Brian Stanfield

I think the main difference between "money" and "lifestyle" in these regional examples can be expressed like this: If I have $5 million I could build a mansion and retire with a very comfortable (maybe not lavish, but close) lifestyle on a vast acreage in the wine country of Southern Illinois. I work for one of these people and see it every day. If, however, I have $5 million in the wine country of Southern California I wouldn't even be able to buy the land, let alone develop it. Money is, after all, money.  "Lifestyle" makes more than a semantic difference here, being the product of the same amount of money.
 
Conversely, I've stayed at a friend's family home which was affordably built in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge before any other house, and the community grew around it. It is now so valuable that they can't even conceive of selling it. The money changed around the property, but the lifestyle remains the same. This sort of distinction is of course campaign dependent, so it is a rather relative term, but I believe that the point is that tying a specific dollar amount to a particular lifestyle is problematic. Living modestly in Belvedere is much different than living modestly in Des Moines, and living a lavish lifestyle is equally different and not dependent on the specific dollar amount. 

Although I'm a backer, this is sort of what bothers me. The powers that be refuse to re-print the 6e core books because Champions Complete is the new standard set of rules, but then turn around and back a project to re-write the rules to 3e, and present it as what appears to be yet another "official" direction for the ruleset. We've also been flatly told "no" on a possible "HERO System Lite" type of ruleset, yet Champions Now appears to be exactly that. Although I like the project, it seems like it could have been astronomically more beneficial to do the same narrative-based introduction to Champions with the CC rules, and then add the Character Creation Cards to the mix when they become available.
 
In short, this seems like some seriously mixed signals are being sent. Sure Ron Edwards has a lot of great stuff to offer, and because it's being presented as a Champions campaign book, I can understand that it is more of a personal project. But I'm not sure what it does for HERO's long term health to promote it against its own Champions Complete. If this is a set up to eventually introduce a new ruleset for Champions, it is messy beyond belief. We can all go back to 3e on our own if we want. I don't think it's a good idea to introduce new people to an older ruleset (if that is actually part of the intended purpose). 
 
There is a lot of emphasis these days on narrative driven, rules light games, and I appreciate introducing emergent character development and storytelling into Champions (although it is suggested with each edition that players can take unspecified Complications to develop as game play progresses). New players are more likely to bite on something like this. After going to Origins this year and seeing how nuts people still are for Cypher System, it seems that they aren't afraid of universal systems as long as they have a narrative driven approach. It seems that it is just as possible to do this with HERO and Champions, but probably more desirable to do it with the most recent rules. 
 
I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I'm really disappointed that a lot of people expressed a desire to develop a rules-light version of Champions in order to introduce it to new people, but were shut down without any discussion. Yet now we're getting that very thing, but with an outdated version of the rules. Will it help HERO? Maybe. But it may only be an OSR nostalgia piece with no extended support, which only adds to the woes of HERO seeming outdated and falling behind the times. 

When these rules first appeared in Champions II, there were no point costs associated with them, for a couple of reasons.  The benefits and drawbacks associated with them were considered to equal themselves out, or at least the GM was recommended to run them that way.  Also, they were intended as part of that no-point-cost background stuff that probably won't come up in play very often. 

Sure... he has all the money in the world... and trying to bribe the agents works sometimes... and as noted above, sometimes it doesn't. And when the news gets ahold of the fact that his companies are employing known criminals and murderers (the villains let them know) and some take his money and stab him in the back, etc.
 
Also... infinite wealth does not mean, buy anything he wants without repercussions. Also... this is role playing. Doing it once in a while is dramatic. Min-maxing is not, so it doesn't happen. If players don't know how to control themselves for the betterment of the drama, you shouldn't be playing with them.
 
Edit: Or, if he wants to abuse wealth as a power, hit him with a custom power Drain: Infinite Wealth, and suddenly he's broke!

Money in points either is too expensive or cheap depending on how it is used.  I've seen people buy 15 pts in wealth in Champions and then try to buy their way out of problems (ex: Why work for the supervillain when you can work for me with free medical and dental?).
 
Personally, I think it should probably be renamed to Lifestyle.  You can have a destitute(-15), poor(-10), lower class(-5), middle class(0), upper class(5), wealthy(10), or super wealthy(15) lifestyle rather than tying it to an amount of money.
 
