Chris Goodwin

4th edition is still my favorite, but Hero Designer works for 5th and 6th so I just bit the bullet and learned 6th edition.
 
Overall it's working out pretty well, but the 6th edition HERO system rule books are player-crushingly thick.  None of my players are willing to choke through 600+ pages of material.

Favorite Edition?   The playtest rules! Man, Magic was cheap. This was contemporaneous with Espionage, so people had huge numbers of combat levels. Mostly, it was the GM, L. Douglas Garrett. 

I've been reading 1St Edition recently...it's pretty wild! 

There's not really a lot of difference between the 5th and 6th edition Fantasy Hero genre books.  If you have the 5th edition genre book, you can use it with Fantasy Hero Complete; the main drawback is that the game mechanics in it are meant for 5th.  But if you've played 5th and 6th both, then you probably can work out the translations where necessary.   Alternately, if you've played lots of 5e FH and it works for you and it's comfortable, why switch?  
 
My own favorite edition for Fantasy Hero is first edition, the standalone version released way back when.    But 6th has been growing on me in a lot of ways.  

I don’t really grok paying for ‘magic items’ in a Fantasy Hero game. I get it in a Superheroic one, but in a Heroic level one, it just doesn’t make any sense to me.
 
In most games, items are a reward, and while yes, unlimited items can be problematic in any system, typically it’s not an issue. I get that in Hero it's points that build your character, but when you have no choice in what gear you find, how do you manage it? Do players spend 4-6 scenarios saving xp and not improving only to hope for an item that they buy and can still lose? That's just never set well with me as a game mechanic. The idea that Bob the fighter might want a sword that costs 20 points and, what happens exactly? When he commits to buying it but doesn't have the xp? Can he use it? If he does but next session it gets eaten by an acid dragon, is he still 20 points in the hole even though he no longer has the item? I have read the FH sections on items but they never really seem to explain clearly enough (for me anyway) how it actually plays out. since characters improve so slowly, a magic weapon and suit of armor could literally be your entire improvement for the whole campaign, which begs the question, why is bob the fighter not learning and training like everyone else? God forbid you find a 50-80 point relic!
 
Looking at the items in FH, at the end of a long campaign say your Paladin character has gained three powerful items: The Paladin's Sacred Sword, the Sun God's Aegis, and the Armor of Healing (very ‘in character’ if you were running a dungeon crawl style game based on D&D tropes). That's 65 points! And those are all independent (assuming 5th edition) meaning they could all be lost and your character has lost all that potential for improvement. At 3 xp a session, that's 22 sessions of game play or 5 1/2 months of once a week sessions! 0.0 Meanwhile, Mani the Mage has parlayed that into 195 real points worth of spells (assuming you lived in a Tarakian Age campaign) or just 65 points worth of never-taken-away improvement. Did the Paladin just sit on all that xp or when they pick up their first item and start using it regularly, are they in debt? And what about the items they found along the way? The lesser items before they found these big ones? Those items…are they still in debt for those too? How could you ever improve in a campaign with even a modicum of magic items (say in a world that is based on D&D conversions or something)?
 
Yes, 5th ed D&D came up with a good mechanic to justify it, but until now, Hero has still expected you to pay for items while you don't pay for items that are mundane but might do the equivalent function (a torch or lantern are free, a glow rod that produces the same amount of light and is possibly even limited as they are, costs points). 
One argument might be, well magic items go beyond what free gear can accomplish, so that’s why you should pay for it. But so can spells and racial powers, and you can’t lose them!
  -- Matthew Skail      

To pay the thread tax, I've got a work in progress:  the Arcana Practica.  At the moment, it's flavor heavy and mechanics light.  It's very much a hard magic, "scientific" magic system.  

The obvious thing to do is scrap the Tolkien elements and embrace the science fiction ones.
 
The result would still be D&D.

Yeah that's part of what I am working up for the Jolrhos Players Guide, letting people do very minor effects with a Magic Skill roll and 1 END such as start a small fire, anything under 6 active points, basically.  You can zap someone with your wand to do minimal damage and make a flash of light; it will kill a mouse, but won't really hurt a person.

