Steve

Session one is in the books. I decided I was tired of dnd and got my brother and our friends interested in a champions game.( they too were tiring of dnd and everyone had played champions 20 years ago ).
 
Had session zero last month, let them rework the kinks out of their characters in that test session.
 
A decade ago I had an idea- there was this old game called Torg which last couple years got rereleased as Torg Eternity and reading both made me realize that it would make an awesome Champions game- why wouldn’t earth tap into its own possibility energy and create superheroes to fight back against reality raiders?
Cast ( forgot to write down their real names, they haven’t come up with super names )
 
undead brick, tough as nails and can take a hit.
Alien battle suit wearer with blaster and stealth field
Teleporting darkness welder, blasts of darkness and strength drains
Regenerating knife and gun assassin. Not much defense, but rapidly heals.
 
There are two other characters joining next session. A mentality and a martial artist.
 
Our hero’s start as regular people, on a ferry off the coast of Manhattan in NYC. Milling around, enjoying drinks and the sightseeing. It’s opening day so Mets vs Nats playing on the tv over the bar.
 
When suddenly the sky splits open and a terrible storm splits the sky, and a bridge made of wood and vines 1/4 mile streaks down from the hole in the sky and slams into the stadium, the feed cutting off and the aftershock rocking the boat even that far away….. and then the tv shuts off and the engine on the boat dies. Cell phones and other electronics don’t work.
 
The party and other civilians mill around and think about using the life boats to get to shore. But notice that the ferry is starting to rust and life boats are beginning to rot. At this point the party notices flyers peeling off the bridge and flying across the city. Including right towards the ferry!
 
As they get closer times slows to a stop, each hero finds themselves surrounded by their own private storm- like a hurricane and a tornado and thunderstorm all rolled into one. Seeing all the things that could be for a brief moment. When the storms subside, our hero’s are transformed and reborn.
Just in time to see 5 flyers, looking like prehistoric terradactyls with lizard men like riders with spears flying in looking for blood.
 
Fight ensues, with the party using their new found powers to defend themselves and civilians from the invaders spears and creatures sonic screams. Wasn’t without cost, however, 2 civilians killed and one body take away by the lone flyer for unknown reason.
 
After calming the civilians and some creative ideas with powers they get the ferry to the shore. After some debate and looking around, noticing the the grass is growing wildly and vines growing up and down buildings, they decided to keep the people on the ferry while they look around. One of party notices one of the buildings shimmer and change into a crystalline struck. At first the party ignores it, until the alien battle suit wielder gets a message, first in language unknown, until it rotates into one it’s knows- the structure is sending out a warning that it’s the last outpost of a fallen reality, and brings a warning to anyone who listens. Intrigued the party now decides to explore the crystal structure. A couple skill rolls pulls up some more information about the invaders and the bridge. And pulls up a crystal camera that lets them look around seeing a) lizard creatures in Central Park burying humans in graves with something placed on their chests. B.) hospital to the NE in the city looks like there is a fight and activity and c) looking east Philly still looks like it still has lights and free of invaders and d) Holland tunnel is still clear, where as other bridges and tunnels are either occupied or destroyed.
 
After leaving the crystal structure, it fades away and reverts back to a vine covered building.
 
At this point the party is deciding what to do next knowing they have information no one else has.
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We just dinged 17 years married, man.
 
It's frustrating as I've finally gotten the spine to speak up and state I don't want to go events that cause me discomfort (usually stuff involving his brothers) and he's gotten better about accepting that -- albeit, he still pushes against even that at times.  I'm not asking him to not participate -- just that I don't want to play/be a pawn in a pre-scripted encounter for the Sake of The Story. 😕
 

Life it too short for a bad game. Admit to being anti-social or better, admit to being an introvert. Tell your husband that the GM creeps you out, and that it's fine if he wants to play, but you don't like 5e, and you definitely don't like being railroaded. This game feels  bad, and remind him of the Wednesday game.

Failing that, have the character become reckless, and try the impossible. If the character dies, Immediately pick up your things, tell your husband that you will pick him up at the end of the game and leave quickly.

If the GM Bends the rules to keep you alive, then you have evidence of railroading, and you have a reason to leave, as well. 
 
In any case you are going to have to be firm. Loving, but firm.

During her reign, some of the most famous works of fiction were first written in Great Britain and later were made into movies as they rose to become worldwide phenomena.

