BigJackBrass

Nothing relevant to the current episode, but thanks for adding to this thread which finally, after months of blindly overlooking it, popped up and caught my attention. Listened to the first episode and thoroughly enjoyed it.

That's an appealing bit of casting. I still can't bring myself to hold out much hope for a DC movie after the lengthy string of soulless disasters, but maybe, maybe…

Great to see this hitting the virtual shelves, Christopher. Can't wait to read it.

It took a while, but my group burned out on Savage Worlds. I started with the first release, then revised and so on, none of which seemed to fully address all of the issues with the system. I mean really, how many different stabs at chase rules have they had? We loved it at first, until all of the characters started to feel identical and it seemed like every roll needed points spending on it because the probabilities are a bit of a mess; and as mentioned above the game collapses at higher power levels due to the nature of its step-dice mechanic. I'm not sure it's possible to fix that. As a superhero game it's at best inadequate and disappointing. Necessary Evil had its moments, even if it never bothers to give decent advice and support for its core conceit (you're supposed to be playing villains, but the whole setup means you're indistinguishable from heroes), and Savage Worlds is fantastic as a convention game, but I would never consider it for supers.

Slight conversational sidestep, but I had a bored moment and access to Twitter earlier, so…

I ordered Champions Powers at the same time: the books arrived together and both were printed by Lightning Source here in the UK, but Powers was altogether cleaner with a bright cover. Given the ink spatter on Destroyer I think that in this case I was just unlucky and got a sloppy example of their work. Looking forward to running it next week, regardless!

Further to this, after a delay due to annoying computer niggles, I found the files! So, I can confirm that the PoD version with PDF also includes a Zip file for Hero Designer. The problem was due to how I was downloading things on a mobile device which only showed the PDF itself. My error, not Hero's or DriveThru's. The actual paperback arrived a couple of days ago: not bad physical quality although the inside covers are spattered with ink which has marked the first and last pages. Compared to the digital cover the printed example seems very dull, no life to the colours at all. Not that it matters especially, since it's bought to use rather than look at. We're finishing up the characters this weekend and I'll be running session one on Tuesday evening… Fingers crossed! Everyone's looking forward to it.

Well, I've searched the forum, trawled old threads and been up and down Google but I can't find an answer to this: is the cover painting for Champions Complete cropped from a wider image? Book art is often quite different in its original format to the part that makes it onto the cover so it wouldn't surprise me. The reason I'm particularly wondering is because the main figure seems to be looking at and dealing with something happening off to the left, outside of the frame. I can't find an image of this picture anywhere that isn't a simple reproduction of the book cover with title etc. Does anyone know if there's more to it?

That certainly surprises me, but then the popularity of child and teen protagonists was something I was baffled by even as a child and a teen 😁

Cool, thank you.

I ordered the PoD bundle a few days ago, but it only includes PDF and physical copies, no Hero Designer files. Were they removed from the final product or is this a DriveThru snafu?

There is at least one active Hero podcast, Chimpions, which is is an ongoing actual play. I don't know of anything on YouTube etc as I prefer podcasts.

I have a feeling that I saw mention of an important error in the Champions Character Creation Cards, possibly a remark by Jason, but of course now I can't recall the details or where I read it. Does this ring a bell with anyone? and is there a list of errata anywhere?

Loudon Wainwright III, Primrose Hill

I feel so seen! 😳

Matt Berry's Kill the Wolf is an album I'd been meaning to pick up for years but finally did so this weekend, after Bandcamp sent a preorder email about a new record of his due in September.

There's a rather fun Automan documentary on YouTube.

There's Mil Máscaras, of course, but weirdly everyone knows who he is even when he changes masks. He's the master of disguising himself as Mil Máscaras!

So it does! The one bestiary I don't have a physical copy of and I forgot to check the PDF! Many thanks.

Thanks Duke, that certainly follows my own instincts (and it's easier to write up 😁).