In my (as yet untried) fantasy game I want a low magic campaign. To this end spells are relatively difficult to cast and it takes a great deal of focus (read: experience points) to become a truly awe inspiring sorcerer.
 
In game, magical effects are caused by manipulating the underlying Laws of Magic (Laws of Sympathy, Antipathy, Contagion, etc.) Different magical traditions apply their understanding of these laws in different ways which in turn gives rise to different types of magical effects. The difference in traditions is just one of individual interest and focus of study, there's nothing stopping a character from learning different traditions. All magic has the same source, there is no difference between divine and non-divine magic.
 
Game mechanically all spells come with Skill Roll (a separate skill per tradition),  Gestures, Invocations, and Focus limitations. Active Point penalties apply to skill rolls and players are encouraged to make use of extra time to offset this for more powerful spells.

In the world of the Arcana Practica, the Thaumic Age began some hundred to hundred and twenty years ago.  This was the beginning of systematized study of magic.  Before that time, "wizards" (charlatans) would ply their trades, often getting hired on into official positions.  Some of these wizards had some actual power, by means of knacks (magical talents that some people, then and now, possessed), but being a wizard was as much about putting on a show as it was about working actual magic.  Often, wizards would take on apprentices, some of which had knacks of their own, many of which did not.  Their training methods were as much flim-flammery as their wizardry.  There was a big scandal, as most kingdoms, governments, etc., gave their wizards the choice of hanging or beheading (sometimes even burning at the stake was offered), but one group (a confederation of duchies) instead commissioned a study on why some wizards could actually do real magic and some couldn't.  It turned into a long running study on magic in general, that began the Thaumic Age.  
 
Arcana, singular arcanum, refers to a type of magic: air, fire, light, lightning, animals, etc.  Practica, singular practicum, refers to a magical technique: create, sense, bind, conjure, dismiss, cloak, etc.  Together, these are a spell's Arcanum and Practicum (often abbreviated as "A and P"), and the overall organized body of magical knowledge and pedagogy is referred to as the Arcana Practica.  The incidence of knacks has gone down in the general population as the Arcana Practica has taken hold; no one is sure exactly why, but there are a number of competing theories.  
 
Learning a number of spells that share a common practicum allows you to buy a Skill (PS) with that practicum, which you can roll as a complementary skill roll to your Magic Skill Roll.  Some individuals have an "affinity" with an arcanum, which in game terms is a few Skill Levels that apply to magical and mundane manifestations.  So, for instance, an affinity with fire would help you with casting spells of the arcanum of fire, as well as with building fires mundanely; an affinity with animals would improve your spellcasting on animals, as well as your Animal Handling and other animal related Skills.  Spells would initially be bought for full point cost, though as the game progresses you can work your way into Multipowers and potentially a VPP (based on arcana).  
 
Characters can also buy knacks, which are just a magical power with an A and P.  Sufficient study of thaumatology and Metamagic can help you turn your knack into an arcanum.  
 
Finally, spells are divided into tiers, based solely on the prerequisites required.  Tier 0 spells require no prerequisites; anyone who is not "athaumic" (nonmagical) can learn them, and none of them require a skill roll.  Tier 1 spells have a basic level of prerequisites; some might have a particular tier 0 spell, others might require a minimum skill in a practicum, or an affinity, or a knack.  Tier 2 spells have more extensive lists of prerequisites; higher levels in various related Skills, demonstrated minimum ability to cast certain tier 1 spells, possibly certain knacks or other magical talents.  There are no tier 3 spells, unless you are a disgruntled wannabee who has barely passed their basic Arcana Practica and thinks that there's some kind of conspiracy keeping you from learning tier 2 spells.  

In the world of the Arcana Practica, the Thaumic Age began some hundred to hundred and twenty years ago.  This was the beginning of systematized study of magic.  Before that time, "wizards" (charlatans) would ply their trades, often getting hired on into official positions.  Some of these wizards had some actual power, by means of knacks (magical talents that some people, then and now, possessed), but being a wizard was as much about putting on a show as it was about working actual magic.  Often, wizards would take on apprentices, some of which had knacks of their own, many of which did not.  Their training methods were as much flim-flammery as their wizardry.  There was a big scandal, as most kingdoms, governments, etc., gave their wizards the choice of hanging or beheading (sometimes even burning at the stake was offered), but one group (a confederation of duchies) instead commissioned a study on why some wizards could actually do real magic and some couldn't.  It turned into a long running study on magic in general, that began the Thaumic Age.  
 
