Brian Stanfield

I don’t think I would allow the focus on the skills at all - that all wraps into the idea of self only.  Neither is the skill hurt if the focus is lost as the need to conceal it is also lost.  The character would have no need to conceal a focus he is not in possession of and so losing a bonus for that concealment does not limit him.  Therefore no limitation.
 
I did not remember either-so I looked at the rulebook :-).   In 6th there are no 5 point levels and the rules say that the GM ‘may’ put Restrictions on what kind of levels can be limited.
 
Doc

I thought you could only put limitations on 5 pt. skill levels. Or did that change? Or am I remembering wrong?

Yes, Indiana is correct. You may buy skills and skill bonuses as powers. 
 
La Rose. 

+2 with Concealment -- 4 points
OAF (-1), because when you see the gun, it's obvious it was made small on purpose so it can be hidden.  You also aren't just across the board better at concealment, like you would be without the limitation
Self only (-1/2), because having the gun doesn't make you better at hiding other stuff
Real Cost: 1.6 points, rounded up to 2

Skill Levels with Concealment, probably. 

Am struggling to see what is hackneyed, but that is peripheral to the approach.
 
Looking at the rulebook (6th edition-vol 1-p376)
“If a Focus is Inobvious, it's not immediately clear where the power comes from. Examples include disguised or concealed weapons (such as a cane-gun or a blaster hidden inside an ordinary-looking glove)”
 
I think this shows that the rules intend for it to encompass weapons inobvious until they are used as well as rings that provide powers without it being obvious that they are the source of the power.  No hand waving necessary. RAW.

Don't try to build it into the gun.  Instead, have the character make a Concealment roll when placing the weapon on his/her body and use the result of that roll (in contested fashion, if desired) to determine how concealed the weapon is.
 
I suggest this approach because strapping a holdout piece to one's ankle, concealing a firearm in an IWB holster, and slinging an Uzi or shotgun under one's coat -- and moving about with such things equipped … all have one thing in common: a degree of skill when it comes to clothing choices, precise position on the body, and movement with the concealed weapon in place.
 
You might also consider a complementary PS: Concealed Carry.  I suggest this because practically every person who carries concealed … has a bin of holsters s/he has tried in various combinations with clothing until he/she has arrived at what works for his/her body type, clothing preferences, and movement tendencies.  I also suggest this because someone who is carrying a firearm for the very first time tends to move much less naturally than someone who has been doing it for years.  Movement characteristics in conjunction with clothing and body type  are important because certain motions can cause a concealed firearm to 'print' (i.e. have the outline of it shown on a cover garment).
Example -- an ankle holster with a small firearm may print if someone is wearing loose slacks and the wind blows hard directly against the side of the leg where the firearm is located; someone who is accustomed to carrying concealed will almost instinctively move to positionthe ankle holster and firearm in the lee of the leg relative to the wind, thereby avoiding such printing. Example: an IWB (inside waistband) holster with a firearm located at the 4 o'clock position beneath a tucked-in shirt is prone to printing on that shirt when someone stretches to reach something high, specifically due to the tension applied to the otherwise loose shirt being applied directly over the firearm; someone who is accustomed to carrying concealed will naturally tend to use the left arm/hand to perform that reach, thereby tightening/tensioning the material on the 8 o'clock position of the body rather than the 4 o'clock side  
A Concealment roll each time a weapon is strapped on also makes sense … because something as slight as the difference between the 3:30 and 4 o'clock positions can make a substantial difference in print levels or noticeability.  Colour choices also matter, and as another example, consider that open carry of a black firearm in a black/grey custom leather holster … while wearing grey shorts and a black shirt … with black socks and black/grey shoes … can yield an openly-carried (i.e. in plain sight) firearm that next to no one notices simply because it blends into the colour palette of the clothing being worn with a rudimentary camouflage effect.  This is basically what belt buckle firearms rely on -- a very limited form of camouflage that causes people to overlook them.  In reality that form of camouflage isn't something built into the belt buckle gun. Instead, it's something specific to the relationship of the gun, the belt buckle holster on which it's carried, the clothing choices of the person wearing it to 'gel' with that belt and belt buckle, the body type of someone able to wear a belt buckle that large, and the human tendency to overlook certain things yet perk up and pay attention to others while people busily go about their lives.  Concealment is likely the skill that best suits someone's ability to identify and effectively leverage that relationship.