 
 

Confusion in the market. Misinformation travels faster than fact a thousand times.  Some may think this is the new Champions, that 6e is being dropped. . Division in the player base fragmenting sales; there's already those refusing to advance to new product nightstick to older stuff out of nostalgia, fragmenting the potential ability to sell new product. I can understand a pure nostalgia product. But if you really want to attract new players, pushing a newer, nicer, newbie friendly version of Champions Complete is the way to go, instead of this diversion back to these rules which are just old and outdated, ( not intrinsically better (or really that much simpler) at reflecting the superhero genre.

Chris,
I would "like" your post because I appreciate all the detail, but I'm out of "likes" for some reason. 
 
So many things you described, like all the different campaigns (OMG we played the hell out of Danger International!) and such from the '80s... but I never had the issues that you described when we translated to 4th. It could come down to differences in expectations. I never tried to spell out huge campaign limits and write down significant house rules, and it wasn't until 4th Edition that we began playing Fantasy Hero in depth. I think that, while there were times where certain applications of powers broke the feel of the game (the use of force field by a mage and a character with wings, both of which were really over-powered), but I never ended up with player push back or frustration on that, as the "table" generally agreed pretty quickly that "whoa... that just isn't right" and we changed things.
 
With supers, we felt the 4th Ed expanded skill list was cool, but not necessary. It wasn't until 5th that I felt the expectation had changed from "General broad skills, and you can get specific if you want" to "Must deconstruct all skills into fifty different knowledge skill specifics for every possible situation"

The whole separation of Heroic level vs. Superheroic really worked for us. Over time, there were always questions of "Is this balanced?" but I never felt that it was up to a rule set to proscribe the kind of game to be played, but that Hero let us find our own.
 
Perhaps it was that I always wanted my Champs campaign to actually do away with most comic book tropes (or at least question them) and move more into the "people with powers in a chaotic, dangerous world" type of campaign. On the surface, you had costumes and code names, but wrestling with issues of the law and vigilantism, killing or not, how to use your power to change society, not just beat up bad guys... what were the ramifications for normal in a world of supers, etc.  Those things were essential to the game, and I don't think could have been done with Champions as it was originally envisioned, that enforced tropes like secret id's, DNPCs, etc.
 
Ultimately, I always found that rules and systems only went so far, and nothing in the book was ever considered absolute. What happened at the table determined what was right... work it out in play... then capture any change that meant to the rule set. This type of thing lead to dumping END as too much boring math in game, dumping the Speed Chart because it made SPD not just powerful, and the chart resolution clunky, but enforced some players as having more face time in the game than others.

Eventually, it is all about the players. I found a good test. Give a prospective player the BBB, have them read through it a bit, and then, "Tell me what you think?" If they say something like, "So it seems like I can play any cool character... like this guy who fights occult crime like the Shadow, but with magical trinkets instead of guns" and I'd feel they have a good chance in the group. If, on the other hand, they say, "So it seems that the character I should play has desolidification and ego attack, affects real world, because then I can attack everyone, but never be touched, right?"   Then I take the book back and say, "Effort appreciated, the exit is over there."
 
It was a good test about whether people wanted to role play, or game the system.

Funny you should mention the band aspect like this - the UK Indie Rock scene actually has to do with Which labels the bands used: not that they didn't use any labels. For a good part of 2000-2010ish "Indie Rock" would primarily refer to Independent Label, a small label not specifically owned by a larger label, especially one of the big 5. DIY musicians really didn't take off (though have always been around) until the rise of Bandcamp, Spotify, and Kickstarters, around 2010 or so.
 
This is in juxtaposition to Alt Rock from the 80s and 90s which was a band that may or may not have had a major label, but was primarily either college radio play or no radio play (as opposed to Format Radio or Top-40 Radio); until the 90s where Alt Rock became a Radio Format of play, making the whole label a moot point.
 
If we want to continue with that bad analogy, I would put Champions in the DOJ Era firmly in Indie Gaming as they weren't one of the big companies putting games out. In that vein IPR is definitely an Indie Label in modern parlance...

I don't think the Indie brand will help sell it (but can't hurt). It's not what people think of as "Indie". It's not small, it's not fluffy, and it has a tendency to bite. The big thing that holds Hero back - and it's also the big thing that makes it valuable - is that it's a programming language. And the market for programming languages is programmers. Most people want a finished piece of software.
 
