Chris Goodwin

For what it's worth, I think a lot of us noticed  that, presented up front, even before the first of the rules.
 
And I know at least one of us really appreciated it. 
 
 
I can only rep a post once (without GM permission, which I don't seem to have... ), so don't think it stalkerish, but I'm going to randomly rep another dozen of your posts over the next few days.      Just remember that this is most likely what that's all about.   
 
And thanks, Derek.
 
I know a lot of us claimed that we could have done it, and some of those probably _could_ have done it.
 
But you _did_ it.  That's a crap load of work, and I can give you at least one concrete example of someone who has appreciated it every time he looks through that book.
 
 
 

I think that if anything it's gotten less complicated since, say, third edition.  Mainly from capping Disadplications, changing the way END costs were figured and modified, having more powers (so you wouldn't have to go down rabbit holes to create certain effects) and in 6e, eliminating Figured Characteristics. 
 
YMMV on whether anyone in particular agrees with or likes the changes, but they're less complicated than they used to be.  (And I'll note that back in the 80's we didn't have software for building characters with; we had to scrawl them out on cave walls by lamplight from a lamp made out of a rock and animal fat.)

The effect remains, even if the slot is switched.  The target continues to get breakout rolls, and the multipower user can't pay END to keep the bonuses on the roll from accumulating.
 
The attack is instant - the effects continue. Just like switching out of a Killing Attack slot would not heal someone hit by the KA two phases ago.
 

In the beginning a GM had an idea, then the players arrived:
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=945841874214564&set=a.123889509743142
 
Laugh, you know you want to.
 
Oh BTW, if this is in the wrong area I'm sorry.

I've always thought those were meant for our more... hygienically challenged brethren.  A die as a reward for using the soap!  

It always bugs me when sci-fi uses the name "humans" to designate homo sapiens, whereas aliens always seem to have either a distinctive species name, or the name of their home planet. SF author Ted White made the point that every sapient race calls itself a name that would translate to English as "human."
 
When I do sci-fi with multiple ET sapient species I always refer to us as "Terrans," and our planet as "Terra" rather than "Earth." It doesn't make sense to prioritize the English words when the majority of the planet uses other names. Terra is a root word in multiple prominent languages and has widespread international recognition and scientific applicability.

I sometimes chide people for ragging on D&D in ways I think are unfair. Nevertheless...
 
For me, magic in D&D feels utterly un-magical. One reason is that despite multiple sources and modes of magic, it all works exactly the same way. Another is that while great effort is made to describe the tactical effects of every spell, the game remains sketchy and incoherent about what magic is and why it works. (Maybe setting books go into this. I've only read the Forgotten Realms Gazetteer, which has some blither about a "Weave" that left me unimpressed.) Maybe I'm unusual, but I don't find resource management enhancing my sense of wonder. Well, what do you expect. D&D began as a wargame, and that remains written into thre game's DNA.
 
I hope I have at times achieved sense of wonder in my own D&D games, but it came from my work, not that of the game designers.
 
For me, at least, part of what makes magic feel magical is the context. Like, let's take Incantations. Fine: It's a -1/4 Limitation, because if something prevents you from talking you can't use the Power. But what are the incantations? For an example, let's say the mage is conjuring that stereotypical fireball.
 
The Hermetic or Kabbalistic magus uses secret names of God to invokes Gabriel, angel of fire, and Phaleg, angel of the fiery planet Mars, to burn his enemies.
 
The Satanic sorcerer calls on Xaphan, who fans the flames of Hell, commanding him by Lucifer and Beelzebub as well as divine names such as Elohim Sabaoth and the Tetragrammaton -- blasphemously treating names of God as arbitrary tokens of power that don't actually mean anything. Or he just uses "barbarous words" -- pure gibberish, void of meaning, but you have to speak it all letter-perfect anyway because you're embracing pure superstition.
 
The Hindu sadhu chants a short mantra that distills both a prayer to Agni,m god of fire, down to a few sacred syllables. He has told the prayer 100,000 times, and the force of his ascetic meditation and ritual is such that even a god cannot deny his will.
 
The shaman has met a spirit of fire in his visionary journeys and made a treaty with it. Tapping his drum, he chants an appeal to the spirit and reminds it of their bargain.
 
The Taoist mystic writes the name of Yan Di, the Blazing Lord and Minister of Fire, on a spip of paper and stamps it with his seal of authority. As he holds it up, he demands that a lesser spirit of fire work his will: "By imperial order, in accordance with the statutes and the protocols!"
 
The Finnish sorcerer sings the story of how fire came to be. Knowing its origin asserts his power to command it.
 
In Earthsea, the graduate of Roke knows the true name of fire. In fact, he knows the specific true name for an explosive ball of fire, and by saying that name he calls it into existence.
 
And so on. Whatever the system of magic, the magic words mean something. Not that the player and GM have to come up with anything. It's enough to extablish that that the mage character is indeed calling on some special knowledge to access something deep and powerful in the world.
 
Dean Shomshak

At least that GM haven't resorted to the Araki method...name people after musical group names.
 
"Hello, I'm Mr. Aqualung, over there is Miss. Piniacollata, and over here is Mr. Strawberryfildsforever."

