massey

And Feige is still in charge of QC for the MCU. I do not look forward to the day he leaves that post.

This. The chief effect of supers is to personalize activities and conflicts, because the number of people on either side is relatively small. Sure, governments and corporations employ lots of mundande computer security people who try to block the criminal hackers, with results about the same as IRL. There are also a few super-hackers who blow through mundane security like it wasn't there because they are cyberpaths, or super-geniuses, or whatever. They are a terror to everyone with valuable data. And you have just a few super-security experts -- Captain Codebar and WhiteHat, say -- who are the only people able to stop them, because they have the same powers.
 
The two sides never reach an equilibrium, because so much depends on the outcome of each single conflict between these few individuals. If WhiteHat stops the attempt by SyberBadd to steal a country's sovereign wealth fund, the world wobbles on. If SyberBadd wins, a government falls or at least financial markets go nuts for a while. It's the financial equivalent of a major earthquake or hurricane.
 
This means it matters a lot who Captain Codebar and WhiteHat work for. It also means that after the third or fourth time they stop SyberBadd, he/she/it thinks about killing them -- the only two who stop him/her/it from enjoying not just limitless wealth (that would be easy to gain legitimately) but the sadistic thrill of absolute power gained by hitting the financial world like a digital pinata. Adventure results.
 
Conversely, the world becomes a lot safer if someone can capture SyberBadd. Capture or kill the other hacker supervillains -- remember, there's only a few of them -- and maybe WhiteHat and Captain Codebar have the time to debug Chrome, squash the mundane hackers for good, and make the Internet the utopian force for good that was promised. So the stakes are high on that side too. In practice, heroes maintain the status quo, but one can present the promise that someday they could make the world much better.
 
Dean Shomshak

Let's hope she's wrong about most of them.  Marvel has been good about making a decent film out of some weak concepts but they'd really be pushing that with some of these concepts.

They call that 'having standards'.

The house rules for the settings would be the benefits.
Specific examples, probably genre examples, of how you can use Hero to do X or Y.
 
Potential benefit I mean. Who really knows of course.
 
But compare the various PbtA games. Same base rules but different abilities and GM moves and whatever the heck else in each genre product.
 
Like let's use Shadowrun as an example. In SR cyberware reduces "Essence" and eventually to go crazy or whatever. Same for CP2020 I think.
Pretty basic idea in general.
 
In Hero we could emulate that in a lot of ways. Or not emulate it 'cause Essence and meta-game mechanical limits on cyberware are dumb and in Hero we have points to limit that stuff.
But what would be fun\useful\interesting (potentially, who knows?) would be a specific way to do that in Hero and a rules set that integrates that in-game mechanical construct in to the in-game fluff\setting\world lore.
 
Just as an example. Specific rules for specific settings to make those settings work more like we want them to.

Sanity loss in CoC is another example.

I go with a more heroic scale.  20 is "maximum" in that it's the max you're likely to encounter in the real world.  It's not the max a human could possibly be.  I reject that idea.
 
5-8:  People of Wal-Mart
8-10:  Average couch potato
10-12:  Average healthy 30 year old in reasonably good shape
13-15:  Top 10% of your high school (when grown up)
16-18:  Top college performers
20-23:  High performing professionals
25+:  Best of the best
 
So let's say you've got an 18 Dex.  You could be a scholarship athlete at a big Division 1 school.  You could play basketball for Duke, or football at Alabama.
You've got a 15 Strength?  You might have been a high school wrestler, and you've stayed in shape as you matured into your adult body.
20 Presence?  You're a skilled trial lawyer in a large city, respected among your peers.
25 Dex?  Nike makes commercials with you in them.

If I was in charge (and had lots of money to blow), I'd make some little stand alone games, with a stripped down version of the Hero System in each of them.  A fantasy game with pre-made spells (and no Powers section), a horror rpg where characters are competent normals, etc.  Hero would run in the background, but really it's about nice looking art and a cool theme.  See what sparks interest.  If something sells well, bring out supplements for it.  Don't try to convert people to a new religion just yet.  Instead let them have fun playing the game, not reading a set of encyclopedias to figure out the rules.
 
Then, eventually, you come out with Hero System 7th edition.  Much thinner than the double volume 6th.  Hero System -- the game you've already been playing.  Something like that.

His clinic is in Gaza, Tehran or where ever and the technology it uses can be weaponized. So it gets bombed.
 