Arcana, singular arcanum, refers to a type of magic: air, fire, light, lightning, animals, etc.  Practica, singular practicum, refers to a magical technique: create, sense, bind, conjure, dismiss, cloak, etc.  Together, these are a spell's Arcanum and Practicum (often abbreviated as "A and P"), and the overall organized body of magical knowledge and pedagogy is referred to as the Arcana Practica.  The incidence of knacks has gone down in the general population as the Arcana Practica has taken hold; no one is sure exactly why, but there are a number of competing theories.  
 
Learning a number of spells that share a common practicum allows you to buy a Skill (PS) with that practicum, which you can roll as a complementary skill roll to your Magic Skill Roll.  Some individuals have an "affinity" with an arcanum, which in game terms is a few Skill Levels that apply to magical and mundane manifestations.  So, for instance, an affinity with fire would help you with casting spells of the arcanum of fire, as well as with building fires mundanely; an affinity with animals would improve your spellcasting on animals, as well as your Animal Handling and other animal related Skills.  Spells would initially be bought for full point cost, though as the game progresses you can work your way into Multipowers and potentially a VPP (based on arcana).  
 
Characters can also buy knacks, which are just a magical power with an A and P.  Sufficient study of thaumatology and Metamagic can help you turn your knack into an arcanum.  
 
Finally, spells are divided into tiers, based solely on the prerequisites required.  Tier 0 spells require no prerequisites; anyone who is not "athaumic" (nonmagical) can learn them, and none of them require a skill roll.  Tier 1 spells have a basic level of prerequisites; some might have a particular tier 0 spell, others might require a minimum skill in a practicum, or an affinity, or a knack.  Tier 2 spells have more extensive lists of prerequisites; higher levels in various related Skills, demonstrated minimum ability to cast certain tier 1 spells, possibly certain knacks or other magical talents.  There are no tier 3 spells, unless you are a disgruntled wannabee who has barely passed their basic Arcana Practica and thinks that there's some kind of conspiracy keeping you from learning tier 2 spells.  

I'm not actually into debating Hero rules editions, because IMO each has its benefits and drawbacks, but much of what you'd put into either category depends on individual preferences. I admit to preferring Fifth myself, partly due to familiarity and comfort with how it does things, partly due to it having hit my personal sweet spot in level of detail; but I have introduced elements from later or previous editions that I just like better.
 
However, another factor that weighs in my choice of editions is the great compatibility between Fifth and Fourth Edition. Aside from the first couple of editions of Champions, those two are the easiest to port between. Stuff built for one of them can be used with the other with only a few modifications; and between the two editions there's a ton of published material to draw from, particularly for Champions (and supers is my favorite game genre).

I prefer my gods transcendent rather than immanent. This makes all evidence for their existence very much subjective and open to interpretation. It's part of my preference for low fantasy.
 
So I'm all for a mountain that some people claim had it's top cut off by the swipe of Clanggeddin's axe in his battle with Gruumsh for ownership of the mountain range in which the dwarves and orcs dwell. But there will be no hard evidence for it. Not to mention competing stories.

I very much like this bit...
 
 
...but to me the strict separation between "divine" clerical magic and "arcane" wizardly magic is a D&D-ism that I'm honestly tired of even in D&D.  To me, "shards from a weapon of a god that was destroyed in battle" puts me in mind of a crashed starship.  
 
I might have gods that are superpowerful beings, or Ancient Aliens, or something else, but if I'm going to lean into D&Disms I'm going to do it in D&D.

(The following is specifically about Forgotten Realms.)
 
Yeah, FR is very much of a throw it all in sorta setting. It's the epitome of what I'm getting at when I whinge about kitchen sink settings. This is not to say that they (the many writers, editors, and creative directors who have contributed to it over the decades) haven't made attempts to give the various elements compelling backstories. They have. But when you put all these backstories together you get a real mess. The different elements can undermine one another because of stylistic differences, or excessive similarity.  For instance - githyanki and duergar and both former slaves races of the Illithid that gained psi powers and rebelled. That's interesting for a narrative once. But the second time it happens I call lazy writing.
 
