Norm

And it was an excellent wiki. 

dieRoller.html

Sorry if this is rambling....   still in a little bit of shock and things are kind of raw right now.
 
Saw this thread for the first time today.... after reading 3 pages, skipped to the end since it was 22 pages.  
 
Not even sure why I am writing this.   Today, my family  became one of the statistics.   My 75 year old mother-in-law died this afternoon due to complication from the coronavirus (respiratory failure).   She was very healthy for her age...  only on thyroid medication....  no heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, nor any other 'old person' maintenance drugs.  
 
She had a slight fever for a couple of days and did not feel well.  Went to the doctor on a Thursday, had a slight temp (~100) and a 98% oxygen level.   Doctor thought it may have been an infection from deviated septum surgery a couple of weeks before and gave her some antibiotics.  She went downhill fast over the weekend and went back to the doctor on Monday.  She almost passed out at the doctor's office since she only had around a 60% oxygen level.  Was taken to the ER by ambulance.  The ICU rooms in the hospital were full and they had to call around to other hospitals to find a room for her.  By Monday night, she was in critical condition and on a respirator.   That was a little over a week ago.  She was able to be put on an experimental drug study since she was so healthy and not on a lot of medication.  It may have slowed some things down, but did not seem to help.
 
Don't want to fan the flames or anything.   Amazon is back-ordered a bit, but get an oximeter for yourself and your extended families.  If exposed and not feeling well, it can at least give you another data point beside temperature and feeling like crap.
 
Not sure if/when I will come back to this thread.   Take care everyone and stay healthy

Sorry if this is rambling....   still in a little bit of shock and things are kind of raw right now.
 
Saw this thread for the first time today.... after reading 3 pages, skipped to the end since it was 22 pages.  
 
Not even sure why I am writing this.   Today, my family  became one of the statistics.   My 75 year old mother-in-law died this afternoon due to complication from the coronavirus (respiratory failure).   She was very healthy for her age...  only on thyroid medication....  no heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, nor any other 'old person' maintenance drugs.  
 
She had a slight fever for a couple of days and did not feel well.  Went to the doctor on a Thursday, had a slight temp (~100) and a 98% oxygen level.   Doctor thought it may have been an infection from deviated septum surgery a couple of weeks before and gave her some antibiotics.  She went downhill fast over the weekend and went back to the doctor on Monday.  She almost passed out at the doctor's office since she only had around a 60% oxygen level.  Was taken to the ER by ambulance.  The ICU rooms in the hospital were full and they had to call around to other hospitals to find a room for her.  By Monday night, she was in critical condition and on a respirator.   That was a little over a week ago.  She was able to be put on an experimental drug study since she was so healthy and not on a lot of medication.  It may have slowed some things down, but did not seem to help.
 
Don't want to fan the flames or anything.   Amazon is back-ordered a bit, but get an oximeter for yourself and your extended families.  If exposed and not feeling well, it can at least give you another data point beside temperature and feeling like crap.
 
Not sure if/when I will come back to this thread.   Take care everyone and stay healthy

Sorry if this is rambling....   still in a little bit of shock and things are kind of raw right now.
 
Saw this thread for the first time today.... after reading 3 pages, skipped to the end since it was 22 pages.  
 
Not even sure why I am writing this.   Today, my family  became one of the statistics.   My 75 year old mother-in-law died this afternoon due to complication from the coronavirus (respiratory failure).   She was very healthy for her age...  only on thyroid medication....  no heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, nor any other 'old person' maintenance drugs.  
 
She had a slight fever for a couple of days and did not feel well.  Went to the doctor on a Thursday, had a slight temp (~100) and a 98% oxygen level.   Doctor thought it may have been an infection from deviated septum surgery a couple of weeks before and gave her some antibiotics.  She went downhill fast over the weekend and went back to the doctor on Monday.  She almost passed out at the doctor's office since she only had around a 60% oxygen level.  Was taken to the ER by ambulance.  The ICU rooms in the hospital were full and they had to call around to other hospitals to find a room for her.  By Monday night, she was in critical condition and on a respirator.   That was a little over a week ago.  She was able to be put on an experimental drug study since she was so healthy and not on a lot of medication.  It may have slowed some things down, but did not seem to help.
 
