Joe Walsh

"Action HERO" would have been a great name! The only way they could have named that supplement worse would have been if they'd have titled it, "Extreme Dark Champions." I had the same problem with "Ninja HERO." The whole ninja thing was over by the time TMNT parodied it in 1984. By the time Ninja HERO came out, it was something I actively avoided. If it'd been titled "HERO System Martial Arts," I'd probably have picked it up. But it was "Ninja HERO" and I was sick to death of Ninja stuff, so I passed it by, back when. Wish I'd have opened it up and taken a look. It wasn't until a few years ago that I finally bought that one.

I'm sure the intention was to provide everything needed, and it obviously works for many people, but I can understand just wanting to pick up Danger International or Justice, Inc. and go.

4th Edition is my preference, but I still see why someone would want 3rd despite the rules have becoming better defined over time. The advantage of 3rd was that the game was what was in the book(s) of that one game, not what you selected from the available options in a book-of-all-games. It's the difference between a house system and a universal RPG. Products made with a house system can be cobbled together by GMs to make a universal RPG if they want, but each game can be played as-is by anyone. A universal RPG can't be played as-is. It needs the GM to understand it first, and to make decisions about which optional rules to include and so on. Universal RPGs require more work up-front from the GM, and there's always more potential for mismatches between player expectations and GM plans regarding which bits to use, etc.

The desires of those peoples are so manifestly different than those of the English, it seems the right thing to do...as sad as that is to contemplate. Edited to add: I'm talking about the voting majority, above. I realize there's a spectrum in each.

The first exit poll released predicts a big win for the Conservatives. https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50765773

I'm hoping for a non-Brexity result for the UK election today. Nice to see they had long lines of folks waiting to vote this AM.

Exactly. They can add taxes to whisky all they want. Just so long as they don't mess with whiskey. (I'm a rye man myself.)

The conservative project has always been about putting the country in the hands of the people who own it. Sometimes I think the only real question remaining is whether we will end up a kleptocratic failed state or a nation ruled by a self-perpetuating oligarchy of the wealthiest families. But that's when I'm feeling pessimistic. There's still the chance (however small) that things will change in this next election. I plan to stock up on whiskey before next November.

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!

My response to that was the same as yours. "WTF? 4e, p 154 says, 'This is basically an all-out punch, and takes an extra segment to execute.' In what world does that imply that it can be used for lightning bolts, etc.??" And then, on reflection, "Well, the risk/reward is the same either way, so I guess extending it makes sense." Like you, we still don't play it that way, but accept it as valid. And that's one of the hardest things about being online: accepting that your ways aren't the only ways, and that others doing things in other ways that work for them is fine.

Reminds me of that concept in developmental psychology, "Object permanence." We're supposed to have that down by the time we're 2 years old. I guess it takes some of us longer than others.

And we're all shocked that this is the sort of thing Trump-the-candidate railed against, yet it's what Trump-the-President is in favor of.

That makes total sense. And it's a reminder to me of one of the (many) difficult things about the RPG market. Every new edition is competing not just with other games, but with all prior editions of the same game. RPGs aren't consumables, they don't stop working, and the people who buy them tend to be the sort who are just as happy fixing any issues they find as they are to pay someone else for a fix. Of all the games I own that have multiple editions, there are only a few that I play or run the current edition of the game. Which makes me admire D&D, especially 5e. They really hit a home run with that one, recovering from not only the stumbles of 4e, but successfully competing with all previous editions, the OSR, and Pathfinder, all of which are currently supported by new products from someone out there, to one extent or another. An impressive feat. But, even so, there are plenty who aren't interested in D&D 5e. I own it, but I don't play or run it. I like the older stuff better, particularly AD&D and B/X. The only D&D version I've run a campaign in within the last decade was B/X. In the end, it's my preferred edition -- and the RPG that introduced me to the hobby. But, then, I'm not really a D&D guy, and haven't been since the mid-80s. If I were, I'd certainly be subject to the one thing that does tend to pressure people into adopting new versions of RPGs they like: the desire to play and run the game with people outside of their immediate circle (at conventions, online, etc.). Good thing I'm mostly interested in niche games, and have folks near me who are happy to play them. 😁

