuff I like. If Digital Hero were a monthly (hard copy) magazine, I'd probably subscribe.

[teh bunneh]

I like seeing self-contained short adventures (something a GM can run in 3-6 hours, with little preparation). Shrike's Project Predator and Bennie's There Was Blood Everywhere are perfect (just to name two off the top of my head).

I like Champions Universe characters (Hermit's Choir and the MC-8, plus the Colorado Crusade and EuroGuard (not to toot my own horn too much)). ;) Darren's old Champions Universe columns were great and I'd like to see more, though I understand time constraints and all that.

I like Surbrook's articles about the supernatural -- vampires, werewolves, hags -- I eat that stuff up like a zombie eats brains. :bounce:

I enjoy articles that give GM and player tips. I've been GMing/Playing long enough that I figure I already know it all, but every once in a while one comes along that really gets me thinking.

And Jason's Ya Gotta Have Character articles are usually the first thing I read when a new issue comes out.

And of course, Bill Keyes' Miniature Hero articles are da bomb. We need to see more of them. :winkgrin:

What I'd like to see more of is more Fantasy Hero articles -- interesting Fantasy (or historical) characters, tips on building a coherent fantasy world, that sort of thing. Proditor's Mythic Hero article was a good step in this direction. I'd like to see more.

Bill.

[steriaca]

Me myself, I enjoyed ALL of the Digital Hero I got for free (because it contained my New Kenjustu Styles artical in it). Since I don't have a campain, I don't use any of it.

Which acualy got me to wondering, exactly how many of you people out there acualy used my new kenjustu styles for a martial artest/Samuri charater? (Just wondering)

[Susano]

I like Surbrook's articles about the supernatural -- vampires, werewolves, hags -- I eat that stuff up like a zombie eats brains. :bounce:

Those may have run their course. I did send another one in... but its for a single creature only (the wendigo).


What I'd like to see more of is more Fantasy Hero articles -- interesting Fantasy (or historical) characters, tips on building a coherent fantasy world, that sort of thing. Proditor's Mythic Hero article was a good step in this direction. I'd like to see more.

Ahhh... well... I have two articles under construction that might fit our needs. One is on designing haunted houses the other is an alternate take on elves.

[Sketchpad]

What I'd like to see more of is more Fantasy Hero articles -- interesting Fantasy (or historical) characters, tips on building a coherent fantasy world, that sort of thing. Proditor's Mythic Hero article was a good step in this direction. I'd like to see more.


On the plus side ... I have some racial packages in the que that may be used for Fantasy or Sci-Fi :)

[BobGreenwade]

On the plus side ... I have some racial packages in the que that may be used for Fantasy or Sci-Fi :)I have a thing or two coming up that might be helpful as well -- though geard for sci-fi, they could be used for fantasy. (These are articles after the mold of my Rigellian Code-Talkers write-up of several issues back.)

[zornwil]

I feel guilty, still haven't caught up on some of my favorite posters' articles...guess since I feel I have the time to catch up on the boards, should do that shortly....

And a bump as well, good topic.

On this topic, I am pretty bad at using DH. There are certainly good articles in it. Steve needs to put new "official" rules in there or something! Seriously, though, I sense it is generally under-utilized, unfortunately.

[aylwin13]

Although I've read the majority of the issues (and enjoyed most everything), I've only used one thing from them. One of my villain characters is a duplicator, and along with her ability to form three "clones" of herself she can also create duplicates of other objects (CREATE OBJECT from Heroglyphs).

[Killer Shrike]

I usually use new Powers and suchlike in Steve's HEROGlyphs.

I potentially could use a lot of the CU related material.

I HAVE used the MC8 (Millennium City 8; and not just because one of the leaders is my own Commando Rubberbando, or that I came up w/ MC8 as the name :D -- Im not quite that egotistical ---- quite).

My players loved the MC8 for some reason -- they got to play 4 of them when the Millennial Men (the normal PC group) got chewed to hamburger by back to backing Holocaust's assault on an IHA front down town and Black Harlequinn's take over of OmegaWorld! (both from Champions Battlegrounds {free plug}). The PC's had to depart for medical treatment, so each player chose a member of the MC8 who were called in to assist.

It was a lot of fun -- the 4 chosen were Stalwart, Lady M, El Aguijon, and COMMANDO RUBBERBANDO!!!! Ever since then the players have had a soft spot for the team.

EDIT: STEADFAST that is. Not STALWART. Stalwart is an FBI Armor Suit. Steadfast is a Blob/Jugger style brick with musical aspirations and religious quirks. Sorry Denver Mason / HERMIT!

PS -- another Denver Mason character in the form of STALKER made a cameo in the Millennial Men campaign as well. One of the PC's (Rook) wanted to pursue him as an ally and was planning on taking him as a contact or at least arranging a friendly accord.

[Chimpira]

I like Digital Hero and have used some things from it. (Vindicators, Whisper of Kali)

I like adventures and would love to see more in the Digital Heroes. I might not use them but reading others thoughts on how an adventure might run is always interesting to me.