Don't want to fan the flames or anything.   Amazon is back-ordered a bit, but get an oximeter for yourself and your extended families.  If exposed and not feeling well, it can at least give you another data point beside temperature and feeling like crap.
 
Not sure if/when I will come back to this thread.   Take care everyone and stay healthy

Sorry if this is rambling....   still in a little bit of shock and things are kind of raw right now.
 
Saw this thread for the first time today.... after reading 3 pages, skipped to the end since it was 22 pages.  
 
Not even sure why I am writing this.   Today, my family  became one of the statistics.   My 75 year old mother-in-law died this afternoon due to complication from the coronavirus (respiratory failure).   She was very healthy for her age...  only on thyroid medication....  no heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, nor any other 'old person' maintenance drugs.  
 
She had a slight fever for a couple of days and did not feel well.  Went to the doctor on a Thursday, had a slight temp (~100) and a 98% oxygen level.   Doctor thought it may have been an infection from deviated septum surgery a couple of weeks before and gave her some antibiotics.  She went downhill fast over the weekend and went back to the doctor on Monday.  She almost passed out at the doctor's office since she only had around a 60% oxygen level.  Was taken to the ER by ambulance.  The ICU rooms in the hospital were full and they had to call around to other hospitals to find a room for her.  By Monday night, she was in critical condition and on a respirator.   That was a little over a week ago.  She was able to be put on an experimental drug study since she was so healthy and not on a lot of medication.  It may have slowed some things down, but did not seem to help.
 
Don't want to fan the flames or anything.   Amazon is back-ordered a bit, but get an oximeter for yourself and your extended families.  If exposed and not feeling well, it can at least give you another data point beside temperature and feeling like crap.
 
Not sure if/when I will come back to this thread.   Take care everyone and stay healthy

Sorry if this is rambling....   still in a little bit of shock and things are kind of raw right now.
 
Saw this thread for the first time today.... after reading 3 pages, skipped to the end since it was 22 pages.  
 
Not even sure why I am writing this.   Today, my family  became one of the statistics.   My 75 year old mother-in-law died this afternoon due to complication from the coronavirus (respiratory failure).   She was very healthy for her age...  only on thyroid medication....  no heart, blood pressure, cholesterol, nor any other 'old person' maintenance drugs.  
 
She had a slight fever for a couple of days and did not feel well.  Went to the doctor on a Thursday, had a slight temp (~100) and a 98% oxygen level.   Doctor thought it may have been an infection from deviated septum surgery a couple of weeks before and gave her some antibiotics.  She went downhill fast over the weekend and went back to the doctor on Monday.  She almost passed out at the doctor's office since she only had around a 60% oxygen level.  Was taken to the ER by ambulance.  The ICU rooms in the hospital were full and they had to call around to other hospitals to find a room for her.  By Monday night, she was in critical condition and on a respirator.   That was a little over a week ago.  She was able to be put on an experimental drug study since she was so healthy and not on a lot of medication.  It may have slowed some things down, but did not seem to help.
 
Don't want to fan the flames or anything.   Amazon is back-ordered a bit, but get an oximeter for yourself and your extended families.  If exposed and not feeling well, it can at least give you another data point beside temperature and feeling like crap.
 
Not sure if/when I will come back to this thread.   Take care everyone and stay healthy

The wayback machine failed me also.   It did take me down a rabbit hole to see OLD versions of the site along with other people's sites I used to look at (Red October BBS, Dungeon Hero, Surbook's Stuff, etc).  I forgot that Surbook's Stuff has been around as long as it has.
 
Memory lane...  man am I starting to feel old.
 
https://web.archive.org/web/19980204044814/http://www.herogames.com/herogames/links.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19980702070157/http://www.herogames.com/herogames/links.html
https://web.archive.org/web/19981206215529/http://www.herogames.com/links.html

This is why I have always said each version of the game (Fred, 6th, FHC, CC, etc.) needed a complete adventure with pregen PCs that can be run right then and there with zero prep except for the GM to read through and go.  Preferably short enough and basic enough the GM only needs 30 minutes max to understand the plot/story. 
 