Oh, the size powers! That sounds right, now. They seemed to always be fiddling around. Prompted by your comment, I looked up the EC entry in 2e and 3e. At first glance, it looks like they changed the cost calculation. In 2e, you buy the first Power in the EC at full cost, and then all the rest are at half cost but none can have less active points than the first slot. 3e is when they changed it to paying X points for your EC, then putting in slots with at least 2*X in active points and subtracting X from the cost. Nope, that didn't get any more fiddly. 😜

I do have one question for Duke, though. Why 2e? I started with 2e, I love 2e and have several copies of it. It's my nostalgia version, for sure. But wasn't 3e just 2e with better graphic design, an adventure, and a few rule tweaks? I'm trying to remember what was different, and I can't. 😞 Are there substantive rules changes from 2e to 3e that keep you on 2e? Or do you simply prefer the presentation of 2e?

I agree, each new edition of HERO System is more persnickety than the last. Each edition is increasingly focused on pleasing those HERO System fans who want very precise tools to work with in character creation. But that focus left a lot of fans behind over the years. Some at 5e, some (like me) at 4e, some at 3e, and then Duke back there at 2e 😁. It makes me wonder what could have been if it'd been handled more like BRP, where each line continued on its own despite various releases of Basic RolePlaying as a separate, generic RPG. Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, and King Arthur Pendragon are all BRP-based games, but even now, decades later, they are all distinct properties with very different focuses and subsets of the overall BRP rules universe. And they're all successful. I wonder what would have happened if HERO had been handled the same. Champions may well be the dominant supers RPG even now, in the way that Call of Cthulhu is still the dominant horror RPG. And Fantasy HERO and perhaps one or two others may also be successful properties in the way that Runequest and Pendragon have had some modicum of success over the years. We'll never know, of course. But I wonder.

Wait...so, they were two different people?

As has always been, and always shall be...

I've been listening to a lot of Hank Williams' stuff lately. He wrote and recorded quite a lot of songs back in the late 40s and early 50s before his death at the age of 29, and most of those songs really hold up these years. I understand now why he was such a favorite of my grandfather.

Anyone else notice the announcement that Chaosium is going to be making an OGL and SRD for the system that powers their popular games, such as Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest -- Basic Roleplaying (BRP)? https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/10565-new-version/?do=findComment&comment=162231 I think that's pretty darned exciting. I'm glad that a good number of companies over the years have chosen to do that. It's opened up a lot of possibilities.

You're not mistaken -- SJG uses crowdfunding quite often, and they do a pretty good job of it. For GURPS specifically, they used it to produce all-in-one boxed set for playing in the dungeon-delving space (Dungeon Fantasy RPG) and a follow-on to it. They've also used it for The Fantasy Trip and many of their other properties, including products for their very popular Munchkin game. Stuff intended for mainstream distribution after Kickstarter fulfillment is put up by their Steve Jackson Games account, while stuff that will just be produced for the Kickstarter (with any remaining stock sold through their website) is posted under their Warehouse 23 account. Outside of crowdfunding, it helps that they have a stable of evergreen tabletop games like Munchkin and Zombie Dice. They can afford to make relatively little money on games like GURPS and still produce one well-crafted, substantial PDF for it per month.

They ran a Kickstarter to bring back all of their Pocketbox Games of the 80s. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/pocket-box-games-of-the-eighties/description I'll bet you'll be able to get what you want once the Kickstarter orders are filled in a few months.

Happy Thanksgiving! May your pants fit even better tomorrow.

In the future, everyone will design and publish their own Champions.

Thanks for that, Deadman. I'd always wondered about that.