Jazzidemus

Not familiar with the new almanac I'm afraid, but, SAT having a role was nice to deal with having two otherwise-similar groups. And, yes, having your top field agent as the desk jockey was a problem, so, brought the director back for my home games... each regional office has a civilian head, too. In Boston (the city I ran for my hero teams), you had the Director, with the Silver Avenger his right hand, then heads of field operations (Captain Dermott... field officers topped at Captain), head of the Iron Guard, head of investigations, head of R&D, and then a liason officer who workd with each local superteam (The liasons were all pulled from the bureaucratic majority that the director was in charge of, so they had no official power other than advisory, but it was good form to have them around for major calls.)

That's a lot of paperwork, but, we're talking about a bureaucratic force, so it works.

SAT, meanwhile, was the strikeforce and, unlike Primus which had a turf war/rivalry with UNTIL, SAT worked with them … in essence, SAT was the tip of the spear, sent in first, then UNTIL would come in as peacekeepers, akin to having the US military assault somewhere and the Blue Helmets take over when the fighting was done. The setup allowed each force to do what it did best, so there wasn't all that much friction between the two.

There is, however, a lot of one-upmanship between Primus agents and SAT troopers, tho.

"Nice watching you guys guard the mayor last week. All that standing around in dress uniforms. Musta been nice."
"Yeah, well we ere on the lookout for super villains."
"Oh, like the ones we took down three weeks ago?"
"What, the *Canadian* villains? No, we were watching for REAL villains."
"Hey, don't sell him short because he's Canadian! The Amasing Darkon is-"
"The Amazing Darkon! Listen to this guy! Couldn't cut it in a real *American* outfit."
"You shut your mouth before I shut it for you!"

Etc etc and so on. 

I think the pouch rule is similar to the cats rule... you can have up to three. One's fine, need somewhere to store your civilian stuff when heroing … I mean, even *Superman* has a pouch in his cape, you know? Two? You can do two pouches. One for each leg, good for mechanics and the like. Three? Well, that's one at the small of the back and two more but … you've got as much there as a police officer's belt and those things are notoriously blocky and cumbersome.

More than that?

You've gone full Liefeld.

You never go full Liefeld.

Ok, so running with the current riff, President Johnson Green lit the Prime Avenger Initiative. Handing over notes that were collected during & after WWII perhaps containing some works by Herr Doktor Zierstointen. So after many years of deciphering the recovered notes & experiments Dr Merill  presented Cyberline, not telling anyone that it was heavily based on Dr. D's work.

I don't make apologies for it, either.
 
I don't make apologies for hating modern society's apparent _need_ to tear down their heroes.
 
I will offer an explanation for my hate, though:
 
I believe in the value of good people.  I believe there are people who will stand in the face of insult, attack, and denigration because none of these things change the value of doing the right thing.
 
 

I always enjoyed Vipers Nest. As a player & a GM.

Mob Rule from the BBB is a good one too.

I have always had a great time with the Coriolis Effect.
 
Doc

Another hand up for a 4e generator!
 
 

I'd love to have a version of the original DOS Hero Creator, just for my portfolio. It's one of the few pieces of software that I don't have a copy of with my (admittedly, kind of retrained) art.

Hey, hey, hey, hey-now. Don't be mean; we don't have to be mean, cuz, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

Come alone! And bring your overthruster!

Hey, hey, hey, hey-now. Don't be mean; we don't have to be mean, cuz, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

Good morning. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. "Mankind." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once again be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live. To exist. And should we win the day, the Fourth of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night!" We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!

Hey, hey, hey, hey-now. Don't be mean; we don't have to be mean, cuz, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

"Champagne?"
 
"We're in the middle of a chase, Porthos."
 
"Right. Something red."

I just finished viewing Dog Soldiers, a soldiers versus werewolves movie. I found it liked it at lot, parts made me laugh, parts made me shudder, and parts made me say "that's not right...." I highly recommend it.
 
I also watched The Wizard of Oz over the weekend, for the first time. Rather fun, with some highly enjoyable sequences -- the flying monkeys were great! -- and the musical numbers are catchy. I also found it amusing to sort of "count" all the lines that have remained in popular use.
 
What have you seen recently?