Pomme Frites are ok, but America I believe has the best variety and taste by far (though my sample size is only limited to 6-7 countries so take it and fries with a grain of salt).

Yeah, I should have made clearer that Duke's post reminded me of Fantasy Hero Companion. Sorry. I need to sleep before I post. ?

Today's Sign of the Apocalypse: As of this writing, there are 15 NFL teams--including the defending AFC champion Patriots--with worse records than the Cleveland Browns.

Back around 2001 or 2002, I stumbled across a horror rpg somewhere on the internet.  I should have saved it at the time, but I didn't (and that computer crashed anyway, so that's that).  It had some brilliant mechanics that perfectly represented the horror genre.  Or at least I thought they were brilliant at the time.  I've looked for that rpg several times since then, without success.  I think it was just on somebody's website, a home-brew system.
 
As I recall, each player selected a certain archetype.  Jock, cheerleader, nerd, etc.  And every time you did something genre-appropriate, like going outside to see what that noise is, or going in the basement alone, or sneaking off in the woods to have sex, you were tempting fate and you would draw the monster closer to you.  Your actions would make it more likely that you would be attacked.  But every time you did it successfully, you built up "luck points" or something like that, and you could then use those to help get away from the monster when it attacked.  So doing dumb things that were in genre could help you escape a close call with the monster later.  Basically by surviving, you were further increasing the odds that you were the "final person", and thus the star of the film.  The final surviving person then got like a power boost or something -- like the monster's invulnerability would turn off when there was only one person left, or the car would finally start and you could escape.
 
I read through the system one time at like 3 in the morning, and thought it was awesome.  Then a couple days later I couldn't find it again.  It seemed like it would play almost like a board game where you collected tokens and got "get out of jail free" cards rather a true roleplaying game.  Maybe I dreamed the whole thing, who knows.  But it's an example of a game that was designed to do only one thing.  There are no rules for martial arts, or seduction, or doing science stuff, or bluffing your way past a guard.  Your characters won't be doing any of that.  They're running from a supernatural killer, and that's the only thing the game has mechanics for.
 
If I was looking to design a sci-fi rpg, I'd decide exactly what type of science fiction I was looking to emulate.  2001: A Space Odyssey will play very differently from Starship Troopers, which will itself play differently from Star Wars.  While you could say they're all science fiction, they really don't have all that much to do with one another.  They're very different films and getting the right "feel" will require very different approaches.
 

I am forced to respectfully disagree.  I often find setting-specific designs to be rather condescending and limiting.  
 
Essentially, a well-crafted generic system is a blank canvas and a fresh paint supply.  The unfettered power of my and my players' imaginations can be let loose.  
 
Setting-specific designs are one of these adult colouring books with crayons.  The drawing of a spaceship might be very nice, and I do get to choose my crayons, but it is some other mind's idea of what a spaceship should be.  It's all born out of the tangled weed of D&D, where some players delight in getting pre-packaged, pre-made "Fighters" where others prefer to design their own ideas.  My fighter might end up looking virtually identical to the pre-made fighter, but I made it!

Late to the game, as usual, 
 
but I wanted to make a couple of comments, if I may.
 
First, I totally understand what you're feeling.  Totally get it.  Went though it many, many times before being introduced to Champions, actually.  As I've noted all throughout my spotty history here, I am not really a comic book guy. I don't hold them in low regard; it's simply that I wasn't a comic book kid, either, and so there was no formative exposure.
 
Further, I _detest_ fantasy as a genre ( paradoxically, I _love_ the Fantasy HERO books and material.  Go figure), and detest D&D above all else.  I like modern age stuff (though at this point I suppose MSPE and Danger International are no longer "modern day."  It's hard to find kids today who understand that tiny hopeless fear in the back of your mind from having grown and lived through the Cold War anyway.  Same thing seems to be happening to Cyberpunk as a genre).
 
But I digress, and this was supposed to be a couple of comments to help me forget for a minute that I have just finished my second work day with a 102 degree fever.  Essentially, I'm staving off sleep at least until sunset, because I don't plan to get up at all tomorrow unless it's for my funeral.  If any of you should find my body before my funeral, put it back in the shower and make sure the water is hot enough to make soup.  Then maybe I can stop shivering.  
 
