Lord Liaden

The three biggest urban areas in Canada -- Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal -- are major centers for international film and television production. Calgary also sees a lot of that work. Canadians often spot familiar landmarks from those cities in movies and shows supposedly set elsewhere.

After they first turn children into employees.

By the way, thank you for your kind words about my input to the Champions Online gamers. And welcome to the Pen and Paper side of the community!

Ugh. I hope not. I understand that series has many fans, but I find those things so creepy and disgusting, I can't stomach watching it. 🤮

Over the years I've come across references to a few Japanese manga involving humans able to grow enormous to fight giant monsters. Usually cute girls whose clothes don't grow with them.

I think if it comes to a vote, there may be quite a few Republican legislators voting to keep Johnson in his chair. Many in the House are now publicly expressing frustration with the "Twitter faction" of the party. I'm pretty sure that group doesn't have the votes to force him out. OTOH the Democrats are likely still in a position to get the votes to turf Johnson and replace him with Jeffries. There are plusses and minuses to them pulling the trigger, so we'll have to wait and see what they choose.

As it happens, it's one of my hobbies to think about and tinker with Champions Universe cosmology. I actually came up with my own rationale for the Gods Celestial. My concept is based on and inspired by hints and precedents from the published CU setting books, so it's compatible with them; but takes the ideas farther. One clue comes from Champions Beyond p. 296 discussing the Progenitors, specifically their evolutionary Ascension: "By approximately three million years ago, the Progenitors had become so knowledgeable and powerful that they transcended the Reality of this plane of existence. They learned to transform their bodies into energy as well as other physical forms, and to rise through the dimensions to other places. A few of them became fascinated by this process and left Earth's plane never to return, but most were still absorbed in the Great Mission and remained here to continue it." And later, discussing The Progenitors Today: "Any one of them is far more powerful than nearly any superhuman, and any who choose to ascend into higher Realities likely become more powerful still." As you are clearly aware, those "higher realities" lie in Briah on the Sephirothic Tree of Life, in dimensions whose inhabitants are spirits embodying pure concepts. The other clue comes from Champions Of The North describing CU Canada, which often refers to the "Four Great Spirits": the Land, the Sea, the Sky, and the Ice. These spirits sometimes involve themselves in affairs of the Canadian North, are connected to/served by other powerful entities such as the demonic Kigatilik (see Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains), and have even empowered mortals to be their agents. Although they're presented in what appears to be a magical context, they come across as more "conceptual" than mere mythic gods; and some of their empowered champions wield cosmic-type powers, including the hero Celestar and villain Borealis. All this led me to decree for my own games, that the Gods Celestial were once beings already of godlike power and status, either "mystic" or "cosmic," whose knowledge and wisdom enabled them to pierce the Veil of the Temple and ascend to Briah and a more transcendent existence. At least some of them retain a connection to Assiah, the Material World -- perhaps metaphysical, perhaps merely sentimental -- and still occasionally revisit it, if only in avatar form. And some of those still actively involve themselves in the affairs of the worlds they left behind. Anyway, that's how I interpret the Gods Celestial. BTW I have my own notions about the Galaxars, the Corelords, and lots of other related stuff; but that's all getting much farther afield from what you asked about.

If you want to know how far I would want to take that, I would be inclined toward the standards of hate speech laws in Canada. But of course, I'm not American. The law and culture of my country is different. It just seems to me that what you have is not working for you as intended, at least not any more.

The daikaiju genre does seem to be particularly hot right now, in multiple media. If a book could be finished within a year, that wave might be ride-able. If possible, a Pacific Rim-like tie-in would be ideal.

Fifth Edition Champions laid a good foundation for that, with the Monster Island source book, and two Digital Hero articles, "Murder on Monster Island" (DH 32) and "Return to Monster Island" (DH 37). Personally I found all those kaiju a little under-powered, but that's pretty easy to adjust upward.

Yes, please show consideration for the disposition of my immortal soul.

"The 2020 presidential election was rigged" is not spin. "The Biden family are criminals" is not spin. "COVID is a hoax" is not spin. People spreading demonstrable lies should be held accountable for the harm they do, which as we've seen, can be considerable.

The legal standard of whether a "reasonable person" would believe propaganda is not adequate. There are clearly no few unreasonable people in the world, and propaganda can do great harm to them, and to those around them.

