Steve

The Red Doom characters got something of a makeover in the 4E book, Classic Organizations, laying out circumstances which reshuffled the membership, putting all the more genuinely heroic characters into a private team called the New Guard, while the more ruthless ones formed a villain team actually called Red Doom. That could form a template on one way to bring these supers forward to post-Soviet collapse; however, their origins and cultural references are very dated by this point, so even by this tactic, using them for the present day would be problematic.
 
Now, I've long thought that in a world of superhumans, the Putin regime would definitely try to recruit or create supers to serve it. I believe that would offer an opening to use some of the RD characters as the basis for a new team, but probably with some name changes and tweaks to their backgrounds; or maybe with new original characters.
 
In the current official Champions Universe time line there were two government superhero teams for the Soviet Union, following the distinction made for the two teams in Red Doom: the People's Legion, which like the RD team, the Comintern, were mostly traditional superheroes who happened to be loyal to "the other side;" and Red Winter, a black ops team like RD's Supreme Soviets. In the present day almost none of the People's Legion are still active or have received write-ups, but Red Winter are still intact, having gone mercenary after the breakup of the Soviet Union. All of the team are physically enhanced, either through genetic engineering, technological augmentation, or magic, so age needn't be a pressing concern for them. They're fully detailed in Champions Villains Volume Two: Villain Teams.
 
Red Winter's members have differing goals. Some of them were loyal Communists and would like to restore the Soviet Union, and are unhappy with the current Russian kleptocracy. Others are more amoral and ruthless, just in it for the money and thrills. But all of them enjoyed the comforts and perks of state support, and might be lured back to serve Russia with offers of a renewed privileged status.
 
Another powerful Soviet hero, Spektr (Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains) experienced a comic-book-style accident which hurled him forward decades in time to the contemporary era, when he is a total fish out of water. He searches for a cause he can believe in and fight for, as he once fought for Communism. Not only is he one more character one might use as-is, that scenario could be applied more generally to the supers from the original Red Doom book, allowing you to keep them pretty much as written, even with some of their anachronistic elements.

They would be best for a Bronze Age setting. Way too out of date for the modern era.
 
That said, perhaps the presence of Soviet superhumans prolonged the life of the USSR in an alternate Champions universe, and that’s where the campaign is set. It might feel a bit like Watchmen.
 
Another possible way to use them would be as a part of a plot by Empress V’Han or maybe a time travel mission into the future for them from before the fall of the Soviet Union. After all, if you can bring Captain America forward from World War II into the modern world, you could do it with Soviet superhumans and might be pretty fun to have something so retro running around causing havoc.

Scott's online obituary page was launched today, if people are inclined to leave messages of condolence.
(Thanks to "epelesker" on the Champions Online forums for informing us.)
 
https://www.myalternatives.ca/abbotsford/obituaries/2022-bennie-robert-scott?fbclid=IwAR1OvJ7ZsOhtjz_bUkUq3vc9YwFylm0cE7jbk2rh91nJ6aaK7HyUgSBxbjg

Hello everyone,
 
I’d like to announce the availability of a new Hero System character sheet for Roll20 intended for heroic-level campaigns. “Hero System 6e Heroic” is available alongside Darren’s “Hero System 6e” in Roll20’s game options. This is an entirely new character sheet that uses no code from the earlier sheet.
 
HS6e Heroic has a different design philosophy motivated by the needs of heroic settings such as Fantasy Hero and Star Hero. Over the last year or so I worked on a Star Hero campaign, but felt stymied because the existing character sheet was inappropriate for the setting. Eventually I decided I would either have to drop the idea or learn html and javascript and develop my own sheet. I hope the result makes running and playing Hero games easier, especially for new players. The project took about three months.
 
