Christopher R Taylor

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

I have completed and sent Western Hero to Hero Games to look over and build a cover for.  Its a complete book with all you need to build characters and play the game (minus powers and modifiers etc, as not applicable in a heroic game) with a full campaign setting adapted from the original Western Hero 4th edition, plus tons of adventure ideas, campaign tips, background, maps, etc.
 
Also, I have uploaded a file of The Greatest Guns Who Never Were, a file containing almost 50 fictional characters of western and western-inspired background from books, comics, movies, television, and radio, from Hopalong Cassidy to Mal Reynolds and all points in between.  Its free in the Downloads section and includes full Hero Designer write ups as well as a pdf containing them all and some notes on how they were made.

Well, in a point-based game, you don't want to be ripped off.  I mean if I have a concept that I'm tall, its not worth 50 points to be slightly taller than everyone else.  That has to be a consideration at least at some level.

SOme of the designs and concepts of the master villains in the CHampions Universe are interesting but as built they are ridiculously, insanely overpowered.  Its like having fifteen Galactuses walking around the world.  One almost gets the idea that the designers felt like they were in some kind of arms race: oh yeah?  "Well you're not gonna beat my Dr Destroyer!!!!"

The big advantage is that Fantasy Hero can offer all that with a far better game system than Palladium's 

I re-watched Age of Ultron last night, and was favorably impressed.  Its still not nearly as good as the first Avengers movie, and Ultron's bizarre method of destroying the world which really was never adequately explained or made any real sense still is lame... but it was smarter than I remembered upon first watching.  And Scarlet Witch's mind-messing with Tony Stark explains a lot of what happened to him later.  She has no real control over her powers and I think she really scrambled his brains long term.  Its the only thing that makes sense of his nearly insane reactions and behavior after that.

Both, but the movie presented the argument so badly that bothered me more.  It felt less like "we have a story that will unfold naturally" and more "we gotta pit these guys against each other, give me a reason!"

I thought it was particularly weak, by contrast, since Tony's entire motivation made zero sense other than just sheer panic and wanting not to feel responsible.  All of the arguments he made were utterly weak and ridiculous, they made no sense.

One thing that's worth considering is that while as a GM you can tailor the bad guys to match special defenses and there is a theoretical infinite number of bad guys that you can create to face the PCs, they only have their limited set of powers and xps to spend.
 
So if a player buys a weird attack that requires some special defense like impenetrable resistant flash defense vs taste, well the agents can all have pocket taste flash shields next time.  But if you pull that on a PC, they're NEVER going to have that unless they spend xps on a defense that nobody will ever need expect against your nifty attack.  And as a GM you can build attacks against what the PCs lack but the PCs can only build against what the average enemy isn't likely to have.
 
So the players really should be given a bit more leeway with powers like this than the GM, is what I'm saying.  If the player is really trying to job the system and create something that's cheating, that's one thing, but if someone is just creative or comes up with a neat powerful build, well find a way to work that into the game.

Mostly D&D is popular now because a certain outsider perspective on Geek Culture became popular, and D&D is familiar to those people while other games are not.  So it gets prominent mention and depiction in entertainment media such as TV shows, movies, etc.  I'm not confident that it is more popular now than before, I mean toy stores and book stores were carrying D&D stuff in the 1980s.  But its experienced a resurgence in popularity.  WOTC didn't use some clever technique to get it to this point so much as ride a wave of cultural sensibilities.

Mostly D&D is popular now because a certain outsider perspective on Geek Culture became popular, and D&D is familiar to those people while other games are not.  So it gets prominent mention and depiction in entertainment media such as TV shows, movies, etc.  I'm not confident that it is more popular now than before, I mean toy stores and book stores were carrying D&D stuff in the 1980s.  But its experienced a resurgence in popularity.  WOTC didn't use some clever technique to get it to this point so much as ride a wave of cultural sensibilities.

