Spence

I can relate, Spence. I've been working on-and-off on a CU setting expansion that's turning out to be pretty substantial; but for that reason I want to get it to a state that folks would actually consider worth paying to read and use, and that calls for an investment in time and energy that's tough for me to make these days.

Well art has always been pretty subjective.
 
But I could name an artist that people pay millions for their work and universities consider them masterworks which I have always considered pure garbage and I really do believe that most people agree.  But if they admit it is garbage they will also have to admit they were scammed. 
 
I really can't put names to many of the artists of comics over the last couple decades.  I had already stopped buying comics when they shifted from superheroes to degrees of evil, but I can tell you that when the cover art became completely different in quality and style than the interior art, it did nothing to make me want to buy it.   If anything, the so called splash art on the cover made the interior look worse. 

Lots of great stuff from others already.  I'll add one thing I've done a few times (not too often).
 
If the player has a great success (typically but not always a critical success), I've said that the character had such an epiphany doing the task that I've given them 2 bonus XP specifically to buy +1 with that skill.  This doesn't get awarded for things the character does a ton of (for instance, Stealth rolls by the Batman-type character), but for example the brick who happens to have Demolitions stepping up to defuse a bomb "because if I fail I'm more likely to survive the explosion."
 
Alternately, sticking with the bomb-defusing example, greater success might provide some useful information they'd otherwise need to tease out some other way.  "As you're defusing the bomb, you notice one component is fairly unique and there's only one company in this city that sells them..."

You know that some of the really early CU villains are actually bigger Heroes than many of what passes for Heroes today. 
 
Just saying

Oh: here's a fun thing to do, if you are just looking for backgeound heroes (and I know it works because I have seen it done by a handful of GMs over the years; it should work even better nowadays, if you and your players started with newer editions) is to pick up a coupl3 of the really early Enemies books and use the forgotten ones as background heroes.
 
Just a thought,

Well art has always been pretty subjective.
 
But I could name an artist that people pay millions for their work and universities consider them masterworks which I have always considered pure garbage and I really do believe that most people agree.  But if they admit it is garbage they will also have to admit they were scammed. 
 
I really can't put names to many of the artists of comics over the last couple decades.  I had already stopped buying comics when they shifted from superheroes to degrees of evil, but I can tell you that when the cover art became completely different in quality and style than the interior art, it did nothing to make me want to buy it.   If anything, the so called splash art on the cover made the interior look worse. 

So a friend linked me to the first issue of Power Pack's Outlawed tie in and I have to say Ryan North actually gets the characters.  He writes them well and before Civil War Jr used the comic as it's commode the story was fun, interesting and generally delightful.  The Power Pack was handling the situation like true professionals, like a super team should (Champions take note) and if the story had ended with the Powers thwarting Boogeyman and going home it would have been perfect.  Instead we have "blatantly fascist organization that Captain America would be beating the crud out of if Marvel hadn't deballed him in Civil War" interfering and sucking any fun from the comic.  Sadly I don't imagine this is gonna lead to Power Pack effortlessly trouncing said goons, en route to exposing the villain behind this plot to take down teenage heroes either.

Comics are being subjected to the same political and social pressures that movies and tv shows are. There is the perceived mandate to add diversity and focus on "woke" narratives despite the lack of sales to support it. Comic companies don't know which master to serve, and so they serve whichever one gets them in the least amount of trouble with social media. This strategy appears to be accelerating the (inevitable?) demise of the industry. I think we need look no further than Marvel's aborted New Warriors reboot, with characters like Safespace and Snowflake, to see the dubious merits of such a strategy.

Besides the stories, I find what passes for artwork in most contemporary comics very disheartening. The art of graphic storytelling is dying. Most artists create what amounts to collections of splash pages. There's no action flow, no shifting perspective, no support of the narrative through-line. What I hear among criticisms of the industry, is that artists today focus on creating imagery they can sell on a poster or t-shirt, rather than serving the story.

