Nolgroth

To be pedantic about it 😛 the people of the farthest east of Arduna, the Vornakkians, are no darker overall than the Khorians who are the "Middle-Eastern" folk of Ambrethel. The darkest-skinned humans are the Indusharans, at the far south of Mitharia. Indushara's culture is very clearly inspired by that of pre-colonial Hindu India, which has rarely been adapted for RPGs.
 
(I explain the differences in coloring among the Ardunans as being due to assimilating various indigenous peoples of the lands they occupied. For example, the Khorians' darker skin comes from interbreeding with the Ventati, who I would postulate were once more widespread in Khoria before the Ardunans migrated there.)
 
That subject leads me to touch on the Drakine again for a moment. It seems improbable to me that they could have been so drastically weakened directly after the Drakine Wars of the First Epoch as stated, and yet been able to retain their independence from their human neighbors for all the subsequent millennia. I would call it likely that they either were rolled back from their former territories to their present borders far more gradually; that they have been periodically conquered for a time, in whole or in part, but won back their independence (many realms of Men have followed that pattern); or both (which I personally favor).
 
A gradual withdrawal would help explain the various scale-color sub-types of Drakine which crop up among them by the default TA start date of 5000 SE. My theory is that Bloodscale, Nightscale, and Sunscale Drakine were in the past preponderant in their own regions of the world; but as they were forced closer together by Men they commingled, resulting in the brown-scaled Drakine (which I call "Earthscale") who dominate their population "today."

The line IS blurry. I draw away from the mechanical and go into narrative reasons for my own judgment. If you have to learn and train, it is a skill. If it is innate, it is a talent. Of course, that is not an easy thing to distinguish and there are examples from both sections that could easily cross over into the other. Defense Maneuver, for example, could represent either some mystical martial arts training or Spiderman's preternatural awareness that constantly saves him from unexpected attack. Ultimately, it really falls onto the individual GM to determine what shelf to put any mechanical construct in the game. For me, throwing everything under one category or another is...messy. The Hero System already resembles a weighty textbook and Hero characters are often more complicated than some legal contracts* I've read. Anything that helps me organize the flow and presentation of information is something good.
 
 
* Yes, that's hyperbole.

You have a very rare and unusual experience in roleplaying.  
I envy you.
 
 
I entered the Navy right out of high school and my RPG time was scarce and rare except for a couple short tours.  Most of what gaming I did get in was pre-built adventures because we really didn't have the time to work up adventures.  When I did build my own it was usually AD&D where you could do a fast layout and plugins from the monster manual.
 
My most memorable gaming run was when I spent a year in Millington TN at NATTC in school.  I drew on material from that time for years later.  But I have had increasingly less time for gaming each year, not more.  I can only go by my personal experience that is shaped by my life and the people I know, but I have met many people that say they prefer to build their own stuff.  Heck, I prefer to run adventures I made.  But the vast majority of games I have played and most of the gamers I know use prebuilt material, intact or hastily modified.  Hastily because each precious hour of game prep is one less of play.  And an hour of time to actually game is extremely rare these days. 
 
Herodom is a very small niche of a niche market, and I am not referring to the rules. I am speaking to it's approach and player base. 
 
Way back in the 90's a course was decided to not publish premade adventures. 
 
When they did produce a setting, it was almost deliberately designed to be almost unusable with detail.  There is a thread about the Turakian Age where it is sagely discussed how the setting cannot be understood by reading it chapter to chapter.  You need to "study" and "research" and hope about.   It is a beautifully designed document as if it was a text book or historical record or a resource for a collegiate research project.  Perfect if you have a few years to dedicate.  But most gamers need something easier and less time intensive.
 
After stubbornly producing one concept, what we have on the Hero forums are the very small percentage of a micro percentage of gamers with the luxury and time to devote hours and days to gaming projects. 
Also, the majority of gamers here scoff at playing at the FLGS because they have firmly established long term (years) gaming groups which is not the norm.   The FLGS and gaming CONs are still the venues that generate new players and then new GM's.
 