The purpose of the starter adventure and PCs is not to establish the new players and GMs game world, but to give a on hand, already built example of how the rules actually work.  A tangible example of how to build works for that genre.
 
IMO HERO is not hard once you realize how things work in-play.
 
In-play is the key.  HERO especially, since chargen/builds are outside of "normal" RPGs.
 
Now I never felt figuring combat mods and rolling effects were hard at all once the characters were created.  I do feel that the game could benefit from a second "in-play" character sheet that has all the build info stripped out leaving only the info needed to play.  HERO IMO is far easier to play than D&D any version and especially easier that Path(rule)finder.  It is just HERO buries the game in walls of text, most of which is not needed once the character/npc is generated.
 
Based on WotC and Chaosium's community guidelines I was formally writing up my Champs intro which I had run several times. But with the way HEROs community content program is written I cannot use GRAB or other official Champions villains.  I used it not just as an intro to HERO, but to give new players an idea of what the different values actually do in-play. 
 
Now I need to replace the villains with a all new lineup, which means I have to redo everything and run more in depth play testing. 
But it is what it is.
 
 
 
 

Here's a quick overview of how to run Hero Designer on a Chromebook.  My testing was done on an Asus C434 running Chrome OS 78.  I personally ran into a number of issues with Java on Debian Stretch that took my some time to track down so I figured I would share this with others.  The magic ingredient for smooth running Hero Designer on Stretch was to pass in -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true as a command line argument... after that all the slowness, artifacting, and UI flickering went away.
 
Assumptions
Minimal proficiency with Linux and the the command line Linux (Beta) enabled under Settings Debian Buster installed under Crostini (this is the default Linux distro installed, assume this is the case unless you know you installed another distro)  
Get Hero Designer
Get yourself a copy of Hero Designer from the store and put the zip into your home directory.  Make a directory to put the unzipped Hero Designer files into:
mkdir ~/Hero\ Designer Unzip your Hero Designer into the directory you just created:
unzip ~/HeroDesigner.zip -d ~/Hero\ Designer/ Install Java
Update your packages:
sudo apt update Install Oracle Java:
sudo apt install openjdk-15-jdk Verify your version of Java:
java -version You should see something like the following:
java version "13.0.1" 2019-10-15 Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 13.0.1+9) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 13.0.1+9, mixed mode, sharing) Create an Application Launcher
Start by creating a .desktop file for Hero Designer:
sudo touch /usr/share/applications/hero-designer.desktop Make the launcher executable:
sudo chmod +x /usr/share/applications/hero-designer.desktop Cut and paste the following text into the desktop launcher file you just created:
[Desktop Entry] Name=Hero Designer Comment=Create characters for the HERO System GenericName=Hero Designer Path=/home/YOUR_USERNAME/Hero\ Designer Exec=sommelier -X --scale=0.8 java -Xms32m -Xmx64m -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true -jar HD6.jar Terminal=false Type=Application Icon=/home/YOUR_USERNAME/Hero\ Designer/hdlogo.png Categories=Utility; Please note that you MUST replace the YOUR_USERNAME text with your actual username... very important!
 
That's it, after the desktop launcher has been created you should be able to launch it like you would any other app.
 

You have a very rare and unusual experience in roleplaying.  
I envy you.
 
 
I entered the Navy right out of high school and my RPG time was scarce and rare except for a couple short tours.  Most of what gaming I did get in was pre-built adventures because we really didn't have the time to work up adventures.  When I did build my own it was usually AD&D where you could do a fast layout and plugins from the monster manual.
 
My most memorable gaming run was when I spent a year in Millington TN at NATTC in school.  I drew on material from that time for years later.  But I have had increasingly less time for gaming each year, not more.  I can only go by my personal experience that is shaped by my life and the people I know, but I have met many people that say they prefer to build their own stuff.  Heck, I prefer to run adventures I made.  But the vast majority of games I have played and most of the gamers I know use prebuilt material, intact or hastily modified.  Hastily because each precious hour of game prep is one less of play.  And an hour of time to actually game is extremely rare these days. 
 
