Chris Goodwin

What No, this is not an invitation for an explanation. Just... What

If they charge for the table space, snacks, and so on, Hero money spends the same as D&D money. If it's the FLGS that's pressuring you to play somewhere else... I assert that the "F" in FLGS for them stands for something other than "friendly".

Mostly, it depends. If a PC wants to craft mundane items, then it's usually pretty abstracted. Buy materials with money, make your roll, spend the time. Time can be pretty variable; probably a day or two to make a sword, a few weeks to make armor. A lot of that will be done during down time. Difficulties that might apply would be if the crafter didn't have the right equipment, materials, workspace, conditions, or time. Most of those would be handled by abstraction and roleplaying. You wouldn't necessarily spend points for mithril; you'd spend points on something significantly better than mundane equipment (effects based). So if it were let's say armor, mithril might make it lighter for the same DEF value than steel. It would be up to the GM whether to pay points for it. If it had other properties, then it would be more likely that you'd pay points. I know this wasn't a very helpful answer; in Fantasy Hero the answer is pretty much "that's up to the GM."

To some extent the Champions Character Creation Deck is this. Six pregenerated stat blocks, a dozen or so pregenerated Complications sets, and a buttload of pregenerated power and skill sets. They're non-collectible and thus non-rarity-leveled, but you can very easily deal out a few cards to create a superhero, then snap a pic of it with your phone to have an electronic copy. Getting called to burn stuff. More later.

Hey, I bought a bunch of those figures as well!

We just discovered that that person is the player in the OP's game, and I at least have been trying to give both the GM and player conflicting advice, there, here, and on Reddit. So, l suggest waiting a bit and getting everyone in the discussion together.

TTS scripting is Lua, I think. http://berserk-games.com/knowledgebase/scripting/ talks about it. I have a 4-pack of TTS licenses myself, though I don't think I've ever done much more than scatter pieces about then flip a table. If you could get HCM to talk to TTS via Lua scripting I can guarantee you at least one HCM sale. Edit to add: Even if it's something like: HCM outputs a line of data, the GM can copy and paste it into a script in TTS, and that makes something happen with the map and figures and so on.

I'm pretty sure there used to be one for 5th. Probably was taken down when 6th came out. I don't think there's one for the earlier editions but I think most of them have something like it in their corebooks.

From experience: In my D&D group, I've had new gamers over and over ask "What do I roll again?" Same question with those same gamers in Champions. Experienced players are used to the answer to that being something like "Roll to hit," or "Roll Perception," or some other game mechanic, when what they're asking is, what dice do you want me to roll? Not really sure what the best way around that is, except to say something like "You're rolling to hit. Roll 3d6, then compare that to your OCV + 11...." or "Roll 1d20, add your Arcana skill, and did you roll a 13 or higher". Further experience: two of the D&D players played in my Danger International run at GameStorm, and they both told me they were starting to get it with Hero; one of them played in a Champions game the previous evening, where I was also a player. I can't say whether that was from repeated exposure or something else, but between the two of them that was 3-4 sessions of Hero each. I think they both still struggle a bit with D&D, and given the amount of time it's been since GameStorm they probably would similarly struggle again with Hero, but maybe... not as much?

I'd recommend heading over to Drivethrurpg.com and searching there. Might take some tweaking of your search terms, but they have a whole section for maps and terrain. Most are $2 or less; some are free. Make sure to add "hex" to your search terms for hex maps, although that doesn't necessarily filter out all of the square maps.

I usually choose based on background and occupation, though I'm sure not always.

I can't speak for Brian, but in my experience with new players it's that Skills have their target number written down, and bonuses or penalties are unlikely to change by more than one or two points, while the target number for combat is a lot more fluid. OCV, DCV, range, combat maneuvers on the part of both the attacker and defender, et cetera, and all of those can change from phase to phase even against the same opponent. Having said that, I haven't the slightest desire to change how either combat or Skill values are (edit) calculated, though I do recognize that combat is more complicated. To me, it's up there with Normal vs. Killing, PD vs. ED, Stun vs. Body, and so on. Fundamental to the system. But making it easier to do without fundamentally changing it is, to me, a worthy goal.

I'd quibble with this a bit. Danger International doesn't touch on the powers at all; it explains what Killing and Normal damage are, and gives lists of weapons, just not in terms of the "Killing Attack (Ranged)" or "Energy Blast" Powers. You don't need any kind of Enhanced Senses to explain how a radio or night-vision goggles work; drugs and poisons are explained in terms of damaging Characteristics other than Body and Stun. And so on. DI, along with Justice Inc. and Robot Warriors, includes two pages or so of "gadget rules" which talk about using the Champions Power build rules to build gadgetry, but those are by no means mandatory. And I was never in any group that used them.

