Scott Ruggels

One idea I had recently was to use Tolkien's discarded characters, maps, and names for a campaign. The Valar really are gods, and some of them had children. Middle-earth was called Palisor instead of Endor. Tevildo and Lungorthin are major threats. Unless your players are Tolkien scholars or die-hard fans, they won't suspect a thing.

-__-   No, in fact it may be finally that DC surpasses Marvel next year in box office and quality.  Was meant was Shazam, not Carol Danvers. 

Most definitely true for us old peeps. 
But I am seeing direct adverse impacts on the young kids (or maybe I should say younger sailors ).   I spend so much time pulling things together that should be available from the start, but leadership these days is so blinded by Master Degree and PhD that they don't seem to realize that those designations lost their distinction decades ago.  30 years ago it meant that they could walk into the workcenter and immediately go to work because they were Engineers with a capitol E.  Now they walk through the door and I have to explain to them what we are looking at and how to read the technical manuals. 
 
 

I experience a similar phenomenon with printed vs digital maps. Digital maps showing a large area blur out all the fine details, and if I zoom in to get the details I loose track of where they are in relation to the larger area. When I can see where the specific place I want is in relation to the whole picture on a printed map, I have a clearer sense of its location and how to get there.

I'm pretty much the same.  Information just doesn't stick in my mind unless I read it from an actual physical book. 
Now I am a great fan of the utility of a PDF for printing pages.  If I am using something from in game in a session I like to print it out.  I can then write notes on it as much as I want during the game.

I have a weird non-issue in that whenever I go to the Hero store I am often confronted with the option of PDF or hardcopy + PDF. I know the PDF is essentially a free add-on and I don't have to download it, but I always want to ask "could I just have the hard-copy ala carte, please?" Electronic copies are like carbs. As I get older, I find I don't want or need as many. 😈

Yeah; that's not much of a title.
 
Sorry about that.
 
So let me back up a bit:
 
Some years ago, I made mention of a few things that were more-or-less standards in my (rare) high fantasy games.  Of these things, my favorites are the Office of the Public Scribe and the Torchbearers' Guild.  I don't actually think I went into any detail on the Guild, save how it came to be, but having told that tale I thought "hey, you know what?  Here we are complaining that there aren't enough things for new players or enough inexpensive things that folks can use to get their own juices flowing....  "  So I thought I'd write these organizations up under the umbrella of that whatever-it's-called "write your own HERO supplement" thing and put it out for like a buck.  
 
I ran into some snags-- formatting, styling, sourcing artwork, etc, etc, ad nauseum.  Mostly time.  I was getting really, really snagged with time.
 
So it never got finished.
 
However, as thought fodder, it's done enough.  I might have been able to just clean up what I had and do a "generic dungeon crawler" supplement.
 
 
But then I got to thinking about the old days-- the Web Ring of Heroes days.  The days when everyone had a website, no matter how simple or how goofy or how fancy and slick-- and they just kept pumping out great ideas and great stuff and saying "here!  Take this!  It's yours!  It's an idea I had, and I just want to share it!"  I got to thinking about how much of my retro-future Atomic Rockets campaign has borrowed from the old Web Ring, and even from Nyrath's own web page of the same name (Atomic Rockets, that is.  Great minds think alike; soft minds run together-- something in there explains it; I'm sure.  ).  So I have the urge to thank Nyrath.
 
I remember how many times we revisited bits and pieces of Lord Liaden's Valley of the Night over the years, and I am struck with the urge to thank him (even more than I already have: I have thanked him for that numerous times, and it doesn't seem like it's enough  ).
 
So the only way I can really "thank" any of these people, I think, is to demonstrate how much I appreciated what they did, and the best way I know to do that is to do the same thing: I had this brain cramp once, many years ago, and it became the Torchbearers' Guild.
 
It's not finished, but I've got three motorcycles to rebuild, an almost-eighty hour work week, a house full of teenagers, a semi-regular game group (soon to be too, as soon as a couple more folks get vaccinated), a camper to build, and a house to finish remodeling.  If it gets finished by anyone, it's going to finished uniquely at each table that cares to try it.
 
Have at it, folks.  It's the best way I know to thank the best kind of people:
 
 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lID1Yboy9nAQnIGRdOeiq4SEI7ZvkH0EAqAWzG4FMIk/edit?usp=sharing
 
 
 
Now, if someone can assure me that Chris Goodwin doesn't have any Players on this board, I've got one for the Western genre, too.
 
 
Sort of.
 

 
 

The big problem with hiding the opponents CV is that it slows down the game considerably.  While some people are able to quickly figure out what the results of combat are, there are a lot of people out there that have trouble doing the math in their heads.  If the numbers are out in the open those who are better at math can help the players who are not as good with numbers. If the GM is one of those that have problems with math but insist on trying to hide the numbers it can absolutely ruin the game.  If you are using some of the more complex rules like critical hits and impairing wounds it makes it even worse.  
 
Then there is the fact that most GM’s do not have the ability to quickly and accurately describe the situation.  Take the following situation and try and describe it?  2 non-combatants trying to stay alive by dodging with a DCV of 5.  5 security guards who fired last phase so are not acting, but have a DCV of 5.  The snipper on the rooftop 100m away who is set and braced with a DCV of 3 (-5 on OCV of someone attacking them for range).  A character attacking the player with a weapon with a DCV of 6.   1 opponent that was stunned by your teammate with a DCV of 4.  And last the Boss at full dodge with a DCV of 11.  Assume combat has already begun and the character is an experience combatant with a decent number of skill levels.  You have about 30 seconds to come to describe the situation so that the player understands everything the character would but cannot use any game terms.   
 