There's no investigation because it was an intentional act by a recognized government.
 
This is both reasonably "realistic", and something I don't want to play.

There are good reasons for a setting to be fantastic, rather than "realistic". A "realistic" setting would be both dystopian and boring.

Hela would probably be the best candidate.  We don't really know what happened to her after Surtur destroyed Asgard.  I mean, we presume she died, but we don't really know that for sure.  Or what death means for a goddess of death.
 
Still, I don't think they should bring Thanos back anytime soon, if ever.  It makes Iron Man's sacrifice mean a lot less.

Some things just wouldn't be online.  Nuclear launch codes aren't.  No amount of super-hacking will let you access what's in my file cabinet -- it doesn't connect to the internet.
 
I think after the first super-hacker stole himself a couple billion dollars, electronic transfers would become a lot less common.

Hela would probably be the best candidate.  We don't really know what happened to her after Surtur destroyed Asgard.  I mean, we presume she died, but we don't really know that for sure.  Or what death means for a goddess of death.
 
Still, I don't think they should bring Thanos back anytime soon, if ever.  It makes Iron Man's sacrifice mean a lot less.

Hela would probably be the best candidate.  We don't really know what happened to her after Surtur destroyed Asgard.  I mean, we presume she died, but we don't really know that for sure.  Or what death means for a goddess of death.
 
Still, I don't think they should bring Thanos back anytime soon, if ever.  It makes Iron Man's sacrifice mean a lot less.

Is that what the two-bladed weapon was that he was using in Endgame?  The rotor from the Thanoscopter?

Hela would probably be the best candidate.  We don't really know what happened to her after Surtur destroyed Asgard.  I mean, we presume she died, but we don't really know that for sure.  Or what death means for a goddess of death.
 
Still, I don't think they should bring Thanos back anytime soon, if ever.  It makes Iron Man's sacrifice mean a lot less.

So, I think the answer depends on how effectively normal people can deal with super problems.
 
If the most dangerous guy in the world has a 60 Str, 18 Dex, 5 Speed, 25 PD and ED, with 15 resistant, then maybe specially equipped cops can take him down.  You lure SuperBubba into an evacuated part of the city and you rain down grenades on his head.  But if Ultron is out there, you have no choice but to let the supers take care of it.
 
The problem I had with Civil War (both the comic and to a lesser extent, the movie) is that the governments of the world have no answer at all when a supervillain decides to rampage.  Sure, you know who the Avengers are, and maybe you can get the drop on them when they're sitting back eating shawarma and taking a break (at least some of them).  But you have no answer at all for Loki, or really any of the other villains.  Putting restrictions on heroes, trying to control them, just means that you keep them from doing their job.
 
Ultimately you end up drifting pretty far from the superhero genre if you really want to push it.  If the government mandates that all superheroes register with them, and undergo training, and basically get drafted, would people be superheroes anymore?  What happens if Clark Kent decides not to put on the costume?  Oh he can still save people in burning buildings and things like that, but what if he just wears blue jeans, a leather jacket, and a ski mask?  And then he doesn't stick around to give interviews, he just flies off.  I think more government regulations would just drive a lot of stuff underground.  There wouldn't be official superhero teams, and people wouldn't wear costumes.  They'd just wear regular clothes with a disguise.  I'm not sure that's preferable.
 
Or people would just not be superheroes, and the villains would run wild for a while, until the police and the politicians threw their hands up in the air and begged for someone to help.  Then you can't really put conditions on how the heroes choose to help.  "We'll let you help, if you tell us your real identity."  And the hero is like "well, have fun fighting Doctor Cannibal by yourself, a-hole."

If I was in charge (and had lots of money to blow), I'd make some little stand alone games, with a stripped down version of the Hero System in each of them.  A fantasy game with pre-made spells (and no Powers section), a horror rpg where characters are competent normals, etc.  Hero would run in the background, but really it's about nice looking art and a cool theme.  See what sparks interest.  If something sells well, bring out supplements for it.  Don't try to convert people to a new religion just yet.  Instead let them have fun playing the game, not reading a set of encyclopedias to figure out the rules.
 
Then, eventually, you come out with Hero System 7th edition.  Much thinner than the double volume 6th.  Hero System -- the game you've already been playing.  Something like that.

