Toxxus

The key is to be consistent and understood by all involved, whether its going to be a whacky loon fest like Toon or a backstabbing PC harvest like Paranoia or a 4-color Silver Age Champions game.  Follow the rules, both player and GM, and remember that the purpose is not to win but entertain.

There's even a reasonably good video game based on The Big Bad Wolf that I *believe* is from that comic series.

Love the sentiment, but it takes two irresponsible people to make a single parent.  Whether single father or single mother it required (minus really rare and unfortunate widowing scenarios) one partner to not really vet the other partner.
 
Blaming only the asshole men who don't stay to raise their kids (and they are assholes) removes moral agency from the women who are responsible for reproducing with the kind of men that won't stay to raise the kids.
 
Women are neither helpless nor without accountability in these things.  Pick better.  A lot of guys are not qualified for the role of father.
 
Also, Happy Fathers' Day!
 
PS:  I received a shirt from my wife and child this year.  Proper gift giving etiquette needs to be reviewed with them - again - as only electronics, video games and mid-life crisis cars are appropriate.

Happy Father's Day to any and all fathers out there, and to any and all mothers who were called upon to fill that role themselves.
 
And for those "Baby Daddy" types who made children and ran, never taking the responsibility for what they had done, only to turn around and do it again and again, go die in a dumpster fire.
 
Wow. Apparently I _can_ run out of love for my fellow man.  Hunh.
 
At any rate, for all you fathers and father-figures, remember the point of this day:
 
To exhaust yourselves doing things you really don't want to to humor those who love you, and think that you really do want to.     Bear it with dignity, with grace, and with the knowledge that it comes from a good place in their hearts.
 
As for me, I will be sequestering myself from humanity for the next couple of days, as the kids have decided to cook for me.  That makes more sense when you realize that all they know how to cook is eggs, spam, beans-and-onions, and cabbage, and corn dogs.   And of course, there is this strange assumption every Father's Day that I start my day with eggs, corn dogs, and a breakfast beer....
 
(if it matters, I start every day the same way: a cup of coffee before a shower, two more cups on the porch watching the sky and the breeze (or the sun rise, if it's summer), and another cup on the way to work.  I just can't wake up and eat, and have never really understood how it is that most folks can.)
 
At any rate, if you see walking around town, just know that there is something I'm... uh...  "trying to work out," and don't get too close.
 
 
 
 

I would cut back on exercise completely while combining a large intake of carbs, fat and alcohol.
 
Deep dish supreme pizzas and beer - several times a day - will have them buoyant in no time...
 

This judge was cited as running one of the best "drug courts" in the state, an institution that diverts low-level drug defenders into programs that help them avoid re-offending and get clean. Any conviction in the court is then expunged and taken off the defendant's record -- an important consideration when so many doors are slammed shut in the faces of ex-convicts.

Well, just looking at Plano's online demographics, the city is prosperous, and the large majority of its population is white. Nearly half the population of St. Louis is black, and the city's economy has been in decline for decades. So at least two factors which tend to significantly promote violence, poverty and ethnic tensions, are notably less in Plano than in St. Louis.

I reckon the statistics are more likely to vary widely when the population size is relatively low.  The bigger the city, the more stable the statistics are likely to be.  As with all statistics you are always better with a bigger sample size over a longer period...

Even the Avenger's series, which I enjoyed immensely, had ludicrous illogical shifts in power levels.
 
How does Thanos - beat the hulk unconscious with a series of lethal hits - end up hitting Captain America a couple dozen times without killing him?  Given their power level differences the first solid blow should have gone in Cap's chest and out his spine.
 
How does the Black Widow successfully fight one of Thanos' lieutenants who hits hard enough to send the Vision careening 50 feet away and not get her arms and legs ripped off due to the strength difference?

If you've been playing D&D 5th Ed for several years (especially the dumbed-down Adventurer's League version) then here are some things you'll get from Fantasy HERO:
1-  Hit locations - These really spice up the randomness of combat.
2-  Realistic Armor Interactions - Armor makes you safer at the cost of being slower, clumsier and easier to hit.
3-  Monsters and Enemies are scary - The unlimited build potential for villains means players can't rely on their innate knowledge of the Monster Manual to know what is happening.  Each creature can be a terrifying and unique thing with custom powers.
4-  Character Creation is INCREDIBLY open-ended.  There are endless character concepts you just can't do in D&D.  In HERO - You can do them.  My Current saturday group:  Fire sorceress (pretty straight forward), a witcher built on the Witcher 3 model, Udyr from League of Legends, an Air Bender, a dwarven explosives expert and a dragon born priest with powers based on cold
5-  Combat overall feels more engaging with a larger number of moves and a limited number of hit points.  Did you take an arrow - in the eye?  You're down and dying.  Weapons are actually scary.
 