Maybe that's putting it too strongly. If you want to whip up a Superhero game, I guess you sort of have to take the Hero approach to make it able to cover all the different character types. But the fact remains that you're buying a box of bits, not a box of toys.
 
I presume FHC and similar are a recognition of this and an attempt to provide a pared down and more focused version that people can get into more easily. A recognition that a huge blank sheet is simply too much for some people and they'd prefer a small blank sheet they have a reasonable chance to fill. And I think that effort needs to be taken. But I don't know if it's the right approach. It's still very much a blank sheet. My attempt to solve the issue was to build a much more specific setting and rule system using Hero. I may market it one day, I'm quite proud of it. But what I did was to create specific character templates not in the way Hero supplements usually do, as suggestions of "hey - you could do something like this" but as specific "Choose one of these six races. Choose one of these twelve classes". I built D&D in Hero 6e. I provided choices rather than freedom.
 
And it worked. I had a few people telling me I was flying against the whole intent of Hero. And you know what? I totally was. I DID turn it into D&D. But you know what? It was a better version of D&D. Because Hero is a very powerful and well-thought out system. I took what I found valuable in Hero (great rules and balance) and used it to make a finished game that people could pick up and get stuck in. If they ever want to use Hero, well, the appendix has the points breakdowns, but they don't need to. I'm convinced it has the potential to be successful if I ever get it to publishable form. I think that's what Hero needs for mass-market appeal. Sell complete games made with Hero, rather than hope to make Hero more universal by exposing people to subsets of it at a time.

Fantasy Flight produce the X-Wing and Armada games, tonnes of board games and several role-playing game lines including WH40K (three related game lines) and Star Wars. The latter has churned out at least twenty hardback books. Even if odd games are small, their ownership or marketing by big companies like FFG disqualify them. Indie was a music term (along with an advertising schtick of "Oooh, isn't the Music Industry evil... Fight it by listening to us!") meaning not owned or marketed by a larger business. So even games like Pugmire which is small and was the brainchild of a single, home author with community support, isn't really Indie because Onyx Path bought rights to market it under their label, just like EMI bought up small, promising bands to market them. Indie really means "we made it and it's ours". Not Indie means "we made it for somebody else". Whether that "somebody else" is another company or a board of directors. It's why Monte Cook is considered Indie - because even though he's established and long-term figure in the industry, he's still someone making his own product and selling it, no matter how successful. And Richard Thomas isn't really, even if he put together a Kickstarter for Pugmire and it looks like a small press game - because he partnered with an established RPG company that deals in RPGs to market and sell it.
 
Hero *is* an Indie game so far as I'm aware. It's the labour of a few people (plus a lot of supplemental help) who sold it to the public themselves.

I think we're chasing a red herring in trying to define the term.
 
Despite the fact that the thread title asks the question and the first post explicitly asks "Does Hero System count as an indie game?" I don't think that's what Mr. Stanfield is really meaning to ask.
 
The important questions aren't things like "What's an Indie game" or "is Hero System an indie game" but rather, "Can Hero System be successfully marketed to the contingent of gamers who identify themselves as 'indie gamers,'  should it be, and if so, how?"
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary and I are in indie-anapolis if that makes any difference.

I started a thread on "indie" games here, with the idea of investigating why Champions/HERO System isn't presenting itself to the younger "indie" crowd. Setting aside what "indie" actually means, I think it should be considered an indie game. I wondered if it could be shown to a new generation with this in mind, and if perhaps this is what Ron Edwards might actually be tapping into.
 
The news announcement, Why Now Champions Now, seems to reinforce that question. I've now reconsidered backing the project because any exposure is better than none! And if people discover it at Indie Press Revolution while scanning for Fate or some other popular game, so much the better.
 
I'll save the problem of why it's not based on Champions Complete for another time. 

IMO "indie game" is a lot like "alt music" - a useless title that tells you nothing, makes someone sound pretentious, and ultimately fails to help anyone figure out if the product is any good at all.

Fun conversation (and I really appreciate Brian's goal of bringing it up in the first place), but I doubt we'll ever have a perfectly comprehensive definition of "indie." To me, I can't help but relate it to indie as a description of music... Indie Pop, Indie Rock, etc. The term is used to cover a lot of different music, and it has a certain historical connotation, coming out of the arc of Punk DIY in the late seventies, post-punk into alternative in the '80s and then a significant independent, creator owned movement in the '90s and on (Indie as a label really took hold in the 90's though it has been used throughout)... but at the same time, there is a particular aesthetic associated with indie beyond just the economics of it.
 