Herodom is a very small niche of a niche market, and I am not referring to the rules. I am speaking to it's approach and player base. 
 
Way back in the 90's a course was decided to not publish premade adventures. 
 
When they did produce a setting, it was almost deliberately designed to be almost unusable with detail.  There is a thread about the Turakian Age where it is sagely discussed how the setting cannot be understood by reading it chapter to chapter.  You need to "study" and "research" and hope about.   It is a beautifully designed document as if it was a text book or historical record or a resource for a collegiate research project.  Perfect if you have a few years to dedicate.  But most gamers need something easier and less time intensive.
 
After stubbornly producing one concept, what we have on the Hero forums are the very small percentage of a micro percentage of gamers with the luxury and time to devote hours and days to gaming projects. 
Also, the majority of gamers here scoff at playing at the FLGS because they have firmly established long term (years) gaming groups which is not the norm.   The FLGS and gaming CONs are still the venues that generate new players and then new GM's.
 
Hero created  a self fulfilling prophesy and now people wonder why Hero is virtually extinct.
 
 
 
It is not aging GM's or that the old DIY ethos are gone.  They are just as common as ever but it is a percentage game.
1% of 100 is 1.
1% of 500,000 is 5,000
I know several GM's for D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu/GUMSHOE, and Pathfinder that build their own original adventures.
But those same GM's routinely run prebuilt adventures/settings at the FLGS for League Night if the game has one, just as a game if not. 
The ratio of GM's to players in any game is very low. 
It is much much much lower for any game community that heaps derision on anyone that "lowers themselves to using prebuilt material".  
 
Take Turakian Age, awesome setting if written to be unusable to the average gamer.
It doesn't need a re-write.  It needs a, let's call it a digest version for easy entry.  Pick one location, one small town, with one human culture and write a smaller less detailed version based on TA.  Add a CharGen section tailored to the digest, and for all that is holy, build a small no less that ten spells beginning player spell list.  Plus a GM ready adventure. 
 
As I try to build up my idea for an adventure for Hall of Champions I realize that I would not be able to create that digest, but I hope someone with the talent will. 
 
Hero already has great rules and settings.
What it needs are entry paths and publicity. 
Hall of Champions is a great start down that path. 
One day I'd love to see adventures that directly use existing Hero superheroes and supervillains.  
I hope to contribute to building some of those entry paths, though the going is much more difficult that I thought.
 
 
 
 

I made more of my own content back in the day when I didn't have to juggle game time in between family and a demanding job.
 
What I especially like to do now is take professionally created content and then modify it to suit my players.  This is far less time consuming and comes with professionally drawn maps, handouts, fleshed out and familiar worlds with their own history, etc.
 
I suspect a large chunk of the population that played Champions, Danger International, Fantasy HERO and so on have grown up and had families and don't have the same kind of free time they did back in the 80s/90s.
 
I think a stack of high quality adventures for Champions and Fantasy HERO would have sold quite well when the player base was larger.  That's a complete guess on my part of course, but I would throw money at my screen to get adventures.  Evermist, for example, is not on the same production quality level, but I bought it immediately and it was quite good.

I don't dispute any of what you're saying, I just wanted to add that D&D and Pathfinder have a ton of high quality playable out-of-the-box adventures that allow the GM to focus on something other than writing an adventure.  I have personally observed this to be a major selling point for those players which I would argue is pretty close to watching TV.  It's akin to having a sandbox where players have predefined boundaries they can't cross.  There's nothing wrong with that but HERO has always been a tinkerer's system with less emphasis on providing playable modules and more about setting books and info... different approach, different market IMO.  HoC may allow players to change that by offering playable modules and allow us to cross over into mass appeal, we'll have to wait and see but I am keeping my fingers crossed.
 
My own observation is that the whole playstyle is different for those games;
listen at the door  check for traps pick the lock fight  collect loot/grab anything not nailed down ??? Profit (mainly for Wizards/Paizo ) I'm playing through Storm King's Thunder with my main group and it's pretty much this but you have a larger sandbox than usual.

