Steve Long

The only other thing I've written for Tuala Morn (which is part of an overall setting I call "the Northlands" or "the Septentrion") is my PDF detailing Acquitaine (which is the "France" part of the setting, where Tuala Morn is the "Ireland"). I believe that's on sale in the Online Store (and is on DriveThruRPG as well). I'd love to do more stuff with the setting -- it's one of my most favorite of the many I've created -- but they usually require a certain amount of research and "detail" that make them harder to produce than most stuff. But still, one of these days, some of my notes will get turned into more Tualan stuff. I hope you enjoy CB!

Great stuff as usual, Dean!

We're currently trying just such an experiment with Champions International, and if that works well for us the possibility of creating more Fantasy settings, or expanding on TA and the others we have, is a definite possibility. Like many of y'all, I love creating worlds. (Which reminds me, at some point I need to get back to working on my Worldbuilding Guidebook, based on the methods and tips I often teach in seminars at gaming cons.)

In point of fact, Scott, when I designed some of the races and creatures in TA, I drew a little bit of inspiration from some of the art you published in Rogues' Gallery over the years. I've thought about doing a PDF of 6E updates to the TA setting, to cover things that haven't already been updated (e.g., I don't have to update the spells from FHG I and II, since the HSG already does that, albeit with genericized names; same for the monsters and the HSB). Things like Templates and such-all wouldn't be too hard to "convert." But as always, I need to find the time to work on all the little projects that spring to mind, while keeping major projects moving forward too.

That depends on how you look at things. It has (typically slightly tweaked) versions of many powers from Champions Powers (for which USPD I and II were of course predecessors). But there are some powers which are entirely new. There are 46 powers in total (many of which have options to change them, of course).

Thanx! I am currently working on Super-Archery Powers and Metal Powers. I have a few ideas for a couple other power sets, but they're somewhat more complex and may require some actual rules design, so I haven't done much work on 'em yet. Unfortunately, no. I barely know anything about the genre, so I don't want to try to write for it. Sounds like it might be an interesting topic for someone to explore who knows what it's all about. I certainly understand that, but I don't know a thing about that genre, so I can't write about it. But I'm sure there's someone out there who can. I often do myself; I love Allen Varney's take on the subgenre. And the Willingham cover is top-notch!

Howdy, Herophiles! My latest book (in PDF form) is now available: The Celtic Bestiary, a collection of monsters and creatures from Celtic myth, legend, and folklore, is now available at the Hero Games Online Store for a mere $12.99! It features 67 monsters, and is just the right thing if you're in a campaign set in Tuala Morn, have a Celtic-influenced setting in your own campaign world, or would just like to have some cool, unusual monsters to throw at your heroes. Please check it out and pick up a copy today! https://www.herogames.com/index.html/store-items/new-for-the-hero-system-the-celtic-bestiary-r399/

Howdy, Herophiles! My latest book (in PDF form) is now available: The Celtic Bestiary, a collection of monsters and creatures from Celtic myth, legend, and folklore, is now available at the Hero Games Online Store for a mere $12.99! It features 67 monsters, and is just the right thing if you're in a campaign set in Tuala Morn, have a Celtic-influenced setting in your own campaign world, or would just like to have some cool, unusual monsters to throw at your heroes. Please check it out and pick up a copy today! https://www.herogames.com/index.html/store-items/new-for-the-hero-system-the-celtic-bestiary-r399/

Pinnacle Entertainment Group has just made available for just $2 an audiobook of a superhero short story I wrote for them some years ago, entitled "The Third War." Here are the basics: https://soundbooththeater.com/shop/audiobooks/the-third-war/ "Crusader is the most isolated man in Star City. He spent the years prior to the v’sori invasion racking up an impressive body count of supervillains and street criminals. For his efforts, he was hunted by the cops, targeted by the underworld, and reviled by the public as a ruthless vigilante. Since the invasion, he’s shifted his focus to shooting aliens; but he still takes any opportunity to kill the villains and crooks he comes across. Superheroes and cops consider him a villain, the villains all want him dead, and the v’sori would gladly torture him to death if they could get their hands on him. But that doesn’t stop him from carrying out his own private war for Justice. Then Crusader learns the v’sori have built a weapon that could kill every super villain on Earth, destroying the resistance in one fell swoop. Forced by circumstance to work with one of his most hated foes — the indestructible strongman, Invictus — can he adapt his moral perspective and learn to work with criminals he knows he should kill? Or will he let humanity remain under the alien yoke so he can see Justice done?" Please check it out, pick up a copy, and give your ears a treat!

