Tywyll

I tend to agree with this, which is why I play the version with 72 pages of rules instead of approximately one-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-five pages of rules (vol 1&2, Martial Arts, Skills, APG 1&2.  Other blue books not counted).  I rather like the one with 130 pages of rules (6e Basic), but even that has "no" and "must" a lot more than I care for in my games.  And apparently it left powers out-- I can't remember off the top of my head, but I think it was Negation.  That could have been summed up handily enough to take up another page or less.  Not sure why it was left out.  :-/  We currently have a system that, to paraphrase, 'preserves the full flexibility of being able to build and do whatever you want,' so long as you want to do it _this_ way.  
 
But I won't quibble about this: for one, Tywill summed up the crux of the problem better than I could have, and for two, I am truly positive that you had no actual intent to slight people who simply don't have the time to eighteen-hundred pages of text only to find out that they didn't actually get a _game_, and now have to sit down and make the universe.  At the end of the day, that's a damned hard sell.  
 
 
Well let's us step back just a minute, a little further back so we can look at this from more of an "outside" point of view than we usually do, what with all of us here being pretty well-entrenched HEROphiles and all that:
 
Going back to the hectic world we live in-- Hell, I'll be sixty next month, I work two jobs totaling just over eighty hours a week, and I hustle side work on Sunday afternoons when I can get it.  I'm not too terribly unique, really: most of my players work in the 60-hours-a-week range.
 
A lot of people don't _want_ that kind of investment.  They want someone to prepare them a game in which they can enjoy a little escapist fun.  Villain-of-the-week type stuff; simple scenarios; maybe even >gasp, I say< a little murder-hoboing.  They want to get together with friends, shoot guns, blow stuff up, and otherwise let off some steam.  They want to be devil-may-care, live for some fun right now kind of people.  They just aren't interested in looking at "where do I see this character in a year?  Two?  Even if we're talking game time, there are a lot of people that just don't _want_ to invest in a second life because the one they are already living just sucks the joy from them.  Escapism, as simple as possible.
 
I can live with that.  It's not my bag, but I totally _get_ where it comes from.  There's notthing wrong with them-- Hell, Im the exact opposite.  To this _day_ I prefer to start out with 250 point supers and _grow_ the character, but I have to level with you: that growth occurs a crapload slower than it used to!  
 
 
Just food for thought.
 
 
 

No, that's not right at all. These are people who have roleplayed numerous systems for years. But they are also adults who with limited time, jobs, and other constraints. Being dismissive of player realities won't help sell the game. 
 
As many have said in this thread, throwing a tool kit out for people doesn't really work (or else we wouldn't be having this conversation and HERO would be the RPG leader). Creativity thrives on limitations, check any creative writing course or book on the subject. Analysis Paralysis is a real thing, and it limits the acceptance of this and any other open source systems. We have to take that into account if we are going to attempt to broaden the game's appeal. 

No, that's not right at all. These are people who have roleplayed numerous systems for years. But they are also adults who with limited time, jobs, and other constraints. Being dismissive of player realities won't help sell the game. 
 
As many have said in this thread, throwing a tool kit out for people doesn't really work (or else we wouldn't be having this conversation and HERO would be the RPG leader). Creativity thrives on limitations, check any creative writing course or book on the subject. Analysis Paralysis is a real thing, and it limits the acceptance of this and any other open source systems. We have to take that into account if we are going to attempt to broaden the game's appeal. 

No, that's not right at all. These are people who have roleplayed numerous systems for years. But they are also adults who with limited time, jobs, and other constraints. Being dismissive of player realities won't help sell the game. 
 
As many have said in this thread, throwing a tool kit out for people doesn't really work (or else we wouldn't be having this conversation and HERO would be the RPG leader). Creativity thrives on limitations, check any creative writing course or book on the subject. Analysis Paralysis is a real thing, and it limits the acceptance of this and any other open source systems. We have to take that into account if we are going to attempt to broaden the game's appeal. 

To be fair, there were a lot of things I liked about New Millennium, including that simplified approach that kept the size of the game at a ready-to-play-by-Friday size. 
 
Didn't like Fuzion a lot, though. I might have, if it weren't for the oversights in what got left out,  but we will never know now, will we? 
 
 

Almost every major game these days needs multiple books. Pathfinder, D&D, WoD,  HERO. I can't think of any big name releases out now that don't use a multiple book format. Exalted 3rd ed maybe, but that rulebook is like 900 pages, so that ought to have been multiple books!
 
Even FATE has multiple rule books, Dresden Files was released in two books, my list goes on.
 
There are a few one and dones, but they are all indie releases or oldschool games really. 

I'd argue that it is just fine for beginners provided you insulate them from the power building crunch.  Either have canned abilities / talents at fixed prices or do the work for them.
My wife is both math adverse and had only a single season of D&D 5e under her belt when I switched it to HERO.  She still refers to our Fantasy HERO Saturday game as D&D.
My daughter is only 10 and she's had no trouble picking up the player bits.  What to roll, whether or not she succeeds on a skill or attack, etc. 
 