The only REAL drawback about HERO that my players continue to gripe about is that character creation is painfully open-ended.  They know what they want, but not how to model it.
 
My two tables alone have resulted in at least 3-4 additional sales of Hero Designer.  Players love being able to make their character the way they imagine it and not being constrained by classes.
 

The defense is "not currently being stunned".  That way nobody takes any damage at all.  But once they're stunned - it's all over.  Stun Lock coma time for everyone.  The damage is probably right at or just below the REC of everyone so healthy types stay conscious, but Stun Locked by the crazy (imo) rule that taking any damage prevents you from recovering from being stunned.  The less healthy will gradually fall into a coma from which they never recover.
 
The power effects almost nobody.  But eventually every NFL player that takes a hard hit.  Every MMA fighter or boxer that takes a stunning blow succumbs to a permanent stun lock.
 
Sports are completely abandoned.  Culture is destroyed by the Legion of Evil! 

The defense is "not currently being stunned".  That way nobody takes any damage at all.  But once they're stunned - it's all over.  Stun Lock coma time for everyone.  The damage is probably right at or just below the REC of everyone so healthy types stay conscious, but Stun Locked by the crazy (imo) rule that taking any damage prevents you from recovering from being stunned.  The less healthy will gradually fall into a coma from which they never recover.
 
The power effects almost nobody.  But eventually every NFL player that takes a hard hit.  Every MMA fighter or boxer that takes a stunning blow succumbs to a permanent stun lock.
 
Sports are completely abandoned.  Culture is destroyed by the Legion of Evil! 

If you've been playing D&D 5th Ed for several years (especially the dumbed-down Adventurer's League version) then here are some things you'll get from Fantasy HERO:
1-  Hit locations - These really spice up the randomness of combat.
2-  Realistic Armor Interactions - Armor makes you safer at the cost of being slower, clumsier and easier to hit.
3-  Monsters and Enemies are scary - The unlimited build potential for villains means players can't rely on their innate knowledge of the Monster Manual to know what is happening.  Each creature can be a terrifying and unique thing with custom powers.
4-  Character Creation is INCREDIBLY open-ended.  There are endless character concepts you just can't do in D&D.  In HERO - You can do them.  My Current saturday group:  Fire sorceress (pretty straight forward), a witcher built on the Witcher 3 model, Udyr from League of Legends, an Air Bender, a dwarven explosives expert and a dragon born priest with powers based on cold
5-  Combat overall feels more engaging with a larger number of moves and a limited number of hit points.  Did you take an arrow - in the eye?  You're down and dying.  Weapons are actually scary.
 
The only REAL drawback about HERO that my players continue to gripe about is that character creation is painfully open-ended.  They know what they want, but not how to model it.
 
My two tables alone have resulted in at least 3-4 additional sales of Hero Designer.  Players love being able to make their character the way they imagine it and not being constrained by classes.
 

I wonder if that rule was in place in 4e.  I don't recall it being that way in ancient times.
 
Regardless, there is exactly zero chance I will run it that way.  It's bad enough losing your turn, but to lose several in a row by taking 1pt of STUN damage per phase?  Nope.

I find it needs reinforcement to prevent 30 pt things like +10 OCV with swords = I hit them in the unarmored eyeball 90+% of the time.
 
Mostly I agree, but some degree of corralling is necessary.

That should be Bush 2x as well, counting both Afghanistan and Iraq. 

I've seriously considered setting the base for OCV vs. DCV to 10 instead of 11 so that it starts at a 50/50 shot. 
 
MMA Fights are typically 3 rounds of 5 minutes each.  Landing 50 strikes a round is very high output and generally only happens with the higher skill level end of the lighter weight classes.  Most fights are substantially less as I suspect that the normal flow of events is the slower fighter always goes for block or dodge and then counters when they can.  If you pace the fight for strike-block-counter the numbers work out better.
 
One of the coolest eye-opening training encounters I did for my D&D converts consisted of the Witcher character and his guard captain dueling with great swords.  They blocked and countered each other 4-5x without a single blow landing until the Witcher took a stunning blow to the stomach, recovered and took a knockout blow to the helmet.  The players hadn't had advanced options like block, dodge, pinning limbs with a Grab, etc. in D&D.
 
Similarly one of the characters got grabbed (both arms) by a were rat who then spent each phase trying to bite their face and was screaming for help from his allies.  Great times!
 
I'd say in MMA you see roughly 3 levels of stunning strike:
1-  Wobbled - Fighter takes a hit that causes a brief cringe, cover or makes their legs go rubbery for just a split second.  Much like stunned - recover at lower DEX on same segment.
2-  Stunned - Fighter takes a hit that causes them to go rubbery legged or takes a body shot so bad they can do nothing but cover up and back-pedal for their lives.
3-  Rocked -  Fighter takes a hit that causes them to collapse and leaves them desperate to remain in the fight.  I would consider these shots that take them to zero-to-minus-nine STUN.  Survival rate from these shots is under 50%.
 
