BigJackBrass

The tents in the back were awful. SJG released Killer, which we played next year at highschool, and the con was overrun with Ninjas, but still Champions was the highlight. 

There was a a gathering at a Steve Petersen’s house for the old Hero Games employees. He told the story of how Champions came the be, and the mad rush to hand collate 1500 copies of that first book, and of what a disaster con registration was for Pacific Origins, and how they turned it into an opportunity, but sending their booth babe, dressed as Wonder Woman down the the lines to hand out flyers. How the had Bruce Harlick squat on the only open gaming tables inside the hotel (the rest of the open gaming was in sweaty tents around behind the Hotel.) the game was a success People would play the demo, then get up from the table and walk into the dealers room and buy their copy for $10.  From there , the rest is history. The distributors that picked up whole boxes at Origins would start selling by August. And the Distrubutors asked, so when are the supplements coming out?”  So upon their return from the con, they wrote Enemies, and The Island of Dr. Destroyer. 
 
Here are some artifacts from that first weekend:
https://imgur.com/a/0E72NAX
 
40 years later it’s still going. 
 
Scott
 

There will be an update with the fix to this bug by the end of the week.

OK I have uploaded the Champions Begins project to the Downloads section of this website.  There's still a lot of work to do, primarily art, maps, and coloring, but I wanted to give people a look at the thing as it now stands.  The current format and layout is probably how it will go.  Because of the art, its a fairly large download for an adventure.
 
Please, if you want to help out, do so soon.  If you want to playtest, please do.  Remember, this is going to be FREE FOR EVERYONE because it is meant to be a promotional product and aid for people to learn to play Champions.  I'd love to see people running this at game stores, conventions, and so on.  There's no pay for anyone involved, but if you want to donate art and your time to help promote our hobby, please do.
 
WHAT WE STILL NEED:
A couple of maps redrawn and updated, or just drawn at all Interior illustrations, especially for the Player Book A definitive VIPER costume for agents and elite agents Coloring on multiple characters More editing passes in case we've missed something important This is getting very close to being done, I hope we can get it wrapped up by fall.  I really wanted to have it ready for Summer, but with the way conventions and the shutdowns have been going, it probably is not that significant a problem for timing.
 

Prompted by finding an embarrassingly-significant mistake in Champions Complete's description of Pushing in Heroic campaigns (noted below 🤦🏼‍♂️) , I'm putting together a list of errata for CC. A few known issues are listed below; no need to report these again. But if you've noticed others, please comment below or shoot me a PM, and I'll include them in the list I'm compiling.
 
Known Errors:
p20: For Pushing in Heroic campaigns, the second sentence should say, "The character gains 5 CP to the ability if the EGO Roll succeeds, +1 more CP per point he makes the roll by."
p91: Should specify the value of the "Gate" Limitation for Teleport (-1/2).
p97: Area Of Effect (Line) should read: "Covers a straight line 2m wide, 2m tall, and up to 16m long. Each additional +1/4 Advantage doubles the width, the height, or the length of the Line. The target point is the center of the short edge of the Line (i.e., where the Line "begins")."
p102: Costs Endurance to Maintain can also be applied to Aid and Drain (to create Boost and Suppress), to Multiform (to make it cost END every Phase to remain in an alternate form), and to other Powers with lingering effects, including Dispel, Flash, Summon, and Transform.
p110: Mental Defense Adds to Ego can also be applied to Transforms that work against EGO.
p112: Only Works Against [Limited Type of Attack] also applies to Absorption and Reflection.
p129: Vulnerability Table. Where it says "1x damage or effect," that should be "1 1/2x damage or effect."
 
When reporting errors, I'm basically looking for two kinds:
 
Places where CC gets a rule wrong (such as Pushing in Heroic campaigns) or leaves out a key bit of information (such as the value of the Gate Limitation) Simple typos (such as the dropped "to" in the description of Affected As More Than One Sense on p96)  
I don't mean things where you think a rule should work a different way; I only mean things where you think a rule does work a different way. 🙂
 
When it seems like I've collected enough (or when submissions slow down), I'll compile the list and make it available in various places (here, the Facebook Hero System group, etc.) Thanks!