Gah-- again.  Sorry.
 
When I was first introduced to RPGs-- I can't remember which was first.  It was D&D (first edition, then a smattering of second) or Traveller, that much I do recall.  I also recall that I preferred Traveller far, far more because it was sci-fi, my favoritiest (it's probably a word; my eyes are too runny to check) genre of all.
 
I also remember that when the guy who owned Traveller moved, I was stuck with D&D to get my fix. Sort of like needing your heroin, even though you know it's laced with bleach and freon.  
 
So we started doing things.  We started trying to re-cast the world around the rules.  I'm pretty sure everyone has tried this at one point.  For what it's worth, it never did work with TSR's D&D; from what I've seen, it didn't even work with the *ahem* "generic" d20 system from a few years ago (is that still around?).  I gave up.  How do you have a blaster pistol that never misses, only fires three shots a day, then you forget how to load it until some time after breakfast tomorrow?  But it does get stronger every time you "level up (something else I detest)."
 
Gave up on that, and TSR eventually released "Gamma World," proving, on a budget and with professional artwork, that D&D can't be sci-fi.  Found Star Frontiers, and-- well, we played that for a while.  It still felt like space magic.
 
Then my GM found Champions 1e.  We loved it.  Well, it wasn't any odd D&D variant, and you didn't roll random stats, so Yay!  Okay, I played it.  I liked it, but I didn't _love_ it.  Because, as noted, I'm not a comic book guy.  I wasn't ever really excited about superheroes.  I knew what they were, knew they existed, and had even read a handful of comics at friend's houses over the years.  I had nothing against superheroes, I just never wanted to be one.
 
So for about six months, we played superheroes, and I was so, so very much happier with the far-more-logical system that made the game work.
 
 
Then one of the players made a character who used a gun.   Not some comic book thing with ray gun circles poobiloobling out of it, but a gun-gun.  Well, mostly.  Non-lethals (he was doing an homage to (that's the much nicer way the French say "rip-off of") Doc Savage (who I also liked, for the sciency bits ) and was building the "super firer" gun that Doc absolutely disdained, but had to fire at least once a novella.
 
And then it just clicked.  Guns.  Armor.  Clinging....   gear!!  Clinging gear!  Forcefield belts!  Life Support via a mylar-esque suit with a bubble over your face!
 
I wheedled and cajoled, and Jim let me borrow his rule book during the week while I read it over and over and over, building a little something each time.  And boom-- Sci-fi with Champions (later HERO).  Wasn't long before one guy in the group was running a Fantasy campaign, I was running a Sci-fi, and Jim was still running Supers.  
 
With the exact same rules.
 
The immediate upside was "no other rules to learn."  But after a while, you did notice a certain "sameness."  The same problem that plagued the entire house of TSR.  
 
But it was different because it didn't detract from the game in any way.  We were just using the same method to tell different stories.  Had we been unable to tell convincing, right-feeling stories (like trying to run sci-fi with D&D 1e), it would have been different.
 
Eventually we realized that the actual core rules of the game had nothing to do with the flavor of the game, because unlike everything that had gone before it, nothing was _actually_ built in to the system that  forced a certain flavor.
 
I suppose this is my fevered brain hoping to remind you that the core mechanics are _not_ the game.  They are the rules for resolving issues in the game.  Unless they actually detract from the feel of the game (I'm lookin' at you, D&D and all your bastard d20 System "generic" off-spring).
 
There's nothing in HERO, at it's core, that forces detraction from any genre.  These days, there is a _crap load_ of stuff you will never, ever use, but you are not required to, either.  Pick and chose until you are left only with rules that _do not detract_ from what you want.  At that point, the rules are _done_.  (For example, in spite of having had them published, we have never used Vehicle rules, simply because, thanks to our early forays away from superheroes, we needed them sooner than the rules provided them.  Oddly enough, the rules already offered them:  A character, at base, is 2 meters by 1 meter by half-meter, roughly.  So is a motorcycle.  Add powers and skills and penalties and bonuses until you have built the vehicle you want, and you did it with the rules you already had.  Didn't need anything special or outside those core rules.   We _still_ do it that way, if only because it makes the most sense to us: this system is already universal; why do we need to add "except for this bit here; that takes special rules?"
 
