Joe Walsh

My wife's going into a stage I clinical trial for a new medication for her cancer.  Part of the entry physical for that trial, which she had last week, was a pregnancy test, and this after she'd had all those internal bits removed surgically about 15 months ago.
 
(merged unintentionally)
 
http://www.dorktower.com/files/2023/03/Dorktower2061.jpg
 

Don't forget that Aaron Allston's Mythic Greece game used 1e FH.
 
You can do a whole lot with 1e.

Rented The Whale, for which Brendan Fraser recently received an Academy Award.  Sometimes it's nice to step away from the MCU to see a film with a cast of six that takes place entirely in one apartment.  It was difficult for me to watch, because I have relatives with the obesity and mobility issues Fraser portrays, but it was still absolutely worth seeing.  I teared up, though not as badly as I did for Endgame.

Best Buy ended up replacing my Xbox Series X with a current set, which included a deluxe version of Forza 5. They also didn't want the controller back from the first one, which means that I've got a spare.
 
I had a problem with a rewards code from a recent movie purchase, and after contacting customer support, they've added a bunch of extra points, enough for two free digital movies. Their apology for taking so long also included that they had about 2000 people ahead of me with the same issue.
 
I had bought some soundtrack CDs from a music label's online store, and one of the discs was the wrong one (a season 1 soundtrack instead of the ordered season 2 soundtrack). I had sent the disc back, and received another copy of the wrong one. That one didn't need to be sent back, and i've now received the correct disc.
 
My car's averaging around 51 MPG on the current tank of gas. Our temperatures are a bit cooler than usual for this time of year, and that means I don't have to run the air conditioner right now.

Alcamtar
 
Thank you for a very informative and detailed reply. I think I will stick with 1e and add the two PDFs above. Although I might buy the 6e just to have a reading resource - as you can never have too much of that!

Sincerely, thank you for the effort you put into your reply.
 
John

[For the TL;DR skip to the bullet points at the end of this post]
 
 
If you like 6E, then yes. Personally I have almost fully abandoned it and have been thinking of running a 1e campaign as-is, because the flavor and tone and even the rules are quite different. I liked FH 4e a lot too.
 
I bought the 6e books and 10 years later I still haven't read them. It's just too much text, too much weight to cart to a game store or someone's house to use as a reference, and the books are so heavy they are falling out of their binding. So they stay on the shelf and rarely get pulled out to look up a rule, though honestly it's a lot quicker to just pull up a PDF and use the search function. And as little as I have used the 6E core books, I don't think I've used the 6e Fantasy Hero at all. I flipped through once after I bought it and looked at the pretty pictures, then put it on the shelf and it stayed there. There's nothing inside that I need. Hero is a do-it-yourself system, and I can already do all I need in 1e or 4e. 5e and 6e may be interesting commentary and house rules on the basic system, but are not anything I need or find any value in.
 
1e is just the right length and tone for me. I know the book and can find things easily. I have read it cover to cover many times, but only used 5e and 6e as reference books to look up specific things that had changed. After a while I asked myself: why? Why go to the trouble to swap the rules when 1e already does what I want. There are some rules in 4e I like to pull in, like VPPs; 5e added no real value, but at least it was compatible and therefore painless to use. 6e requires me to cross-reference every second rule to see if it changed, but the changes strike me as merely cosmetic, change-for-the-sake-of-selling-an-update with no real benefit to game play.
 
I think the 4e rules are the ones I remember best, I have them practically memorized; but 1e is my mental blueprint for how the game works and plays, and is the first place I go when I need to look something up. It's the book I turn to for inspiration. It set the pattern that every edition of Fantasy Hero followed and reprinted. In terms of Fantasy Hero I think the first edition was the best and most focused, and each edition after that has been less useful to me than the one preceding it.
 
One major (and frustrating) difference is that things get renamed and reclassified with each edition. Recently I went through all FH editions (1e, 4d, 5e, 6e, FHC) and compared them. From 1e to 4e a ton of powers and skills changed their names, and more than a few rules changed. The basic 14 attributes are the same, but everything else changes randomly. And then every edition after that, things move around; skill become powers and then become skills again; other things change from skills to perks to talents to powers; some things disappear, only to skip and edition and reappear again under a different name.
 