Features include:  
 
1) A bookkeeping system, which hopefully provides a full accounting of points spent on characteristics, skills, powers, talents, perks, and complications. Includes support for skill enhancers, group levels, and overall levels and calculates skill rolls.
2) Self-contained. No custom APIs needed. Usable with a basic free Roll20 account. Those with a pro-level account may still find the Hero Roller script useful for more flexible macros.
3) Heavy focus on skills. Support for 30 general skills, 7 combat skills, 6 martial skills, and 9 languages.
4) Support for 10 powers and/or frameworks.
5) Designed for purchased equipment, armor, and weapons. Adds weight and calculates END, DCV, and dexterity penalties.
6) Support for normal and killing damage weapons. Rolls and calculates BODY and STUN of each attack type. (Only recently possible without custom APIs.)
7) Uses basic armor activation instead of hit locations since this is simpler and probably more appropriate for heroic settings.
 
Some caveats:
 
1) Unfortunately, you will not be able to easily switch between the two 6e Roll20 character sheets. The code bases and lists of attributes are really very different. Although it should be possible to write some kind of translation script, I don’t have plans to do this.
2) I should mention that except for a few items needed to support the underlying math there are no lists of skills, power descriptions, power advantages, etc. You will need official Hero Games source material to actually fill out the character sheet and understand how to create a character and play the game. I am intrigued by eepjr24’s Hero Designer to Roll20 import script and may look into porting it. No promises though.
3) The new API for displaying your avatar on-sheet is implemented, but only supported on the Dev Server at this time. I expect it to be approved for general use soon.
 
I’ve tested my code in Chrome, Firefox, Safari (Mac and iPad), and MS Edge. There are some cosmetic differences between browsers, but nothing major. Roll20 on iPad Safari is harder to use, but it does work. Note that although Safari and Edge aren’t officially supported by Roll20, that hasn’t stopped me from using Safari as my primary browser in Roll20 games.
 
I welcome your comments and bug reports. I’m thinking about ways to improve handling of basic and martial maneuvers, possible optional support for hit locations, and general ways to improve usability.
 
GitHub Readme with screenshots: https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/blob/master/HeroSystem6eHeroic/README.md
 
Cheers,
 
Villain In Glasses

There’s a new Roll20 project in the works with a Q4 2022 targeted release. The Champions Complete Bundle will include a combined Compendium of Champions Complete and Champions Begins, plus the Champions Begins tutorial adventure and an additional set of maps and tokens.
 
If you’re unfamiliar with Roll20 Compendiums, they provide simple rules and content access with filtering and search capabilities. Additionally, Compendiums allow users to drag and drop character tokens directly into maps and access their character sheets. For example, a GM could drop a villain into a map and access the villain’s character sheet in seconds. The Compendium will use the currently available HeroSystem6e character sheet. Additionally, the GM can share the Compendiums with their players.
 
The Champions Begins adventure will have links to easily access content, character sheets for the pre-generated characters and villains as well as maps and tokens to run the adventure. The Game Master book will also be available in the Compendium allowing GMs and players to quickly reference information. 
 
We will continue to use this topic in the coming months to post news of the progress and to get feedback from the community on the project. 
 
We hope you’ll be as exited about this project as we are! 

You know it is funny, I have met several gun enthusiasts from the south and have never met anyone that matches your stereotype.  I remember some people buying ammo and weapons because there were promises to outlaw them but that was not an assumption by the people making the purchases, it was the rhetoric of the campaign which was pretty damn clear.  They tried to implement what they were saying as well if I remember but were stopped by the courts.
 
I decided I have absolutely no use for arrogant leftists that go around lecturing people on how ist and phobe all the right wingers were when  I saw on twitter the  video a young black kid made in a Seattle or Portland hospital, I forget which exactly.  Kid was maybe 20 and he was talking about the young white BLM Antifa member who, because the young black kid had a red MAGA hat on, approached him called him the N-Word to his face and then stabbed him in the stomach with a kitchen knife.  Luckily this kid survived.  He was pretty calm and reasonable considering what he went through but still did not have complementary things to say about the person that stabbed him.  Of course the cops never made an arrest because you know protesters were making a stand for Die versity.
 
See leftists can talk this kind of talk all they want but all the most terrible racial slurs and complete stupidity seems to come from their side.
 
