Boll Weevil

That's a very tempting location I must admit.  I'm currently planning a 1-shot set in Aarn for a group of D&D players but if that goes well and there's interest I would totally look at that region for a campaign

Played by Shaquille O’Neal.

One of the best parts about a real RPG, a face to face pen and paper game with dice, is that game balance is a much less significant problem than a computer game.  If your mage is more powerful than your warrior than your rogue than your hunter with the wolf companion etc, then the GM can address that with what kind of adventure you are presented with and how the story unfolds.  You can tip the scales with a thumb, using equipment, types of enemies, situations, etc.  OK the sneaky gal feels weak, then you have more adventures where sneaky rules or is critical.  

Nope, still not getting it. Eurostar does not demand a billion dollars or they blow up a bridge with everyone on it. Eurostar blows up the bridge. Then claims responsibility. The critic of Eurostar does not get to apologize or else a loved one is tortured on public broadcast. The loved one is tortured.
 
Did Al Qaeda demand money before flying a jumbo jet into the World Trade Center? Terrorists attack and kill without warning, that's what makes them so terrifying. They don't extort, they make graphic statements. Since this is the Champions forum, perhaps someone has been watching the recent The Falcon and the Winter Soldier streaming series. That's how terrorists operate.
 
The way this plays out in dramatic fiction like our RPGs is that the heroes learn of a planned attack by some means -- an informant, electronic eavesdropping, piecing together the pattern of the terrorists' previous activities -- and then intervene before the attack takes place, usually at the last moment.

I try to not be a strait man when it comes to economic jokes.

Well, what Eurostar does is shaped first and foremost by Fiacho's motivations, both intellectual and emotional. As far as I can tell from his backstory and activities, Fiacho believes that Europe's inherent potential for greatness is being held back by all its nations' entrenched political, economic and cultural structures, which keep it divided and weak. Fiacho seems to have decided that those structures need to be irrevocably smashed before a new united Europe can arise. I don't get the impression he's thought through what specifically should replace them. It's as if Fiacho makes an almost Marxist assumption that something better will inevitably evolve once the old order has been swept away.
 
Of course a lot of Fiacho's philosophy is rationalization for his personal anger, bitterness, disillusionment, and resentment. He wants revenge on a system he feels failed and betrayed him, and his campaign is his intellectual excuse for venting. It's no coincidence that he recruited violent psychopaths for his team. They follow him out of a combination of their natural predilections aligning with Fiacho's activities, personal gratitude and loyalty, his persuasive charisma, and the wealth and power they expect to get out of his campaign.
 
I would imagine Eurostar's activities generally follow the pattern of most normal human terrorists, to cause death and destruction targeted at a particular group in order to sow confusion, doubt and fear in that group. Of course their superhuman power allows them to be more direct and obvious than normal human terrorists. Their specific targets would likely fall into two main categories. One would be the power structures underpinning European society: governing bodies and political parties; law enforcement and the military; industry, banking and other linchpins of the economy. The other would be symbols of the standards and values of the old order, and of its aura of strength and continuity: national monuments; great achievements in technology and engineering; particularly prominent and famous politicians, business people, intellectuals, and media/entertainment figures.
 
Because Fiacho resents America's economic and cultural "imperialism" in Europe, that's more than enough justification for Eurostar to cross the Atlantic to strike at similar targets in that country. So you don't have to confine their depredations to the Old World.

I blame the paucity of public transport in the US

I wholly agree that individual campaigns should focus on particular subsets of the setting, and mostly ignore the rest except for "change of pace" adventures. But I very much appreciate that the CU offers me such a vast range of possibilities to choose from. And I admire how, for the most part, all that diversity hangs together and makes sense, so that you have justification to bring those diverse elements together.
 
