segerge

Lot of good ideas. Ham could be brainwashed to loyalty to the Confederation, the "Manchimpian Candidate"

If I may be allowed to abuse my historical knowledge of the Apollo program...
 
it didn't have to be all six landings which did the Plutonian's bidding... just one.  Seen in that light, I now have to ask, "What was so important about Fra Mauro to the Plutonians that Apollo 14 was re-tasked to perform the mission Apollo 13 couldn't do?"
 
Also consider in Real Life that LMP Edgar Mitchell publicly admitted to attempting an experiment in interplanetary ESP with someone back on Earth during that mission.  An enterprising GM can take things from there.

If I may be allowed to abuse my historical knowledge of the Apollo program...
 
it didn't have to be all six landings which did the Plutonian's bidding... just one.  Seen in that light, I now have to ask, "What was so important about Fra Mauro to the Plutonians that Apollo 14 was re-tasked to perform the mission Apollo 13 couldn't do?"
 
Also consider in Real Life that LMP Edgar Mitchell publicly admitted to attempting an experiment in interplanetary ESP with someone back on Earth during that mission.  An enterprising GM can take things from there.

If your Pluto is hollow, make it bigger on the inside
While you're at it, Charon is no moon, it's a fully-armed and functional battlestation defending the Plutonians...

My supers universe is filled with these:
 
Characters (NPCs) with a power or two who are _not_ "super heroes" or "super villains," but just people.
 
Honestly, I _had_ to do it.  I mean, i introduced it as a minor, once-in-a-while background gag, just to test the waters, but I was surprised at the reaction of the players: it just made so much sense to them!  I was shocked.  Like me, they figured for every one guy who got ten different powers, there were probably three or four who got one or two powers.  For every person who go some awesome movement or combat or clairvoyance power, there were likely a few who got "see in the dark, period."
 
I have no idea whatsoever how to write them up in 6e in a way that won't result in nine different discussions about what I did right or wrong, so let me just give you the basic idea of two of the still-present (and strangely popular) of these characters:
 
Steven "The Step" Stephenson (real name Jordan Piper) has the singular ability to survive a fall from any height.   That's it.  Even if he lands at terminal velocity and falls flat onto a field of high-density concrete, he'll be fine.  This does _not_ mean he can survive being hit by a car doing 50.  His amazing invulnerability only applies to falls.  He currently supports himself as a highly-demanded stuntman in the movie industry.
 
 
Danica Manning (real name Danica Manning):  Duplication.  She has become so used to being twelve people that it's rare to find her fully combined.  Currently, she supports herself as six lab assistants (mostly in the "super science" type fields), attends college where she is currently working on four different degrees (three duplicates) to go with the ones she already has. She is also dating a couple of guys, and is living a life of absolute leisure, doing whatever strikes her fancy.  When she needs to rest, the more worried, frazzled, or tired duplicates will merge for a few days with the "permanent vacation" duplicate, re-align themselves psychically, intellectually, and spiritually, and then go back to work.  Though sometimes it's not always the same one going back to the same place (nor does it really matter, so long as she has recently combined with the appropriate one).  This neat trick has given her an undeserved reputation for infinite patience.     She respects those with powers who decide to put on costumes and put their lives on the line, but in equal measure she finds the entire idea unbelievably stupid.
 
As she is does not age unless all of her is combined into one form, she expects to enjoy a long working life (with eleven retirement plans!    ), she's pretty confident that she's working toward a very, _very_ comfortable "middle age" that she plans to extend for as long as possible.
 
She's slightly sarcastic, (very slightly), almost monotone when at work, and -- well, she's not exactly anti-social; it's just that sometimes she is more company than she cares to have.    She can be bribed with a small sack of chocolate-covered mayonnaise balls from Truck's Tacos.
 
 
 
There are many, _many_ more, but for some reason, with every supers group I run, those two keep coming up as fan favorites.

I could dump 100 points into faster-than-light travel and not have a superhero. The first time the character activated her power, she'd be off-planet without a spacesuit.
 
You could run a Typhoid Mary plot with someone who is unknowingly giving other people FTL but can't use the power herself. The victims disappear without a trace

Unless it's all part of a diabolical plot........

If you really wanted to be evil, have her use some of her dragon gold to fund a lawsuit for infringement of prior art. 
 
Then if the trial in Orlando doesn't go her way, she uses her gate to the Shadow Realm for a Change of Venue...

If you really wanted to be evil, have her use some of her dragon gold to fund a lawsuit for infringement of prior art. 
 
Then if the trial in Orlando doesn't go her way, she uses her gate to the Shadow Realm for a Change of Venue...

The Shadow Queen, when you absolutely need to make a Disney villain into a Champions villain.

This is Champions.  Forget the Growth, give the partner lots of DEX, at least 20 STR TK usable only on Dead and Buried Man invisible power effects, and possibly PS: Puppeteer.
 
Good lord, I've just created Zombie Jim Henson...

