Altair

Yeah, It's tricky to make heads or tails of the character sheet copypaste, sorry. Is the character for a particular game? 200 character points, I'm guessing? Some context would be useful in helping out. Which book/edition are you using? Anyway, to take a stab at some questions: I'm not sure what your END is from the above, but a 25 STR attack will set you back 2 END, which is very little. Also, END is cheap, so getting more shouldn't be an issue On the character sheet, there's that little section in the lower left called "Attacks & Maneuvers:" that's got your basic combat options there. A basic "punch," would be Strike, which just does your STR damage, nothing fancy. And that's how you punch!Or kick Or headbutt Anything, really - Hero provides rules for what happens, but the how is usually left undefined by the system To take your damage up from 5d6 to 8d6, you'd want some kind of a Hand-To-Hand attack, which is a power. 3d6 is 12 points by itself, but if you were to add the limitation Obvious Inaccessible Focus (often abbreviated to OIF) - which would be something like a knife, or some other weapon that could ostensibly be taken away - then you could get the cost down to 7 points. For anything else, it'd be nice to see the character sheet in a readable format, to know what book you're using to build the character, and what the game they're in is going to be like.

I enjoyed the history lesson. Once upon a time I was a budding music critic; during this time I developed an overwhelming desire to drown my readers in context. To this day, when I read a music or video game review, my immediate thought is "ok, what other things do they like?" Same thing with game design. So, reading you talk about the impact that Ninja Hero had on you, what you liked about it and why, was really informative. Frankly, I wish every RPG line developer would do a little essay about games that were influential to them, and how that effects what they see their game line as being about/for/good at. Anyway. I enjoyed muchly!

@ Scott Baker - yeah, this has been going on for about a month. I've been making cardstock models while doing other things; I discovered I enjoy doing so. It's something to do with my hands, much like many people knit or crochet, I apparently make buildings out of cardstock. This isn't even for a game, the buildings just keep showing up! It has made my friends more excited to mess around with Champions, however. @Tech - short video commercials? For each game? That sounds awesome. I've considered making trailers for games in Flash, but I haven't really touched it since sophomore year of undergrad. What software do you use?

Cardstock has been employed. http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/268-%7B%3F%7D/ Three glorious dimensions!

Thanks! The links are pretty much in-line with what I've found online; very few people talking about PAH, and those who have something to say praising it to the heavens. The sole review on Amazon is pretty sterling, from someone who isn't using it to play Hero. Thanks for the clarification; I think I have a pretty good grasp on the mechanical differences between Super/Heroic (Heroic also trends toward much smaller numbers across the board if I'm not mistaken) now; I'm actually more curious about qualitative differences. Also, balance from a GM perspective. I'll dig around the forums, I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseam.

Everybody that I know who has read Steelheart has recommended it with great vigor. It currently sits atop my "to read" list, as soon as I've finished The Lotus War.

So, I have a deep and enduring love of Post-Apocalyptic settings. The Fallout series, Mad Max in all of its gonzo absurd glory, Wasteland (which IMO, kind of splits the conceptual difference between those first two), the weirdness of Nier, and so on. I've got a setting that I've been working on for 5 or so years -- when I remember it exists -- that I've never run anything with. Partially because endless tinkering is a thing, and partially because I never really found a system that really clicked for me. One of the types of games I wanted to run was a scrappy, survival-based game with lots of cover-based combat, drawing heavily on the excellent Jagged Alliance 2 in terms of what I wanted combat gameplay to be like. GURPS was recommended, and it's one of those relationships that just didn't work out. I'd been hacking Shadowrun 4th, then 5th into a shape that I liked, but not too seriously. Enter my recent discovery of/infatuation with Champions Complete. So! I've heard a lot of great stuff about PAH, but it's been mostly of the generic "it is so goooooood" variety. What makes it awesome? How much of it is 5th edition-specific mechanical bits? I've heard it's useful as a general campaign/genre guide - if I went the opposite direction of Hero and ran something in Apocalypse World, would it still be useful from a setting/world-building perspective? Related tangent: Heroic-level games: what's different? Advice? Maybe an existing thread that addressed that question thoroughly long ago? Danke!

Cool, thanks! And yeah, I dig these little micropdfs, seeing how different effects that aren't necessarily in Hero's native language is always interesting to me.

Word. I like that there's a wide variety of what I consider to be really good universal gaming systems now. My initial interest in Hero was in an attempt to get something more granular and better suited to simulation that I was pleased with. GURPS just never really worked for me, so I'm thrilled to pieces with Hero now that I'm getting an understanding of it. I love that Hero can provide experiences like that. In my experience, the system really does model a very wide array of characters, and its assumptions about the world line up very well with what I like in games.