Examples (not exhaustive):
SKILLS. Charioteering and Sailing were separate skills that became Transport Familiarity; Courtier skill became High Society; Artisan skill became PS; Brawling became the Hand Attack power; Propecy skill was removed in 4E, then added back in 5E under the name Divination, then removed again in 6E; Spell Research became Inventor; the Luck skill because a Talent in 4E and then a Power in 5E. POWERS. Shield because Armor in 4E/5E and then Resistant Protection in 6E. Shadow and Silence became Darkness. Noncorporeal became Desolidification. Blast became Energy Blast in 4E/5E and then Blast again in 6E. Mind Attack became Ego Attack in 4E/5E and then Mental Blast in 6E. Perceive became Enhanced Senses, Bind became Entangle, Dazzle became Flash, Ward became Force Wall and then Barrier; Sounds became Images; Cloak became Invisibility; Adapt became Life Support. Haste became Running. Heal got folded into Aid and then separated back out into Healing. Some powers like Destroy and Create and Analyze were removed altogether. MODIFIERS. Aura became Damage Shield. Constant became Continuous and then became Duration Advantage and then became Constant again. Some modifiers like Fast and Easy and Permanence and No Magic Roll were removed because the rules changed to be more generic. LIMITATIONS: Burnout became Activation and then Activation Roll and then Requires a Roll. FRAMEWORKS: Magic Pool (1E) was renamed to Variable Power Pool in 4E. DISDADVANTAGES: Friend became Dependent NPC. Personally I find the older names shorter, more intuitive, and they make for shorter stat blocks. As I said this list is not exhaustive, though I have a doc (also probably not exhaustive) if you are interested. There were rules changes; for example in 1E the standard spell requires a magic roll and takes a full phase, and these changed in 4E. The whole thing with "Create" spells disappeared in 4E.
 
The only pattern I can discern to all this randomness is increasingly generic-ness and decreasing balance. More options mean more ways to get around rules limitations, especially with 6E which has ways to circumvent nearly any limitation in the system. You can't just say make a character with X points like you could in 1e, the GM need to review every line of the character sheet and consider if it might break something in the campaign. 1e was specifically designed and balanced for Heroic Fantasy; the fantasy flavor was baked right into the names of skills and powers, and the rules were tightly focused on the needs of fantasy. Workarounds were rare and expensive. In 4e it was all genericized so it doesn't feel like fantasy anymore, it feels bland and generic; the rules were genericized to be more universal. 6E doubled down on this and is far more generic than 4E was. Jack of all trades but master of none. That trend continues with each edition, so that 6e is the blandest, least focused, and least balanced version yet. It has more options, yes; but also effectively fewer options, because now instead of using your imagination, you look up the official options and rules in the exhaustive list of "anything anyone might ever want to do with Hero." It's already been done, no need to invent anything or use judgment, just look it up or ask for an official ruling. IMO that sucks the heart and soul right out of Hero, and takes away all my desire and a joy in playing.
 
Honestly, when I ran 6E Fantasy Hero, I mostly used FH 1e as a reference and sourcebook at the table; I even converted the items and monsters from 1e to 6e because I found them more evocative and inspiring. When I had a 6e-specific rules question I looked it up in Fantasy Hero Complete, or searched a 6E pdf. And I finally realized that if what I really want to play is 1e (and it is) then why am I swapping the rules from a different and incompatible game system? (Especially one that is similar enough to be confusing, but different enough to be incompatible. It's the worst-case scenario.)
 
Ah well, so much for my thoughts and experiences. I'm just an aging gamer unhappy to see his favorite neighborhood park bulldozed and turned into a parking garage.
 
So, not trying to start an edition war, or just complain. Okay, maybe complain a little. But you asked 1e vs 6e and I can't answer that without relating my experiences and feelings, so you can decide if your thoughts are similar, or if your needs are different than mine.
 
If you like 1E FH and really want to play that, then play that. If you like the flavor of 1E, none of the other editions are going to even come close to delivering that IMO, they are all generic and mix supers and modern and sci-fi in with your fantasy, while removing nearly all the fantasy flavor. Then trying to add it back in with separate FH that recommend you rename the skills and powers back to the old 1E names... but who actually does that? It would just be confusing. But the newer editions are great if you want to use the same rules to play multiple campaigns in multiple genres. (All I ever used Hero for was fantasy.)

