procyon

From my youngest girl at the beginning of the last session.
Daughter/Alley Cat - "We aren't going there.  I'm supposed to keep Jack safe.  So we aren't going there."
Me/GM - "So what are you planning to do?"
Daughter/Alley Cat - "Chicken burritos.  They're safe."
 

From my wife, while firing her energy bolts at a mook beating a fallen police man.
Wife - "I'm not going to take a chance on this one getting away. (rolls a successful hit, then rolls all the dice for her attack)"
Me - "He missed the roll for his armor.  What did you roll for damage?"
Wife - makes concerned face "Oh.  Oops. I may have killed him.  The three other cops are watching me, aren't they."
 
During another session with the 14 y/o boy.
Me - "Do you have Unluck as a disadvantage?'
Son - "No.  I bought that off."  Looks at sheet.  "Um.  Maybe I didn't."
Me - "Go ahead and roll for it."
Son - (rolls) "Um, what number is bad again..."  .

So my wife of 18 years has finally decided she'd like to try out this weird hobby of mine! I'm talking her through the basics of how RPGs work, this is how you create a character, etc. And she asks "Do you have a couple character sheets for characters I'm already familiar with that I could see for comparison?"
 
That loud smacking sound you heard was me & my forehead. Yes. Yes I do. And no, I don't know why that never occurred to me before!

From my youngest girl at the beginning of the last session.
Daughter/Alley Cat - "We aren't going there.  I'm supposed to keep Jack safe.  So we aren't going there."
Me/GM - "So what are you planning to do?"
Daughter/Alley Cat - "Chicken burritos.  They're safe."
 

I did my time in the Army.  Never met a teacher who could even be considered in the same league as drill sergeants.
Not that I wanted to meet one though.
 
And mine generally wasn't instruction through fear.
More, see if they were actually functioning, or still in the 'deer in the headlight' phase.
I would do things like ask them ot calculate a number of values (usually dopler and gravitational redshifts).  Then, if they worked them out - I would take their work over to the chart on the wall to check them.
The looks on their faces usually was somewhere between disbelief and homicidal rage...

Pol Sanderson had always been slow moving. That was why he was the last out when Kaon's experiment failed. It changed him into something that absorbed matter as it moved and added it to its form to become Super Massive.
 
(I guess the mechanic would be ka built into a damage shield, absorption of body from object to feed density increase and strength. Not sure.  The effect is when the power cuts on, it sucks in anything he is touching and builds a super tough form around him until he cuts it off. At the top end, I believe that he would stop moving and just absorb anything until something was done to shut him down.) 

From my wife, while firing her energy bolts at a mook beating a fallen police man.
Wife - "I'm not going to take a chance on this one getting away. (rolls a successful hit, then rolls all the dice for her attack)"
Me - "He missed the roll for his armor.  What did you roll for damage?"
Wife - makes concerned face "Oh.  Oops. I may have killed him.  The three other cops are watching me, aren't they."
 
During another session with the 14 y/o boy.
Me - "Do you have Unluck as a disadvantage?'
Son - "No.  I bought that off."  Looks at sheet.  "Um.  Maybe I didn't."
Me - "Go ahead and roll for it."
Son - (rolls) "Um, what number is bad again..."  .

From my wife, while firing her energy bolts at a mook beating a fallen police man.
Wife - "I'm not going to take a chance on this one getting away. (rolls a successful hit, then rolls all the dice for her attack)"
Me - "He missed the roll for his armor.  What did you roll for damage?"
Wife - makes concerned face "Oh.  Oops. I may have killed him.  The three other cops are watching me, aren't they."
 
During another session with the 14 y/o boy.
Me - "Do you have Unluck as a disadvantage?'
Son - "No.  I bought that off."  Looks at sheet.  "Um.  Maybe I didn't."
Me - "Go ahead and roll for it."
Son - (rolls) "Um, what number is bad again..."  .

Non Sequitur was formerly Adam Lilithski, a scientist known for his inability to explain his advanced theories in a linear order.  As you might imagine, he got laughed at a lot.  His power is being able to alter the order or action of causality--making things happen in reverse order, making correlation equal causality, producing illogical results from standard procedures, etc.

We all live for the happy endings.
I'm glad you got one.
 
 
I'm glad someone can do that work.  I can't.
I may have more than enough nights where I and a mom / dad sit with a box of Kleenex.
But I get to enjoy the happy endings to.
 