For myself I would have no issue handing out at a bar with some rednecks who believe in Open Carry.  They tend not to ever pull their weapons or do stupid things with them.  It might be the training they got in all those  concealed carry firearms classes.  You know the ones that Alec Baldwin should have taken. That incident suggests to me it is the leftists that have guns I should worry about.
 
But whadda I know ....

waiting to hear how many are available, but the price will for 15.00 for one book, or 25.00 for both, not sure on shipping costs yet, I suggested USPS Flat Rate envelopes, which 2 books fit nicely in
 
 

As LoneWolf suggested, I would use the Power skill and edit the Display to Divination. I would then use Custom Adders to add the Divinination method, using a cost of 0 for the three (one primary, two secondary).The one oddity is that you cannot create a 1/2 point Custom Adder; however,as explicitly stated in the Hero System Skills (aka The Ultimate Skill), buying one extravsecondary divinition method costs 1 (minimum Hero System cost), it's not much of an issue. If you buy one extra secondary, you buy a 1 point adder. If you buy 2 extra secondary methods, buy one adder with a cost of 1 and the other with a cost of 0.  Alternatively, you could combine multiple primaries or secondaries on one line using the total cost for those methods.
 

 
 
 

Who wouldn't want to be a Perv-ect?

You can always make elves and goblins the same race. The good ones are called elves, the bad ones goblins.
 
You can run a fantasy game without elves and other nonhumans. Lots of classic fantasy novels don't include them. Conan is the most popular example, but don't forget about Thieves' World and the Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories.
 
If you want fantasy races but not elves, you can draw from the MythAdventures series for inspiration. The Talislanta RPG is also good. Note that the game has several races that resemble elves despite the "No Elves" tagline.
 
 
I don't define fantasy as magic being present in the world. I define it as a story or game set in an imaginary world, whether or not magic exists there. Tales set in our world with the inclusion of magic would also count as fantasy. Clerical magic can be a slippery slope in a game set in our world. Lots of stories about miracles are articles of faith, which I tend to avoid. But I wouldn't be averse to running a game set in Medieval Europe with clerics casting low-level spells.
 
For me, alt-history has to take place in our world, whether it is magic or not. I would consider a historical campaign with very little magic or even just psionics alt-history, but I would term an imaginary low-tech world (even with parallels from our world) without magic very low fantasy. But it all depends on how you define fantasy.

It's almost a running joke in LOTR that hobbits were always being left out of the old legends and the old lists of the Speaking Peoples. When and how they came to be is never really defined the way the other races are. Gandalf is the only one of the Wise who studied them, or even paid them much heed, before the War of the Ring.

For my "Fantasy Europe" alternate-history Fantasy Hero Campaign, I did a version of hobbits but they never came up in play. For this I emphasized the "Hidden Small Folk" trope, owing more to Pliny by way of Robert E. Howard that to J. R. R. Tolkien. (Though in the introduction to The Hobbit Tolkien said hobbits were still around, just staying out of sight from clumsy Big Folk.)
 
Humans called them Pygmies, or Picts. They took care to stay hidden, still living underground. They are still Stone Age folk, wielding spears, bows and arrows with points of chipped flint, and practicing their sacred rites in deep caves with paintings on the walls. Their lore-masters know much that Big Folk have forgotten or never knew. Their demons are the Unreborn, souls grown monstrous through refusal to submit to the cycle of reincarnation.
 
Some pygmies, however, resent the Big Folk who supplanted them. They form terrorist bands, using stealth, poison and dark magic drawn from the Unreborn to murder isolated communities of Big Folk... or, sometimes, entire neighborhoods of cities. They are called Goblins, and are justly feared.
 
Dean Shomshak

There are halflings in my "Magozoic" D&D campaign because it's a D&D campaign. I treat them mostly as just small humans. I have had no reason to develop their cultures to any great degree, in part because no one has yet asked to play one.
 