When I adapted TA to my own use, I expanded the role of various non-humans, giving them a more prominent "footprint" in the setting. For example, I made more explicit the economic and political ties between the score of named Dwarven kingdoms and their human neighbors, as well as their role as trade middlemen between the surface world and the Sunless Realms. I also tried to individualize each kingdom as done with the human nations in TA. I inserted more Elven forest realms into several areas where there was space on the map without much else happening in their vicinity. I also gave more independence to various Gnome and Halfling communities. I added communities of Drakine driven from their original homes by the wars with Men who had adapted to new living arrangements, e.g. "barbaric" clans living within the Ulimar Jungle; and boat-dwelling Drakine "gypsies" roving the coasts of Lake Beralka and the Sea of Mhorec. I also established a couple of underwater kingdoms of Merfolk in places I thought they would logically fit, and expanded the presence of aquatic races like the Uthosa in Mhorec and Beralka.

Ah. Link from the News page must be flawed.
 
Still seems rather vague, though. What's the style and tone? Is there an overall plot? Any adventures included? Prebuilt NPCs? Is it insertable into other settings?

Not exactly. 
 
People want settings/adventures that can be "played out of the box". 
 
The biggest issue with Hero "settings" and such was they gave info, but the GM was looking at weeks of work before chargen could begin, let alone have a adventure ready to go. 
 
The question isn't how the product is edited or laid out. 
 
The question is whether the product is "playable out of the box".
 
 
 
 

YES!  This is the organization that I threw at my gaming group after a couple of small adventures.  Interrupting a kidnapping or two brought the party to the attention of the local group of the Red Talons.  The party started to investigate some more and was getting an idea that this was a larger group than they thought.  Suddenly DNCPs/contacts/family/friends were threatened/investigated/kidnapped by the Guild to distract them.  Fun for all.
 

To be fair, some of those villains are only "little" in comparison to TA's resident Dark Lord. But the Thunese gods, in particular, represent as great a threat to the Earth as Kal-Turak himself, if not even greater.
 
Then again, there are potential foes for PCs with a much narrower focus or scope of operations. One outstanding example from Nobles, Knights, And Necromancers is the Red Talon Guild, a network of slavers who kidnap people from parts of Arduna where slavery is illegal, and transport them for sale to places where it is legal. This group is never going to be conquerors, but their operations span thousands of miles, involving a  network of gangs of thieves and smugglers, tribes of barbarians and bands of mercenaries, and manors or castles along their trade routes where they can stash their victims. PCs who aren't ready or interested to save the world, may be highly motivated to track down and recover a kidnapped friend or family member.

I've found the best way to get a Fantasy Hero table going (I have 2 weekly now) is to DM D&D 5th Edition (so popular right now) for an extended period and then offer your D&D players the chance to try out a new system.
 
Both of my tables flipped on the 1st offer we're a couple months in now and the primary take aways are:
1-  HERO is ultra-flexible and you can make any character you dream up.
2-  HERO is more number crunchy and you'll need the DM's help more often.
3-  HERO combat is more tactical and more fun than D&D combat
 
If you develop a good rapport with your players they'll trust you enough to follow you into a new gaming system.
 
All that being said we're using Pathfinder material because the players have explored almost all of the D&D material and the pathfinder modules are GOOD.
 
I think the real challenge for getting back into the market in a meaningful way is the lack of adventure combat and the rules bloat.  Condense the rule set back down to something that players can absorb and provided content they can play.  A lot of us veteran GMs from the 80s/90s don't have the time for fully home brewed worlds and adventures.

Yep.  But you need a combo. WotC has the perfect trinity.
 
DM Guild
OGL
Traditional License
 
The DM Guild is where the majority of those free and paid fan made adventures come from. 
 
The traditional license has fixed expectations and (more importantly) timelines. 
 
Both DM Guild & OGL do not have any expectations for the development/creation process.  The timeline itself is 100% yours.
 
As for starter scenarios, I have a Supers one I use that woukd fall directly under the WotC DM Guild guidelines.  But I frankly don't have a solid enoufh predictable schedule to commit to a written contract.  And a license is a written contract.  Heroes may be "really reasonable", but that is a subjective description.  If it was a standard one I could review I'd be more interested.  But I doubt anyone will grant a license for an unspecified adventure sometime in the next few years. 
 
