Sketchpad

I found these at the local Comic store. They are metal,  about 40mm tall, and these are two of the three boxes. They cost me about $12 per box, so they weren't a painful expense.  IF one feels ambitions you could drop them in paint remover, clean, re-prime, and paint to your own heroes."

 
 
As to their use, for any sort of tactical combat game, which Champions is one of them, I find Maps and miniatures mandatory, because it allows everyone to agree on the same  terrain, and can plan their moves. It also keeps people more involved, planning out their next moves.  We didn't build a lot of terrain features, but drew the terrain out on 25mm Hex Chessex Maps, using  Stadtler Wasserlosich pens to  line out what the terrain was for the night, and using matchbox cars and 1/72 scale model kits of vehicles if available (because supers toss cars).   Now granted, I came into this hobby, from tabletop war games, so I am used to reading the maps and boards, because "Theater of The Mind", doesn't always do it for me. But having the maps helps in my experience, to give people more tactical  options. Hope this helps.

 

Pre-COVID, I always found minis useful in a Champions game. In the recent past, I mainly used Heroclix for my minis fix, though I would love to see more generic minis come out. Or Champions Heroclix.
 

Pre-COVID, I always found minis useful in a Champions game. In the recent past, I mainly used Heroclix for my minis fix, though I would love to see more generic minis come out. Or Champions Heroclix.
 

I think Mind Control (Only to Inspire Fear/Terror -1/2) would work. 

Actually, in Mongoose's Traveller 2nd ed. they did away with the whole "death during character creation" bit. They have it as an option in their Companion, however.
 
 
Beyond going with the free systems, it would depend on what style of game you'd want to run/play. There are a bunch of games on DriveThruRPG that are pretty affordable that go beyond any kind of D&D. Much of it depends on the play style that you choose. 
 
 
Have to agree with Joe here. FATE and FATE Accelerated are both easy to access and play relatively easy. And while I dig FATE, my group had some issues with it. In all of its simplicity, they had problems adapting to it. Unfortunate, as the game is highly adaptable to a variety of concepts. If you were looking at this option, you'd have the following:
System: FATE/FATE Accelerated \\ Pay What You Want (PDF)
Dice: FATE/Fudge Dice \\ $6+
Map: Ream of Paper/Index Cards \\ $5+
Minis: Not Really Needed. 

Just throwing a quick guess out: a 1d6, 1 Def NND Entangle (Def: Life Support vs breathing or Poison), Area Effect, 1 charge lasting 1 minute, doesn't hinder if only a 1/2 phase is taken, easily dispersed by strong wind

a) I would do NND (Grounded) myself. I find that Stun Only doesn't have quite the same effect for electrical effects (like Tasers), since it would be altered by Defenses. 
b) The auto hit I would stat out as Damage Over Time. 

I don’t have as much of a problem with fictional countries especially if they are small. Even Marvel did it with Latvaria. We did it ourselves for our D. I. Runs back in the 80’s and 90’s. Viva Costa Diego!
 
Marc is working on an update of San Angelo. I have urged him to produce a proper detailed map. 

Like @dsatow and @Hugh Neilson I always found mechanical conversion charts a bit uneven. I always recommend looking at the concept of a character and rebuild them in the system, eyeing various caps from the sheet as benchmarks. 

Agreed, dsatow.  I find V&V characters are better written up as "OK, how would I do these powers in Hero" than any formulaic conversion.  The games are simply too different.
 
One key difference is that 1d4+2 will pass some damage along to the target in V&V.  A character like, say, Nightcrawler can have impressive agility and speed (high DEX), Teleportation, Stealth and 1d4+2 or 1d6 damage, and get along fine in V&V.  He'll average 3.5 or 4.5 damage.  That big guy with 1d20+6 or 4d6 will average 14 or 16.5 - three or four times as much damage.  
 
But in Hero,  we have defenses, and that changes the playing field.  That big burly guy might have a 14 - 15d6 attack, passing 24 - 27.5 damage past defenses of 25.  If we want Nightcrawler to do minor damage, 1/3 to 1/4 as much, that's not achieved by giving him 1/3 to 1/4 of the base damage - 3 1/2 to 4d6.  That just bounces off.  He needs to pass 6 - 8 damage past 25 defenses, which needs an average roll of 31 - 33, or 9 - 10d6.  That's still a pretty wide range,  but matches some older 1e to 2e published enemies.
 
What's the V&V multiple actions rule again?  As I recall, they rolled 1d10 + Agility for initiative, the highest roll went first, then we count down and each character gets another action every 15 points lower on the count.   So if our big, burly dude has 10 Agility, he'll move once or twice in each sequence.  Nightcrawler might have an Agility of 30, and be guaranteed three actions, or twice as many as that big, burly guy.  That may mean the big guy gets a SPD of 4 (if that's our "low end Super" SPD) so Nightcrawler, to act twice as often, gets a SPD of 8.  That's also a broad range, but not wholly inconsistent with those old published characters.
 
