Steve

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?

For particularly decadent societies, or especially mad tyrants, the Game of Death first introduced by Edgar Rice Burroughs in, IIRC, Chessmen of Mars. Gladiatorial combat structured as a chess game (or analog), with gladiators as the living pieces and the arena as the board. Two players order the gladiators around. When one gladiator moves into another's square, they fight to the death.
 
One of the requirements is unfortunate: The Master of the Games needs a smackdown-hammer big enough that the captured PCs can be compelled to go along with the game instead of saying "Screw this" and trying to fight everyone at once. Or, well, some reason that a pack of egotistical murder hobos (and their player) will play along. (At least until the equally traditional slave revolt, when the heroes persuade the other gladiators to break their chains and turn on their debauched and evil masters.)
 
Dean Shomshak

The biggest conversion problem is exactly skills, ironically.
 
Classic Traveller had very few skills- I think seventeen?  Going from memory, and the author himself,never considered them,to be that important.  I cannot- and would not dream of doing it- speak for him, but having watched him,run a com game decades ago, and having found online accounts from others who were as fortunate, skills were quite literally "does that seem like something your character would know?  Do you feel like you would know that?"
 
If thw answer was yes, then "where or how dis you learn it?" And the justification itself seemed,not to matter; only that there was one.  "Okay, you know that. Keep track of that; write it on your sheet."
 
In the game I witnessed, Miller, when a roll was called for, invariably selected a characteristic roll and went so far as to allow the player to pick the characteristic.
 
If the roll was successful, he would prompt "how dis that characteristic help you overcome the situation?"  You could not re-select any characteristic until you had used each characteristic once.
 
That was thw author's take on skills.  During a Q and A, he was asked about his style versus the skills in an the variius published expansions, and gave a nice crowd-pleasing answer to the effect of 'the fans kept demandinf skills- more skills, and more opportunities to gain skills.  That is why the new skills and advanced xharacter generation exist.  You guys wanted it; I never envisioned it working that way.
 
 
At any rate, that was my first exposure to "rules light" and "narrative-focused" gaming.  I can see that going South with the wrong group, but it was surprisingly elegant the way he handled it.
 
To get back,on track though:  that kind od thing is absolute _anathema_ to HERO's die-hard core fandom.  Let's take a step back and remember that these are the guys and this is the game wherein once upon a time, one grognard invented a campaign flavor that took _skill levels_ -- not even skills, mind you, but just skill levels- froze their effects, dipped their prices just a bit, and renamed,them Martial Arts Maneuvers, and not only,did the fans _like_ it, but  for the last roughly thirty years they have demanded that this interesting flavor game for a single campaign is, in fact, necessary and inviolable core rules of the game itself.
 
This is indicitive of the incompatibility issue with how Traveller uses (or used; I think today everyone plays Traveller like any other game, where a lack of skill means you cant do it, period, and probably don't even know what it looks like.  (Sorry, Mate.  I just checked my sheet and it seems i don't have "open doorknob" skill.  Unless you picked it up, we're stuck here...)
 
Hero, though, went so far as to provide a list of fifty skills and then add three "blank categories" to invent your own skill in case you sisnt see one you liked, and has kind of a tendency to push infinite cascades of specialization into those categories, etc, etc.
 
The upshot of all that is that the base principles of the skill systems are diametrically-opposed as to make-, well, if not the HERO System then the die haed HERO fans- totally,incompatible with the old career path system or any variant "lifeboat" system.
 
If you _do_ want to make it work (and you can, but you have to have people that want to play Traveller more thsn they want to exploit the HERO System, is to create youe charts with their lists of skills, assign the default to either a Characteristic Roll or 10-, and declare that this is _it_; these are all the skills that are availabke in this campaign, period.
 
Like any other campaign, they may or may not go for it.  Just for the love of everything you hold dear, make sure you are wearing heavy clothes, padded armor, and a catcher's mask when you point out that Martial,Arts is off the table.  
 
 

 
 
 

I was looking in the Hero store to see if there were any PDFs I wanted to buy, and saw the Traveler HERO 5th pdfs there for sale.  So I did a forum search and found this thread again.
 
One of my gaming/college friends has run a number of Traveller HERO campaigns over the years, and I'm glad to see that the work continues to live on.  My only complaint is that Shadowcat and I and Randy never got a penny out of the deal, but that's the fan author's life I guess. Our payment was being involved in something we enjoyed.
 
Fifteen years ago... 

