Eyrie

I dislike agents that make the PCs feel less super.

I dislike agents that require the PCs to be built on inflated points to be viable.
 
I accept that a few "agents" are actually low-powered superbeings, through equipment, training or both. Most shouldn't be.

For me the problem is that those kinds of large sweeping setting are useless to me.  Except to weigh down a shelf and collect dust.
 
Adventures do no happen at that scale.  A smaller setting book that actually has smaller focused information is far far more useful.  The Sword Coast is what?  The map is around 1200 miles north/south and maybe 600 miles east/west not including the ocean.  The islands are in an area around 300 miles N/S and 100-150 miles E/W?  And even then the SC is an immense area where most of it will never be actually used.  And yet so many settings seems to think mapping out and entire world in even broader wide strokes is "better"??
 
While not perfect, Sword Coast is the best modern setting of it's type.  A broad high level overview of area.  And then individual supplements that combine setting and adventure information for specific locations.  But even then the setting info is suitably imprecise allowing the individual GM to tinker or ignore easily. 
 
Speaking of Hero products, and this is my personal opinion, they suffer from the "Far Far Far Too Much" syndrome.  Too much detail. Too much density.  Far too intertwined.  Too much in on book to effectively use.  If you decide that "blah blah" is not right for you campaign and decide to remove it, the removal is far more effort than you can expend for a weekend game because instances and influences of "blah blah" are throughout the product and you begin to drown in removal and replacement "fixes".   And even if you decide to run it as is, the details and density of text mandates the expenditure of more effort than was required for your most daunting real world professional requirement.   I was able to read/skim the Sword Coast plus an adventure in a single afternoon and ran session zero the next day.  I spent an entire weekend with Narosia, which I had to READ, and after getting through the 2nd culture, took a look and realized there were a bazillion to go.  So it went on the shelf and I was all "D&D it is". 
 
In the games that you actually play, Medieval Stasis isn't really relevant.  If you are slogging down the muddy track between villages on the frontier of the Kingdom Blah Blah, the fact that there is a ruin from the Ancient Ones really doesn't matter.  Even if the GM has turned the ruin into a dungeon.  But to the PC's and the current regular NPC's the exact history is irrelevant.  Oh the GM could easily make up myths and legends for entertainment.  But unless it is to set up a quest, none of the players will care about the "history".  Heck they will not care about any of the surrounding kingdoms/nations/tribes unless their PC's actually need to do something there or counter something here.   The only purpose for extensive timelines or deep histories satisfy the author and provided casual reading for the GM's.  Since reading the complete setting/adventure book by the players should never be done since it would spoil the game, just what value to the weekly session is knowing that 45,000 years before your adventure that the High King Blah Blah rules the Kingdom of Who Cares?
 
As an intellectual exercise Medieval Stasis exists.  But what practical or impractical value does that 1000 pages of minutia have for tomorrows afternoon game session.   Especially when the participants of that afternoon games session are only able to scrape up four hours every two weeks to game and the GM will only be able to dedicate maybe an hour to prep.   That is the market.  
One hour prep for a four hour session every two weeks. 
 
People will spend a couple weeks to read through a RPG's rules.  Not sit down and study them, but to read a few pages here and there over a period of a couple weeks.  Once they believe they know enough they will see if they can get their friends to make PC's.  And if the session zero takes more time than their normal session or the PC's do not intrigue the players enough during that session zero they will not play it. 
 
IF the GM manages to lead the players successfully out the other side of session zero, then he must be able to run the four hour session with one hour of prep for the campaign.  
 
That is why D&D 5th is dominating.  The average GM can prep for today's session with an hour of prep.  Each Adventure book may have six to ten individual encounters, but the DM only needs to read the one they are playing today.  For League night it was common for each tables DM to arrive about an hour early and prep right at the table before the players get there. 
 
Does D&D's world have a long and detailed history?  Yes, after all the game has been around since the 70's and carries all the baggage and detail that comes with it.  Did WotC immediately inject all of the history into their 5th product?  No.  The selected a tiny slice of part of it, boiled it down to just what a DM and players might need and published that.  Medieval Stasis?  I don't know because the info I am using today doesn't really talk about enough that it would come up.
 

I don't think I was meaning that line of thought, though I was probably unclear.
 
The PC's are not unlearned or incompetent, but they also do not have google and an full awareness of what the world holds.  
With over developed setting the players will know the worlds details.  While a good roleplayer can try to ensure that their PC's only act on what the PC would know, there is a vast difference between a player knowing details and playing like they don't and the player actually not knowing and being genuinely surprised. 
 
