John Desmarais

I tend to automatically look over at Pelgrane Press - particularly the Essoterrorists and Night's Black Agents lines - for these types of adventures.

52 minutes ago, zslane said:

They were probably afraid to make him look too much like a Kree.

But Kree are blue, Coluans are (or should be) green - very green.

On 1/16/2018 at 1:56 PM, Cassandra said:

Good episode last night undercut by Brainiac 5's "Albert Einstein" hair.

Well, pretty much Brainiac 5's "everything".  (Hair, color, costume, forehead buttons, spastic behavior - I was left with the impression that whoever developed the character for the show had never looked at a LSH comic and based everything on the 2006 cartoon).

Alas, another LSH opportunity lost.

So, anyone planning on being there?  (http://www.marscon.net)

On 1/5/2018 at 1:07 PM, Netzilla said:

It varies but typically a few weeks.

Took exactly one week. (I wonder what's done with it during that week?)

On 1/3/2018 at 1:53 AM, Darren Watts said:

OK, genuinely my last try here. Golden Age Champions was a labor of love for me, and I'd have been delighted to do more like it, but without reviews and public support from fans post-Kickstarter sales simply won't happen, and without those the entire operation is pretty much non-viable. So if you have any interest at all in further Hero products like GAC, please go post a review somewhere you buy or get info about RPG products.  We're more than two months in and Dread's review above is still literally the only one on the Internet that I can find.

Anyone know how long it takes rpg.net to post a submitted review? (Assuming an actual person curates the reviews, I'm sure the the holidays slow things down)

Cool stuff.

20 hours ago, RPMiller said:

I've made massive progress in putting together my campaign. Fedifensor's contribution above really gave me some great ideas and I've built on what he's put together. When I have a chance, I'll post up what I've put together.

The last time I ran a similar game, I pulled a lot of ideas from here: http://savageearth.net (Keith Curtis's Savage Earth setting)

I do love me some sword and planet...

18 hours ago, Cassandra said:

How about a 1940s campaign that is played as if it's a 1970s TV show?

So, Wonder Woman, season one?

When given a choice, that choice is always Golden Age.

9 hours ago, assault said:

 

The classic example of DC responding to Marvel is of course the Doom Patrol. But the DP weren't really a mainstream, central, part of DC's output.

 

The Doom Patrol precede the X-Men by several months.  (Doom Patrol: June 1963; X-Men: Sep 1963).  

Back in the 4th edition days, there was index in the back of Classic Enemies that categorized the villains by a bunch of different criteria (Mastermind, Mercenary, Loner, Alien, Magical, Mutant, etc, etc).  Has anyone put together anything similar for the 6th edition villains?

Enjoying the book so far.  Lots of cool info - particularly the timeline (love a good timeline).  Ties nicely into Champions Universe continuity, but not so much that breaking it out it is difficult.  So far my only real complaint (if you can call it such) is that I wish it had a few mostly fleshed out scenarios in it (seeds and hooks are nice, but I'm a lazy time constrained GM sometimes).

Yup. Seems like an appropriate name for a realm of gremlins. (And Fubar is probably my favorite character in GAC.)

 

Was that a good "really," or a bad "really"?

It was a face palm "really".

Mine arrived this weekend.  Still working on chewing through, but....

Bohica?  Really?

I'm a backer, I'm in Canada, and mine arrived in the mail today.

Canada?  I'm not feeling the love here on the US east coast...

No sign of it on my doorstep yet (nor any kind of tracking notification so I have no idea when to expect it).

A lot if good ideas here. But, yes there is a but Why stay with the dark and depressing "guberment is E V I L" mold? After a while it has become so pedestrian.

 

I'd rather play or run a more upbeat supers game for a change. As supers emerge some see the easy road and become villains, but not always killers. Some good guy supers become hardened vigilantes, but the majority step in to help local law enforcement as welcome allies and even members of the local law enforcement, fire department or other responders.

 

Instead of the same old trust no one paranoia, how about a world of mostly good with the overly envious, overly fearful, corrupt and evil ones being the exceptions.

 

I don't know about the rest of you, but the assumption of trust no one, everyone is corrupt and all are dark conspiracies has become very very blah. That well has become pretty dry for me.

My intention is to very much NOT go dark - but I'll incorporate ideas from a variety of sources, and even ideas from dark concepts can be used in non-dark games.  In the case of this campaign there is not particular "the government is E V I L" vibe.  It's just a big bureaucracy, neither good nor evil.  The heroes work for a apartment that acts in tandem with the Metro Police, and they are definitely positioned as the Good Guys (rather then the Not A Bad As The Bad Guys Guys). Certain background plot elements require that they be working "within the system" - but not in a darkly depressing "there's a huge evil conspiracy within the British government that the players need to defeat", but more that there are secrets the PCs will need to uncover, and the very existence of these secrets will only become apparent to people within the system.  

