Scott Ruggels

Just to set a counterexample: I maintain a subscription to Paizo's Pathfinder adventure path because it's just so damn useful to anyone running Pathfinder games, and outside of that the last $100 I spent on gaming related stuff was all toward buying Superhero RPG adventures.  Green Ronin publishing has a dozen or so 20 page adventures and I've bought all of them.  Fainting Goat games has several big collections of mini-adventures, which I have also bought a ton of.
I basically either create Hero Stats for the characters that appear or I substitute a Champions Universe equivalent. 
 
Settings I got.  Genres I got.  Even Villains I got.  Stuff to do with them is the eternal need.
The Champions Universe is vast and pretty well detailed.  I don't need more, and rebooting a new universe is great and all but so what?  There are a zillion of them and a new unified theory for where super powers come from doesn't help anyone actually play.
 
I play every week, and I homebrew a ton, but man it's nice to just have an adventure to slot in.  I just ran a Mutants & Masterminds adventure where an evil plant guy starts using energy drinks to turn local college athletes into berserkers, changed it to Highschool for my Ravenswood PCs & substituted Thorn for the M&M guy & away I went.  I can come up with my own adventure, I do all the time, but the money this one cost me was well worth the price when work ran long & I didn't get time to do it all myself.
 
It would be *amazing* to have some official Hero games adventures.  I've mined out the classic ones.  I bought Red Cobra (which is tonally all over the place & comes of as contemptuous of it's own story but maybe can be salvaged), I've looked at the revamp of the Isle of Dr Destroyer but I own the old one and was never convinced it was worth buying again (the old one is way too grim for my playstyle anyway).  My group played the heck out of everything that came out for 5e (Sharper than a Serpent's tooth, Battlegrounds & so on)
 
If Hero Games put out a series of adventures that actually took place in the Champions Universe that would be 100x more useful to me than a book about what is going on in Australia or a deep dive into Until's space station.

Okay, so let's look at some rough history.
 
Paizo began, publishing Adventures for D&D 3.5.  But decided to go off on their own, and use the D20 license to publish their own system, we now know as Pathfinder. The product was a very Publishing adventures was supposed to be a losing proposition, but they made enough money to put out a magazine.  These magazines would put out Adventures that were linked to the Next issue of the magazine, and after a year, they would publish the adventures in a hardbacked book for $50, and start the next year's adventures in the magazine.   This has resulted in a very lush game world (Golarion) for Pathfinder, and a lot of material.  I do not know how well Second Edition is working out for them, but I would assume that since the stats in both editions are similar, if not the same, then the current published material should work. 
 
Now it has become evident, that the quality of computers has increased in capability since the early 2000s, pushing more work and productivity onto the rank and file worker, and sucking up vast amounts of time at home with ever more capable games.  So Marc W. Miller's  lament, that people don't have time for imagination seems apt.  IF we remember, both Traveller, and Hero were conceived as generic systems for running what ever you wanted to, but in Traveller's case, the player base became dependent upon published material, either modules, or magazine articles. Like Paizo, some of those magazine articles became collected into books.  Today you can see the fruits of that productivity in https://travellermap.com/, where the planets from  all the published Traveller material can be accessed on a single large, scalable, continuous map of all the Traveller sectors and subsectors.
 
Hero had a magazine for a while, but it went defunct with one of the sales, and did not continue.  Very little of that material was collected into separate books and adventures, but I also9 think Hero was a bit too early in the cycle to change the assumption that it was a system for home brew.  However there are a lot of questions on the Hero Discord about the original Champions Superhero group, and Millenium City, that there is interest in the published materials.  What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.
 

Brother Scott, I don't even know who the _Defenders'_ Defenders are, and until I drifted back to this board, I thought the Fantastic Four was Roger Corman's attempt to break into modern sarcasm-based comedy via superhero deconstruction.
 
The only thing I know about the Avengers is that it was a series of three superhero movies that didn't really trip any switches for me outside of "ooh--!  Pretty special effects!"  (Seriously: the CGI effects were amazing), and they served to reinforce something I have said for years that no one really wants to hear:  The only way to make martial artists and "skilled normals" a relevant part of a genuine super-powered team is to make sure that the party is split pretty much all the time, which is the antithesis of a good RPG session, at least when it becomes a habit.
 
 
 
 
I have always felt that meta plot lines were more the domain of scenarios, adventures, and the campaigns that contain them, and should not be hardwired into the setting---
 
 
However---
 
I also think this is a completely different conversation, so I won't muddy things up with more exposition on that.   
 
 
 
 
 
Agreed.
 
 
 
That's a huge loss, not just to gaming, but to style in general.  I had no idea.
 