Players portraying a competent party that gets to discover the truth behind the legend is a lot more fun than players who know what is going on pretending that their PC's do not know.
 
It is less "dumbstruck villagers looking at the ruins of aqueducts, and thinking it’s the products of giants"  and more of "the villagers avoiding the dark forest because of the legendary Beast and the tendency of anyone disappearing and the Heroic PC's venturing into the unknown to end the threat". 
 
A setting book should tell me there is a Legendary Beast and give suggestions on what the beast could possibly be, but leave it to the GM to actually decide what the Beast is.   Making every iteration of the campaigns in the setting different.   This is different from an Adventure Module taking place in in the setting about the Legendary Best in the Dark Forest, and adventure should be completely fleshed out and contain needed everything except the core rules.
 
By definition Adventurers are exceptional and far more competent than the mundane "normal folks".   But that doesn't mean Adventurers have access to a magic google and Wikipedia 

Exactly.   Dont get get me wrong: its wonderful, at least for those players who are into it, to have lots and lots of stuff.  But I have found that in general, about two pages is all you really _need_ to get started.  The rest of your document or background is a guide for what players will learn as they navigate the world or ask questions.
 
Even the history of your world is ptetty much something you do for you, or to make NPC stories interesting: most players flat don't care how the county lines and country borders got to be where they are, or what family was killed a hundred years ago to install the current royals, or what great battle is responsible for the destruction of the bridge that once existed where the "river pier" sits now, etc.
 
Why?  Because they care only about what the world has become as a result of those things, excepting only where those things specifically relate to their characters (you are all part of a secret society dedicated to restoring the rightful ruler to his throne) or the main thrust of the campaign (it is now time to restore the rightful ruler to his throne).
 
This is not a shortcoming in the players; this is reality.  To this very day, I have no idea who went into battle with Andrew Jackson, and if it wasn't for Little Jimmy Dickens, I probably wouldn't know it was in 1814.  Similarly, I have no idea who surrendered to Washington, or where, or even though I know it was July 4, I have no idea if that was the date of the surrender, the negotiations, or the signing of something.   I know Henry Ford popularized the gasoline engine, but I have no idea who invented it.
 
And on and on.  And you know what?  I dont know because I don't need to know; I live in the world that resulted from those influences, period.  What I deal with on a day to day basis in my life has absolutely nothing to do with any of it.  There is nothing I can do to change that, and nothing I have to do to react to any sort of direct, straight-line-from-Ford-to-me impact.  You can shout 'cars!', but we all know Ford didn't invent them, and assembly lines were on the way anyhow. 
 
Ben Franklin and electricity?  There is So much mythologizing about this subject that it is impossible to know what's true and what's romantic fantasy.
 
Same with religions: give me some local ones, period.  I live in rural Georgia.  I have never met a practicing Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist.  Before the internet, I knew _nothing_ about these religions, and today...  Well, the little bit I know today is less than useless to any non-gaming part of my life.
 
Your players are the same as we are: we know what we have to do to cope with the world around us because we have some small idea of what the world immediately around us is.  We don't really have any practical use foe how it got that way.  The players instinctively understand that there characters don't need to know it, either, and if the players themselves aren't interested in setting time aside to read your fancy world build, they aren't going to.  There are exceptions- myself, Chris, Scott (who may correct it and hand it back to you.  ), etc, but for the most part, your massive full-world detailed build out is for _you_.  The players want just enough to make characters and interact with the locals, then they want to roll some dice.
 
😕
 
 

One of the issues I have with many of the setting out there is they have far too much detail.  Far far far far far too much.
 
Right up to the 1900's, arguably up to the 1950's the vast proportion of people on earth were born, lived their lives and died within 20 miles.   The industrial age and the major wars (WW1 & WW2) were really the only thing that lead to massive numbers moving any great distance.  And they basically stopped after returning home until the modern era 1980's+.  Even now we have the largest number of population traveling world wide and still to this day the majority stay withing a 100 miles of home.  100 Miles because modern transportation allows travel of 100+ in a single day, but even with that I still meet people all the time in the US that have never flown or left their state.  I am pretty sure that with a small variance other countries are relatively similar.   I may have personally traveled all over the world, but that was because I spent my entire adult life in or around the Navy.   The extent of most of my high school class's travels have been from my home town to a larger city and then either back or putting down roots at that city or another small town and then staying within 100 from there.
 
Why do I say this?
 
