bluesguy

Really like the look and feel.

I would recommend the following to increase how lethal combat in your campaign is. This is based on many years of playing/running heroic Hero Campaigns. Limit the ability to heal. No "healing potions". Limit the ability to heal by someone 'laying on hands/casting spell' Limit the maximum resistant defense a character can have. If killing attacks in your game will average 3 to 5 points of Body per roll (1d6 to 1 1/2d6KA), then set the maximum resistant defenses to 5 points. That means most characters should have 3 to 5 rPD/rED. Limit the maximum OCV/DCV Allow players to buy combat levels Allow players to buy penalty skill levels, especially for 'called hit locations' Include martial arts skills that can be combined with melee weapons to increase damage potential Use Hit Locations If you do just those things you are going to have a much more lethal campaign. It is unlikely will end up with a TPK situation, since Hero leans towards characters being stunned/knocked out vs. being killed, but it could happen. Also you won't add that much additional bookkeeping or time to a normal combat (potentially extra roll for the hit location). If that isn't lethal enough I would add the max damage rule.

In my heroic campaigns I will allow players to get up to +3 PSL vs. Hit Locations and +3 PSL with Range Offsets. One of the characters in one campaign was a marks woman with a bow. Many adventures were in outdoor environments, much to her advantage. She would typically find a place to hide (stealth), set/brace and pick off targets 1/2 to 2/3 of the way across a 6' gaming table (how many ever inches/hexes that is). If she thought she could get away with it, surprise out of combat (for instance), she would take a head shot. The big thing with placed shots in the assurance of how much Stun the target takes. Other players had +3 PSL vs. Hit Locations with their favorite melee weapons. That also applied to major villains. And all the bad guys had 'random hit locations' when they tried to hit the players.

My campaign world spans a long period of time. We have only played in one period of time, There are time periods in the past where technology and magic have been more advanced/prevalent. The opposite is also true.

If the players have a whole bunch of clues but don't seem to be able to put them together (because I haven't done a good job laying them out) I will ask anyone w/ a 'real' Deduction roll to make the roll. If they just make the roll I will point out a connection, if they make the roll very very well then I will point out something really hidden but still in the clues. This comes up more when the session is oriented around investigation/detective work.

Thank for posting folks!

I just ran a game on Sunday. We hadn't played in a while and we didn't have all our players. So I told the players that were there that their characters had gone to Houston to help with search, rescue and some clean up (they can either fly, teleport or have create survival skills). I told the players that the other part of the team was in FL doing heavy lifting, literally since that was the brick and other character has high telekinesis. I have never played out a disaster w/ the characters - just used it as backstory.

As the creator of HCM - not that I know of....

Basically I use the setting and social norms drive the players towards appropriate behavior. If they wander around with armor/weapons - the city guard will assume the PC is looking for a fight. They will be confronted and generally be disarmed. The PCs will also find out that shop/inn/taverns don't take kindly to heavily armed people coming into their establishments. Usually there are parts of town where weapons and armor are strictly forbidden and people entering are searched.

I am a firm believer in appreciations, which I use in work all the time.

And more importantly - did you have fun? Did the people played in the group have fun?

How many combats have you run using Hero (or played in)? As a GM one trick is take 1/2 the 'mooks' and have them hold in phase 12. For instance I have 12 Viper goons with a speed 3. So I break them into 2 groups of 6. Normally SPD 3 would act in phases 4, 8 and 12. The 1/2 that hold decide to act in 3, 9, 12 and then have the other group do the same thing. That will keep the players on their toes.

A while back I bought a product called Odyssey: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management which describes the process of managing a campaign. The material is genre and system neutral, which makes it very useful. The definition they provide for a campaign is "A campaign is a series of gaming sessions focused on a group of characters which maintains a sense of continuity." The book points out that there are four basic elements to a campaign: Characters : A group of characters who do things together. Some will be at the beginning and last throughout the entire campaign and others will not. Game Sessions/Adventures : Stories/events/ actions that take place with the characters. Change happens through the adventure - both to the characters and to their environment. Series of adventures : Characters are involved in multiple adventures and typically the adventures are linear. Continuity : Events that occur in one session can impact the next session or a later session. My Champions campaigns are extremely episodic and tend to revolve around action (the fight). Some event brings the superheroes together to battle the bad guys of the week. This approach matches a great deal of the source material available to many players. Superhero TV shows (live action and cartoons) have tended to be very episodic (Wonder Woman, Incredible Hulk, Bionic man/woman, campy Batman TV show). A much more recent development in Superhero TV shows is the long running story arc - usually a whole season revolving around a single menace. Both approaches meet the above four criteria: characters got together, they have an adventure, the main characters keep showing up and past episodes impact how the character will act. I have been running a Champions campaign for about 5 or 6 years now. It all started because I wanted to do something with my teenagers and wife on Sunday afternoons. Their three characters formed the basis of a team. There have been a rotating cast of other PCs as people joined/left the group. I think we had two or three adventure arcs that lasted longer than 2 sessions. Most were one or two sessions. Episodic. Sometimes a past bad guy would reappear. All of the characters have changed - not just because of XP (often in spite of XP). I have also run a pure sandbox Fantasy Campaign. Basically created a place and populated it with people, monsters, rumors, stories, etc. and then turned the players loose to do what they wanted. There were some themes - trying to find a son who had been kidnapped by one of the player's brothers, finding out who killed another character's wife, etc. Those themes took years to play out. But mostly it was wandering around and discovering things. Many times the players would guess about something in the game (outside of what I was thinking) and I would find ways to include that into the campaign. I have also run many big Epic Fantasy Campaign. It is important to know what your players want vs. trying to fit things into a narrow definition of what you think is best as a GM. I made that mistake with a Sci Fi campaign which imploded after three episodes (after I spent about 8 months setting everything up).