 
 
There's that Ruggels guy; his stuff has come a _long_ way since doing that illustration for --- was the the Black Queen?  The Queen of Hearts?  The character's name escapes me at the moment, but the picture is fresh in my head: the Harley Quinn before there was a Harley Quinn-- the one who tried to infiltrate the Card Shark's organization and went full-on nuts.  Oh-- and those asteroid pictures in... Was it Space Gamer?  JTAS?  It was Traveller-related; I recall that.  
 
Anyway, his stuff is pretty damned good, I think. 
 
 
 
 
 

Yes, but that does not preclude the introduction of new material, and new villains. The background has more than one city. If The Champions are like the Avengers, then who is their X-Men? Their Defenders?, Their Fantastic Four? (The only DC I read was their War and humor comics, and the Teen Titans, so I don’t have many references for their product).
 
However, right there you have a way of indicating power level and flavor, by putting what ever team on the cover.  With a Defenders analogue on the cover, you would have street level villains, organized crime, and the occasional low level strangeness. 
 
With the X-Men on the cover, you had threats by large organizations, behind the scenes government intrigues, villains of a higher threat level individually, and the occasional cosmic threat (plus a lot of soap opera, and a mass of NPCs).
 
With the Avengers or Fantastic Four on the cover, you get the cosmic threats, the Alien Invasion of the year, and adventures off world or off in other dimensions. 
 
What this would require is shuffling Heroes and villains around into the proper cities and power levels and flavors, and build the meta plots from there. 
 
On an aesthetic subject, we cannot settle with the art. Unfortunately, Albert Deschanes has passed on, and Patric Zircher has gone full pro, but we need artists than can draw characters who can act as well as fight, realistic backgrounds, and consistent NPC likenesses. With the decline of the direct market, some comic artists have become available for somewhat reasonable prices, and it never hurts to inquire about rates. 
 
On the whole, I think it’s doable, with some thought and planning. But to succeed one has to take a systematic approach to keep the teams, cities and adventures organized (even by cover dress) so that the customer can find the right flavor and power level for their players. 
 
 

Well crap.
 
We're stuck with it.
 

 

Honestly I don't much like the Champions Universe setting either, and think that the approach of moving time forward from a fixed date and making so many significant changes doesn't blend well with a comic book genre but.... its a pre-set easy to use world for champions that has decades of development and tons of support and info.  So its dumb not to use and it can be turned into something pretty striking.  As Liaden notes, its very well developed and detailed.  And almost all the adventures plug into it very easily. 
 
So we have a setting, and we have adventures, we just need to update, repackage them, and string them into a campaign for GMs to just drop players into.  A few campaigns like that and we might see some real momentum. Its just a matter of doing it, but I'm not gonna put off my fantasy setting any longer to push more Champions stuff, even if it pays better.  Once I get the setting and a few more adventures out, it will be all ready for people.
 
Because I think Fantasy Hero deserves some love and attention as well.

Horror on the Orient Express - Lausanne - Nocturne Pt.1
 
Jan 1923
 
In Which The Investigators Enjoy The Sights Of Switzerland, Which Include Mountains, Lakes, & Horrible Murder
 
The investigators have reached Lausanne, where a taxidermist is selling a scroll written by a madman, and is trying to raise the price he'll get by inviting anybody that might be interested in something written on living human skin with white-hot needles. He will regret this decision.
 
The taxidermist in question is one Edgar Wellington, who had written to the Loriens in Poissy, inquiring about the Sedefkar Simulacrum. This naturally makes him a person of considerable interest to the investigators, even if Switzerland isn’t one of the places Professor Smith believes the Simulacrum was scattered to. Wellington and his brother moved to Lausanne after the War, and Wellington is happy to sell the scroll. He acquired it from a French soldier by the name of Raoul Malon during the war, and it apparently discusses the Simulacrum, although he claims he hasn’t translated much of it. He wants 250 pounds - quite the profit over the pack of cigarettes he originally paid. Unfortunately, he’s also offered the scroll to the Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes. 
 
The Duke seems charming enough, but it’s likely he has more funds available if things escalate to a bidding war. Edgar certainly seems eager to encourage one - perhaps he needs the funds to help his mute brother William, who suffered devastating head injuries in the War. 
 
Edgar suggests the Duke show Huxley and Florence around Lausanne until they can all meet at the Black Cat Café in the evening, and arrange a blind auction - for one thing he has to retrieve the scroll from his bank, before anybody can even have a look at it. 
 
So it’s probably just as well that Alex was still nursing their hangover from all the Dreamlands wine the night before, and missed this meeting at the taxidermy shot - because Huxley is paranoid enough to have Alex stake out the shop, from a café across the road. And while the Duke is showing Huxley and Flo the sights, Edgar is seen hurrying down to the nearby stationers shop, and returning with something the size and shape of a scroll case. 
 