Because the issue I find with fantasy setting is that they are written from a global view with billions of high tech satellites recording everything for the last 50 trillion years or so instead of what they should.  Cover a single area that can be covered by a horseman in a few weeks surrounded by an empty map labeled "here be dragons".   Did the ancient/old world have large urban cities?  Yes.  But they were the exception rather than the rule.  There were far more smaller cities and towns than metropolises.  Even New York City, London and other modern cities were far smaller than they are now in 1800's.  The were certainly amazing the people of the times in comparison to what was the norm at that time.  But still much smaller.  
 
My point is that the need by game companies to write massive entire world guides is why they don't get played.  One of the few things I thought WotC did right with D&D5th when they launched was reduce the "official" world to the Sword Coast.  And then slowly add bits in completely stand alone guides that could be used or ignored with the majority expanding on the Realms.  The non-Realm settings are covered in single digestible 250ish page books.   In other words they are accessible to new players and DM's.  Accessible in a time frame of hours.   Not months.
 
The initial book for a setting should be targeted at a single area and narrow the PC options down to at most a dozen occupations for a handful as in 4 or 5 "races" in a single culture.  If options are in the book the players will NOT PLAY until they have read all the options and then calculated the best PC build.  Narosia and Runequest are examples of game that actively bar and discourage new players.  There are so many races cultures and options that after owning both for years, decades for Runequest, I have not run either recently.  I played Runequest in the 80's but simply do not have the time to absorb what it has become.  For Narosia I still have not had the time to complete a good read, and I have not been able to get any players to even try.   
 
If the options exist, players will not play unless they can understand enough to understand those options.  
If the players cannot have a general understanding with the first evenings read, they move on. 
 
The same for a setting.  If the setting is too wide with too much info it will see less use.  Take a step back and really look.  D&D 5th has all kinds of settings if you include third party, but the only ones people are really playing are the thin books like sword coast.  The tomes like Midgard are not.  The thin books are limited in the area, player options and timeline they can cover.  The tomes are huge and simply have too much information for initial games. 
 
Start small in a single geographical area that the PC's can adventure in and that the GM can digest in a few days.  Then add supplements to expand if people get excited.  
 
Fantasy Medieval society.  Most are illiterate.  Most books and scrolls that contain lore are in carefully horded "libraries" with most being simply the writings of someone of which most are only copies.  And at most they have only been read by a fractional minority of the population.   Bree was just a days journey from Hobbiton and yet the two considered each other odd and weird, places to take care if you visit.  Anywhere more than a few days was thought of almost as fables and tall tales. 
 
Narrow the focus, anything known from lands 50 miles away would be highly embellished.  Further out would be legends and tales.  History would be from tales told by the grandmother and grandfathers sitting around the hearth in the evenings that they learned from their grands.  Tales that have probably become unrecognizable after 20 years. 
 
I have no Medieval Stasis issues because the topic really never comes up to the players or most games beyond "it's an ancient artifact from the blah blahs."  Who were the blah blahs?  No one really knows, they vanished from world countless years ago and now are only remembered in tales and legends. 
 
If I buy a setting book with too much info I usually do not actually use it.  I move on the things that allow me to actually run a game.

Let's borrow the classic Spidey line.  With great power comes great responsibility.
 
This is near-infinite power...which means near-infinite responsibility.  And therefore...burden.  Consider someone with perfect healing...can't reverse aging per se, but can eliminate any disease or condition no matter how far advanced, and can fix any non-fatal damage, even brain damage from a stroke, or long term damage from blows (CTE and the like).  This person will have *overwhelming* requests for services.  The more he heals, the more healing gets requested.  Note that I'm assuming the power's limited to a single person, or at most a few people, at a time;  suddenly snapping your fingers and everyone within 100 miles is healed is far, far too much.  I gotta put SOME sanity checks on things.
 
So how long before the hero burns out under this much pressure?
 
Is the gem powerful enough to clean up the oceans?  Or reverse global warming, or the related concern of reversing the increasing acidification of the ocean?  (That's what's damaging the coral reefs.  The ocean is a carbon dioxide sink, but dissolved CO2 becomes carbonic acid, and that has numerous, nasty related impacts.)
 
On the flip side...if the gem IS powerful enough to clean up the oceans, and the hero is constantly called upon to fix the messes everyone thinks they can make now, the whole resentment/burnout cycle comes back into play.  How long can you spend cleaning up other peoples' messes when they refuse to stop making them?
 