I think the skill list probably is too long, particularly with the sub-categories for stuff like survival.

Yeah, well there is that.  Let's set the wayback machine shall we?

1999, what was out in theaters?
Fight Club
Being John Malkovich
The Matrix
Blast From the Past
Office Space
The Mummy...
 
1989
New York Stories
Christmas Vacation
Major League
Say Anything
Batman
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
License to Kill
Akira...
 
1979
Mad Max
The Warriors
Alien
Quadrophenia
The Jerk
Star Trek: The Motion Picture...
 
1969
True Grit
Midnight Cowboy
The Italian Job
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...
 
Well, you get the idea
 

There are certain rules and game simulations which are part of play which take the place of real world interaction.  The phase/segment system is a method of representing reacting to a moving, fluid combat and timing things carefully without being able to see and take those actions yourself.  Further, while a superhero with decades of combat training and experience can time things perfectly, a middle aged author and illustrator eating pizza at a gaming table will not.
 
In other words: saying things like "I wait until right at the end of the segment to take my delayed action" is just a way of simulating that training and timing.  Its a method of allowing players to get their character to do the stuff they'd do in a fight, with rules.  Saying "no you can't do that because there's no clock on the wall saying what phases are up" misses the entire point of the interaction.

...are you joking?  You want me to explain how hitting someone twice is better than hitting them once????
 
 
Well you can do it but it takes really fast, strong thumbs like a 13 year old girl after all her texting experience.  Realistically its not very feasible, though
 
A more realistic move is to snap the hammer back with your thumb for one shot, and then pull the trigger, ba-bam.  Extremely poor accuracy (your thumb will yank the barrel up) but works in close range and takes a really smooth, easy to work mechanism.

There weren't any. 
Well, there was "firing two shots," for a typical fanned second shot. 
 
If you're interested:
 
We did it as a Skill that granted something akin to auto fire (five shots). 
Essentially, roll the skill.  For each two points you succeeded by, you could fire off an additional shot.  First shot (the initial trigger pull) was unmodified; each successive hit was at - 1.(realistically, it should have been - 2, but read on about wasted shots. ) as soon as you missed, all subsequent shots missed. 
 
Whatever your success turned out to be, you popped off that many shots.  If you missed the second shot but your skill roll said you fired four shots, then you spent those other shots.  Track your ammo, track your expense. 
 
 

...are you joking?  You want me to explain how hitting someone twice is better than hitting them once????
 
 
Well you can do it but it takes really fast, strong thumbs like a 13 year old girl after all her texting experience.  Realistically its not very feasible, though
 
A more realistic move is to snap the hammer back with your thumb for one shot, and then pull the trigger, ba-bam.  Extremely poor accuracy (your thumb will yank the barrel up) but works in close range and takes a really smooth, easy to work mechanism.

...are you joking?  You want me to explain how hitting someone twice is better than hitting them once????
 
 
Well you can do it but it takes really fast, strong thumbs like a 13 year old girl after all her texting experience.  Realistically its not very feasible, though
 
A more realistic move is to snap the hammer back with your thumb for one shot, and then pull the trigger, ba-bam.  Extremely poor accuracy (your thumb will yank the barrel up) but works in close range and takes a really smooth, easy to work mechanism.

The problem with a death trap is that it relies on the writer knowing how to get out and making the character figure it out.  Players are... less reliable in that aspect.  You often have to end up giving them die rolls to figure things out which is less than satisfying.  On the other hand, sometimes they come up with a way of trying to get out which you had not considered.  And if its remotely feasible or entertaining... go for it, even if you have to change things a bit to make it work.
 
Better you change your plans for the player to succeed on their own than force them along a predetermined path through die rolls to feed them info.

Just a quick update: I am receiving positive feedback from  the players so far. They say they are enjoying the game and want to continue. I am having a blast. It had been a long time since I have been excited about the hobby. Hero system rocks!