Huxley: The b****** is going to try and sell us a forgery.
 
Or at the very least use the party to help defraud the Duke. 
 
Florence: We were supposed to be sightseeing most of today.
Huxley: Then Huxley got distracted by books. 
 
That evening, at the Black Cat, they set Alex up in a corner to keep an eye on the meeting just in case anything happens. More strong coffee would probably be a bad idea, especially after the hangover and stake-out while hungover that morning.
 
GM: You’re practically vibrating as it is.
Alex: I’d better switch back to alcohol then.
 
But the Duke and Edgar Wellington don’t arrive - instead, one Maximillian von Wurtheim, best described as a poster boy for the SS, comes to the café, making apologies for the other two and inviting himself to the table. While Max flirts outrageously with Florence and regales them with the endless story about his family fortune, late father’s will, Max’s evil twin, etc, Huxley quietly sends Alex around to keep an eye on the Wellington’s shop. Huxley manages to escape the melodrama himself, later, and heads around to join Alex. It’s probably just as well they did, because the shop is dark, and silent, and the door ajar.
 
Alex and the lieutenant sidle into the pitch dark shop,  knocking over stuffed wildlife as they try to find the light switch.
 
Alex: Just light a match!
Huxley: I’m a non-smoker, sorry.
Alex: When we get out of this you’re taking it up.
 
Back at the Black Cat Maximillian is still talking - sure, his outrageous claims might make an interesting novel at some point, but he’s. Still. Going. 
 
Florence OoC: I’m keeping my expression polite as I imagine the ways I’m going to make the Lt. pay for this. 
Huxley OoC: I’ll bring you a nice stuffed animal from the Wellington’s shop.
Florence OoC: I like cats. If you can’t get fresh-made store-bought is fine. 
 
Eventually Flo reaches her limits.
 
Florence: I'm taking my handbag to the restroom and see if I can climb out the window. 
 
Alas, she won’t fit, and she is forced to return to the table. 
 
GM: He continues his story.
Alex: He probably hasn’t stopped.
 
But enduring this is probably preferable to what the other two find upstairs in the Wellington’s flat - William brutally stabbed and partly flayed, and Edgar killed with a massive morphine overdose in his bed. Huxley’s medical experience rouses William briefly,  just long enough to let the veteran point at a painting of a Merganser for some reason, while Alex runs across to the café to summon help.
 
William might survive, if the doctors at the local hospital are very good. The police take statements, particularly the statement that Alex and Huxley had come to the shop to see why Edgar never arrived for his meeting. They apparently suspect it might be a murder-suicide - or, as Alex overhears - ANOTHER suicide. 
 
Alex also hopes that all this doesn’t get written up in a newspaper her father actually reads.
 
Florence is not happy when the others get back to the hotel.
 
Florence: I had to listen to him talk for hours - and then HE STIFFED ME WITH THE BILL.
 
Of course Alex and Huxley are looking pretty frazzled too - the latter still has blood all over him.
 
Alex: It’s alright, it’s not his.
 
Blood isn’t the only thing he acquired however - while Alex was out getting help he also grabbed Edgar’s diary, a drug bottle of something called ‘Dream Lausanne’, and a scroll case containing what is indeed a fake scroll. 
 
Huxley: How am I going to smuggle the scroll case out of here?
GM: Just shove it down your pants and pretend violent death gives you a massive hard-on. 
 
According to the diary, Edgar has severe PTSD and a crippling morphine habit after the war, and needed to sell the scroll to provide for his brother. But it appears the Duke provided the books, morphine, and ‘the dream drug’, which contributed to Edgar’s downward spiral. The drug apparently takes Edgar to a version of Lausanne ‘from olden times’, and to which Edgar could actually take physical objects, and leave them there. He’s left the real scroll there.
 
The next morning they make full statements to the police and change hotels, to avoid Maximillian and the Duke just in case.  That’s probably just as well for Maximillian because if Florence ever sees him again she’s going to stab him with knitting needles. Unfortunately the new hotel is full to the ceiling with Turkish diplomats, which doesn’t do their paranoia any good. Nor does the news item blaming Lausanne’s massively inflated suicide rate on the psychological effects of the war. At least spending the rest of the day and night here and getting the hell out of Switzerland on the next Orient Express gives them a chance to experiment with the Dream Drug.
 
Huxley: This is balderdash! Magic potions, and, and, and - as a medical professional I cannot recommend this. 
Florence: I’m more interested in who will keep an eye on us if we all go together.
Alex: I like the phrasing there - ‘all go together’
 
Alex and Florence opt to take the drug, which Huxley identifies as a combination of at least three different herbal narcotics and god knows what else, while he monitors their vital signs and hopes they don’t choke on their own dissolving livers or something. Florence makes the good point that if a magical drug is supposed to take you to Dream Lausanne, it might be unwise to take the stuff if you’re hurtling across the landscape in a high speed train.  They decide to take as many weapons as they can hold onto, just in case. That includes Huxley’s sword-cane.
 