This is Champions.  Forget the Growth, give the partner lots of DEX, at least 20 STR TK usable only on Dead and Buried Man invisible power effects, and possibly PS: Puppeteer.
 
Good lord, I've just created Zombie Jim Henson...

If you combine him with a partner who has several levels of Growth and who used Dead and Buried Man as his marionette, you could have Dead Man Walking.

Hello everyone,
 
The second Champions campaign I played in was called "Russian Winter" from 2012-2014.  Unfortunately, I had a falling out with the GM over storyline and with another player due to personality conflicts (who also happened to be the game host).  I loved the essence of the campaign, which had a group of Soviet superheroes come back together 20 years after the fall of the USSR and the disbanding of their super-team.  The GM used characters from a variety of sources (4e, 5e, and 6e) but the campaign had an anti-climactic end that I disliked.  
 
Anyways, the storyline has enough potential to become an actual campaign booklet but I'm going to modify things substantially at the request of the GM from my old game.  I've started off by crafting the 11 members of the old Soviet Super-Team The People's Legion (Champions Universe 6e) and the new Russian Defenders (also Champions Universe 6e and Champions Worldwide 5e).
 
These are the heroes that I will use at my convention playtest:
Captain Ukraine- Weaponmaster (used a modified build for Captain America and turned him into a Ukrainian, he's name-dropped in 6e)
Erg- Radioactive Blaster (I got rid of his containment suit for the convention game I plan on running, might list it as optional, he's from Champions Organizations in 4e)
Kometa- Speedster/Martial Artist (created at suggestion of one of the board members, but an amalgamation of two characters from the old Russian Winter campaign)
Kuznya- Mystic Blacksmith (created from the old Russian Winter campaign, based off of a class in RIFTS, she serves as a more balanced Gevory Vedun from 5e)
Mamont- Titan/Brick (used my build for Ivan from Champions Organizations in 4e that I played in Russian Winter, he's name-dropped in 6e)
Quake- Earth Elemental (converted and upgraded from the 5e version)
Steel Wolf- Power Armor (converted and upgraded from the 5e version)
Syeryebro- Telekinetic (name-dropped in 6e, combined and modified characters from Champions Organizations in 4e to create her)
Taiga- Metamorph (name-dropped in 6e, build him with suggestions from Darren Watts)
The Whip- Weaponmaster (created from a build for a fellow PC in the Russian Winter campaign, was based off of Eurostar member in 4e)
Vulnapedzka- Water Elemental (converted and upgraded from the 5e version)
 
I've attached the .hdc files.  Let me know if you need me to put them in PDFs.
Erg.hdc Kapitan Ukrayina.hdc Kometa.hdc Kuznya.hdc Mamont.hdc Quake.hdc Steel Wolf.hdc Syeryebro.hdc Taiga.hdc The Whip.hdc Vulnapyezdka.hdc

A standard feature of Ladyhawk's character sheet in the TASK FORCE universe, except I have it requiring an Acrobatics roll and call it "Artful Dodging"
 
"Evasive" in Fantasy Hero basically does the same thing.

Plus all the stuff from Kingdom of Champions, there's scores of characters and organizations in that book.

Wrong. There is only one way to do something, you do it with character points
 
 

 

I did a variation on the old "You All Meet in a Tavern" trope for a one shot I ran for some old gaming friends of mine a couple of years ago.  The trick was in planning the multiple entry hooks for the characters that would all eventually converge in Indianapolis February of 2012 during Super Bowl week, made all the more interesting because everyone bringing a serious character wanted to play either villains or anti-heroes.  I put one character in Hot Sleep at the Goodman Institute, with multiple characters hired to break him out -- when that was done, he learned the NPC hero whom he blamed for his powers would be in Indianapolis and immediately wanted to go there to fight them.  A couple more characters were approached by UNTIL's Section 13 (basically SAT from earlier versions of Champions) with a job offer to aid in the defection of a member of the Vril Society.  The anti-hero was a member of that society and was attempting to break up its alliance with DEMON, which he hoped the fellow member's defection would aid. 
 
Surprisingly enough, it worked when gamed.

Desolfication, only vs AoE attacks, requires a dex roll.

A professional grade full color modern campaign or adventure book.  A project with art.  It costs money.  
Even if Hero does not have the capitol to invest in it themselves, this is 2019.  There is a well established method to publish this type of product.
It is called Kickstarter.
 
There are several people on this board that fall into the "professional game writer" category as well as "professional artists".
 
The biggest issue is not the ability to locate talent or even finance the project. 
The big issue is what the adventure/campaign is.  It needs to be something that new to supers RPG players can learn in, definitely NOT a end of the world crisis. 
 
Just a solid super-criminal type adventure.  
 
I would make it a mini-campaign about a series of super-heists for money, jewels and a MacGuffin.  Designed to run at least 5 to 6 sessions and be easily plugged into any large city.  Especially Hudson City or Vibora Bay but also real world cities like New York or Chicago.   Provide guidelines for suitable character generation and include pregen heroes for those that simply want to play.
 
Full color hardback with maps.
 
