5th Edition Renaissance?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I have  put out stuff in 3 genres and the Superhero stuff definitely has the biggest appeal in terms of sales, although Western Hero was going like hotcakes there for a while.  I think it still would if only I could get some hot gaming group to play it and stream the game.

[SCUBA Hero]

6 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Western Hero was going like hotcakes there for a while.  I think it still would if only I could get some hot gaming group to play it and stream the game.

 

Calling Wil Wheaton! 😁

[Christopher R Taylor]

Unfortunately, all those groups are so piled on by games who want exposure they are strictly "we'll call you".  You gotta know somebody who knows somebody, basically.

 

I don't know nobody.

 

Its worth understanding that Hero Games kind of doesn't exist as a company.  They don't have an office or employees or backstock or an address.  Its all handled through Indie Press Revolution.  So I don't even know if there is any money in the kitty to buy books to put on a shelf.  I wish they were like in the old days with the office that has a massage parlor next door, but apparently the money isn't there to maintain any space.

[Duke Bushido]

Well then the solution is to form our own hot group!

 

Quick!  Who here is way less ugly than I am?!

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Well, that leaves me out.

[assault]

5 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I wish they were like in the old days with the office that has a massage parlor next door, but apparently the money isn't there to maintain any space.

 

Yes, it's a really difficult time for the massage parlour industry.

 

Maybe they should branch out into RPG streaming.

[Christopher R Taylor]

No, really, the first place Hero Games bought for their HQ shared building space with a "massage" parlor *wink wink*.  Hey, you want cheap square feet, you gotta put up with neighbors.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Z, you are absolutely not wrong: I prefer home brew myself, but I also know _why_ I prefer it.  Scott's question is a good one, though I would push that date back even further. Up-thread we had a discussion of just how not having a published setting was not only common, once upon a time, it was the absolute _norm_!    I can't think of a single 70s- era game that had a setting outside of Baker's earliest attempts to do something with Tekumel (no idea why Tekumel has never really hit it big; it very really had an entire lifetime of development behind it). 

 

Tekumel's problem was two fold. It had a background, that unfortunately was not Tolkeinesque, and shared more with the Maya, than it did with Northern Europe. The second problem is that it was saddled with a terrible combat system, unless one used the Mass Combat rules.  THe individual Combat system was similar to the first examples of D&D, but was quite lethal, and klunky. It would be a good candidate for a "Single Book" Hero conversion 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

The bulk of the well-known Traveller setting wasn't even done by Marc Miller-- the most popular stuff was done by a volunteer group (who lost their shirts, very nearly, with over a decade of money-losing investment in publishing)-- was it DGP?  Is that right?  Eh-- to many years....    The practice was so common in the building of the "official Traveller setting" that people used to petition for land grants in a fiction universe!  (No; I am not making that up).  Miller had actual documents drawn up and would award various people (after sampling their writing) worlds, systems, sectors, etc-- signing them as Strephon or various other dignitaries (I would love to have one-- not for anything I did, but just as a wall hanging for the game room  ).  I have read quotes attributed to Miller (no; I have no way to verify them, though having watched him Referee a Traveller game once, I can completely believe that he would have said it) that there were large parts of the by-then-official setting that he himself didn't even like. 

 

I have heard the same.  But I do remembher there were several companies that produced Traveller  materials, and there was one group out of Alaska, or their Illustrator was from Alaska, that had just some of the most achingly perfect artwork of any of the Traveller materials. I wish I remembered that Illustrator's name.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

The Fantasy Trip was literally two map battle games shoved into a box with some exposition about adventuring and advancement.  That was it.  No setting; no plot lines-- just "see what you can do with this" and have fun. 

