Duke Bushido

We went on to play Traveller under Lars for three or four more years after that, up until he moved. We never revisited that campaign. We asked him about it a couple of times, and he explained that his heart just wasn't in it after "the event" happened. Now I _am_ resonably certain that we did hit a lot of that prepared material over the next few years- repackaged and changed up a bit to fit whatever the current situation happened to be, etc. Now to be clear, I only say that because that iis the economical decision _I_ would have made: never let such a vast amount of creative work to to waste, right? How much did he get to use? I can't say. We never encountered God, or anyone we could mistake for God, and we never had an big philosophical moments or revelations about either our purpose or place in the universe, so I am reasonably certain he either didn't get to use all of that or at least finally understood that we (that group, anyway) didn't want to waste our escapism on exploring our insignificance. (Which I guess also means he didn't get to use all of it), and he never really wanted to discuss that original planned campaign, even years later, so who knows? Other than him, I mean.

Nah- Youre reading too much into it. Lars had always had this hang up about getting us to go coreward. Hw was fascinated by what might lie at the galactic core, where all the arms come together. We had always worried that giving in to the pressure to go coreward was going to result in some philosophical Interstellar / Jodie Foster horsecrap in which we had _zero_ interest. So, when given the chance to explore, we _always_ went outward. Having seen the mountain of work he had piled into this campaign, we as one- and without any sort of communication between us- decided "wow. That's a lot of work; maybe we should humor the guy this time." Unbeknownst to us, he had finally decided to give up on us moving coreward, and had built the entire campaign (which he had even gone to the trouble to pin to _real_ star charts) on the idea that we were going to be headed for the edge. Now consider the frustration and - if you're being honest with yourself- moment of absolute fury that resulted from this one scene.

No argument there; that is why I would like to see it updated. The heartbreaker is "Dark Champions replaced it," and Dark Champions isn't the ideal for 'normal guy with a normal gun doing normal guy things.' As a guy who has been doing Traveller on HERO for a long time: It works great. Some caveats: If you are really into building ships, build them in Travelller and convert the finished product. Or scramble the base and the vehicle rules together. Or devise your own rules. The HERO vehicle rules are extremely vague when it comes to volume and how it is divided. That is one of the reasons we never switched from our house rules after Champions II came out. Of you are really in to robots, byuld them as characters with programming limitations as Physical Limi-plications. If you are into the randomness and the life/career path, roll the character up in Traveller and convert. Reputation isnt a good replacement for Social Standing. It is worth creating a Social Standing characteristic. I tend to run it from 0 to 4, and use it as a modifier ( if I positive and negative, as appropriate) for Social interaction skills between people of different SS. Won't go into much detail, as I have to get back on the road in a minute- riding to Crawfordville to see some friends. Hero as-is cannot be as lethal as is Traveller. You can flip on all the "bad time" switches such as hit locations, etc, but Traveller's applying damage directly to Characteristics creates a brutality that HERO just isnt equipped for out of the box. Before anyone complains that I like killing Pcs: I have ten times the firefights in Champions Traveller than I do in regular Traveller. This is because the players know they are likely going to live. I get a lot more social interaction, cunning, cons, dealing, and straight-up sneakery in Traveller as Traveller: the threat of the one-hit kill tends to make then more civilized in general.

Well, Dean, probably not in the way you are asking for, but... Sort of? I think I may have told this story before, but my first Traveller GM, Lars: he took a summer off and went back to Austria to see his family. When he came back, he had this pair of 4-inch binders just _packed_ with notes and maps and new NPCs and who-knows-what-else. He had spent a lot of the summer brainstorming what was to be his Magnum Opus of a Traveller campaign- something that would have us see half the universe and ultimately looking upon the face of God.... At least, to hear him tell it (a couple of years later). We were all incredibly stoked! We made up new characters- we even took some of his advice when selecring careers and skills charts upon which to roll. That cant be stressed enough: we were so excited to sive into this massive new universe that we took GM advice _without balk or complaint_! Two hours into the first session finds us in serious trouble and on the run- mistaken identity, I beleive it was, followed up by a solid frame while our reputations were low. We had to get out of Dodge, and fast, if we were to have any hope of clearing our names! Lars was quite excited- he already had four or five bookmarks in the first notebook (which he had been,dlipping through furiously, feeding us situations and flavor text), then he paused, grabbed the second book while we were warming up the engines for an illegal departure. We lifted off as he oulled the book open near the center, just soread enough to get his fingers in it. "So!" He began, excited by the turn of events. "Which way is it that you think will run to escape your circumstance?" In unison, we all shouted happily "coreward!" Followed by various ckaims about just how fast we were goinf to go! Lars's face fell completely off. He sat there, stunned, dumbstruck, and just stared. Finally he sobered up, made a big show out of xloaing both books, got up, walked to the kitchen, held them in outstretched hands, and dropped them both into the trash can. "I think, my friends," he started, never actually looking at us, "that we are done for tonight, surely. (As a anon-native- but excellent- English user, he had some rather odd structures and turns of phrase). I think it is the best thing to be stopoing here at this point for tonight. We should plan on not grouping up again for I am thinking maybe three weeks." He turned then to look at us. "I should be enough sober again by three weeks from now. Okay?" Then he went into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and turned the TV on.