What nobody at my table wants to even attempt is building powers/spells/talents.
Even with Hero Designer (which I love) it is far too complex.  It is along the lines of the difference between playing a D&D fighter and creating the fighter class from scratch.

This, right here. 
 
I've been introducing a new group of players to Fantasy HERO for the last several months and so far it's...not going well. Despite the toolkit awesomeness and ability to build anything kind of approach, the players just stare blankly at me when its time to spend XP and the wide open nature leaves them cold. They want me to provide a clear dump of 'things that exist I can buy' and then not think about it. I have done this, making PDFs for them of talents and super skills and even that is a bit of information overload. They can't really envision how the stat block equates to a cool in fiction ability (I mean, I can, but most of them can't). 
 
Now, a lot of that is on them...they won't read the rules, none of them have bought a book, nothing. But I don't think my experience is unique. 
 
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that a limited selection of possibilities would have been more helpful had I gone with that initially...but, hind sight and all that. 

Well, we won't if we never try. And by "we" I mean someone with the time, resources, and talent (or access to the talent) to capture that lightning in a bottle. As I've said countless times before, it certainly won't be easy, but it is necessary. I guarantee you that anything less will amount to a useless half-measure at best, which will result in no movement of the needle whatsoever. So far history has effectively proven me right, and I fully expect it to continue to do so.
 
Another very unpopular opinion of mine is that the HERO System is not a good system for people who have never played TTRPGs before. It should not try to become a gateway game for that demographic. It is, always has been, and should remain the game system you graduate to after you've tried something simpler, more accessible, and ultimately less satisfying (I'm looking at you D&D). The HERO System has enough to do just being a deeper, more sophisticated, superior system. It shouldn't be burdened with the additional responsibility of teaching TTRPG fundamentals to complete newbies, and getting diluted dramatically in the process. That's why I would not be so eager to put any time/resources into some kind of (misguided) "Starter Set" version of the game.
 
In effect, the goal of drawing "new blood" to the system shouldn't be one of attracting people who've never played a TTRPG before, but one of attracting players from the massive pool of experienced TTRPGers who've never given the HERO System a chance.

That sounds like a fine way to sell movie tickets or adventure novels.  Our primary goal is to get people to play the game.  Those are very different things.  I know a woman who was a big Doctor Who fan (old-school, Don Baker - which was all there was at the time.  She went out and bought the Doctor Who Role-Playing Game from the 1980's because she was intrigued by the setting.  But she never actually played it, because she wasn't necessarily into role-playing, and even to the extent that she might have been, she would have preferred not having to be so restricted by the setting.  She already knew the story of Doctor Who, and it's not any fun to just play out the script that you already know.  If we get a gaming group together, and we all love Doctor Who, and want to play this game, only one of us can be the Doctor.
 
Tolkien's Middle Earth is one of the most popular settings ever, but it's never been all that popular for role-playing games.  A Twilight sparkly-emo-vampire setting might also bring in girls, but I don't know how many will actually play in it more than once, and I don't want to play in it at all.
 
Actually, they do.  As anyone who played D&D prior to, say, 1990, can attest.  Adventures existed in a vacuum.  Many of them.  You play the game, you play the game some more, you enjoy the game, you really get into the game, you play lots of adventures, and only then do you wrap a setting around the adventures - maybe.

I played D&D for years without ever thinking about a "setting" or a "campaign world".  And it was still fun.  All you need is the map of the location where the adventure takes place - the Haunted Ruins of Castle Hufarb, and maybe the village nearby where the players buy their equipment and supplies and meet up in the tavern, and all the people warn them not to go near those ruins, "No one has ever come back!"  And then you need the map for the next adventure, and then the nest one after that.  You really don't need the map of the land between them, where nothing the players care about is happening.  You don't really need to know where Metropolis and Gotham City are, with respect to Chicago and New York, to play the game.
 
Don't get me wrong:  I love world-building, and I enjoy detailed worlds, and I love epic story arcs that tie all (or many) of the adventures together, but they aren't necessary to start playing.

That's not a bad idea, however:
 
1) it adds more work to each combat resolution
 
2) it falls apart when you want to punch a brick wall in the kidneys.  
 
 

When I say starter set I'm also not referring to a beginner's set.  The D&D Starter Kit happens to use the D&D 5th edition Basic Rules, but when I played through it we used the full D&D 5e ruleset.  
 
The existing Fantasy Hero Complete "starter set" (electronic supplemental material) uses the full Fantasy Hero Complete rules.  There's no reason there can't be "complete game" sets that include everything but the rules; I'm fine if "complete game" includes the rulebook, even the full toolkit, as a separate book or books.  
 
 
Good question.  Danger International is self contained and limited.  It assumes not just genre but a particular play style (i.e. no powers, agent-level, gritty).  In theory, yes, we could reproduce that, as long as we're assuming a genre and play style.  No, it's not the toolkit -- and that's a feature, not a bug.  
 
Everything about the full HERO System toolkit ecosystem assumes everything is wide open, and that GMs and players will have full access to it.  It's kind of hard to reconcile that with a pregenerated world, power sets, power systems (magic systems, psionics, etc.), source material (monsters, villains, spells, gadgets, etc.).  Believe me, I've been told a number of times that what I want is "dumbing down" the system -- no, I don't.  I want something that I can open up and be playing in an hour.  
 