One of the PCs is a mage with a spell that gives up to 8 people 5d6 Luck for several minutes, so it mainly gets cast at the start of practically every combat for him and his teammates.  To give it a tangible effect, we decided to have them roll the Luck dice and count BODY - and that total they could spend to add to to-hit and/or skill rolls.  And any "6" rolled also gave them a re-roll for any to-hit or skill roll. 

How I have used or seen used in other games:
 
Roll Luck at the start of a in-game day or session (which ever is shorter). The body represents the number of rerolls available to that character. These are rolls for attack, skills, and even attacks directed at the PC. Always take the player favorable result. 
 
In addition, if there is ever a question of if something is possible wherein the GM is questioning it or a moment wherein things could go in one of two directions, the player may expend a luck point for their more favorable outcome. This is usually in addition to the reroll mechanic but could be a common pool to use for both.
 
Luck has never been a common mechanic in the games I ran or played in, though. 
 
La Rose.  
 
 

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
 
Visually spectacular. Luc Besson knows how to make a pretty picture, and CGI has advanced enough to portray darn near anything.
 
The acting is second-rate, but fully adequate for the hackneyed plot and characters. I am glad I didn't pay money to see this.
 
Dean Shomshak

In my case, it was the internal consistency that was the problem.  
 
Champions, 3rd edition, was a different game from Danger International and from Fantasy Hero, 1st edition.  To me, it was fine that they had different sets of rules.  For the most part, perfectly compatible; a lot of the optional dials-and-switches type rules in 4th through 6th editions are almost word-for-word identical to their first-gen counterparts.  
 
To me, the parts that are different serve a purpose in their difference.  Champions, the 3rd edition core rulebook, didn't need or have an extensive skill list, because finely detailed extensive skills weren't the point; the point was the things that your character can do as a superhero.  It told the GM how to do skills, including importing them from Danger International if you wanted, but an optional way to handle them if you didn't (and the Champions II supplement added most of those in anyway).  Champions wasn't just "a superhero RPG powered by the HERO System," it was a dedicated superhero game that happened to use a house system.  Fantasy Hero used a lot of the same basic mechanisms, but added its own tweaks that worked for fantasy games.  Likewise for Justice Inc. and Danger International.  If you look at, say, Runequest/Call of Cthulhu/Superworld, you can see something similar.  
 
In first-gen era, the games themselves were designed using the core "Hero System" and their own sets of assumptions; each game did its own thing and did it well.  In 4th edition, suddenly we had the fully internally consistent "HERO System" that tried to do everything, and did most of it, pretty well, but you did it all starting with one set of assumptions.  The most unsatisfying games I had were when I tried to run first-gen style non-supers campaigns with people who started with 4th edition; even when I'd write up in campaign documents what I was trying to run, even when I'd use the campaign design sheets, the underlying assumptions tripped us up.  I was trying to run one style of game, they were trying to play a different one.  I was trying to run low powered, primarily skill-based games, and they were trying to figure out what powers their thief should have and how many points they needed for their Multipower.  
 
The truism around the webs is that Hero is best for superheroic games, and GURPS is best for gritty games.  I honestly never found that to be the case, until 4th edition came out.  The group I used to play with in the late eighties, firmly in first-gen era, was an organized group that had five sessions in a weekend; Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening.  I was part of that group for about three years, and the system of choice was almost exclusively "Hero System", meaning the first-gen games.  We played ridiculous numbers of different campaigns; some of which went on for two years, some of which went on for two sessions, but 95% of which were one or more of Champions, Fantasy Hero, Danger International, Robot Warriors, Justice Inc.  Each of the games -- even different campaigns using the same game! -- had its own flavor, and own assumptions.  For instance, Fantasy Hero 1st edition didn't include the Martial Arts rules by default.  The assumption was that you were playing swords and sorcery types, with weapon skills represented by specific fantasy-flavored optional maneuvers.  In a Fantasy Hero conversion of FGU's Bushido RPG, I played a ninja (it was the 80's, don't judge) with Karate from DI, so I asked the GM, who chuckled at my kewl-ninja-wanna-be-ness but said yes, I can do that.  If he'd said no I wouldn't have had Karate.  And it was no big deal either way.  You started with the particular set of assumptions in the game you were playing, and asked the GM to go beyond them; it's easier to give than it is to take away. 