MSPE was... Well, it was workable, and the fans of it were die hard fans, too. Aome folks still play it to this day, even if it isnt for spies and the like. I want to say up front that there wasnt anything inherently _bad_ about the system. It did not, however, trip any joy triggers for me: it was another reasonably solid (for the day) game for a genre that I have _still_ kind of had enough of. Like DAD above, we tried them _all_..which I suspect has a lot to do with my permanent burn out on the genre as a whole. System-wise, the only real stinker (in my opinion, and it is worth slightly less than you paid for it) was James Bond. I dont know if it was a rush job or what, but something about it just didnt gel for me- it felt like it was incomplete, and knew it was incomplete, and denied it the whole time you were playing it. Well, "incomplete" is too strong: unfinished might be a better descriptor.

I am pretty sure that it won't get rereleased; I seem to have a (possibly artificial) memory of a semi-official comment (that is, a not-stated-as-official comment from an official person) that Dark Champions is the recomended model for modern action-HERO games not covered by other genres, even though DC leans heavily toward capes and costumes, which to me (remember I am not a supers guy in general) is kind of a turn off from right out of the gate. It also skews toward low-level supers as opposed to "normies." As far as 6e goes, I have to fall back on 4e-era habits and use Western HERO as my standard for "heroic level" adventures. Well, it goes a bit above normies, but at least normies are covered.