Hero created  a self fulfilling prophesy and now people wonder why Hero is virtually extinct.
 
 
 
It is not aging GM's or that the old DIY ethos are gone.  They are just as common as ever but it is a percentage game.
1% of 100 is 1.
1% of 500,000 is 5,000
I know several GM's for D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu/GUMSHOE, and Pathfinder that build their own original adventures.
But those same GM's routinely run prebuilt adventures/settings at the FLGS for League Night if the game has one, just as a game if not. 
The ratio of GM's to players in any game is very low. 
It is much much much lower for any game community that heaps derision on anyone that "lowers themselves to using prebuilt material".  
 
Take Turakian Age, awesome setting if written to be unusable to the average gamer.
It doesn't need a re-write.  It needs a, let's call it a digest version for easy entry.  Pick one location, one small town, with one human culture and write a smaller less detailed version based on TA.  Add a CharGen section tailored to the digest, and for all that is holy, build a small no less that ten spells beginning player spell list.  Plus a GM ready adventure. 
 
As I try to build up my idea for an adventure for Hall of Champions I realize that I would not be able to create that digest, but I hope someone with the talent will. 
 
Hero already has great rules and settings.
What it needs are entry paths and publicity. 
Hall of Champions is a great start down that path. 
One day I'd love to see adventures that directly use existing Hero superheroes and supervillains.  
I hope to contribute to building some of those entry paths, though the going is much more difficult that I thought.
 
 
 
 

Unfortunately, the history (of the Hero System) strongly suggests otherwise. Past attempts to defibrillate the game using paired down, abridged versions of the rules have all failed to accomplish anything of substance. I wouldn't expect it to in the future either.
 

You make good points but I think I am starting to see something of a trend here. Sometimes, the players don't need to know so much. Kal-Turak should have an extensive section in the GM section. Just leaving subtle hints that the world is getting darker and more dangerous is really all that the players should need to know. Having a name makes him seem less threatening. Also, did I miss it or is there not a write-up for Kal-Turak in the Turakian Age. I have a vague recollection that he was sort of covered under the "if he has stats, we can kill him" meta rule.
 
And I am reading forward. Slower than I would like. I am currently doing a detailed read of the races (as opposed to the quick skim I did earlier). Perhaps I am strange, but why would drakira need breasts? Seems that they would be very reptilian/avian about feeding their young. I know, gross, but lizard breasts seem weird. Like you, I agree with the birth rate thing and was brainstorming ways to keep the flavor of being "outbred" by humanity without the silly "one child once" thing. I was thinking, if live birth is a thing, small "litters of 3-5" young once in a lifetime or a clutch of eggs (which seems more dragon-like to me) once. Even with a moderately high infant mortality rate, that will still leave enough viable offspring for the drakine to not immediately die off. A similar idea is to have much longer gestation periods. Finally, keeping the "one child once" thing but it is a recent thing caused by KT himself. Would explain the gradual decline and a few mothers in a given sample size could still produce more healthy numbers. Enough to hold on until the end of the age maybe.
 
The human sub-cultures seem very modern friendly with lighter skinned to the west, moderately dark in the middle and dark to the east. Part of me kind of winces at that BUT, it is also familiar and that makes it easy to conceptualize. Same with the ubiquitous D&D Fantasy races.  For many players, it is like slipping on a pair of old slippers. I need to finish the Races section before I comment further. I am currently about to start Elves and go on from there.

I'm going to have to disagree. 
 
My group consists of two types of people. 
Half the group will take the shortest and most direct route in chargen.  So when the GM said "Campaign standard is a CV of 7", they responded by putting their DEX at 20 since that's the simplest way to get CV 7. 
The other half pokes at numbers and thinks about things.  So when the GM said "Campaign standard is a CV of 7", they responded by saying "Well I can get +1 CV via 3 DEX costing 9 points but -3 for the SPD rebate so +1 CV for 6 points.  Or I could buy CSLs for how much?  No thanks!" and put their DEX at 20. 
So in our first fight, we had one hero above 20, the mooks and a villain in the teens, and a six-way initiative tie at DEX 20. 
 