My supers intro is a short series of thefts by GRAB called Crime Spree that starts with simple pregen Heroes. 
 
If there was a HERO Guild I probably would update it to 6th and put it out there.  Especially for constructive feedback.  But I've noticed free gets you thanks and wow's, but no usable feedback.  But charge 2 to 5 bucks and they will write a wall of criticism. 
 
 

Pretty much.  But I do think a lot of opportunity is being missed.  In some aspects perception is actually more important or relevant than the truth. 
 
For example.  I have a couple scenarios I have run many times over the years.  I trot it out once the players have graduated to their "real" PCs.  Or after the pre-gen intro and they have played out their first build attempt. 
 
It is a short "crime spree" by GRAB.  If Hero had a version like the DM Guild.  I'd have formatted Crime Spree, added the latest version of GRAB and dropped it onto "Hero Guild" for $5.  I could use it to guage opinions on my writing style and adventure structure. 
 
The $ aren't really important to me at this point so Hero taking 50% or what have you wouldn't matter to me. 
 
But an adventure via an "official" you have to pay money to get it will allow me a metric.  From reviews as well as number of sales.  A two or three similar adventures will gather enough personal data for me to decide if I want to try a more ambitious project. 
 
It allows one to test the waters.
And Hero gets a % of each sale.
 
There are plenty of old hands on these forums that would be willing to throw up One Page or short arc adventures, but do not have the time or motivation to put out a full production 2019 style/quality Adventure Book.  You know, color, art, etc.
 
Anyway, a game that is played by gamers sells game books.  Games only attract new players by hype from people playing it. Right now in 2018/19 RPG play is driven by readily available adventures.  Yes, the bulk of the current playing Hero now people only use their own custom adventures and generally play in private (read invisible) game. But Hero needs NEW players.
 
Hero needs their rulebooks to POP, direct adventure support and a series of adventures for a regular "league" style play.  D&D simply ensures one of their Adventure books is available for sale each calendar period to be bought by the DM (sometimes the shop).  Modiphious and Pelgrane provide free adventures for their "League GMs". 
 
The key common denominator is that there is a pregenerated adventure for the GM to run.  Everu single time a GM has announced they were running a "league" or "organized play" game, regardless of system ( D&D, 13th Age, CoC, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) their tables have been full and people buy the books.  I have personally run CoC, Star Trek and Conan, Fear Itself and Night Black Agents using their organized play or published adventures.  Everytime my table was filled to capacity and everyone bought the rulebook and more if available.  The key was many like to play, few like to run and those that will run have limited time.  I ran the games I did because I didn't have to create everything whole cloth.   I didn't need to digest  400 page setting book to figure out what I needed to know to build an intelligent adventure. 
 
A good organized play/league usable adventure is a micro-snapshot of the setting with pre-gens that can be used if desired.  But allows players to build PCs if the wish.  As a gm, one read through plus a glance at the pre-gens tells me exactly the guidance I will need to give to players if they are building their PCs. 
 
Most of the games I have run or played in recently have been these types.
 
They encourage and allow play by eliminating the need to design an adventure design. 
 
The FLGS RPG league/organized play engine, from the rigid semi-dictatorship of Pathfinder to the almost structureless Star Trek RPG organized play all accomplish the same thing.  Gets their games played at the table in a shop every week like clockwork with a regular cycle of new players that buy the books. 
 
People that PLAY willBUY.
 

Also not arguing ? But I don't think I really clarified myself very well on a few points. 
 
Also I have no idea how to make this forum break up a long quote into sections.  Its the old in me.  So I will manually insert the items I want to quote below
 
 
Here I believe I was really unclear with my example. D&D has three basic ways to publish support material for their RPG. 
1. Standard Licensing
2. OGL
3. DMs Guild
They actually have a matrix on the general differences between OGL and DM's Guild.
 