Well, I haven't done anything here for some time- mostly because; well, dying computer, posting by phone sucks, etc..... Last year at Halloween we started a "background arc" built around a Mcguffin called the Morgan Stone. Short version is where the stone appears, weirdness happens. At Halloween, the city was overrun by angels, spirits, asylum escapees, and zombies. At the end of the day, blame,Foxbat, who needed the stone to serve as the jewel for his walking stick while he qas John the Good Reverend Smith, because the perfect costume requires the perfect accessoriea, and you cant sell The Church of Everybody Else is Going to Die without the perfect costume, right? Geez, Leroy; sometjimes I dont think you are paying attention at all... That side quest ran two six-hour sessions and a third four-hour session, so you can see why I don't want to discuss it with two thumbs, bad eyes, and a brain-damaged autocorrect. So just before Christmas, the Morgan Stone reappeared. See, even though our heroes figured out that the stone was the cause of their troubles (much earlier than I had meant for them to, but hey- I can roll with it), they still failed to recover it after Wight Night: Foxbat had taken crafty (for various values of 'crafty') precautions to keep it out of their hands, and- to my incredulous disbelief- _they worked_! (Seriously: these kids jad seen through most of his plans right up until now, then they all had some kind if brain cramp or something....) Well, _that_ waan't going to cut it, as the Morgan Stone has to be in play to cause more holiday-themed mischief for at least two (and possibly three) random holidays. So skip to Friday's adventure (which we played in under three hours, for a number of reasons, the first one being that I had seen this one as being little more than mindless combat: they had done a considerable job chasing leads, connecting the dots, putting everything together, and figuring out that zombies ciuld be cure through forced ingestion of Bison-brand microwave chicken nuggets and that much-maligned artificial orange juice: Delish-S. (Let's remember that I lightened it up considerably in the planning stage upon discovering that one of the younger girls playing had a serious squeamishness about zombies). So what does a campaign look like? Sometimes, you have to fill in the blanks for the players. You have to handle this,,,, well, with new players, you have to just make it a matter of fact kind of thing; always, you should have a firm grip of the players and how they operate, and use your best judgment. Some newer players might find it a bit railroad-y (it isn't), and some older playrrs might object because 'why cant we play that out?' At the end of the _experienced_ players realize it is just "so you are all sitting in a tavern" with extra filler. It won't take long before your new players get there; you just have to handle it accordingly. You are all standing in the street in feont of city hall, waiting for the sun to finish setting. Magnus (Magnificent has been accidentally called Magnus so many times,since I last posted here that he has retconned his name), you and Firefly are posing with a bunch of the school kids from yesterday. The Chamber of Commerce put out an add for superheroes to help young children decorate the big tree, with an emphasis on those who could fly. The massive pine tree in front of the City Hall has been the town's official tree since the cornerstone for City Hall was first laid behind it. Today this venerable pine tree is just over 90 feet high, and so thick with foliage as to be even more perfect than the most meticulously-designed artificial tree. For decades now, the bottom fifteen feet have been decorated by kidergarten and elementary school students, and a tradition started by Rook over 20 years ago has a few superheroes come to help, lifting or sometimes carefully flying children up to reach the highest branches of these lower limbs- with parental permission, of course. Of course, you, Firefly, and Magnus were big hits, as you can actually fly and carry the children; Red Cloak would cast levitation spells, giving children the illusion that they were flying all by themselves. Feral was delighting the kindergarten children by turing into a gigantic squirrel and carrying ornament-laden children scamering up the trunk and out onto the limbs, bursting through the needles, pausing long enough hang an ornament, and scampering back into the tree, over and over again. I did a quick run through of how each od the PCs participated, inclyding Mycroft lifting a few children as high as he could reach, but mostly pushing and collecting various release forms from parents and constantly yelling at different heroes to "be careful! Those aren't sacks of sand you're carrying!" See? We could have played that through, but instead it took three minutes to simply summarize a non-plot-critical scene that set the tone for the moment and explained why we were so here together now in our costumes. Had we played it, we could have easily burned half or more of the session just gooding around. Yes; it would have been fun, but with any luck, the planned adventure would be even more fun. In front of City Hall are the sixteen steps to the ground, each the full forty-foot width of the stone courtyard in front of the main entrance. Today, the steps and the courtyard serve as an impromptu grandstand for the mayor and various other local officials who will be making short statements and well-wishes as soon as the parade finishes. A small handful of the helpful heroes from yesterday are gathered behind the officials- that includes you guys, of course, and most of you have tuned out the panderinf of the politicians, waiting for the big even itself. You pass the time amusing youselves with the antics of the people enjoying the Winter Carnival set up in the park across the street, and generally scanning the huge crowd that has gathered for the tree lighting. The parade has almost concluded; it has gone through the financial district and is currently windinf its way through the government distric, known locally as Red Tape Row (even though it consists of a series of buildings built around eight small squares such in turn are built around the much larger Founders Park, where the Carnival is set up. As the parade winds through the street in front of City Hall, it continues on around to the opposite side of the Carnival and breaks down the floats and disperses. Finally, the last of the parade- Campaign High # 213's award-winning marching band has one the draw this year, and has won the right to lead Santa's Sleigh in the parade. They march just beyond the courthouse and pause, marching in place, and a small golf-cart festooned with decorations and lights tows a comical-looking machine that is spraying dlurriws of artificiaI on an assortment of people dressed variously as elves, nutcrackers, and polar bears. As they march forward, the jinflinf of bells heralds Santa's sleigh, drawn (on hidden rubber wheels) by a team of real reindeer (raised and trained by a local man living on a small farm outside of town). The sleigh stops briefly, Santa leaps out, and runs up the steps with his gift sack on his back. He continues to the podium, steps up to the microphone, and gives a hearty "Ho! Ho! Ho!" to the crowd. "Santa has so many gifts for Campaign City this year!" As if on cue, the first of the politicians step forth and Santa hads him a gift. The politician opens it, and removws an oversized check. He shows it to the audience, and then announces "the charities board is pkeased to announce that they have raised thirteen thousand dollars for Campaign County Animal Shelters this year!" There is cheering and applause and rhe politician launches into a bried speech, wishes everyone happy holidays, and steps down. Santa produces another present, another politician steps forward, and rhe cycle repeats itself. Mercifully, rhis only lasts thirty minutes or so, rhen then Mayor Cauldwell takes rhe podium. After a brief speech and well-wishes for rhe citizens, he is interruptwd by Santa. "Mr. Mayor, I think it's time-" "It was time thirty minutes ago!" Yells a voice from the crowd. Rhe mayor turns to Santa, gestures grandly, and the tunrs back to the crowd "we are fortunate to live so far north that Santa himself can attend our tree lighting!" as Santa makes his way toward a comically-oversized and festivley-decorated switch. Reaching the switch, Santa turns to the crowd and announces "Here we go-ho-ho-ho!" and thros the switch, setting off a few pyrotechnic sparks as hidden technicians throw the real switch, and the tree blazes to life. The crowd oohs and aaahs for a few minutes, then begins to break into smaller groups, each doing whatever it is it wants to do- take pictures, move closer to the tree, go to the carnival, or whatever. Again: we could play this, but ultimately, there is nothing for the PCs to _do_ at this point, and it is four more minutes of narraration. At this point, the players are a bit antsy for something to do. Mycroft, you notice the float that had the two gigantic Timmy Tiger balloons seems to be having trouble wrestling with them. "Hey- one of you flying guys want to go help out with those balloons before someone gets hurt? Doesn't hurt to peove you're worth keeping around." We have a few similar situations- let the players run around, do some,helpful things, let rhem interact with the townfolk- Feral got to flex a skill solving an electrical problem,that had stymied the Ferris wheel- things like that. As soon as evertone had settled into rhe "okay; we are having a character development type session.... Mycroft; give me a Perception check Why me? For one, you're closest.,,for another, more than any other character here, you are the most likely to be habitually looking for trouble, what with your police training and general untrusting nature. Makes sense. Eight. The light seems to have shifted. What do you mean? There is something different,about the pool of light in which you stand. I look around. Make a Perception check at plus 2. Eleven. It's the tree. It's leaning. Leaning? Like falling?! It Doesn't seem,to be fa)ing, but it is _definitely_ leaning way forward for some reason... Crap! You can hear the creaking of the trunk, and the tree seems to be.. Wobbling?... Crap! Rook! Took is tied up: her social group runs a small roller coaster at the carnival to raise money for the homelss shelter. So she's here? Yes, but she isn't here in costume- She's like seven and a half feet tall! What else does she wear?! Right now, she's wearing a very xute Santa's elf costume with a name,tag that says "Hi! My name is Tiny Elf." (Much laughter from the players) The roller coaster is muscle-powered; she's the muscle. Is she strong enough to catch a tree? Probably, but she doesn't have her radio. She is here to have fun with her friends from one of her social clubs and raise money for charity. Magnus! Can you hear me? Can I hear get? Him. Him. Can I hear him? Have you got your com link on? Yeah... Then you can hear him. What's up, Mycroft? Are you strong enough to catch a tree? Maybe......? Maybe?! Nobody has ever thrown a tree a me! What kind of a question is that? Well the Christmas tee is falling over... Feral, Kinetica, and Red Cloak: What?! Firefly: I am on the way, Detective!" Kinetica: I will beat her there. Thanks, Firefly, but I think thia will take more muscle than you have. Feral: I hummingbird over to the tree- Mycroft, you turn back to the tree and notice that it isn't leaning. It is as straight as it has always been. What? How? Guys, be on the lookout for any supervillains with illusion powers! Red Cloak; I have illusion powers! Me: and you're not under suspicion; you are one of the good guys. Can I help? Feral: I think I have gor muscle covered! I turn into an elephant the second I land! Mycroft: unless you can turn into a team of rhose things, I dont think it is goinf to be enough, Cloak has that giant hand he can do; I dont know what we are going to need... Okay, Magnus has arrived, as has everyone else. Magnus, the tree looks fine to you. What's the matter, Detective? What is going on here-? There is a tremendous craking and groaning and the tree leans again, the other way this time. Some of the citizens have noticed and are looking panicked.... The team leaps into crowd control and helps everyone move into Founders Park. Red Cloak sets up q mystic wall as a barrier to keep people at least one hundred feet from the tree in case it falls. It rights itself, then leans the other way, then leans,backwards, flopping around faster and faster, the truck craking and groaning- suddenly. One massive root erupts from the ground and,befins to push against the soil. Another root rips free, then another, then two more-! The tree befins to rise up- up, up, up, towering into the sky... It stands, fully erect, the gaudy LED star atop it almost invisible nearly two hundred feet above you.... And thus began the Terri of the Christmas Treant.... More later; I can't stare at this tiny keyboard anymore....