So my experience is that CV keying off DEX makes variation in DEX mostly go away.  Every other characteristic, my group has wonderful spreads going up and down the range.  But DEX is mostly a pile of 20s.  And I don't like that. 

Essentially since the last time I was at my ideal weight, I was a teenager, desperately trying to find anyway to gain weight, yes.  
 
I always shock people when I tell them I am borderline obese.  I look about 10-15 pounds overweight, pretty much.  (though the way I eat at the early onset of winter, usually adds about 10 lbs, which I generally lose in spring)

Not only does BMI completely fail to account for variations in lean muscle mass and differences in build, it is also biased against tall people: it measures mass divided by height squared, when (proportions being equal) mass should track with height cubed. Also, because of the square-cube law, taller people need to have proportionally thicker limbs to maintain the same strength to weight ratio. With a height of 6' 4", I don't think I could get down to a "normal" BMI without looking kind of scrawny . . . and BMI says I'd have to get down to 151 pounds before I'd be considered "underweight". That's absurd.

I did it in a game I ran for D20 lovers.  I customised a character sheet and told them that the test for success was to beat 10 on a modified roll.  So roll + levels and bonuses - difficulty and penalties. 
 
In combat, OCV is a bonus as are skill levels and sundry situational modifiers; DCV is the difficulty with range etc providing penalties. 
 
With skills, the difficulty was 10.  I treated every improvement to base skill as a plus on the sheet, so Stealth 11 or less was listed as Stealth on the character sheet; Stealth 13 or less was listed as Stealth +2.
 
Worked a treat, everything was about beating 10, rolling high was always good.
 
However, to show the fickleness of gamers, not one of them complained about Runequest when looking to roll under a percentage to hit and roll high for damage....
 
Doc

Much of that was dealt with in Mod 16. No more speeding through a dungeon. Everyone is the same base speed regardless of level.

Randoms are still the primary was to get your rAD. Top end random (Trials) earn the most, followed by Epic Dungeons, skirmishes, and finally leveling dungeons.

Not to mutilate a horse's corpse too much further , but to really perceive the full extent of Kal-Turak's influence in Ambrethel requires reading through a lot more of the text. He is capable of great subtlety; the story behind his orchestration of the protracted war between Szarvasia and the Drakine Realms is an outstanding example, and the GM's Vault has quite a few others which few suspect he's behind. But because those schemes are in fact subtle or obscured, how far the Ravager of Men can reach, and already has, is generally underestimated.
 
Ever since Kal-Turak proclaimed his presence to the world, "evil things" of all stripes are said to have been drawn to Turakia. Unnatural products of the "experiments" he's reputed to perform are probably included among his followers. Of course the Undead make up a major fraction of his forces, which are nightmarish enough for most people. But a few other such creatures are specifically mentioned, including "ogre-zombies," "demonic birds," and "plague-spreading colossi." The Ravager is also rumored to be breeding a new type of dragon "whose breath is frosty cold instead of fiery hot."
 
The products or byproducts of K-T's magic could include the God of Worms, a gigantic intelligent "carrion worm" of unknown origin which rules other carrion worms in caverns beneath Kal-Turak's Wall, as well as being worshiped as a god by Orcs and evil Men, some of whom it's transformed into worm-featured humanoids. The God of Worms is mentioned in Monsters, Minions, And Marauders, and fully written up in The Book Of Dragons. (For my own games I had the GOW pledge itself to K-T, and in his name govern the region of the Sunless Realms under Turakia.)

Welcome to the Hero Boards. Probably not the most appealing thread for somebody just jumping on, as it is a discussion about the current "down" trend with Hero Games right now. Still, happy to see new people pop in. 

Hello.  Yet another old Former military player checking in, because I am stuck at work hurrying up and waiting and a Robot Hero search sent me to this thread. 
 
It looks like I have a fairly similar history with the game as a lot of people on this thread. 

Yeah, adapting existing stuff is a great time saver...and sanity saver, if you have a busy life!
 