There are multiple halfling ethnicities. Halflings native to the heartlands of the Plenary Empire are called Leptopoda ("Lightfoots" -- no Stout subrace because their poison resistance schtick overlaps too much with dwarves.) Your basic peaceful agrarian folk, living in smallish hill areas with subterranean homes. Probably the most notable feature is that their gods form a divine village rather than the divine royal family so common among human cultures. There's no King of the Gods, there's a Mayor of the Gods. Other gods have similarly homely roles: shepherdess, wise old granny, artisans, farmers. No warriors or other "hero" types. Myths emphasize quick thinking and good sense, and usually end with everyone sitting down to a good dinner in good humor. Many Leptopoda have moved into human cities and assimilate well.
 
The Laterculi ("Bricklings" -- not their name for themselves) come from arid western lands that used to be part of the Plenary Empire, where they built pueblo-like adobe villages in oases. A long history of attacks from desert raiders made them clannish and suspicious of outsiders. They did not assimilate particularly well. The chief result of their becoming part of the Plenary Empire was to generate a national consciousness that they, as a whole, didn't belong in it. They got their wish when the western provinces broke away in the chaos following Panopticon's War. Then the Sorathite zealots returned from their long exile in the far west, conquered the whole regions, and gave the Laterculi the same choice they gave everyone else: convert or die. Plenary cities now have ghettoes of Laterculi refugees who still show no interest in assimilating.
 
Distant lands have their own halfling cultures. The port city of Thalassene has a small enclave of halflings from Vohai. Vohinese halflings have dark brown skin and straight black hair, often worn long in elaborate braids. These equatorial halflings introduced the Plenary Empire both to choolate and curry (Vohai is a major source of spices). Every lunch counter in Thalassene now includes a curry booth. Everyone knows, though, that for the very best curry you have to know someone in Little Vohai.
 
Dean Shomshak

This is true, and Lord Liaden's outline of their presence in the Turakian Age highlights that. There's a terrible whiff of "people want us to have them, so we'll shove them in".
 
Still, Tolkien's Hobbits are interesting. They have, of course, an idealized Englishness - one free of cities, or industry. In fact, the period of Sharkey's rule had marked overtones of the Industrial Revolution.

You could probably riff off this - with Sharkey getting the support of the Hobbit landowner class, instead of alienating them.

Hobbit landowner class? Oh my yes. What else were the Tooks and the Brandybucks? Why could Bilbo and Frodo loaf about in Bag End, while Sam and his family worked? Yes, there was their share of the dragon hoard - but Bilbo was doing it before that. There was a visible Hobbit gentry, shading into an outright aristocracy.

There's no need to have Hobbits to explore this, although using humans might be a bit too obvious.
 
So there's a place for "halflings", right there. They are human proxies.

In fact, you could even have stereotypical halfling Rogues - the dislocation of an Industrial Revolution, or even just enclosure of formerly common land, could easily produce the vagabond, dispossessed halflings that would have to take up the life of a Rogue.
 
But of course such things don't exist in most fantasy.

---
EDIT: This explains how New Zealand was settled by Hobbits. It was a penal colony!

(This started off as an Australia joke, but the Hobbit/New Zealand connection took over.)

Good! Bad! has no meaning if they are just labels.
 
Why is someone Bad and if they are Bad why can't they decide to become Good?  Christian thinking believes in forgiveness and eastern traditions believe you can work off karmic debt but ideology, especially in a fantasy setting does not have to follow our traditional paradigm.  T.S Lewis yes I know but that was the author's choice.
 
Perhaps when one breaks bad they lose the ability to be good!  Goodness, peace, mercy, kindness, forgiveness etc. might be a quality that we are born with kind of the opposite of original sin maybe and it is something that we have to protect.  Demons and evil may attempt to attack our character by making us destroy what is good inside of us because they know that once good is broken in a mortal it cannot be repaired.  It is just gone.
 
