Joe Walsh

The contrast isn't as great these days, though.  Its not random stats and AC any more, they've made it a lot more like Hero over the years (especially 3rd edition).

My preferred edition is what I call 4e+. It is 4e with stuff cherry picked from 5eR.

this started before Disney+. Superhero movies in the cinema kind of have to be epic. Some people don;t go to the cinema for anything less. Disney+ (and before them Netflix) had superhero movies that were more down to earth. This is where we will find the more low-key superhero stories (like Hawkeye)

I have resigned myself to realizing nobody is going to do the Suicide Squad right because they think they need the BIG SUPER MASSIVE EPIC story instead of a tight thriller like Dirty Dozen of bad guys forced to work together.  Sooner or later its going to dawn on Hollywood that you can do any story in a Superhero setting, that its not genre, its more like set dressing or time period.

Posting this for whomever might be interested: 
 

Wellll.....the guy is an idiot.  
Talk radio shouldn't have any legal protections...the numbers of incoming calls should be recorded.  A subpoena should be trivial to get the number of that caller, and hopefully that'll target a search effort.  Plus, it wouldn't surprise me that this elevates the case status;  it's like waving the red flag at the cops.
 
Hopefully the guy will be caught soon, for so many reasons.  And when he is...in the US, what he's done is parental kidnapping, and I suspect in Canada, with their vaccination policies, it might even be child endangerment.  #1, I hope the kid gets returned to her mother ASAP, but #2, I hope this guy gets put away for a few decades.

That said, I just accepted a job offer. Travel time isn't too bad, and it's a full-time position, albeit a contract job. Not thrilled about it, but needs must.

Bah! I always dug Seeker. In my old campaign, he became an agent of UNTIL and served as an advisor to one of the groups.

I believe that's what the 5E Champions Battlegrounds book was intended to present -- a group of adventures which could be run separately, but which also had an overarching plot to tie them together if a GM wanted it.
 
Rather than the 4E and earlier adventures, it would probably be easier to update the Champions adventures presented in Digital Hero to 6E, and collect the majority of them (there were fourteen in total) into a single volume. They have the advantage of being ready to run, already having written up NPCs, and optional PC heroes in several cases, with artwork, plus most of them include maps.
 
DH also has seven Star Hero adventures, three for Fantasy, and a couple for other genres.
DH Adventures .doc

I believe that the followup to Champions Begins should be a bone stock basic Champions adventure campaign.  Simple base, simple NPCs, simple adventure arc with lots of ideas and options to customize.  Like "Dr Destroyer has an island somewhere, he's building up power to attack the world and the PCs slowly uncover the plot as they do other adventures along the way"  6-10 adventures with a bunch of adventure prompts for things like "love interest in peril" and "secret identity might be discovered".  You know, the Superhero classics.
 
Again, like Western Hero, if you're introducing people to the genre and the game, you don't need to remake the mold, just give people a chance to play the comic books and movies themselves.  You can get wild and creative after that.

I'd like to see a return of the 2-4th thin style modules. You can run in a night or two with hooks to add on later.
 
A Book of Champions would be interesting, detailing the teams over the years similar to Book of.. Destroyer and Mechanon. While Seeker could be left out (wgmhistles innocently) seeing the others updated for the 2k+ era would be nice. Also a revisit to Champions 3K.

Hoo boy....
 
We crossed the 300 million case number a while ago...and at this point, we can barely see it in the rear view mirror.
According to WorldOMeters...over 18 million new cases worldwide *in the last week*.  
Yeah...highest we got before was a tick over 900,000 new cases a day.  Right now it's pushing 3 million.
 
I never got measles.  I vaguely remember getting the vaccine tho, as a kid.  I did get mumps...hadda be around 5 or 6, I'm pretty sure, because I remember which house we were in.  There was just NO QUESTION, tho, back then...we stayed home, we isolated.  End of story.  
 
