Joe Walsh

IIRC Champions Deluxe was just the original 4e Hard Cover with the original Character Gen program included. I don't believe that the book was any different from the original (ex the binding was better, and the cover said deluxe). I seem to remember that the 4e Cybergames volume had a cybergames logo on the cover. Not sure, that was a LONG time ago.

It has been a long time!  I remember discovering Champions Deluxe at GenCon, circa 1997 (by which time it was already old news). Funny how I remember picking that up in the booth better than I remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

Anyway...you're right, it did include a copy of Heromaker, but Champions Deluxe also incorporated some bug-fixes (no rule changes). It was referred to informally as version 4.2, as I recall. I bought it for the bug-fixes when it came out, but never used it because I couldn't get past the lousy graphic design (something even the inclusion of a nice index could make up for, since just reading page numbers was a labor with that thing).  I eventually sold my copy (which I now regret; they're quite difficult to come by, it seems).

Here's a contemporary reference:

 

The new book looks like the old BBB with the word "Deluxe" added

and the coloring improved somewhat (a new sparkle on Seeker's sword).    

 It's the same system with some bug fixes.  No rules changes. Some of

the art inside has been changed.  A lot of the tables have been given

stranger looks- an image of torn paper is printed below them.  I hate it

myself, but that's what was done.  Some of the backgrounds for some

bits (Jimmy Dugan on page 255, Putting together a supervillian team on

page 341) make those sections very difficult to read.  

A lot of the new art looks like they were originaly color pictures that

didn't make the transition to B&W very well.  

And what I think it one of the *worst* things is that all the page numbers

have a "shadow" page number printed a half-character width to the right and

down.  This makes the page numbers difficult to read at a glance,

particularly in bad light.    

   The nicest change is the index, which seems pretty complete.  Partially

negated by the difficult-to-read page numbers.  I hope the binding holds

up better than the old one did.

As I noted, every player would insist on a copy of the rules, so we're talking $40 x 5 people = $200 .... from a group perspective.  That's not chump change.  And then there's the time investment, which is worth yet again more to anyone who actually values his/her time (even when having fun, it has a price tag).  This is the reason I need a good grip on the advantages -- as the costs, from a group perspective, are not 'total peanuts' as you put it.

 

That issue aside, thanks for the input, so far, I'm actually aggregating it on a PROS/CONS sheet for my own use.  I consider the hexes-to-meters issue a CON/drawback to 6e, by the way...

If money were an issue and I didn't have a problem with 5eR, I'd just stick with that.

Which makes it the last 4e ruleset published, and the most logical one to choose for any reprints during the moribund period in the late 90s/early 2000s. Yet, it's hard to find, so...

as for the timeline, if you are lucky one of those people involved will reply.

That would be great! It would be really nice to hear from someone who has first-hand knowledge of the situation.

Not quite. I believe that Cybergames had a printing of 4e during/after the CNM period.

Interesting. If so, I wonder whether it was a reprint of Champions Deluxe, or a reprint of the paperback or hardcover original 4e Champions release, or the Rulesbook. I would expect it was Deluxe, but it is so much rarer that I question whether that's the case.

I'm thinking about during the late 4e period, mainly. Reading the Hero Games section of "Designers & Dragons" doesn't make it clear, as it only talks about supplements published during that period. I wasn't paying attention to the RPG market at the time, so I don't know if you could still find Champions Deluxe or the Hero System Rulesbook on the shelf from 1998 to 2001.

Your affected speech has the effect of affecting my effective affect.

I wonder if there will be a crossover with Wizards of Waverly Place.

I enjoyed Daredevil too (not crazy about their take on Fisk, but that was me), but many seemed flabberghasted that I didn't like it as much as Arrow or Flash.

Everybody's different. I never enjoyed Seinfeld, Friends, Lost, 24, and a whole host of other popular TV series.  So, I understand.

All else being equal, I prefer some comedy in my drama. So I like Agents of Shield and iZombie a lot. Daredevil and Jessica Jones are very dark, but they're both in their first 13-episode seasons, so I can deal with the darkness and appreciate the rest of the stuff they bring to the table.

The Flash is OK -- it's a "good enough" show to me -- but Arrow is tough to take at this point. For the first season or two, I really enjoyed it. But at this point, it's overstayed its welcome. I'm hoping they will bring enough fresh stuff this season to keep me interested, but they keep disappointing me.

JJ wasnt bad but I liked DD better.

No argument from me about DD. They were both great. And most importantly, JJ shows that DD wasn't a fluke! There's hope that the others will be great, too. I'm looking forward to the other series.

I sure hope there is a Season 2 of Jessica Jones. It's one of the best series I've ever watched.

I'm watching it, but not really enjoying it -- just like last season. I keep hoping it'll get better, but so far there are just good bits here and there. Kind of like Grimm.

Over the years, I've run many heroic campaigns without the stun rule. Works fine for me. I like STUN because it gives us a non-lethal damage track. That's very appropriate for heroic, cinematic campaigns. I don't find the stun rule necessary or even helpful in that case.

I do use the stun rule for superheroic campaigns and for grittier heroic campaigns, though.

[T]he scene where she's trying to keep the axe from slicing her head in half while she heats it up with her heat vision was really poor; I didn't see any sign of muscular strain at all. It was so phony I would have laughed if I wasn't so embarrassed for the actress.

That they didn't re-shoot the scene because the actress adjusted her hand-hold on the axe speaks volumes about the production quality, to me.

