BigJackBrass

One of those films I'll never return to, because I know that the reason we enjoyed it so much was down to age and situation. Anyway, it wouldn't be the same without renting a VHS copy.

Here's the  map at high Res. Enjoy!

https://imgur.com/a/5IcmFXZ

Yeah; that's not much of a title.
 
Sorry about that.
 
So let me back up a bit:
 
Some years ago, I made mention of a few things that were more-or-less standards in my (rare) high fantasy games.  Of these things, my favorites are the Office of the Public Scribe and the Torchbearers' Guild.  I don't actually think I went into any detail on the Guild, save how it came to be, but having told that tale I thought "hey, you know what?  Here we are complaining that there aren't enough things for new players or enough inexpensive things that folks can use to get their own juices flowing....  "  So I thought I'd write these organizations up under the umbrella of that whatever-it's-called "write your own HERO supplement" thing and put it out for like a buck.  
 
I ran into some snags-- formatting, styling, sourcing artwork, etc, etc, ad nauseum.  Mostly time.  I was getting really, really snagged with time.
 
So it never got finished.
 
However, as thought fodder, it's done enough.  I might have been able to just clean up what I had and do a "generic dungeon crawler" supplement.
 
 
But then I got to thinking about the old days-- the Web Ring of Heroes days.  The days when everyone had a website, no matter how simple or how goofy or how fancy and slick-- and they just kept pumping out great ideas and great stuff and saying "here!  Take this!  It's yours!  It's an idea I had, and I just want to share it!"  I got to thinking about how much of my retro-future Atomic Rockets campaign has borrowed from the old Web Ring, and even from Nyrath's own web page of the same name (Atomic Rockets, that is.  Great minds think alike; soft minds run together-- something in there explains it; I'm sure.  ).  So I have the urge to thank Nyrath.
 
I remember how many times we revisited bits and pieces of Lord Liaden's Valley of the Night over the years, and I am struck with the urge to thank him (even more than I already have: I have thanked him for that numerous times, and it doesn't seem like it's enough  ).
 
So the only way I can really "thank" any of these people, I think, is to demonstrate how much I appreciated what they did, and the best way I know to do that is to do the same thing: I had this brain cramp once, many years ago, and it became the Torchbearers' Guild.
 
It's not finished, but I've got three motorcycles to rebuild, an almost-eighty hour work week, a house full of teenagers, a semi-regular game group (soon to be too, as soon as a couple more folks get vaccinated), a camper to build, and a house to finish remodeling.  If it gets finished by anyone, it's going to finished uniquely at each table that cares to try it.
 
Have at it, folks.  It's the best way I know to thank the best kind of people:
 
 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lID1Yboy9nAQnIGRdOeiq4SEI7ZvkH0EAqAWzG4FMIk/edit?usp=sharing
 
 
 
Now, if someone can assure me that Chris Goodwin doesn't have any Players on this board, I've got one for the Western genre, too.
 
 
Sort of.
 

 
 

Explain This, Comics Guys!! continues our history of Quality Comics with Part II, featuring the hilarity of Black Condor, Madame Fatal and the Red Bee as well as the debut of Kid Eternity!! Come support Michael the bee in his Superhero Sidekick Retirement Home over here: https://explainthis.podbean.com/
Both Fox and Fiction House are on the list to get to as publishers, so he'd certainly turn up there. If you'd like us to dedicate a show just to him, back our Patreon and start telling us what to do!! dw

Err... other two. 🤷‍♂️

*cough* I uh wonder who has the other three… 

Found this in my files.

Presumably the print on demand version. It's frequently—and confusingly—shown as in stock on Amazon etc without mention that it's PoD or even paperback.

Personally, I am thinking that the Chimera project is not a wise expenditure of funds, when what Champions, or any of the sub rules need is something "big", that has almost a campaign sized adventure, a spray of adventure seeds, and a stack of written up villains, and monsters, for the adventure. Duke Bushido had something like this with an adventure  in one of the threads here.  What needs to be done is to produce more adventures with villains, and equipment.  We can't assume that all the GMs are Home Brewers like they have in the past. Because it's in the past, it's not in the way GMs do things now.

Gotta say, I'm not keen on yet another fragmentation of HERO's rules. But hey, maybe it'll appeal to others.
 
The only two products I'll be interested in will be the IHA and Champions International books. I've already put money into CI with buying the "unfinished" versions so my interest has already been shown.
 
Champions Begins, while I appreciate the concept and admire the hard work put into it's not for me. I hope it goes well, I do but I'd kill to see more support that goes beyond a basic entry-level point.
 
Patreon down the road? Sure maybe?

Thank you, Terminax, for pretty much mirroring my thoughts.

Fellow Hero System Fans-


I’d like to take a moment to talk about our plans for Hero Games in 2022. I believe they’re both modest and realistic, in that they can be accomplished on time and using our limited resources. At the same time they are also ambitious, as I intend to release four projects in 2022; one each quarter of the year. They will be the following:


(Quarter One) HERO2023 Champions Begins Created by a group who wish only to be known as “Hero Fans.” This high-quality free electronic product provides everything you need to play your first game of Champions! It’s designed to teach people new to Champions how to play the game, but isn’t a complete presentation of the rules set; it provides you with just enough to play for the first time. The zip file contains a 52 page GM book, a 20 page Player book, a villain book, hero book, paper figurines, and Hero Designer files.


(Quarter Two) HERO2017 IHA: Pride & Prejudice Created by Thomas Stadley. To most people the Institute For Human Advancement is best known for its boring spokespeople who appear on talk shows that only their parents watch. But the Earth’s superheroes know better: the IHA is an insidious, genocidal threat to the planet’s mutants – and anyone else who gets in the way of their plans! Packed with agents, villains, weapons, and equipment, IHA: Pride & Prejudice contains everything you need to introduce the IHA into your campaign.


