Scott Ruggels

GM could always set a price. Also if the spell is in a defined area, use foci to determine the AOE?

Never used it, and rarely put negative modifiers on skills in stress situations. I had it done to me in a situation where the characters could not sleep, and nearly resulted in a TPK in Hero, so I’d rather not subject my players to that. RSR on magic is at the ragged edge of too much calculation, and too many die rolls to keep things moving, but if the magic requires it, but I made it a flat roll, as it was in the FH playtest, rather than impose negatives due to spell power in the later editions. I do this to keep things moving, and I myself am math-traded and math phobic, so Everythingbis usually static rolls other than combat modifiers.

interesting essay on the problems with Snyder’s interpretation of The DC Superheroes. https://arkhavencomics.com/2020/12/30/the-superheroic-virtues-prudence/ Wonder Woman 1984 was overlong, self-indulgent, boring and crushed under the burden of its caricatures of 1980’s MEN. However, its biggest problem was handed to it three or four movies ago, when Diana told Bruce Wayne that after she had lost the love of her life, she had withdrawn from the world, apparently for 100 years. Snyder turned Diana Prince from Wonder Woman into the Dread Ayesha waiting thousands of years for her one true love to be reincarnated. He never had any kind of handle on the character. This is about as bad as Padme “dying of sadness” because Anakin had turned to the Dark Side (admittedly, Lucas is pretty autistic in his own right). Simply put, Wonder Woman wouldn’t do that. She is the embodiment of too many of the heroic virtues of… Prudence: the ability to always discern which is the path, that is right to take. Whether or not it will be the easiest is immaterial it is the Right thing or it isn’t. Temperance: the practice of self-control and moderation. Self-restraint in all things from extremes in emotions to extremes in pride and grief. This is critically important in those that have great power. Justice: Having a strong sense of fairness. Courage: The strength to carry out the other virtues. To able to confront fear, uncertainty and extreme opposition. To follow those virtues regardless of the painful burdens of personal sacrifice they will entail. The strength to keep going when all hope is lost.

Innnnnnteresting. Well what I have played was mostly Superhero Campaigns in real cities, but I notice that most Champions Publications are RPG Fake cities. Millenium City, Vibora Bay, San Angelo and Hudson city. These are places I have not played a single game in. The one problem though, is that while comic books can get away without maps, it I belive is really harmful to not have a detailed map of a city, which makes only the current Hudson City feel "real enough". Without a map, to me it's just smoke. I do like inventing fictional cities, but still generally play in Real world locations. One of the best campaigns I was in was bob Simpson's campaign, which was set in St. Louis, a city I had not spent much time in, mostly passing through by train (when I was very little), and by car (when I was older), but where he had grown up, and so he toured a bunch of California players through the intricacies of St. Louis, as well as tromping through the history of that campaign that had been run out of a Fantasy and Science Fiction book store while Bob still lived in St. Louis, before he took a job in Silicon Valley. I guess because most Champions players in the San Francisco Bay Area were generally Marvel readers, rather than DC, it followed the convention of mostly real world cities. The exception to playing in real world locations was our heroic level campaigns, that were mercenary operations inside of the fictitious Central American Country of Costa Diego, run by Mr. D.I. himself, L. Douglas Garrett, and when not playing in those we would kind of blue sky background and historical details of the country, like the names of the Capital, the major river, and bits of its colonial past, but try to make it feel as authentic as we could.

The funny thing is that skills were not a thing until Espionage came out and that was the first Non- Superhero Hero Games product. The rules were mostly the same, but this introduced foreign languages and skill sets. Before Espionage, Champions skills were rather broad, and vague (Reed Richards has "Science" on a 14 or less). ^th edition has gone a long way away from that, which I think isn't really true to the comic book source material, but... well it's what Steve wanted with the bifurcation of "science" into a vast array of somewhat expensive specialist disciplines. Works for Modern heroic level games, though.

JRRM Was a master of it. All the characters in ASOIAF, had recognizable, but slightly off names that were not entirely unfamiliar, but odd enough that they felt "of a place". It's probably not a bad idea to follow.

I think most of that is because of cultural resonance. It's one where the players can make more correct assumptions than they could with other cultures they are unfamiliar with. It's easier to work with, and minimizes assumption clash, or problems with disparities of knowledge.

Oh really now? A bit of a surprise, but now I will have to take a look.

Well, if you want to fight them in court, be my guest. But the cost of legal disputes tend to go to the deepest pockets in this country.

Crayons isn’t the proper analogy. Music sampling is. Remixes and sampled licks are often copyright claimed by the original artist, who often ends up with a share of the profits and a credit, or all of the profits depending on the particulars. The problem is that the products of the Hero Forge creator, by the nature of of their creation, cannot be “transformative” works, and as such are still made entirely from Hero Forge assets. Until recently, LEGO, defended their bricks tenaciously, shutting down companies that infringed on their patents. You can do a lot with LEGO, but until the patents expired a few years ago, there was a good chance you would be sent a “cease and desist“ order of you made parts compatible with LEGO. For those big displays in shops in toy stores, the displays were paid for as a service to the artist making the display. so no, it’s not analogous to Crayola. The only way to extract oneself from the Hero Forge dilemma is to use the STL files as a template or heavily edited and modify the figure so that each of the separate assets used to create the figure are now recognizably different, and unique. As to questions of concept. Unless the character likeness existed before the Hero Forge mini was created, then the likeness could be claimed by Hero Forge. The work around would be to grab a screenshot or two, but never save the work or pay for a figure or file.