Had numerous phone calls today (we didn't go anywhere, and all my friends and family out of town were made well aware eight weeks ago that traveling in from somewhere and coming up to my door was a great way to get hit with a brick and sent packing: my wife and daughter are both high-risk (asthma), and my age and heart problems aren't helping me too much these days, particularly with the drop in fitness by eight months of "go nowhere; do nothing." 
 
Anyway, during the phone calls from old friends, many memories and much celebration came out, including a bit of "group lingo" referring to things from games gone past.  One of those terms led me to this:
 
 
Martial Sneer:  3 pts --------+1/+2-----------Must Follow Presence Attack; Target falls.
 
I didn't really want to add the OCV, but there's a minimum cost of 3, so why not?   Turn an entire team of opponents into Fainting Goats.   
 
 
The term goes way back to a game just about the time 3e was being distributed: Jim had picked up both the boxed set and the perfect bound single-volume printings  (he was like that).  I hadn't picked them up yet (and, it turns out, wouldn't for roughy thirty years).  Anyway, we had a new guy who was what we used to call a Some Timer (not to be confused with a part timer, who was someone who, while not always available, could be counted on to show up when he said he would).  I honestly don't recall his name, but something in the back of my mind says it was Keith, and since it doesn't matter, that's what we're going to call him. 
 
Keith was excited for the game, for the social activity, and for the hoots and hollers of well-played sessions, but Keith was suffered from a chronic crippling shyness that we had spent several sessions working on (mostly me yelling at everyone else before Keith arrived, telling them "Look; he's got comfort problems being around us; we're relative strangers.  Whatever he does, you _love_ it, period.  Talk to him in character, out of character, whatever it takes."-- that sort of thing.
 
Because of his shyness, Keith wasn't really good at the descriptive part of the game, or the interactive part of the game, but he really did try, at least as best he was able.  The bad guy is before the team, Keith's Batman Clone is in the rafters, observing closely while the team moves in.  The boss smiles, laughs, and haughtily announces "you people have the worst timing.  Any other night, I wouldn't have been here, and you would have lived...."  looks back at his business and jerks an extended index finger toward the group, a signal that sends a dozen armed minions out of the shadows toward the team.
 
Keith:  Okay, uhm...  I wanna- can I jump down?  I wanna jump down.
 
Sure.  It's only eighteen feet or so, and you've got Superleap (2e, remember?), so sure; you won't have any problem with that.
 
Okay, I jump down-- ooh!  Can I jump like on one of the bad guys?
 
You can, but remember two things: you can totally kill a guy like that if you break his neck, or paralyze him if you damage his spine.  If you still want to try, I will let you, of course, but remember you're one of the good guys.  Also remember that such a move would technically be a move-through, and you'll take half the damage.
 
Okay....  uhm....   Can I....  Can I jump down, like right in front of one of the guys?
 
Sure.
 
Okay, I hit him!
 
You can't.  You're still in the rafters.
 
Wha--  oh, yeah, okay.  I jump down in front of a guy and hit him.  Like, really hard.
 
Which guy? I nod toward the impromptu map.
 
Okay, the so the big red round dice there...  that's the boss, right?
 
RIght.
 
And this pencil eraser here, that's a bad guy?
 
No; that's a pencil eraser.  Sorry about that.  Brent, pick that up and keep it out of the map!
 
Okay, these two dice on top of each other...?
 
That's a bad guy.  He's standing in front of the boss as a sort of ersatz bodyguard until the team is taken care of.  He's not likely to move from that position unless things go really, really badly for his guys.
 
Okay, that's the guy I want to drop in front of, and as soon as I land, I want to ...   I guess just hit him?
 
Sure.  How?  You've got weapons and your punches and kicks.  Which are you going to use?
 
The club thing-- the baton.  Wait!  Does he look tough?
 
He looks big and tough, and just like the other guys, he seems to be wearing a motorcycle helmet of some sort with a flaming eyeball painted along the crest of it.
 