Huxley: An elegant weapon from a more civilised age.
Florence: The pointy end goes in the bad guy.
 
At the last moment Huxley adds the scroll case and fake scroll to the pile - as he points out, the case might be useful if they find the real thing. The two women dissolve the drug in some whiskey, throw back the shot glasses, and instantly fall into a deep sleep. They find themselves in a blasted landscape, with a freestanding door. Beyond the door is a medieval version of the Wellington’s shop - with the doors smashed in, cathedral bells tolling, and the sound of a great many people moving outside…

I like spicy settings.  Partially because (like Duke Bushido) I read them for entertainment, and also because I'm always looking for ideas to rip off use in other games, and because I like having a lot of details already spelled out.
 
Hey, I ran a Harn campaign for my gaming group, which was well received.  (Classic moment:  the party had picked up a cat [that was supposed to be a throw-away encounter] and kind of made it their mascot, calling it 'Shadow', so I ran with it.  The cat was injured in an encounter, and the PCs had to travel hard and fast to another place to warn the inhabitants of danger.  So I told the group, "Okay, but if you ride that hard, I'll need to make rolls for the cat - and if there's a failed roll, Shadow dies."  Player immediately drops out of character, points a finger at me and says, "Don't you DARE kill Shadow!!").
 
Given the opportunity, I'd like to run a Harn Hero campaign.  Don't know if it will ever happen, but if it does the story arc will include elements from canon that have enough ambiguity/mystery that I can build my own creation in the existing world.  And Harn is an *incredibly* detailed world.  And I can fall back on canon if (when!) needed.

Regarding the "blandness" of Elweir, as well as the aforementioned Aarn, I can't help but contrast them with my preferred city setting from the Turakian Age world of Ambrethel, the Free City of Tavrosel. Described as an "enormous" city per the standards of the era, Tavrosel is a great center of trade, at a location where the "Western" cultures of Mhorecia and the Westerlands mingle with the "Eastern" culture of Khoria, giving it a cosmopolitan diversity and sophistication. Long a conquered land, the Tavroselans finally rebelled and over decades of war forced their oppressors to recognize their independence, leaving them a tradition of respecting fighting men and hiring mercenaries to defend the city. Tavrosel lies within the spheres of influence of several larger powers, and not only invests in strong military and magical defenses, but extensive diplomatic efforts to maintain its freedom.
 
Having experimented with various forms of government over the centuries, Tavrosel "today" is a semi-democracy ruled by a Triumvirate elected by three social groups: one Triumvir from the nobles, one from the guilds and merchants, and the third from all other citizens. The Triumvirs often conflict and sometimes scheme against each other, but the city's large bureaucracy keeps it functioning in spite of that.
 
There isn't much more detail than that given about Tavrosel, which leaves me much room to develop it as I wish; but just what I related above gives me a stronger sense of the style and atmosphere of the place, and of how its people think and live, than all the pages devoted to Elweir.

Okay, so let's look at some rough history.
 
Paizo began, publishing Adventures for D&D 3.5.  But decided to go off on their own, and use the D20 license to publish their own system, we now know as Pathfinder. The product was a very Publishing adventures was supposed to be a losing proposition, but they made enough money to put out a magazine.  These magazines would put out Adventures that were linked to the Next issue of the magazine, and after a year, they would publish the adventures in a hardbacked book for $50, and start the next year's adventures in the magazine.   This has resulted in a very lush game world (Golarion) for Pathfinder, and a lot of material.  I do not know how well Second Edition is working out for them, but I would assume that since the stats in both editions are similar, if not the same, then the current published material should work. 
 
Now it has become evident, that the quality of computers has increased in capability since the early 2000s, pushing more work and productivity onto the rank and file worker, and sucking up vast amounts of time at home with ever more capable games.  So Marc W. Miller's  lament, that people don't have time for imagination seems apt.  IF we remember, both Traveller, and Hero were conceived as generic systems for running what ever you wanted to, but in Traveller's case, the player base became dependent upon published material, either modules, or magazine articles. Like Paizo, some of those magazine articles became collected into books.  Today you can see the fruits of that productivity in https://travellermap.com/, where the planets from  all the published Traveller material can be accessed on a single large, scalable, continuous map of all the Traveller sectors and subsectors.
 
Hero had a magazine for a while, but it went defunct with one of the sales, and did not continue.  Very little of that material was collected into separate books and adventures, but I also9 think Hero was a bit too early in the cycle to change the assumption that it was a system for home brew.  However there are a lot of questions on the Hero Discord about the original Champions Superhero group, and Millenium City, that there is interest in the published materials.  What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.
 