Hi, Can you post a couple of character builds here so we can see what you are dealing with. I have been playing Hero for a long time and I have never run into a situation like the one you are describing.

In my current group only a couple of people are capable of building their own characters. Everyone provides me with character concepts. I have published guidelines. The people who can build a character on their own can and then I review it prior to any game.

One of the things I remind my players, they are all experienced Champions players, is that 10d6 normal damage is potentially a lethal attack. In fact in our last Champions game they were deal with super villains and their mooks. One of the players was about to really smack down an agent and I reminded them the agent is just a highly trained normal with some armor. They hit them with an average 10d6 roll and the agent went flying into a tree - no body got thru but plenty of stun did. When it came to the super villains they definitely let them have it - they had run into them before. Also there was a player who used a lethal attack on a super villain - basically a lethal gas type attack. The player kept up the attack even though it became obvious that she was dying from the attack. He kept it up until she was almost dead and the other PCs told him to stop. His excuse was 'She tried to kill me first'. As the characters are associated with PRIMUS and the fact he had no remorse at all about what he did, PRIMUS let federal prosecutor charge him with attempted manslaughter. His character is currently serving time in Stronghold. The player was heading off to college so it was ok. He was use to playing D&D (hack/slash/steal/look/kill)....

In the case of a missile I would probably allow it if they are diving for cover behind something. For instance the players are in a bar and a fight breaks out and someone has a crossbow and is shooting it at a player who isn't wearing armor (in a bar after all). They can dive behind the bar and get 100% protection. If they have acrobatics I would probably require that they make the normal dive for cover roll. If they didn't have acrobatics I would add an additional -1 penalty to the normal dive for cover penalties. If they say I am diving behind a table (that hasn't been flipped up on its side) I would just say that was FX for a dodge.

I run a very episodic Champions campaign. I always use the setting of 'modern USA', in the city the gaming group lives in, with the addition of supers who have been around a long time. It is a mashup of CU + Marvel. Since I have mostly lived in the mid-west we don't have the issue of running into 'big name superhero groups'. The players have fought Viper, Cobra (offshoot of Viper), Wreaking Crew, a bunch of villains from the Champions villains books, etc. I basically check out what is going on locally, tie in a supervillain or group to that event and aim the players on their way. The last session involved the return of Cobra and his minions showing up at the PRIDE parade (they were their to kidnap people and try and take down the heroes once and for all). The battle all took place in a park so the PCs had lots of NPCs to deal with plus all kinds of interesting landscape (trees, bushes, etc) to deal with. Snipers in trees and bushes were fun.

Not sure what you mean "integrated hundreds"? You can buy a ton of Harn stuff at DriveThruRPG

The setup was that each player was hired for a 3 month contract (good pay + nice places to live) on the same planet doing pretty mundane things. The last day of their contracts they show up at their respective workplaces only to find those places don't exist anymore - empty buildings. When they head home they find they are going to be evicted because the rent wasn't paid and whatever they were paid for the last three months is gone. They then meet with their "benefactor" which goes downhill. Stupid idea on my part. Reset: So they let me do a reset. Everything is the same but two weeks before the end of their contracts they are informed the contract won't be renewed. They each get an invite to meet at a corporate headquarters for dinner and interview. They meet with their 'patron' which goes much better. He tells them why he needs them, how much he will pay and once they say yes he gives them their first mission briefing.

Thank you for asking. We have only had two sessions. Session one did not end the way I intended it to end and would have set the campaign down the wrong road. After talking to the group we decided to do a slight reset and replay the end of the first session which helped get things back on the appropriate footing. The intent of the campaign is the players are part of a team which fixes things that neither the Interstellar Alliance or Earth Alliance has the resources to deal with (IA & EA are dealing with galactic changing events and these folks are dealing with events that tend to be more localized). They are being paid by a corporation which is owned by a man who has his own reasons for wanting these things done. Their first mission was to find out if a 'shipping clerk' with a gambling problem was providing shipping information to a local gang which was selling the information to a raiding group (pirates). Lots of stealth, observation, one B&E, some hacking of a data crystal, and voila they accomplished their mission. Oh and one of the characters who was shadowing the mark, realized he was being shadowed. I believe there were five shadowing rolls in a row between the PC and NPC (killer) before the PC managed to get away.

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My only response is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XcKBmdfpWs

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