Christopher R Taylor

Ideally a good campaign will look a lot like the animated series Young Justice or Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes.  A nice mix of simple scenarios balanced against long term plot lines.  For what I consider the best reference material on starting and running a long term campaign read “Strike Force“ by Aaron Allston. It can be ordered on this website.
   It tells the history of the Hero game he ran for many years. Besides being a great sourcebook it tells how the game dealt with a number of different types of players, what to do when real life takes people out of the game, and too many other incredibly useful pieces of info for me to go through.  The only flaw in the book I’ve ever heard was that longtime GM’s found some of the advice too basic. That was because this is where those suggestions came from. Like someone saying E.E. Smith’s Lensman series was too much like Green Lantern.
  I’ve recommended this book so many times to so many new GM’s that I joke I should start getting kickbacks from Hero.  But I’ve never heard back that it wasn’t very helpful.

As a villainess, animated Maleficent puts Angelina Jolie's version to shame. That Maleficent isn't simply misunderstood and abused. She is the true Queen of All Evil, reveling deliciously in her cruel, vindictive, ruthless wickedness.
 
The official Champions villain, The Shadow Queen (Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains), is very clearly inspired by Maleficent, as well as the Queen in Disney's animated Snow White.

Indeed. I am sorry if this sounds snarky, but it's hard to play in a genre game if you have no experience of the source genre.
 
Assuming you're familiar with the genre but are having trouble seeing how it looks translated to the gaming table... Aaron Allston's Strike Force gives a superb portrayal of what a good campaign looks like. I learned more about running a campaign from that book than anything else I ever read. And not just Champions.
 
As games go, D&D is actually kind of freakish in its use of set-piece "dungeons" that are all mapped out, with every monster defined and placed waiting for the PCs to show up and kill them. For most games I've been in (not just Champions), the antagonists react to what the PCs do as much as the PCs react to the antagonists. Specific locations may be loosely mapped out for particular scenes (I just sketch them on notebook paper), but there's no need for a big "campaign map." Especially since I usually set Champions campaigns in real cities so the players already know the landmarks.
 
Heck, we kept a chronicle of my "Keystone Konjurors" campaign. I'll dig it up and post the log of an actual adventure.
 
Dean Shomshak

Have you ever read comics? Or superhero movies? Ideally a campaign works like that.
 
Or, to put it in a rather trivial fashion: The Nefarious Plot of Dr Nefarious requires the PCs to do a few things in order to prevent it. Along the way, they encounter the Red Herring's plot in its early stage. So when the PCs have defeated Dr Nefarious, they still have to deal with the next villain.
 
And so on and so forth.

Heroes in Champions don't party until after the bad guy goes to jail. They're a team.
 
Bad guy does a thing. Heroes get wind of it. Heroes engage bad guy. Bad guy gets away after saying how great his plan is. Heroes prepare for round 2. Heroes track down the bad guy and stop him just in time.

I am somewhat okay with the concept of these two powers, just not as officially written up talents.  When its a "pick from" list, it becomes a matter of people grabbing them just because "dude, this is powerful!" rather than "I have an idea for my character..."  When they have to come up with the build or work with the GM to make it, its going to usually be more character and concept- based rather than going down a list and getting the broken parts to make your l337 Goblin Pwner

Actually there are notable differences.  Reload time is much slower with a cap&ball pistol, some pistols have more rounds, some have a stun multiple, some are better at range, shotguns have an area effect, rifles have great long range ability, etc.  "A gun" isn't any more true than "a weapon" in Fantasy Hero.  A sword is not an axe is not a flail is not a crossbow, and so on.
 
 
I dunno what games you've played -- I suspect few if any in the genre -- but nobody except the lawyer type who is sickly and avoids fights has a 2 PD in Western Hero.  You have the Mountain Man type who is burly as hell and outdoors all the time, so he can take a terrible amount of abuse.  You have the boxer who's trained to take a punch.  You have the Hoss type from Bonanza who's just big and tough.  And even the lean wiry cowboy is rough and ready, can take a punch really well, and has 5 or more PD.
 
2 PD?  Seriously??
 
There's tons of reasons to take 1 point in things.  1 more recovery, 5 more END, 2 more Stun, 1 more Body, it all adds up.
 
I think you guys get so focused on huge stats in Champions you lose any sense of perspective here.  this doesn't seem like any sort of "when I played it was..." so much as from the outside not seeing what is going on inside.

Actually there are notable differences.  Reload time is much slower with a cap&ball pistol, some pistols have more rounds, some have a stun multiple, some are better at range, shotguns have an area effect, rifles have great long range ability, etc.  "A gun" isn't any more true than "a weapon" in Fantasy Hero.  A sword is not an axe is not a flail is not a crossbow, and so on.
 