If I was in charge (and had lots of money to blow), I'd make some little stand alone games, with a stripped down version of the Hero System in each of them.  A fantasy game with pre-made spells (and no Powers section), a horror rpg where characters are competent normals, etc.  Hero would run in the background, but really it's about nice looking art and a cool theme.  See what sparks interest.  If something sells well, bring out supplements for it.  Don't try to convert people to a new religion just yet.  Instead let them have fun playing the game, not reading a set of encyclopedias to figure out the rules.
 
Then, eventually, you come out with Hero System 7th edition.  Much thinner than the double volume 6th.  Hero System -- the game you've already been playing.  Something like that.

Another thing to keep in mind -- if your game is all about combat, that's what players will spend their points on.  If you include other things in the game, players will feel like they're getting the most bang for their buck by diversifying.
 
 
For instance, let's take Aragorn from LOTR (movies, since I haven't read the books in about 30 years).  He starts off and he's a combat character, and he has a handful of wilderness survival skills as well.  Then when he's off doing some ranger stuff, the hobbits' players all blow their Int rolls.  They start a fire and are cooking food, until Frodo's player comes back from the bathroom.  When he finds out what they're doing, he says that he wouldn't let them do that, but the GM is all "no, you were asleep, you wake up and they're cooking bacon".  Then the Nazgul attack.  Aragorn comes in to save the day, driving off the ring wraiths, but Frodo gets dropped to negative Body in the process.  The GM starts rethinking how many combat levels he let Aragorn buy.  The Nazgul were supposed to be really tough opponents, and he just solo'd them.  Maybe Aragorn needs some other stuff to spend points on.
 
So Aragorn carries Frodo and they try to head for Rivendell, with Frodo's player bitching and moaning the whole time that it's not fair that he got stabbed when it was these other guys' fault.  Aragorn asks if he happens to know any sort of ranger healing techniques, maybe with his wilderness skills he knows of a healing plant or something.  The GM asks if he has either Paramedics or KS: Herbalism.  Aragorn says no.  The GM lets him make a roll anyway, but tells him that his next XP points have to go into that skill.  Aragon is like "I got this", then he rolls a 17 and totally fails to help Frodo.  Frodo's player starts complaining again, the GM sighs, and then he introduces Aragorn's elf girlfriend.  "After you buy Paramedic, you'll need to buy Contact: Elf Girlfriend" the GM says.  She's cool and has neat powers, so Aragon says okay.
 
As the story progresses, the GM drops the hint that maybe he's got some royal lineage or something.  Wouldn't it be cool to be a king?  That's something to spend points on later.  Oh and here's a magic sword that belongs to the king.  It's broken right now, so you will have to have it reforged before you can use it.  Be sure to save your points for that.  Aragorn thinks that sounds cool, and he's on board with it.  The GM decides that to be king of Gondor, Aragorn is going to have to buy a lot of stuff.  He can't just spend 10 points for Perk: Head of State.  He will have to buy that, but he'll need other stuff too.  Along the way, he's going to have to buy Contact: Elrond.  He's also going to have to buy up his Tracking roll when he goes and chases after those orcs who kidnap the hobbits.  He will encounter Eomer and Theoden, and he'll have to buy KS: Rohan (with the excuse "yeah, I've always known this stuff"), as well as Persuasion and High Society.  Of course his Presence will have to go up as well.  Then he'll have to lead an army at Helm's Deep, and so he has to buy Tactics.
 
The whole time, Aragorn keeps talking about how he wants to increase his damage, and get some more combat skill levels.  He didn't like having to run from that Balrog, and when he almost lost to that one badass orc that killed Boromir he got pissed off.  But the GM always puts him in a position where there are new skills and abilities that he needs as the game goes on.  Aragorn complains because the hobbits have started spending points on combat abilities, and he's not super head and shoulders above them anymore.  "Hey, you're working on being a king, remember?" the GM says.  Aragorn reluctantly accepts that he needs to spend points on other things.  But then Legolas will do something awesome and Aragorn gets mad again.  The GM finally says that Aragorn gets to command a ghost army for a while, and then he's happy.
 
Ultimately, he's spending 10 points on Head of State, then he's got to spend 15 on Wealth (all the riches of Gondor), several D6 of Reputation, he's got to buy up his Ego to use the Palantir, he has to pick up a bunch of skills, and then he's got the magic sword (and the GM doesn't really mention that it only has Affects Desolid and a couple D6 of Rep, without doing much more damage than a normal sword).  Being king ends up costing Aragorn at least 70-80 points, once all is said and done, but combat-wise he's not really any more effective than he was when he started.