I've never been able to use someone else's world in detail -- I've just never found it fun to memorize the minutiae of someone else's setting. But I sure as heck will use the maps, the general overview of the place politically, and so on, then fill in with my own ideas for details.
 
Sure, it was tons of fun to sit there as a young teenager and roll up an entire sector in Traveller, one subsector at a time, and then fill in the details about the worlds and the interstellar political situation and so on, and then on top of that come up with patrons and underworld intrigue and all that stuff.
 
But once I started dating, that sort of thing went out the window. If I made my own setting, I did it piecemeal, just enough to keep ahead of things and avoid having to invent too much on the fly. But mostly I adapted existing stuff.
 
And that didn't change after I started working my way through college, got married, and got to work building a life.
 
Maybe I'll try creating from whole cloth again once I retire. Or maybe not. There so many things I've been saying, "I'll do that when I retire," that I think I'll still be pressed for time!
 

Nothing wrong with trimming the Skill List for a specific game/campaign. The Hero System skill list is designed around maximum flexibility but is not necessarily great for every game (Computer Programming in Fantasy, for example - and yes I know there are extreme closet cases where this might be appropriate but for most campaigns, it would not).
 
The important thing is to come up with a list of skills that have a narrative "attractiveness" for the game you are running and don't duplicate existing mechanics. The Perception skill from your list could be retooled to represent Enhanced Perception from the Enhanced Senses power, but you should probably just stick with Enhanced Senses. Similarly Endurance is already covered by the Endurance characteristic. If you want to handle Pushing, then use the existing Pushing rules. I think I have a fantasy Skill List around here....found it. Looking at it though, I would trim mine even more.
 
For example, Mimicry and Ventriloquism can be rolled up into one skill. Acting and Disguise into another. I suppose my list would look something like;
Acrobatics [Acrobatics, Breakfall] Acting [Acting, Disguise] Analyse Climbing Combat Skill Levels Crafting (category) [Examples: Crafting (Weaponsmith), Crafting (Brewing), etc - mostly replacing the clunky Professional Skill catch-all] Cramming  Defense Maneuver (if you allow it) Diplomacy [Charm, Conversation, High Society] Espionage [Cryptography, Forgery, Lip Reading] Expertise (category) [Examples: Expertise (Arcana), Expertise (Religion), Expertise (Demonology) - mostly replacing the clunky Knowledge and Science Skills] Fast Draw Gambling Infiltration [Concealment and Stealth] Language  Mental Combat Skill Levels Mechanics [Lockpick, Mechanics, Security Systems] Nature [Survival, Tracking] Persuasion [Interrogation, Intimidation, Persuasion, Trading] Rapid Attack Riding Sleight of Hand (for Picking Pockets and minor prestidigitation) Streetwise Teamwork Two-Weapon Fighting Weapon Familiarity  If you require your Wizards to pass a Skill Roll before casting spells, you might add Power in there. You could rename it to something like Sorcery or Spellcasting or whatever. The above list should be pretty manageable. 
 
Skill Levels and Skill Enhancers would no longer function exactly the same. Or rather, because so many skills have been condensed into single skills, the costing structure would be off. You might very well just dump Skill Levels/Enhancers altogether and have each skill be improved singularly. Combat Skill Levels would not be affected.
 
Everyman Skills would change too. Again, so many condensed skills would increase the value of any given Everyman Skill. On the other hand, having a fair bit of the Skill List as Everyman Skills would be similar to the Trained/Untrained skills for D&D. YMMV.
 