The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit)
James Bond
Harry Potter

There are base mechanics in Hero and they are reasonably intuitive.
A bell curve roll to determine success is a base mechanic.
For skills that is a straight-forward bell-curve roll against a target number.
For combat, there is a formula to reach the bell-curve target number.
But, its still a bell-curve roll and modifiers affect it accordingly.
The same is true of damage and defenses.
There are base DC costs and base defense costs and consistent interactions.
And modifiers to those (and all powers) follow a consistent formula.
The AP/RP math is delightfully straight-forward and easy to use.
 
Is Hero simple? No. Hero is complex. 
Is Hero linear? No. Hero uses a bell curve.
Is Hero closed? No. Hero is an open eco-system.
 
But, for all that, it has clear and consistent "base mechanics."
Though, "mechanics" might not be the right word. It has clear and consistent mathematics.
I have been saying hero is the DOS prompt of the RPG world rather than a GUI since pre-DOJ boards.
This review is like a Windows user saying DOS isn't a core mechanic.
DOS is what Windows runs on. Its just hidden way under the hood.
In Hero there is no hood. You are staring straight at the engine that makes it go.
 
In fact, I would argue Hero is more consistent than many games that claim to have "core mechanics."
Why? Because the math is internally consisted and you have to engineer everything to play.
In many other games a lot of rules are hand-waving and the art of what "felt right" to the designers.
That's not, in of itself, a "Bad Thing" (TM), but it is far closer to gaming art than gaming science.
Not everyone wants to code the game they are going to play.
This reviewer is clearly such a person.

They shouldn't feel anything directly related to the power, but should notice over time that its having an effect: why does this woman seem so compelling?  its like I've lost my mind or something...

I recently came across an article for an AI-created art program called Midjourney and wondered if anyone on here had ever used it.
 
The online art that it generated was pretty impressive.

I like that idea.  Mr. Shrike has rules for making a potion master ... add small icons and talismans to the list.  HMMMM!  I think I may have to toss out all my work I have done so far and remake my clerics.
 
Toubaris (travel, skill, commerce) Potions healing, Potion Endurance, Talisman of glibness (+2 on trading for one day), Talisman of alarm, Oil of movement (rub on shoes get +3 to run and all run is at 0 End)
 
Themis (Law, Protection, Vengeance) Potion of armour, Flask of protection (break it for a 6/6 FW at you location), Oil of vengeance (rub it on you to get a damage shield)
 
Ohhhh I can see some possibilities now.  Lesser potions (up to 20 AP), Potions (21 - 40 AP), Greater potions (41 - 60 AP)  Substitute Oil, Philter, Talisman, Icon, Coin, etc  As long as it has limited uses and defined durations (We need the worshippers to come back again to donate)  
 
Marilea (Plants, Earth, Death/milestones)  Dust of crops (CE field to a fruitful field), Talisman of labour (Healing only to offset Birthing), Loam of Healing (Place over wound to HoT),  Greater Talisman of Alarm (Protects for up to a season).

For an example of divine domains that *isn't* D&D, there's the Scion game from White Wolf. The gods of myth are often (though not always) portrayed as having distinctive areas of interest and influence, so I won't say that giving their priests distinctive areas of influence is an automatic D&D-ism. "D&D does it that way" is a lousy reason to design features for a Fantasy Hero game, but it isn't an automatic reason to reject a design choice, either.
 
If you also want a set of universal magical powers that are available to all channelers of divine power, these should be based on the fundamental priestly role of representing the god or gods to a community of worshipers, and the worshipers to the god. There... No, I don't see healing as universally clerical. Curing disease, maybe, if you've decided that disease is caused by evil spirits the cleric casts out of curses that the cleric lifts. But curing wounds? It's useful for anyone, but that doesn't make it suitable for every god.
 
If you feel you *must* give all clerics healing, define SFX to fit it within a domain. Like, the Artisan God's priest intones "From clay were you made; now to clay return, that the Great Maker's hand may repair you!" And the wounded area briefly becomes clay, which flows back together before reverting to flesh.
 
You've got a better case for Spiritual Weapon, as a basic low-power "Manifest Wrath of God" with which to smite enemies of the community. But again, it whould be skinned to fit the god's themes.
 
I find Detect Magic dubious as written, since I tend to think of magic as a fairly broad category. If there's enough variation to make Discriminatory meaningful (let alone Analyze), that should be at least a 5-point category.
 