The amazing thing to me is that no one suspects that Thanos is still alive and has the Infinity stones.
 
Think about it.
 
Thanos is on the alien planet all alone wanting to retire. He knows that everyone will figure out it was him who snapped half of everyone out of existence and that armies of angry people will come after him looking for revenge. So he's either going to have to live out the rest of his life on the run, kill off everyone who comes after him, or come up with a real plan (aka not retiring to a rural planet while waiting for people to come after him).
 
So he uses the Infinity Gauntlet to create a duplicate Thanos who "remembers" that he used the Infinity Gauntlet to destroy the Infinity Stones.
 
Then the real Thanos flies off on a spaceship, leaving the duplicate behind to take the fall from whoever comes looking for revenge. Once the duplicate is killed, the heat is off and everyone will stop looking for him.
 
The Avengers detect the power flare of Thanos creating the duplicate and kill the duplicate on schedule.
 
The real Thanos has quietly retired to some base he'd set up in advance and is living a life of luxury while watching his erstwhile hunters running around like self-satisfied fools.

If somebody over there remembers Samuel Sterns, I'll be particularly happy.

The problem with developing the Champions setting is that theoretically, you're just enhancing the value of something you don't own.  I'm sure Cryptic would be perfectly happy if Hero Games poured a bunch of time and money into the Champions setting and made it really popular again.  That would make them more money.
 
Now, I don't know the terms of the sales agreement, but it may be possible to separate Champions the game from Champions the setting.  The company could possibly decide to create a new setting from scratch, something that they would own.  Of course that means leaving behind Dr Destroyer, VIPER, and a lot of the other pieces of the Champions history.  It might even mean leaving behind the idea of a team named "The Champions".  That would all be determined by the conditions of the sales agreement between them and Cryptic (which, obviously, I don't have and haven't read).
 
I think you could still create a well done Marvel/DC combo universe, but who knows how well that would do in the modern RPG environment.
 
--
 
I see a few possible avenues if Hero Games really wanted to get back in the game.  All of these, of course, would require a significant investment.
 
1.  Find a well known IP that is somewhat stagnant at the moment, but that might have some appeal to fans, and that you can get for cheap.  (Is anybody doing anything with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at the moment?)
 
2.  Try and guess the next big thing.  Get an IP that hasn't hit yet and hope it blows up big.  (Find some Young Adult book series that hasn't had its movie deal yet)
 
3.  Pick a genre that appears to be underserved, and do a generic version of it.  (All Flesh Must Be Eaten did this with zombies -- can you find the next zombie craze?)
 
 
With all of these, I think you need to be willing to run a bare bones version of the Hero System.  Use only the most needed parts, ditch the rest, and produce a slick book in color that's customized for your setting.  If you're not willing to do that, don't waste your time.

The key power of higher speed is in acting on other phases which most characters do not.  If you look at the speed chart, many phases are like "greatest hits" and get a lot of action.  Everyone moves on 12, of course -- or, at least they used to until 6th edition (which makes for a really weird anomaly in the progression of turns.  With this system speed 1 gets effectively 2 actions in the first 12 segments -- a turn -- then nothing for another 11 segments.  So its phase 0 (everyone acts), then 7, then... 7 next turn.  Anyway...

But look at the chart and you see some outliers.  Phase 6 for example has tons of action.  4 and 8 are the next most active phases.  So if you can move before those phases or you use saved phases tactically that can be a very useful advantage.
 
Until speed 7, nobody moves on phase 7 (ignoring speed 1 which is basically meaningless to the discussion because its so slow).  That's a scary phase, and it means someone is really really fast.  And Speed 7 is the first speed that moves on phase 11.  Further, look at speed 7 again; its the first speed where you get back-to-back phases of action.  Its like getting free held phases.  Frankly 7 is powerful enough for speedsters to dominate fights without needing to go any faster.
 
Honestly the more you study this chart, the more the genius shows.  It was probably not intentional but it worked out really well.  Mathematically they are split up across the turn as evenly as possible (and 12 gives the best number of possible even divisions).  But for the first few steps (the range most often encountered in Heroic games) the differences are most elegant.  From speed 3 to 5, each higher speed moves a segment before the previous speed in almost every phase.  So you have a slight edge showing greater training but not absurdly fast like phase 6 or something.
 