Nowadays?  It's one system, one set of assumptions.  The assumption is that everything in the book is fair game; for instance, if want to run a low powered Fantasy Hero game reminiscent of the first-gen days, I can write up a campaign rules document that clearly says "No Martial Arts," and no to a dozen other things, but I guarantee every character will have Martial Arts and at least half of the other things on my "no" list.  And I'll get all kinds of pushback about how this is just his combat style, it's not really a Martial Arts form, and I'll just toss the character sheets back and never run the game. 
 

Reading through the playtest document was quite a trip down Memory Lane for me, remembering those wild and woolly days when characters were 100+150 points in Disadvantages and martial arts was a damage multiplier instead of an adder.
 
Just for the sake of nostalgia, I'm backing it for a PDF, but I'm not really interested in paying any extra money for a special, unique villain that no one else will have. I would have happily added $5-$10 extra for a new version of Enemies with 5-10 villains instead, so whoever thought getting ONE unique collectable villain for $5 was a swell idea must really love collectable card games, I guess.

I remember trying to write a character creation program in BASIC on my Commodore 64.  ☺️

During the course of an game episode, if the need for someone to make a roll, I grant the person with Luck to automatically make it. How I use Luck varies. I rarely have people roll Luck anymore because 2d6 of Luck is 10 points of uncertainty; I could easily use the points for 10 points of certain Defense or Stun or... etc. Another way I handle it is if a hero needs a break and an attack roll is supposed to hit, the attack misses because "of a lucky break". There's too many ways to describe how I use it but those are a couple ways I use Luck.
 
For Unluck, I use it more for humor than to hurt the character. Of course, if they have Unluck, I might allow an attack that should've missed to hit them. I use it more for "Btw, you realize while you're in public that you forgot to shave or comb your hair" or something like that such as, "Your next door neighbor's gate is open - the neighbor who's dog hates you."

Here are my Luck Chit rules... will seem like a lot of text, but in play, it is quick and dramatic... toss a chit for a certain effect.
 