Really? I kind of did, but mine was _way_ smaller....

Yeah; I know that _now_, but I learned it 20 or so years too late to do me any real good.... Good press and better covers (not just artwork, but something that informs upon the theme(s) inside, and most importantly, a rear blurb that _informs_ instead of just praising- are so regularly under-valued by publishers... Not just HERO in the day, but the whole publishing industry. Using DI as an examole though: A square-jawed version of Carl Sagan in a brown sportscoat and black turtleneck hodling a spy-favorite concealable pistol in a background that evokes sneaking around desert military camps in the cover of night.... Oh. I get it: yet another entry into the recent glut of spy games.... Nothing in the back blurb made it sound like anything other than an updated Espionage set. That vague "Danger International" title did more to reinforce the idea that we would once again be tourists in Cairo by day....

You are quite welcome; I wish I could find confirmation from a more reliable source than a memory of pretending to be interested for a moment forty years ago, but that's all I have, I'm afraid. I suspect, however, that just like Champions 3e, everything in the boxed set (except map and poster) was faithfully included in the perfect bound version. Unless you are just a wingnut like me for the old stuff, there is no need to hunt down the one if you have the other-- again, I am basing that assumption on the similarly packaged-both-ways-product that I _do_ own both ways: 3e Champions; I have no way of knowing for a fact that a potential similar double-release of DI is going to have been handled similarly. when Derrick first pointed me toward the old Red October board (anyone know what happened to Filksinger? Great guy, and now that I know what filk is, I have questions... :D. ), and as I eventually moved to this board, I have ever-so-slowly developed a regret for dismissing DI (you know what they say about judging a book by its cover), I came to realize that we had essentially missed out on the honest-to-goodness genesis of the generic aspects of HERO, and that DI was the first in a line of poorly-named Action HERO Games, and not 'just another spy game.' (The poor naming would get worse with "Dark Champions," which we _again_ dismissed by the cover- not the incredible art, but the cringe-upon-cringiness of the title.) for what it is worth, for _years_ Western HERO was our guidebook for playing normal human adventures 'correctly' (sort of). Still, all the nostalgia I have seen on the boards over the years makes me kind of regret never giving DI a real chance. (Though even knowing what it is, I still find the cover off-putting. Yeah; there is nothing wrong it; it is just me. I cant tell you how much we were burned out on spy stuff- so much so that to this day I _still_ have zero interest. I think we tried every stinking one of them.)

Sorry- late to the party; I wish I had known this question was being asked. I have been avoiding browsing the net as it is my father's birthday, so we are making a day of it. Yes; I am sixty-two and,both of my parents are not only alive and healthy, but actively remodelong their house _again_. still, you have the answer: there was a DI boxed set: that and two of the flex tile sets are the only things (well, more than that, I suppose, as there were three sets in at least three colors, and I have but one set in one color) are the only things that have eluded my collection all these years. I know it exists only because my first Champions GM owned it for a while (had it "stolen" at Dragon Con, but I suspect, knowing him, he simply lost track of it). We never played it (which I think is why he took it to Dragon Con- looking to maybe trade it off) because we had gotten burned out on the whole Spies thing before he picked it up, and were at that time rediscovering TFT, so... We did all rifle through the box when he first got it, but let me preface this with a couple of notes: The rifling-through was more about making him happy with our feigned excitement, and took all of possibly three minutes. We weren't terribly interested in doing more than ooh-ing and aww-ing for Jim's benefit; not a lot of note-taking, even mentally. The memory is on the order of forty years old, and until now, only the cover of the box has ever been revisted in the mind's eye (identical to the cover of the perfect-bound softcover book. (Being totally honest, the theme and design od the cover, with our current burn-out on spies anyway, combined with the over-use of browns, was probably the single biggest thing that turned us off the fastest. "Oh, _great_! Seventies spies! :eyeroll: no; thanks.) The mini-poster was indeed the cover art and the title logo of the game. There was a saddle stitched (staple bound) rules book- I _want_ to say there were two books, but I sont trust the memory enough to declare that as fact), and an uncovered 'booklet' that we took to be a,short adventure akin to VIPER's Nest in the 2e Champions box. The map.... God help me, my brain keeps showing me the famous Roses map from Champions, but I do not think that is right. Further, I believe one side was some,sort of warehouse or "at the docks" kind of set. Again: don't accept this as being from a credible source, as what little I do remember was placed into memory against my will. There were dice: I dont remember anyone counting them, and if I am,remembering correctly, they were od one of the 'normal' small sizes, and not those odd sized sice that packed with Champions. Those were promptly stripped out and tossed into the salad bowl of D6 that was the centerpiece Jim's gaming table. My question goes back to the first quote above: I know Justice, Inc was a boxed set-- Are you perhaps implying that there was a JI perfect bound? Because that would be news to me, and I would have to begin tracking it down as well.....

