Scott Ruggels

Plus, with miniatures and such you got something to paint and show.

I downloaded all the Herculoids episodes off of YouTube postings a few years ago. Certainly not the highest quality, but free has its appeal.
 
And Yes, the Arabian Knights! A little cheesy, and the setting was unusual for the genre, but the Knights were effectively superheroes. Zazoom was clearly a pet, just an exceptionally smart cute little donkey. Who was also the most powerful and destructive member of the group. But his berserk mode was a weapon of last resort, as it could be just as dangerous to the Knights as their enemies if they didn't get clear.

I can understand how most of the original post can be jarring but in any world where magic is plentiful the practitioners, particularly those not so good ones will seek to produce things they can sell to make a living. This in turn will inspire better mages to make new or better products to have a better living and so on. They may not call it the "germ theory of disease" but any healer mage of any notable ability  will study disease and one will eventually make the connection and pass it along. 
     What pops my button is slang and puns, bad puns. 

I have a lot of Herculoid Episodes on bootleg DVDs I picked up in the depths of the Dealers room at San Diego Comic-con. Always preferred the Adventure to the humor, because the humor never could get me to laugh.  
 
SO does the little donkey Zazoom, from THe Arabian Knights count?  THe Arabian Knights were two fighters, two casters, a Rogue and a Donkey. 
 
And Yeah I am ancient as well. Watched most of these in first run.

A remarkable system of exoplanets:
 
‘Shocked and delighted': Astronomers find six planets orbiting in resonance (msn.com)
 
(The BBC story was cringe-inducing. The presenter interviewing the scientist kept calling it a "universe" instead of a "solar system." Aargh!)
 
Dean Shomshak
I was reading about making pharmaceuticals in space back in the 1980s, in books like Stine's The Space Enterprise. Now it's happening for real.
 
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/11/29/low-earth-orbit-open-for-business-varda-space-industries/
 
Dean Shopmshak

Jabberjaw's shape-changing ability probably counts as "super," but his band, the Neptunes, definitely weren't. The OP specified pets for superheroes.
 
I try not to think of the cartoon "superheroes" who were played almost completely for laughs. I love the genre, and seeing it relentlessly mocked rubs me the wrong way. (And please don't get me started on Deadpool.)

Kaboobie was a camel with wings, so I guess that might be considered "super." It was certainly a pet, unless your resistance to horses as pets extends to camels.   But I wasn't counting Shazan! because, as I'm sure you'll agree, he was the star and hero of that show, and the humans were his sidekicks (although they technically counted as his masters). Once Shazan was summoned, he never needed help from anyone to deal with whatever menace threatened them.
 
And the Galaxy Trio were my second favorites, as well. Genuine superheroes in space. And another group I would have liked origin stories for.
 
(Geez, we're a bunch of old farts for remembering all this stuff.) 👴

I consider the Herculoids including Zandor to be a super team. Yes, the "animal" members of the team generally did what the humans told them, and Zandor was clearly their tactical leader. Nonetheless, each Herculoid was obviously intelligent, resourceful, and fully capable of acting on their own initiative, independently or as a cooperative team member. Their humans' interactions with them came across much more as equals and friends, than as pet and master.

I definitely have to agree with you. Problem is most young players really just want to play a video game, not an actual role-playing game. They want it short and simple. I have played the new D&D and the reason they need to have 50,000 different character types is that each character is pretty much the same. And to actually look at it, in many ways D&D is more confusing than Hero, with each character type being completely different and nearly impossible to tell which would be more powerful as there are plenty of character types that are almost completely useless. But I have found a good note. That players as they get older do find the repressiveness of some of those simple game to no longer be fun and go to more interesting games, such as Hero, where you can actually make the character you want, not just something listed in a book the same as every other one.

George McDonald was of the opinion that heroic games need strong heroes, so strength was always the first go to stat for Champions.

I have played a bunch of other modern systems and while each has their nice features or ideas, none of them are superior to Hero overall for me, at least.  I see no reason why on earth I would ever change to any other game except to just try it out or for a specific play session.

I find games without maps to be incredibly annoying.  Without a map every fight becomes a super mushy game of mental Calvinball which means I have to interrogate the GM every phase.  Can I reach the bad guy?  Is anyone blocking my shot?  Is there any useful terrain?  How many bad guys can I catch with this AOE effect?  It becomes much easier to take another swing at the guy in front of me and I'm instantly bored.