I'm currently working on a Lucha Libre HERO character called "El Hombre Peludo" (which hopefully means "The Hairy Man"). In many ways he's a typical crimefighting luchador, but underneath the mask he's actually an orangutan; and nobody ever notices, because of the mask. EL Hombre Peludo is of human intelligence and can talk. Without the mask he looks like an ordinary orangutan, but when he's wearing it everyone treats him as they would any other luchador. I'm working on a Standard Luchador build (so, 5th edition rules, 200 + 50 character points) and taking the Bestiary entries for Gorilla and Chimpanzee, along with the 5th edition build for Dr. Silverback, as starting points for how to deal with the orangutan side of things. Has there ever been a published description of an orangutan in Hero terms? Haven't found one anywhere as yet. Anyway, the tricky part for me is how to treat the fact that everyone thinks he's simply a particularly hairy person when he's masked; and of course it's Lucha Libre HERO so he'll be masked for almost the entire time. I could make the actual mask a super item, altering perceptions so that onlookers see only what they expect to see, or I could simply handwave it as part of the genre: he's a luchador, so in a way he's simply a living embodiment of what the mask represents and nobody sees beyond that, just as a superhero in a domino mask is instantly unrecognisable. I'm not sure if making the mask an actually powerful object in its own right is terribly fair, since all of the abilities inherent in being an orangutan are going to be paid for as normal, it's simply telling the world who he is (and perpetuating a running gag). Any thoughts on this? If someone brought the character to your table and simply argued that because he wears a luchador mask then nobody will spot he's actually a short, fat primate, with orange body hair and exceptionally long arms, would you accept that as being reasonable?

Well, I suppose what I was thinking was a replacement for the stat block, say, that would give you the equivalent of buying a 6E version of the book, without needing to do any conversion yourself. In that respect I suppose I'd be expecting the update to be optimised for 6E. Right now there are lots of titles which I guarantee some potential buyers are skipping over because they use the older rules. It's not clear how easy it is to play a 5E book like Urban Fantasy Hero if you want to use 6E rules; and that in turn raises the question of whether to buy 5E or 6E if the supplement or setting you want hasn't been updated. Picture someone who is interested in Hero looking at what to play: right now they might not only be dealing with character creation and writing an adventure, they may also need to revise the book without any experience using the system. It's an additional chore, but it's also very off putting. Honestly, if you look at the product descriptions in the store they're often ambiguous enough as it is and certainly don't go out of their way to bridge the gulf between editions. Accepting that not every book would be suitable for this sort of treatment, I still think it could be a good way of making a lot of that great older stuff relevant and accessible, sort of a software patch. I don't know if Hero Games would go for it, so thought I'd toss the idea of the for opinions from people who have actually used the system far more than I have.

This may have been discussed before but, since nothing came up when I searched, here's something I've been pondering: At this point I think it's fair to say that we are not going to see 6E versions of, say, Lucha Libre Hero or Dark Champions. The economics clearly aren't in favour. In many cases, though, the parts of the 5E books requiring an update are not the bulk of the volume, so they still work as excellent sourcebooks if you don't mind doing a bit of work on the numbers. With that in mind, what about producing update PDFs for older books specifically to bring them in line with the current edition? There's no rewriting, reformatting and reprinting of the originals involved, simply a downloadable document providing updated stats etc. I can't think of an easier way to make old stock relevant again and to open up earlier material for people who aren't really in a position to rejig everything themselves. Does that sound like a reasonable idea, something worth pursuing?

The table of contents mentions Templates, so does that suggest that this is actually a 6th rather than 5th edition book, despite the cover?

Well, now I'm confused too 😁 I have the Traveller HERO CD-ROM from FFE which includes Traveller HERO Book 1: Adventurers in Charted Space and Traveller HERO Book 2: Adventure in Charted Space. There's no Traveller HERO Sourcebook in that collection. The Traveller HERO Sourcebook listed in the Hero Games store doesn't appear to be either of the two core volumes, or at least not as they were originally presented, and there's too little information provided to work out if it's a revised or combined edition. How very odd!