OneSmallGod

"The game depends on the card you're dealt." (Absolute Zero, a villain from a campaign in which I played.) AZ, who obviously had wicked cold powers, specialized in hitting vaults. He and his partner Shockwave could drain security systems and then shatter bank-vault doors. Their average in-and-out time was less than three minutes, and when they included a mass-and-range teleporter named "Scotty" in their crew, they raked it in for quite a while. Their favorites were loose cash from gambling casinos and tracks, and bearer bonds from corporate holdings. With the latter, the secret is to create as much chaos as possuible to delay an accounting of what's missing, and have your fences ready to take possession instantly after the heist, before the cops are looking for the stolen merchandice. More hoobs have been caught trying to shop a chance-grabbed trinket around town for a good price, ginving the Recovery Specialists a chance to close in! "Small-timers grab the money themselves. Big-time operators have the mark give them the money." The Organizer All The Organizer did was make introductions. He's the one who introduced Scotty and Shockwave, for example. He set a price on his help, and the crew paid happily. The Organizer threw business to other people, but he never handled merchandice himself - only the finder's fees. He also worked with folks in the recovery business, helping to recover those priceless paintings or other valuable items, for a small commission and a finder's fee. (And since he helped set up the heist in the first place, he got paid by both sides...) Have you considered an evil genius who has invented an operating system which is pretty good and widely marketed, but also allows him to issue Mind Control instructions to people staring at the screen for hours on end? You know, it plays videogames really well, too!

I bought a pack of 20mm GW hex slotta-bases (not 'cause my minis have slots, it's just what the shop had.) I did have a couple of multi-hex figures, and the only hitch is that the edges of the GW bases are beveled in, not vertical. It took 3 minutes with a piece of medium sandpaper to rectify that, and superglue stuck 'em together just fine. I wish I could find a source for transparent hex-bases, but ya takes what ya can get... One note - in "strict" HERO scale, one inch 'real' size equals ~80" (6'8"). Your 'normal' human being (6') ends up being a lot smaller than a 25mm figure. (Most '25mm' figures are 28mm from the ground to their eye-level, meaning that they're about 31mm tall. In HERO scale, they'd be almost 8 feet tall!)

Steriaca- that's just Sick, Twisted, and Wrong! (Of course, this is from a guy who wrote a character, "Lightning Girl", who was the second hero by that name - and was the younger brother of the original Lightning Girl... Didn't make a big thing about it - the other heroes just theought 'she' was a little butch. So what - so was their female brick!) If you're interested, check out my Commissions section on my website: Art Business here

This has been much on my mind. First, my teen-supers game has always lived near this sort of narrative space (low-powered paranormals, etc - thinking about running one which is stricly mystically-powered teens, a cross between Xaviers' and Hogwarts). Second, I bought the Buffy RPG on a lark and I'm looking to run that, too. (Supreme, I hope you don't mind if I steal that "Kick Me" storyline - very nice!) Another cool source out there would be J. Michael Stryzynski's "Rising Stars" graphic novels - a "flash" incident occured in a small Illinois town, and it was discovered later than any kids who were in utero when it happened have been gifted with a range of powers from the minor to the difficult to the cataclysmic. I highly recommend it! An interesting thought - ask the players to make up Normal kids (point levels entirely to your taste, but they need to rigorously justify any unusual abilities). Then, make a number of 'powersets' equal to the number of characters and have everyone pick a sealed envelope containing their power-set. If the evil in town has a common source, perhaps a force for good has decided to move in and clean it up. And when the evil's been vanquished, the kids' amazing abilities will go away too... If they discover this before the denoument, wouldn't it make interesting roleplaying for the kids to have to choose - vanquish evil, or remain a hero? Perhaps these kids have been empowered because the last set of champions which the power of good selected made the other choice... They fought each other, decided to keep the power which had been loaned to them, and left town to become superstars in the outside world. Hmmmm?

Some characters for your perusal: Flare - a teenaged electrokinetic. Pencil sketch modified in PhotoDeluxe. Haggerty the Witch - the main villain for a FH campaign, who also appeared in a Champs game which I ran. Pen and Ink. Julia - a little girl who liked big guns! Pen and ink. I'm still taking commissions.

I'd take it as a favor if each power had a "Combat Readout" listing it's average effect. That was the only way I found to accurately explain stuff to several newbie players. Example: An 8d6 Energy Blast. What does it do? The Average hit will do 28 Stun & 8 Body. Against an Unprotected Normal, you can expect to knock him (lightly) unconscious in one shot. Against an opponent with Medium Protection (Body Armour), you can expect to Ring His Bell (CON-Stun him). One good shot or two average hits will knock him unconscious. A Heavily-Protected character (Force Fields, etc) may not even feel this attack...