Such a world might have the kind of idyllic Andy Griffith Mayberry feel of a television show where everyone helps everyone out, no one steals  anything, the sheriff does not carry a bow and the deputy has one bolt in a quiver in his front pocket because nothing goes wrong in the kingdom.  The goblins and demons and evil races are the way they are because goodness was broken in the entire race.  Maybe at one point all the goblins were kind nice little creatures like hobbits but so many became corrupt they killed off all the good ones and there was no more good left in the race to be pushed to the next generation.
 
In this scenario the good kingdom is always under threat because Evil is always trying to corrupt people in order to turn the entire race evil.  Maybe some races are immune and goodness and evil are not absolutes so they are always neutral, able to decide or change their minds.
 
I would suggest this way of thinking about it makes for better roleplaying because the alignment has a purpose in the world.  It is explained and has rules and thus it is more than just OK I am good so I get to cast healing spells.  
 
You don't have to use this particular paradigm but if you think out one of your own and answer these questions to create a philosophy of alignment I would suggest it would be easier for you to answer these questions and make for a better game.
 
Cheers!
 
 

Another factor in a city's growth is how aggressively it pursues extending its influence, not necessarily by conquest. Look at the Italian city-state of Venice. During the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance it was a significant mercantile and maritime power through establishing colonies and trading posts across the Mediterranean to control trade routes. Phoenician cities like Tyre and Carthage took the same course.

While this thread has understandably focused on Scott Bennie's numerous contributions to the tabletop RPG hobby, he also wrote extensively for the computer gaming industry, such as being one of the earliest contributors to Fallout. Scott was also an avid supporter of the Champions Online MMORPG since its earliest days online, a frequent player and role-player, and a beloved contributor to the CO community, usually playing as his alter-ego from his long-term tabletop Champions campaigns, the Canadian superhero Thundrax. CO developers and player base have been brainstorming a permanent memorial to Scott/Thundrax in the game.
 
Scott's contributions to the CO forums included posting a number of engaging short stories set in the official Champions Universe, usually revolving around Thundrax. Since this thread has been dealing with reading his work, these stories provide an excellent window into Scott's humor, his points of view, and the kind of gaming environment he liked to promote. I gathered links to such of his stories as I could find. I don't think it's exhaustive, but it's a good overview, and IMHO a fun read. They're listed chronologically as they were posted, earliest to latest.
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/253481/the-interrogation
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1194343/woof
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1194573/day-of-the-tornado
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1203401/its-a-boo-tiful-day
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1208114/craig-carson-and-the-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1209355/hercules-vs-thundrax-in-the-arena-of-death
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1208186/this-story-does-not-exist
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1209565/war-of-the-craigs
 
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1209901/time-enough-for-war

Hello everyone! Hero Games publisher Jason Walters here with an update. But before I being telling you what we are up to at Hero Games this quarter, I thought I would take a moment to share my thoughts on where we are, what we are doing, and where we may go in the future. And, of course, to hear your thoughts as well. Because an RPG publishing company is at its core its fans. With them, it can accomplish a great many things. Without them, it can’t accomplish anything at all.
 
As many of you know Hero Games is owned by a parent company called DOJ Inc, which also owns the small press RPG distributor and promoter Indie Press Revolution (or IPR). While serving as general manager of IPR takes up most of my work time each day, it has also given me a lot of new ways to think about RPG publishing. Among these is the conviction that in the world of RPGs the line between fan, creator, and publisher should remain as blurry as possible. We are all fans and, in playing these games with one another, also creators. And that is really only a few short steps away from becoming designers and publishers as well.
 
If you’re like me, you’ve probably spent a measurable amount of your life using the Hero System to create just the sort of characters you’ve imagined, then shared them with your friends. I remember doing that a lot in my youth and, looking back on it, wasn’t that basically a kind of publishing? (Though admittedly, one with an extremely select audience!) Then years later in the late 90’s I discovered that there was an online community of people doing exactly the same thing, which renewed my interest in locating people to play Champions with once again. This in turn led to an odd and extremely unlikely series of events that involved befriending a nearly seven-foot-tall bouncer at a seedy San Francisco bar, making an entirely new circle of interesting friends, and eventually attending a business meeting with one of the suspects in actual case behind Tom Hank’s 1982 made-for-television film Mazes and Monsters that, eventually, ended in my writing the words you are reading today.
 
