Christopher R Taylor

Again, I have to thank everyone for their interest in and purchase of Western Hero. I am honestly shocked about how many units are selling around the world. I know its not D&D levels big time but its huge for me, and fits my thought that there was a lot of interest in an old west game setting. Honestly it almost brings me to tears. I have been working as hard as I can for years and it is so nice to see at least something sell really well for a while to make it seem as if I'm not just wasting my time. Thank you all, everywhere.

His career was dead, because he was out of control and impossible to work with. In the 80s you could tell he was brilliant as an actor but he was taking every drug that existed in fistfulls and was destroying himself. Downey finally cleaned up his act but by then had such a toxic reputation as being utterly impossible to work with kept him from any real career. Shane Black gave him a shot after he cleaned up his life with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (brilliant, underrated film) and he started to get his career back but yeah. Favreau giving him a shot with Iron Man was brilliant and turned RDJ into a superstar. I loved Evans as Johnny Storm, he really captured the hothead youngster thing perfectly and was fun every scene. He got it just right. But that made me baffled when they chose him for Cap, a totally different character. But he did a wonderful job.

How much control over their abilities does the priest have? Are they utterly unable to call on anything specific, or reliably use their special powers? That's probably worth -2: it works when the GM decides what and when it does work, and never on command like a base unconscious control limitation. Are they able to call reliably on something but cannot control what the results will be? That's worth a -1: the lesser unconscious control limtation. Does it generally work, but requires their deity to be paying attention? That might be as simple as a Skill Roll: whoops, rolled an 18, Arioch was out eating lunch. That's a -½ or so. But it also might be tougher, because the deity is often distracted or prevented by a rival or enemy from accessing their priest. Is it reliable unless they have done something in particular to annoy their deity? That probably isn't worth a lot, since its pretty easy for a half capable role player to stay in the lanes, maybe a -¼ You can use the rules for Requires a Roll to estimate the limitation value: how often on average is this likely to succeed?

A Dyson Sphere is almost inconceivably vast in terms of square mileage. You could have ten thousand gigantic civilizations that never, ever had contact.

They did a ton of setup between movies with Agents of Sheesh, odd to see them just dump that. I mean the show was pretty disappointing but still.

Everybody likes monsters being set on fire. Except the monsters.

The puppet arms worked really really well in Spider-Man 2, I hope they can at least match some of that quality. Sam Raimi is amazing at making inanimate objects appear to have a personality and life of its own.

Pretty sure there's a limitation that makes your damage carry across, so its just some bookkeeping

Aid is probably the power intended to be used for this kind of thing but I do like the Multiform option better, especially for combat monsters who do nothing but get better at fighting and abandon all other skills and abilities.

Yeah I didn't touch on that but a lot of GMs kind of let that slide, when its a serious issue. Even with 28 points of you'll start to wade through asphalt streets like they were mud. You will destroy cars, furniture, steps, elevators, sidewalks, etc. All that weight concentrated on one square foot.... Even if you're not running a super realistic game, there comes a point a GM has to say "look, you weigh too much for this floor"

Yeah you break it down by cost with modifiers and the price is right (I did the same thing Derek did when I first saw the price). The reason it feels powerful is that its all straight combat bonus stuff, everything about it makes you fight better. So if your game is combat heavy and doesn't require so much clever problem solving as a fist to the face, its going to be super effective.

I found an old paper while cleaning my room that has a list of ideas for Champions campaigns of various types and power levels.I figured I would post them here to offer some inspiration for GMs looking to start up a campaign: Part of a government or state official super team collected to fight crime and terrorism Each character is a child of an extradimensional being who has sown his oats widely - characters probably don't even know they were related. Dying alien distributes part of their power amongst all people gathered nearby to help fight his evil family. Low powered game, possibly no other super types in the world Characters all awaken in a high tech lab in a dark and dystopian future world, each with powers. Who did this to them? Why don't they remember anything? Regular people in this world who use a special device (alien tech? Magic item? Extradimensional debris?) that ports them into the Champions Universe, with powers, but only for a set time period each day Members of an existing team with a base, contacts, history etc get into a dispute over tactics and goals and split off: the PCs are the new team Wake up on a deserted South Pacific Island with no memory, and powers. They are in an alternate dimension where aliens are invading and have to fight them off. But where are they really from? All were terminally ill of various ailments, even advanced old age, and submit to an experiment to save their lives. The mad scientist is a supervillain who in exchange wants them to use their powers for him -- but will they? Very low powered police force members, part of a special powered task force in a big city to help fight low level street crime and minor supervillains Old retiring supergroup seeks out new members, holding auditions and picking a new team. In the process a new potential member does not take rejection well, but is extremely powerful. Very rich old geezer wants revenge on the supervillain that casually crippled him in a battle with police in collateral damage. He hires the PCs to deal with the villain, and the team stays together with his sponsorship. Individual superheroes are all captured by a big bad supervillain to keep them from interfering with his plan, they all escape and work together to beat the guy, and gain a nifty new base (with many secrets to discover) in the process I'm sure other people have ideas for campaigns as well