Forgive the assumption. I assumed "lots more dice" because I also assumed you werent foing to sit around and let them het in multiple uses. My mistake.

Let"s take a look at something that tends to get lost in periodic "T-form is too too powerful" conversations: With Killing Attack, I can Transform you into a corpse, and all it takes is BODY x 2. With the frog thing, it also takes BODY x2. _however_, the default is that you can heal. You start to heal right away, unless the attacker has _paid even more_ to move recovery down the timetable. But you get to recover. You will, given enough time, be a superhero again- even if the attacker paid more than the price of a killing attack. With Killing Attack, at BODYx2, you ain't healing. There are no more recoveries, no more recuperative vacations, no long sessions of experimental treatment and recovery. You are a corpse. Given enough time, you can become mulch. Even if someone paid an exhorbitant amount to purchase his major T-form, and moved it far enough down the timecard that your first recovery comes somewhere outside od your character's natural lifespan, you are still _alive_ and can still be healed. So this guy who has paid upwaeds of 50 pts/die to turn you into a frog "forever" is still getring far less utility than the guy who paid 15pts /die for Killing Attack because even after he has scored BODY x2 in 'damage,' someone can come along and patch you right back up with the proper healings, or even just another T-form. Killing Attack, though.... You cant be healed from dead. The GM has to pull some,"it was only Krypronian death-like near death self-preservation catatonic" horse puckey to justify you being revived by anyone short of a necromancer. People are surface-okay (I say "surface-okay" because most people are cool with it until it affects their character personally) with dead is dead. That seems like a no-brainer for most folks- a bitter pill, to be sure, and it sucks, but most people are surface-prepared to lump it if it happens. But a transient condition that does not kill me and from which I can be healed? Oh, no! We aint having no part of _that_, seems to be how the argument goes. Weirdly, the guy who gave you that condition doesn't seem,to be bothered by the fact that the points he paid to cause this temporary effect on you are often _more_ that he could have paid to butcher you outright. I don't often allow T-form in games outside of Fantasy (where they are to be expected, in some measure), not because they are overpowered, but because I get tired of the crying: I dont _want_ to be a perfectly healthy Quarterling who the party is now carrying to the coastal cities to be cured! Would you rather be a dead human? Oh, God, _yes_! (Not that this is not dramatic licence. This is a summation of an actual discussion from many years ago. Note that it is also not the only such discussion on the subjecr that went roughly this way. Accordingly, to ensure my players are happy, they encounter a lower percentage of non-lethal wizarda than they used to.) Ultimately, dead humans are cheaper and easier to create anyway. I can actually hel.p. you a bit there, historically. It had nothing to do with any of that. It was Fire Storm. Forgive me if I have the name wrong; I was never a comic book guy. Anyway, there is a xomic book character with some sort of "molecular powers" and fire where his hair should be. His signature power is the ability to rearrange matter and turn one thing into another thing. I do not remember the magazine in which the interview edplaining this was printed, but one od the original crew- I no longer recall if it was Petersen, McDonal, Thain, or who was being interviewed- was explaining how some od the things in Champs II and Champs III had come to be. He used the same line that appeared in Champs III in the explanation of Transformation Attack, stating that it was eventually dexided that it made perfect sense that at the cost of creating a dead body, there was no real reason to deny the ability to instead create something that was every bit as useful as a dead body. It was later editions, starting with 4e (and possibly 3e Fantasy HERO? I can't recall now; getting old sucks) that began to divide and subdivide and create cosmetic and major and all the other Transforms. That is also when healing from T-form became possible. Originally, dead is dead. Now personally, I dont use it much; my distaste for it is the exact opposite of yours: Because of constant complaints of how Godlike it is and the devout belief in the myth of game balance through points cost, there has been an unending push to "balance the cost." Jerk, even I feel it slightly necessary given the exoanded scope that grew into it: granting powers, for example. (Wierd that it gets more and more powerful while Change Environment gets less and less powerful on its own, and now requires several addirional purchases- all of which can be made _without_ buying CE, thus relegating CE byvitself as yet another Special Effevt for which you re being charged. That is probably for a different discussion, though.) The biggest change to T-form (Though the most useful for actually creating something) made it quite expensive, and that was the ability to add points to the target by doing additional "damage." This meant that a xharacter wanting this abikity had to buy _lots more dice_ or pay considerably more points to up his maximum, neither of which is especially budget-priced. Ultimately, the biggest reason I dont use a lot of T-form is that the oricing versus the utility and the heal-back / be healable mandate has it so hobbled that in general, you almost _can't get what you pay for if you want to so something more than add aome temporary tattoos. Different strokes and all that- completely opposite views on how powerful (or crippled) a single power is. Overall, I find making dead bodies much more cost-effective, much less controversial, and way more permanent than anything useful that I can do with the modern iterations of T-form. On a different note, does anyone happen to know if 6e requires a range limit on UBO and how that limit is determined?