 

As I see it, D&D has the following advantages:
 
Name recognition.  D&D has by far the most name recognition out of any RPG and is, still, in 2019 A.D. synonymous with paper and pencil roleplaying.  In the marketing progression of repetition -> association -> trust, D&D is farthest along and is therefore most likely to be tried.  I doubt most normals could even name a second RPG. Production values.  Even the worst D&D publications have had high quality writing and graphic design throughout.  Support.  There is no shortage of modules, expansions, settings, and sourcebooks available for D&D. Low barrier to entry.  D&D is easy to start playing.  Here is your character sheet and a d20, which goblin do you hit?  Having played 5e D&D, I can say that it is not, in fact, much simpler than Hero once you get into it.  Reactions, actions, saves, spell slots, specials, armor class, paths, XP, it's dizzying.  And 5e is simplified!  But it's easy to start in a way that Hero's highly customizable character creation process is not.  (Don't even get me started on Pathfinder.  That s--t is unplayable.) Player base.  Related to all of the above, D&D has the critical mass of users that makes it easier to find a good group to play with.  RPGs are not a solo game, after all. Hero loses on every single point.
 
I've argued this before, but my approach to popularizing Hero would go like this.  (It's going to be expensive.)
 
License Marvel comics characters.  It's mind boggling to me that there is no Marvel superhero RPG that's giving D&D a run for its money.  Take a property that is enjoying unbelievable popularity right now and pair it with the one game system that can handle it. Quality.  We have to invest in copywriting, art, layout, and design.  Publication standards in 2019 are just way ahead of any Hero publication in the past two decades. Hide the system.  Hero is an RPG system and an RPG-system-creation-system, and the latter is what scares people.  List powers as "Optic Blast Level 12", not "12d6 Energy Blast No Spread 0 END Not vs. Ruby (-1/4)".  95% of the time all you need to know is you roll 12d6 for damage. Simplify.  I love the SPD chart, but save it for the "Advanced" game.  Likewise with the other figured stats (but keep Stunning).  Ditch most Advantages and Limitations.  Don't publish Entangle with half a dozen specific advantages, publish three Spider-Man web powers: Entangle, TK, and ranged Blast. Make it into a board or card game.  I wasn't kidding about simplification.  Distill Hero into a board game or card game that any kid can pick up.  Save the full power of the Hero system for "Advanced" expansions that are advertised at the end of the rulebook ("Pick up the Advanced game and make your own superhero!!") Support.  Publish some modules FFS.  Codevelop an online version of the simple and advanced games to make it easier to pick up players.  I can play Catan online.  Hero?  Nope.  
Anyway that's my approach.  I'm aware that it would require a level of resources that the Hero System has basically never enjoyed and that it's a pipe dream for this reason.  Does anyone have any embellishments?
 

Depends on which setting I am running/working on at the moment. In my Ulûm setting, which is a deliberate homage to Dark Sun, the Gods are actually the God-kings of the Ulûmite City-States. They rarely show themselves but are considered really powerful wizards. So much so that legends persist of single God-kings wiping out entire opposing armies. Only one of the God-kings acts openly and he wages a near constant war with tribes from the outside. There are no clerics in the D&D sense. The God-kings' servants tend to be very well trained magi, but there are no gods to grant power. There is a single godly entity who also grants no favors to worshipers. He is tied to myths of the end times and is said to be the only thing that can kill a God-king. Outside of the Ulûm "nation", gods are pretty much individual to each nomadic tribe. A lot of them share characteristics but have different names. Most are based on distant memories of an alien species called the Annuki (based on the Anunnaki from Zecharia Sitchen's work), that came to Ulûm in the distant past and then left as some sort of catastrophe wiped out much of the lift on the planet. 
 
My Corinareth setting has very D&D-like religions and clerics, though the gods themselves act through seers, oracles, dreams, etc to get mortals moving on the right track. Truth be told, I lost the list of gods somewhere but the ones from the 4th Edition D&D books would slip in there seamlessly, so I don't bother.
 
Another setting is based on a slightly different Earth, but the gods/divine entities of a given region/religion would apply just as they would in the "real" world. There are massively powerful entities that might as well be gods, but like Lovecraft's entities, they have cults and followers that act on their behalf while they exist in a sort of semi-hibernation.
 
A final setting, not really worked on, is based on the late Mesolithic/early Neolithic time frame and a totemic religion, similar to Shamans in Shadowrun was what I imagined for that setting. I had been reading Chronicles of an Ancient Darkness and playing Far Cry Primal a lot when this was percolating in my brain.
 