 

They had two maps. One was a blank, 25mm Hex Map.  The other was a 25mm Hex map with a couple of terrain features printed on it. I think it was two sides of the same sheet of paper, folded into quarters, so it could fit in those  booklets, all of which was wrapped inside a plastic bag.  Advanced Melee / Wizard, was a magazine sized book that came out later, with a bit more background and more information, but not a lot. Like I said, Magazine sized.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

And that's a _lot_ to do with why I prefer homebrew:  in the early days, it was all we had!  Homebrew or, if everyone was together and you hadn't had time to really throw something together, either break out the board games or grab a handful of NPCs and run an out-of--story skirmish session or other "practice," because there wasn't really anything you could just fall back on.  The gaming magazines became something of a Godsend in those moments-- you had probably read one or two adventures published within on and could tweak it in a hurry.   More often than not, though, you didn't have the time to do that our, being young and haughty, you just refused.  I know I did, and at this point in my life, I can accept that it was just a stupid way to feel about it:  I let some nonsensical notion that doing such was beneath me deprive us of a gaming an instead we'd spend the next few hours figuring out rules for four-player chess.  (fun fact:  It does not rock.  It works, but it does not rock.  What does rock is having a roll-off when capturing pieces in 2-player chess: 2d6, with modifiers based on piece type and number of pieces being used to threaten.  Beat target number and take the opponent.  Fail and he takes you.)

 

Compounding the problem was that when published settings became available-- as they crept and trickled onto the market, and in some cases-- like Traveller and non-Greyhawk D and D-- as they were compiled and canonized and beaten into a single extensive backgrounds, it either had no bearing on your existing campaign or actively contradicted what you had already established, making it easier (and less expensive) to just keep not using it.  In the worst-case scenarios (like, say, a group that new next to nothing about comic books being presented with a comics-modeled setting), everything would have to be reset- in some cases, even favorite characters and NPCs and location, entire campaigns would have to be scrapped, and everything started all over.   Not only is this unattractive, but even players balk at it when it means at best having to rework beloved characters of retcon cherished adventure moments.

 

...  My Traveller HERO/Champions game-- running since the late 80s, is a bit different, because it was a different group, and my not-at-all-Traveller Space Opera HERO/Champions game was meant to model Space Opera, but....  well, you might notice there hasn't been a lot published for that in recent decades. 

 

Which Space Opera?  The one by FGU?  Geeze I think there were two books on that, A set of Miniatures Rules, and an RPG sort of background thing?  I was happy with the Third Imperium stuff.  But I played in a Traveller game, that had a Homebrew Background and slightly different tech, run by Paul Gazis.  He published a fair amount of material in the APA The Wild Hunt. 

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Crud-- way, way off course here..    Sorry for that.       

 

Anyway, We talked a lot about the importance / unimportance of store-bought settings up-thread, and while no one is suggesting that we force everyone to use a particular setting, the trend in gaming overall, particularly with new gamers, which not just HERO Games, but the entire hobby has need of, prefer-- for whatever reason-- to be able to buy a book, open it, and shake an entire world loose and pour it onto the table.  For what it's worth, I found the last iteration of the Champions setting to actually be too stinking _big_ to do that, at least all at once, which actually kind of paves the way for smaller setting books, at least for those gamers wanting to be 

 

Again, it's a time issue.  The "Modern Gamer" has little time for imagination or prep work, what with jobs and such. One could produce material in little packets, but in the end, there should be a large overall world and a plan to release and support it, with adventures much in the way Paizo has done for Golarion.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

I have asked before for definitions of the "ages" of comics and the results have been....  inconsistent, at best.   So I still don't know what it means, except that apparently the industry or the fandom (or both) are in the habit of pretending that certain stylistic changes occurred on very specific dates.  It doesn't matter, though, because at this age, I'm probably not going to start reading them anyway.     

True story:

 

Golden Age: From  Action Comics issue one in 1937, until just after the end of WW2.

 

Silver Age: from the First Issue The Flash, as Barry Allen(?), though some Mark it from when Timely Comics changed its name to Marvel Comics, this until Spiderman dropped the Comics Code Authority.