Yes on both counts, Amigo.

Truthfully, I love this idea. Never let me be a player in such a game, though, or the trustwd agents will do their best to become,the rulers of the territory.

You're still able to go that route with individual VPPs- you can assign a limitation such as "cannot be changed," or once the power is declared, slide points out of the pool and into that power. Make up the shortages by mortgaging future Dps: any earned experience mist go to power X before XP can be spent elsewhere. The mortgage is not my favorite, but I have done it when a Player needed two or three points to nail a concept. Of course, the re-arranging points on a compkteted character thing is complete anathema to men but I learned years ago that I am the only guy here who doesn't go in for "wait! I have a more efficient power set in mind; let me completely rebuild my character" or "now that I have this XP saved up, I can change these two powers, pull points out of them, use the savings there and the XP to rebuild this Blast as a Killing Attack..." So because I am the clear minority on this, I am going to say that this is also an option most people have no problems with. Personally, I am pretty sure it is how you end up with Super Ventrilloquism and Super Hypnosis that sticks to glass of a picture frame, but who am i to argue with Superman?

There is also this option: "Must be blessed" or somethinf to that nature. Build the characters already with their own VPPs, but it can only,be activated by the Head, who will determine what powers the Legs (hands?) Will have: "Arachnus! I grant you the powers of Flight and Mighty Strength! Go, and defeat our enemy!" Arachnus's VPP now provides STR and Flight, period. In all fairness, I don't see it as a huge limitation, but it does what you want: in-world, it is effectively the Head granting powers to the Legs. Off-camera, you still have the origin that the head granted them these abilities / this VPP.

Additionally-- though I am not certain about this anymore, as it doesnr come up much in our games- does not Usable By Others have a range limit from the grantor? I would go one of two ways: in-game-- that is to say that one character is creating super beings on the fly as part of the game in progress, then the only rules-legal way is as Hugh points out: Tranformation. Be prepared to soend boatloads of points buying down the timechart, though, as by the book, t-formed characters will being to "heal" back to their normal selves, even if it is not in their best interest. Pick a time surarion that exceeds their lifespan to make this change "permanent." (Though I think someone can use appropriate powers to "heal" them back anyway- dash handwavium liberally into sauce until seasoned to taste to prevent this) Unless, of course, the goal is _temporary_ powers, in which case pick a slot on the timechart that suits your desires. Now if this is off-screen, behibd the scenes stuff, then I would handle it purely with the narrative: the superwizard Mangulos used his super powers to turn me into Captain Flying Strong Guy! _is_, ultimately, just an origin story for the good captain, and even if it hapoens on-screen, I would treat it as such.

How far back in the rules are you willing to go? I think Armor Piercing is still viable in the Long Editions; I dont remember for certain about 6e. That can make quite a difference. And of course, there is the originalvversion of that as well: 2e's Piercing Points as presented in Champions III. Very pricey, but there are some Limitations you can add that would help: only up to sufficient points to score 1 Body, only for X attack, etc.

Anything but metric, right America? In weather related news: Going to 18 degrees in God's own Fahrenheit for the ride home tomorrow. I am totally loving this! (sorry, but I spent almost two years tracking down parts for a complete rebuild of the Humming Moose, and in my own tastes, this is _primo_ riding weather! (again: I live where the roads don't freeze; it makes a lot od difference)

Glad it was a success!