Mild spoiler if you haven't read Eddings' Sparhawk books, but at the end, Sparhawk realizes *he* has this much power.  And asks that it be taken...because it can only lead to problems.  Make a perfect world?  By whose definition of perfect?  A loved one asks you to do something...can you refuse, when that will make them unhappy...and by definition, make YOU unhappy?  Can you hear the cry of the lone child amid the anguish of millions?
 
So one tactic to attack Our Hero is to push any of these angles.  You can't tempt him in the normal sense;  you can try to co-opt or sideline him.
 
 

After seeing the title, my first thought was: isn't that a GM

may I add Christopher Lee

Orcs... a fantasy staple race now popularized almost anywhere.
 
I ran a game (past tense) where I decided that it made no sense for orcs to be so brutal, warlike, aggressive, unintelligent. A society of people like that simply would collapse without workers, farmers, or craftsmen.
 
So I created a world where orcs were a true society. There were three varieties: urban, savage, and nomadic. The urban orcs were like any other civilization: intelligent, organized, specialized in their tasks (traders, farmers, craftsmen, soldiers, leaders, artists, philosophers, witches, shamans, etc.) The savage orcs were like the orcs we know today: brutal, tribal, aggressive, somewhat isolated, highly prolific, and relatively primitive. The nomadic orcs were a bit of both: civilized, intelligent, organized, but cunning and somewhat militaristic, raised with a philosophy of domination, and to some extent, xenophobia. But they did get along reasonably well with others, despite their xenophobia. You could talk to them.
 
And within each subgroup you could find individuals who fell right into the stereotype and those would be far from the norm. Anything was possible.
 
So, you could meet all types of orcs, and you had to decide how you personally would want to react to one orc or another, not because they weren't orcs anymore, but because you now had a choice. It no longer was "black & white".
 
I liked the idea and it threw up a lot of interesting situations, like when the party was joined by a nomadic orc warrior detachment who encountered undead with the party. The orcs thought this was not acceptable and offered to join the PCs to destroy a common enemy. Not your typical orc interaction, but it was great for the story and the roleplay. Unfortunately I also had one player who could not tolerate the idea that orcs were not the "evil, ugly brutes" that he knew and loved to hate, so he almost immediately quit the game. To each their own, I say.
 
So, then I decided that it was actually orcs who had been here longer than humans. They had an ancient civilization with magical and mechanical wonders that were lost thousand of years ago due to some cataclysm. But the remains of their cities and fortresses were scattered throughout the lands like pockets of buried treasure, ripe for the looting by clever thieves and research by enterprising mages. If they could get past the prodigious magical and mechanically animated guardians. It made for an interesting contrast to see how low orcs had fallen in recent centuries when compared to their ancient predecessors, and it gave the orcs historical significance and a past they could be proud of.
 
It made for a very different game where players actually had to truly consider the orcs, and in some places, admire them, instead of just hating them by default.

An Amazonian looking woman in a red and black costume with exaggerated spikes on her shoulders steps out as the commercial starts, "Hi. I'm the villainess Bonecrush!  Some folks know me for my amazing Prius chucking abilities, others scream in terror as I dangle their chosen heroes such as Australian Ninjas over the wreckage of a building I helped decimate. I was having a successful career as a bad guy! I was really getting up there, but like many twenty first century super-criminal women, I wanted MORE than just career. I wanted someone special in my life. Someone I didn't have to kidnap to get a 10 minute conversation with."
 
A Mars Unit pulls up, their law enforcement vehicle being used as cover as they draw out their high powered weapons "Freeze!"
 
She sighs, grabs an empty garbage dumpster and flinging it up where will land on the Mars Police unit, forcing them to flee. After it comes down with a huge smashing WHAM she continues, "I admit it, I was lonely, and I was missing romance. Sure, I knew other supervilains, but a lot of them just weren't connecting with me. I'm okay with world conquerors, high tech assassins, and vengeful maniacs, but... some of them get handsy before they know you- Ugh, what a turn off."
 
Bonecrush holds up her smart phone, "That's when I found Rend-er! The Dating app for Supervillains! I took a compatibility test, gauging my limits of what's acceptable to me ethically. A personal example? Removing spines non surgically? YES. "  She smiles , then goes on "Ketchup on Spaghetti? NO"  A look of disgust, before her expression  turns cheerful again, "And Rend-er takes that all into account! And now I'm meeting with bad guys who don't just desire and admire this big bullet proof body, they respect and want to talk about what I value in my life of mayhem! Who knows? The chances of meeting Mister Right just went up, " She pauses and covers her mouth coquettishly  with a glove that has an old blood stain on the index finger that just hasn't quite washed out, then winks and smiles as she removes it "Or should I say ? Mister WRONG for everyone else... but me!"
 