After reading a bunch of Reddit posts I was persuaded to give Farscape a try. Four Episodes it, it's not bad, but seems a little cramped after the first episode, but people are fitting in to their characters. Not a lot yet I could use for a traveller campaign, but it's nice to see aliens that were more than just bumpy foreheads.

After reading a bunch of Reddit posts I was persuaded to give Farscape a try. Four Episodes it, it's not bad, but seems a little cramped after the first episode, but people are fitting in to their characters. Not a lot yet I could use for a traveller campaign, but it's nice to see aliens that were more than just bumpy foreheads.

If the GM wants to create a magic system where wizards cannot use armor or weapons, then the problem is caused by the GM.  Even in that case paying cash for equipment can still give the wizard equipment.  In a world where magic works there will be some wizards who will create magic items for sale.  This is not any different than a smith creating weapons and armor.   They may be expensive, but then so should heavy armor.  It took a lot of time and effort to create a suit of full plate.  Even without magic items components still cost money, especially if you are using difficult to replace expendable foci.  You start using those and spells get even cheaper than they already are.  
 
If you want a brick type character in Fantasy Hero a wizard is much better at pulling it off than a warrior.  With things like growth and density increase it is cheaper to build a high STR character as a wizard than it is a warrior.  One level of growth and 3 levels of density increase will boost a characters STR by +30.  Buy up the STR to 20 on this character and I have a STR of 50 giving me a 10d6 punch.   In Hero system it cost the wizard the same to buy OCV and skill levels.   This means a wizard can fight as well as a warrior for the same points.   
 

Clearly the sport of the future is super-boxing, directly inspired by John Byrne's (I'm blaming him because he's the biggest name involved) Super Boxers graphic novel. 
 
Gladiatorial fights passed off as public "destructive testing" for geneered bioweapons probably shows up a lot too.   Maybe with a crossover league for combat robot matches so we can see the arms race between hard and soft tech right there in the arena.  You'll pay for the whole seat, but you only need the edge!
 
Probably going to be some really strange "historical recreation" stuff as we move forward.  AIs dressed up in lifelike android bioshells (with realistic bleeding features!) and old-fashioned industrial robots teleoperated by actual meat humans refighting the early battles of the Pansapience Revolution, that sort of thing.

I myself didn’t run Champions, but I played with a consistent group for about 4 years. We were all avid comic buyers, so a lot of inspiration came from Teen Titans (George Perez and Marv Wolfman), The X-Men (Chris Clairemont and John Byrne), and a scattering of John Byrne era Fantastic Four. There was a bit of influences from early 80s anime as well, however since all of us came out of the highschool wargaming club, the Comics Code was a loose suggestion.
 
I ran Fantasy Hero, and my influences were the Deryeni books, and other politics and violence heavy fantasy trilogies of the time. I bounced off of Tolkien, so his influence was minimal. 

Pathfinder stripped every last trace of D&D from its new rulebooks — even owlbears

Have you read Terry Pratchett's Strata?  Less science and more fiction, but hardly a major reading time investment and even his early writing is generally enjoyable.
 
Shades of Tekumel, sans the convenient chlen-beast whose constantly-shedding skin can be chemically treated to produce swords and armor roughly as durable as fiberglass but somewhat lighter.
 
A pox on Barker and his feet of clay for tainting such a interesting world.

Happy happy, Joy joy!

And remember, Fantasy Heto is not D&D. 
 
I get a little depressed, every time some young player tries to cobble together a 3.5 or 5e TSR build. It never works or is never an efficient use of points. 

THe U.S. Army issued Gladii to Artiller troops from 1855, through th Civil War. You still run across them in gun shows, plus repros for Civil War Re-enactors.

And remember, Fantasy Heto is not D&D. 
 
I get a little depressed, every time some young player tries to cobble together a 3.5 or 5e TSR build. It never works or is never an efficient use of points. 

And remember, Fantasy Heto is not D&D. 
 
I get a little depressed, every time some young player tries to cobble together a 3.5 or 5e TSR build. It never works or is never an efficient use of points.