I would say, run a Danger International scenario, or some other modern game's scenario converted to Hero, using the edition of your choice. Pare everything down to Danger International levels of detail and Stuff. Agent-level characters, lower power level, primarily skills-based, heavily curated list of Talents, gear for no point cost, no Powers, a lot fewer moving parts. That's essentially what I did at GameStorm earlier this year, except I used actual Danger International. The two players who'd been in my aborted Champions game "got" it in a way they didn't seem to previously. Don't be afraid to use the heroic level gritty rules. Come with a number of pregenerated characters; modern scenarios leave lots of room for specialists who don't fit into fantasy style character class niches, which will help them as well.

All the editions are highly compatible, but between them, 4e and 5e are the most. You should have no trouble at all.

If we assume the smaller star isn't there, then the planet has four seasons lasting one Earth year each. Adding the smaller star in... the smaller star orbits the Sun eight times for every one time the planet does. Which means that every season will have two full smaller-star cycles in it. Each of those cycles consists of three months with the smaller star on the "far side" of its orbit around the Sun, then another three months approaching. So, every season will have a warmer, brighter period and a cooler, darker period, then that cycle repeats. Think of the Earth seasons like so: Spring goes from cold to cool, to warm. Summer goes from warm to hot Fall goes from hot to warm to cool. Winter goes from cool to cold. The "border" between winter and spring can range from cold to cool. For each of those, apply a cooler period and a warmer period. Which comes first probably depends on northern or southern hemisphere. PS -- yeah!!! Those who like a little bit of science in our fantasy, represent!

Does the EM field interfere with all means (SFX) of Extradimensional Movement? Does it interfere with all forms of cross-dimensional contact (e.g. Clairsentience with Transdimensional)? Does it interfere with psionics and/or magic? Can it be overpowered in some way? I'm certain the Empress (meaning, her people) would have researched all of those, and such would have led to the existence of the abovementioned extradimensional bridge, but if she can do it so can others.

Let's say you've been playing D&D all these years, and want to try a different genre. Modern espionage, or supers, or post-apocalyptic. Let's say you've tried reskinning D&D for all of those and none of them were satisfactory to you for one reason or another. Further, when you tried different systems, your players balked; you couldn't get any of them to sit through more than one session because it was too different. If you're playing Hero, you don't need to learn a new system to switch genres. (edited some of the above)

I don't have Infrared Perception (let's assume Infrared Vision) of any kind... can I buy up my Infrared Perception roll? If I don't have any form of Infrared Perception, can I sell back my regular Vision (35 points, per 6e2 p. 9) and buy it back up with a "Not With Infrared" Limitation? (No. No, I cannot.) What about the possibility that I might find some military-grade infrared goggles? I think that if you don't have Infrared Vision, you can't buy up your Infrared Perception. And you don't have an "Infrared Perception Roll" to sell back. It doesn't exist. If you expect that you might, somehow, gain Infrared Perception of some kind during the campaign, and want to be prepared for it, and want to buy Enhanced Perception (Infrared Only), you can... I mean, you can spend the points, and write that on your sheet... but it's not going to help you until and unless you somehow acquire some form of Infrared Perception. And this doesn't mean you get to suck points out of your regular Vision, on the off chance you'll somehow gain Infrared Vision. If you later decide to spend points on Infrared Perception, then you suddenly have an "Infrared Perception Roll", which starts at the same value as your regular Perception Roll. (Replace with OMCV and mental powers as appropriate.) (Edit: Also let me note that I'm speaking for myself as a GM only, for my own games.)

If you have no offensive mental powers, you don't have anything to sell back to recover points from. If you insist on spending points, then you start from 3 like anyone else would. In a campaign where no mental powers exist, then neither OMCV nor DMCV would exist, and no one would be able to sell either of them back.

The way I see it -- and this is my GM opinion, everyone else's may differ -- is that if you don't have any offensive mental powers, and if you don't spend any points on OMCV, then you don't have an OMCV score. If you don't have any offensive mental powers, but you really want to, you can spend points on it, and you'll buy it up from 3. Why you would want to, I have no idea, but the option is there.

There's no reason at all that a GM or player couldn't build "level up" templates. I think I may have seen something to that effect around here, possibly posted by Killer Shrike? Or maybe on his site.

I did notice that, and yes it does. Thank you, and thank you in general for posting it!

Providing pregens doesn't mean you can't create your own.

If one of those $5-10 books then proceeds to sell four or five $40 books, with the longer term potential for 16 more... what's the profit margin on that? Adventures should not be product. They should be marketing.