Indie rock/pop has a certain angular, off-kilter sound to it. The lyrics and content tend to be less mainstream, and the sound considered less than radio friendly (even though there are often break through hits). The overall aesthetic eschews mass appeal, down to its marketing, etc.
 
Applying this to any other business, in my mind, brings that aesthetic question. Is the game being produced to be a mass market product line (D&D) or is it being created as an expression of play and experiential design? I'm not saying the creators wouldn't love to land upon a popular product line that actually made them lots of money somehow, but that isn't the driving force behind it (which clearly is with the classics, D&D, or White Wolf in the '90s, etc.)

I guess the B&N test is a good one. They carry the D&D stuff, and 5e has gotten pretty popular. It's gained enough traction to have started releasing more compendiums, campaign books, DM screens, spell cards, and all that stuff that screams "big business" in my mind.
 
I wonder if "big" and "small" aren't bad measurements. I may have made that distinction too soon. I think RDU Neil brings up a good point: a lot of people think of "indie" as being rules light, although that's not the only consideration. Monte Cook has several games based on the Cypher System, and indie gamers love his stuff. I think maybe one thing that makes things "indie" is that they tend to be more open sourced by fans of the game.
 
I bring this up only because I'm wondering why Champions, or HERO System, doesn't try to market itself with the indie gamers. They love trying new things, have a lot of energy, and enjoy exploring the possibilities of a game system. And they tend to produce a lot of secondary material. The common problem with HERO, that there are no adventures being produced, could be solved if you unleash some indie nerds on the scene!
 
This also makes me reconsider what the "Champions Now" Kickstarter might be about as well. Because it's taking a more "narrative rich" approach, like modern indie games, I wonder if it is trying to use a rules light version of Champions to lure in the indie crowd. I just wish that this was made more explicit in the Kickstarter pitch if it was the case. . . .

Indie, rightly or wrongly, also tends to implied stripped down, modern design... a game designed for a unique experience rather than a "system" to be applied in many different ways with lots of support material. I think it is this, and its past as a major product brand (as zslane pointed out) that make it "feel weird" to consider Hero indie, even though right now, it probably is.
 
Like, there is a lot of "Fate" play and games and uses out there, so that it doesn't really feel indie to me, even though each individual example of a game designed with Fate behind it is/could be. Powered by the Apocalypse is a good example of open source "common axiomatic design" but the games that use all or parts of the PbtA 'system' are very much indie.
 
Hard to say, but clearly the community and current support are very much indie in nature.

If you are producing your product exclusively through vehicles like Kickstarter, then that means you are operating independent of an established publisher, and that is the very definition of "indie" (i.e., indie being short for independent). The nature/style of your game design is orthogonal to your publishing stratum.
 
By this definition, most RPG "publishers" out there are indie, yes.

Well, Champions started out as an "indie" game, and then grew to become a major product brand (mostly thanks to I.C.E.). Post-4th edition, however, it shrunk back down to indie status, and now it is more of a community project than a legitimate, fully commercial product line, at least in my view.

If the game line is more or less its own company, I'd call it Indie. Owned by a larger company, I would not. Smaller companies like Cubicle 7 might edge their games into the category just about, even though technically they shouldn't. The term "Indie" feels more like a cultural affiliation than a technical category to me. A sort of "We're not the Man, man!" branding. There were lots of "Indie" bands from Seattle that were corporate as Hell. Whilst something like Pugmire might be produced by Onyx Path but somehow feels more small "labour of love" game than you'd think.

Done.  There are now 38 people in that particular sandbox - a decent number of folk that are looking on how to use Roll20 to play HERO.
 
I use it weekly for D&D purposes and I find it laggy.  The problems are worse as the size of the group increases, I cannot imagine playing with more than four or five people (including the GM) and even with three, not using video, dropping out can be an issue.
 
I think that they grew more quickly than they could cope with but if I this was not the best of a bad bunch of options (for my purposes), I would be looking elsewhere.
 
I am hoping it continues to improve.