You can eventually work out what the DCV of the target is in a few phases of combat, but that's fine. The point isn't "never let them know" its "you just met this guy how would you know his stats?" In combat, you'll eventually figure out your opponent's strengths and weaknesses, relative ability, etc, and you should. That's how real life combat works. But you don't know right at first, and that's what hiding their DCV accomplishes.

yeah, Americans build guns for precision. The Soviets built guns so you could beat a bear to death with them and still shoot.

Yeah the most obvious ways are to disable the ability to use common limitations like incantations and gestures. Technically you aren't stopping an incantation simply by making an area quiet (just because someone cannot hear them doesn't mean that they aren't incanting), but most GMs allow that with darkness, for example. Concentration and extra time allow for interruptions, and so on. You can use a Change Environment to make someone's magic skill roll worse, which often leads to uncomfortable side effects.

Plastic cartridges sounds like a bad idea all the way around but soviet ammo tends to be bad for your gun anyway

I like the idea of doing a base adventure setting, then having lots of small adventures that can be run in it like you guys have been talking about with Stronghold. Like, Escape from Stronghold has the prison, then an adventure in it... and then we could release several like 99 cent or 2 buck short adventures, 1-2 run bits to use in Stronghold.

Wonder Woman is nearly Superman with magic lasso, she's more spendy than you might think

I like Dr Draconis a lot, he's a forgotten and I thought very interesting villain with a lot of potential that simply disappeared. Just some rumors and mentions in comments I've seen. It might not get anywhere but at least it might. JI and DI were two of the best games Hero ever put out.

Looking over the Champions adventures in order of release, the first three are The Island of Dr Destroyer Escape from Stronghold Deathstroke And while the first two are very simple and even incomplete in some ways, Dinapoli really knocked it out of the park with Deathstroke. Its a complete multi-part adventure with some clever adversaries, several different kinds of encounters and events, and a great climax that doesn't go the way anyone plans. I could write an update and tweak it some, but honestly it doesn't really need any changes. So while I want to reboot Escape from Stronghold (with actual escapes!) I think that's all that I want to tackle in terms of reboots. Someone else is supposedly working on Justice Inc and Danger International the two other books I might have considered rebuilding, so that's great. If I can get Stronghold rebuilt and released, then I think from then on I'll be focused on new content. I wanted to get Stronghold out this year, but the Champions Begins project intervened and that took most of the year to get through. Champions Begins is a bit of a risk business wise, since its going to be given away for free, but its my fantasy that people find out about it, try it at their game store or with their gaming group and decide Hero is their slice of cheese and buy more books.

Well using the Hero method of arguing from effect to build what does this really do? The special effect is "attacks the soul" but the game mechanic is "reduces x stat or power by y amount" so you look at what gives you that mechanic and define it as an attack on the soul.

I'd probably swap out The Question for Captain Marvel (too powerful) and Hawkman for Martian Manhunter, just because of the vast point totals

I have played several different types and run games on some as well. They each seem to have their advantages and drawbacks, none of them really standing out as superior in my experience. What is really missing is a super easy, straight forward program that figures out what you're trying to do so you don't have to take a class to make them do what you want.

The illusion of change is what comics are about: they seem to change, but don't really ever

Thanks a ton I am not very good at editing my own stuff so every little bit helps. Its only 19 total pages of text for the Player Book, because I wanted it slashed back as brutally as possible, to counter Hero's vast tome reputation. So that's a third of it covered and a huge help.