Anaximander

Melange for Dune - Increases lifespan and aids in mental powers but physically addictive.

I think this is the best advise that there is. It also works if you are playing a person of a different ethnic group than what you belong to. The biggest trap to look out for is to avoid playing stereotypes. Perhaps, you could pattern her as across between your favorite female characters and real life women you know.

Looks nifty. I particularly like the UNLESS idea. In my campaign world, the United Nations was founded by an Illuminati type organization and has been ousted by the Federated Nations of Earth as the primary force for global governance, and adherents towards the UN are now my Viper/Hydra type organization, but I am still working on a name for them.

Sometimes comparing stats between different RPGs is like comparing apples to oranges. When in doubt, I would go with what feels right rather than a point for point conversion.

I'm not sure if you want to know what I like in general or what I like in your work; so, I will start with what I like in general and explain what I like in your work. To start, I view myself myself first as a writer who writes in roleplaying games as medium and not a roleplayer first. I also dabble in short story and poetry writing. Among important traits for a writer are a diverse number of interests and being a reader. I do both. I am very eclectic in both reading and other interests, and as a writer, I want my writing to reflect my eccentric tastes. In normal short story, writing in a diverse number of genre and sub-genre is easy. As a gamer, I would also like my gaming to reflect my diversity in story writing, and there are two option in doing that. One is jumping from campaign to another. The other is to find an overarching genre that encompasses a multitude of other genre. I decided that the second option was the better choice and decided that either science fiction or super heroes would do the trick. If I got into a western kick and want to run an adventure, both genres have guns. If I got into a Sherlock Holmes kick, either could be written as a whodunit, and so on. I thought a super hero game would be the most flexible, but that was before I invested in Hero and was creating a heavily modified Star Trekesque game for the Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek game system. Anyway, a few years ago, I took a Creative Writing class in college. The first half of the semester was writing poetry and the second half was writing a short story, and because I thought that was what poets were supposed to do, I wrote in very dark and melancholy tones, and I was making myself depressed; so, for the short story part, I decided to rebel a bit and write something fun and witty. I have a slightly absurd sense of humor, and my humor can be a little dry, and I loving mixing the spectacular with the mundane. If you have ever read the Myth books by Aspirin. In the first book, the main character is in the Bizarre Bazaar ordering food at a fastfood restaurant being served by a troll or something, and I wanted to capture the absurdity of that scene in my short story; so, I needed someone or something spectacular doing something mundane. Super hero movies were just starting to show that they might have staying power, and I grew up reading comic books; so, for my spectacular, I went with super heroes. For the mundane, one of the mundane tasks I most dislike is going to the laundromat; so, I decided to write a story about super heroes going to laundry at an all night laundromat and discovering each others' identities. My goals with the story was a friendly ribbing towards comic books I grew up on while exploring the humanness of the character through a dry humor. The title of the story was "A Night at the Laundry," and it was well-received. I eventually wrote a couple of other short stories for the universe and a definite feel started to coalesce, and the Laundry Knight Universe was born. I also started to think it would be fun running adventures in my universe and started looking for a system that was flexible enough for me to write my universe as close as possible to the way I visualize it. Eventually, I discovered Hero and made the plunge to invest in a book or two and decided that Hero was the for what I want to do which brings me here. In my world, I want to mix elements from the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages eras of comics with mixtures of the action/adventure and sci-fi I used to like in my younger days. I am also going with a Kirbyesque ideal of magic as super science concept; so, magic and magical beings have super scientific explanations which leaves a question of what to do with the gods of myth. Nordic, Greco-Roman, and Egyptian myths and legends play a strong part in both DC and Marvel universes. I had considered that the gods of myth belonging to some kind of super race of aliens which works great for most pantheons. The problem came when I was having to decide what to do with the Greek gods and their Roman counterparts. I liked both the Greek versions and the Roman versions, and in the case of the Greek versions, Greek literature regarding them shifted throughout Greek history. In the earliest Greek literature, they are portrayed they were viewed idealistically while in later Greek literature they were portrayed unidealistically. Originally, I decided that best way to deal with the shift in Greek opinion of their gods was to say that all gods were really just the super heroes of their day who passed on their names and legacies to younger heroes. In the case of the Greek gods, the younger heroes gradually began to degrade in quality and behavior. As for their Roman counterparts, the Roman super heroes simply borrowed from Greek culture by copying the motifs of the Greek heroes but gave themselves Roman sounding names. Coming to your use of gods as super race idea. I like that you explained the similarities of the Greek and Roman gods are because they are family, because it sparked new ideas on how to employ the super race concept in my game. One thing the similar breakdown in archetypes of not only the Greek and Roman mythologies but of most mythologies. The lead god and/or goddess is associated with sky, sun, or weather. There is usually a poet/storyteller/messenger, artificers, war/battle, representations of various ideals and natural phenomena. I notice that when I create superteams from scratch. I also have certain recurring themes. Perhaps, the recurring of themes is just a metaphysic that is true of the universe in general. As far as the change in popularity of the Greek gods, it could have been a result of an ancient smear tactic by some enemy. Today, we would social media. A couple of decades ago, it would have newspapers and network news. In ancient Greece it was poets and playwrights. Also, by accepting that the stories transmitted by ancient poets and playwrights might not be accurate, I can rewrite the backstories of various myths the way the best fit my universe ideal. Kind of like the way you made Hera a strong example of balanced femininity instead of the vengeful shrew she was portrayed in Greek myth.