Their OGL is pretty standard and allows you to use the 5th Ed rules to publish and sell your own unique world/setting/adventure.  But your cannot directly use any of their published material, such as Sword Coast, Waterdeep or Monster Manual entries.  In a broad sense you can use the SRD stuff but not the color or defined creatures/treasure/setting material.
 
DMs Guild is different.  You can use pretty much all of the setting material, monsters, classes etc.  But you can only sell it as a PDF on the DMs Guild site and must conform to the format requirements.  You retain the IP of your original material, and they retain the IP for theirs.  They also may approach you to purchase material that is really good to incorporate into the main IP.  They also get a small slice of the profit form each sale.
 
So Bob the gamer has the opportunity to create content without the need to commit to a formal license.  Mainline D&D players can easily create a short adventure in the existing D&D world and sell on the DMs Guild site to test the waters.  Is my stuff really as great as I think it is.  The caveat of WotC being able to buy it from you pretty much eliminates full blown campaigns on DM Guild, but does all initial entry.
 
OGL is OGL and requires you to be completely unique and not use any setting related material. 
 
An agreed license has requirements.  Time lines, costs, legal guarantees, etc.  It is a contract.  It might be completely super reasonable.   But it is a secret, you do not know what they entail until you enter into negotiations.  Which is fine for people in the industry and is 100% the way to go for serious projects.
 
But WotC apparently decided they didn't want to deal with small content items.  But they also realized that their is a market so they have established a pipeline to allow others to make them while maintaining control and getting a small slice of the profit for basically no effort on their part. 
Players and DM's get access to a lot of low cost material and WotC gets a few cents to a couple dollars each. I just looked at the DMs Guild and filtered to Adventures.  There are 2462 as of this post for D&D.   That does not include WotC material or licensed material.
 
Champions/Hero System on Drive Through only has 74 items listed under Adventure and most are not actually adventures Hudson City, the campaign setting that doesn't actually have any adventures.  NPCs, organization info, and some plot hooks.  But no adventures.   What adventures there are, are for Pulp Hero or mostly older editions.  You can't filter for edition, but less than 10 are for the current edition. 
 
 
Not wrong, but the current, ever shrinking Herodom fan base isn't the target.  Yes, the established Hero player has their rule book.  But what else do they need?  Nothing.  One sale and done.  A person who has not seen the game before does not have anything to deviate from in the first place.  Viper?  There is a organization book.  But no adventure.  There was Vipers Nest in the early editions and we have all played it.  But Champs Complete has the write ups of The Champions and a few Villains.  But no adventure.   It isn't a case of "You don't want VIPER in your campaign, simple, remove them".  Rather "remove them from what".  There is not a playable campaign organized for novices to run Viper.  There is a 5th Edition organization book for Viper (which also does not include an actual adventure) that you can convert.  But a novice to Hero buys the current edition Champions Complete and discovers that the majority of material available has to be converted first???
 
 
Yes the current 150 active Hero gamers....err 149....148... ?  Semi Joking here...
 
But on the serious side, yes that is the priority of the majority of people here.  Most of them are the same ones for years or decades.  But for that slice of gamerdom, once they but a copy of Champs Complete, they are done buying. 
 
The target needs to be the vast sea of casual gamers that are flocking to the "lame" and "derivative" works that everyone here shows disdain for, and yet out sells Hero products by magnitudes. 
 
 Exactly.
 
 
Yes yes yes.  Do what Pathfinder does.  Publish each adventure and then later put out a combined "Campaign Book" that puts them all into a hardback with full art and a extra chapter on GMing it as a campaign.  The Rise of the Runelords came out in 2007 and people still order it. 
 
 
Pretty much...yep.  The thing is that Champions Complete does not need a rewrite.  It needs a new layout and format.  People here that already own CC or 6th Ed vol 1&2 are not going to buy it.  In fact people here are the slice of gamers that really don't buy anything from Hero anymore.  We have the rulebook, we can make it all. 
 
The target needs to be the guy holding CC in one hand and D&D's PHB or the Pathfinder Core in the other.  Which are they going to take up to the register.  When CC released and was available in general distribution, I covered/donated three copies for my FLGS. 
 