My advice:
If you loved the 1E setting and rules, then play 1E. I switched to 4E when it came out because I wanted the VPP rules and some other stuff; but then I later learned that in the 1E Spellbook and 1E Magic items books, a lot of that stuff (such as variable power pools) was added to 1e anyway. And you can also pull stuff from Champions 3E. if you do play 1E, then I recommend the PDFs of Magic Items and the Spell Book: some of my favorite fantasy supplements for any game ever. The Magic items book in particular has some wonderfully creative stuff in it. And they have rules corrections and additions for 1E. If you loved the 1E setting but want to update to "standard" rules, play 4E and convert the stuff over. The rules are still small and pretty compatible, and conversion will be painless. If you try 4E, you'll probably want the 4E Core Rules and the Fantasy Hero book. I liked the 4E FH book, it was readable and full of good content. Also check out the FH Companion I and Companion II. If you disliked the 1E setting, or don't care, or have your own unique snowflake setting, use 4E/5E/6E because they are generic. 1E is strongly flavored like chocolate. But it is easier to add your own subtle unique flavor to vanilla (4E+). Use...
4E if you want rules familiarity, and small rules that get out of the way and leave room for you to be creative. 5E if you want rules familiarity, but very complete rules that don't leave any questions or things for the GM to have to adjudicate. I didn't particularly like the 5E Fantasy Hero supplement, it was too long and dry and packed with stuff I didn't care about. But it may be useful. The 5E bestiary is good. There were a boatload of userul sourcebooks published for 5E. If you want off-the-shelf material 5E is your best bet, by a long shot. 5E is the GURPS of Hero editions: a freezer full of TV dinners, just heat and serve. 6E if you don't care about familiarity (or barely remember 1E), and want a very complete rules set similar to 5E. My main dislike of 6E is that I am very familiar with the older edition and the changes seem arbitrary and pointless; and it is overly generic and long-winded. But if you've mostly forgotten and your rules knowledge is rusty, 6E won't be any more difficult to  learn than any other edition. Work mentioning that the 6E FH supplement is beautiful and full color. IMO you don't need the core rules in physical form, they are more useful in PDF, but the FH printed book is pretty nice. And hardback so it should be fairly durable. Fantasy Hero Complete if you want 6E rules but a smaller "focused" rulebook like 1E. It is still generic, but it omits all the non-fantasy genre stuff like Computer Programming, so it's at least a step in the right direction. Use this with the 6E bestiary and other sourcebooks, though you will eventually want the full 6E PDFs because this is still missing a few things. Now that you are thoroughly confused, I bid you adieu! 😇
 

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-fans-celebrate-ike-perlmutter-disney-firing/?utm_medium=Social-Distribution&utm_campaign=Echobox-CBR&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1680126825

Finally.  You'd think Disney would have gotten rid of this misogynist years ago.

Wouldn't sharing a creative effort with those who are interested be enough reason?
 
 

This is three characters that was cut from the final product that the author shared on Facebook. Golden_Age_Trio.pdf

An update (thank GM Joe)

https://gizmodo.com/wyrmwood-gaming-doug-costello-bobby-downey-1850237181

There's an article out about Wyrmwood Gaming (makers of high-end gaming furniture, etc.) that goes beyond the recent sexual assault allegations:
https://gizmodo.com/wyrmwood-gaming-doug-costello-bobby-downey-1850237181
 

So the description is a bit sparse for Heroes in a Hurry, and I'm wondering a few things...
Is it basically templates for powers, skills, etc.? Is there anything there for the veteran player? What types of heroes can be made using it? Are there specific power types?

I've been saying this for many years. The root of the problem isn't guns, although multiplying guns exacerbates it. The root is a gun culture that glorifies and romanticizes guns, links them with masculinity, and normalizes them as a way to deal with all sorts of social problems. Gun culture needs the same kind of advertising campaign as smoking, drinking and driving, wearing seat belts. Make it so that everyone calls out irresponsible handling of guns and makes that behavior socially unacceptable.

That didn't look competent at all to me. 

I would think concession stands would be all for it. 

I really want to see JW4, but I can't do three-hour sessions in a theater seat anymore.
 
Unfortunately, those are the only ones that even tempt me back to the theater these days. 

Wow, I didn't know WaPo editors read this site! It's so nice of them to try answering our questions in a front-page article today:
https://wapo.st/3JQ1yZd
(That should be a "gift article" link that doesn't require a subscription; otherwise, here's the regular link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001)
 
Their answer as to why the AR-15 is so popular in gun culture today? Marketing.
 