 Bronze Age: The Rise of the Direct Market and the first wave of independent Publishers, like Pacific Comics, and Comico,  until  the Publication of The Dark Knight Returns, and The Watchmen.

 

Iron Age: The Publication of The Watchmen, when everything got Dark and gritty, until the end of the 1990's.

 

There have been comics published continuously since the mid 1930's  so these blocks of time are not representative to all comics published. Some companies like Archie, changed very little until quite recently.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

Based on the fandom on this board, and based on comments elsewhere, when my kids were much younger, I wanted to "pave the way" for gaming by introducing them to sci-fi and comic books, etc.  I can't possibly have biased them, because I know diddly-over-squat about comics, right?  I took them to comic stores and let them pick what they wanted.

 

They hated them.

 

They hated comics?  Or , did they hate the comic stores? If it's the stores I understand that.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

I tried again, with less investment, using an online method for buying comics (Play Books, actually, because it was the default for my phone and their tablets).   Anything from the 70s and 80s, they absolutely loved.  Stuff from further back is hit-and-miss, though the Flash was a consistent hit.

 

Sounds like they are solid Silver Age fans. This is very much the same sort of reading material that spawned Champions originally.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

   Anything after the 80s, the very early nineties, they have absolute zero interest in, going so far as to call it "just stupid crap and whining" and "it's like reading those TV shows Nana likes"  (Nana is into those angst-riddled soap operas that come on in the upper cable channels or late at night).

 

Sounds like late Bronze and Iron Age were not to taste.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:59 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

And if anyone is interested, Firestorm is hit-and-miss, and Spider Girl, the Blue Devil, and the original Captain Marvel ("Shazam!") are their personal favorites, even as they move through their early teens.  I have no idea who comic books are marketed toward today, but apparently it's house-bound angst-junkies in their mid-eighties.  Not the prime audience for an RPG, but who knows, right?)

 

Unfortunately, A lot of the current output from The Big Two are marketed to those that exist on Twitter. No one seems to understand that the Twitter Audience is a small and extremely self referential audience, that does not share tastes with the general audience, so the general Audience is dropping their reading habit. The Pandemic should have fostered and environment of more reading, but people were turned off, and dropped the habit of buying American Comics, and have instead moved to reading translated Manga. The Comic industry is currently shrinking and dying, but not quite dead, but only valued as an IP farm by their corporate masters, as they are not bringing in the profits that they used to.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Brother Scott, I don't even know who the _Defenders'_ Defenders are, and until I drifted back to this board, I thought the Fantastic Four was Roger Corman's attempt to break into modern sarcasm-based comedy via superhero deconstruction.

Strangely enough, your unfamiliarity with the comics cannon, is close to how the current  new gamers are, as comics have not been very good (with a few exceptions) for close to 10 years. Most of the current knowledge is from The MCU and the DCEU.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

The only thing I know about the Avengers is that it was a series of three superhero movies that didn't really trip any switches for me outside of "ooh--!  Pretty special effects!"  (Seriously: the CGI effects were amazing), and they served to reinforce something I have said for years that no one really wants to hear:  The only way to make martial artists and "skilled normals" a relevant part of a genuine super-powered team is to make sure that the party is split pretty much all the time, which is the antithesis of a good RPG session, at least when it becomes a habit.

 

Not Splitting the Party is a hold over from D&D, and some GMs never left that mindset, staging Set Piece battles, and not allowing their player characters to shine individually, as they would if they had been comic book characters, even in team books. Often  teams would split up to perform specialist tasks, and friendly interviews, and investigate.  the large pitched battles were usually every third issue or so, which to us, matched how we liked out combats in Champions to be about every third session, with the other two being the aftermath from the last fight, and then the investigation leading up to the next fight.  The Party would break up into pairs or even individuals and go through their scenarios. Lets hand it to Aaron Allston for coming up with a far more elegant solution with his "blue booking" of characters individual tasks and actions, between group sessions, that stopped the down time during the game for the other players when one pair or singleton was talking to an NPC. So Chapions in our play was not like D&D, and being out alone did bring a risk of Capture, and well, that was the next scenario, breaking our teammate out of his incarceration.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

I have always felt that meta plot lines were more the domain of scenarios, adventures, and the campaigns that contain them, and should not be hardwired into the setting---

 

However---

 

I also think this is a completely different conversation, so I won't muddy things up with more exposition on that.   

