Spence

Actually, I think a far better product than "Psionic Hero" would be an actual "Game Powered by Hero" Heroic Level psychic game.
 
Maybe it's a "psychics among us" game - these powers exist, but are well-hidden and people work hard to keep it that way.  Maybe it's "noble psionics protecting the mindblind from psionics who would exploit them", or maybe it's various devious groups, each after their own advantage, and their own advantage alone.  Maybe it's modern world, or future-earth, or cold war earth, or scattered across a futuristic galaxy.
 
But pick one.  One theme.  One setting.  One way psionic powers work.  Whether normal weapons are typically also used or whether they are not.  Whether psionic powers can generate a force field making targets bulletproof or whether a gun is just as fatal to the most powerful psychic as to an ordinary guy on the street.
 
And write up that specific game that people can read through, pick some stats, gear and psionic powers and build characters they are ready to play at 2 PM next Saturday.
 
Not a Book of Infinitie Options you could use to build that game, or a slightly different game, or a completely different game, or a thousand and one different games.  One. Game.  that can be played right from the book.

I think teen school is setting is hot right now because there's so much on TV about such things. There's also the high school for assassins in training on one of the premium cable channels. Many anime fans crossing over to RPGs are accustomed to a school setting as well (even if you leave out My Hero Academia).
 
If I had a second choice, I would have picked stock modern Champions campaign. I like to see how other people envision heroes fitting into a modern setting (specifically "heroes" rather than "people who happen to have powers and costumes").

Coming in late, I did change the dampeners to dampening collars, thus each one is custom to the villain in question, but allowing the same movement etc....(It is also what law enforcement uses to move said villains)

Yeah!
 
Like maybe an escape.
 
Perhaps from Stronghold.
 
Or, you know... Anything.

Yes, I have just the adventure in mind, something I ran in a convention once.  And yes, it involves an actual escape

Eh, current trends come and go, gaming is long term.

Super Agents at two levels would do this: a UNTIL/Man from Uncle/SHIELD kind of game, and then a low level/street hero game setting and tips.  One of my long-term dream campaigns I never got to run was super cops: police officers with powers.  Just one low power, just something that sets them apart, and dealing with street crime and low end villains

Also could Street level Supers get some love? There is scant little of it mentioned in various books/editions. More though of how to blend true Super powers (though not that super) into a Street level game. Here specifically I’m thinking of Luke Cage type guy. 

Just finished it this morning on the my morning commute.
 
My only issue is that I can finish them at a faster rate that you are making them
 
Another great show and keep them coming.

But to be fair.  Those idiot extremes are helped along by a tiny but disproportionately over represented idiot fans.  You know the ones that insist that characters like Venom (I know not DC) are great heroes.  Well they only eat bad guys so yep, hero
 
The problem with relying on social media to get a feel about whether your comic is good, is many of the social media types don't actually contribute anything tangible. 

Just finished it this morning on the my morning commute.
 
My only issue is that I can finish them at a faster rate that you are making them
 
Another great show and keep them coming.

Well it does go 3598, 3599, 1 bazillion....
 

 

I know a lot of people like it, and many never knew any other way.  But the whole Lantern Corp thing destroyed the entire coolness of the Green Lantern.  Instead of a unique and cool Hero, we got Smuckatelly Joe just one of 246729482629 others. 
 
We went from one unique magical based superhero to one unique superscience based superhero to "just a beat-cop among thousands of other beat-cops".  
 
Sad, but there you have it. 

Yeah but they can rewrite that.  Someone made a mistake, it was a fake ring, whatever.  If you do a reboot, then the whole history gets rewritten anyway.  We're on, what, the tenth total restructuring of DC's universe now?  If nothing else you could just blast them all off into Earth-9328 or whatever and have the earth GL be the only one, but now his ring uses a different battery. I think Green Lantern is a fascinating concept character, but has almost never had good execution.  And usually way too much power.

I’ve started getting into audiobooks. ( I know I’m late to the party)  So I just finished Peace Talks by Jim Butcher.  It’s part of the Dresden Files ( a long time favorite of mine) and it’s the first half of an incredible story that gets finished up in Battle Ground which I’ll be getting soon.  The series is read by James Marsters who played Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It’s a good fit of actor and material and I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

The fifth season of Babylon 5 is unfortunate. Season 4 was supposed to end with the interrogation episode, but rumors began to fly that the show wouldn't be renewed for a fifth season. So JMS hurried things along to get the bulk of his story told by the end of season 4. When the show was surprisingly renewed for the fifth season after all, there wasn't a lot of story left untold. So if it feels like season 5 is mostly filler, well, it is.
 