 
I dunno what games you've played -- I suspect few if any in the genre -- but nobody except the lawyer type who is sickly and avoids fights has a 2 PD in Western Hero.  You have the Mountain Man type who is burly as hell and outdoors all the time, so he can take a terrible amount of abuse.  You have the boxer who's trained to take a punch.  You have the Hoss type from Bonanza who's just big and tough.  And even the lean wiry cowboy is rough and ready, can take a punch really well, and has 5 or more PD.
 
2 PD?  Seriously??
 
There's tons of reasons to take 1 point in things.  1 more recovery, 5 more END, 2 more Stun, 1 more Body, it all adds up.
 
I think you guys get so focused on huge stats in Champions you lose any sense of perspective here.  this doesn't seem like any sort of "when I played it was..." so much as from the outside not seeing what is going on inside.

Equipment in heroic games isn't built showing all the powers and such because its not going to come up (the active points of a Winchester '76 rifle is irrelevant; nobody is going to dispel or drain it).  They're just presented as basic equipment with stats.  Western Hero was very vague in its presentation of weapons, without much detail beyond caliber.  The new edition coming out in a bit will have more specific things about particular guns, since that's pretty interesting to most players.

I am somewhat okay with the concept of these two powers, just not as officially written up talents.  When its a "pick from" list, it becomes a matter of people grabbing them just because "dude, this is powerful!" rather than "I have an idea for my character..."  When they have to come up with the build or work with the GM to make it, its going to usually be more character and concept- based rather than going down a list and getting the broken parts to make your l337 Goblin Pwner

See, all that’s gonna happen when you start taking away somebody’s special focus is that they begin redefining their characters.
 
Captain Flagsuit doesn’t have a rare, one of a kind invincible shield.  He’s got a regular shield, and he’s just that damn good with it.
 
Albino Sorcerer Man doesn’t have a unique soul-sucking sword.  He’s haunted by a demon that gradually transforms any sword he uses into a demon blade.  
 
Functionally there’s no difference here.  The guy is just going to have a different explanation for why his weapon will always come back.

Weird, I find that Hero is often at its best at the Heroic level.  Especially Fantasy Hero.

Weird, I find that Hero is often at its best at the Heroic level.  Especially Fantasy Hero.

Great insights, and very true.  Over time, experience teaches you what will and won't work and what goes smoothly.  Sometimes a long fight is interesting, sometimes quick surprising fights are better.  I particularly liked the trick of starting up something that felt really familiar and kind of old hat, then introducing something unusual or interesting in the middle: the ground collapses, a Hunted shows up, the fuel tank explodes, the enemy suddenly surrenders -- what is their scheme???  And so on.
 
But keeping the battles so they feel like the source material is a very important thing to maintaining a sense of the genre.  If it feels wrong, people will sense it even if they aren't sure why, and that leads to dissatisfaction and frustration.

There are a lot of tricks, the Hero rules actually have a bunch, such as:
Be prepared: know everyone's stats ahead of time.  A sheet with the speed, CV and DEX of everyone helps, and there's an excellent Combat Management program available right here on the Hero site. Give people a set time to decide their actions; if they cannot come up with something, have stepped out to the restroom, had to take a call or something, they hold.  Move along to the next person. People with Power Pools, etc that have to decide a power to use, they have to have that power ready when their DEX and Phase comes up or they use the previous phase's load. Use the OCV+11-3d6 roll for rolling to hit, just say the result, that's what DCV you hit, and the GM can take care of the rest. Group dice by 10's for easier counting. Body for normal attacks is determined with a simple system: count the number of dice.  Add any sixes you rolled.  Subtract any 1's you rolled.  That's the body dealt. Let players help out.  They can resolve damage done to themselves. The old Red October BBS standard of "assign little trash enemies 1 or 2 hits, and they go down" for quick disposal of the less important enemies. When a non critical bad guy goes down, they stay down. Then there are the extreme measures you can take, clipping off rules to streamline.  I don't recommend this but it might be okay for beginning games until people get used to the rules
Don't count END, people just never get tired. Everyone has the same SPD, you just go by DEX rank each phase. Drop combat maneuvers, you just use basic attacks Don't bother with STN damage, just count BODY Ignore various modifiers like range, hit locations, combat maneuvers. Just straight rolls each time.  

It never bothered me much to be out of a fight like that, because I would just watch and enjoy the talk as a player, but I know it is usually very annoying and frustrating for players -- or they get out their distraction box and stare into it instead of paying attention to the game "dude, I'm unconscious, I won't know what is happening and besides I gotta respond to this text and watch a cat video!"