Western Hero is still selling well and I want to thank everyone out there so much.  From a dumb little side project to practice writing up Hero for my Player Handbook, it developed into a real product and was so much fun to work on.  I hope everyone enjoys Western Hero and runs a zillion games with it.
 
The Taming of Tascora module is selling fairly well but not gangbusters, I don't think there's enough demand to expand on that right now.

The beta builds have been created and approved for testing by Apple and Google.  
 
Here are the links you can use to join the beta:
Android - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.herogmtools iOS - https://testflight.apple.com/join/VnuJAmln If you see anything funky or find a bug DM me here, email me at phil.guinchard@gmail.com, or leave a note here

A degree of luck (their crime spree lasted a couple of years), myth-making and brutality. They loved powerful cars and guns, and took a lot of photographs, giving them a glamorous air in desperate times: the reality was more squalid, unsuccessful, petty and murderous. 
 
There's little to suggest that they were particularly skilled or clever. For one thing, they weren't up against difficult targets or efficient, coordinated law enforcement to start with. They killed more than a dozen people to gain trifling sums. Clyde was especially fond of the Browning Automatic Rifle he stole, a seriously powerful firearm which he clearly considered a status symbol, but honestly their main weapons seem to have been desperation and ruthlessness. 
 
The truth is they weren't "pulp" in an action/adventure way at all, from their harsh individual lives until their deaths together. I'm not sure I'd want to feature them in a game other than as news from elsewhere. 

A degree of luck (their crime spree lasted a couple of years), myth-making and brutality. They loved powerful cars and guns, and took a lot of photographs, giving them a glamorous air in desperate times: the reality was more squalid, unsuccessful, petty and murderous. 
 
There's little to suggest that they were particularly skilled or clever. For one thing, they weren't up against difficult targets or efficient, coordinated law enforcement to start with. They killed more than a dozen people to gain trifling sums. Clyde was especially fond of the Browning Automatic Rifle he stole, a seriously powerful firearm which he clearly considered a status symbol, but honestly their main weapons seem to have been desperation and ruthlessness. 
 
The truth is they weren't "pulp" in an action/adventure way at all, from their harsh individual lives until their deaths together. I'm not sure I'd want to feature them in a game other than as news from elsewhere. 

You are not. I've mentioned the same thing elsewhere on the forums, after privately raising the issue with the Secret Masters.
 
For me it isn't simply the length of the products, but also that their layout is very basic, not up to the standards of any previous Hero ebook; that they're nearly devoid of artwork and maps; and that some of them are even thin in providing NPCs. As one Herophile I corresponded with put it, we're paying professional-grade price point for amateur-grade product.
 
FWIW I have it on good authority that Hero considers these sectional ebooks to not be finished products, and more will be done with them when they're collected in a single volume. But if they're going that route I believe that should be reflected in the price. That also convinced me that I should wait for the whole book rather than buy any more individual chapters. Which really bums me out, because I thought the sectional book concept had potential, but IMHO this approach will torpedo it before it gets a fair chance.
 
 

I liked Tri-Stat when it debuted as Big Eyes, Small Mouth but it grew increasingly clumsy as they tried to apply it to wider genres. In particular, it was a d6 roll under system, but they came up with the peculiar idea of having higher power characters use larger dice (d10 for typical supers, d12 for the likes of The Authority ). Obviously that makes it harder, not easier, to roll under a given number. There was a fudge I don't recall which made it work, but it always felt like a fudge, as if they'd forced the idea to fit. 
 