 

Agreed.

 

 

 

That's a huge loss, not just to gaming, but to style in general.  I had no idea.

I was living in L.A. at the time, and Ray Greer gives me a call, and asks if I want to go to Albert Deschane's memorial. I say yes, and we had a rather somber memorial, but with a lot of good stories and his art was all over the room.  But still, it was a room full of gamers, so after the ceremonies were over, we held a game with his old players, with Ray and I taking Guest shots, with our Old characters.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

There's that Ruggels guy; his stuff has come a _long_ way since doing that illustration for --- was the the Black Queen?  The Queen of Hearts?  The character's name escapes me at the moment, but the picture is fresh in my head: the Harley Quinn before there was a Harley Quinn-- the one who tried to infiltrate the Card Shark's organization and went full-on nuts. 

 

Don't quite remember that one.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Oh-- and those asteroid pictures in... Was it Space Gamer?  JTAS?  It was Traveller-related; I recall that.

 

 

M<ay have been the pics in "Pyramid In The Sky" or several of the Tri-Tac system games like FTL 2448, or Fringeworthy, or Bureau 13. I was all over the place in the 90's.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 12:19 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Anyway, his stuff is pretty damned good, I think. 

 

Thank you very much. You are too kind.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

The Pandemic should have fostered and environment of more reading, but people were turned off, and dropped the habit of buying American Comics, and have instead moved to reading translated Manga. The Comic industry is currently shrinking and dying, but not quite dead, but only valued as an IP farm by their corporate masters, as they are not bringing in the profits that they used to.

 

Curiously, Manga superhero stuff is heavy on the soap opera aspects of personal stories, romances, slice of life stuff, and then wild, often implausible action.  If you want to know what anime is like to watch or manga is like to read, watch some Bollywood action movies.  I'm not saying they are bad, they are often hilarious and wonderful, but they use very different tropes, characterizations, and imagery than you expect from western work.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Well then the solution is to form our own hot group!

 

Anybody know any hawt semi-famous girls who want to establish their geek creds?  Its useful on the resume these days.

[Lord Liaden]

35 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Anybody know any hawt semi-famous girls who want to establish their geek creds?  Its useful on the resume these days.

 

If we knew girls like that, do you think we'd be hanging around here?

[Scott Ruggels]

On 2/20/2022 at 10:08 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Art is the sticking point, its very, very expensive to kit out a book with good art.  Especially in color.

 

I do not disagree, but for the stuff to sell, it has to stand shoulder to shoulder with WOTC and Paizo on the shelf, with full color art, No more B/W ink line art. THis is why I have pursued digital painting in that vein, so as to be "competitive" in that  sphere, plus use 3D assets to reduce the time to produce such works.

 

 

On 2/20/2022 at 10:08 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Mind you, its a good investment for a high quality cover.  Great art can move a book, and using a respected, beloved artist to give you a good comic book feeling cover can make a huge difference.  That 4th edition Champions line of top comic book artists was a major investment of cash, but well worth it in the end.  Its just someone has to HAVE that cash to begin with.

 

 This could happen with a high enough crowd funding campaign.  The items that are going to cost the most is  the art, and professional level editing, and layout.  Sure it can be released as a PDF, as all modern game publications are, but most Crowd funding patrons would prefer something printed as well.

 

 

On 2/20/2022 at 10:08 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

And I use that term "investment" deliberately.  You have to sell enough of a product to pay for the cost of production.  And you have to be reasonably sure that you sold enough extra of the product to justify that cost.  This is a business, not just a hobby.