To make it more clerical, I would adjust it to Detect Souls, or Detect Spiritual Forces, whatever those might be in your setting. This enables clerics to detect whether a creature has a soul; if it is being affected by a god or spirit (incidentally revealing whether a person is a cleric); or if an object is a holy/unholy relic and, if so, to which god it is consecrated. But if there are forms of non-divine magic, there's no intrinsc reason that all clerics should be able to detect them. (Or if there is, that's something you've defined about magic in your setting, as well as about clerics.)
 
More later.
 
Dean Shomshak

In a WWII game, you could set it up like how the first MCU Captain America movie did. Cap wasn’t directly fighting Nazi Germany’s main forces but the HYDRA organization they funded. His fight against the Red Skull was a subset of the greater war raging around them.
 
You could do a campaign the same way. There are supervillains, monsters and mad scientists working for the Nazis, and the heroes are focused on fighting them. While they aren’t easily trouncing Nazi soldiers in the various battlefields, their efforts are keeping the mad scientists and supervillains occupied, or _they_ will trounce Allied soldiers.

Viper's Nest was always a favorite of mine. 

God Yes.  This extended through the Re-enactment Community. A LOT of prior Service types joined re-enactment groups in the nineties and the early oughts.  So many contcts, but the club was able to restore a pre-ww2 Coastal Artillery Gun in San Francisco, asking around the Artillery community, and found spare parts for a T-34/85. The institutional knowledge was breathtaking.

Wouldn't the Green Beret be a "Contact"?
 
The Mute Girlfriend could be quite interesting. She probably still wants her opinions known at least to her friends, and might become one of the fastest texter in her social group. She might also pursue other interests like art or writing as a channel for self expression. The problem with a lot of "disabled" Characters as they become ":saintly, but we all have our flaws.  Does she follow gossip? Is she an online troll, because no one would suspect the silent girl? A lot of GMs make the DNPC Girlfriend a Damsel in Distress, but, what if she was the instigator, due to something she posted online? 

For several years now, I've been working on developing the planet Ashraal, seat of the space-god tyrant Xarriel, the Champions Universe's Darkseid/Thanos homage. I hope to publish it one day through Hero Games' Hall of Champions imprint.
 
I admit my concept takes some inspiration from Darkseid and Apokolips, but I wanted to more deeply explore a theocratic society where the ruler is the actual god they worship; and a world that's been shaped by that god solely to support his ambitions of conquest.

Flattering, but I think one of the other GMs in my gaming group topped me with the adventure that had our PCs fighting in, and against, a lake of sentient petroleum buried deep beneath the North Sea. "Special Environments" became sort of a theme for that campaign.
 
We also fought the alien Star Gods on/in their homeworld within the Gray Nebula, a planetoid made of the corpses of the miles-long corpses of the real Star Gods, who had passed echoes of their appearances, power and personalities to the space maggots that had fed on them. (Sort of a Jack Kirby homage, but much weirder.)
 
Dean Shomshak

In my two "Supermage" playtest campaigns, I created many of the supernatural/extradimensional realms of the CU such as the Congeries, mad patchwork realm of the dimesnional conqueror Skarn, and Babylon, the City of Man. IIRC the PC Artifex had CK: Babylon because he grew up and still spent much of his time there.
 
Some PCs also went to Manoa, a Muvia/Atlantean "lost city" in the jungle-clad mountains of Brazil. Except... In my campaign world there was no Mu or Atlantis. Something else was going on.
 
In my latest campaign, PCs raided the Hot Zone, a deadly subterranean "zoo" and "garden" created by the mad biologist villain Helix. I hope to send the PCs there again, as there's a lot more for them to discover.
 
Dean Shomshak

Well, I've run through my share of alien planets, fantasy dimensions, underwater kingdoms, underground "lost worlds," etc. I think the most exotic location I ever gamed any substantial time in was based on a brief reference for the current official Champions Universe, which I greatly elaborated for my own use (with some assistance from forum posters). The Valley of Night is a hidden vale in South America containing a remnant of the pre-Columbian Inca civilization of South America, ruled by "were-jaguar priests." I tied the Valley to an official villain derived from the same cultural region, the terrible demon-goddess of darkness called Eclipsar, who hates the Sun and seeks to extinguish it.
 