Hey, all y'all Champions players! I've got three new mini-supplements available at the Hero Games Online Store. Each of them expands on CHAMPIONS POWERS to offer an new category of powers. They are: Aquatic Powers, which features nearly four dozen powers for characters who live in or often work underwater. Whether your character is a native of Atlantis, a water manipulator, or has powers derived from a marine animal, Aquatic Powers has just the powers you need to create him! Hard Energy Powers let a character create energy constructs with sufficient solidity and stability to function like physical objects. Since the character can create a practically infinite variety of hard energy items based on his imagination and the perceived needs of the moment, he has far more power at his fingertips than the owner of any merely physical arsenal. Get plenty of ideas of powers such characters have in Hard Energy Powers! Super-Magic Powers presents powers for use in creating super-mage characters who don’t use the Super-Thaumaturgy spells found in The HERO System Grimoire. Instead, these characters have powers that follow a distinct magical tradition — such as Alchemy, Black Magic, or Witchcraft — or which hide behind a veneer of Stage Magic. Super-Magic Powers provides dozens of example powers to help you build these characters. Please check 'em out and pick yourself up a copy! If those three aren't enough, please take a look at my PDFs of Control Powers and Insect Powers, which are still available -- and be on the lookout for more PDFs containing even more additions to Champions Powers!

Oh, I'd say 100%. That's my plan. I built it as soon as I could so that I can enjoy it as long as possible.

Banning yourself might create some sort of meta-black hole that would suck the website into another dimension.... O.o

No, but you can get Taurus or Scorpio.

I wish I could have gotten mine for only $15,000. If memory serves, the wood alone for all the shelves (I needed a particularly high quality wood due to the nature of the project) cost more than $15,000. Overall I believe the bookshelves alone were 20-25% of my budget for renovating my entire house. That's why I had to save up so long to do it -- since I intend to live in this house for the rest of my life, I insisted on getting the best materials and craftsmen available to me. Unfortunately I had to sell a kidney, a lung, a leg, and my Red Ryder BB gun -- but at least I had lot to read while I was recuperatin'.

Sure, I've seen those. My pen chest is essentially a specialized variant of the "flat file" cabinets used by architects, libraries, and other places that need to store large pieces of paper without folding or rolling them.

Perhaps I should return to posting "book porn" pictures of a shelf in my library every week....

Actually, some of us in the pen collecting community do use the term "pen porn" to refer to pictures of pens and pen collections. I've never heard of "pantry porn" before, but as a somewhat OCD-ish person who loves to organize things, I'm sure I'd enjoy looking at some of it. Thanks! I commissioned it from Hartwood Pens in Fredericksburg, VA; it took nearly three years to finish (due to various unavoidable delays, mostly).

As some of y'all out there know, one of my other hobbies is collecting fountain pens. I have a semi-valuable array of a bit under 900 pens so far, ranging from ultra-cheap everyday use kinda pens to expensive works of art that I'd never dare write with. Another hobby is collecting antique maps from the 1920s and '30s, partly to help with Pulp Hero writing. If you need to know exactly where the police station is on Gibraltar in 1934, where the short-lived nation of Tannu Tuva was, or where the railroads run in the Pulp Era Belgian Congo, I'm your man. So, after many years of waiting, I just got a new pen chest that will hold all my pens on the left, and many of my large-ish antique maps on the right. Check it out! Even Persimmon approves.

Congrats! I can barely keep a campaign going for a few months, never mind years. The mind boggles -- but in a good way.

Intriguing idea! I may have to swipe it for APG3.

As you probably know from posts we made years ago, we had planned to do one and I was really looking forward to writing it -- Aaron was going to do all the setting and NPC stuff, while I would write the genre material, character sheets, and other such stuff. Unfortunately, Aaron's death torpedoed the project. While I'd love to tackle the book myself (maybe even as a sectional book), but the sad fact is that we have lots of data that Pulp Hero supplements simply don't sell well. I love the genre and would love to write more for it, but aside from the occasional small PDF product that I can produce myself in my spare time, it simply isn't economically feasible.