Eh, not really. The system - while highly dynamic - is pretty solid, with consistent mechanics. Now, it's a lot more abstract than something like Hero, but that's by design. I really like Fate! I also really like Hero! They are very different ways to approach similar questions.

Picked up Control Powers, think it's rad. Quick question, though. Absolute Effects. Is there a guideline that I'm missing somewhere on how high that should be? Specifically, I'm not sure where the numbers for Immobilize come from, they seem a lot lower than the others. All in all, I think it's a useful little pamphlet on how to get that character type translated into any RPG, not just Hero. Nicely done, mate.

Most players I ever worked with was 10 in one game. That was... certainly something. Keeping 8 players engaged is a tall order indeed. A couple thoughts on that: I think zslane's advice on action scenes and pacing should be pretty valuable - with that many PCs, keeping them all engaged is a must. With a party of that size, if they don't have interpersonal agendas with each other, that's really more weight than the tabletop format is suited to bearTo that end, if you can break off a group to address something that doesn't need GM attention, and split them off in another room, it can give everybody more to do. Formulate a plan, analyze the high-level strategic goals, or pursue dramatic goals that involve other PCs.If your players aren't interested in that kind of thing, or the game/characters don't support it, then there's no harm in that. But, I would strongly consider splitting the group into two games - one with 4 players, the other with 3 - presuming that someone else in the game can GM. Large play groups can be great, but present a whole bunch of structural issues that need to be addressed. A lack of engagement from 8 other people is not necessarily an indictment of the GM; it could simply mean that the group isn't best served by a megascale game

So, there's this discussion regarding how to make Superman interesting. Many like the character, though I am not usually one, for many of the reasons you list. "Superman is in a fight Gee, I wonder if he'll be ok?" - said pretty much nobody ever. If he action scene has one goal/two outcomes (Supes wants to win/survive; he either does or does not), then it's dull as anything. Of course he'll survive, he's Superman. But, if the goals are: Get Information From the Villain (hopefully through polite questioning post-apprehension) Rescue Jimmy Olson Prevent Civilian Casualties Keep Cute Coffee Shop Intact for Upcoming Date With Lois ... then we have a lot of different potential outcomes. Supes could rescue Olson and prevent any other casualties, but lets the villain get away in the process, he could get everything right but lose the coffee shop, he could have to choose between Jimmy and a couple other bystanders, etc. Basically, the idea is that Superman's physical peril is the least interesting thing we could be paying attention to. So, we pay attention to other things, which are actually in question. To bring things back on point, for an old-school, D&D-style sandbox game like the OP is planning, personal physical peril is an integral part of that classic setup, and is likely to feature pretty heavily. IMO, HERO is a great option for that style in a single player game; its tendencies towards PC survival mean that your player doesn't necessarily need a stack of characters ready to replace their fallen hero - provided they hire competent assistants to drag their incapacitated body back to town Normally, I'd be pretty leery about the chances of that type of game succeeding in a 1-on-1 setting; after all, if the PC dies, there's no party for them to meet back up with, yes? It's a TPK. Hero's bias toward survivability tilts that math in the PC's favor. Though if I were them, I'd be asking the OP if the resurrection power is ok in their world, just in case. (Tangentially related: hot diggity, do I adore how relatively cheap self-resurrection is in this game! It's very exciting to me.)

If the PC doesn't have anything important at stake besides avoiding physical injury, that can be just as true. Again, I recommend John Rodgers' excellent (if not perfectly SFW) blog post on writing action scenes. In an action film, we know the hero's not going to die - we've seen them do stuff in the trailer that hasn't happened yet - so how can there be any tension in an action scene? The short version is that if the only tension in an action scene is whether or not the main character dies, then it's poorly written, and we can do better. On the other hand, if you're going for a gygaxian high-fatality, low-character attachment dungeon crawl, then immediate danger is one of your best tools. All depends on the type of game you're going for.

Also, there was mad chuckling over here. I shall communicate such in the future

@ zslane: All valid points. I don't think that we disagree, but rather, have some different experiences/expectations/tastes. I find that when I'm playing in shorter time periods, the screenplay model is very useful. In the longer sessions my group tends to do (my Space Opera game runs about 12 hours for an average session), the novel/manga/serial model is much more useful. Down time allows pursuit of less time-sensitive goals, and random character interaction. My group asked for more of this, and has singled out my "enforced down time warp system" (warp gate-to-warp gate FTL travel, which moves at a constant rate - can't go faster or slower, and it's usually a couple days between planets) as one of the things they've really enjoyed. Interior decoration, inter-crew romances, scientific research, blogs and a truly bonkers karaoke party for the Captain's birthday are the kinds of things that happen in down time. They've been really memorable, the players have loved them. Conversely, they tend to like it less when everything's under time pressure. Again, not saying you're wrong! The advice is spot-on. And when I find interest lagging in my game, that's usually when they catch a distress call, or get attacked by pirates, or stumble into the villain's latest plans, etc. But when I've had too much time-sensitive action in a row, my players start to disengage. I pretty much chalk that up to the amount of time the games run - after all, a screenplay with no extraneous moments is a glorious thing, but a novel or serial with no extraneous moments lacks dynamics. /2 cp