 

Agreed.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 10:08 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Oh, and a way of contacting actual comic book artists, who are notoriously difficult to reach.  Plus, they usually have a huge workload.  Remember: these guys are expected to pound out a full 22+ page comic every month, and I can tell you from personal experience, that is a seriously challenging task even without any side projects.

 

Actually, they aren't, if you know where to look. Most of them have an Instagram, and some also have Twitter.  They solicit for commi8ssions a lot of the time as a side business, though the top of the top, are too busy and have shut down their social media, but it's not impossible. THose that have professional representation are also not hard to contact, though it is slower.

 

On 2/20/2022 at 10:08 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Ideally you find a young, amazingly talented newcomer or someone who is trying to break in (like they did with Zircher) who can pound out some great looking stuff without costing a mint... or taking months.  As a former freelance illustrator I can assure you that we're notoriously slow and procrastinate a lot.

 

I had to revisit this again, because we need to look at costs, where a cover painting can be around $2- $4,000, and interior illustration, fully painted can be anywhere from $500, and up.   A young Newcomer is an option but unlike being a cantankerous procrastinator, they will often misjudge the time necessary to produce the art, and may get prickly if the project lead requests some changes. Pat Zircher has himself become a bit prickly about revisions in his D.C. work.  So it may just be the artists, but it is something to think about. That newcomer may have to learn to become comfortable with a lot of sketch revisions and color roughs before comitting to the finished piece, which also takes time. But even Pros have their problems, We had Craig Mullins paid for some work that he basically phoned in, and used color shifted and distorted photos found on Google to do the work for the game company I worked for at the time. Step ack and do some research, or if there are those talented newcomers, start perusing the pages of Art Station (www.artstation.com) for some up and coming, but not cheap talent.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 Pat Zircher has himself become a bit prickly about revisions in his D.C. work

 

Its always a line; some requests for revisions are reasonable, but some are just nitpicking, pointless, or an overcontrolling editor.  He seems prickly in general, really.  I could not get him to respond on Twitter sadly, because I would have loved for him to do a cover for Champions Begins for old time's sake.

 

I am all for crowdfunding something but it would have to be someone who knows how to do it well, has the time, energy, and drive to do it, and has lots of access to social media.  I know that IPR does crowdfunding sometimes, so its worth considering but it not only is tough and time consuming but you really have to know what you are doing to do one successfully.  I have considered it a couple of times and came to the conclusion each time that it is not for me.  Especially since by the time I'm done with a project I'm pretty well wiped out.

[Jhamin]

5 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I do not disagree, but for the stuff to sell, it has to stand shoulder to shoulder with WOTC and Paizo on the shelf, with full color art, No more B/W ink line art.

 

This is a very important thing.  Back in the 3e & 4e "good old days" B/W line art was the state of the art for the industry and the 4e big blue book stacked up pretty well against the D&D books of the era.  That isn't true anymore... and Hero hasn't had a cutting edge looking game by the standards of it's era for a couple of editions now.  Compare Champions Complete with (say) Mutants & Masterminds 3e.

[Ragitsu]

Scott, I'll take quality monochromatic art over mediocre colored depictions any day of the week.

[Christopher R Taylor]

6th edition Champions has colored art and excellent layouts and presentation.  But its also very expensive and that comes across in the printing cost and shelf cost when it comes out to sell.  D&D can get away with cheaper books because they sell a lot (I mean, relatively, they sell a speck compared to other print media like Harry Potter books for instance).  I personally like an am fine with black and white illustrations but modern people want color images and super high end layouts, printing, etc.

 

To reach out to the maximum number of customers, that's ideal.  I colorized old illustrations and used modern color illustrations in Champions Begins because I knew that would appeal more to modern gaming people.  I mean I did simple 4 color type coloring for all but the main characters, but it pops better than monochrome.  And if you look at comic books, there's a pretty huge range of quality being put out even by the big two.  Some are almost painted, some have photorealistic stuff, some are very simple colored webcomic style.

