KawangaKid

Interesting point of view, but with Tony dusting Thanos and his invaders before they were returned to their timeline, there's already an alternate timeline, IMHO.

I also liked the mid-season finale. Very fast-paced, good drama, action, and fewer plot holes (hah). Wish there was a bit more ship combat in this series, and wish there was a bit more strategy than just "our advanced tech trumps your advanced tech" this time. Visually, also liked how they're bringing a lot of the control surfaces closer to TOS (actual colored buttons and switches, less of the LCARS touch screens). I have grave issues about the Klingon ship designs, less so about the Klingons (maybe this Klingon fad of shaving their scalps will end, and they'll start growing hair again).

Wow! This is a lot of work. Will you consolidate things later?

http://youtu.be/1rO2GlDC5gI One unusual approach at the time that worked was Batman Beyond! Teenaged, non-Bruce Batman? Unthinkable -- but it worked!

For some reason, I thought of this phrase from the cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid in the Philippines... ... and became curious about all the different types of strange incarnations of well-known supers in media. After hearing some stories from various professionals in animation and comics on Kevin Smith's podcast Fatman on Batman, I'm no longer surprised at how some of these weird ideas came about. So Ben Grimm is the Thing, who got turned into a teenager by accident, BUT somehow can turn back into The Thing by pushing his two rings together and shouting "Thing ring, do your thing!". Yeeeeeaaaaaah. Okay. It wasn't very canon. But it was fun! Doesn't this give you license to throw strange versions of well-known supers into your Champions games?

Interesting. I had a similar approach to an Energy Projector who was a host to sentient alien metal -- it was changing him physically (not spiritually and physically as in your example) to better channel the energies. Of course, that was rife with story potential for the GM. Btw, may I reference your article on building balanced HERO characters in my next set of posts?

True. This triggers a memory of a friend's character called Swordsman, who was a former master swordsman who gave up the sword because he killed someone and now only wielded a club... until, I suppose, he earned the right to wield a sword again.

Thanks for the feedback, folks!

I began blogging a series of posts on my gaming blog on the things I'd learned from playing Champions with my old gaming group, and at conventions. It's partly nostalgia, partly a push back against the detractors of the system, partly geeking out on the joys of playing in the genre and related subgenres, and partly thinking about the style of gaming that Champions and the Hero System is really about. Here are my posts so far. A Power Fantasy Has A Cost It's Okay to RetCon, Reboot, or Even Re-Invent! Sometimes the JLA Is Busy Exactly The Character You Want Sometimes You Just Wanna Fight But even if you don't read them, I wanted to hear what other folks learned about RPGs, play styles, the genre and themselves through playing Champions.

RIFTS Skyrealms of Jorune Shadow World (Kulthea) Scarlet Heroes / Red Tide Spears of the Dawn Stars Without Number Ashen Stars Alien Legion Mindjammer

Re: [New Product] Champions Complete I have the PDF. I like what I've read so far. Btw, any chance the PDFs can be updated with minor typo corrections?

Re: The Last Word fear not!

What do you consider high-powered? Someone built on 1000 points? Someone with 120 Active Points in a Power? How does your group handle mixing them in with less experienced characters (and players)?

Re: Weird Adventures -- A Different Kind of Pulp Setting

More like Pulp meets D&D, actually. And why not? Shadowrun did D&D meets cyberpunk! I tackle Weird Adventures on my blog, and I'm currently figuring out how to create a bunch of character templates. Character templates are different from the package deal approach to character creation; I'm basically doing a Star Wars d6 approach to character creation, but using the Hero System. Sort of a quick chargen option to make it easy for pickup games. Check it out!

Re: Marvel Heroic Role playing compared to Champions/Hero System I put up a review of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying on my gaming blog. I think it's worth noting that if you're uncomfortable with some of the more indie / narrative gaming mechanics, this may send you spinning. There are no specific stats to speak of, there's a "fate point" mechanic in there by another name that is used very similarly to the FATE ruleset, but without the FUDGE dice rolling, since we're using Cortex Plus. There's a "Doom Pool" representing the dice pool of the GM as an overall representation of the escalating level of threat. There's an 'experience point' system that allows you to earn XP in game, and spend it in game as well in a manner akin to both 'fate points' and 'experience points' in other narrative games besides FATE. Player dice pools are created using appropriate 'tag' based abilities such as Affiliations (are you working solo, with a buddy, or as part of a team RIGHT NOW?), Distinctions (I'm tapping my "Never Give Up, Never Surrender" distinction for d8), and your relevant ability to do something, plus anything extra from spending points. Character creation doesn't use points, really. Although character concept is really at a premium, since you're sort of forced to have only a limited number of what we HEROphiles might call 'special effects' for your abilities. Note that SFX is used differently in the game, as are Stunts, and Limits, so tread carefully when reading the rules -- the words may not mean what you think they mean. Rules aside, it's a fun read, captures the atmosphere of the current Marvel Universe comic book genre (complete with action and drama). I haven't played it yet, though. Narrative mechanics frustrate me when trying to envision running a game. I think I'm just too traditional to take to these things easily.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Downton Abbey Christmas Special Conan (recent flick) Double Vision (rewatch; I love that film -- the buddy chemistry between Lau and Morse is great)

Re: What Can We Do To Serve HERO? Perhaps a separate thread on what hooked you to HERO in the first place, and see if the market niche(s) are different now? For me, it was three things: (1) my friends were playing it (2) more combat options that "made sense" (3) the game-within-a-game wherein players and GMs would compare character builds and power builds (some serious, some humorous, all evaluated based on creativity and elegance of build).

Re: Religion in Science-Fiction? Well, in some religions they do believe that you can still influence the world after death. The dead pray for the living, and in some cases intercede for them -- not just for their salvation (which is considered more important of course) but for certain events in their lives. In the Roman Catholic religion, you can be elevated to sainthood if (among other things) it can be proven that three miracles can be attributed to you. Oh, but you have to be dead first, of course. "Living Saint" is just a turn of phrase for Catholics.

Re: So I want to "build my own solar system" (for things like astrology, solstaces, e I don't think that this matches the need for the extra suns and moons... but it's sorta related for a different view from 'earth'. Hope that works!

Re: Fantasy Art Thread Here's an image (photoshop + sketches) from an artist named Andrew Drilon who is in my current group. It's my character back when was the favored mount of the shard Valder who was -- at the time -- leveled up to the Essential Savant of Bone.

Re: Hero Games On Google+ Hey, this is cool!

Re: Star Hero PDF now available. There's a review out already: http://philgamer.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/review-star-hero-by-hero-games/#more-3167 Very favorable!

Re: Viper: From Hydra To Cobra? The current G.I.Joe run is quite good. In it, both G.I.Joe and COBRA are unknown / secret organizations. Everyone in G.I.Joe is considered to have died in training or some accident after transferring to the responsibility of General Hawk (who, by the way, has a bad rep in the U.S. Military because of this), and COBRA itself is only spoken of in whispered communiques and hushed tones and never refers to itself that way -- especially since it has a variety of front organizations. Larry Hama is back overseeing this series, which is a restart. They also CONTINUED the original G.I.Joe comics series from Marvel as the comics line G.I.Joe: A Real American Hero in a separate -- slightly less lethal but no less interesting -- universe.

Re: Shadow World setting Since there's no stats in the Player's Guide, was thinking of revisiting the old stats in my old copy and seeing if a conversion to 6th Ed would be in the cards. Then again, I never returned to the other projects in my Hero Forums blog...