So that’s who I am, and probably who you are too: a fan. And it was in that spirit that I launched our DriveThruRPG community content program Hall of Champions a year or two back, which hummed along nicely for a while for a while before quieting down. Now I have a new idea in the same vein. I’m planning on launching a Hero Games Patreon (https://www.patreon.com) account that will serve a platform for new manuscripts to be seen and reviewed by serious fans before moving on to physical and electronic publication and distribution, with the goal moving forward to release a new book or project each quarter. You’ll be able to see and comment upon raw, unedited work before it travels the road to publication, and get an early peek into upcoming products while also contributing to their development. And you’ll get credit in the pages of that work for doing so.
 
My plan is for there to be a single level at $5.00 per month. We’ll release individual 3 to 5 page sections of manuscripts sequentially each week, possibly several manuscripts at a time, entering patron’s suggestions and edits into a spreadsheet for that manuscript as we go. Then, after those patrons have had a good hard look at the content, we’ll integrate the input into the product during the later stages of production.
 
Right now I’ve got several complete or almost complete manuscripts ready to go plus the beginnings of several others. The first is Gaslight by Christopher Hackler, author of Hero System Book of Templates 1 & 2. It’s a setting for competent normals set in London in the 1890’s. Think League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Call of Cthulhu, and Sherlock Holmes mashed together with all sorts of period characters like Spring-Heeled Jack, Dracula, and the Invisible Man.
 
The second is Imperial Throne, a Champions organization book about a deadly conspiracy whose goal is to transform the world into villainous parody of classical Chinese heaven. Our friend and fellow fan Michael Satran, author of such works as Imaginary Friends and Foxbat For President, was writing it when he was suddenly and tragically struck down by brain cancer in 2017. It’s 99% complete, and packed with hundreds of pages of characters, locations, and source material.
 
Though it isn’t a Hero Games product, I’m in possession of the final unreleased novel of our recently deceased friend and veteran Hero Games author Scott Bennie. Entitled The Last Orc, it's quite a lovely, classical sort of fantasy novel - the sort of thing we all grew up on, but one seldom sees these days. I’ve touched base with Scott’s family and they would like for it to be released, so we will use the upcoming Patreon account to do that, then most likely pass it on to my own High Rock Press imprint for actual publication.
 
Additionally, I have some projects of my own I would like to release using this method. I’ve begun getting chapters of my Star Hero supplement The Melancholy Seas of Space ready. It’s a sort of homage to Nishizaki’s Space Battleship Yamato, informed by simple setting creation elements I’ve taken from Powered By The Apocalypse games. Finally – and probably of the most interest to you – Hero Games legend Steve Long will be contributing material to this project as well, most likely beginning with chapters of The Martial World and Advanced Players Guide III. Though like the titans of old his ways are mysterious, and He Shall Create those books which He Shall Create.
 
If you have a manuscript of your own you would like to submit, contact me at jason@herogames.com and we can talk about it.
 
Now onto other Hero Games matters!
 
1) A lot of people have downloaded our free introductory product Champions Begins since we introduced it earlier this year and made it available on DriveThru, Indie Press Revolution, Itch.io, and our own website. Than you once again to the mysterious “Hero Fans” for their hard work.
 
2) We’ve been making various edits to Thomas Stadley’s IHA: Pride & Prejudice, and are basically ready to publish it. Steve wants to check over the manuscript and make sure the information in it lines up with the Champions Universe; then we’ll take it to press. We have an excellent cover and interior artwork all ready to go.
 
3) Veteran Hero System fan Carlos Castaneda has come to us with a proposal to create a Champions Complete package for Roll20. We’ve already signed a contract and he will be getting to work shortly with a proposed release date of October 2022. He’ll be keeping you updated about his progress here on the forums.
 