Wellll... if you look at things up through Champions III, that was normal. Skills were for detectives and rarely did anything important happen outside of Hero ID and only gadgeteers and detectives bought skils.

New season (6th) of The Expanse dropped on Amazon Prime last week. No spoilers, but the good quality still holds

That seems more of a personality problem than a problem with power gaming. Did they bitch about the later distribution of magic items?

A good introduction is The Classic Fitearms channel, which covers popular trends. Also 9 Hole Reviews does comparative analysis of various rifles out to 500 yards.

There are various ways of power gaming, though. There is squeezing in every appropriate advantage and limitation, to get the most bang for the points. There is making an attack that is irresistible to almost all defenses, there is tweaking things until you never miss, and then there is piling on DeX and skills so they never miss. What did was spend less so I had fewer disads-attatchments, built with mostly had higher defenses and stun, as my builds prioritized being the last man standing. Offense was variable, but depended on the concept. So there are different degrees of power gaming where a 241 pt. Armored suit could go toe to toe with 300 pt. Villains.

I id neglect to mention that. that yes, when the Noble Characters achieve their goal, at that point they have duties to the land, the realm, what have you and at that point they become an NPC< who can do cameos, but their adventuring days are done. I had a Paladin in D&D 5e, who was a member of the Royal Family, and due to war, was next in line to the throne. IT was a thrilling campaign, and the stakes got higher and higher as he overcame obstacles, Delved dungeons for loot to pay his armies, engaged in mass warfare, and won the throne. The Character was retired at 7th level as the Current King of Glimvale. The Rest of the party were then tasked by him to ferret out the clues to a much older and larger problem that needed to be dealth with, and the party got a perk of Royal Support. I then had to play the Ambassador from the Elven city, who also had an interest in resolving that ancient problem. So yes, once the Noble is seated, his role becomes more abstracted to the background of the campaign, but it sure makes for some good first hand history in the campaign. As for the politics, depending on it, I can love it or hate it, but that's a result of detail and background.

Honestly, it's not so bad, you get used to being cut open after a while. I had a "Major health event" in the summer of 2018, and I am not the same as I was. Right now I am on Kidney Dialysis, and other than the "enforced relaxation of three and a half hours Mondays and Fridays. MY health has improved a bit since 2018. In fact I have to go in for some minor surgery this morning, but it's out patient, where basically my right elbow is going to be sore for a week. But after that "health event" I have been a LOT more attentive to good health and diet. (and losing 50 lbs. was a big help). I have had gallstones in the past, and they were removed. I have had kidney stones in the past, and they were dealt with, back then. It's not how you pay for the medical care that counts, so much it's the quality of the doctors, Nurses and facility that does. Talk to them, deal with them directly if you can, and above all, follow their advice.

It's not. The problem is there is a sculptor, working for Hero Forge, that has created the sculpts in a specific way to allow for scaling and posing, and the costume and prop elements that work within that same framework, that fit those sculpted figures in such a way that they fit and work together. Each of those individual pieces of artwork have been created by the sculptor on the company dime for this service. Hero Forge (Shapeways) has created and owns those specific shapes. It basically becomes the "Fan art" problem, in that Batman is owned by ATT-Warner. You cannot sell the likeness of Batman without a license from ATT-Warner. However, if you are at a convention, you can pay an artist to draw Batman for you, and that is a legal gray area that is often exploited at conventions. The customer is paying for a service, not the "product". If you make your own figure from scratch or using high end 3D software (Z-Brush, Blender, or Maya) that is demonstrably different from the Hero Forge product (because the hero Forge product has a definite, chunky, identifiable art style) of a character, that character is yours, even if you mocked up one in Hero Forge to test the concept.

Done it. It worked pretty well, but it takes a player that can plan, take a long term view, and for people that are comfortable with a hands off approach. It’s not for everyone, but it does work. A good scenario is sending princes on a diplomatic mission to another country.

Here's a more thorough explanation of their TOS. basically they crafrted all the parts you are putting together, So they own the parts: https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2020/10/19/hero-forge-and-the-copyright-controversy-over-miniatures/ Hope this helps.

Yes you can make figured without bases, and that's how most people are importing them into Tabletop simulator. Examples: https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D11985781/ https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D11985948/ https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D12139067/ https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D11986866/ Hope this helps.

Wonder bunny is whole again!

Sounds just like Halfmoon Bay , complete with the telemetry station on the north point.

I conduct it mostly like the above, as it's dependent upon the surrounding culture, and the time period it's been "lifted" from. The Western Empire is Late Roman, early Byzantine, so that names are Latin, with humans having the traditional three names, and the non-human Lupines having two, with their last name based on Latin tree names for the trees that were in traditional areas of their original clans. Flat tree names are used as the clan names for "unassimilated" lupines, with first names often being Slavic or eastern European (but non-Christian). Eastern names are primarily pre-Islamic Persian names and Zoroastrian. names. I really dislike random keystroke or onomatopoeiac names. a collection of letters, like legos spilled randomly on the floor doesn't make for pleasing names., even for aliens.

Hope this helps: https://imgur.com/gallery/EiQEc3w A gallery of DC- plans I collected making a 3D model of one.