SUBTITLES FLASH ACROSS COMMERICAL SCREEN IN SMALL PRINT:
Render is for Entertainment only. Render is not responsible for undercover superheroes who may use you to get information on your next crime and or make you want to reform. Some applicants may lie and seek to use your genetic material, blood, or very soul for even grander dark schemes. Render is also not responsible for your secret identity or plans being discovered by spunky reporters you will want to kill later. Please use the Rend-er app with caution for these reasons and more. But isn't love worth it?

Well, thanks for that!

I just was sort of frustrated for a moment with the normal stance of Alien = Human + Thing. So, I thought about why that bothers me, and got that ramble. And then made the Alien of the definition of Human + thing.

Aside from Texans.

I used to GM for a superhero team that was kind of like Suicide Squad, but not actually villains... more just less-publicity-friendly heroes who had gotten a bad rap, or had edgier personalities, etc.  It was like Suicide Squad in that they were sponsored by an off-the-books, "black op" government agency that called them in when ordinary govt. agents couldn't cut it, and they were sort of deemed expendable (or at least, disavowable). Their charter allowed them greater freedom of action, so they could take steps ordinary police or other govt. agents couldn't
 
They were the Proscribed-Operations Level Ten Emergency Reserve, Government-Endorsed International Superhuman Team  (P.O.L.T.E.R.G.E.I.S.T.)

I have actively avoided commenting in this thread, for several of the reasons some folks have touched on:
 
Go through a list of comic book supers--
 
Spiderman
Hulk
Electro
Plastic Man
Ghost Rider
Captain Marvel
Iron Man
The Flash--
 
These are all (as far as I know) Americans.
 
Yet they aren't called "Some distinctly American spider"
Hulking North American
Plastic Bags Strewn through Cacti Man
Spirit of '76 Rider
Captain Marvelous Bald Eagle
Iron Horse
Racing Stars and Stripes
 
 
I admit (yet again) that I'm no expert, but from a few googles, Flag Suits  and country-specific themes are actually kind of _rare_ (and openly mocked, even if good-naturedly).
 
While the idea of someone introducing himself as "Wom-Batman" tickles me to no end, That very same list-- Spiderman, Hulk, Electro, Plastic Man, Ghost Rider, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, the Flash-- even their power sets-- would be just as at home and proper on an all-Australian cast as it does on an all-american cast.
 
Sure-- I had that momentary flash of a telepath / illusionist hybrid "I will show you your worst nightmare!" based entirely off a photograph of a wet koala I once saw, but immediately I saw all the problems trying to give him an "Australian" name or theme.  Such things just don't really seem to happen, and certainly aren't important to the validity of character "belonging" in a particular setting.
 
I'm not saying you're wrong for trying; it might be just me.  I just really felt the need to mention it.   And remember: it _could_ just be me; I don't do "theme teams" either, for very much the same reasons.
 
 

Since I ran two long playtest campaigns in which most of the characters were mages with honkin' big Multipowers, and a few had small VPPs, I can assure you that not all GMs feel that way!
 
But GM tastes differ. My Dark Champions PC Repairman had a small Gadget Pool, only change out of combat in his Base, and only for "realistic" technology. My GM said he still found it a headache to plot around, and he'd never allow VPPs again.
 
I don't think I'd ever allow a PC with a big VPP, magic or otherwise, because I wouldn't want the game to bog down while the player calculates new Powers. But I now like the group to have one character with a small VPP. At least for supers. It gives me some assurance that I can design situations without worrying whether the PCs can actually handle them -- if they are clever at thinking of just the right little Power to get them through to the main conflict. I've never seen it be a Win Button, but I've seen it be a Don't Immediately Lose Button. And very often an Oh That's Just So Cool Button.
 
Dean Shomshak

Absolute 0
 
The Universe will end in either Fire or Ice it has been said. For Absolute 0 it needs to be ice. He is attuned in one way or another to every atom and every molecule, everyone of them, everywhere. It can feel when a sun goes nova, when one mortal does harm to another, when a planet is poisoned and corrupted. It knows when the fabric of time or space are torn asunder by powerful interdimensional beings. It can not escape this pain, these feelings. The only thing it wants peace and quiet, an end to all the endless noise that is existence. The only way to do that is the way it did it in the last Universe it was in : stop all the motion in all the atoms so that everything dies, everything becomes silent, all the buzzing and humming and thrumming finally stops and it can once again know peace until the next Universe starts.