4) As many you already already know, Steve and I have already written six chapters of Champions International and he’s working on a seventh. So we should have that ready to go by Q3 2022 as promised. After that we’ll focus on running new material through Patreon before publication, with the exception of the Gemini System project, which is mostly complete down to a final layout.
 
 

Very much a Golden Age GM/Player. Class of 1105 😁

I'm only just getting into Traveller myself.  My group in the 80's didn't seem to be into it, for whatever reason.  It's possible that they played it and then switched to Hero sometime before I joined.  They did a lot of conversions from various systems; a number of sci-fi games, converted or otherwise.  One was a conversion from Chaosium's Ringworld game, in fact.  Another converted game was Twilight 2000.  We used Danger International for the basis of almost all of those.  
 
Had the group intended to convert Traveller to Hero, there probably would have been a number of package deals, either gleaned from various sources (Danger International itself being a big one) or written up.  Lifepath character generation would probably have been modified; you would have chosen a package deal based on your first Traveller career.  Our group was mostly former or future military, so the military careers would have been heavily represented, and there probably would have been a large number of MOS's written up as additional packages.  There would have been smaller skill packages for promotions, or for crossing into a career that wasn't your first, and quite possibly required prerequisites (so you'd have to already have some kind of spacecraft Skills before joining the Navy, for example).  
 
Promotion and reenlistment would have probably been done via the "brownie points" and agency rules in DI and RW.  (We didn't have Star Hero yet because it didn't exist.)  Events in the lifepath would have informed brownie point gains and losses, and final word on promotions and reenlistment would have been done with a service roll modified by brownie points, decorations, and possibly Luck/Unluck.  Failing a survival roll would have probably gone to a random Disadvantage table one of the members probably would have written up; options on that probably would have been Hunted, Physical Limitation, Psych Limitation, Rivalry, Watched, or player's/GM's choice.  Jeff probably would have said, with a grin, "If you really want your character to die during creation we can do that, but it's a waste of our time out of character, not to mention the service has spent hundreds of thousands of credits training you this far, so we're not going to do that."  At least two players would have bragged about how many of their characters did die during creation, though. 
 
Replacement characters (for PCs who died in play) probably would have been written up from scratch, just because we'd all have gotten tired of rolling lifepaths for Hero System characters by then.  
 
If needed, we also had the Here There Be Tigers supplement, for Characteristic regression from having been out of the service for however many years, plus the Age Disadvantage from DI.  Psionic abilities would have been taken out of Justice Inc. if there were characters who were psionic.  
 
All of that is to say:  if you want to roll your character's career path using Traveller, feel free, but as with any conversions, note that one system's mechanics aren't ever going to translate precisely into another's.  And you're probably going to be playing in a game without Powers, unless someone is psionic, in which case you're going to be extremely limited in what you can choose and how many Active Points you can have.  

The flow pattern Killer Shrike ably describes above applies to North America's Great Lakes when taken as a whole. Each lake, except Michigan and Huron which are hydrologically one lake, is at a different elevation and flow into each other: water flows from Lakes Superior and Michigan to Huron, then through the Detroit River to Lake Erie, then over Niagara Falls to Lake Ontario, and finally down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean, ultimately the only outflow for all the Lakes.
 
The St. Lawrence and its region may be relevant examples for how circumstances might have influenced the evolution of Mr. R's cities. Upthread I already mentioned Quebec City, the capital of the province, built overlooking the St. Lawrence; but Montreal, farther upriver, is a far larger and more economically important city. It's built on an island in the middle of the river, so river traffic almost has to stop at it (and could easily be forced to if naval power was applied). Montreal is also near the point where the Gatineau River, Quebec's longest, joins with the St. Lawrence. Thanks to the St. Lawrence Seaway, the river is the sole route for deep-water shipping between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic, and Montreal is smack in the middle of it. In this case the benefits of location outweigh those of being a government center.
 