 

Manga is the single best comic book seller on earth right now. Europe sells a lot of comics, but Manga, I mean one issue of one Manga comic outsells everything Marvel and DC puts out that month combined.  I think doing manga-style stuff is a bit of a mistake, because it narrows your appeal, but some of the art inside should be that style.  I loved how they mixed styles in Spiderman Multiverse movie, and that's a good approach for any products from here on forward.

[Scott Ruggels]

51 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

Scott, I'll take quality monochromatic art over mediocre colored depictions any day of the week.

Mediocrity should have no place, period. What we need is to meet the current market expectations for a quality product. And that means quality COLOR art. no B/W, as , well, you aren't the main demographic of the market any more.

[Scott Ruggels]

39 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

6th edition Champions has colored art and excellent layouts and presentation.  But its also very expensive and that comes across in the printing cost and shelf cost when it comes out to sell.  D&D can get away with cheaper books because they sell a lot (I mean, relatively, they sell a speck compared to other print media like Harry Potter books for instance).  I personally like an am fine with black and white illustrations but modern people want color images and super high end layouts, printing, etc.

 

A lot of the cost can be mitigated with smaller books. 6th edition is a weighty tome, where-as if these are 80 page adventures, the cost of art would be quite a bit less.  We don't need to make an entirely new set of rules, But even presenting these as Magazine length, small but linked adventures. Then compile them into a book if it proves to be popular.

 

39 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

To reach out to the maximum number of customers, that's ideal.  I colorized old illustrations and used modern color illustrations in Champions Begins because I knew that would appeal more to modern gaming people.  I mean I did simple 4 color type coloring for all but the main characters, but it pops better than monochrome.  And if you look at comic books, there's a pretty huge range of quality being put out even by the big two.  Some are almost painted, some have photorealistic stuff, some are very simple colored webcomic style.

 

We cannot look "cheap". Also "comic style" art may not fly any more. Sure it will Pop, but with what has been going on. Still, art is the icing on the cake. THe content of the adventures have to be slim, and top notch material.

 

39 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Manga is the single best comic book seller on earth right now. Europe sells a lot of comics, but Manga, I mean one issue of one Manga comic outsells everything Marvel and DC puts out that month combined.  I think doing manga-style stuff is a bit of a mistake, because it narrows your appeal, but some of the art inside should be that style.  I loved how they mixed styles in Spiderman Multiverse movie, and that's a good approach for any products from here on forward.

 

Manga definitely sells more than US comics combined  ...in America.  That kind of blew my mind.  Manga style artwork covers a very wide variety of styles, but I don';t know how to contact Mangaka, other than getting a Pixiv account. Google Translate is not something I would trust too much for business communications, though.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Thankfully there are a zillion people who draw in that style in the America to varying degrees of talent and ability.  And honestly the skill level and style varies a lot, we don't have to get the absolute best of the best.

If we don't offer art in comic book style I'm not sure what style would be used for... you know, comic book adventures and heroes.

[Duke Bushido]

20 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Not Splitting the Party is a hold over from D&D, and some GMs never left that mindset, staging Set Piece battles, and not allowing their player characters to shine individually, as they would if they had been comic book characters, even in team books.

 

 

 

To be fair, I have never had an issue personally with splitting the party, even when I was trying very hard to convince myself I liked D and D.  The flack comes from two sources:  the general community hates it-- it may well be a holdover, but mention doing it with any sort of regularity, or allowing it to happen because one player announces "my character is going to to x place and do y," and you'll get ten condemnations for every curious inquiry.

 

The other source is the players in the group that isn't rolling dice right now.  Not all, to be fair, but there is a particular caliber of player who just assumes that whatever group he is with is the group that is going to get all the action.  Sure; I try to make sure both groups have something to do, and even-- because everyone likes it-- a chance to roll some dice.  But as soon as it is time for the other group to roll a die or two -- "Man, this sucks!  We should be there, too!  Why aren't we doing anything?"  Uhm...  you are.  You just finished doing a thing, and as soon as these guys do their thing, you'll likely have another thing to do.  Alternatively, you could split from your splinter group and wend your way back to this group, but they'll be done by the time you get here, and the guys you left will be doing something, most likely.  "This sucks!  Why did you do this to me?!"