Will your fief have any impact on the game?  If you are not getting any in game benefit to having a fief then it does not need to be purchased or even written up.  Even if some parts of the game takes place there you may not need to purchase anything besides the wealth perk.  If your fief is just an ordinary village with ordinary buildings you don’t need to write it up as a base.     If your manor has some sort of magical protections or other special abilities then you may need to write it up.  

OK here's the intro to the GM book, I have some placeholder art I did of Viper agents a while back I'll stick into these, but they are dated (VIPER doesn't look like that any more).  This gives a sense of the basic layout and look I have in mind, and how I tried to bring GMs into the ideas of the game and playing RPGs at all.  The player book I intend to be simpler, less wordy, and more image-y
 
Champions Begins Intro.pdf

Ah, thanks for the pm.
 
Apparently, I'm the comic relief.
 
As long as I'm not the Comic Sans relief....

Hard to be precise with colors, but something like this?

At page 58 6E1 it says that combat condition is for skills not normally used in combat, for me magic (skill power) is a skill used in combat, so I don't apply the negative modifier

Historically, imprisonment wasn't a penalty in most societies. You would stick someone in a tower (donjon) or underground only for the duration it took to judge them.

Then you would kill, mutilate, flog or enslave them according to your laws. If you couldn't punish them that way, you might, perhaps, just leave them imprisoned for an indefinite period.

Well, I am going to be "that guy" and ask "why"?
 
Are the player characters going to be repairing the roads? 
All my fantasy games use swords and yet I have not written up one forge.  Or mine for that matter. 
I know that there is a write-up for a horse out there somewhere, but I have never used one.  I jot down a basic stat block with just the basic capability of the horse.  I don't need the entire point build, just movement, carry and basic damage needed to kill/disable the horse.
 
What I mean is, I write up items and magic that is used in play by PC's or NPC's/Creatures that the PC's face. 
 
While it can be fun to write up various things, exactly how much in session play actually needs specifics on road repair? 
The road people have a spell they use to fix the road. 
It is their secret.
It is hard. 
Done.
 
 

Dancing doesn't appear on the skill list, which means GMs must decide which category it falls into for their campaign. GMs might even decide to create an entirely new skill for it. Electing to not toss it under the Professional Skill umbrella might be desirable in a particular campaign/setting because, as 6E1 points out:
 
 
So a GM trying to capture the spirit of an RPG like Pendragon or C&S may easily conclude that PS: Dancer is not the equivalent of a Dancing Skill, and doesn't provide any of the abilities Dancing does. Creating a new Dancing skill, based on DEX and with the 3/2 price schedule may be exactly what the campaign calls for.

We have dampeners in our games as well, but they're different from the "official" ones.
 
Stronghold suffered from the same problem that vehicle rules did:  We needed them before they came out. 
 
By the time Stronghold was published, we had a super prison.  We had "dampeners," too.  Ours were a good bit simpler, though: they were a constant Drain: END.  They maxed out at leaving you with 4 END (just sort of handwaved) so that you could function: get up; walk around-- etc.  People with _really_ high REC could get a bit sneaky, here and there, but we were actually pretty happy with that result, too: we didn't want something that worked flawlessly; that was just too hard to swallow.
 
Drain END worked really well because, as those of you who played older editions likely remember, Reduced Endurance was _way_ expensive!   
 
We only ever had one character manage to overcome them, though (to this day, she wears them-- they were a boots / gauntlet combo-- as part of her costume, partly as a reminder, and partly as a psyche-out to anyone who knows what they are), so they must work reasonably well.
 
I am in nigh-complete agreement with whoever it was that said he preferred the original "tailored to your powers" version of the prison rather than the one-size fits all modern prison, and particularly with the "the new design allows them to mix and mingle and cause trouble, etc." thing in the new one.   Make all the civi rights noise you want, there is a certain amount of "the entire staff puts their lives in very real danger" that is just unacceptable and unworkable.
 
My issue with the portable dampeners is that they work: the dampen powers _mechanically_.  That is to say that they dampen Flight produced by my ability to manipulate the gravity around me _and_ the Flight produced by my surgically-implanted rocket-pack and mechanical wings.   There are those occasions where we just accept "Mechanic trumps SFX."  There are also those points where it's a bit too much to swallow.  That's why we ended up going with Drain: END with ours.