As time has gone on, however, we've seen a trend towards the mean in Hero, so we see "campaign cap is 12d6 and 6 SPD", and we get both Burly Guy and Nightcrawler with 12d6 attacks (maybe 11d6 at the low end) and 6 SPD (maybe 5 at the low end).
 
What all this long-winded example boils down to is that the translation between systems needs to capture relative effectiveness in the game the characters will be used in,  and that's generally not practical to achieve with formulaic conversions.

One of the problems with the V&V conversions for HERO is that the V&V characters in their own game system vary wildly in power the original old system.  You can have characters that did 1d4+2 with characters that did 1d20+6.
 
It is better to use the system numbers and dice as a comparison to power level for the HERO conversion than to use a straight algorithm to convert.  Even if the conversion says that the power only does 6d6 Blast damage, if the character is in a 12d6 game, think about making it at least 10d6 if not 12. 

I've been using Roll20.net for my remote gaming and have really enjoyed the experience. It does have a dice roller included, but you don't have to use it. The map functions tend to work well, and it has a handout feature, as well as character sheets.

While I run my own universe these days, if I were to reboot the Champions Universe, I would tackle some of the following:
The Guardians: I would try and license them back into the CU as the predecessors of The Champions. Some of them may even still be active. The Champions: Sure, they're a sample group, but I'd give them history that takes the 4th ed group as the original members, through to the 6th ed group, who currently hold the title. In all honesty, I would also make a "Crisis at Homestead" style of module that could make the PCs the next heroes to take on the team name.  Villains: I'd update some of the villains, and bring a few more back from obscurity with some changes. Deathstroke would be back as the "anti-Champions" team, Doc Destroyer might have his "Kristoff Moment" where someone's become his successor for a short time. I would retire the Tree Monster / Elder Thing for something else. Genocide would return and I'd ditch the IHA. Demon would change pretty significantly, as would Viper. Magic Root: Never like the whole Magic is the root of power shtick. I would drop it in favor of more variable explanations.  Cities: I would keep the cities, but change some things up within them. Personally, I didn't find them as "living" as they should be.

I've used Demon, Genocide, Viper, PSI, and COIL in past campaigns. 

Well, the idea would be for someone to make DD's format as an export format. I'm sure there's someone on the boards who could create such a thing. Background and other non-stat info is a pretty easy add on wiki pages, right? Having the stats formatted would need a bit more finesse, right?
 
 
Dread, no problem. I really like the format and think that Hero could use something like it. Heck, I made a variant of it in InDesign.

I messaged Jason and he is fine with the campaign wiki project:
 
"
 
I also asked about hosting the wiki software etc. here at this site (i.e. doing an on-site wiki instead of an off-site wiki). He's not sure about that, but he didn't say no yet.

Also, Heroic Publishing had to change  Foxbat into The Flying Fox. So it is safe to assume they don't have the license to do Foxbat anymore. 

From my understanding, the comic license no longer exists. Heroic Publishing had to change the "Marksman" character to "Huntsman" due to this if I heard correctly. 

You might run into some problems from the retail chain.
 
 

It is my life goal to get a Cease and Desist from Weird Al... 

You might run into some problems from the retail chain.
 
 

I always had problems with Luck as written, but worked up some pretty lengthy house rules on it in my last campaign. 
 
I don't see why you couldn't have either (or both) as a defense against a NND.

If folks work on this, I would recommend putting it all together under a Creative Commons licence (https://creativecommons.org/). Might help protect the work and the creators.

There are a bunch of powers that could represent Luck Powers beyond Luck. For example, an Indirect, Invisible, Variable FX Blast might be a convenient piano dropping from a roof, or an accidental car crashing into a hero. Alternatively, a Speed or Dex Drain with might represent a sudden slick area, or tripping into something. Lastly, a bonus to DCV or OCV with an Activation Roll might mean a lucky hit or lucky dodge. Hero X is blasting Hazard, but Hazard sees a $5 bill on the floor and reaches down to pick it up, and the attack misses. This is because Hazard made his activation roll on his Lucky Dodge power and gained +5 DCV.

There are a bunch of powers that could represent Luck Powers beyond Luck. For example, an Indirect, Invisible, Variable FX Blast might be a convenient piano dropping from a roof, or an accidental car crashing into a hero. Alternatively, a Speed or Dex Drain with might represent a sudden slick area, or tripping into something. Lastly, a bonus to DCV or OCV with an Activation Roll might mean a lucky hit or lucky dodge. Hero X is blasting Hazard, but Hazard sees a $5 bill on the floor and reaches down to pick it up, and the attack misses. This is because Hazard made his activation roll on his Lucky Dodge power and gained +5 DCV.