Thanks! (Yes; I know there were a lot of participants, but truthfully, this is one of the more enjoyable conversations recently. I have had a lot of fun here.) Of course they could. You are gree to do whatever you like with the rules; that has been one of the themes in this thread. When you gwt down to it, the Spirit rules were wssentially an outgrowth of the Automaton rules of the time. More in a moment. No. The rules themselves were unchanged. They just changed the tasty text bits about the undead and the lost souls,and the great beyond into more matter-of-fact rules-flavored text. These rules-- and understand that I have never met or spoken with the author- seemed to be an outgrowth of a sort of "movement" in that era: there were a lot if ideas beinf tossed around in the rules, in the sourcebooks, and in the old Adventurers Club magazine and on the old Red October board. The general,flow of the conversation went along these lines: Automata and GM-approved character concepts buy "takes no STUN, but isnt it just as practical to create a character with no STUN characteristic? I mean, we already used modified character sheets for vehicles that feature some-but-not-all of the normal I-want-to-build-a-character type characteristics. We use scaked down character sheets for AI and such, and we accept that a character can be an AI. Rather then building, buying, Disadvantaging, and selling our way to create an "incomplete sheet" character- For example: a Voodoo Zombie: it has no EGO, as it has no will of its own. Why build the character then sell off the EGO stat, or pile on Disadvantages and such (early name for Complications, if you are new to HERO) when we can just _not have an EGO characteristic_ for the Zombie? Why have a clockwork man purchase Takes no STUN when we can simply build him without a STUN characteristic?" Things along those lines. So far as I can remember, AsmI is still built on an incomplete sheet: they were adressed in even the newest edition, while truly non-corporeal entities were never officially adressed again in any subsequent editions. Individual pin on-corporeal characters were addresses (the above-mentioned Ghost from whatever bestiary it was found, for example). There really isnt much to modify: it is extrapolation from the exisiring vehicle and AI rules: if something genuinely has no STR- no ability to interact is a physical or pseudophysical way with _anything tangible or intangible, then it very realistically has no STR characteristic. Of something is incapable of any sort of though or computation, then it has no INT score. The biggest thing the GM needs to be think over is the effect that this sort of character will have in the game: a character with no STUN score will be identical to a character who takes no STUN: he cannot be stunned (CON Stunned) nor can he be knocked out (barring complete loss of Endurance, and even then there is a lot of GM fiat involved in what may happen there. A Character with no DEX will be unable to move, period- at least in older editions, where DEX determined your base SPD. A character with no SPD score will be unable to move in _any_ edition. Somewhere- and given its unprecedented verbosity, it is probably available in 6e-- is a list of what happens when each Characteristic reaches 0. Even then, not even having the Characteristic isn't quite the same as having it at zero, but it helps,give an idea of the impact such could have. I am not sure that I understand your question. So far as I know, there are only three true genre books available in 6e versions: Champions, Fantasy HERO, and Western HERO. I am delighted and surprises that someone tackled Western HERO even before some version of Ninja HERO, HERO System Martial Arts in the core blue books is pretty complete, so there is likely not as pressing a need. So... Any genre book (except 4e Cyber HERO. I _liked_ it, but it was so incomplete,that the author had planned a follow up book even before it saw publication. His untimely death meant that it would never be finished, I am afraid. To be honest, though, all versionw of Kazei 5 are as (and probably more, if I am being honest; I just have a habit of downvoting catgirls. That is my own problem, and I dont expect anyone else to share it. ) useful than 4e Cyber HERO, and of course 5e produced a very in-depth genre book kn the same subject. Be warned that many of the 5e genre books have so many 'optional options' as to be far less,useful than they seem,when you are reading them: they are a bit like taking a sip from a fire hose. The 4w books have the advantage of assuming a type of campaign, meaning you don't have to choose from a slew of options: they are chosen (and locked in) for you. Still, you are free to make any changes you like. Many people find Strikeforce more useful than I did, but I beleive that also has a 6e version, so you can go right to that. Honestly, the book I think is the most useful out of all "splqtbooks" foe the HERO System was the 3e publication "lands of mystery." There isnt much there- really! There isn't! But what is there applies equally to any genre, and everything is provided in a super-slim meat-and-potatoes kind of way that doesnt leave the mind reeling with an overwhelmed,feeling the way the moden books,of a billion options tend to do. As for what might have been omityed from 6e? You would likely do better asking Lord Liaden, Chris Goodwin, or Hugh Neilson that question. I found the time to read rhe nine blue-backed rule books (if you havent gotten it yet, I would save APG II for when you have decided to go all Pokemon and just gotta have 'em all, as it is the least idea-packed of the books)- four years? I dont recall now, but quite some time ago. Nothing in it excited me enough to change editions, and given my scheduling,, finding only a few minutes here and an hour there to get the reading some, it took three or four months to get it all read, and I knew I was never going to so it again. Accordingly, I don't remeber it as well as those guys who have embraced it. They can likely five you a better idea of what other things might not have come forward. Chris might even enjoy discussing the scaling of vehicle components from 3e's Robot Galdiators and Star HERO, I know that did not move forward, even though it would have helped the vehicle rules to feel more like you were creating something concrete instead of an abstract reference to a vehicle. If You do a lot of not-superheroes, as I do, I might suggest oicking up a couole of early third-party weapons books like The Armory and Guns! Guns! Guns!. I wouldnt getcmore then a couple, because of low-end scaling issues in HERO: guns and melee weapons a) tend to have a certain "sameness." The cure for this overall seems to be adding the odd Skill Level or PSL into the weapon itself, or the odd disadvantage. I like resding early rulebooks just to get a rwad on what the vreators intended with every subject. As an example, there have been lots of disxyssions about how to simulate a party. Missile Deflection and Missile Deflection (once a stand-alone ability) both state clearly that these abilities are the constructs for parrying. Not that other ideas are wrong; I just find it interesting. Sorry for the ramble; I really,did not understand the question, so I tried to,civer all the potentially-relevant bases that I could think of.