Museum curators who are really super heroes who seem to have to run off mysteriously at inappropriate times. Museums can house statues and other mementos of the local favorite super hero which attracts various members of his rogues gallery to trash the place.

I view deliberately ignoring stuff for the sake of the story you want to write as totally valid. There are things in my campaign that are there simply because I want them there, and if anyone complains, I chalk it up to genre and story needs, but as someone with slight perfectionistic tendencies, I've thought about an issue before ignoring it. I'm not saying I'm right. Just saying that's how I think.

Don't worry about the delay. I can go long periods where I either don't have time to post or am barely able to post cogently. I am the last person to judge someone for a lack of timeliness.

A few years ago, I returned to college to get my degree, and though I did not go to school for the purpose of becoming a better gamer, a lot of the classes I have taken has affected my campaign design and character creation. I would go into further detail, but my education is still ongoing and I have a paper to write; so, I don't have time right now. I will give examples in a few days.

I didn't know about the multi-generational element. I have only read the first couple of books, but I did find a link to them. http://www.wildcardsonline.com/books.html

How about Bludklaw for your claw fighter?

You should check out the Wild Cards. They are a collection of books written in the 60s about super heroes from a counter-cultural perspective.

I know what you mean. I learn something, forget about it, and learn it again.

The Skald employs various sonic effects from his specially designed lute.

I sometimes learn an interesting fact and I wonder if I could turn that into an interesting character or story idea. As examples, I just learned that northeast Indians are ethnically pure Asian in appearance and receive some racially based suppression from more dominant Indian ethnic groups. I have also learned that there is such a thing as national collegiate-level croquet competitions. I have also heard of a minority Vietnamese warrior tribe called the Hmong. I have come up with a super hero for my campaign who is Hmong. I only just learned of the ethnic issues in northeast India and have not developed any character or story ideas to go with it nor have I created a character that is a collegiate level croquet champion, but I intend to do both. I doubt I am the only one on this board who likes to bring in interesting real world knowledge into their games. What unusual facts have you worked into a campaign or character, or what unusual facts would like to work into your campaigns or characters?

This kind of reminds me of the "Death of Silicon" arguments that have been going on for since discovery of silicon processors. Every time the doomsayers seem to be right, clever engineers prove them wrong by creating work around that prolong the life of silicon as a basis for how technology advances. The same is true of von Nuemann information processing. Engineers keep finding ways to keep those technologies alive. Perhaps, they can do that with wireless Internet communication, but for the sake of argument, let's say that they don't? There has been a lot of progress in understanding quantum mechanics, and maybe, engineers can create a quantum mechanical solution to the bandwidth issue. Within quantum mechanics, it is theoretically possible to teleport information across nearly infinite distances without the information having to travel through the intervening space. Perhaps, they can figure out how to make that work.