 
Comment 2 (which I seriously pray is much, much more concise):
 
It is not up to the mechanics to enforce feel or flavor.  It is up to the mechanics to do two things: provide a meter to which the story will be told and a means of resolving challenges, and to absolutely not get in the way.  That's it.  Once the system gets in the way, the spell is broken, and the curtain falls, and the entire "story" is two kids pulling ropes and a fat guy with a lap full of noisemakers.
 
HERO doesn't do that: it doesn't get in the way, because there is always another way to do it.  Find the one that flows and stays out of the way.
 
The feel of the game should be up to the players: the GM can create as simple or as grand a universe as he wants, and can share it at any level of detail he choses.  The players respond in kind.  You want it to feel like science fiction?  Chose one:
 
Okay, you find an area full of chest-high walls and take cover.  There's lots of shooting, but not directly at you, at least not yet.  It looks like your ship is okay because it's still hidden.
 
Or
 
So keeping low and slow, darting when their attention seems focused elsewhere, you've made it within a hundred yards of the skirmish.  The entire hilltop is scarred with pits and sprays of raw earth from a shelling that seems to have been just a day or two ago, from the sick, musky scent of the mud.  Several buildings, or maybe one large compound, once stood here, and scattered around for two hundred yards square are chunks and sections of plasteel wall, ranging from big enough to hide behind to too small to cast a shadow.  You've made it to a wide, low section of wall, the top line of which is black and globular as if it were seared by a tank-mounted plasma beam.  If you stay crouched, you should remain hidden.  The wall is wide enough that the both of you could stretch out and sleep, if you wanted, but the nails-on-glass crackling and burnt ozone smell of beam weapons just a hundred yards away is enough to keep your hair on end, even if the build up of charged electrons around the battle wasn't already doing it. 
 
A small group of five men is marching along the tree line on the far side, and you can't help but wonder if your ship's concealment screen is still functional, of if a stray shot or two might have damaged it.  They don't _seem_ to be a headed directly toward it, but their carefully-picked advancement path is going to carry them awfully close.
 
 
Okay, _not_ my best stuff.  Not even my mediocre stuff, but in my defense: fever, remember?  
 
 
All that to say this:
 
I know what you're going through.  I've been there.  It took some time to realized that the feel of the game-- that was _my_ job.  That was _your_ job.  That was the job of everyone at your table.  The only two things the mechanics have to do with your story is to let you tell it in a fair, equally-accessible-to-all manner, and to not be in the way of the story itself.
 
I'm going back into the shower now.
 
Good night.

And why stop there?
 
We only need one Power! Just describe what it does and assign an appropriate cost!
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary suspects Lucius Alexander is being sarcastic.....

Sorry about that.  I've been on the internet too long, I suppose, or perhaps away from this site too long.  I'm so used to "THAT'S WRONG!" and "NEVER DO THAT!" and "YOU'RE A MORON FOR SUGGESTING THAT!" etc, etc, with any different-from-expected solution to a problem.  Thus, I preemptively stated that the wood glue-injection wasn't endorsed by any major book bindery or any whatever-you-call-paper-fixing-guys.  (or girls. Or what-have-you)
 
 
 
 
From what I recall, it's not really that expensive; it's certainly less expensive than having a book re-bound in its actual cover.  
 
My opinion is just that: the random rantings of a complete stranger on the internet.  Therefore, I suggest you not assign any particular weight or expertise to it.
 
I tried spiral binding once on the suggestion of someone on this board who had done it numerous times and seriously enjoyed it, and I have to admit, the allure of a book that lays open flat to any page is huge.  In my own experience, though, I can't recommend against it fervently enough.
 
Again, these is simply an opinion of a guy you don't know and will likely never bump into, so don't put a lot of thought into it.
 

If you do not mind the expense, when I needed to get my copy of FREd repaired I went to a copy store along the line of Kinkos.  In place of the original binding, I got a spiral binding that still held up years later, long after the original binding is expected to wear out.  

Your first link isn't showing anything: can you check it again?
 
Regardless, this is the same conclusion I made. The hinge tape comes in several varieties, and I've talked to several book people and done a lot of reading, and it all seems to point to the same solution.  How's the tape holding up? And how's the end-paper and spine holding up?
 
