MitchellS

Re: Plainclothes Champions The point of some costumes in the Paragons setting is that government meta-humans do often wear costumes. It is a marketing ploy to try and garner the public's support and imagination [it's the same with many other supers who are trying to make a living from their powers]. If you pick up the module called A More Perfect Union you'll see that none of the PCs in it wear costumes.

Re: Hero threads on rpg.net I didn't miss the point at all. I just get as tired of seeing Hero players tell everyone the math is not an issue if you have an xth grade education as I do seeing people say you require calculus to do it [both statements are insults]. The fact that someone doesn't like math doesn't mean their intellect should be questioned.

Re: Hero threads on rpg.net Why do people always want to bring this up as if it's a question of intellect or education? It's not a question of being unable to do the math. It's a question of not wanting to do that much math. Some people don't want to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and multiply & divide fractions to make a character. Not wanting to do it doesn't make people stupid or uneducated. It just means they're rather prioritize their time with some other aspect of character creation. I'd also point out that on this very forum there's a thread about Hero's best product and the thing that seemed to get a lot of votes was Hero Designer: the little tool that keeps you from having to do all that math. So even some of the Hero System's strongest proponents don't really want to do the math if they don't have to.

Re: Ps238 While I understand the concept very few companies benefit by marketing to fringe audiences. Kids who are interested in gaming, who actually find their way into a FLGS, are few and far between. Hero is already a fringe market. When you start targeting only the fringe of the fringe you're in for trouble in any business. I don't know if the writing will be such to specifically target younger games. As I said above, I only hope Hero understand that the majority of the buyers will not be kids; and the majority of the fans who read PS238 also aren't kids. It's not 12 year olds who will be seeing this for the first time on a FLGS's shelf. It's 20+ year-old existing gamers who are looking for something new to buy. For every kid looking for their first purchase there will be 100 existing gamers looking for something new. Target the 100, not the 1.

Re: Ps238 I don't like you either but I don't go around making blanket, unsubstantiated, statements about you just in a vain attempt to discredit your posts. I suppose that's the difference between us.

Re: Ps238

Re: Ps238 I think you have side-stepped my point. Those of us with children are teaching our kids to game; and we don't need a special book for that. My 7 year old was playing Champions when he was 5. Since the vast majority of buyers of the book aren't going to be children writing down to the real buyers serves no real purpose. As for the Wii/PS3 issue, I have a feeling the initial price disparity of $250 versus $600 had far more to do with the sales then anything. I can't get my kids to touch our Wii but they're on the Playstation almost every day.

Re: Ps238

Re: Raw STR: Marvel

Re: Gestalt Now Available In Color My full-color version arrived today. It looks very sweet! For some reason it was bigger then I expected. I guess I'm not used to super thick books any more. Darn thing must weigh 10 pounds. I hope the M&M version is only 250 pages long. Well done to both Scott and Dave.

Re: Quick thoughts on Gestalt

Re: Gestalt is Online It's obvious you're not in the book-trade retail. All you need to do is look around at some of the other books from the industry. Take a look at The World's Largest Dungeon, The World's Largest City, Ptolus, etc. There are rpg books in the $100.00 category that sell quite well. Take a look at Paizo's new Pathfinder line: $20.00 a month for 64 pages and requires 6 books per series. That's $120.00 per series. So obviously a $50.00 book is not outside of the consumer's price range. What you're statement is really saying is "I can't afford to pay $50.00 so I think the book is overpriced; and because I can't pay it I don't think anyone else can pay it either." It's quite clear that you're taking this somewhat personally and assuming because you can't afford to easily spend $50.00 that no one else can. There are a lot of gamers who buy $50.00+ books all the time; you're just not one of them. Personally, I've already bought the pdf and plan on buying the full color print version when it's available. On top of that I plan on buying it all over again when the M&M version become available later in the year. I'll have over $200.00 invested in the material when it's all done.

Re: Gestalt is Online The fact that you can't afford the book has nothing to do with the price of the book; but your statement is coming off as if the book's over-priced for the market. There's a huge difference between "I can't afford it" and "it's over-priced." One statement is a reflection of you and the other statement is a reflection of the company. For the size of the book and the size of the company the book is reasonably priced. No one at the company is trying to cheat anyone out of an extra $10.00 for the book. That's just what it costs to print in small runs. The fact that you want the book but can't afford it doesn't mean you should disparage the material [and that's what you did by criticizing the price and making statement about how poorly you think it will sell based on price] just because you can't get it. It's like saying that you want a Lexus but can't afford a Lexus so you go around telling people Lexus won't sell well because you can't afford it. I'm sorry your financial situation doesn't allow you to buy the book. Perhaps that will change in the future; or you'll take advantage of some OFGS [there are more of them then just FRPGames]. Otherwise I'd suggest you buy the pdf. It's time for Hero players to come out of the "I hate pdfs" closet anyway.

Re: Gestalt is Online

Re: South American Supervillains Champions Worldwide covers Mexico, Central, and South America and gives write ups for Eclipsar, Raya De Plata, El Sauriano, and El Tiburon. Arcane Adversaries gives us the write up for the god Tezcatlipoca. None of them seem to have much interest in conquest. Perhaps this is a good time to bring back Professor Muerte?