How many points would the equipment that the warrior has access to through coin cost?  Armor, weapons, horse, etc.  Is it equivalent?  Because he's not paying one single character point for that suit of plate armor.

My thoughts on Duke Bushido's concerns (most of this is extremely basic and everyone already knows it, I'm just outlining my philosophy on it):
 
Playing an RPG is a cooperative task.  We get together and agree to what we want to play (Hero System), where we want to play (at Bob's house), when we want to play (Saturday afternoons), and who we want to play with (Bob, Joe, Steve, and Mike, but not Dave -- he's not invited anymore after the incident with the tuna fish).  The Hero System takes the position that the players should have more control over what kind of character they play.  Ever played D&D and you really wanted to be a Paladin/Ranger/whatever, but you rolled crappy stats and were stuck as a cleric or something?  Ever thought it would be neat to play something unique, like a farm boy who found a magic hat that gave him unusual abilities to compete with the big sword/big fireball crowd?  Well the Hero System allows you to do that.
 
In the Hero System, you can take powers and abilities through something called a "focus".  A focus is an object that is required to use the power.  This gives you a discount because the object can then be taken away from you.  If they take away your suit of armor/magic hat/special shield/freeze ray, then you can't use the associated powers.  But one of the inherent assumptions of this particular game is that you have a degree of control over your character concept.  If you want to be the farm boy with the magic hat, then you get to be the farm boy with the magic hat (subject to the agreement of the rest of the people in your group, of course -- I'm sorry Wayne, you can't play Captain Bitch-Rape in a game based on Saturday morning cartoon characters).  That means that even though a focus can be taken away, you can be secure in the knowledge that you're going to get it back at some point soon.  Yes, the orcs can capture you and take away your magic hat.  But normally they aren't going to send it away to the evil wizard on another continent, not before you manage to escape the dungeon and find the hat carelessly left sitting in a storage room.  The magic hat, you see, is an integral part of your character concept.  The discount you received for taking a focus is based on the problems you incur for losing it temporarily, not permanently.
 
Now, as I said, games are a cooperative effort.  You have some degree of control over your character, but not total.  In some circumstances, the GM may decide that the story demands you spend a period of time without that hat.  You've got to go on a quest to reclaim it or something.  And it's entirely possible that halfway through that quest, you say "screw the hat, I want to do something else".  And that's fine too.  But generally you'll get your focus back, because this is a cooperative game we're playing, and it's not real life.  The genre you're playing should have more influence on what happens than what would "realistically" take place.  In real life if you lose your special hat, there's very little guarantee you'll ever get that exact hat back.  But in a cartoon, the animators always draw you with that same hat, so you're probably gonna get it returned pretty soon.
 
When Rocket Pack Man gives the alien rocket pack that he found on the street to Gary Groundpounder, and Gary flies off, that focus may be gone until the GM and the player have a conversation.  Things like "why did you do that?  Do you want to change your character?  You know he wasn't planning on coming back, right?"  And the player is like "I dunno, I didn't think about it."  One of the guidelines for playing in a cooperative game is not to try to ruin the fun -- don't do things that put the other people at the table in a difficult situation (as opposed to putting the characters in a difficult situation, which is fine).  If you wanted to keep your irreplaceable rocket pack, why did you give it to the alien who was going back to his home planet?  Now the GM has to come up with some kind of in-game excuse for how you get it back.  Or he can let you change your character.
 
--
 
The most important thing to realize is that the game rules exist to give us options for playing.  "Focus" is a limitation that generally reflects people being temporarily deprived of an ability.  The easier it is to deprive them of it, the more points it is worth.  But that doesn't mean that everyone with a sword has a focus.  Let's look at some examples.
 
He-Man has a sword.  He-Man is almost never deprived of his sword.  He almost never gets disarmed, though it may happen very occasionally.  Of course, He-Man almost never hits anyone with the sword anyway.  The sword is really He-Man's method of transformation.  He-Man's player and the GM talk about this before the game begins, and they decide that Only In Hero ID is the appropriate limitation here.  The sword is basically an infinitely durable thingy that he holds in his hand and uses to change form, but it doesn't actually do any real damage (because it's a Filmation cartoon and he isn't allowed to stab people).  The sword isn't a focus, it has no powers.  He just has a big boost to his stats with -1/4 "Only in Hero ID" written beside it.  And the way to change is to hold up the sword that nobody ever pays attention to you carrying around.  It's occasionally possible to get stuck as Prince Adam, but it'll be rare.
 