Okay, so let's look at some rough history.
 
Paizo began, publishing Adventures for D&D 3.5.  But decided to go off on their own, and use the D20 license to publish their own system, we now know as Pathfinder. The product was a very Publishing adventures was supposed to be a losing proposition, but they made enough money to put out a magazine.  These magazines would put out Adventures that were linked to the Next issue of the magazine, and after a year, they would publish the adventures in a hardbacked book for $50, and start the next year's adventures in the magazine.   This has resulted in a very lush game world (Golarion) for Pathfinder, and a lot of material.  I do not know how well Second Edition is working out for them, but I would assume that since the stats in both editions are similar, if not the same, then the current published material should work. 
 
Now it has become evident, that the quality of computers has increased in capability since the early 2000s, pushing more work and productivity onto the rank and file worker, and sucking up vast amounts of time at home with ever more capable games.  So Marc W. Miller's  lament, that people don't have time for imagination seems apt.  IF we remember, both Traveller, and Hero were conceived as generic systems for running what ever you wanted to, but in Traveller's case, the player base became dependent upon published material, either modules, or magazine articles. Like Paizo, some of those magazine articles became collected into books.  Today you can see the fruits of that productivity in https://travellermap.com/, where the planets from  all the published Traveller material can be accessed on a single large, scalable, continuous map of all the Traveller sectors and subsectors.
 
Hero had a magazine for a while, but it went defunct with one of the sales, and did not continue.  Very little of that material was collected into separate books and adventures, but I also9 think Hero was a bit too early in the cycle to change the assumption that it was a system for home brew.  However there are a lot of questions on the Hero Discord about the original Champions Superhero group, and Millenium City, that there is interest in the published materials.  What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.
 

You will need dice larger than they can fit in their mouths. 
 

Canned tuna, fresh tuna, they are still both fish, and I want beef!

Answer the Call got 46 mill before there was a pandemic. Afterlife got 44 mill with a pandemic and the movie being delayed two years maybe. ATC opened in a summer slot with no competition. Afterlife opened in Nov right before Encanto and the Matrix Resurrections both of which are looking at taking the wind out of its sails. In a week, Afterlife has made almost as much money in five days as Answer the Call did in two weeks.
 
In my opinion, Paul Feige caused the failure of his movie. He should have said nothing. All he did was stir up people who might have given him a chance into saying we don't need your movie. And the movie sucked. (The boy said the actresses were trying to be too wacky which hurt the movie because they weren't funny). I have to agree with his assessment.
 
Critics liked Answer the Call but they don't like Afterlife. GB fans hated Answer the Call and liked Afterlife. That's all that matters.
CES   
 
     

Range Video.

I think at worst a base should be treated exactly as a power a PC purchases which isn't apparently very useful. (Example: Transform skin color to Caucasian, only works on humans who are already Caucasian.) 
 
1) It isn't the GM's job to make the base useful in any way. Instead it is the player's job to make it useful if it is going to be useful. If the player can't figure out a way to make it useful, he'll spend his points differently on the next character.
 
2) It also definitely isn't the GM's job to treat the base as if it were a disadvantage that the PC took on his character sheet but had to pay points for instead of getting additional points for.
 
Now if the PC took disadvantages on the base, fine, those disadvantages exist. But having a base doesn't cause disadvantages to spontaneously appear out of nowhere if the PC isn't doing anything to create a disadvantage or purchase a disadvantage. 
 
 

My Character grew tentacles, and the Speedster grew a third eye.
(Kidding)
 
Oh we emptied it out, redid the walls and conduit,  moved a relative into the house on the topside and added our own electronics.  One of the players was an IT professional (Silicon Valley in the 1990's, go fig), so we were never hacked. and rarely had intruders, but the base was basically for lab work, and communications with members of the group on patrol, so they could get back up quickly.  Different teams had differnt priorities for their bases.
 

Season 1 is VERY, VERY good. Maybe the best Marvel villain portrayal throughout all the MCU movies and TV.
 
Slowly drops in quality thru seasons 2 and 3.  3 is just ok IMO.

Ivan Reitman, producer and director of 'Ghostbusters,' has died at 75 
 
Reitman was also behind classics like "National Lampoon's Animal House" and "Stripes." 

Reitman's directing credits include "Twins," "Kindergarten Cop," and "Junior," and "Dave."
 
And more. 

Remind me to come back and rep you when I've refilled. 
 
 
 
In my entire history here, I have used the ignore function only twice.  I won't name names (I _proudly_ will not name names; opting to choose the Ignore feature seems the most responsible, adult option available), though there is a third I have waffled on for several years.  Fortunately, that one only seems to come about when that one is particularly bored in 3d-land, so it hasn't happened.
 