Soft.

Sorry, didn't mean to be repetitive. But it just sticks in my craw, because it encourages people not in the know to downplay how serious the charge is. But of course "hush money" is an easier sell to an audience who don't follow the details of a story. It does highlight how Trump has managed to retain his personal fortune despite his managerial ineptitude. He uses other people's money. The "crowds" of Trump supporters appearing outside the courthouse during the past two days of the trial have numbered in the dozens. That must sting Donnie as badly as the mean tweets.

I'm getting pretty annoyed with the press continuing to call this a "hush money" trial. There's nothing illegal for paying someone to not reveal details of actions which aren't criminal. This is a campaign-fund misappropriation felony trial, over a significant amount of money explicitly raised for funding an election campaign allegedly being diverted to another purpose, deliberately mislabeled as "legal expenses," and the payment not being reported to the FEC. EDIT: Added "allegedly" for legal reasons.

Book Of The Destroyer includes alternate power level character sheets for the Doctor, as well for models of his armor from his earliest days to the present, mirroring the evolution of the character from his first appearance in The Island of Dr. Destroyer to his most recent 6E version. One of those could be used as the basis for the debut of the character in whatever venue you choose, and can thus be "aged" for subsequent adventure encounters. Pursuant to my suggestion of Mechanon above, Book Of The Machine treats that character the same way. For any villains in this Champions Rises book, I'd take a cue from the core books from past editions, and make the majority of them lower power level, suitable as opposition for beginning heroes.

As far as adventures go, I believe those which appeared in Digital Hero would all be usable with Hero Games' permission. I'm pretty certain it was stipulated that anything which was published in DH belongs to Hero Games. Technically that would be the property of whoever owns Champions Online now, but nobody on the MMO side appears to pay any attention to what's happening in PnP any more. Almost all of them include full write-ups for NPCs, artwork, and maps. They'd only need game stats updated from 5E to 6E. Several of those adventures were written as convention-style games to introduce new players to Hero, so setup and power level would make any of them appropriate to include with the book being discussed here. My own suggestion would be "Unearthed Mechana" from DH #12. That would be a way to introduce Mechanon and its robotic forces as the "big bad" of a campaign, just as it was included in most past editions of the Champions core book.

In the unified Multiverse in which I like to set all my game worlds, Magic is, fundamentally, a force of Chaos, a power which can warp reality and physical laws according to the will and imagination of its user. Some creatures and races, and a few rare humans, are inherently magical, and can tap and control that force instinctively and at will, the way we walk and breathe. How such magic manifests is usually limited to a creature's nature and function, e.g. a dragon breathing fire, a ghost becoming invisible or intangible, and so on. Sapient beings can learn to consciously utilize magic, often in much more diverse ways. However, without that instinctive connection they need to find a rational approach to using magic that they can comprehend. Hence a given society or school conceives a philosophy for how magic works reflective of their own world view, a structure and style with rules they must follow to achieve the effects they want. Because magic responds to will and imagination, those rules truly become necessary to use that magic style, even though another style may have very different rules. This is the reason why there are so many diverse forms of magic, whereas science holds and seeks to further uncover one set of universal physical laws, which exist irrespective of a person's knowledge or belief. (BTW the process of magic conception I describe above is pretty much how they came to be in the real world.)

That makes for a funny line for Edna Mode, but if it was an inevitable reality in comics books Batman would be dead many times over. Out of all the laws of physics that superheroes break on a regular basis, this doesn't even rate.

I doubt either his editors or Howard himself expected people to still be reading his work a hundred years later, let alone discussing it. They were just trying to make a buck doing what they enjoyed.

At this point I'll be grateful for whatever Hero product I can get.

If it helps, I got this off the Marvel Fandom Wiki: "Unlike the Kree and Skrull Galaxies, which are identified as the Large Magellanic Cloud and Andromeda Galaxy, respectively, the Shi'ar Galaxy has yet to be associated with a real-life galaxy. Annihilation: Prologue stated the Shi'ar Empire to be located in M31; however as M31 is another designation for the Andromeda Galaxy, this is unlikely. A similarly-named galaxy such as M33 - the Triangulum Galaxy - may have been intended, but so far the error is yet to be corrected."