After cutting the cover off my copy of 6e1, I realized why the books are all failing: 
The glue is horrible and cracks apart. Everyone knows this issue.  The book construction itself is half-baked. The spine is glued directly to the cover, and there are no actual hinges holding the text to the cover. So combined with bad glue, the moment one opens the book the pages are forced away from the spine as the book flexes open. The only thing holding the book together is the weakest part of the construction, and the only remaining part holding the text block in is the end-paper itself.  This resembles the "perfect binding" of paperback books, but because it has a hard cover the pages behave differently and the covers can't move the way they need.  That's what I've discovered so far. I'm going to experiment with hinging the text block to the boards themselves and avoiding the spine altogether. 
 
Thanks for the Input!

I've found all kinds of stuff about book binding repair, and talked to my librarian friend about it as well. I'm going to try to repair it on my own. I'll let you now how it goes.

Don't be so hasty to judge; it may have been intentional. The GM may have been running a campaign set in Lake Wobegon.

This... a hundred times over. In our playtest of Champions Now, everyone of my group is like, "Ugh... we are back to figured characteristics... bleh"
 
The variation of characteristics and skill levels is so much greater... there is no inherent "everyone is a quick mini-brick at the core because nothing else is as efficient." 

If you're curious, you can look at the GURPS Lite document for free. It's a very basic introduction to the game in 32 pages, which made me feel like I understood the game in 30 minutes, something I wish HERO would do . . .

One of the web comics I read had this interesting snippet about secret ids and costuming,  I'd thought I'd share it. Enjoy!

Edit: Original web comic link to image http://shotgunshuffle.com/comic/hit-list/

I'm actively opposed to things like this.  I think it's a horrible value and I won't go for any of these single-provider streaming services.  I'm actively rooting for them to all fail.
 
The way I see it, I already have most of what this service would offer.  I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, and each of those services offers me hundreds (maybe thousands) of different movies and TV shows.  I can almost always find something I'd like to watch.  If this DC Universe thing doesn't exist, then I can watch most of what they're offering on either Netflix or Prime.  I can do that already.  So what are they offering that is new that I can't watch right now without paying for their service?
 
I know they're planning on removing their shows and movies from these other streaming services, but that just means they're taking away value from me that I've already got, to try to promote their own service.  I don't like that, and so I won't support it.  Even if it wasn't a bad value, I wouldn't support it because I don't want to encourage other companies to do the same thing.  It's part of why I won't get CBS All Access -- I'm not going to be goaded into getting it just for a show they'd have put on Netflix otherwise.
 
And finally, I just don't think they've got enough content for me to want to pay just for their stuff.  It's not a very good deal.  I don't even think Disney's service is going to be worth it to me.  They don't have enough stuff for me to want to see each and every month.  When it's October and I want to see scary movies, what Disney films will I watch?  You can only watch the Legend of Sleepy Hollow cartoon so many times.  I think these specialty services have very limited appeal, and a very limited library.

I may be missing some important connection-- perhaps it is exclusively the inclusion of thematic art or settings that qualifies it as Champions, but isn't 6e Basic pretty much rules-light Champions?  Or Fantasy?  Or Sci-fi?
 
(of course, this may not be 6e; is there a version of 5e with 6e-style Characteristics?)
 
 
oh-- 
 
And thank you, Assault.  I assume there will be some sort of announcement when it becomes a buyable product?
 

I didn't pick up on this comment until much more recently. Would Champions: The New Millennium, that came out in the 1990s in that short partnership between Hero Games and R. Talsorian Games count as a "rules-light" version of Champions? I remember briefly owning it and from my playing experience, the rules were simplified to make the Hero System to fit the Fuzion Games system for character creation, powers, and so on. I also remember reading about confusion in various fan forums on whether or not Champions: The New Millennium was its Fifth Edition or not (it wasn't, as Fifth Edition came out a few years later).
 
I share the same disappointment in that the development of a rules-light version Champions wasn't even discussed for consideration. In general, when I'm introducing the superhero RPG to brand-new players, my go-to system has been Icons: The Assembled Edition as a result. Although I occasionally get brand-new players when I run Champions at game conventions, the majority of the participants have been players who, "played it for several years then stopped after <insert edition number here>" and wanted to play for the nostalgia.
 
"HERO seeming outdated and falling behind the times"... I thought that I was alone in that sentiment when I compare Champions to Mutants and Masterminds, Icons, or even the Super Powers Companion for Savage Worlds. Guess not...