I love that one of UNTIL's young special agents with apparently minor psionic powers, is actually a much older and more powerful Empyrean clandestinely monitoring the agency's activities for her people. I love that the immortal sorcerer Dr. Yin Wu joined in the defense of Earth against Istvatha V'han's first invasion. And that VIPER's patron deity Nama ordered the group to attack and disrupt DEMON's terrible Demonflame ritual, that might have threatened Nama himself. And that the Greek goddess Hecate and Aztec god Tezcatlipoca teamed up to try to tear down the Ban barring mythic gods from fully manifesting on Earth. And Mechanon and Dr. Destroyer engaged in a year-long global war after Mech tried to "liberate" DD's artificially-intelligent supercomputer. And the alien Qularr attacked Earth to obtain genetic material from Earth's superhumans, because they encountered the great Silver Age superheroes, the Fabulous Five, during one of the heroes' missions in space. And that Herr Doktor Pandemonium of DEMON's Inner Circle discovered and exploited the genetic legacy that the Slug's race, the Elder Worm, left in humanity from the Worm's prehistoric era of domination of Earth.
 
The way it all weaves together is just so cool. 😎

I dare say that's what most GMs do in practice. There's too much CU to use in the average campaign; GMs must decide which sections and characters to use, and leave the rest in the background.
 
But that's how comic books operate, too. (Or did, anyway.) Take the Marvel U, for instance. The Fantastic Four have their stable of regular and semi-regular villains like Dr Doom, Galactus, the Mole Man, assorted aliens, etc. Spider-Man and Daredevil have their street-level villains, which the X-Men seldom if ever encounter because they're fighting Sentinels, other mutant factions, and such ilk. None of them are likely to fight Nightmare, Dormammu, or Dr Strange's other mystical foes. And so on.
 
Sure, change-of-pace stories happen: The X-Men go into space, Spider-Man fights a demon, or Thor fights robots. But that's the point: Change of pace. Heroes usually stick to their niches.
 
So pick what style of heroes and team you want for your campaign and pick the set of villains and background to support it. Say the rest doesn't exist or just ignore it. Like, unless you're running a Mystic Masters campaign most of the mystical side of the CU effectively shouldn't exist. Unless you really want to make anti-mutant prejudice a big part of the campaign, you can (and probably should) ignore IHA and the MInuteman robots and, conversely, Kinematik and his mutant supremacists. And unless you want to actually run an alien invasion story arc or out-to-space story arc, the alien races might as well all not exist... jnless one of your players specifically wants to play an alien character.
 
The same goes for the "thousands of supers around the world" issue. For decades, 90% of Marvel stories happened in the Greater NYC area. Heroes were more likely to visit the Kree Galaxy than, say, Nebraska. Or even major countries like India or France. DC spread things out further by at least giving different home cities to heroes, such as Metropolis, Gotham City, Star City, Central City, yadda yadda. But those heroes tended to have their own favored sets of villains, too.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

Like the Marvel and DC universes, the Champions Universe is a pretty busy place.
 
I’ve been doing some thinking, wondering how far to strip it down for a future campaign, to get down to the core elements.
 
For example, instead of thousands of superhumans across the globe with a multitude of origins, the pool shrinks to a few hundred or maybe less. Instead of a multitude of superteams, there are very few.
 
Instead of a multitude of alien races and invasion armadas every few years, there are only a handful of races and no mass invasions.
 
The same thing for mystic stuff. The occasional demon shows up, but not the legions of hell.
 
Bring the agent groups down in number to just maybe UNTIL and VIPER.
 
I’m pondering a more manageable variant of the CU, but don’t want to cut into the bone.
 
How much of the CU is bloat and fat that could be pulled out, but still leave the core feel of it intact?

Breaking this project off from the Fifth Edition Renaissance thread.
 
 
Working Title:  Pittsburgh: City of Champions
 
Purpose:  Provide a setting and campaign book.  With P:CoC and Champions Complete, GMs and players have everything they need to actually run a Champions campaign.  Bring in new players and folks who want a ready-to-run game and campaign, not a toolkit.  Support with future products, if sales support it.
 
Format:
Introduction - Explain where all of the toolkit toggles are set (Silver Age, Standard Superheroic characters, power levels, and so on) History Geography and Government Transportation, Media/Arts/Entertainment, Subcultures Police, Emergency Services, Underworld, Superheroes, Supervillany Places of Interest GMs Vault Villains (include an organization and master villain) Adventures Continuing the Campaign  
Note that bullet points 2-7 follow the structure of Millenium City and Vibora Bay.  MC clocks in at 135 pages, VB at 157.  Much of the difference in page count is VB's extended GM chapter and adventure seed ideas.  P:CoC would be longer, based on the Introduction and extended Adventures/Campaign sections.  Make the adventure/campaign arc related to why the previous super-team is no longer around and the new PC team has to pick up the mantle.
 