There's no reason a complete game has to dumb anything down.  "Starter set" doesn't have to mean for beginners!   Pregenerated source material doesn't have to be "dumb".  

As opposed to the design and logistical nightmare that it is now?  In an active-linked PDF, you almost don't need to worry about the order information is presented in, because you can link directly to another section of the rules when you need to.  Electronic formats allow you to solve those logistical problems.  Hard copy does not.  If a particular rule makes reference to one other rule, then you can put those rules next to each other.  If a rule makes references to multiple other rules, you can't put them all next to each other on a piece of paper, but you can link them together in an electronic format.
 
Y'ever shop online?  Y'ever shop out of a big hard copy catalog?

I absolutely agree.  It is now a waste of paper and ink.  A box at the start with a link to internet text and a video of people playing the game would be MUCH more valuable.
 

Like Haymaker, I don't see Move Through (or move by) as limited to tackling. Move Through seems perfect for representing a Charge attack, especially with a spear or similar weapon.
 
I don't see why weapons are less effective. Why do they (almost always) suffer an additional CV penalty and DC penalty. Don't look at someone with max human str, look at someone with the minimum needed to wield the weapons. A soldier with a 12 STR and a medium spear suffers an additional -2 OCV and -2 DC when charging which is...weird? Using the same example above, his Move through would get him back up to the normal spear damage, but he's less likely to hit. There is little reason to bother with the maneuver at the point. 
 
It actually encourages performing Move X's with smaller weapons, not larger ones. Which again, seems really weird. 
 

Didn't your die rolls also not count unless they went uphill and ended in snow? 

I agree with you in spirit, but not in reality.  A lot of that stuff is useless without Hero Designer. 
 
I'm willing to download and print stuff on my own dime; that's not a problem.  Buying software and then having to turn around--if the bulk of the conversations in the HERO Designer forums are any indication--learn Java and build export templates and match this and thats? 
 
No thanks.  If I had that kind of knowledge already, I'd be using it to make a living.  As I am making a living differently, I don't have the spare time to learn it.  I can barely do a weekly game session with a bunch of high-schoolers and a bimonthly with my remaining regulars. 

Still use 4th. worked fine for Knights with lanced making move throughs.

Since Con doesn't contribute to figured characteristics in 6e and I rarely see a Con roll in game, I'd call it a 0 or at most -1/4. Honestly I probably wouldn't allow it. 
 
Like what about: Body, Only to absorb damage as a limitation? Anything? I wouldn't give it anything. I kinda feel like this is the same. 

What genre and theme?  That makes a _huge_ difference, at least for me. 
 
I like my supers and my space opera to be like the comics of the the sixties and eighties, with a bit more drama but supers-are-super. 
 
I like my westerns to be realistically lethal- everything short of hit locations is on the table, and nobody catches three bullets and keeps running. 
 
My cyberpunk and pulp are action movie, and the rest of my space-related sci-fi is either Traveller or Atomic Age. 
 
My fantasy swings from gruesome to action movie, depending on the campaign in question. 
 
Everything else falls into the cracks.  Honestly, it depends on the tropes we want to play with at the time. 
 
As you can probably tell from that, I have very little problems picking and choosing the rules I am using and the ones I am ignoring. 
 
 
 

Mostly because Clairsentience has no ability to target an unknown location. I suppose combining a detect with it might work. It's just frustrating that it becomes such a high AP construct for a power that is so situationally unusable. 
 
I'm the GM. I'm always the GM with my group. No one else in my group knows or loves HERO like I do, sadly. 

It's been over a decade since i got to game champions at a table regularly, so my memories are a bit fuzzy, but I do remember a player of mine who ALWAYS got at least one crit on Mechanon.
 
It didn't matter what type of character she was playing. Blaster, Brick, whatever.... the same character that would miss Foxbat one week, or even get challenged by VIPER agents, would meet Mechanon, and it was like her little dice became hatefilled luddites that wanted to destroy all robots! In one battle, she rolled Three ones THREE times... two of those in a row.
Now mechanon is supposed to become stronger as he improves himself IF his head can fly away etc etc.
But this is where the other players came in, and props to them.
At times they fried the tech in the area so Mechanon would have a harder time using it against them .They even faked powers or vulnerabilities they didn't have to feed false info to Mechanon (Garbage in, Garbage out). 
And then that head flew off...
and that third crit from that same player!
 
Ever wonder if the dice gods are telling you to not use that villain anymore?

I have a similar thread about the master villains you're discussing if you want some ideas.
 
 
Hope this helps.
 

I remember around fifteen years ago, one of our long-silent forum colleagues, Lord Mhoram, claimed that his team of very experienced, Justice-League-ish PC heroes fought Dr. Destroyer solo as written in Conquerors, Killers, And Crooks, and killed him -- killed him -- in two Turns of combat.
 
Champions campaigns can range a lot in power level, and in where published NPCs compare.