In all of my settings, gods are vitally important to the day-to-day societal structure but they are not present in the sense of Ares coming down and fighting in the Trojan War sort of thing. That might actually be an interesting divergence from my normal thing.
 

All good ideas. I might quibble with a couple on my list.  Seriously. I took an already trimmed list and trimmed and condensed it even more. Some skills, like Cramming, Defense Maneuver and Rapid Attack, might fall better into the Talents category than Skills. Streetwise in an outlier. It functions almost like a combination of Expertise and Diplomacy. Might drop that altogether and require both of the previous skills for a street smart character. So yeah, no list begins with perfection. I was merely tinkering with the idea for the purpose of contribution.
 
I have no arguments against your Everyman and Skill Level points. 

While I certainly understand why someone could have issues with the unified timeline, for both personal and practical reasons, I find that it adds great depth to the setting; depth which can also be mined for plot lines and character concepts.
 
As I've mentioned elsewhere on the forums, the Hero Universe being a hobby of mine has led to me becoming kind of a "lore master" to the Champions Online MMORPG role-playing community, frequently answering questions about the official Champions Universe and helping people develop PCs derived from it. One brainstorming session I had with a player named Jon Sils -- himself a veteran Hero gamer -- led to a PC directly relevant to this thread.
 
As Jon explains it: "At his height, during the Turakian Age, Kilbern Skyfather was the chief of the gods, but bound most of his power into his sword Auralia in order to seal the tomb of Takofanes the Undying. He'd retired to a quiet corner of Elysium, slowly losing power as his worshipers died out... Then, in 1987, the Tomb was opened. Kilbern could feel the disturbance as Auralia was removed and the Lich-King's tomb opened. He spent most of his remaining power crossing the Elysian fields against the wishes of the other gods there, leaving him weak enough to evade the Ban. He manifested directly on Earth, but with only the power of a beginning superhero. Now he strives to become famous enough (the modern equivalent of worship) to gain the power to defeat Takofanes permanently."
 

That's a good looking list of skills right there. I might quibble over one or two of them, but overall, I think they look good.
 
I don't know that everman skills need much changing. Honestly, anyone who is taking the 'adventuring' life ought to be broadly capable, so most of the above skill probably should count as everyman I would think (with some obvious exceptions like language, the combat ones, crafts, etc). 
 
I think I would probably drop the 3 point skill levels, but otherwise leave the structure as is.

Depends on which setting I am running/working on at the moment. In my Ulûm setting, which is a deliberate homage to Dark Sun, the Gods are actually the God-kings of the Ulûmite City-States. They rarely show themselves but are considered really powerful wizards. So much so that legends persist of single God-kings wiping out entire opposing armies. Only one of the God-kings acts openly and he wages a near constant war with tribes from the outside. There are no clerics in the D&D sense. The God-kings' servants tend to be very well trained magi, but there are no gods to grant power. There is a single godly entity who also grants no favors to worshipers. He is tied to myths of the end times and is said to be the only thing that can kill a God-king. Outside of the Ulûm "nation", gods are pretty much individual to each nomadic tribe. A lot of them share characteristics but have different names. Most are based on distant memories of an alien species called the Annuki (based on the Anunnaki from Zecharia Sitchen's work), that came to Ulûm in the distant past and then left as some sort of catastrophe wiped out much of the lift on the planet. 
 
My Corinareth setting has very D&D-like religions and clerics, though the gods themselves act through seers, oracles, dreams, etc to get mortals moving on the right track. Truth be told, I lost the list of gods somewhere but the ones from the 4th Edition D&D books would slip in there seamlessly, so I don't bother.
 
Another setting is based on a slightly different Earth, but the gods/divine entities of a given region/religion would apply just as they would in the "real" world. There are massively powerful entities that might as well be gods, but like Lovecraft's entities, they have cults and followers that act on their behalf while they exist in a sort of semi-hibernation.
 