They (the leadership) should take the name and run with it. They don't have bases, they have Haunts. They are not organized in "cells" but in Covens. There planned crimes are called "Hexes". They don't have pets, they have Familiars. 
 
Do with it what you will.

I usually pick a particular fantasy world and tell my players that it's either that world or substantially like that world.
 
====
 
Dragonlance
 
Humans, elves, Dwarves as playable races. Goblins and draconians as major "evil" intelligent races. Some very minor neutral races such as centaurs and unicorns. A standard array of D&D class tropes: warrior, barbarian, wizard, sorcerer, cleric, thief, paladin, etc.
 
Nations may or may not be the same as in the books.
 
====
 
Guardians of the Flame
 
Humans, elves, and dwarves as playable races. Elves are racist. Dwarves are moderate in everything. Slavery is endemic in all societies except the dwarves.
 
The major roiling force in society has been a small group of adventurers who came from another world and who declared war on the Slaver's Guild claiming that slavery is a moral evil. Those adventurers created a small kingdom called "Home". The king is called "Mayor" and is selected by the landowners as a group. And can be de-selected by the landowners as a group...it's a very confusing form of kingship but it seems to work for them so far.
 
"Home" is in an unclaimed corner of the Middle Lands which has in recent years become home for a goodly number of freed slaves. It has also quickly become a center of commerce as the adventurers have introduced inventions by "engineers" (apparently some new form of wizardry) who have produced a better form of steel and "firearms" (a thundering weapon which instantly bores large holes in targets).
 
Other major players in the area include
1) The city of Pandathaway which is ruled by a council of guilds (including the Wizard's Guild and the Slaver's Guild). A metropolitan area open to individuals of all races as long as they're willing to pay the entry fee, keep the peace, and don't go broke and become homeless.
2) A number of societies of clerics, the most common of which is the Spidersect and the most powerful of which is The Society of the Healing Hand. Most clerics are open for hire by anyone, except the Healing Hand refuses to help the people of Home. The most anyone has been able to get out of them on the topic is that they've already "done their part". Rumor has it that the Hand has also refused to assist the Slaver's Guild...but people who snoop into the business of the Slaver's Guild usually end up as slaves so take that rumor with a grain of salt.
3) A large Elven kingdom in the north where humans are second class citizens and barred from owning land and barred from a number of professions. 
4) A small dwarven kingdom.
5) A patchwork of human kingdoms throughout the Middle Lands and around the Cirric (a large freshwater inland sea).
 
No paladins, sorcerors, or druids but other D&D class tropes are available. All magic-users do the "have to memorize spells from a spellbook" thing.
 
====
 
The Land (from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant)
 
Playable races are human, giant, Haruchai.
 
Haruchai are vaguely Asian in appearance, telepathic with each other, very physically fit, athletic, know martial arts, and a huge number of mandatory complications like watched by other members of their race, competitive with other Haruchai, taking vows of martial service to various lords or causes as an excuse to be in The Land rather than in their racial homeland. They prefer talking telepathically to other Haruchai and don't ever seem to have a lot to say to other people. 
 
Giants are 8-12 feet tall. They're supremely fire resistant (especially to BODY damage) though fire does still cause pain. And they regenerate from fire damage or fire death. They live on the coast and most have some amount of seamanship. Most also have some amount of stone lore (masonry, stone magic, or both). They're very verbose by human standards.
 
The main evil race are the Cavewights, a troll variant with no regeneration. 
 
There's no dedicated cleric class.
 
There are mages who use staffs to channel their power and are considered to be very powerful (no body-affecting powers or movement powers but pretty much everything else). There's also lesser mages who work stone (create heat, lava, light, some density increase, etc.) and mages who act basically like druids but with no powers over animals (so things like divination, weather, plant growth, etc.) 
 
Haruchai are never mages and refuse to use magic. They also distain to use weapons and fight exclusively with their bare hands (unless that's completely impossible like the opponent is made of fire or lava).
 
Giants are never staff mages. Learning a bit of stone is common. Learning some wood magic is fairly rare.
 
A special evil god exists (but no deity of good). He has a number of powerful servants, which ones you might see depends on how much of a pain in his butt that you are. At points in time in which he's more powerful, he's able to create large numbers of warped creatures to serve as a slave army. When he's not so strong, some of those warped creatures might still be hiding (or wandering around) left over from the last war.
 
There's a lot of ancient magics in The Land left over from a previous golden age...or from even earlier than that. Some of those will be plot hooks. Others are locations, both those that are well-known and those which are long-forgotten.
 