At that end of the care spectrum, there generally aren't any happy endings.
You have my respect.  As I have said, I can't work that area.
 
And yes, they talked me into coming in early.
Amazing how there are a bunch of call offs on a holiday weekend...

From my 13 year old daughter during an introductory game - She's playing a Supergirl-lite character vs a bunch of agent level thugs.
 
"But Papa, they're being silly. Why don't we just sing them a song and become friends?"
 
Next stop, Napoleonic figure gaming... Maybe I'll have more luck.

From my wife, during the investigative portion of the last game:
 
"I like it better when I can just hit something...".

From the older son to his younger siblings.
 
"If you don't fight the big bad guy till the end of the story, you won't lose as much."

From the older son to his younger siblings.
 
"If you don't fight the big bad guy till the end of the story, you won't lose as much."

From the older son to his younger siblings.
 
"If you don't fight the big bad guy till the end of the story, you won't lose as much."

Our Champions game has my wife, two sons and two daughters as players.
From our last game.
 
Players are listening to a battle in a nearby room as they get ready. 
The soldier/guard in the other room is blazing away at the big bad guy, followed by a loud crashing noise and then silence.
 
Older son looks at the rest of the groups and says, "Don't worry, he's just reloading."
 
Took five minutes for everyone to quit laughing so we could get back to the game.

How I currently acquired my current group for Hero probably won't work for most.
All it takes is have a bunch of kids, then wait between 1 and 2 decades...

How I currently acquired my current group for Hero probably won't work for most.
All it takes is have a bunch of kids, then wait between 1 and 2 decades...

I think HERO should encourage players - especially in Champions - to think about and write down what they expect the experienced version of their character to look like. It doesn't have to be written in stone like a level based system but it's useful stuff for the player and GM to reference later when the topic of spending XP comes up.  It's the most freeform part of the system.  Putting some structure around it up-front is much easier than after the fact.
 
HM

Ok, it isn't like I am just saying - 'Hey, you don't want to play my way, you only get half the points.'
This is just in respect to 'new players' that are just starting and in all likelihood have never read through the rules.
 
More of what is above - especially with new players.
They don't know what cost there are, how they can spend them, etc.
If they don't already have a contact or favor on their sheet (that I probably wrote for their first adventures) - they probably have no idea it even exists.
So I take what the player says they think the character learned/accomplished - and try to translate it into how that would actually come out in the game on the sheet.
This gets to be a really big deal when a player is (like my youngest daughter in our current game) 11 y/o and it will be years before she gets down the rules.  If she wants her heroine (Alley Cat) to be able to do something - she will come to me and discuss it.  I will draw up the options and list them out as she gains XP - and she can pick what she feels is closest to what she is hoping for.  Of course, there are often times when the response is - 'that is going to take a loooongggg time and a lot of points.  Is that what you are really wanting to work for...
 
When the players get more experienced - I usually stop giving out the 'option' paper as they don't need it and the 'picks' (other than the straight point option) is usually one or two XP more than what they would normally get from the adventure - to try and get them to appreciate character development over min/max development.
Because (in my experience) most new players that have little understanding of the system and only have experience in games that reward becoming the most effective death machine ever - tend to try and figure out what makes that happen and spend every last point in that respect, never bothering to worry about the rest of the options and rules.

Our Champions game has my wife, two sons and two daughters as players.
From our last game.
 
Players are listening to a battle in a nearby room as they get ready. 
The soldier/guard in the other room is blazing away at the big bad guy, followed by a loud crashing noise and then silence.
 
Older son looks at the rest of the groups and says, "Don't worry, he's just reloading."
 
Took five minutes for everyone to quit laughing so we could get back to the game.

Our Champions game has my wife, two sons and two daughters as players.
From our last game.
 
Players are listening to a battle in a nearby room as they get ready. 
The soldier/guard in the other room is blazing away at the big bad guy, followed by a loud crashing noise and then silence.
 
Older son looks at the rest of the groups and says, "Don't worry, he's just reloading."
 
Took five minutes for everyone to quit laughing so we could get back to the game.

From villian to hero.
"If you're fighting fair, you just don't want to win bad enough."

Just me paraphrasing...
 
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
- Albert Einstein
 
Edit because my fingers are dyslexic when caffeine deficient.