 
Miskatonic Repository
DM's Guild
Etc.....

Well, you have just described exactly the business model that has led Hero from being the top of the of Superhero games list to being functionally out of print. 
 
It is not Pathfinder that has amazingly somehow found a method to sell adventures.  Every single successful RPG, and by successful I mean actually selling books, has invested in well crafted adventures/campaigns.  They are not throwing out dozens of half-baked one sessions.  No, they are putting out  one or two well crafted campaigns (6-12 chapters/adventures) a year.  D&D, Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, Star Trek Adventures, Star Wars and Shadowrun is just a short list of the lines currently succeeding at this.  D&D is the actual example to use.  They started with free league adventures, and then they changed to "buy and run one of our adventure books on league night".  And it took off.  The FLGS has a regularly scheduled league night and coordinates GM's, the biggest issue is enough GM's.  There are new "as in I have never played D&D ever" players every league night and they always buy the Players Handbook and at least one Adventure book. 
 
Yes, the concept of using established groups to introduce individual new players to the game is neat.  But when the established groups that play Hero are virtually extinct, it is still the same loosing strategy that was adopted in the late 90's.  
 
What Hero needs in 2019 is a new strategy aimed at "how to get new players using just the books by themselves" and "how to get Hero back into the spotlight so that it is on the FLGS shelf".
 
1) the rules are fine.  DO NOT waste effort on yet another ruleset.
2) DO add a chapter(s) to the rulebook that contain an adventure with pregens to walk new GM's and players thru the process.
3) Publish at least one starter campaign, no end of the world mega villain stuff.  Instead a local in city crime spree or revenge on the city by a local master villain/mastermind.  Something that can be resolved by a new team based on standard supers build points.  
4) Tap into the fan-base and allow them to create and sell adventures using something similar to D&D's DM's Guild and Chaosium's Miskatonic Repository.  These allow fans to publish adventures and supplementary material and charge a price of which the company gets a cut, while maintaining control by limiting where they can be sold. 
5) Establish some form of League Play.  Either a prebuilt campaign adventure like D&D does or a campaign frame released in parts like STA. 
 
The point is the current strategy (95ish till present) has failed. 
A new strategy needs to be formulated and in this case we have a plethora of successful examples to emulate.
 

Don't assume the time dilation between the alternate Earth and your Earth/V'Ha-1 has always been a constant.  Assume they all started with time flows at about the same speed.  Over the course of eons, the Alternate Earth drifted away from the other dimensions.  The farther away it drifts from Earth or V'Ha-1, the larger the time dilation.
 
If I had time (see what I did there? ) I'd come up with a more techno-babbleish explanation using healthy doses of General Relativity and Kaluza-Klein Theory.  I'm sort of remembering how time dilation can change as a function of gravitational potential energy as I write this.

Go for it.  I had it as initially a Mechanon plot (though at a larger scale and meant to cause planet-wide extinction), stolen by a villain team and scaled down.  And having a bunch of tiny satellites working in concert, rather than one large satellite, meant the heroes wouldn't be able to just shoot it down easily.  At the first sign of attack, they could scatter and then regroup later.
 


Too true, at least as far as cell phones are concerned. 
 
Though to be honest, I basically stole that phone / electrical line idea straight from a Lois and Clark episode.

I can't see Menton joining up.  He seems to be insufferably arrogant to a degree that none those "egos" would put up with him.  I have a hard time seeing Menton being convinced that he would need to be among "equals."  He would insist on treating them more like the "help"; kinda like he was when he was dealing with PSI before his incarceration.  Dude is a control freak!
 
Ah, isn't Baron Nihil a Nazi and Joseph Otanga an African.  Unless I have seriously misunderstood what it means to be a Nazi, there might be issues.
 
Doctor Yin Wu is a luddite in the extreme.  Dude has a Psychological Complication (Common, Strong) for his hatred of technology.  He would probably have a hard time working with Warlord and Interface.  There's also that despising Westerner's thing.
 
It would be fun to watch the fireworks in that group.  I think instead of fighting them, the good guys should grab some popcorn and coke and watch the show. 

I'm not really up on the "why Cyberline was bad" storyline.
 
But I agree: the government is likely to continue using Cyberline unless it's secretly a drug coming from Dr. Destroyer which allows him to control Primus agents at will. If it's just highly addictive and dangerous to the user, the government would re-label it and promise that the "new" formula has the kinks worked out of it and besides all the agents will be closely monitored both medically and in the field in the future.
 
Then they'd go on with business as usual. The government isn't going to give up on having super-powered agents without having super-powered replacements ready to go.
 
You'd have Special Forces operatives lining up around the block to get a drug which would give them superpowers for ten years of intense special ops even if the drug killed them afterward. Getting too old to function and having to go back to civilian life is a nightmare to too many of them for there to not be volunteers.
 
You might get more of a two-tiered Avenger system with "those who can function in public as the 'hearts and minds' kind of operative" and "those who can only function as military assets". But I'm certain they could fill their ranks even with extreme Cyberline side effects.