 

 

 

And, as noted, I find it absolutely _mandatory_ in a supers game, lest Mechanon just decide that Crusader is aesthetically unpleasing while fighting some Superman pastiche.

 

 

 

20 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Don't quite remember that one.

 

 

 

GIven time, I could dig through my AC magazines and find it, but let's just say-- while it is _far_ beyond anything I could do, all the improvements you've made since might be blocking it from your recall. 

 

 

 

 

 

20 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Thank you very much. You are too kind.

 

 

Nope; just honest.

 

You have quite a talent, and should preen on occasion.   

 

 

Now I can't find the post to quote it, but referencing your comment on the Traveller artist with the hauntingly beautiful artwork---

 

give me a day or two, and I can probably come up with it.  I kept an interview I stumbled across some years ago simply because his artwork was discussed (remember, I have spent my whole life trying to develop two talents that just never happened-- drawing is one of them.)   I loved his art, too, and it _looked_ so simple, so do-able, but damn do you have to have a rare ability to decide what the absolute minimum amount of drawing yields the maximum amount of impact.  And the early days-- when the books were just black and white with a splash of red?  I can't think of anything else that would have made his art look as phenomenal as it did.

 

 

At any rate, I kept the interview because one of the parties was a friend of his, and he commented something akin to this:

 

Yeah; he said all he ever did was get an idea of the type of face he wanted, then he drew the eyes.  He would spend hours on the eyes.  He said once the eyes were done, they told him what the rest of the face would look like, and it took him just a few minutes to draw the rest of the face.  After that, he was just whipping his pencils around and done.  He said the face was the key to everything: if you could read the face, you knew everything you needed to know about the background.

 

I found that to be rather profound, even beyond artwork.

 

 

 

AH!

 

Does Craig Farley sounds right to you?

 

[Scott Ruggels]

46 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

AH!

 

Does Craig Farley sounds right to you?

 

 

It might be, but I would have to see a sample to confirm.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I am not sure of the ownership of all the adventures that were in Digital Hero and Adventurer's Club, it probably would be good to lock down that info first.  Then it wouldn't be hard to pore through them and do updated versions of them in a collection.  In fact, given the nature of superhero writing, tying several together even if they are absurdly unrelated isn't that tough a job.

[Lord Liaden]

I can't speak to AC, but when I wrote for DH the terms were very clear that the published article became the property of Hero Games.

[Duke Bushido]

On 2/24/2022 at 7:34 PM, Jhamin said:

 

This is a very important thing.  Back in the 3e & 4e "good old days" B/W line art was the state of the art for the industry and the 4e big blue book stacked up pretty well against the D&D books of the era.  That isn't true anymore... and Hero hasn't had a cutting edge looking game by the standards of it's era for a couple of editions now.  Compare Champions Complete with (say) Mutants & Masterminds 3e.

 

 

Yes.  You are quite correct: detailed, colored, even cell-shaded art _is_ what sells.  I won't argue that.

 

I just want to say that I hate it. 

 

Good, clean perfect-pencil line art will always be my favorite.  I don't even want too much shading, if it's not necessary.  I can't explain it: it captivates me.  The ability to create and sell _so much_ with just a few strokes....  no painter on earth will ever impress me as much.  

 

Still: you are right:  if you want something to sell, don't listen to old people.   

 

 

 

 

On 2/23/2022 at 1:38 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Well then the solution is to form our own hot group!

 

Quick!  Who here is way less ugly than I am?!

 

 

 

 

It occurs to me that Scott has that World Traveler hair.....

 

We just need a few other equally-stylish and distinguished looking people.....