[Lord Liaden]

Well, if I WERE Interested, I'd want to see short adventures with write-ups of people. Something akin to To Serve and Protect which had an adventure along with the base and members of the Protectors, Wrath of the Seven Horseman, which had a mini-adventure, the villains and a Swedish heroine, Target Hero which had a good "Demon wants to sacrifice an NPC hero." That's the kind of stuff I like. If Digital Hero were a monthly (hard copy) magazine, I'd probably subscribe.

Well, there are quite a few of those in the run of DH. I find most of them to be well-written, with good art and charcter designs, and often including maps. Since Hero Games is no longer publishing adventures in hardcopy, this seems to be the main outlet for that sort of thing.

I understand your preference for hardcopy, Kirby, but considering that individual issues are $5.00 US for 64 pages of HERO material, or a 10 issue subscription for $30.00, IMHO this is a real bargain. Especially since you can buy any issue at any time, in any order. The previews of the Table of Contents always help me decide whether I want a particular issue or not.

Since I'm mostly running Champions these days I get the most use out of that material, but rules options and expansions by Steve Long and others, discussion of roleplaying issues, and You Gotta Have Character are all favorites of mine.

[GestaltBennie]

I like to write about one adventure for them each year. The nice thing about having a relatively small venue like DH is that you can experiment a bit and still get published.

I love most of the features, especially "You Gotta Have Character"

[Killer Shrike]

I like Digital Hero and have used some things from it. (Vindicators, Whisper of Kali)

I like adventures and would love to see more in the Digital Heroes. I might not use them but reading others thoughts on how an adventure might run is always interesting to me.
I did Project PREDATOR previously, and I sent off a large adventure to Dave a while back, but its never been printed. Problem might be that its pretty big. Good adventures are hard to do in a few pages. The page count, even cutting corners and writing sparsely, would eat most of an issue.

I also had planned to revise my old Demon Hunter FBI mini-campaign w sample adventure, which appeared in Haymaker and EZHERO, to be 5th Edition / Dark Champions compatible, but havent gotten around to it.

[starblaze]

I have used Dreadwood Missouri, and Enemy of my Enemy at Necronomicon. I plan on using the Alliance of Evil in the future in my Silver Age campaign. I would love to see more Champions Universe stuff particularly some villians that were around during the sixties.

[Duke]

I've always been interested in DH, though was never able to get it due to no credit capabilities.
I got the last issue because of my art work in it, and I found most of it very useful.

What would I like to see more of in it?

I think I'd like more mini-adventures or longer ones stretched out over several issues with good maps, with side bars detailing how to alter the game for other source books, such as pulp, teen, dark or whatever.

I find adventures to be very useful, with well made npc's to illustrate good examples of how to design characters. That being said, I'm pretty lazy when it comes to designing powers, and maybe even a section of some interesting new powers that could be illustrated, and why they were built the way they were. Like if someone built a shockwave power, and perhaps simular powers with it, like a 356 vibration sense detection, and so on and so forth.

Also I think that since it is in a digital format that making it more colourful would be a strong visual aspect of it. Not just the art but the layout. A lot of games are coming out full colour now and if it is a digital medium the printing costs are negated.

I do understand the budget though for hiring artists may be taxing on designing, but it may be enticing to potential buyers.

What I also think is that it needs a bit more promotion to the masses here, and this was a great thread to start for people to get to know.

Maybe even in the section online if it was possible to click the thumbnail of the issue, and get a larger version of the cover, before the highlights of what is contained inside.

I know you can't judge a book by its cover but, it sure as hell is a good selling feature for me when I don't know what something is entirely about.

[Kirby]

I have used Dreadwood Missouri, and Enemy of my Enemy at Necronomicon.
Well, you know what they say: Missouri loves company. :)

[starblaze]

Well, you know what they say: Missouri loves company. :)
Hey! As someone who was born and raised in Missouri I resemble that remark!

[Chimpira]

I did Project PREDATOR previously, and I sent off a large adventure to Dave a while back, but its never been printed. Problem might be that its pretty big. Good adventures are hard to do in a few pages. The page count, even cutting corners and writing sparsely, would eat most of an issue.

I also had planned to revise my old Demon Hunter FBI mini-campaign w sample adventure, which appeared in Haymaker and EZHERO, to be 5th Edition / Dark Champions compatible, but havent gotten around to it.

Good stuff, that. I have plans of dropping Project: PREDATOR into my campaign by having them drop a lot of the government connections and link it to ARGENT.

[Killer Shrike]

Good stuff, that. I have plans of dropping Project: PREDATOR into my campaign by having them drop a lot of the government connections and link it to ARGENT.
I did something similar in the original capaign of what became the MetaCyber setting -- I recast Project: PREDATOR as a corporate initiative run by the sinister megacorpoation Biocorps. Project STORK and Project GYPSY had both occured, and they were gearing up for Project SHANGHAI when the campaign started. Having discovered a means of creating metahumans, they were poised to really jump ahead in the market -- however due to the long process necessary, they were keeping it an in house secret, and making their own cadre of metas to use against the competition in a more direct manner.


Anyway, glad you liked it.