Agreed, as I'd like to understand the POV expressed here, as it is the exact opposite of how I feel. I have not ever, in my 40 years of gaming, enjoyed a pre-built adventure, and certainly never used anything more than a rough outline from one, like "Road Kill" for a one off "not everyone showed up for the game" type of thing. 
 
To me, the experience of a game evolving and being defined "during play" is the real enjoyment I get... not spending massive time trying to create everything beforehand. Entirely different philosophies of gaming, so I'd like to read more about what is being expressed here. 

Well, I wish it all success, but I'll be passing.
 
I really haven't been doing much of anything with Hero even though Champs is my favorite RPG
 
Pretty much the only gaming I do now is with fully supported systems.  And by fully supported, I mean systems that put out pre-built adventures.   I only know 2 people that are running anything homebrew, and one of them is running a full on crawl.  The primary reason is ee all work full time and most have family obligations.  Limited free time.
 
So I am playing in a D&D 5th league game and when I run itbis usually a GUMSHOE or Call of Cthulhu scenario. 
 
I love to run mystery/investigation games and have been working on a Supers campaign for a while.  But constructing a investigatve based campaign is detail intensive.  Once I complete the spine and enough side branches to a viable level, I'll decide on game system and begin plugging in Villians and stat'ing them out. 
 
But for now I really do not need yet another ruleset or yet anothet advice document. 
 
What I need in a gaming product is self contained general adventures that can played stand alone or pluged into a campaign if I ever start having enough time to actually write/run one again. 
 
Pretty much every successful RPG found in full distribution in actual stores have full lines of adventures.  The local FLGS's can't keep them in stock. 
 
For me I will have to shift my attention and funds to games I will actually have a realistic expectation of playing.  Ones with not just rulesets, but also a solid support in adventures/scenarios.

I played the following games:
 
Heroes of Altamira (Flashback Episodes 2 & 3): The PCs were a group of swashbucklers.  This is an organized play game run by the Guild of San Marcos for 7th Sea (first edition).  I did enjoy it, despite having to improvise up a character based off of a pregen while most of the other PCs were designed and had played other adventures.  The first adventure had the PCs trying to rescue a kidnapped tavern server from the Inquisition, and the second adventure had the PCs work for a villainous merchant in order to keep him honest in a race.
 
Summer Camp of the Damned:  It was an interesting idea, but had rather poor execution.  The PCs were a group of normal teenagers who found themselves in a summer camp full of "demons" (a catch-all term for supernatural creatures).  The GM improvised a variety of skill challenges and social situations, as the game had little combat.  Unfortunately, the GM wasn't very good at directing and guiding the party- and a number of PCs didn't really take the game very seriously which kind of ruined the game for me.  I did like the concept, and I'm a fan of the system (Savage Worlds)- but it really could have used a stronger storyline and better direction.
 
Complete Guide to Peasants: This was a 5th edition D&D game run by a pair of DMs from Amorphous Blob Games.  Both were a hilarious stand-up comedy duo (similar to Penn & Teller) who added a lot of humor to a really dark story.  The PCs were a group of peasants and town residents (who had 1st level D&D character stats) who suddenly found their village elders missing and/or acting strangely.  It turned out that they had been inducted into a cult by a coven of Harpies, who were using the elders' greed to enjoy meals from missing villagers (as you can see, this is a bit horrific and depressing but the DMs turned into a comedy).  I had a lot of fun, and it was the right group for the kind of game it was.
 
Suicide Squad: A Change in Plan: My favorite game of the entire convention.  This was a Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition game where the PCs were the Suicide Squad (I played Captain Boomerang  complete with an Australian accent) from DC comics and the 2016 film.  The group was tasked with retrieving (kidnapping) a renegade bioweapon scientist on a cruise ship.  Of course, the simple mission went terribly awry when the Brotherhood of Evil showed up, along with Aquaman and Mera, and the scientist decided to unleash the bioweapon and create a horde of zombies from the ship's crew and passengers.  It was wacky, wild, and a ton of fun- with a fantastic GM and the perfect group of players.
 
Countdown to Terror:  This was for Hollow Earth and the PCs were a group of British and American agents who traveled to Bikini Atoll in 1946 to uncover a secret Japanese-German weapons program.  We discovered that the two Axis powers had unleashed a rift to another dimension full of dinosaurs and also a zombie biological plague.  My character was a secret Soviet agent, and I ended up dying at the end of the game, but I probably inflicted a TPK on the rest by detonating a grenade on the plane we were on once my cover was blown.
 