I have always done something similar in my games and when teaching others to play.

(11+OCV) - 3d6 = DCV hit
 
People can adjust their math as needed and speeds things up a great deal.

Trouble is, this requires you to know the opponent's DCV.  The other way, you can just announce what DCV you hit, and the GM can announce whether or not you succeed. You don't have to know the DCV, or whether there were any modifiers, etc.

Roll 3d6.
 
If you roll exactly 11, you hit a DCV equal to your OCV.
If you roll below 11, you hit a DCV one point better than your OCV for each point you roll below 11.
If you roll above 11, you hit a DCV one point worse than your OCV for each point you roll above 11.
 
It sounds slightly complicated to write out in words, but it's very easy to do in play. I've never really encountered a player who struggled with it...
 
EDIT: Obviously, this is the same thing greypaladin_01 suggested above; it's just a different way of getting there that generally lets you add or subtract smaller numbers.   

Watched "Star Wars Visions. Basically Anime Studios takes on The Star Wars Mythos. Wide Ranging from humorous to Dark.  overall quality was good, but there were a couple I didn't find all that good. All of them were short, but had a fairly wide range of styles. I definitely could recommend them, Samurai and Jedi have a very significant crossover.

Team Rocket, blasting off again!!!

A disagreement between two individuals burst turns into an area wide generational feud? 

Invert it:
 
it doesn't have to be the PCs carrying the grudge.
 
 

A disagreement between two individuals burst turns into an area wide generational feud? 

I know this is the single most unpopular opinion on this board, outgunning even Linked and Shapeshift, but I think it's helpful to keep it in mind:
 
Martial Arts in the HERO System is a hyper-tweaking of Skill Levels.
 
You can have Skill Levels in Ranged Attacks and in HtH Attacks; you can have a Martial Art that includes both.
 
 

No. 
 
I tend to keep things to the historical model in my games. I also rune with fewer pantheons than a typical D&D which makes their establishments a
bit less willing to rock the boat, and have a more conservative clergy.   Though the Byzantine game is monotheistic and has a powerful church, none of the current rent players are believers. 

I dunno. There are plenty of places where women can own guns. That doesn't seem to have changed the dynamic much in itself. Power can lead to fear of individuals, but not respect for a group. Understanding seems to have been a more effective tool for that purpose. Although some people still refuse to understand...

The no edged weapons seems to come from the portrayal of Bishop Odo on the Bayeaux Tapestry. 

It has no other historical basis, but existed as a factoid before (probably) Gygax wrote it into the Cleric class.

Historical clubs, sceptres, maces and so on were symbols of authority. It's possible Odo's club had that meaning. Duke/King William himself used a club elsewhere in the tapestry.

The armour and fighting ability stems from the crusaders, yes.

The Paladin class is arguably redundant.

New version of GM and Player books up in the downloads section; this is rough draft 5 and probably the last rough draft I'll put up before final release.

Richard Tucholka, God rest his soul. He is gone, and we are the poorer for it. I worked on some Bureau 13 stuff, but Doug Blanchard defined the look of most of the Tri-Tac games. There was a definite gallows humor edge to that game, but having spoken to folks who played in Rich's games, as well as to Rich himself often at the old Milwaukee Gencons, that the games got pretty lethal to player characters if they weren't smart. The old Tri-Tac system itself was crunchy, and dangerous, in that post Gygaxian way. But often Bureau 13 adventures did have their moments of Laurel & Hardy events due to the die rolls.
 
The odd thing is that to me, Danger international, and Dark Champions have two separate "Feels" to me, with D.I having a grounded, real world flavor, with the occasional weirdness, whereas Dark Champions feels less grounded, with it's foot in the Superhero world. Doing SCP feels more like D.I. than D.C. with all the real world weapons, and many of the SCP items being otherwise mundane items being altered by the unexplainable. But  D.C will have to do, these days.

Weirdly enough, I was thinking Bureau 13.
 
No; not because I didn't think Overlord wasn't packed full of suspense, mystery, horror---   but because every time I try to run that kind of game for one group in particular (the Brunswick group), it invariably devolves into a game of Bureau 13.      You can almost _see_ the entire game as a Foglio-esque cartoon, played out before your eyes....
 
 

I don't know how many folks out there are familiar with SCP (Secure, Contain, Protect) fandom out there.  starting first as creepypasta on Reddit, it has grown into all sorts of activities.  Recently they released a near professional fan film called Overlord, and i feel this could be an inspiration for a horror based, or X-Files flavored Dark Champions game.  Take a look.
 
 

I think that it is more "cultural" factors that dictate  if the "cleric" is a viable adventuring class.  In the Old Campaign, priests were mostly associated with specific temples and settlements. In the newer campaign, there is a division called "The Church Militant" which are armed and armored priests that are sent out as "Policy implementation Specialists", and functions more like Paladins, or Templars, and  answer to the higher Church Hierarchy which are bound to the cities and towns. Different religions have different expectations of what they want their clergy to do.  The Problem with the original question, is it comes from  an assumption coming from D&D, but then D&D has very poorly defined cultures and folkways of the various peoples, and they all speak common.  The Turakian Age at least gives and attempt to flavor the various kingdoms.  Even in my Campaigns there are different languages, and different customs.