And then they went and called the book of female characters Country Matters … 

I liked Tri-Stat when it debuted as Big Eyes, Small Mouth but it grew increasingly clumsy as they tried to apply it to wider genres. In particular, it was a d6 roll under system, but they came up with the peculiar idea of having higher power characters use larger dice (d10 for typical supers, d12 for the likes of The Authority ). Obviously that makes it harder, not easier, to roll under a given number. There was a fudge I don't recall which made it work, but it always felt like a fudge, as if they'd forced the idea to fit. 
 
And then they went and called the book of female characters Country Matters … 

I liked Tri-Stat when it debuted as Big Eyes, Small Mouth but it grew increasingly clumsy as they tried to apply it to wider genres. In particular, it was a d6 roll under system, but they came up with the peculiar idea of having higher power characters use larger dice (d10 for typical supers, d12 for the likes of The Authority ). Obviously that makes it harder, not easier, to roll under a given number. There was a fudge I don't recall which made it work, but it always felt like a fudge, as if they'd forced the idea to fit. 
 
And then they went and called the book of female characters Country Matters … 

Just as general advice to a 6E player, many of the fantasy-related books written by DOJ-Hero had the Turakian Age in mind as their default reference, and when that material was compiled and updated for 6E its applicability to TA also carried over. For example, TA often refers to character templates and other game elements provided in the 5E Fantasy Hero genre book, so if you have the 6E book you get their updated versions there. (I can't speak to Fantasy Hero Complete as I haven't seen that.) If you have the 6E Hero System Bestiary you've got practically all the creatures and races from the setting. If you can lay hands on the Hero System Grimoire for 6E, that gives you all the magic spells TA refers to. Any further elaborations on those elements in the setting book and its attendant volumes would be easy to translate to 6E.

According to Champions Complete page 144, no. 
 
"… Mental Combat works on a Line Of Sight basis; if an attacker can see the target, he can attack him without suffering the Range Modifier. Typically, none of the Combat Modifiers apply either." 

My preference is for more of a Charles de Lint style, I think. Buffy and its ilk seem to suck all the magic out of the idea of adding magic to the world. 

This is probably an appropriate place to mention The Phenomena Department, a Hero System urban fantasy campaign setting developed by our long-missing colleague, Michael "Susano" Surbrook. By his own assertion it's inspired by the X-Files, Delta Green for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and the anime Silent Möbius.

Hostess episode is hilarious and fun, great job guys
 
Here's Frank Miller's offering mentioned, with the Ice Master.  Great art for a Hostess ad.
 

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

Hm. Spence makes some cogent points, though I think they apply more to how a citybook should be written more than which city should be chosen. In that vein, it might be a good idea to provide indices for what can be used for which purposes: like, if a GM needs someone to hire the PCs for a job, here's a list of NPCs who might do so, and what pages they're on. And the descriptions don't need to be long; better if they are not, to make them easier to slot in where needed, with just a few sentences about their motivations to help GMs pick which one to use.
 
I'll still say that originality matters a lot, though. Any FANTASY HERO supplement is likely to stay niche just for being FANTASY HERO. So you might as well swing for the fences and try giving gamers something they can't get from yet another D&D/Pathfinder supplement... and that is *not* just, "See, you can do it with Hero System."
 
Dean Shomshak

I am speaking up purely to express my outrage at The Banana Splits show being called "tacky"! 😉

I am speaking up purely to express my outrage at The Banana Splits show being called "tacky"! 😉

I am speaking up purely to express my outrage at The Banana Splits show being called "tacky"! 😉

Well the hand waving comes in when you describe gliding as a "different form of movement" which is wringing the definition pretty vigorously. 
 
Perhaps the best way to approach this would be to make gliding a natural part of any flying, then give limitations to flight purchased as only gliding or unable to glide.  That way anyone who flies can switch on gliding at any time, accepting its drawbacks and advantages (lower END cost?). Kind of like a combat maneuver, but with movement instead.  Who knows, maybe we could come up with several kinds of movement maneuvers (better turning radius, acceleration, etc).