If you want a reminder...Ancestry.com used to offer a trial period, or even pay for it for a bit.  Chase down your family tree.  When you're getting back into the 18th and 19th centuries...start looking at how many of the kids never made it to their teens.  It can be quite the eye-opener.  Or look at things like life expectancy estimates back then.  Most of em exclude deaths under the age of 2, in that even today, the risks are higher in that period, and they'd skew the data badly.  The biggest changes in life expectancy come when the childhood diseases stop being a massive threat, I believe.  You can also search cause of death statistics.
 
Unfortunately, the anti-science, anti-vax crowd won't care.  

Personally, I am thinking that the Chimera project is not a wise expenditure of funds, when what Champions, or any of the sub rules need is something "big", that has almost a campaign sized adventure, a spray of adventure seeds, and a stack of written up villains, and monsters, for the adventure. Duke Bushido had something like this with an adventure  in one of the threads here.  What needs to be done is to produce more adventures with villains, and equipment.  We can't assume that all the GMs are Home Brewers like they have in the past. Because it's in the past, it's not in the way GMs do things now.

I liked it a lot, but I'm an easy mark since I've always liked Hit Monkey in the comics. 
I didn't expect to binge all ten episodes the day that they dropped, but there ya go.
 

Solar Opposites (Hulu). Animated series from Rick and Morty's Justin Roiland. Seemed promising, but we bailed 10 minutes into the first episode. Watching paint dry would be more fun.
 
Marvel's Hit-Monkey (Hulu). Animated series from Marvel about a monkey who is seeking revenge. One episode in, it's OK.
 

It's so damn frustrating to me, with peoples' attitudes toward lockdowns and preventative measures.  I think of my dad, who lived through the Great Depression and World War II.  Heck, he managed to go to college at the end of the Depression, working at a spaghetti company to help pay his way while taking classes.  Then having to interrupt his studies to go fight in WWII.  When I think of all he had to go through... and I'm being asked to wear a mask, give people their space, and stay in my home.  If that's the worst I have to suffer, geez, I'll take it.  
 
To paraphrase something Robert Fulghum once wrote, people need to realize whether something is a lump in their throat, a lump in their potatoes, or a lump in their breast.

Gotta say, I'm not keen on yet another fragmentation of HERO's rules. But hey, maybe it'll appeal to others.
 
The only two products I'll be interested in will be the IHA and Champions International books. I've already put money into CI with buying the "unfinished" versions so my interest has already been shown.
 
Champions Begins, while I appreciate the concept and admire the hard work put into it's not for me. I hope it goes well, I do but I'd kill to see more support that goes beyond a basic entry-level point.
 
Patreon down the road? Sure maybe?

As much as Canadians have always complained about the annoying, frustrating, inexplicable things Americans do, we've always been grateful to have the United States as our neighbor. We considered Americans to be dependable friends, partners and allies. We felt safe with them. The prospect of that changing is deeply unsettling to us, and if it becomes reality we'll be facing a profound paradigm shift in how we think and live.

It's pretty unsettling to us too, believe me.

Mounting an invasion against a country at war with itself is highly likely to ensure it remains divided.  It is a no-win option, IMO.  I'd also point out:  define the circumstances under which such an intervention would be considered "necessary" from the perspective of, say, Canada or western Europe.
 
If anyone intervenes, it would most likely be, IMO, to establish and protect refugee safe zones.  I don't see even Russia or China moving against US soil;  I could see both of them supporting as many factions as possible, in order to maximize fragmentation, and while that's happening, move to grow their sphere, closer to home.  The breakaway republics for Russia;  for China, solidifying the hold on Taiwan and Hong Kong, and moving on the Philippines.

Let me do my best to answer a few questions/comments-
 
1) There were bunch of books slated for publication back in the day; including, alas, several that were to contain my own work. HERO System Vehicles was one of them, and I would most certainly publish it. If someone (or several someones) wants to send me a manuscript, I'll consider it for publication. I suspect Ninja-Bear is probably right, and it already exists among you in some form. In fact, I could release a pretty good sized book using only the work shadowcat1313 has done already.
 
2) The Chimera System project is "it's own thing." It's not much like the Fuzion System - or for that matter Champions Now. Nor is an attempt to replace or update the Hero System. It's an interesting project - and we're open to interesting projects. 