--
 
Luck & Luck Chits 
Luck cost 5 pts per level. (Price doubles for each 3 levels bought (so fourth level of Luck costs 10 points) For each level of Luck purchased, players gain: 
1d6 of Luck to add to a Luck Roll that can only have positive results. 
They randomly draw +1 Luck Chit at the beginning of the game from “the bag.” 
------ 
Luck Chit Rules 
Each PC draws one Luck Chit from “the bag” +1 Chit for every level of Luck at the beginning of the game.  “The bag” contains 72 Chits in the following assortment:  30 White Chits, 20 Black Chits, 20 Blue Chits, 1 Red Chit, 1 Gold Chit.  A player may decide to “throw a chit” at any point during play where they think it will benefit them, the group or the story to do so.  The chits provide the following benefits in play. 
White Chits:  Lowest rank.  Using a white chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player: 
Re-roll one roll you control 
Take an Abort Action at any time without cost of a regular Action. 
Take a Recovery at any time without cost of a regular Action or any defensive penalties. 
Defensively move a Hit Location result one level up or down on the HL chart. (Only used in Heroic games where Hit Location is used.)
Black Chits: Middle rank.  Using a black chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player: * 
Any one of the benefits as listed under White Chits. (see above) 
Any one benefit as listed under Blue Chits. (see below)
BUT...Throwing a black chit allows the GM to draw a chit to add to his/her pool of NPC/Villain chits. 
Blue Chits: High rank.  Using a blue chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
Any one of the benefits of the White chits as listed above.
May remove a single die from a 3d6 roll you control, to maximize chance of success/hit. (Making the roll a "3" or less does not activate a critical hit.) 
Power Stunt:  Player may choose to utilize active points of a power of their character for an effect not specifically paid for with points, but within the SFX of the power.  Ex:  A character with an EB defined as “flame blast” wishes to extinguish a fire in a doorway blocking escape for civilians. The character does not have a power that would normally allow him to do this, but by throwing a blue chit, for one action, he can put the active points of the EB into Change Environment: Extinguish/Reduce Normal Fires (or something similar) and the player can then perform the desired action. 
Minor Scene Change:  Player may choose to alter or set a small piece of the scene for character or story advantage.  Ex.  “There is a pack of dry matches in the old hunting shack. Just what I need to light my torch to fight the vampire!” or “As I fly in, I see an open skylight allowing me access to the building without breaking in!”   GM and group agreement on what is appropriate necessary. 
Make the impossible, possible:  Player may throw a blue chit to turn an action with little or no chance of success, into one with a standard chance of success.  Ex.  Even for a superhero, diving through the window of a moving car, snatching the kidnapped child out of the seat and out the other side window without causing a crash or hurting the child would be nigh impossible. A blue chit makes this a simple matter of Acrobatics and grab roll situation.
Insert Minor Dramatic Moment: The player may state a dramatic moment into a scene that can initiate story, resolve story. Similar to Minor Scene Change, Minor Dramatic Moment is less about adding an element to the current scene, as to initiating a scene or resolving one. Example: Vigilante Squad has just finished off Don Montelli's goons in the warehouse, as the sounds of sirens and stamping of SWAT boots approaches. A player pushes forward a blue chit and says, "As the police rush in, the smoke clears to find the bodies of Montelli's men, but no sign of us. The police surround the area and helicopters sweep, but we are gone, vanished in the night. My intent is that we get away and don't have to hassle with the law... at least this time."  This would be appropriate, assuming the table agreed it was within the bounds of the fiction, and didn't make things unfun, etc.
Bypassing a successful Block.  Player may choose to throw a blue chit so that an attack that is successfully Blocked still carries through, effectively negating the block.  Only a blue chit thrown in response can reassert the Block’s success. 
Move a result on the Hit Location chart up or down 3 places, either defensively or offensively. (Only used in Heroic games where Hit Location is used.)
Gold Chit: There is only one Gold Chit and it has unique abilities.  Using the gold chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
Any one of the benefits of the white, black or blue chits as listed above, without GM drawing a chit. (But this would be a waste.)
Primary use of the gold chit is to allow the player to become storyteller/GM in powerful ways.  By spending the gold chit, the player gets to insert a scene, event, plot point, result or other situation that they wish to occur.  This normally focuses on their character and that character’s Story, but it can encompass the group if all player’s agree. GM still has last word, but mostly it is a group decision on “Is that cool and interesting as a story, and does it make sense for what is happening currently?”  Whatever the event/situation/scene, it should have significant effect on current and even future plots, though specific results or repercussions may be unforeseen. Player intent is key. What is the "outcome" the player wishes to occur?
             Red Chit: There is only one Red Chit and it has unique abilities.  Using the red chit allows ONE of the following by choice of the player. 
                        Exactly the same benefits as the Gold Chit, BUT the GM then takes possession of the Red Chit and has it to be activate a very clear obstacle/challenge/things-go-badly scene against the PCs. You spend the Red Chit knowing that karma is a  bitch.
 
GM: Draws after all players.  One chit per PC, plus chits for any NPCs/Villains who may have Luck. 
Unluck:  Unluck reduces the number of Luck chits drawn for every level.  This primarily effects the GM and the use of Luck chits for certain NPCs, as it is unlikely a PC would take Unluck.  

I allowed it as an option for many years in a variety of genres and it works very well in execution, at least in my opinion and that of the players in various games who used it. It makes its usefulness quantifiable and puts it entirely into the control of the player. It is direct probability manipulation as opposed to hand-wavium.
 
Don't get me wrong, I think that the vague version of Luck in the HERO System offers something as well, as a sort of deus ex machina power. The Intervention ability in Here There Be Monsters is a direct re-casting of the by-the-book Luck power for instance. It's essentially a "miracle" power; roll the dice and hope for the best.
 
However for most "lucky" sfx characters, the direct dice result manipulation version is more practical and gets less tiresome, again in my opinion.
 
A good indication of it's efficacy is that in my experience back in the day players who knew what was up did not bother taking the standard Luck power in RAW, instead relying on skill bonuses or skill levels with the sfx of "lucky" and other such crab-wise attempts to model luck as succeeding more often than average at various tasks. The occasional newb might take Luck, but would invariably be disappointed with it in practice and regret taking it. I offered up the original version of the point based variant for a player wanting a probability manipulating super, and it worked out well and became available for later games. Players started to take it here and there...not so many as to indicate that it was too good and not so few as to indicate that it sucked...it sat nicely in the "goldilocks zone" of providing good value for the cost but not so much as to make it stupid to not take some.