Okay, I...  I _jump_!  I jump down and I hit this guy, like with the stick, as hard as I can!
 
We roll, the body guard goes down even before he registers what happened.  The boss looks up, shocked by the instant appearance of a hero right in front of him and the crumpling of his henchman.
 
Okay, Keith; you have the higher SPD and the boss is clearly shocked.  What do you do?
 
Okay, I get my club--
 
Someone butted in with "Presence Attack, Keith!  Perfect opportunity for a presence attack!"
 
Okay, yeah-- I do one of those!  Wait-- that's when you scare them, right?  And I can get extra dice if he's already scared, right?
 
Yep.  You've got the appeared-from-nowhere thing going on, the extremely violent action going on, and you dispatched his most capable henchman as if he were a mannequin.  [I tossed him four extra dice].  Add those; you've got eight dice now.  What sort of Presence Attack are you making?
 
??
 
What do you do? What do you say?
 
Oh, I uh..    Okay, I stand there looking cool; I don't even check the guy I just knocked out to be sure.  I turn my head and ....   I look at the boss.
 
You look at him?
 
Yeah. Like _hard_, you know?  I look at him like, really _hard_.
 
 
"Ah, yes!"  Chimes in Jeff, who, while an extremely amusing dry-witted type, had a really hard time remembering the "don't shake his confidence" sessions.  "Nothing more intimidating than a good sneer, really.  It's all the rage in gunfights nowadays...."
 
We all pointedly ignore it; Keith rolls his dice.  easily _half_ of them were sixes.  There was one three and one four.  No ones; no twos.
 
Jeff's eyes bugged for a moment.  "Oh; my bad!  I didn't realize you were using your Martial Sneer......
 
Anyway, Keith managed to get the boss shook up long enough to wrangle him with bolos and cuff him.
 
It was a hilarious moment for all of us, but a great one for Keith.  It also brought "Martial Sneer" into our lexicon.   
 
 
 
 

From my Monster Hunter International game, where I badically play Jack Burton...
 

 

Finally!
 
Well, it's not the nice big clear one I was looking for, but it's a smaller lo-rez copy of it.
 
At any rate, this was something I found invaluable when we played lots of westerns, especially when the party travelled around a lot.
 
 
Hope it helps.
 

For me I have copies/scans of a lot of out of print that I simply cannot find. 
But I also make it a point to always buy a copy if it is out there to be had. 
I prefer physical copies and have far too many RPG related books on my shelf. 
 
I refuse to take a "home scanned" copy of a book that is being actively published that I can buy legally. 
If the book is no longer in print I will look for it on the secondary market.
If I have exhausted all other possibilities I will take what I can find, and if it comes back into publication I'll pick up a copy.  I guess I look at it as balancing the scales.

And yet the recent spate of extremely profitable superhero movies have been founded upon selfless action striving to help others, even at great personal cost. The biggest movie of last year, Avengers: Endgame, featured a whole cast of protagonists driven by responsibility, compassion, self-sacrifice, love. I believe the trend of narcissism, cynicism, nihilism in entertainment has worn down, and many people are hungry for stories of true heroism again. They just want those stories to be told well.

Thanks, Spence! I’ll give them a thought as I have the books, so I can just copy the things I need from them to the character sheet.

You are not wrong. 
 
My area had several good FLGS's and and they have fallen like dominoes.  
 
As for the other part, I have backed several books through Kickstarter including some graphic novels.  I also pass thru a local comic store that carries a far greater range of products besides the standard Marvel/DC comic.  I know that my handful of purchases and KS's will not carry the industry, but I really have no incentive to buy more.   I really can't take yet another grim grim dark splatterfest. 
I am not saying that there can't be events and storylines that have dark and/or grim settings, but sheesh why are all the main characters some version of jack the ripper "done gone good" duh....
 
Does anyone even understand the definition of the word Hero?  If no one is buying the current comic lines, perhaps it is because people don't like the stories?  Grimm grimm dark dark stopped selling, try something not grimm grimm dark dark.
 