Then of course there are critical hits and these usually result in an INSTANT full-health to deeply unconscious hit.
Classic Example:  Fighter drops his arms to defend a body kick which turns out to be a head kicks - oops! - sleepy time.
Another Example:  Conor McGregor KO'ing decade long undefeated Jose Aldo in 13 seconds.  They trade right hook vs. counter-right hook and only one of them rolled a crit.
 
I think HERO models those pretty well (plus or minus my issue with parts of the recovering from being stunned rule).
Highly trained martial artist with 15ish STR landing martial strikes in the 5-7d6 damage range plus several levels for OCV/DCV/damage.
 
A critical hit from a 7d6 punch or kick is 14 BOD/42 STUN and with mortal PD being in the 5-7 range for lighter weight classes you're looking at taking 35+ STUN and possibly a major injury (beyond the concussion) such as a fractured orbital, broken ribs, ruptured liver, etc.
 
 

Taking an amount of damage so low that it doesn't keep up with your recovery score is not "being pounded".  I'll admit this power construct in an absurdity made purely to point how how inconsistent and odious I find the current recover from being stunned rules.
 
I just can't stand the idea of stunned = dead because you'll never get another chance to act unless the villain misses you at 1/2 DCV.  I want a chance for heroes and villain alike to rally from one bad hit and continue the fight.
 
Even in MMA (which I'm big fan of) the best fights have solid back and forth action.  When a guy looks ruined by a savage blow and finds his composure and is able to fight on and even win.
 
The first variation of the rule where you get stunned before your DEX on your Phase and fully recover on your DEX (so less than 1 second) is the way I like stunned to work.  You lose your turn.  That is bad enough.
The second variation where you hold your action - get stunned - and lose the held action and DO NOT recover from being stunned - I like this less, but I can live with it.
The third variation where you take any damage at all on a segment you have a phase in and you can't recover at all is just - and I'm reluctant to be this forceful about it - stupid.  It's dumb.
 
SPD 4 character example:
Segment 3 - You use your phase.
Segment 3 - You get stunned.
Segment 5 - You take another massive blow (but not quite enough to KO you).
Segment 6 - You recover from being stunned.
 
VS.
 
Segment 3 - You use your phase.
Segment 3 - You get stunned.
Segment 6 - You take a SINGLE point of stun damage.
Segment 6 - You lose your phase and DO NOT recover from being stunned.
 
This makes ZERO sense.  None.

Well, I can see why many people are finding the sentiments this Batwoman expresses in that trailer to be irritating. On one level they sound quite hypocritical. This woman proclaims she doesn't want to be defined by the man she's succeeding as Gotham's protector; she wants to establish her own identity and be given credit for her own accomplishments (and she expresses those sentiments within an explicit man-to-woman dynamic). Yet in order to do that she unilaterally appropriates for herself everything that man had built -- the headquarters, equipment, methodology, even part of his name and image.

Doing a Batwoman is not that bad of an idea and could work out well.  But they need simply make a Batwoman series instead of a emphasizing a political stance.   Every single article to do with this is buried under identity politics. 
 
The movie Wonder Woman was prime example of how to do it right.  The lead up publicity made efforts to ignore or play down the idiots (on both sides) if the identity politics.  The emphasized the story and when it hit the theater you had a great movie with their "political statements" tastefully inserted with a humorous flair. And they tried to downplay the pseudo controversy that was laboriously hyped by agenda driven idiots pointing at a handful of anonymous internet posts. 
 
So far I have little idea of which version of Batwoman they are making, but I know that the main character is written as a lesbian and apparently is being attacked because she isn't the correct type of lesbian or something.  I have given up in trying to figure out an agenda that changes hourly.  
 
Anyway I hope the show makes it.  I love super shows.  But I absolutely hate political platforms masquerading as TV shows. 
 
Marvels Runaways on Hulu is another example of a show done right.  Did they have their political views and statements?  Yes.  Did they apply them like a 2x4 to the forehead? No.  I am really hoping for another season. 

This is a great point.  When I recently modeled several D&D spells into HERO for my players one thing that consistently happened is that the stupidly over-powered spells became hard to do without prohibitive costs.
 
"What do you mean the force wall breaks??" - HERO has some absolutes, but not many.  And this is a very good thing.
 
Not having a hard list of codified spells and monsters also keeps players on their toes.  It re-introduces the fear of the unknown and makes for a much better game, imo.

In this particular case I believe the issue is that the rule for recovering from being stunned is unnecessarily punitive and leads to some pretty anti-heroic scenarios.
 
I've beat this horse into a fine red puree by now, but taking damage shouldn't stop you from recovering from being stunned unless it is sufficient to stun you again.
 