Regarding names for NPCs, I've always been terrible about coming up with names on the fly.*  Then one year a player in my Champions game brought back a paper copy of this from GenCon:
 
The Everyone Everywhere List - Erik James Olsrud | DriveThruRPG
 
I've kept a paper copy of this in my GM binder ever since.  More recently, I bought the PDF, then bookmarked each nationality so I can quickly go to whatever country of origin / ethnicity I'm looking for.  
 
I highly recommend it.
 
* But to be fair, at least I'm not as bad as one of the other GMs in my gaming group.  We've caught him pulling names for people and places from bags of chips and other snack foods.  

I do this, too. (In fact I have several binders just for villains: one for teams and solo villains, one for the campaign's top-tier Master Villains and their teams, a slender one for the VIPEResque group CROWN, and another slender one just for demons since I write up a lot of demons. Only the villains I need for the current adventure go in the main binder.)
 
Keeping lists of names to draw on for unexpected NPCs is a good idea.
 
Dean Shomshak

CGoodwin recently asked me about the referee binder I'm using for our Champions game.  I don't remember where I stole this idea from, and I can't find the blog post anymore.  It was certainly 2017 or so.
 
I've got a three ring binder, with section dividers.  Here's the outline
 
I. Referee's section.
  A. The PCs.  My copy
  B. The Game World. : My Referee information about the game world.  A list of all Persons, Places, and Things we've added to the world.  The players get a (redacted) copy in their section.
  C. The Adventures
    1. The current adventure
    2. The archive of previous adventures
  D. Plots.  Future adventures and plans
  E. Tool Box : Things like my list of NPC names, so I don't have to come up with them at the table.  I intend to add the key sheets from UNE (The Universal NPC Emulator) and Mythic GM Emulator here as well, since I find them useful at the table.
 
II The Player section.
  A. Campaign setting hand out.
    1. For character creation : Includes the Campaign worksheet from the champions BBB.
    2. For use during play : newspapers, etc.
  B. Lore Sheets.  Single page-single subject handouts
  C. Other handouts.  The Base, our Hoverjet, etc,
 
I have a second binder that is JUST for NPCs.  It's a 3" binder.  I use Hero Designer to write up my NPCs, and I print them out and keep them in plastic page protectors.  That makes the NPC section big enough I had to pull it out of the first binder.  We play in person, and I find I want to have the printed character sheets for the villains out on the table.  I know I should be able to run the NPCs off the top of my head, but I'm not there yet.  
 
So, there we have it.  It's the setup I've been using to run a Champions! 6th edition game with.  I have other games I use this binder setup with, and it works for me.  I figure it might be useful for some new referee out there to see what others are using.  Do you other Refs have something similar?  

I may have mentioned here and there a Star Wars Hero game... I've now been running it for a couple of months.  I've written up a document for it, which contains rules info and session write-ups, here. 

It can cycle 6 times a day, for 10ly each, so 60 ly a day assuming it has the END. 
 
According to my trusty calculator, it'll take (100,000/60) 1666 and 2/3 days.

More like 20 meters times ten lightyears times six times a day equals one thousand two hundred lightyears a day, so crossing the galaxy takes three months.

Appreciate the effort Chris.  I think it is easy to talk about game styles you don't like as long as the Game Police are not going to break down your door and make you use it!  😄 
 
I think this is some of the stuff that the complication idea I had might trigger.  It should not be every time that the GM has to decide, that could get tedious, but if the magic roll contains a complication THEN things go awry.
 
I might want a bunch of broad things to impose, like the SFX significantly changing (very much like the Spellsinger novels) or ignoring detailed management of physical components until a spell complication destroys everything being carried, making the spellcaster scrape things together (and risk more complications) until he can properly reprovision himself.
 
Those things are helpful too.

Hero being an effects-based system helps here. 
 
I know I'm on record as pooh-poohing the idea, but I'm going to make a good faith suggestion. 
 
You'll want the following:
SFX decided by the GM. The spell is a Blast, let's say, but the GM decides what form it takes.  It takes some amount of Extra Time, either to cast or to strike.  Not so much that it would make a combat spell useless, but it might not hit in the Segment you cast it in.  But if your combat roll to hit succeeds, then the spell will hit them. The GM rolls your Magic Skill Roll behind the screen, and doesn't tell you whether it's objectively successful, instead describing the result in-character.  The time at which the spell would take effect is when the caster will know success or failure; the GM should describe what the caster senses about it on every Segment until it hits.  SFX would still happen: the winds might gather, maybe even kicking up dust, inflicting a minor OCV penalty on ranged attacks from friend and foe alike. Optionally, a Side Effect decided by the GM at casting time.  "All magic comes with a price!"  It might not be paid by the caster right then, but it will come due at some point, and if the caster can't pay it at that time then it will be extracted in some other way. How do these sound? 

Of all the games I have played,  Tunnels and Trolls has the most evocative spell names.  Immersion destroying, but evocative.  You can actually imagine a mage yelling "TAKE THAT YOU FIEND!!!" and blasting an enemy.