Joe the Fighter is just a standard heroic fantasy character.  He has a variety of swords, some better than others.  They aren't really a focus, they're just a weapon he found.  He didn't pay points for them, he can't sell them for points.  It doesn't matter if Joe is carrying a +2 longsword or a two-handed sword, no particular sword is a core part of his concept.  He is a more normal RPG character, where his equipment is gained or lost entirely through the events of the game.  None of his equipment has "plot protection" where you know that's his special weapon and he should always have a version of it (I'm looking at you, Simon Belmont from Castlevania with that whip you always have).  Nope, Joe the Fighter just uses what's available, and even if he likes a certain weapon, it isn't special enough to him to become a part of his character concept.  If it were, he'd have spent points on it.
 
Darth Vader has a red lightsaber.  Vader is so good with his lightsaber that nobody can ever disarm him (unless, you know, you actually cut his arm off).  Vader may not have actually put the focus limitation on his sword power.  He may not have any limitation on it.  While it looks like a lightsaber and he wears it on his belt, he never loses it once in the entire trilogy.  He just always has his sword when he needs it.  "But couldn't he be captured and the lightsaber taken away?"  Mmmmmaybe.  But he probably cleared that with the GM first.  "Don't worry, you aren't gonna be captured.  This isn't that kind of story."  Vader doesn't get the focus limitation, but also no matter how many times you try to disarm him, it won't work.  He can just use the Force and now it's back in his hand, no questions asked.  Vader comes up with a semi-plausible reason for why people can't take it away from him and therefore they don't.  Remember, there's cooperation in this between the player and the GM.
 
 

You might try something similar to what you see in some MMORPG's, where spells are "learned" from a trainer for coin, not points.
 
The mage has a skill they pay points for, such as Magic, that allows them to cast any spell they have learned. The Magic skill is modified by how powerful the spell is: the more powerful the spell, the harder it is to cast. The trick is to try and make the modifier such that a low level spell (i.e. Magic Missile) that does 1d6RKA is about as easy to cast as a firing a bow that does 1d6RKA on average. That helps keep things balanced between magic users and non-magic users (but not perfect by any means). More powerful spells cost more coin, just as better weapons and armor do.
 
You might also want to consider other balancing factors, such as weapons and armor can be taken away, but a spell can't. That could tip things against the Mage (increasing cost and/or the skill modifier). However, if you require all spells to have a focus then they can be taken away and the balance tips back. For instance, requiring the Magic Missile spell to use a wooden shaft the caster holds in their hand (like a wand) that flies out of their hand and turns to a magic arrow in flight. Then, it requires "arrows" just like a bow does. However, I like the idea of only a very few, special spells requiring a focus, but I'm probably the only one.
 
A disadvantage to all this is, in addition to a list of weapons and armor, you now need a list of spells, too. No player made spells! (Unless approved by the GM, of course). That puts a huge burden on the GM, but I think gives them more control over balancing casters versus non-casters.
 
For what it's worth, I've been working on just such a magic system and I like the way it is going. I just don't have anything yet to release into the wild.
 
Lee

Sadly I've not been able to playtest in actual game play how it plays out, but I know my players would be glad to roll more dice.  rolling 1d6 or d6+1 or d6-1 all comes down to the same thing: its one die.  And as we all know from combined centuries of experience between us all, the single die roll sucks.  Even 2 dice is bad, but its slightly better because then you start to get the rudiments of a curve.

The only way having a set default SPD for constant abilities (and movement, for example) would work is to have it be the highest speed, rather than set for everyone.  In other words, you pay for END on you constant powers on SPD 4, unless you have a lower speed than that, and it only works/is paid for on your phases.
 
One thing that I've been doing for a while is to use a set speed for independent constant effects.  How often does a fire burn you?  On its own speed (which I use 4 for usually).  So if you stand in a fire, you're burned at a set rate, rather than based on how often you move.  That way the Flash doesn't burn to death faster than Joe average.  And you can vary the speed for particularly intense or mild fires: this one is speed 6.

I forgot one last item.  I print sheets for the villains to be thrown away or put in sheet protectors for wet erase marking.  Then when they recover or lose stun/end, I just write it on the sheet.  When a power which uses charges is out, I cross off that power.  I also sort the villains based on the trip sheet.  This only really becomes a problem if there are a lot of villains, but I seem to handle up to 6 fairly well.

Somewhere on here I have the rundown of the numbers when you do the system that way, and its not a notable increase.  Why?  Because KA's take a +¼ advantage, so their active cost compared to the active cost of the normal attack ends up making the DCs very similar in stun damage except at the very low level.  It works out extremely well and has many other advantages besides (such as making it easier for new players so they don't have to learn two kinds of damage and damage classes and all that).

I've always run them as costs END Only when they go off, personally.  I dunno if that's a house rule or not.  But almost everyone buys damage shields down to 0 END anyway.