(Quarter Three) HERO2018 Champions International Created by Steve Long and Jason Walters. There are a variety of imaginary and unusual locations that have been mentioned in Champions Universe books over the years, but have never been fully explored or detailed. Champions International does exactly that, providing an in depth look at locations such as Awad, Lugendu, Larisagrad, and Costa Azul. It also includes some new locations like Transnistria and Prosperidad. Previously released individually in 2021 and 2022, these articles will be further edited and reworked to become chapters in the final version of the book.


(Quarter Four) HERO2024 The Chimera System Created by Philip J. Guinchard. The Chimera System is a hybrid of the Hero and OpenD6 systems in which elements from both have been combined together by the author to create a unique, new game system. Like the recently published Champions Now, it’s a joint undertaking by ourselves and a creator to publish a variation of the Hero System fans will find interesting and useful.


Additionally, if things go well with Champions International, Steve and I are considering creating a Patreon account to fund the creation of the HERO System Advanced Player’s Guide III, Champions Martial World, and other projects starting in 2023. But we’ll see how this year goes before we commit to a long-term project like that!


If you have a manuscript you would like to submit to Hero Games, contact me at jason@herogames.com with a one to three paragraph description of your work. If it sounds like something we would be interested in, you can then send me the full manuscript for review. And, of course, feel free to post any comments or questions on this thread.
 
- Jason Walters, Publisher
 

Explain This, Comics Guys!! continues our tour through the Golden Age by Explaining Quality Comics!! Part One includes the life of Busy Arnold and the stories of Doll Man and the Ray. https://explainthis.podbean.com/

Got word: Champions Begins is greenlit for a 1st quarter 2022 release!  I'll get more info to you as I learn more.

The October, 2021 issue of Scientific American has a brief article that mentions a potential method of detecting life on exoplanets.
 
It starts with the fact that some molecules can occur in mirror-image forms. Many of the key molecules of Earthlife have this property -- and only use one version, not the other. "DNA molecules, for example, always have a 'right-handed' curl, while all known life uses only 'left handed' amino acids to build proteins."
 
When light reflects off molecules that are all of a given handedness, some of the light becomes circularly polarized: the light waves corkscrew, clockwise or counterclockwise. A new instrument called FlyPol uses this to assess the presence and health of life in an are: You fly the instrument over a region, it teases apart the light reflecting from below, and uses this to assess the density of plant life and even the health of the plants, from subtle details in the polarized portion of the light.
 
Here's the space bit: There is no intrinsic reason this could not be done over interstellar distances. The engineering is generations in the future, but scientists don't know of any process besides life that can generate complex, circularly polarized light signals. If you can find such a signal in the light reflecting off an exoplanet, there must be life with 'handed' biomolecules.
 
It is of course not certain that alien life would use 'handed' molecules. But at least there could be no false positives.
 
Dean Shomshak

more info on the accidental Warp bubble creation in the lab. 
 
https://thedebrief.org/darpa-funded-researchers-accidentally-create-the-worlds-first-warp-bubble/

I've uploaded a PDF file with errata for Champions 2nd edition:
https://www.herogames.com/files/file/573-champions-2nd-edition-errata/
 
I've had this back-burnered for a long time now, but it wasn't until recently - after finally getting my hands on a copy of the fourth printing of the 2E rules - that I was able to dust it off and complete it.
 
Undoubtedly it's not more than a historical curiosity at this point, but I hope those with an interest will enjoy this smallest of Christmas presents

Flight

I have to thank all of the above-mentioned people for giving us Herophiles a Golden Age of Hero Games. DOJ Inc. came in when the game appeared all but dead, and produced more and more diverse Hero material than ever before, most of it of high quality. It's a tragedy that many of the company's plans for further publications were unable to be realized, and that new production slowed so dramatically over the second decade compared to the first. But I for one will always be deeply grateful for the many great hours of gaming, and heck, just reading, that DOJ provided me. You all should be very proud of what you accomplished.    
 

Believe it or not, it was 20 years ago today that Darren Watts, Jason Walters, the Secret Masters, and myself bought the HERO System (and its related IPs)!
 
It's been a wonderful, amazing journey ever since -- one with its ups and downs, like any journey -- but still an awesome one. My deepest thanks to all the HERO fans out there who have made it possible!

I had a look over at my Taming of Tascora module for Western Hero and discovered that it had some errors and a bad map in it.  Apparently I'd sent Jason the work version of the file instead of the completed finished version
 
So that's been straightened out and you can get the correct version either here or at DriveThru RPG.  If you already got it, you can just download the updated version free.

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. 

Roll 3d6.
 
If you roll exactly 11, you hit a DCV equal to your OCV.
If you roll below 11, you hit a DCV one point better than your OCV for each point you roll below 11.
If you roll above 11, you hit a DCV one point worse than your OCV for each point you roll above 11.
 
It sounds slightly complicated to write out in words, but it's very easy to do in play. I've never really encountered a player who struggled with it...
 
EDIT: Obviously, this is the same thing greypaladin_01 suggested above; it's just a different way of getting there that generally lets you add or subtract smaller numbers.   

I uploaded a couple of these to the Downloads section a month or so ago, @Scott Ruggels.   
 
 
 

☹️ Sorry to say, I won't be releasing the update this week (7/9/2021).  While I was testing I found another error that occurs after a character tries to break free of an Entangle.  I was ready to try and debug it last night when we got a call from one of our adult children asking "Dad could you help us out?"  In any case I hope to have this wrapped up quickly in the next couple of days.