Why only twice?  Well, I have found that most people-- even when you disagree with them _vehemently_-- really _do_ have valid points, and reading them (and deciding to ignore them "manually," if you will) can inspire some interesting thoughts about your own beliefs. The only two people I have ever ignored have in common a gratingly haughty "holier than thou" type attitude and no issue resorting to insult and derision _immediately_ at any sign of disagreement.  (Can I say one person?  I think the first person got banned or something; I have not see that person here in at least a couple of years now....)
 
I don't do much in NGD beyond a couple of the games, the joke thread, and the funny pictures thread myself.  I go out of my way to not even _open_ the politics thread unless I have found an amusing image that is more suited for it than for the images threads.  Even then, I make a hard effort to read _nothing_, even the post above the little box I am working in.  After all, I like you folks.  Why do I want to go out of my way to get angry with you?  That's just silly, and entirely my fault for looking, right? 
 
 
 
 
Clarification:
 
I said that I pushed 5 and 6e at people who asked me about the game we were playing.  This was a different point in the conversation.  I did _not_ suggest that either of those things was a complete game in and of themselves.  I will go so far as to say that even the 4e "HERO System" was not a complete game.  BBB was, since it had a book at the end to add some flavor and give character examples, a couple of plots, etc.
 
I _did_ state that CC and FHC were complete games, but allow me a moment to explain why:
 
while they are extremely dense (a necessity to reduce page and word count, but it does make them a bit of a slog to read through if you're brand-new to HERO), they are every bit as complete as were both the original Champions first edition and (arguably) the second edition Champions.  (I say "arguably," because the case can be made the the Viper's Nest module made 2e somehow "more complete."  (fun fact I don't think I have ever shared:  I have never played Viper's Nest.  Hell, I didn't even _read_ it until I had realized that I had never read it-- twenty-some years after having purchased my first 2e !    )
 
Do I feel they could have been more complete?
 
Certainly.  Well, at leaset FHC could have been.  It could have been a one-book game by simply eliminating build data (the "powers" section, essentially), picking one or possibly two magic systems-- maybe even three (let's say "druidic," "Holy," and "Shamanistic" just for fun), describing the differences between them (akin to the 4e "spell colleges."  I never liked the 4e colleges, but that's a different discussion, I think) and then laying out-- let's say fifty actual completely-built spells, costed in "units" (another fun fact: I have always, and will always, refer to dice of effect and steps up or down a chart as "Levels" everywhere but on this board.  For example: "But you get nine extra PD because you have three levels of Density Increase").  As players advanced, they could spend their XP on more "levels" of each spell, or buy new spells.  The build for the spells / potions / whatever didn't even need to be included to make it a complete "one book" game.  This would have left some room for a couple of sample characters and possibly even some very light exposition to suggest a world. Certainly a half-page for each of perhaps five, six races.
 
Granted, this would have tied it into a set of assumptions, but that seems to be comforting to a lot of folks (witness what happened with Traveller, one of the most successful games of all time), and reduces the amount of time and confusion lost to building a simple spell.     
 
 
However----
 
let's look at CC:
 
CC _almost_ needs all the powers build stuff.  Certainly one could have instead put in "Blast" and a the list of powers, two sentence descriptions of how they work, the cost, and let it ride.  The game would have still been complete and more easily picked up.  Champions is completely playable without Advantages, Limitations, and Frameworks.  Power levels are lower for the costs, but it _is_ completely playable.
 
I think what happened here is that there was a desire to give Champions a great shot-- create something like its original roots-- at being a single thin book that gives a nice deep dive into the workings of the HERO System, and of course, Champions is-- at least once was, if the magazine reviews were to be believed-- the greatest superhero game ever designed because of the unique ability to create precisely the hero you want.
 
Skipping back a moment:
 
I think FHC took a similar "here's the whole system, even if the game would be easier to play if we had just ticked a lot of these boxes for you" approach because-- well, Fantasy has always been the largest sector of the RPG fandom.  FHC had the potential to expose to the entire system people who would never dream of picking up a superhero game.  That's just my thoughts, and be aware that they are based on nothing at all beyond what seems the most logical path that leads to what we ended up with.
 
Now back to CC:
 
Champions is totally playable without Power Modifiers of any kind.  I _know_ it is, because my first two characters had none at all!  It wasn't that I didn't grasp them (there were a couple that did take a bit of thinking on), but because I was in a hurry to throw together a character and get playing!      I have met two brand-new GMs over they years who weren't using the modifiers because they hadn't really gotten it all sussed out, but wanted to go ahead and play, so they did.  I assume as they played and gained experience with the system, they added the complexity; I don't know.
 