Re: I'll mimic your powers.. what? That's impossible! I can't!

Re: Champions game one shot. =) While this won't help you from a mechanical standpoint, you might want to pick up the new M&M adventure from Green Ronin called A More Perfect Union. The adventure is for the new Paragons setting and it's all about the emergence of superhumans in a real world setting. The sample characters in the back would be incredibly easy to convert to Champions because the powers are both described by special effects as well as giving you game mechanics write-ups. Here's the ad blurb: The sample characters in the game are PL 6, so that would make them around 200-250 point Champs characters. Edit: Found the cover pic.

Re: HERO - Champions Just to add to list Lord Mhoram has started above, there's some talk that the Autumn Arbor Campaign Setting [an M&M setting] might also be getting a Hero version sometime late this year or early next. There is also the Kandris Seal by Heartfelt Productions that offers a superhero magic setting idea. Finally there's the Omlevex setting by Z-Man Games which is triple-stated for M&M, Hero, and SAS. The superhero genre is much smaller then the fantasy genre. It's easier to publish multiple settings for fantasy because you don't need to attract as big a percentage of the fan base to be successful. A fantasy publisher can make a descent living by only selling to 2% of the worldwide fantasy fan base. A superhero publisher would probably need to attract 1 out of 4 superhero fans to get the same amount of volume. Then you also have issues of small companies only having so much time to support a product line. Green Ronin's just getting ready to release their second superhero campaign world and one has to wonder how a company which only puts out 8 superhero books a year will be able to adequately support two campaign worlds without either group's fans feeling shortchanged. Last year Hero Games published 3 dedicated Champions Universe books and two of those were quasi-reprints: 25th Anniversary book and Evil Unleashed.

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? M&M separates OCV and DCV into their own abilities called Attack and Defense. In M&M dex only relates to initiative, dex rolls, and skill bonuses. That makes it quite simple to have characters within the human norm who are good fighters but don't need above Olympic level characteristics to cost effectively get OCV and DCV.

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists? This argument was old even before the original Dark Champions was released. I don't miss it playing M&M. In a point-based game system point efficiency is king. The simple fact is it's more efficient to by dex then it is to buy lightning reflexes, combat levels, and bonuses to dex-based skills. Number crunching means exactly what it sounds like it means. Why buy +10 lightning reflexes for 15 points, +1 speed for 10 points, +3 combat (offensive only: -1) for 12 points, +3 dcv for 15 points, and +2 all dex skills for 10 points when you can buy +10 dex for 32 points cheaper [that's half price!]? It's like buying a 13 strength because you know spending those 3 points will get you +2 stun, +1 recover, and +1 pd: why not spend 3 to get the benefit of 5? If the components were the sum of all the parts stat inflation wouldn't even be an issue [maybe that can be fixed in 6e] but as it is right now most people don't see a logical reason to pay over twice as much to get the same benefit.

Re: SPD and DEX for superheroic martial artists?

Re: The artwork drives me nuts This is the type of statement that tells me people really have no idea what they're talking about. Just as a point of reference between Jan of 2002 and Jan of 2006 1 US dollar went from $1.62 Canadian to $1.14 Canadian [The current rate is $1.04 Canadian]. If GoO's profit on a $30.00 book were $5.00 in 2002 that equated to $8.10 Canadian. By 2006 their profits when from $8.10 to $5.70 [that's nearly a 30% drop in profit]. GoO's problem was not the cost of their art or their production values. GoO's problem was that the owners were unable to raise the cost of the books fast enough to compensate for the monthly drops. 10,000 units in sale lost them thousands of dollars from what they expected to make [and Mark has said many times that their sales were on the increase]. Compound that over several books of various prices [under the mistaken assumption that the dollar would stabilize] and you can see how easy it was for GoO to wipe out their operating cash in that period of time.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts Or better yet, Hero Games could just produced more books for the lines that do sell well and make more money on their own without the need for charity. The simplest concept of business is to sell the things people want to buy.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts That is the important point. There are plenty of Hero gamers who have bought M&M products because they look cool but I don't think there's a lot of M&M players who've bought Hero products because, quite simply, Hero products look amateurish on the shelf. I have small indy press books like Truth & Justice and Capes on FLGS shelves that look better then some of the things Hero is offering. No matter what anyone might think the 2 minute flip-through at the FLGS determines sales for most of the buying public. This was the point where G-A's 25 point "I love Hero more then air!" psych limitation got away from him. The idea that we must buy books full of crappy art just because the artists might get better someday is taking things a little too far. Guys like Storn C. and Patrick Z. didn't get better by working for Hero Games. They got better in the years Hero was dead because they kept on trying to improve their talent.

Re: The artwork drives me nuts I have literally put down dozens of books because the interior presentation was terrible. On the flip side I have purchased many books for systems I did not like simply because of the production values of the book. I purchased the entire M&M 1e line based on nothing but presentation.