For me, I am lucky if I get to play in any game I would like to buy; so, I have owned a lot system and a lot supplements to those systems that I have never played. I live in a small city in northeast Oklahoma. There just aren't that many people who play RPGs around here and many of those who do aren't into what I am into.

That is interesting, and it follows along with some things I have written into my campaign. I have also decided that super heroes have always existed, and that the so-called gods of myth were really the super heroes of their day. I had considered going with the idea that the gods of myth belonged to different ethnic groups of some long-lived and powerful super race, but I decided to go with the idea that heroes often take up the mantles of previous heroes by donning their names and costumes and the reported long lives of the gods was attributed to the fact that there were different heroes using the same name over a long period whose legends melded together. This helped to solve a problem in ancient Greek literature. In early Greek literature, the gods were more heroic and in later Greek literature were jerks. Perhaps, earlier heroes who bore the Apollo name were honorable and heroic while later bearers were self-serving egotists. I also felt this was the best way to have both Greek gods and their Roman versions in the same universe, but making Greek and Roman gods relatives could explain there similarities and assuming false identification and smear tactics to explain their loss from favor towards the end of their popularity could overcome the issues caused by literature, or any number of other possibilities could work. The mingling of "god" blood with human blood not only solves the problem of amazingly long life spans of otherwise normal people. In real life, a typical non-powered super hero career would probably last between 2-5 years before the accumulation of permanent injuries forced him or her into early retirement. The presence of god blood could allow them to heal more completely than they would in real life, and it can explain why common crooks can be flung through walls without permanent injury or death and such as that. As far as having super heroes codified in and protected by the Constitution is brilliant. I have been exploring what sociological effects would occur if much of what occurs in comic books really occurred, but I completely overlooked the affects they might have on important legal documents, like the US Constitution of the Magna Carta, or honor codes, like the Code of Chivalry or the Bushido Code. If you have no objections, I would like to consider some of your concepts for my universe.

It seems to me that bogging down character creation by creating stats for every possible piece of equipment that a character might own would be tedious and not very fun. It kind of begs the question whether you should be required to have appropriate skills before using that equipment Like PS: Smart Phone usage (a skill I lack in real life as I have never owned a smart phone), or PS: AM/FM Radio Tuning. I think I would just not worry about making such things an issue unless it is important to the player's character concept or unless the character can do things with the smartphones that cannot be typically done with real world smartphones.

You have a point. How often do you see a movie or read a story where the protagonist is a hapless loser compared to the other characters but manages to come out on top in the end?

You could upload your collection onto a thumb drive, place the thumb drive on a book shelf, and take a picture of the book shelf.

Interesting use of Arthurian legend, Greek mythology, and Roman mythology. The Morgan le Fey vs. Merlin twist is different. It isn't the first time Merlin was a villain and charlatan in fiction, and I have read fiction that portrayed Morgan le Fey as more misunderstood and sympathetic than genuinely evil, but I having Merlin being the villainous archenemy of the heroic Morgan le Fey is unique, as far as I know. Having both Greek gods and the Roman counterparts in the same universe raises some questions, however. How do you justify their concurrent existences in the same universe while staying in story?

In the campaign I am writing, my Big Gun NPC team has been around for decades, they have lots of equipment, a great headquarters, and such, but they have become rife with internal politics and have become so insufferably arrogant that no one really likes them much, and they are not the first group that people like to call unless there is an extreme crisis leaving plenty of room for a lesser team to fill the popular imaginations of the common people. Another idea is a lesser team could be specialized to a particular type of hazard making them the first to call under those circumstances which gives them opportunities to show up the Big Gun team on occasion.

Bill Picket who was an African-American cowboy and rodeo star who invented bulldogging.

Wasn't a big fan of the Iron Age. I do remember a lot mutant animal martial artists, a few mohawked punk guys, and such, but as far as power and skill sets, I think you pretty much nailed it.