Bullet in the Mountains: This was a playtest for a RPG module (for the Apocalypse system) designed by a Wyoming GM where the PCs were a group of residents of a small frontier town in Wyoming.  I played the token Native American.  The game was more of a "sandbox" than a "railroad" so it was an interesting opportunity to see a system focused on cooperative storytelling.  Thankfully, we had a party of GMs so we had a successful session.
 
Good Dogs: The Cancer Maw of the Red Forest: This was a playtest for a RPG where the PCs were a group of dogs in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone trying to protect the outside world from the evil within, as well as trying to survive in the area.  The game also had a substantial cooperative storytelling component and gave the players the opportunity to roll up, design, and play characters as well as do an adventure within 2 hours- which we all managed to do.  I highly recommend this game, although it is still in the design and playtesting phases.  I ended up being the great dane alpha leader of the group, as we sought to investigate a strange beast that had begun terrorizing our territory.
 
Atomic Sky: Waters Weeping: This was also a playtest for Nova D20, a modification of D&D 5th edition but set in a post-apocalyptic world similar to Fallout.  I ended up customizing a post-apocalyptic bard/scrounger and had a lot of fun with the character.  We had a fun group of characters and players, but ended up nearly suffering a TPK after we accidentally activated 3 encounters into a single encounter.  Somehow and thanks to some lucky rolls, we survived.  Shane Harsch is a great GM, and I highly recommend his Nova 20 and Nova 6 systems, as well as his Narossia Sea of Tears fantasy setting for HERO.
 
DC Adventures: Gotham Uncovered: This was the best adventure design of the convention, as the GM also wrote a really impressive adventure with a thorough knowledge of the Gotham and DC universes.  We had a fun group that was half Bat family (Nightwing, Red Robin & Batgirl) and half wild cards (Azrael, Red Hood, and The Creeper), however the GM could have done better time management (we went significantly over time) as well as directed the party better (the wild cards players got a bit out of hand at numerous points).   I played Cassandra Cain Batgirl as this was the canon where Barbara Gordon had become Oracle.  I still had fun, and really liked the adventure's design and story. 
 
Umerican Burger Wars: I'm not a fan of the Dungeon Crawl Classics rpg, but I found the setting interesting enough to try out; as I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic settings.  It was a zany party and an awesome DM, but it was a bit too dungeon-crawly for my tastes- I think I would have enjoyed an adventure with greater roleplaying and intrigues- but I still recommend the setting and adventure.
 
Heart of Endekor Castle:  A fun D&D adventure where the PCs were dispatched to investigate a mysterious and foreboding prophecy of doom at a castle.  The DM and group were a lot of fun, and apparently we did things very differently from the other groups that had played the adventure.  Still, the secret of the castle was interesting.
 
Tomb of Whores:  Another Amorphous Blob Games adventure: this one also had a pair of DMs acting as a comedy duo dressed in parody pimp outfits.  This adventure parodied the Tomb of Horrors adventure by turning the lich into a pimp-lich named "Ass-Rack", and his undead minions into undead prostitutes.  The game featured 70s porn music, sexually explicit references, and political incorrectness- almost as if Deadpool had decided to run a D&D adventure.  It was enjoyable, but we only managed to get through half of the adventure in 3.5 hours, and had to rush the second half in the remaining half hour.  However, one of the GMs was a hilarious rapper- and the other one was the perfect "straight man" to his outrageous colleague.
 
I certainly had a lot of fun at Origins, although I am disappointed by the Director's decision to rescind Larry Correia's invitation (I happen to be a huge fan of the latter, and would have boycotted if I hadn't already purchased tickets and made arrangements with friends).
 
 
 

Yes, I have been going to U-Con since 2016 (I went from 2005-2009 until I moved to DC and spent the next 6 years utterly broke), and it's a lot of fun.  I will probably run 2 HERO games there actually (one fantasy hero, the other will be either martial arts hero or champions).

If you are anywhere near southeast Michigan in November, I'm trying to work with U-CON to up their game (pun intended) with regards to IGoD. Try to drum up more GMs and more interest and do some real indie gaming, not just "games on demand" but some hard hitting, experimental, boundary pushing indie stuff.
 
Nice little con if you can get to it.