Having said that, season five gets better once the telepath nonsense is cleared up. The second half of the season is worth watching just to see the resolution of things with Londo.

I know a lot of people like it, and many never knew any other way.  But the whole Lantern Corp thing destroyed the entire coolness of the Green Lantern.  Instead of a unique and cool Hero, we got Smuckatelly Joe just one of 246729482629 others. 
 
We went from one unique magical based superhero to one unique superscience based superhero to "just a beat-cop among thousands of other beat-cops".  
 
Sad, but there you have it. 

I was on Deviantart when I saw a notice from Prodigyduck.
InputJack whose real name was Marc Curlee has died due to Covid 19
https://www.deviantart.com/prodigyduck/journal/RIP-Marc-Curlee-872022855
Some of you will have seen some of his art in the Champions forum for example.
He even did a piece for me.
This one hits home.
RIP

Ah, so you were the person who didn't think Dark Phoenix was too bad.
 
 

Superheroes survived for so long because they were about positive elements of humanity: ideals, principles, responsibility, compassion, hope. They represented the best in us, inspiring us to try to be better people ourselves. What I see of recent comics are full of cynicism, brutality, "edginess" for shock value rather than serving any purpose. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I'm starting to think of Zack Snyder as, "the anti-Feige."

As Christougher said.  Playing Hero is easy.  In fact it is FAR more easy than many of the so called easier RPG's are. 
 
If.
 
And this is a big IF.
 
The GM builds everything for the players, strips all the build annotation from the character sheet. 
 
For example, the Wizard only needs know that the Flame Strike does X damage and costs X end (or mana, or what have you) and uses X skill to hit (if any). 
Ditch, hide, burn at the stake anything even resembling build annotation. 
Ditch, hide, burn at the stake any hint of characteristic build costs.
A un-sanitized Hero character sheet has sent more prospective players running screaming from the gaming table than than have ever tried to play it.
 
I've run Hero at cons before and had a difficult time getting players until I stripped the annotation from the sheets.
The sheet should have everything spelled out in plain language. 
I had a laminated playsheet with all the common things on it.
If the character sheet didn't fit on one side of a 8x11 page NOT using micro sized print, then streamline and remove things until is does.
Same with the play sheet. 
You don't have to use fifty zillion rule options for the intro. 
 
But the thing hero has than virtually no other game has is when a player says "that was OK, but I wish the rules let you X", you can actually say "It can, I just made this intro simple".   You shouldn't be surprised how many times that will make a new player a Hero convert. 
 
If you are borrowing another systems starter kit to base the intro on, I'd recommend the D&D one or the Pathfinder one.  I refer to both of them as "Generic Fantasy Settings" because file off the place names and they are practically the same setting.  And 9 out of 10 people can immediately understand that setting enough to play and what their PC's role is.  Leave generic fantasy and you will also need to explain setting and PC roles.

Straight up bad writing and poor characterization of characters isn't terribly helpful.  Writing intelligent characters as stupid so they'll fit into the story you want to tell rather then altering the story to fit the characters.  Deus ex machina to give the villain the upper hand doesn't really help matters either.  

Yeah I feel like the state of comics now is by far the most open to wild, creative and innovative ideas in comic book history.  Why do I say this?  Because it does not need to make money.  Marvel Comics can totally lose money every month and still stay open because the movies make such ridiculous cash (or, at least, used to).  So why not go nuts, do new wild crazy things, why not try stuff that nobody thinks will work, why not give the creators total freedom?
 
Sadly, a certain rigid political viewpoint seems to be dominating the entire industry, which greatly limits the possibilities, and likely annoys a great deal of their customer base as well.  Stan Lee and Steve Ditko both had very strong political viewpoints (diametrically opposed) but they were able to restrain that in most of their work and make sure it was more broadly acceptable to the overall audience.

Given the low (financial) stakes involved in comics you'd think that would be where you'd see new characters introduced and used to explore new ideas the most, but I guess that's not the case. You won't see that in movies very often because of the massive financial risks involved. Studios feel they have to play it safe at all times, and so rather than create new characters they mutate existing characters to fit with the social agenda du jour. That's why there's such a big push to race- and gender-bend well-known, existing characters rather than invent new ones.
 
And as for writers who don't want to write superheroes, that extends to directors as well. For all his claims of loving the source material, Zach Snyder sure does love to tear the superhero genre apart and make it nearly unrecognizable.