For the next couple of years...
Customer picks it up.  Puts it back.  Moves on.
When they did carry it to the counter they would ask a few questions.  The store staff would talk it up. If I was there I'd do the same with some information.  And then the "Question of Death".   They would ask "What kind of adventures are out?" followed by "Oh it's new, what are the planned releases?" Followed by a surprised "It's been out since the 80's?" and then "Adventures need to be converted from previous versions, really?". 
 
In a three year period, one sold and I now have two extra copies. 
 
Yes, the current players that frequent this board are committed to designing their own cool stuff.  
 
But they are not the target. 
The target is the new player that is scooping up D&D 5th, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Conan, Star Trek and on and on. 
 
Champions/Hero rules have been hammered and squeezed down until there is nothing left to alter.  There absolutely nothing to be gained from yet another iteration.  What Champs/Hero needs to present a reason to play it. 
 
To catch the eye and get the players into a flashing super battle. 
 
Or a rousing adventure with the Heroes saving the village from the goblin horde.
 
Or SOMETHING to ignite the prospective players creativity and wish to use Hero.  
 
Everyday I watch $60 RPG books leave the shelf.  A LOT of adventures and a never ending rotation of RPG games.  
When someone does ask about Champs they normally already have their books and if someone does ask about getting a copy, the store recommends ordering direct from Hero.  My FLGS's primary distributor is the local GTS (no shipping because they can drive there in 30 minutes) and their secondary is Alliance because they can get virtually anything not carried by GTS.  They cannot justify opening and maintaining a new account for the purpose of a single item.  And I already have multiple copies of the books and pretty much everything 4th, 5th and 6th edition.  I will spring for new material, but I just can no longer buy items just to buy.  Heck that was what CC was.  I also have most (all?) of the third party material/adventures.  But none of it is suitable for a teaching game.  Great for experienced teams and I have folded them into my games, at least a few years back I did.  But as an intro to supers adventures they are not the easiest to use, and for a novice Hero GM/player they can be daunting. 
 
Simple, introductory, playable. 
 
What is boring or blase for a veteran player can be new and exciting for a new player. 
D&D's Curse of Strahd and Storm Kings Thunder were basically updates of old adventures, Ravensloft has been retooled for multiple editions.  And yet it was new and exciting as Curse of Strahd for the current generation of players.
 
Well now I am preaching. 
Time to stop trying to hold back the dike with my pinkie

You could start here, free and legal: https://www.herogames.com/forums/files/category/9-maps/

You might also go to this archived page of Free Stuff from an earlier incarnation of this website, and scroll down to the download links to Ambrethel Maps: https://web.archive.org/web/20090101013210/http://www.herogames.com/freeStuff.htm

Definitely this!
 
Not saying "everything must be such-and-such;"  But there should definitely_ be some kid / family friendly adventures.
 
Right now, I've got two groups set in the home-brew campaign background my original group fleshed out starting in '82. (Yeah; I'm old).  We were younger, and had time and energy to spare.  Those groups right now are pretty much an "autopilot" set-up: we all know the setting intimately, and everyone an help initiate the occasional (and rare) new guy get acclimated.  Stamping out villains and plots is super-easy, because I know what they like, what they expect, and when and how to toss them a surprise  ("Wait a damned minute.  Are you saying this ancient Aztec emperor they've been struggling to bring back to life is....  a LUCHADOR?!  What the Hell, Man?!")
 
The youth group-- the fun lark I got conned into (and have thoroughly enjoyed)-- that's stinkin' _hard_, Dude.  I haven't been a kid in a long, long time, and I find it's actually become difficult to keep things from getting...  stabby.  You know: underhanded deals, over-sophisticated plots, and truly twisted lunatics as villains.  Don't get me wrong: I don't run a grim and gritty anything, but have spent a few decades running for _grownups_.  I find myself getting just a bit too "Spongebob" with the youth group, and am working my butt off in my very little spare time trying to find something in that "sweet spot" of family-friendly but not childish.
 
In my prime, I would have mocked anyone telling me that I would one day say this, but the fact is I would stack up some pre-generated pre-published family-friendly material right now, just to reduce my workload and the strain of keeping it where it needs to be.