One concern that I have is that CC only has 64 print copies left in stock, and I don't know if it will be reprinted.  Or possibly I'm an old pencil-and-paper grognard and that's not a big concern, folks today buy the pdfs and, if they want, use PoD or the local copy store for a paper copy.
 
Funding: Kickstarter.  Based on previous successful Hero System Kickstarter campaigns, rough estimate of $15,000. Start with a nice color cover and minimal B&W interior artwork; stretch goals would add more artwork and then upgrade it to color. Mention (and have) plans for future supplements: more linked adventures, a city development book; also to use Kickstarter.  Maybe have a second adventure arc, linked to the first, at a high enough stretch goal to fund it.
 
Staff:  Writers. Editor. Proof-reader. Artist(s). Project coordinator.  Mark Rand is providing backgound on Pittsburgh.  Need another writer to do the gamey stuff.  I am neither a writer nor an editor, but I can proof-read and coordinate (I am also qualified to do character write-ups.)

If you didn't see my earlier post, I've been working on a new "combat tool" for managing combat under the HERO rule system; things have come a long way.  Today I used it for the first time in a real campaign, importing characters from Hero Designer, and am happy with how it's progressing.  Though it doesn't yet have support for things like Aid or Drain, it managed normal combat just fine with full BODY, STUN, and END tracking.
 
And it's free!  You can reach the tool here and I've created some instructions here.  I'd love to get some feedback on it.
 

So in the original Star Wars, I'd say you have at a minimum 3, maximum 6 players.  You've got at least Han, Luke, and Leia.
 
Han spends his points on smuggler skills, being good with a blaster, being a good pilot, and having the Millennium Falcon.  Leia spends her points on a bunch of diplomatic stuff, contacts, wealth, rank, etc, as well as being pretty good with a blaster.  Luke spends his points on lots of piloting skill, decent combat ability, and then some low level force sensitivity.  All three of these characters are roughly equal, we'll say, but when we first meet Leia she's going through a story arc where she doesn't have most of her stuff available to her.  That's okay though, because Luke doesn't get to fly a ship until the very end, and Han has a decent amount of points tied up in the Falcon, which isn't that useful when it's been captured by the Empire.
 
Now, you've got up to 3 more players in the game.  Chewbacca is cool enough that somebody wants to play him, though he might actually be Han's Follower.  Chewie spent his points on really high physical stats, skill with his crossbow, and tech skills.  The next character who might be a PC/might be an NPC is Obi-Wan.  He's got mystical Force powers that nobody else has, but he doesn't appear to be that powerful physically.  Finally you've got the two droids.  3PO is pretty damn useless most (well, I guess, all) of the time.  But R2 can hack into computers, and repair stuff, and is basically a fully functional team member.  So maybe a player gets both of these characters  Neither of them is a very high point character, but hey, you get two of them.
 
By Empire, Luke has increased his Force abilities, and may have paid for his X-Wing.  Leia (who seems to have most of her points active in between movies) is now a General with the Rebel Alliance.  Han is going legit and has bought skills and contacts with people who aren't crime lords.  Chewie is still Chewie, and Obi-Wan is a ghost.  The droids split up, though they don't really have a lot to do during the movie.  Of course then we introduce Obi-Wan's player's new character, Lando Calrissien.  
 
It's only really in Jedi that we see Luke's abilities start to outstrip the others.  He's clearly the most powerful by that point.  Even still, in the forest fighting on Endor, Leia hangs with him, fighting stormtroopers on speeder bikes.  So I think the other characters have been buying up their stats as well.

Last month I enjoyed the fall game convention (Nuke Con) and am slowing building up the desire to revitalize Champions and run it at the next major game event. The challenge remains, though, is to take something that's very rules heavy (Hero System) and make it easy enough for brand new players to pick up and be interested in like the rules light superhero game ICONS that I typically run, while still providing the details (e.g. "crunch") that existing Hero Systems players enjoy.
 