Plus, it provides a framework for financing, equipping, and organizing heroes who have no other reason to be together.

 

My "oddly prepared government agency" has for years been running an underground prison/concentration camp/experimental laboratory for supers.  Much longer than supers have "officially" existed for.  I hadn't thought about the details in depth, but I was assuming they were keeping troublesome ones in a medically induced coma, and/or using others to maintain force fields and such.

 

That's kind of creepy.

As someone who has come to Hero largely through the two Complete books, I would welcome Star Hero Complete. Some great points in this thread shape what the book would hypothetically be. The default approach would likely be on Space Opera, but there is no reason other sub-genres couldn't be touched in via templates and a few paragraphs each regarding capturing the tone. No need to detail every nut and bolt of a ship, just the bits that affect the story.

OK, really this was just a lot of words to say, "Yes, Star Hero Complete please."

Will you help me with a question however? If I play Hero using the two Complete books, would I be able to use the sixth edition Star Hero book to effectively run a game?

Thanks,

Matt

You should be able to. You may have to extrapolate a few things, but Star Hero will give you enough leads on how to do this. You may be happier, however, picking up the core rulebook PDFs for 6e for the finer details. Once you're more comfortable with the 6e rules you can look at the 5e sourcebooks (vehicles and so on) for more ideas, etc., because there is so much information out there.

I would tend to lean more towards the smaller/cheaper *Basic Rulebook* as I find that it covers everything I typically use in a "heroic" level game quite well.

Hmm, I did sort of wonder at the party balance of Champions 3000 straight from the book.  Sort of good to know that my concerns were valid.

 

But that leads into one thought for the book, a section talking about how to handle uneven parties.  Because not every character concept makes sense to have a 20 DC attack. But some villains have to be able to take such hits without crumpling, which can make people with 12 or 14 DCs feel impotent.  Or maybe ways to cut back on the DCs even while letting characters push small asteroids around.

 

Also, perhaps a bit on the logistics of adventuring and tracking with casual interstellar travel.  Because Galactic Champions really does sound like it wants you to bop around much of the galaxy while you are at it.

 

Also, I think it might be nice to have a second example team of heroes, but at a lower power level than the Champions 3000.  Might be a good place to work in the LoSH reference.  Hmm, maybe have University Planet, which also has preparatory levels, as the nucleus for the team?  And that the PCs would be a sub-team they recruited, and on the planet because someone in the administration likes the idea of superpower scholarships.  As good an excuse as any why teenagers are running around largely unsupervised.

When I did a Legion of Super-Heroes inspired game I had each player create three heroes - all built on different point-bases (150, 250, and 375 - this was 4th edition).  Anytime there was a break point in the plot players could swap out characters, none of your three characters could accumulate more then an a 10 point XP differential from the others (to force you to play all of them at some point).  It worked better than you'd expect, and gave the games some of the "you've got Invisible Kid on the same team as Mon-El?" feel.

I've got some of the notes from this campaign (incomplete and poorly edited) online here http://www.herostuff.net/campaigns/c3k/index.html if anyone is interested.

 

There were a Supermax Prison in a ship, in international waters. Some of the prisoners were heavily sedated, and the guards carried guns with ammunition of uranium coated with cyanide. But... When the prisoners broke out the guards evacuated without fight.

This idea - or something similar - may get stolen (perhaps not in international waters though).  I had't really given much thought to how to incarcerate super-powered criminals in a world without super-tech - but given that the PCs will be part of a government task force working directly with the London Metropolitan Police Force, Im sure the question will come up at some point, and this sounds like a great place for "bad things to happen later".

The last campaign I ran, I had the PCs build non-powered characters and play them a few sessions before getting powers.  That way they had a sense of who they were and what they did other than have superpowers.  And I had the only people with superpowers be villains, criminals, and thugs.

 

It depends a lot on the tone you want for your campaign.  If you want a gritty, realistic sort, then Era Scarecrow has a pretty good framework.  If you want a more romantic, four color approach, then having the heroes able to help out extraordinarily in crises (like Superman saving an airplane) to great public acclaim, acceptance, and respect is the way to go.

 

I'll be having the players build their characters in a similar fashion. Although I don't think I'll actually run anything with the PCs pre-powered, I like the idea of the player developing their characters as fleshed out people first, and then adding powers on after.

How well is the government prepared for the sudden emergence of supers?  Is there a lot of generalized denial?  Is someone immediately thinking, "These people are here so we'd better figure out how to deal with them, and now!"?  For values of "deal with" to include help, work with, work around, exploit, capture, imprison, study, vivisect...

The Government (in the larger sense) is comepletely unprepared. One small department is oddly well prepared (also part of background plot).