I don't intend to either.  I just don't enjoy the extent of the changes. 
 
But to be fair 5th also made some change that makes you think they did it just to fiddle with the game.  Like Secret ID, in 5th they changed it from the Disadvantage called Secret ID at 15 points to the Disadvantage called Social Limitation and then added a sidebar to tell you that the Social Limitation called Secret ID cost 15 points.  So they had to add a sidebar and a additional index entry just to tell you where to find Secret ID.  All in all an exercise of the pointless, multiple entries to clean up what could have easily been left as a separate entry.  Zero net gain.
 
5th just moved the game a few lanes over.  6th on the other hand made significant changes in the core structure that in the end just never felt right to me.  Too long with 1st thru 4th edition I guess.  I only lean toward 5thR because I can actually lay my hands on physical rulebooks and supplements for it.  If I had or could get 4th edition books, I wouldn't look back.

Even if I had left on Forcefulness, (sorry; didn't realize I had cut it until I saw it here in the reply box), there is nothing in that description that implies this person can't be a "normal schlub,"  or even look like a normal schlub.
 
I think for a lot of us old farts, having spent our formative RPG years in D&D, we learned to equate Charisma with appearance.
 
Charisma is so much more than that.   Willem Defoe has lots of charisma; there's just something magnetic about him.  He's also as unattractive as the flight deck on a buzzard's butt.  Honestly, drop that charisma, and he's Steve Buscemi with better teeth and hair.
 
Since 1981, we've asked "well what is presense?  Is it looks?  Is it scariness?  Is it a big personality?"
 
It's presence.  Presence _is_ a word, with an actual definition.  Granted, today it's something of an archaic word outside of theater, but it's still a word, and I'm reasonably certain (I have _zero_ proof of this, but given all the care that went into everything else when the game was being developed, it stands up to reason) that the word "Presence" was known to the G. MacD, and selected absolutely on purpose.
 
Mirriam Webster:
 
 
Full Disclosure:  I ditched the parts that referred to things like "bringing more troops to this base provides a strong military presence here in the islands."
 
 
Anyway, _that_ is presence.  It's what the french call  _je ne sais quoi_ ...   Figuratively, it means "that certain something."  Literally-- and I think that this is extremely important-- it means "I don't know what."  It's a certain, hard-to-pin-down, harder-to-describe quality about a person that -- well, not everyone has it.  Some people positively _radiate_ it.  Some people fill the entire room with it.  English speakers should call to mind descriptive expressions like "he has this air about him...."  or "Men are drawn instinctively to him."  On the other side of the coin:  "I don't know, Becky.  I mean, he's always super-nice and everything, but there's something about him that makes my skin crawl....."
 
It's _different from Charisma_!
 
So let's bother Mirriam Webster again:
 
 
 
(For the two or three people left playing HERO who have feelings similar to mine, I would like to point out that _NEITHER_ of these refer to a person's appearance / good (or unfortunate) _LOOKS_!  If _only_ there were some characteristic that someone could invent to use as a general yardstick for that....)
 
 
So what is Presence?
 
The condition of being present.  In game terms, how _obviously present_ you are without actually trying.  A person who catches attention, who perhaps radiates "I am here, and I am comfortable being here."  A person whose nature makes him an absolute solid part of his surroundings, wherever he may be: confidence?  Comfort?  and unflappability?  A person whose confident carriage is not overlooked, and whose composure is difficult to ruffle.  A person who, simply by being in a room radiates something that _demands_ attention, and perhaps respect...  anyone near him can almost _feel_ that he is near....
 
 
What is Presence _not_?
 
Charisma.   While "an air of leadership" and "confidence in his command" may give a character a high PRE, that is not what PRE is.  The two are compatible; the two can potentiate each other, but the two are _different_.
 