I came up with what I call, "Simplified Sixth" where I combined powers, skills, talents, and perks under the generalized category of, "Skills & Attributes" (I got the idea from Silver Age Sentinels), spell out what I can, minimize acronyms (which really confused new players in the past), and make it fit on one page. Below are two examples and constructive feedback would be extremely helpful.
 
Thank you!
 

Thank you for writing this up. I have been playing Star Wars Rebellion (PC 1995 ish) again lately and would love to run a force-light (if at all) Star Wars game where the players would play out the missions with the flavor of the game. I could imagine a single night of roleplaying where the team just needs to blow up a shield generator or shipyard. Also, after watching Ahsoka I am finally watching Rebels from the beginning which feels the same as Rebellion missions. 

I may have mentioned here and there a Star Wars Hero game... I've now been running it for a couple of months.  I've written up a document for it, which contains rules info and session write-ups, here. 

Just to round out the descriptions for the stable of Fantasy Hero genre books: The Valdorian Age is a sword-and-sorcery setting, evocative of fiction by the likes of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber. The Atlantean Age is inspired by classical Greco-Roman mythology and culture, but mixed with epic-scale magic. It also supports a "superpower"-scale conflict between rival world empires. Tuala Morn is a land and era representing a synthesis of Celtic legends and folklore from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
 
The above follow, in chronological order, the world of Ambrethel in The Turakian Age on the Hero Universe's official unified time line.

If I had a question like this I would PM Lord Laiden. He is our resident lore expert. If it's in a HERO book, then the odds are pretty good that he'll remember it.

Hey, BW. Nice to see you around. We don't get to see your handsome boy as often as we used to.
 
The Turakian Age was deliberately written to be Hero Games' "D&D-esque" fantasy setting. Most of the familiar characters, creatures and tropes are in there: Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes, Orcs, Goblins, dragons, wizards, clerics ("priests"), paladins, liches, pseudo-Medieval European/Middle Eastern cultures, ruined cities full of treasure and monsters, extensive underground civilizations, etc. There are some more unique creatures or takes on the classics, including Trolls, Drakine, and Migdalars. The setting also deals with realms and regions inspired by cultures not often translated to RPGs, e.g. Southeast Asian; or more original and innovative civilizations like the quirky nations of Vornakkia. TA also delves more deeply into some subjects which most games gloss over, such as the role of religion in society.
 
I can't speak definitively to the 6E versions of support books for Hero's fantasy line, such as the Grimoire; but many of the 5E versions use TA as their default reference. Nobles, Knights, And Necromancers provides numerous NPCs drawn directly from the regions and peoples of Ambrethel (the TA known world). Many of them are elaborations of persons mentioned in the setting book itself. The two 5E Grimoire(s) detail the spells of the various "arcana" of magic described in TA. Monsters, Minions, And Marauders often describes exemplary members of the creatures it stats out which are based in TA. Enchanted Items, Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds, and The Book Of Dragons are all connected to TA, although all of these books could be used for almost any world following the D&D pattern.
 
BTW if you'd be interested in a more detailed exploration of using TA as your game's setting, you're welcome to follow my signature.

I'm working as fast as I can! 

Unfortunately we have some terrible news to report. Darren Watts, who used to be one of our business partners in DOJ Inc./Hero Games and has also worked for many other companies in the RPG industry, suffered a very serious heart attack last Thursday (December 22, 2022). It appears that his brain was without oxygen for an as yet unknown period.

Darren's currently under sedation at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. While he isn't conscious, his wife Diane tells me he can receive visitors.

We'll keep the forum posted as the situation warrants. In the meantime, please keep Darren in your thoughts and prayers.

Oops, sorry. I was on mute. 

I'm not sure -- perhaps Dan S. or someone else removed it (or changed its "pinned" status) during a clean-up session. I'm still working hard on MH, trying to get at least a little work done on it every day, and more than a little whenever possible.

I was playing around with Daz Studio today and did this. Each hex is 2m, with a 1/2 scale, Normal (2m) and Large (4m).

Eh...
 
Well, I popped back up.  Maybe I should have showered first.