 

I bought the the first Fist of Fu. And for $1.95, I say it was worth it. (Now I own all the Hero Martial source books since 4th Ed so I might be biased.)  He has two Styles which are for non-human races which could be used for Fantasy or Sci-Fu. The villainous Style’s background could be used for either a scenario or campaign. I think it has great story hook in it.

 The  interesting thing though is that at least two Styles refer to maneuvers to the old V/5 rather than 6th V/10.
 
Of the 7 more Fists of Fu though I’m only looking at buying the 7 Noble Sons. I see that as easy plug and play if I get several players together. And the Video game (it only has 3 characters) however I always try to entice my kids playing and Video Style might be more up their speed. 

What you're describing is a fairly close match to the Caspian Sea, real modern Earth's largest "lake." Hero's Turakian Age fantasy setting also has a comparable inland sea, Lake Beralka, and the even larger Sea of Mhorec. Some of the precedents from that setting, as well as the real world, have a bearing on the suggestions I can make.
 
First off, it's very unlikely that the outflow of a body of water that large would flow into jungle. It would be much more natural for the jungle to drain into rivers which then feed the lake, while the lake itself would have an outflow to a sea or ocean.
 
Several factors will determine where the optimal location for a major city would be along that river (discounting enough flat land to accommodate it, and sufficient harborage). First, is the river navigable along its entire length? If it is, then the key points would be either where the river begins in the lake, or ends at the sea. If not, then the farthest navigable point would be the waterborne trade terminus, hence a natural spot to urbanize. Also, is the second river connecting to it navigable as well? If it is, and trade flows along it, then their junction would be the best spot to tap into both trade routes.
 
Another factor would be population. What kind of settlement is there around the shores of the lake, or of the sea? Are there enough people for large-scale, widespread trade? How about along the river joining the main one? If there isn't much population, are there valuable resources in any of these areas to make it worth exploiting them?
 
Where the largest number of these factors line up for you would be an appropriate location for your largest city.
 
Just to look at a few examples: in the late Classical period, Constantinople benefited greatly from being on the closest land bridge between Europe and Asia, as well as the strait between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. OTOH Alexandria was not only a deep water port along the East/West Mediterranean coastal trade route, it was the gateway to the cities south on the Nile River.
 
In the fantasy Turakian Age I mentioned previously, Aarn was the world's largest city. It lies at the mouth of a river connecting back to the aforementioned Lake Beralka and the realms along its coast. It's a seacoast city with the only deep-water port over a long stretch of coastline, with other kingdoms around the shore of the sea. And it's close to a mountain pass leading to a rich inland region.
 
Aarn's closest rival is probably Tavrosel, on the coast of the great inland Sea of Mhorec. The region around Tavrosel produces many valuable trade items, and its excellent harbor makes Tavrosel the natural shipment point for those goods, in exchange for the products from across the Sea.
 
I hope that was of some help.

Good news!  According to his Twitter, which I don't have a link for right this second, he's gone into remission!
 
Edit to add:  https://mobile.twitter.com/nyrath/status/1509944269796171782
 

I still consider Classic Enemies the gold standard for Enemies books. Scott took characters, most of whose brief initial descriptions didn't go much beyond, "Embittered, he turned to a life of crime," and made them, well, characters.
 
Rest in peace, Mr. Bennie.
 
DEan Shomshak

Breaking this project off from the Fifth Edition Renaissance thread.
 
 
Working Title:  Pittsburgh: City of Champions
 
Purpose:  Provide a setting and campaign book.  With P:CoC and Champions Complete, GMs and players have everything they need to actually run a Champions campaign.  Bring in new players and folks who want a ready-to-run game and campaign, not a toolkit.  Support with future products, if sales support it.
 
Format:
Introduction - Explain where all of the toolkit toggles are set (Silver Age, Standard Superheroic characters, power levels, and so on) History Geography and Government Transportation, Media/Arts/Entertainment, Subcultures Police, Emergency Services, Underworld, Superheroes, Supervillany Places of Interest GMs Vault Villains (include an organization and master villain) Adventures Continuing the Campaign  
Note that bullet points 2-7 follow the structure of Millenium City and Vibora Bay.  MC clocks in at 135 pages, VB at 157.  Much of the difference in page count is VB's extended GM chapter and adventure seed ideas.  P:CoC would be longer, based on the Introduction and extended Adventures/Campaign sections.  Make the adventure/campaign arc related to why the previous super-team is no longer around and the new PC team has to pick up the mantle.
 