Charm. Presence is not charm.  Batman is not charming.  Not since he stopped smiling back in-- what?  The seventies?  And really, he's only appealing if you're in the same age or intellectual bracket that Shonen Jump markets toward-- no; not even that.  Anyone ever see the old anime "Riki-O: Violence Hero"?   _That's_ the crowd I'm thinking of: tweens and early teens with serious revenge fantasies.  _Disturbing_ revenge fantasies.... 
 
 
 
Beauty.  See "Willem Defoe."   See "Andre the Giant."   See "wet koala."
 
(as an American, it is _extremely_ difficult for me to not say "koala bear," if any of you upside-downers were wondering)
 
As you can see, Presence, in spite of us understanding the concept, is extremely difficult to summarize; sometimes it's not even easy to put into words.  It is, ultimately, "that certain something...."
 
 
It's not Charisma.
 
It's not Beauty.
 
It's Presence.
 
Stop confusing the three.
 
 
-------------------------------------------------------------
 
Now, to answer the question:
 
You see what Presence is; you see what Presence does.  (And yes: I full-well understand that the answer to both questions is "sort of" and "I get it, but I can't explain it, either.")
 
Here's the other problem you are up against:
 
There is a long-standing (and, I have to level with you, I have always thought "a little misguided") line of thought that more is more.  More is better.  In HERO, it's "more costs points, so it should be worth something extra."  The (and here's the part I don't always agree with) corollary to that is "less shouldn't be worth as much!" followed by "you got points back; that means it's absolutely crippling!"
 
I'm here to say that nocking your STR down 2 points isn't crippling.  You can spend 80 pts on STR and get MOAR! and have all the benefits, but unless STR is a super-important thing to you-- I don't know; maybe you're a collector or something-- then a 40 STR isn't "worse" than an 80 STR.  It's _less_, but it's not "worse."  An 8 STR is _less_ than an 80, but it's not automatically _worse_.  It's less, and it's different, but it's not debilitating in any way.  At the mean age of this board, I'm willing to bet it's pretty typical, to be honest.  We can't _all_ be crippled.....
 
So what does a reduced PER mean?
 
It means you have less PER than someone who didn't reduce it, and more less than someone who bought extra.  The guy you talked to for twenty minutes about the details of your free energy gizmo couldn't pick you out of a crowd of two just a few minutes later.  Your name doesn't stick in people's minds until they've made a hard, conscious effort to remember your face and associate it with your name.  You can wear a plaid suit to the office party and a month later you have to say "well sure we've met!  Remember?  I wore the plaid suit to the office party!" while the person you're speaking to thinks "well, I remember the suit...."
 
What else does it mean?  You don't look like you're up for the job.  You don't look ready.  You don't seem like the kind of guy I can rely on.  Maybe you're mousy.  Maybe you're shifty.  Maybe you have a week chin and pasty skin and big nervous eyes and people keep mistaking you for an accountant, even when you're wearing your cape and crown.
 
Remember, though, that it doesn't necessarily mean _any_ of these thing:  Becky and her friend will remember for _years_ that guy that makes their skin crawl.....
 
 
Benefits?  Well they're going to be mostly social, and really only beneficial to the anti-social or the introvert: even if they remember you, people aren't going to lump you into the category of "people who interest me" or "people I'd like to hang out with."  Sure, your GM may even decide "people forget exactly who you were" or "people can't describe you ten minutes later" or "people forget appointments with you" or whatever-else, but _before you try discussing that on this board_  ---
 
 
Wait.  Let me specifically preface this next comment:
 
I am _not_ suggesting that you do not discuss those ideas here.  I really am not.  The whole reason I hang out here as much as I do (though i only do it in fits for a few months every few years; this time around has been longer than usual because I've got so many projects going on that keep pulling me back here) is because _most_ of the members here-- the vast majority, truly-- are surprisingly bright, insightful, creative people who enjoy bouncing ideas around and helping folks come up with solutions or alternate approaches to something that you might be having trouble with.    But even then, you need to be absolutely prepared for something, so how's this for a seque?  _Before you try discussing that on this board_---
 
Be prepared that there are a lot of people who are going to respond with "No; if you want something positive, then you have to pay for it."  They aren't being mean-spirited or telling you that you absolutely can't do something the way you want.  Or maybe some of them are, but really....  are they going to show up at your house and police your game?     It's part of the group culture here to agree that everything positive must have a character points price.  Though, when pressed, I'm pretty sure even the most stalwart defender of this position would let Kingsford, Master of Flame use his RKA: massive gout of thousand-degree fire to ignite a campfire, even if he didn't buy a Transform: Non-burning flammable object to very much on fire flammable object.  With that being said....
 