The most important thing with CC is that of the two, superheroes have the least amount of need for a setting.  The vast majority of superhero adventures are set in "today."  They are set in "right now" and, for whatever reason, New York.     Okay, I _halfway_ kid about that, but New York seems to have _more_ supers per square inch than any other place in the universe.  Don't know New York?  Well, neither do your players!  Just think "craploads of stupid-tall buildings" and run with it.  Of the two "complete" books, CC suffered far less for not having any sort of background or setting.
 
But even then, it _was_ every bit as complete as the very first Champions game, and I don't think acknowledging that is misleading.  FHC?  Well, it's playable, but yes: the aspiring GM will have far more work ahead of him than will the aspiring CC GM.  Still, that book, too, is every bit as complete as the original Champions book.  Not what I would have liked to have seen, but with solid determination, playable as-is with only what is presented in the book.
 
 
 
 
You are preaching to the choir, Sir.  And frankly, I think _this_-- more than any mechanic or similarity or difference between HERO and not-HERO-- is the crux of the problem with recruiting new-to-HERO players and GMS.  it is not complexity; it is not which way you read the dice; it is not the lack of cards or d4 or or critical successes or exploding dice or anything else.  It is the complete lack of a game!  There is no game in there!
 
Remember what the books cost?  Seems like the two big books were in the fifty bucks each range; then Skills, MA, Tech, APG (1 and 2) and I am probably forgetting a few---  what did they go for?   Yes; detractors from this will say "you only need the first two," but I will counter that with the well-documented fact that Duke is the only person in the entire fandom who does _not_ think MA is a vital, necessary, un-get-by-without-it-able book, making it, at least to the fandom, the third absolute core rule book.
 
So what did you spend on those three?  Paperback?  A hundred and thirty bucks?  Hardback?  Two-something?
 
And you DID NOT GET AN ACTUAL GAME, did you?!
 
THIS-- _THIS ONE THING_-- more than any other possible change that could be made to mechanics-- is the hands-down absolute largest barrier to getting new people interested.  The argument can be made that a world can be found with a splatbook.
 
You still need to shell out that hundred and fifty to use that book, don't you?   And once you have that worldbook, you can populate with.... what?  Pick up one of the bestiaries!  Can it be argued that at least the blue one becomes "core rules" when a GM would like to build a fantasy campaign?  Want a dragon?  There is a separate bestiary specifically for dragons, available only in softcover (it's very pretty) and I paid FIFTY BUCKS for it (gift for my daughter a few years back; she digs dragons).  At least with FHC, I can squeeze something out by skipping Core 1 and Core 2, but now I need FHC, MA, Bestiary, and possibly Dragons.  Still no game, though, because I don't have a world!
 
So FHC, MA, Bestiary (I've decided to skip dragons for this world), and-- Crap.  I really wanted to say Tuala Morn, but that's 5e.  Yes; perfectly compatible, but I'm going somewhere here.    How about Atlantean Age?  Was that 6e?  Let me run to the Store real quick. BRB!  Okay, let's say we pick up Christopher's Jolrhos Field Guide (the PDF is fifteen bucks.  I hope there's a paper copy, because I missed the release news, and I really, really prefer paper).  Even then, we have to sort of _hope_ it's an actual setting book and not some sort of accessory (remember: I am a new guy, and haven't been following Christopher's notes ).  Now If I take the advice of FHC and decide I can get more flavor out of Fantasy HERO, then choke on the sixty-dollar price tag on the only paper copy on e-Bay.....  Okay, we'll pick that up later.
 
Right now we have FHC, MA, Bestiary, a world book ( we hope), and....   races?  How do we do races?  Well, maybe there's something in the Bestiary.  Maybe there's something in the world book.  Maybe.  Maybe i need...  Crap!  What do I need?  (Fantasy HERO and a couple of NPC books, actually, but we don't know that yet).
 
 
And _now_-- and only now-- do we have what most players today would call a complete game.
 
 
It is positively ridiculous to think that this is going to pull in waves and waves of new customers.
 
One Book Games.  I have said it for years now: One Book Games.   They don't have to be big or complex, just playable out of the box.
 
 
 
 
 
 
I say the following with nothing-- and I mean _nothing_!-- but love and respect for everyone on this board (except the two d&*ks I have on ignore):
 
In my own experience-- and I confess that my access to real-world gaming culture is very limited because of my geographical location-- is that only the people on this board feel that way, and I will reiterate how much I think HERO shot itself in the throat by assuming that these folks-- the most hardcore of HERO fandom-- were somehow the most representative of potential HERO customers.  It makes me very depressed.     Not that it isn't important to provide something for the long-time fans, but not at the expense of attracting new blood.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I don't have an opinion on that, honestly, simply because the mechanics currently _are_ kind of grouped:  Damage Dice, mental Powers, Skill Checks, Movement (with EDM being something of an odd-man-out there).   There are corner-cases, probably, that I can't think of right now, as it's getting on toward bedtime here, but I think that's something you find in any game.
 