 

Unfortunately America can't just "get out of the Middle East." What happens there has huge ripple effects across the whole planet, which will eventually impact America. Even if the US does achieve energy self-sufficiency, much of the rest of the world, including American allies and enemies, will not for the foreseeable future. And if the United States withdraws completely from involvement in the region, there are other powers eager to fill the void.
 
Now, what kind of involvement the US should have is very much open to debate.

And they are good ones!
 
 
Well...who said anyone "needed" to? You CAN. COM is *A* way to do that.
 
To me it's like Fringe Benefits. I could play a super whose secret ID is an FBI agent and pay the points for federal law enforcement powers.
Or we could just hand-wave it as part of his background.
 
I could just say my PC is a medical doctor, take PS: Medical Doctor and not take surgery or even paramedics and not buy the fringe benefit.
Or I could get real gritty and buy a nice suite of skills and perks\bennies, including military rank (former Army trauma surgeon) and a license to practice medicine.
 
Either could be used to support roleplaying. Or either could just strictly be mechanics effects. Or they could be free for various reasons.
 
Heck, why have Psych Lims and stuff, right? We can roleplay those too.
I mean if I'm voluntarily roleplaying stuff then is it really disadvantaging me? Should I get points for it?
 
I think of Hero as being used to describe things.
COM is a way to describe things. SA is another. Roleplaying too. Body models (what we called it when you pick an actor\model\person that your character looks like). Perks\Fringe Benefits. Disads.
 
 
 
 
But by the same token if you want to describe your character as being a boy scout and feeling this will sometimes disadvantage him then you could also take points for it. And then not really roleplay it all and only grudgingly abide by the code when the GM gets frustrated with your murderhobo ways.
 
So you CAN, if you want, if it fits your game, playstyle, group, and character, get points for that.
Or just roleplay it if that works better.
 
I could say my PC is Zooland good-looking and...do nothing mechanically. I could take a Disad that he's recognized and chased around in public like Austin Powers. Or I could just buy up my COM. All good options!
Or take SA. Or SA and COM. Or just roleplay it.
 
You know, like Hero does.
 
 
 
 
Sure and neither COM nor SA really prevent that. I'm still going to be roleplaying. If the GM says, "Oh, SuperHottie sure is hot, SA Presence Attack + Seduction roll says you are totes smitten!"
I can say, "Oh, she's really hot for a redhead even though I'm not usually in to that", or you could just roleplay it and say, "Oh, she's really hot for a readhead (because of her COM 20) even tho I'm not usually in to that".
 
 
 
Points are paid for all kinds of stuff to represent and describe game constructs.
You roleplay with those game constructs.
 
My PC doesn't have to roleplay anything when a 16d attack comes at him in a 8d game.
Or he can roleplay being terrified based on what that mean in-game.
 
That's roleplaying directly from mechanical effects.
 
When I build dudes in Hero I pay points to make their mechanics match my desires for them.
I pay points to try to describe them mechanically as I think they should be in a roleplaying sense.
 
If you'd prefer to strictly segregate Roleplaying from Mechanics then...that's totally cool and you should do that.
 
Personally I don't mind things going from mechanics\points to roleplaying and vice versa.
 
If a PC takes, "Prince" as a Fringe Benefit I have no problem with that translating in to better roleplaying (not social skill role mechanics) interactions with peasants.
 
If a PC wants to play a medical doctor and wants to roleplay that as having in-game effects he can buy the Fringe Benefit...and then we'll just roleplay it.
 
 
 
 
 
Agreed! They are not mutually exclusive.
 
 
 
Sure, and if he makes a rousing speech we can roleplay that. Or he can make a Pre Attack to actually create mechanical effects. And if his roleplaying is good I might give him a bonus on the Pre attack. And if his roleplaying is bad, like Toxxus says above, I wouldn't penalize him mechanically for that.
 
And if the powerhouse in question has a COM of 35 and is of an desired gender\sexual configuration for my PC then I might roleplay the "ask to join his team because he respects power" instead of fleeing based on the mechanics.
 
Or I might roleplay my character fleeing because he's got a roleplaying only bad history with NPCs with 30+ COM scores and he ain't fallin' for that no more.
 
 
IF COM is a useful too, for you, for your game, for your players, then use it. And if it is not useful, even if you are playing 4th edition and it's clearly right there in the rules, then don't use it.
 
 
What's useful is....what is useful to you and your players about it?
 
How does it effect or not effect your games?
 
What problems does COM create? What problems does SA create?
 
 
 
 

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