So, the cats I've been playing with are super big into Sentinels - I think it's glorious and lovely. I don't really play it, because card games tend not to be that much fun for me, but I adore the thing, it's just full of character. For anybody who likes superheroes or (inclusive or) card games, I cannot recommend it enough. In the quasi-setting we've been playing around with in our Hero games, the Sentinels are the first generation of supers, and showed up in the 60's. I have Haka statted up on 600 points; one of the PCs is his niece, so I thought I might as well do so

For sure. Again, this is in the context of a more combat-sparse environment, where in a biweekly game, about 24 sessions in a year (accounting for misses, etc.) we might only see 5-7 combats, maybe less, as opposed to every session. In that context, having a quick romp added to the total tends to work much better, than if it's a focus of the game.

That can depend greatly on the type of gamers you have. For some groups, that can be richly rewarding, and keep everybody invested in the events of the game. In my experience and observation, this has more often led to "let's just clear the level" type of disengagement, than it has serious investment. I find it more in-line with Spence's comments - it's about fit. If people want a series of urgent dilemmas, with all the in-between cut out, then that'll go great. It could also sabotage your game. Really depends on the group. I'll definitely agree that matching the type of game to the group can really be a shot in the arm. If people feel like the game drags on, and they lose interest, maybe inject more action like Zslane suggests. If they feel like the game is one big string of rooms with enemies, then maybe give them something that isn't so time-sensitive. And this really comes back to dialog. Zslane entered the RPG hobby through wargaming - I came in through my university improv class. We tend to have different ideas about the kind of game that we'd like, and there's nothing wrong with that. And if you have a group with a strong established preference, great! But if you have different play styles in your group, then catering to all of them in the same game can be difficult, but is also manageable. I cannot recommend Robin Laws' excellent Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering enough. Very practical, but also accessibly academic.

Yeah, I'm very firmly in the clear lines of communication camp. Note: this can very quickly lead to intense conversations and hurt feelings - nobody likes to hear that something they've put a lot of time and effort into is falling short of expectations. I would say, bring it up but don't be confrontational about it. If people feel like they're being personally attacked, they tend to get defensive, which serves no one's interests. From a communication perspective, this is the time to employ "I" language. Example: "You guys want to goof off instead of playing" vs. "I feel like we're having trouble focusing on the game. What's not working, and what can we do to fix it?" The first one is likely to be taken as an attack, and is more likely to result in a fruitless conflict. The second shifts the perceived responsibility away from any one person, and focuses on actionable steps. This kind of language choice is even more applicable in an RPG group dynamic, because it really is a group endeavor; fixing the issue is going to be easier if y'all work together. /communication lecture

Ban laptops during game hours. I'm totally a new-generation gamer, I have .pdfs and spreadsheets on my computer, I use it for gaming things all the time. So, I get having them out during a game. They were starting to become a distraction, though. So I suggested we try a game without them, and it was a serious improvement. Not saying that one should do that all the time, but it can be a real help in focus. How long are your typical sessions?

Bangin'! Seems like lots of Champions, sensibly adapted for individual groups, and reflecting ongoing play as every setting pretty much must be. Follow-up question: what are some of the defining traits of the setting? I played a bit of Champions Online, and I've read CC, but I don't really have a good feel for the setting. What makes Champions the choice? Is it simple convenience? What's cool about the setting? Thanks!

Necessary Evil is the hotness. I was never sold on SW for supers, but man. The hotness. Oh man, I didn't realize that the Detroit -> Millennium City thing happened in game time. I always assumed it was setting backstory. Cool! Out of curiosity, why are you going pre-cataclysm? Just don't want anything as dark as that in your supers setting? Didn't like the way it was handled? Have your own plans to destroy Detroit?

Pretty much what it says on the tin. Do you play in the Supers genre? If so, what setting do you use? Champions? Marvel/DC? Something still licensed, but less mainstream like Robert Kirkman's Invincible, or Brian Michael Bendis' Powers? Perhaps a custom setting of your own design? Or maybe a mishmash of the above, multiverse style? I'm sort of under the assumption that people play a lot of Champions, and I'm curious what the setting has going for it. In general, there are pros & cons to all the above approaches; I'm curious what people have found enjoyment in. Thanks!

I stand suitably corrected regarding sympathetic damage. Very cool! Man, this system just keeps going with what it can model, huh? I shall rephrase that to be, sympathetic life, as in, "I die, you die" is pretty unlikely, due to being an absolute.