 
 
 
I agree.  One Book Games.
 
Champions.
Espionage
Justice, Inc
Fantasy HERO
Robot Warriors
Danger, International
Star HEROPS238
Lucha HERO
MHI
 
 
It _seems_ to work.  But in all these years (the newest game in that list is a 3e publication), we have added only four more tiles:  Lucha HERO (which was going-in not expected to be a huge hit, and was a labor of love by the author.  I loved it, but I understand that it is a niche sort of thing  ).   The next one was tanked by the creator of the licensed IP.  PS 238 was a great showing of an all-in-one superhero universe (though I thought the property was a bit weak).  Christopher's all-in-one Western HERO is wonderful, but at this point, the HERO fandom has shrunk to a point that I don't see it becoming a huge hit across the market, and of course: young folks aren't into westerns the way they once where.....
 
 
 
 
 
And that's essentially what the one-book games do: nail down the variables, and give you just the stuff relevant to that particular setting.  The full HERO System can certainly handle that, and there is considerable discussion in the current rules sets about doing just that to create a game.
 
However, it refuses to actually do it; it requires that you do it so that it can maintain its appeal as the ultimate universal toolkit.   In its desire to maintain the highest possible appeal to everyone, they have created a situation where there isn't enough flavor to appeal to anyone (outside of us diehards, that is).
 
 

1st off the Hero Boards have always been fairly civil and friendly, but it really became my favorite place for discussions when I discovered the ignore function.  There are not very many toxic individuals here and they are eliminated easily.  For me anyone that feels the need to inject snide political comments in their
non-NGD posts goes straight to toxic land.  I don't really spend any time on the NGD so I rally don't care about that.  But taking a dump in the RPG forums is out.
 
2nd.  While I do agree in general with most of your comments here.  There is one major concept I completely disagree with.
Hero System 6th Edition, Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, Hero System 5th Edition Revised and so on are NOT role playing games. 
 
Spence: Yes Igor, please raise the drawbridge and bar the gates....
Igor: But we should flee!
Spence: It is too late Igor, I can already see the torches and pitchforks...
 
Then what are they, you may ask?
 
It is simple, they are a system that a gamer can use to build a role playing game. 
 
A role playing game can be picked up and played.  Hero, in pretty much all its incarnations cannot.  Instead it can be used by a gamer to put together something that then can be used to be played. 
 
I am currently in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game. 
 
I am STILL in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game.
 
But I was able to discover, buy, read, design scenarios and run them for actual playable RPG's in just a few days. 
 
Even most Hero supplements are not actually RPG's.  The Champions universe has a lots of stuff, but lacks a coherent playable setting of campaign. 
I fully understand that the primary overwhelming ideology was the belief that potential customers would suffer massive catastrophic death if anyone even hinted at a pre-designed campaign or anything that could even distantly be construed as establishing a concise character creation guide.  
 
So while Hero is my favorite RPG related system hands down.  
It is not an actual RPG that can actually be played "out of the box". 
 
No I do not have a solution, but I do not have to have one to see the problem. Just like I do not have to be a Chef to identify the cause of food poisoning.
 
 
 
 
 

I bought Champions New Millennium (1e) and both the supplements to it. Back in the day you could also DL the Fuzion rules for free from R.Tal's website. I should also have a Fan created PDF of the whole Champions powerset Fuzion style. I also own Hero Creator which included the Fuzion template.

They had flaws, they had figured characteristics that didn't work well with the base system. IMHO it would have been better if it used the 6e style of buying secondary characteristics. It was easy to run, and my mostly newbie (to Hero or Fuzion) players got it really quickly.

I have the CNM that stripped all Fuzion out of the book. I ran CNM using Hero 5-6. It was nice to have a game city that was on the west coast. Written by people who live here in the bay area. CNM is a big loveletter to the SF Bay Area. Unfortunately, it's very outdated now.
Nah, you need the original CNM, Alliances, and Bay city. to get a full set of the rules. CNM also included truncated Mekton rules for creating vehicles. It also included Life Path for Champions which was VERY useful.

As sourcebooks they were IMHO the most accessible set of game world books that has ever been created for any Champions Edition. Characters(Villains) that I thought were boring in Champions 1-4 were interesting in CNM.

Colorized and expanded a little

If they’re housebroken, that puts them ahead of some players I’ve known.

Does anyone know how to get hold of these two?
 
 
https://i.imgur.com/NrErzo4.mp4