Look at it this way:  if HERO had a size stat, then going by the conventional wisdom, more would always be better, because you paid for it.  Smaller would always suck, period, because it cost less, and really small might have even rewarded you some points back, so you would just suck at having Size.
 
It is now the time of the Forecasting of the Great Smiting, but God is all out of toads, so, in a pinch to stay on schedule, He opens the closet and takes out what he has on hand, and BOOM!  It's raining hand grenades.  Is it better to be big enough to get hit with several every few seconds, or to be small enough to slither into a storm drain and wait it out?  Is the GM going to look you straight in the eye and tell you that you can't slither into the storm drain because that would be a benefit of having sold off your Size?
 
Fortunately HERO doesn't have a Size stat, so we don't get to have that potentially-hilarious conversation.      
 
Oh wait!  Robot Warriors had a Size Sat.....   Who published that.....?
 
That's right!  It was HERO Games!   Not the current crop, mind you, but the guys who built the engine on which this game still runs.  Looking at that example....   Having more size meant bigger, stronger weapons.  Having less size meant being harder to hit.   At no point was it "bad."
 
 
But to stop that digression far too late after it started---
 
Now you have a better idea of what a "low presence" means.  You might decide that it's not what you thought it was, and that you don't really want to lower it.  You might decide to lower it anyway.  Either way, you will want to get with your GM (unless that's you, in which case you'll want to get with your player) and decide just what it means to have a low PRE.  Honestly--- and I don't think anyone on this board will deny that I tend to be pretty liberal with what I allow as "incidentals related to powers and SFX"-- I don't know that I would give it any direct stand-alone benefits.  However, I might let it serve as a (small) modifier to things where it seems appropriate:  Shadowing comes to mind immediately.  Every time the villain thinks he's being followed, he turns his head to check...  and you just don't register.  I mean, he sees you, but you don't trip any alarm bells.  he kind of looks through you and thinks "I must be getting nervous..."
 
Things like that.
 
 
 
Okay, people; 
 
I'm done.

OMG you made me snort my soda through my nose. 
 
That is also the type of rule changes that are why I don't play 6th.
 
 
Thanks Duke,
 
Great post!

But even that isn't available, unfortunately.
 
I'm on a couple of FB groups for certain authors;  who doesn't matter.  A VERY common refrain is "when can I get more of ... " when the storyline's totally played out, or it'd just be More Of The Same.  I know of at least one where...ok, maybe there's room for new stories here, but it's mostly same-old, same-old...and we know the ultimate outcome too, BTW.  Not only that, but there's quite a bit of momentum...read, sales...that continue long past the point where the story should have ended.
 
So, it's REALLY hard to completely retire a popular character.  

I’d have to agree. With the expected demise of the pamphlet floppy by June of 2021, the superhero genre  is breathing its last.
 
As for the crowd funded comics, I don’t disagree either. But U buy mostly for the art, and I like some grim dark, probably more than you, but other than certain artists, I don’t buy a lot. 

As someone who doesn't use 6E, that was my first thought as well: Just use Transfer.

Are you using HERO Designer?
 
If you're not, the easiest solution is to step back an edition or two and reinstate "Transfer."
 
 

I've been recording it and am a couple episodes behind.  I was impressed that it was trying to avoid the CW teen angst trap, an then realized it wasn't a CW show. 
 
I should have realized it was canceled, after all I was enjoying it....