One concern that I have is that CC only has 64 print copies left in stock, and I don't know if it will be reprinted.  Or possibly I'm an old pencil-and-paper grognard and that's not a big concern, folks today buy the pdfs and, if they want, use PoD or the local copy store for a paper copy.
 
Funding: Kickstarter.  Based on previous successful Hero System Kickstarter campaigns, rough estimate of $15,000. Start with a nice color cover and minimal B&W interior artwork; stretch goals would add more artwork and then upgrade it to color. Mention (and have) plans for future supplements: more linked adventures, a city development book; also to use Kickstarter.  Maybe have a second adventure arc, linked to the first, at a high enough stretch goal to fund it.
 
Staff:  Writers. Editor. Proof-reader. Artist(s). Project coordinator.  Mark Rand is providing backgound on Pittsburgh.  Need another writer to do the gamey stuff.  I am neither a writer nor an editor, but I can proof-read and coordinate (I am also qualified to do character write-ups.)

Yes. I generally like it when players rotate characters. When I get the chance to play, I rotate characters as befits the narrative. As the GM I do enforce character shtick / niche protection, i.e. I wouldn't allow a player to make a new character that just steps on another existing PC's niche. And of course the introduction of the new character and exit of the old should be bent to fit the continuity of the campaign rather than the other way around.
 
As long as it isn't super disruptive, like every session of two, I see it as a beneficial thing. It can be an opportunity to extend the larger story of the campaign, reinvigorate the group dynamic, provide new hooks and / or pull in new antagonists, and so on.
 
 
Try not to make everything about you. Are the players there to serve you? Or are you a group of peers getting together to enjoy a collaborative creative activity? 
 
In the end, its just about having fun together. If any of the players, including the GM, are not having fun then either adjustments need to be made or one or more people should leave the group.
 
If this player isn't having fun playing the character they have, and them wanting to change their character is making things not fun for you, pick a path and go down it:
Player keeps character, possibly with some changes to the character or the campaign or both. Player makes new character Player leaves group GM ends campaign My experience in life is that most people problems start and end with a failure to communicate effectively. Try talking to the player to understand why they want to change characters, why that bothers you, and then figure out together which of the above four choices is best to your situation.
 
 
Right and wrong are irrelevant to subjective / emotional things. I would ask instead, is it productive for you to think / feel this way? Are your feelings making things better or worse? Seems to me that it is making things worse. So, flip the script and find a more productive footing to proceed from.

Hmmm. I get the impression of a control freak, my way or the highway, personality in this description. Throwing fits during conversations is not a sign of maturity, and I’m actually now thinking he is trying to take control of your campaign with his actions. You let him change characters once already, which caused you to retool some aspects of the campaign and now you’ll need to do it again.
 
Frankly, he does not sound like someone happy being a player, since your description is of him makes it sound like he was only GM-ing in prior play sessions. Give him one more chance if you want, but be prepared to let him walk away.

I still wish for a Champions Villain Volume 4: Organizations . A simple place to get basic information on villainous organizations and basic agent writeups, all mostly in one place with a small sidebar about where one can get more infomation if one wishes to find it. 

We here at Hero Games are deeply saddened to announce that long-time HERO System writer and support Scott Bennie passed away earlier this week. Please see the thread in Company Questions for more information or to post your own memories of Scott.

I'm not sure -- perhaps Dan S. or someone else removed it (or changed its "pinned" status) during a clean-up session. I'm still working hard on MH, trying to get at least a little work done on it every day, and more than a little whenever possible.

We here at Hero Games are deeply saddened to announce that our long-time friend, and frequent Hero Games author, Scott Bennie passed away earlier this week from complications due to pneumonia. As many of you already know, Scott suffered from extensive health problems for most of his life, and unfortunately this was one last struggle he simply couldn't win.
 
I personally met Scott in the early Nineties -- probably at one of the first DunDraCons I attended -- after I began writing for Hero myself and hitting the con circuit. In addition to being a talented writer and game designer -- perhaps best known to Hero gamers for his superb work on Classic Enemies and two VIPER sourcebooks -- Scott was quite simply one of the kindest, gentlest people I've ever had the privilege to know. I'm so glad I had the chance to work with him on several projects, including the VIPER and Villainy Amok sourcebooks for HERO System 5th Edition.
 
The world is a darker place without Scott's light in it, and all of us here at Hero Games shall miss him terribly.