The elements might even undermine one another within the diegesis. I can't think of anything off the top of my head but I'm sure someone with exhaustive knowledge of FR can find many inconsistencies within the diegesis.
 
Not directly related to kitchen sinking (oh look! I made it a verb. I'm bad people. sorry.) are the many bad re-writes and retcons. Ninja-Bear, you mentioned spell plague. That's one of several. There's been one for each edition change from 3rd ed. (maybe 2nd?) onward. The Time of Troubles was the first one I think. I just don't get why anyone needs to retcon a game world to reflect an extra-diegetic change to game mechanics. Not needed. (Hmm, not needed unless you're deliberately making a kitchen sink setting to show case all the IP your company owns therefore you need to update the setting to make it easier to shove in the new stuff... Yeah, even I think I'm drawing a long bow with that one.)
 
Another, oft overlooked, aspect of the Forgotten Realms, at least in its early days, was the amount of Ed Greenwood self-insertion slash fic. Seriously. The number of beautiful goddess sisters who were all clamouring to get with Elminster is... unlikely. Look at a picture of Elminster. Or worse, Ed Greenwood. Not gonna happen. One infamous passage has one of these goddess types introduced into the scene while she is chopping wood. Topless. WTF?
 
Also, never forget FR brought us Drizzt Dourden. Never forget!
 
(Whoo. That felt good. Cleansing, ya know?)

I very strongly prefer tailored.  I can't stand kitchen sink (D&D style) tropes that are included haphazardly just because someone thinks it's "not fantasy" without them.  Give me something different -- not just strangeness for its own sake either; but something really different and neat that makes me think of it in a different way.  
 
I am quite happy to see technological elements in fantasy, again not kitchen sink, especially not kitchen sink high tech mixed with kitchen sink fantasy.  The Thundarr or He-Man type mixture doesn't really appeal.  Give me something like Eberron.  
 
(I'm currently reading a web serial called Worth the Candle which is scratching a lot of those itches.  And would strongly recommend giving it a chance, up through chapter 14 -- the end of book 1, at least.  It's an isekai, litRPG style story, only good -- very non-weeb.  It's on Archive of our Own and Royal Road; easy to find via Google, but I'll provide links if requested.)

Chris, 
 
I sincerely thank you for thinking of me; that was most kind of you.
 
But even back in the late 70s, when Hidden Valley was the _only_ ranch (I guess they invented or something?), it was atrocious.  I just straight-up don't like it.  Now my wife _loves_ dill.  
 
You know how certain people, just upon _hearing_ someone vomit, will immediately vomit?   I don't have that problem.   But the very _scent_ of dill.......  I have that problem.   Sorry, Dude.      Ranch is just not a thing that can be made palatable for me....
 
 
 

Ah.
 
I'll have to find the time to read it up, then.
 
 
 
 
Ditto for me!   
 

 
 
 

Thanks Chris!

It's one of the sample magic systems in the FH genre books for 5th and 6th.  FH 6e p. 298; it doesn't look like I have the PDF for the 5e version to hand, but I know it's in there too.

I think Tolkienesque is considered generic because of-- well, sure; the ubiquity.  The damned thing won't die!-- but also because it's what so much other fantasy pulls from: same monsters; same sort of settings-- the only difference I see in a lot of it is that in everything except Tolkien, magic undeniably works, spectacularly.  Every instance of it in the Rings trilogy was sort of ..... uh....   yeah....  I can see where the magic might have done that......    The only place in the whole thing I can point to and say "yep.  Magic."  was the destruction of the billy goat balrog bridge.  Even then: how do we know he didn't whack the keystone with his staff?  I mean-- he fell in, too.....
 
You can safely accept that Tolkien is, today, as generic and wide-spread as it gets just by the existence of the acrostic:  YATRO:   Yet Another Tolkien Rip Off.
 
People just seem to love his mary sues elves.  What can I say?
 