As I defined it, the Valley was created by Eclipsar as a refuge for her worshipers, who were driven from the Inca Empire by the followers of its dominant cult, that of the sun-god Inti. The Valley is shielded from the Sun and all other celestial light by a canopy of illusion which looks like the surrounding jungle, and which casts the Valley in perpetual night. The denizens of the Valley have a civilization derived from that of the Incas, filtered through the worship of their dark goddess. The Valley itself has developed a unique ecosystem adapted to its lightless conditions, and influenced by the presence of spirits from Inca folklore.
 
Again with assistance from helpful community members, I compiled this info into a PDF "sourcebooklet" and put it in the free file Downloads section of this website. Anyone curious can find it here.
 
 

Prehaps the infamous "What Rogue Beast" should work. The adventure should have a nice laboratory and maze work location, and a monster hunt with a terrifying bear/spider hybrid monster.

You need rationales for warriors to fight, wizards to cast spells, rogues to roguishly rogue, and priests to heal/minister/interface with the gods.  
 
There are a number of ways to do that:
 
War:  There's a war on, and the PCs are part of it.  It works better if they're part of a small unit of what we'd call "combined arms" IRL.  Pro's: defined roles and missions.  Every PC gets a chance to do their thing.  Cons: PCs are part of a military organization and players might not take kindly to having to follow orders.  May or may not be a lot of available rewards ("loot drops").  Players expecting "traditional fantasy" might be disappointed.  References: the Black Company series by Glen Cook.  The Misenchanted Sword by Lawrence Watt-Evans.
 
West Marches:  Based on a campaign idea by Ben Robbins.  Overland exploration, mapping, fighting, and treasure hunting.  Pro's:  Defined roles. Amenable to drop-in players by design.  Cons:  Dungeon crawl overland, if you're looking for not-a-dungeon crawl.  
 
City-based vigilante adventurers:  Fantasy Dark Champions, essentially.  Characters can solve crimes, find missing persons, help the poor and weak, and so on, within the walls of a city.  Pro's:  Mission-based.  Cons: Even less traditional fantasy than the war campaign; characters who need the tropes will probably not enjoy this.  References: the Garrett, PI series by Glen Cook.  Probably others I'm blanking on.  

A variation if the exploration theme could be that the party is dwarves. Centuries ago your stronghold was put under a protective sleep spell to protect you from the disaster that was coming. You’ve awoke but no longer know what’s going on the outside world. Further, you’ve got no response from any other stronghold. Whats happened to them?

How about a game set in Earth’s far past when the Slug’s race ruled the world and you’re a group of escaped pit fighters/slaves?

This, spot on. It was one of the first things that struck me when I saw the published guidelines for plate, the average attack will do nothing against plate. You need to push one of the larger two-handed weapons to do any damage, get really lucky, or have a combat technique to negate some of the advantage of armour (half-swording FTW). Those special fighting techniques were also not something the standard fighter on the field would possess. But then, considering the exorbitant cost of plate, it was well worth it to those who could afford it.
 
But, for the sake of running a game, we make exceptions. How many people actually play the "Real Armour" part of the disads? How many people charge their players for the upkeep (replacing buckles, strapping, pounding out dents, etc)? Make the players spend time doing maintenance while adventuring? Good armour is going to require a lot of maintenance in the field to protect it against the elements and stave off rust and rot. Some of the real major disadvantages of plate are distinctly *not fun* for most play groups.

One thing to keep in mind is that vs the type of foes that were actually encountered in the real world the weapons did a lot less damage than in the game.  Unlike in a game, historically the only real opponents people in the Middle Ages faced were other humans. Humans during that time period where actually smaller than they are today, and in the game, characters are even larger.  That means the average sword was not doing anywhere near max damage.  
 
A person attacking you with a sword was probably doing 1d6 +1.  That means the maximum damage they can do is 7 BODY.   DEF 8 armor means they cannot actually do any BODY.  Even a critical hit to the head (assuming hit locations are being used) only does 19 STUN to a character with wearing full plate and PD of 8.  The average damage from a long sword is 4.5 Body and 11.25 STUN.  This means the knight in full plate takes no damage form the average sword hitting him.   
 
It seems to me that the Hero System is actually fairly accurate as far as armor goes. The average knight in full plate is probably going to ignore somewhere around 90% of the attacks coming from a historically accurate opponent.  If he is facing something like Roland or Lancelot he is probably going to take more, but vs the ordinary foot soldier not much.  When you start throwing in 7-foot orcs with body like an Olympic weightlifter then they start taking more.   If you want armor to be as effective as historically was don’t throw opponents that are 4 times as strong.