Wow, I didn't know WaPo editors read this site! It's so nice of them to try answering our questions in a front-page article today:
https://wapo.st/3JQ1yZd
(That should be a "gift article" link that doesn't require a subscription; otherwise, here's the regular link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f001)
 
Their answer as to why the AR-15 is so popular in gun culture today? Marketing.
 

Statistic and Power Levels For the Builds
I dont know if this is still a thing, but over the years Champions published characters would fall under certain patterns for stats which sometimes I did not like and overall I felt the stats were too high, especially when looking at both dexterity and speed. On the other side of the coin I felt Strength too many times would fall around the 60 mark, so lets look at these in turn.
 
Overall power level in damage dice
I want to simulate a greater common range of power level than was common in Champions back in say 4th edition. the higher damage levels say 15d to 20d will be more common in these builds depending obviously on the character and some  (powerful villains, top tier powerful heroes) will go way beyond that. That said I also want to keep street heroes at the correct level, but I am going to build many characters as very much glass cannons if they need to be.
 
Defenses
Pd and Ed levels will not commonly be artificially raised in builds unless there is a real reason to do so and increased defenses for combat luck or great willpower will probably be given to the most famous and iconic heroes to simulate the fact they have something special that allows them to come through in fights, but it wont be the norm instead reserved for the real comics superstars such as Batman and Spidey.
This will mean obviously fights will be much shorter in my campaign eventually and I am fine with that, as I previously said many characters will then be glass cannons going down quickly if tagged but able to be very offensively damaging themselves (Cyclops I am looking at you!).
 
Dexterity
I will be lowering DEX across the board if characters are considered to be more or less normal humans. I never liked the fact that the most common DEX scores were around 22-23 and slow was considered 18. I will dial it right back to the average human being 10 and anything over 30 is considered superhuman. However looking at the 6th edition tables on page 72 of the champions book, I love those ranges, but wil lenforce them much more strictly so characters fall between average to competent much more with only a few exceptional heroes going into the legendary range on DEX.
 
Speed
Again in Champions write ups over the years a speed of 5 seemed bog standard and 4 was slow and 6 considered fast. Again I want to dial this back a bit so a 6 would be considered very fast and reactive and slow would be considered much more down the line and common at a 2 with averages more 3-4. Again to use a wider range of speeds and make the superhuman speed guys that much more special.
 
Strength
Going to be really careful with the street hero/ normal strength characters to differentiate them more, so a character say like the Human Torch will not be given strength of much better than say skilled 11-13 also taking into account build and gender so when we get to the real street heroes such as Daredevil, Nightwing etc they still stand out.
 
Martial Arts & Combat Skill Levels
In comics recently it seems that everyone has training in Martial Arts these days, However I want to be careful in again showing the difference between this and and the real martial artist experts, so will be keeping a real tight rein on combat levels.
 
Contacts
The builds will be contact heavy to show heroes allies and history whenever possible.
 
Enemies
I will be limiting this disadvantage to maybe one or two arch enemies for the heroes and then a generalized rogues gallery disadvantage to not overload with enemies, for example Cap would have the Red Skull as his arch enemy then a rogues gallery representing villains like Batroc, Crossbones, Arnim Zola etc.
 
Cross Universe Levels
I want the characters to make sense and be competitive across the main comics universe so that obviously means many DC characters will be reduced in stats and raw power compared to their marvel counterparts, this obviously means characters like Superman who I want to be on a rough par with Thor and Hulk from Marvel. This is going to be a bit of a juggling act obviously as both universes operate under different power levels sometimes but I want them to be broadly comparable as I will be using them in the same Universe.
 
That is enough rambling for now, i will add to my thinking as different bits come up.

I suspect there's a good deal of cultural paranoia and just plain racism, too. IIRC, an episode of "The Daily" (the NYTimes podcast) delved into the weird world of 2A absolutist political activists, and found that many of them are also active in White Nationalist activism. (Though it's been more than a year, so it might have been "On the Media.")
 
"Be prepared" for what? Who is the enemy for which you need an arsenal?
 
Though the connection seems highly plausible to me from a psychological viewpoint, I don't personally know of any rigorous study to establish a statistically valid correlation. I am willing to hear contrary evidence.
 
Dean Shomshak

Toxic masculinity is, I believe, a major part of it. The civilians who post social media photos of themselves posing in full combat gear with their rifle, shotgun, and/or pistol, braying about how the government will take their guns from their cold dead hands, and what they would do to their preferred class of "villain" if they get the chance.