I'm not familiar with the character, so I can't comment on how good an implementation this is of it. But I can say based on the pilot is that I don't care for this show. It's tolerable for the most part, but I look for more than that in a show.

Who knows, though. Maybe it'll evolve into something better over time. I'll keep an eye on it.

So working on a project to go through all my Hero books and enter the characters to 6th edition.  Every once in a while a bit of the character will make NO SENSE, this is a thread for us to get some joy from the weirdness of a by gone era

 

So today I bring you one of the dumbest Susceptibilities to date.  MOTOR OIL 3d6 ... yes MOTOR OIL is the Achilles heal of Fire and Ice

It seems ludicrous now, in 2015. But that's because it was a joke, one that was tied to its time. Back when that supplement was written, Shell Oil was heavily advertising their "Fire & Ice Motor Oil."

Yeah, not terribly funny. But it was a small chuckle at the time.

http://www.icollect247.com/itempage.php?uniqueid=73040

They changed his name to Shazam.

I thought it was Jim Nabors who suggested it.

I think that Champions Powers has all of the powers from all of the 5th edition Ultimate books, updated for 6th.  Off the top of my head I'm not aware of any others, though.

Ah, OK. I was hoping someone had gone through and systematically updated the templates/powers/etc. in 5e books that weren't themselves updated for 6e.

After a quick search, I did find a template update for Dark Champions. I couldn't find any for Pulp Hero or the vehicles books, though.

http://www.herogames.com/forums/store/product/527-dark-champions-6th-edition-templates-pdf/

You might also want to pick up the Mutant Madness PDF in the online store, which updates all of the mutant powers to 6E.  

Neat!

Are there other PDFs that update 5e products to 6e?

Yup, it's a great thing that each system has a flavor. HERO defaults to cinematic/comic book, GURPS to realistic, Savage Worlds to pulp, etc. There are options to make each of them more like the others in feel, but you have to work at it and IMO they get clunkier the further you get away from their default. With the campaigns I run, having both Hero and GURPS at hand makes my life easier. (It helps that they're both 3d6 roll under systems.)

Not actually related to said product: what kinds of things do y'all look for in a Hero supplement? I haven't read a lot of little adventure or campaign things, looks like a lot of Big Settings (Champions, or newer stuff like The Day After Ragnarok). Is that just a function of the generic nature of the system, or is it that Hero tends to attract people who do very custom things, and therefore have less use for that kind of product?

 

Just curious

I buy everything Hero puts out there, but when it comes to third party support I look for high-quality POD supplements. I'm much more likely to buy a genre book than anything else, especially if it includes a model campaign. Next would be interesting rules expansions like you see in the Advanced Players Guides or some of the GURPS PDF supplements (GURPS Social Engineering being one example). I'm unlikely to buy adventures.

That's interesting. I suppose the huge number of RPGs available these days skews the way it looks in online discussions, but as I think about it, what you're saying sounds right.

And, yeah...big toolboxes are awesome. Hero has a pretty huge one (as does GURPS). There are so many options in the Advanced Player's Guides alone that it sort of boggles my mind when I step back and think about it. (Looking at APG II, I really want to use some form of Social Combat in a Hero campaign, one of these days...)

I bet we must come off as kooks to some people, with our answer to "What system should I use for..." being an endless refrain of "Hero!" or "GURPS!" or whatever our favorite flavor is. I try to be careful about that and answer with a single-purpose system if it makes sense. But it's just so hard when your toolkit really does do a lot of things better than most!

Even though the largest portion of my RPGing has been with Hero over the decades, I have enjoyed many games and can understand folks who prefer one or the other approach. Certainly it's easier to grab something off-the-shelf and run with it, rather than using a toolkit like Hero. I appreciate a well-crafted game that represents its gaming style, genre and setting well. But I also know that some of my best, most satisfying RPing experiences have been when I used a toolkit game to craft my own, unique mélange of style, genre and setting. There's also the benefit that comes of long-term use of any system. Once you and your players know it well, it steps out of the way. And unless your group's thing is learning new systems all the time, it's nice not to have to do so in order to switch gears completely.

I wish more people were open to toolkits, but they do require a bit more work to understand and use properly. What's most frustrating is when I encounter folks who don't actually have any experience with toolkit RPGs and just dismiss them out of hand. (It's sad when I encounter folks who were burned by a poor experience with a lousy GM or misfit gaming group, and have turned away from toolkit RPGs as a consequence.)

For those interested:  Ron has posted a blog entry about HERO System math and some of his approaches to it:

 

https://adeptpress.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/math-is-not-hard/

The ratio is interesting, but I enjoyed the essay on focuses even more. It brought back memories of being literal with our builds back in the 80s. If it was an object, it was a focus.

For years I felt this way about Vampires and Werewolves. I was so fed up because of popular fiction and the RPG community wanting to go angst on me. Now I like vampires as villains again.

Totally understandable! Good thing there wasn't an awesome rules supplement called "Vampire and Warewolf Hero".

Zombies must be affecting people that way these days. They were totally off my radar until iZombie, though, so I enjoy that show a lot.

You did what?

 

Ninja Hero was easily regarded as the best supplement for Hero in the 4th edition days. I'm surprised you didnt hear about it.

I was pretty biased against ninja stories/movies/etc. in those days. They just didn't interest me at all, and I found it irritating that some of my friends seemed at times to want to talk about nothing else. If someone told me Ninja Hero was a cool supplement, I'd have dismissed whatever they said, I'm sad to say.

Nice!

Makes me really, really regret looking at 4e Ninja Hero on the shelf at my FLGS back in the day and saying, "Ninjas? Pfui!"