Killing Attack deals BODY. What happens when a different power drains BODY? In 6e all stats are a point per. I don't like the loss of figureds for different reasons, but knowing sone of the people involved in the discussion that went into this change, I have to say that no matter what I think personally about 6e, this change was reasonable, and all angles were considered; I suspect even this one. Before That, EGO was still priced the same as BODY. Being at 2 BODY did not make you completely dominatable by a house cat; being at 2 EGO is akin to having no free will; and beyond acceptable, but dependent on the commands of others. I will wager that a dead enemy is less valuable than a healthy enemy doing my bidding. Yet EGO remained the same as BODY. The only defenses for EGO were special: there was no ego-protecting equivalent to PD and ED, meaning it has always been technically _easier_ to do damage to EGO, yet it was always priced the same as BODY. Ego determined its own combat value and the owner's resistance to mind control and other powers- thing for which Body has no analogue- yet it has always been priced the same. We dont suggest that EGO should cost more because it can be drained, and it has always been arguably more valuable than BODY. Granted, if this is the straw which breaks the GM, he is well within his rights to increase the cost of EGO, but there is nothing here that suggests it is necessary. It always has been; most people fail to realize it because the majority of supers campaigns don't feature well-thought-out mentalists, and most HERO players only think of EGO in terms,of Fantasy Magic. The two best "dirty tricks" of the HERO System since the earliest days of Champions have been "Drain: EGO" and "Drain: Recovery." By the books, that particular Ghost has a BODY value. Again, if you want to make them all that way, that's fine. I am not huge on bullet-vulnerable ghosts. Yes: you need affects Desolid in your bullets. Problematically, you can say that it is a blessed bullet. By the same token, I can declare my taser is ADO, because it delivers electric shocks. And either one of these will take out the ghost, because all you need is ADO. Sonics, whatever- affects desolid on my throwing spork, and the ghost is toast. As someone pointed out, the original rules came from an earlier edition. However, these rules have not been recreated- or even adressed conceptually- in a later edition. This makes them the most current rules available forbspirits and souls,and such. As someone else pointed out, they came from a supplement book that was outside the core rules book- like a genre book or a bestiary. They were printed originally in the genre book Horror HERO, and were later reprinted (without genre flavor) in one of the two 4th edition HERO System Almanac books, which I submit makes them at least as much core rules to 4e as the APGs are core rules to 6e. This is to say that sure; they are optional, but even the author points to them when answering rules questions. I only suggest them because, as stated above, this concept has never been officially adressed since. Fair enough. Personally, I find it simpler and more in keeping with the extant concept of "buy your power and then declare your SFX and if the attack goes against PD or ED" by simply adding "Mental Defense / Ego" as an option. At no time will I proclaim that it is the bestest or mostest correctest way to do it. Same thing with building spirits and souls. By damaging EGO, you can not only affect disembodied souls, but embodied ones, too. Using a combination of "spirits have BODY and Desolidification" and "you need Affects Desolid" to hurt a spirit or a soul means you effectively cannot harm one that is still attached to its original host. It boils down to a flavor thing: If you want killing ghosts to be identical to stabbing hobos, give them a BODY score and use any old Blast or Killing Attack- wind, fire-- ice is a good one, actually: even desolidied, molecules have movement, and this will stop if it gets cold enough. For purposes of gaming the fantastic, that could be considered a feasible approach to dealing damage. Looked at another way, desolidified suggests that there is a body (small 'b,' ket's just say "carcass" to avoid confusion) there, but for some reason that carcass can't be touches: molecular bonds that have relaxed; the carcass is composed of vapor or smoke; the carcass vascillates randomly between dimensional planes, and is never completely enough in any one to interact with things bound to that plane- whatever it is you'd like. _Non-corporeal_, however, implies that there is _no_ carcass to be found: the being exists because it wills itself to do so. Willpower, in HERO, is a function of the overlooked super-stat EGO.

You make good points, Amigo, but the confusion seems to come from selective expectations. Remember that at all times, the game paradigm and the real world are not related. The game systemcan be used to simulate the real world, but always poorly, as there us no direct one-to-one conversion for anythinf except measurements. There is one other point where there is intended to be a real-world analogue: the starting character. Obviously, there is a desire for fairness, so all starting characters are,identical in game twrms and abilities until the player modifies then with powers, abilities, limitations, etc. Until that happens, all characters are the same. Honestly, that is the basis of half of the "how do I model" and "but you must X in order to Y" threads. The short version of this is that all starting characters are assumed to breathe unless you buy a trait of some sort that makes it unnecessary- all people, all aliens, all Atlanteans, all brains-in a-jar, all robots, and all skeletons. If you do not buy the appropriate Life Support, a toxic atmosphere is just as damaging to you as it is to Captain Five Lungs. You are free to "rubber science" why- 'chlorine gas eats away at the bones and weakens them in BODY damage an equivalent amount that breathing chlorine gas does to normies. As one last pursuit of "all characters are just special effects of a normal human being" thinking: other things one would never expect from a skeleton is movement, an INT and an EGO score, STR and DEX, and one-hundred-percent not REC. Any form of communication or teamwork is right out, as well. However, any player making a skeleton will scream bloody murder when you tel him he has none of these things. He exoevts them, because characters are special effects for a collection of initially-identical characteristics. In HERO, skeletons breathe by default. One must pay for Life Support to avoid enduring that nuisance. Won't lie: It has been over 50 years since I read the medusa story. After that, I just relied on "collective culture" to keep my keep even on the bulk od mythology. While I respect that a lot of people have gone out of their way to consume and study a great deal of it, and that I myself like a lot of the ideas and concepts enough to remember the gist of things, I wasnt interested enough to track down more or remember more than the themes of what I have read. All that being said: Did her gaze effect a blind man? I cannot recall that, but as previously-confessed, she might have used it on a Volkswagen or two; I couldn't tell you for certain. I do know it didn't work on Perseus, and I know it didn't work for the same reason that I suspect,it was never used on a blind man: NND was not the only power modifier in effect. I expect her T-form included multiple modifiers (15 ots per die then NND on top of that- some GMs might require "Does BODY" as its effectiveness is determined in terms of BODY 'done! To the target. This gets extra-spicy pricey in a hurry. Fortunately, there are waya to,bring that cost down: you might considier Limitations- things like "requires direct eye contact." There are orobably some,others we could find justification for, but I think that is the important one for this conversation. Great points, though, and thank you for bringing them up, N-B!

I _think_ ( but do not recall with certainty) that deafness was given as an example of being immune to a Flash v hearing. Again, I am not certain. However, strictly by the book(s), defense against NND has to be a "positive"- a result of a definite purchase or action- and cannot be "negative"- a specific inaction or lack of a purchase. Though you don't have to buy normal hearing, but you _do_ have to declare your character to be deaf, so it is marginally possible that Deafness can be pushed as a legitimate corner case.