Fellow Hero System Fans-


I’d like to take a moment to talk about our plans for Hero Games in 2022. I believe they’re both modest and realistic, in that they can be accomplished on time and using our limited resources. At the same time they are also ambitious, as I intend to release four projects in 2022; one each quarter of the year. They will be the following:


(Quarter One) HERO2023 Champions Begins Created by a group who wish only to be known as “Hero Fans.” This high-quality free electronic product provides everything you need to play your first game of Champions! It’s designed to teach people new to Champions how to play the game, but isn’t a complete presentation of the rules set; it provides you with just enough to play for the first time. The zip file contains a 52 page GM book, a 20 page Player book, a villain book, hero book, paper figurines, and Hero Designer files.


(Quarter Two) HERO2017 IHA: Pride & Prejudice Created by Thomas Stadley. To most people the Institute For Human Advancement is best known for its boring spokespeople who appear on talk shows that only their parents watch. But the Earth’s superheroes know better: the IHA is an insidious, genocidal threat to the planet’s mutants – and anyone else who gets in the way of their plans! Packed with agents, villains, weapons, and equipment, IHA: Pride & Prejudice contains everything you need to introduce the IHA into your campaign.


(Quarter Three) HERO2018 Champions International Created by Steve Long and Jason Walters. There are a variety of imaginary and unusual locations that have been mentioned in Champions Universe books over the years, but have never been fully explored or detailed. Champions International does exactly that, providing an in depth look at locations such as Awad, Lugendu, Larisagrad, and Costa Azul. It also includes some new locations like Transnistria and Prosperidad. Previously released individually in 2021 and 2022, these articles will be further edited and reworked to become chapters in the final version of the book.


(Quarter Four) HERO2024 The Chimera System Created by Philip J. Guinchard. The Chimera System is a hybrid of the Hero and OpenD6 systems in which elements from both have been combined together by the author to create a unique, new game system. Like the recently published Champions Now, it’s a joint undertaking by ourselves and a creator to publish a variation of the Hero System fans will find interesting and useful.


Additionally, if things go well with Champions International, Steve and I are considering creating a Patreon account to fund the creation of the HERO System Advanced Player’s Guide III, Champions Martial World, and other projects starting in 2023. But we’ll see how this year goes before we commit to a long-term project like that!


If you have a manuscript you would like to submit to Hero Games, contact me at jason@herogames.com with a one to three paragraph description of your work. If it sounds like something we would be interested in, you can then send me the full manuscript for review. And, of course, feel free to post any comments or questions on this thread.
 
- Jason Walters, Publisher
 

Even conceding this...the source material changes so often that, to me, details like this are meaningless.  Marvel isn't as bad as DC, but the stories are still on a drunkard's walk, if you look at em over the course of decades.  
 
How many black characters existed *at all* in 1962?  Much less Latino, Puerto Rican, Filipino, etc. etc. etc.  Those limitations would be completely unreasonable when the story's set today.  That's a major change in the underlying premises of the world...and the audience.
 
Introducing friends/expected romantic interests 'earlier than' in the comics is also dictated by the medium.  There's only so much time in each movie;  the more you want to tell the main story, the less you can move background aspects forward.  People want to see MJ or Gwen earlier, rather than later.  Similar things with Dr. Strange...how long, in the comics, did it take before we met Wong and Mordo?  And I think they adjusted Wong's role a bit.  No big deal, to me;  it's part of the process of adapting to the medium.

From Nature: Monoclonal antibody treatments ineffective against omicron variant
 
Not happy news.

I was basing the "justice" part on this:
 
"...he called in to the Zanzara radio program ... and openly told listeners he was seriously ill, with a high fever, but had made a point to stroll through a crowded grocery store maskless."  (emphasis mine)
 
This goes beyond monumental stupidity or willful ignorance and straight into deliberate, premediated malice.  Even if one accepts the idiot's assertion that COVID doesn't exist, he knew he was sick (presumably with flu? which is still potentially deadly) and went around *trying* to infect others.  To me, this is akin to that guy who knew he had AIDS but continued having unprotected sex and spreading it to many, many others.   You're a much better person than me, Duke, because I really feel the gene pool is a bit cleaner without someone like this swimming around in it.