That weight also shows in comparing Montreal to Ottawa, capital of Canada. Ottawa is built at the juncture of the Gatineau River and the Ottawa, another major river and traditional trade route. The incorporated city of Ottawa is over a million population, and its whole urban region adds to that by nearly 50%; but the city of Montreal is more than half again as large as Ottawa, and its urban region almost triple that of Ottawa's. (The city and urban region of Quebec City are close to 550,000 and 800,000+, respectively.) Ottawa and Montreal are around 100 miles/160 kilometers from each other, and while water travel between them is rare today, road, rail, and air travel is extensive.

I would do it procedurally, starting at the first regional settlement(s) in antiquity and walking forward in time introducing various events (wars, famines, new technologies, natural disasters such as floods, rivers changing course and / or getting damned and / or bridged (etc), over / under population, trade imbalances, and so on). Layer it up over time, to attain verisimilitude.
 
Also, it's useful to remember that contrary to common belief rivers flow downhill, not toward the equator, not toward a particular cardinal direction, and not in arbitrary directions. Thus the topography (particularly in regards to relative elevation) of the region should be carefully considered. If you have a giant lake with a bunch of rivers flowing into it, then it would logically need to be at a lower overall elevation to the areas the rivers are flowing to it from. If there is one river flowing out of it, then that outbound river would need to be flowing towards an even lower elevation, and there would need to be some barrier between that even lower elevation area and the adjacent areas or else some of the rivers flowing into the lake would actually flow towards that even lower elevation area instead.

The Answer to that question is not where in relation to the lake the city is, either downriver or at the mouth of the lake flowing out but rather what is the elevation of the land both in the inland lake and downriver.
 
If your lake is a lake and not a sea i.e. it is fresh water than the basin of the lake must be elevated fairly high above sea level, like at least 200 feet or so otherwise the water near sea level would flow out like it does in New Orleans and much of it would be brackish.    If that is the case you have an enormous amount of water sitting at an elevated height, even if it is only 200 ft 67m this is still a great quantity of water sitting on a lot of potential energy.  If there are massive amounts of rains that affect the land around the lake or feed into the lake over an extended time and the elevated levels start to rise rapidly you only have one natural artery by which that excess water can flow out.
 
So this means in that case you either have flooding along a huge plain that would be devastating or a river that becomes a raging torrent of water overflowing along its banks.  Any city on a low lying flood plain would eventually be destroyed.
 
So how high is the topography of the lake  is this an elevated height with many waterfalls miles downstream that breach the heights or is it one continuous slow moving river.  This will affect trade and safety.  Any city would be best built where there are very high banks and elevated mesa on one side. 

I'm looking at character creation now.
 
Since fantasy, aside from Urban Fantasy, involves a world other than our own, a data dump is necessary. It should, however, be as short as possible. You can't really expect people to read your book before they can start playing.
 
You can, in fact, cheat, by incorporating their character decisions into your world building. That can get out of hand though.
 
For example, if a character is Hunted by Orcs, Orcs exist, and are a significant factor in the setting. But what if you don't want Orcs in the setting?
 
Of course you can ban such an option in your data dump, but the problem is: what is allowed?
 
You can cut down some problems by using a familiar set of tropes - but that restricts you to settings your players are familiar with. Worse, you can't assume that your players have read the same stuff you have.
 
So a mediaeval setting would end up being Hollywood mediaeval, without all the interesting options from the actual Middle Ages. Or worse, sub-Tolkien. Poor Tolkien.
 
Anyway, Hero is relatively rare as RPGs go, by putting Complications/Disadvantages so up front. A character isn't complete without them.
 
A game doesn't work unless both the GM and the players are happy with them.
 
It might be best to have some serious guidelines about what is desirable. Of course that means that you are basically using stock characters. I don't really have a problem with that. They will be fleshed out through play.
 
The other benefit of using stock characters is that they are quick to create, fixing one of Hero's major problems.
 
So I have just talked myself into using stock characters.
 
Has anyone else had experience with this? Or are there alternative solutions that reduce analysis paralysis to manageable levels?