The rules aren't even consistent with themselves:
1-  If you have a lower DEX than your attacker then you can recover from being stunned in the same segment despite having taking sufficient damage to stun you in the same segment.
2-  If you hold your action - You lose it and cannot recover from being stunned.  Now you're effectively stunned for 2 phases (current phase & next phase to recover - maybe).
3-  If you have a higher DEX than your attacker then you can recover from being stunned ONLY if you don't take any damage at all in the next segment you have a Phase in until your DEX arrives.  Any damage at all stun-locks you - indefinitely.
 
Situation 1 makes sense to me.
Situation 2 I don't like as much.
Situation 3 I have to house rule so I can continue to have players and not have my boss monsters stun-locked by a single critical hit.

There are certain rules and game simulations which are part of play which take the place of real world interaction.  The phase/segment system is a method of representing reacting to a moving, fluid combat and timing things carefully without being able to see and take those actions yourself.  Further, while a superhero with decades of combat training and experience can time things perfectly, a middle aged author and illustrator eating pizza at a gaming table will not.
 
In other words: saying things like "I wait until right at the end of the segment to take my delayed action" is just a way of simulating that training and timing.  Its a method of allowing players to get their character to do the stuff they'd do in a fight, with rules.  Saying "no you can't do that because there's no clock on the wall saying what phases are up" misses the entire point of the interaction.

The defense is "not currently being stunned".  That way nobody takes any damage at all.  But once they're stunned - it's all over.  Stun Lock coma time for everyone.  The damage is probably right at or just below the REC of everyone so healthy types stay conscious, but Stun Locked by the crazy (imo) rule that taking any damage prevents you from recovering from being stunned.  The less healthy will gradually fall into a coma from which they never recover.
 
The power effects almost nobody.  But eventually every NFL player that takes a hard hit.  Every MMA fighter or boxer that takes a stunning blow succumbs to a permanent stun lock.
 
Sports are completely abandoned.  Culture is destroyed by the Legion of Evil! 

As I see it, D&D has the following advantages:
 
Name recognition.  D&D has by far the most name recognition out of any RPG and is, still, in 2019 A.D. synonymous with paper and pencil roleplaying.  In the marketing progression of repetition -> association -> trust, D&D is farthest along and is therefore most likely to be tried.  I doubt most normals could even name a second RPG. Production values.  Even the worst D&D publications have had high quality writing and graphic design throughout.  Support.  There is no shortage of modules, expansions, settings, and sourcebooks available for D&D. Low barrier to entry.  D&D is easy to start playing.  Here is your character sheet and a d20, which goblin do you hit?  Having played 5e D&D, I can say that it is not, in fact, much simpler than Hero once you get into it.  Reactions, actions, saves, spell slots, specials, armor class, paths, XP, it's dizzying.  And 5e is simplified!  But it's easy to start in a way that Hero's highly customizable character creation process is not.  (Don't even get me started on Pathfinder.  That s--t is unplayable.) Player base.  Related to all of the above, D&D has the critical mass of users that makes it easier to find a good group to play with.  RPGs are not a solo game, after all. Hero loses on every single point.
 
I've argued this before, but my approach to popularizing Hero would go like this.  (It's going to be expensive.)
 
License Marvel comics characters.  It's mind boggling to me that there is no Marvel superhero RPG that's giving D&D a run for its money.  Take a property that is enjoying unbelievable popularity right now and pair it with the one game system that can handle it. Quality.  We have to invest in copywriting, art, layout, and design.  Publication standards in 2019 are just way ahead of any Hero publication in the past two decades. Hide the system.  Hero is an RPG system and an RPG-system-creation-system, and the latter is what scares people.  List powers as "Optic Blast Level 12", not "12d6 Energy Blast No Spread 0 END Not vs. Ruby (-1/4)".  95% of the time all you need to know is you roll 12d6 for damage. Simplify.  I love the SPD chart, but save it for the "Advanced" game.  Likewise with the other figured stats (but keep Stunning).  Ditch most Advantages and Limitations.  Don't publish Entangle with half a dozen specific advantages, publish three Spider-Man web powers: Entangle, TK, and ranged Blast. Make it into a board or card game.  I wasn't kidding about simplification.  Distill Hero into a board game or card game that any kid can pick up.  Save the full power of the Hero system for "Advanced" expansions that are advertised at the end of the rulebook ("Pick up the Advanced game and make your own superhero!!") Support.  Publish some modules FFS.  Codevelop an online version of the simple and advanced games to make it easier to pick up players.  I can play Catan online.  Hero?  Nope.  
Anyway that's my approach.  I'm aware that it would require a level of resources that the Hero System has basically never enjoyed and that it's a pipe dream for this reason.  Does anyone have any embellishments?