 
 

So long as you are up-front with your players during the planning and introduction, you can minimize push back and complaints.  Tell them straight away that this is the idea you are planning on exploring -- not "I intend to be heavy-handed" bit; more the "your powers are deadly and narrow in scope.  As you progress, you may learn to widen that scope, but they will still tend to carry a certain focus.  If you shoot energy beams, you may learn to create varied effects with them, but you will likely never be able to turn them into Force Fields."  That sort of thing.  Let them know up-front that you will be pretty strict about enforcing this, at least until you feel the players have a solid grasp of what you're tying to create.
 
But make sure you tell them this _up front_.  Nothing gets push back faster than a group of people who have an entirely different "grasp" of superheroes.
 
As an example of push-back:  Until recently, I ran a sic-fi Space Opera type game that started back in '86 or '87.  Periodically, a player would leave or a player would come in.  Some time in the mid nineties, we had a player introduce a new guy-- who eventually became a good fit, and played for nearly six years (he moved after he finished his degree).  But _I_ had thought his friend-- the player that brought him along initially-- had given him a rundown on the game we were playing.  His friend thought _I_ was going to take him aside and give him a rundown.  So here we are, playing high Space Opera in the tradition of the Atari Force and Alience Legion (without the "you are in the military, period) comic books of the time (sorry; they are the only comic book examples I know for the type of "life is everywhere and there are a bajillion aliens" type setting.  Most importantly:  not Star Wars.  
 
At any rate, there were four sessions before we figured out neither of us had been working with this guy:  every damned time there was a sensor probing, or a missile, or pretty much _anything_ that could be bad, this guy wanted to "modify the shields."  You know: turn them into radiation screens, UV filters, rubberized projectile repellant, good food, and beautiful women.
 
We didn't have shields.
 
Not a one.
 
The closest thing we had was a rift caster, which opened small multiversal tears (at an extreme power expense):  if you were fast enough, and lucky enough, you could open a brief tear in the universe between you and the missile coming your way.  If you timed it just right, no more missile.  (but don't go to the universe to which you sent it; they might be mad.)  This was my concession years prior to players wanting an energy-screen type defense, which was a technology I just didn't want in my universe.  Force Fields and globes existed, but didn't work well beyond "covers about ten people" size; sand casters and the like: no problem!   But _not_ Star Trek shields.
 
Obviously, this kid was a big STNG fan (gag), and just assumed that "science fiction means Star Trek."  His friend and I held him a bit after a session, and we went into great detail about what the game universe was and was not.  He confesses that he had totally misunderstood, asked if he could re-do his character, to which I replied "we don't have Jedis, either," to which he got downright pissed.  "Why the Hell not?!"  Well, for one, everyone at this table except Marcus thinks they're pretty damned stupid as a sci-fi concept. (Midochlorians hadn't happened yet, and the only person whose mind was changed was Marcus: he decided that they were, in fact, pretty damned stupid.)
 
So he left, and we didn't see him for about three sessions; figured he was not interested in playing something that he hadn't seen on video or something.  Then one night he showed up and started asking some questions (before the game, obviously) and pitching a third character concept.  As I said, he played with us for about six years and a bit; no more problems.
 
 
 
Short version?
 
Get everyone on the same level of understanding before the game starts.  It's just easier that way: if there is something that the majority is unhappy about, then you can work out something that works for all of you _before_ the game starts.
 
 
 

I agree.  I think everyone (including me) is going to add their own ideas for whatever they've wanted "fixed".  
 
We've got six editions worth of material that's largely compatible from first to last that any of us can pull in as house rules to any of our games, regardless of what edition we're running in.  I've got various house rules documents spread out here and there made up of my own fixes and additions, and I'd bet money that every one of us has something similar.  When sitting at the table eating snacks and throwing dice, you'd be hard pressed to tell what edition a given Champions game was running under without a careful look at the character sheets.  
 
"Edition" is only meaningful in terms of what is currently available and recently supported.  
 
 
Me too.  I don't want that to change. 

http://kimberlychapman.com/rpg/equipment.html
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/3sqc3x/generic_rpg_price_list/
 

I've usually gotten better results basing it on mass than on volume.  Do you have the mass of the pyramid?