That is true, but we have considered doing Danger International as a subgenre book for the Dark Champions line that would cover espionage, terrorism, and related subjects. The problem is that it would require an insane amount of research, because if I'm going to write a book about espionage for gaming, it's going to be the book on espionage for gaming. It would cover everything from one caveman keeping a secret from the others, all the way up to the present day; would include bios/descriptions of many famous spies and espionage capers; tons of espionage equipment; "Espionage Super-Skills" like the ones we see in James Bond movies and the like; and of course a section discussing the genre in general, presenting information and campaigning options from the ultra-realistic to the totally absurd but deliciously fun. Especially since I want to keep moving forward on Mythic Hero, a new DI would take at least a year or two of non-stop effort to write -- and even though I do have a couple of potential contributors in mind (one of whom has worked in the US intelligence community for the past three decades), this is a subject that intensely interests me and that I want to write, not assign to other writers. I'd definitely like to revamp DC for 6E (you can find PDFs where I've already updated the Templates and some other stuff in the Hero Online Store), but we're not going to change the name. Back in 1993 I wasn't entirely wild about it, but eventually I realized that it was better than my original title (Heroes Of Vengeance, which became the subtitle), and since it's been in use for 30 years we don't want to lose whatever brand recognition we've built up for it.

That's something I'd very much like to do as well -- Vehicles is, I believe, the last remaining subject to be covered in what I think of as "The HERO System Core Library" (which is, basically speaking, all the books with blue and gold covers that discuss "fundamental" subjects such as Magic, Martial Arts, and Equipment). I'm not sure if it would be a good subject to write as a sectional book -- I'd need to do a lot of research to update existing vehicle write-ups and find new vehicles to cover (just last week I read a fascinating article on cool military vehicles currently in use or in development that I'd want to draw on for new vehicles, for instance), and it doesn't really break apart into small sections I can cover on a weekly basis (since I'm only budgeted for so much time per week at present). OTOH, a lot of it would just be updating the existing text to 6E rules, which would be much easier work. So I'll give that some thought. As a huge longtime fan of Shadowrun, I certainly love this idea, though I suspect that licensing fees would make it a non-starter (and as much as I love the SR setting, I'm kind of reluctant to spend a lot of effort writing up something that I don't own). In any event, though, before we can even consider this I will have to write a new Cyber Hero genre book, something I've wanted to do forever, have lots of ideas for, and am considering as a possibility for a sectional book or Kickstarter project.

Thanks as usual for the excellent suggestions, LL! I'd be happy to look at whatever data you've compiled that you think would be helpful for Costa Azul (which is the PDF I'm currently working on, assuming the ice storm raging outside my windows doesn't knock out my power like it did last weekend). Please send it to me by direct message, if you can -- or contact me for other options. ARGENT is a subject that we've long wanted to explore in more detail (along with the IHA). Originally the idea was that Allen would write the book, which I was really looking forward to (not only because Allen was really creative and a skilled writer, but because his strongly pro-union, anti-corporations status would lead to a very different product than one written by anti-union, pro-corporations me -- and the final product, once edited by me, would have turned out pretty sweet IMO). Unfortunately that wasn't something we could get to before we had to cut back on staff. It might make a good subject for a sectional book, but I'm not sure; I'll have to ponder that. I have actually been thinking that we might change the title to The Martial World (thus making it consistent with The Mystic World, though it would cause abbreviation confusion ). That way I could present information about subjects other than just martial arts-based villains (though they would, of course, make up the majority of the book). I could cover some martial arts heroes (like Nightwind and Shugoshin), revamp the Tournament of the Dragon, provide a section of "Super Martial Arts" powers in a CP-style format, and so on. When the time comes, I'll post a "What Do You Want To See?" thread that will let Herodom Assembled fling ideas at me like so many inspirational shuriken.

Have no fear, I'm still working on it, slowly but surely. I'm currently doing a lot of research for it and a nonfiction work-in-progress called The Encyclopedia Of Mages, Magic, And The Arcane (or "EMMA," as I like to call it ).