I think you'll want the spells to have evocative names, and even to an extent write down specifics of Gestures, Incantations, and Focus.  You'll want casters to describe the actions they're taking:  "With my right hand I wave my staff in a circle while with my left I reach into my pouch, pull out some dried mistletoe, and crumble it to fragments while scattering it in the wind.  I then beseech the wind to Destroy My Enemies!" with the latter three words being the name of the spell in question. 
 
 
Those are probably issues inherent to this style of magic, I'm thinking. 
 
Should a mage always pay a penalty for casting a spell?  You want the ability to know the secrets of the universe and wield powers beyond those of mortals?  There's always a cost for power.

Man, I could write a thesis on what makes fictional magic systems 'feel' like magic.  It comes up all the time in fantasy fiction discussions.  There, it boils down to whether magic is repeatable, whether it is known, and whether it is knowable.  At some point, alchemy became chemistry; where your magic system is on that continuum determines how 'soft' or 'hard it is, IMO.
 
Keeping magic magical is even harder in RPGs where it needs to be systematized for playability and balance.  Fortunately, as Steve mentioned, we're already throwing dice, so that helps.  Drastically increasing the complexity of spellcasting is absolutely required--I've spent decades fighting this battle with Hero critics who whine that magic 'feels like superpowers'.  Not if your spell requires a skill roll, incantations, gestures, concentration, thirty seconds, and multiple foci, it doesn't.  I use Doctor Strange as the minimum example here.  At least in the comics Strange has to contort his fingers, sit crosslegged, recite various invocations, and carry several magical artifacts, and even then he's still a borderline superhero.  MCU Strange drops the incantations and is basically wuxia.  Conversely, in literature it takes three witches chanting while they drop all kinds of weird and creepy ingredients into a cauldron to cast a precog spell.  It takes three days of fasting and concentration while painting a single room-sized rune for Elric to summon Arioch for the first time.  Potterverse wizards can be like unto gods but must use a wand.  Magic circles.  Pointy hats.  Staves and wands.  All these accoutrements are what flavors the magic. 
 
And for unpredictability, as I see it there are three ways for a wizard to screw up: magnitude, control, and effect. 
 
Power: Usually this manifests as a failure to generate enough magical power.  Luke can't lift the X-Wing.  Ron can't leviosa.  It's also possible to overpower a spell--this might not matter if you're trying to kill a dragon, but could be bad if you're casting a love charm.  Some Hero powers already have dice rolls here, but not all. Control: Power is nothing without control.  Ron casts a slug curse with a busted wand and it backfires on him.  He later Disapparates without a license and leaves an arm behind.  Hermione successfully transforms herself... into a cat.  Ged summons Elfarran, but also summons a shadow creature that almost kills him on multiple occasions.  To-hit rolls cover some of these instances but not all. Effect: Sometimes magical mistakes have completely unrelated results.  The Potterverse almost has a monopoly on this trope.  Harry loses his temper while casting a spell and... accidentally inflates Aunt Marge into a balloon.  Neville accidentally transplanted his ears onto a cactus.  Luna Lovegood's mother cast an experimental spell and simply blew herself up.  This is the hardest thing to randomize without just having the GM make something up. This really cried out for a much more fleshed-out Side Effects system.  As it stands Side Effects is entirely situational--in fact without GM intervention it's possible for the Side Effect to be better than the original spell.  But using the above it should be possible to set up a system to randomize spell failure without leaving it to the GM to make something up.
 

Well, with skill rolls, attack rolls and damage rolls involved, I would submit that a spell is very limited in its repeatability.
 
Other than Ars Magica and the various versions of the Storyteller system, the Amber system was the only other one that seemed mysterious to me.

Hero being an effects-based system helps here. 
 
I know I'm on record as pooh-poohing the idea, but I'm going to make a good faith suggestion. 
 
You'll want the following:
SFX decided by the GM. The spell is a Blast, let's say, but the GM decides what form it takes.  It takes some amount of Extra Time, either to cast or to strike.  Not so much that it would make a combat spell useless, but it might not hit in the Segment you cast it in.  But if your combat roll to hit succeeds, then the spell will hit them. The GM rolls your Magic Skill Roll behind the screen, and doesn't tell you whether it's objectively successful, instead describing the result in-character.  The time at which the spell would take effect is when the caster will know success or failure; the GM should describe what the caster senses about it on every Segment until it hits.  SFX would still happen: the winds might gather, maybe even kicking up dust, inflicting a minor OCV penalty on ranged attacks from friend and foe alike. Optionally, a Side Effect decided by the GM at casting time.  "All magic comes with a price!"  It might not be paid by the caster right then, but it will come due at some point, and if the caster can't pay it at that time then it will be extracted in some other way. How do these sound? 

It is possible that GURPS handles low end campaigns better than Hero, I don't have enough experience with GURPS to decide one way or another on that.  I just know that Hero works really well for low end in my experience.

I question the premise, I have no problem running low powered games with Hero and have done so for 30+ years.

You would substitute the computer's INT for EGO.  This is actually detailed in the 5th edition supplement The Ultimate Mentalist, page 89. 
 
It's also in Champions Powers, p. 65.