A final setting, not really worked on, is based on the late Mesolithic/early Neolithic time frame and a totemic religion, similar to Shamans in Shadowrun was what I imagined for that setting. I had been reading Chronicles of an Ancient Darkness and playing Far Cry Primal a lot when this was percolating in my brain.
 
In all of my settings, gods are vitally important to the day-to-day societal structure but they are not present in the sense of Ares coming down and fighting in the Trojan War sort of thing. That might actually be an interesting divergence from my normal thing.
 

I generally use the Eberron approach ... the gods might or might not exist, there's no way to prove it one way or another.  There's simply no evidence.  Faith is what powers divine magic, and it doesn't have to be faith in a god, one can have faith in justice or worship the sun directly instead of a sun god and get just as much divine power as an adherent to an established religion (in the words of Eberron's creator, Keith Baker, if you believe strongly enough in your left shoe, your left shoe will grant you divine powers).  This also means that so long as you *think* what you're doing supports your god's agenda, your abilities will function perfectly.
 
If I don't do that, I just go with 'there are no gods', and religion operates the same in the game world as it does in the real world.  Since I don't need to worry about D&D's divine/arcane magic identity issues (there's no bloody reason wizards can't cast healing spells), it's not anything I have to account for.

Been a long time since I read the Hero Universe document. Thanks for posting it. At the time, I was vehemently against the idea that every Hero product was shoehorned into a semi-contiguous timeline. Even now, I have my problems with the idea but I also understand that need for a sense of continuity between settings. It can be very rewarding for the person(s) creating these settings to have that continuity.

Nothing wrong with trimming the Skill List for a specific game/campaign. The Hero System skill list is designed around maximum flexibility but is not necessarily great for every game (Computer Programming in Fantasy, for example - and yes I know there are extreme closet cases where this might be appropriate but for most campaigns, it would not).
 
The important thing is to come up with a list of skills that have a narrative "attractiveness" for the game you are running and don't duplicate existing mechanics. The Perception skill from your list could be retooled to represent Enhanced Perception from the Enhanced Senses power, but you should probably just stick with Enhanced Senses. Similarly Endurance is already covered by the Endurance characteristic. If you want to handle Pushing, then use the existing Pushing rules. I think I have a fantasy Skill List around here....found it. Looking at it though, I would trim mine even more.
 
For example, Mimicry and Ventriloquism can be rolled up into one skill. Acting and Disguise into another. I suppose my list would look something like;
Acrobatics [Acrobatics, Breakfall] Acting [Acting, Disguise] Analyse Climbing Combat Skill Levels Crafting (category) [Examples: Crafting (Weaponsmith), Crafting (Brewing), etc - mostly replacing the clunky Professional Skill catch-all] Cramming  Defense Maneuver (if you allow it) Diplomacy [Charm, Conversation, High Society] Espionage [Cryptography, Forgery, Lip Reading] Expertise (category) [Examples: Expertise (Arcana), Expertise (Religion), Expertise (Demonology) - mostly replacing the clunky Knowledge and Science Skills] Fast Draw Gambling Infiltration [Concealment and Stealth] Language  Mental Combat Skill Levels Mechanics [Lockpick, Mechanics, Security Systems] Nature [Survival, Tracking] Persuasion [Interrogation, Intimidation, Persuasion, Trading] Rapid Attack Riding Sleight of Hand (for Picking Pockets and minor prestidigitation) Streetwise Teamwork Two-Weapon Fighting Weapon Familiarity  If you require your Wizards to pass a Skill Roll before casting spells, you might add Power in there. You could rename it to something like Sorcery or Spellcasting or whatever. The above list should be pretty manageable. 
 
Skill Levels and Skill Enhancers would no longer function exactly the same. Or rather, because so many skills have been condensed into single skills, the costing structure would be off. You might very well just dump Skill Levels/Enhancers altogether and have each skill be improved singularly. Combat Skill Levels would not be affected.
 
Everyman Skills would change too. Again, so many condensed skills would increase the value of any given Everyman Skill. On the other hand, having a fair bit of the Skill List as Everyman Skills would be similar to the Trained/Untrained skills for D&D. YMMV.