PhilFleischmann

You don't like seafaring or ships in your fantasy?  Why not?  There's plenty of precedent in the source material.  Granted, I don't want to see submarines and aircraft carriers, but there are plenty of ships and sailors (and pirates) in fantasy literature.

THIS!  So much this!  Ancient polytheistic religions were not organized like medieval Christianity.  And their places of worship were not called "cathedrals" or "churches" AFAIK.
 
I like the standard fantasy races:  elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes.  However:
 
* I really don't like the D&D proliferation of "subraces".  I don't want a half-dozen different types of elves.  Or any other race.  This does not serve any purpose in a game that isn't already served by having different races, nations, and cultures.  Any story arc involving the differences between Valley Elves and Dale Elves can just as easily be done between Elves and Humans, or between Elves of Northern Vithnaklia, and Elves of Southern Vithnaklia.
 
* And speaking of races, there is no need for each race to have it's own "dark" "evil" subrace.  We already have evil races: Orcs, Goblins, Trolls, or whatever else.  (I've never found Drow Elves to be at all an impressive idea, despite how proud of them the deendee folks are.  And I never saw any definitive answer as to whether it rhymes with "blow" or with "cow".)
 
* And speaking a little more of races, I also never liked another thing in D&D that I call, "The Star Trek School of Reproductive Biology" - that any two races can make a cross-breed, and that cross-breed constitutes an entire separate race.  That any two sentient creatures can have sex and make a viable offspring.  And if the father has pointed ears and the mother has forehead ridges, then the child will have pointed ears and forehead ridges.
 
It's as if the D&D plan was that no two PCs would ever be the same race.

Oh, here's another one for me that has nothing to do with anachronism:
 
Bad names.  If your name is Jim Ward, don't name your wizard character "Drawmij".  If your name is Tom Keogh, don't name your character "Keoghtom".  Don't name the god of insanity "Ssendam".  Don't name your halfling character "Dorfongolf".   You don't have to invent seven languages like Tolkien did, just to name the people and places in your setting, but you should put a little effort into coming up with names that sound reasonable.  There are plenty of fantasy name generators online, and even the worst of these is better than just spelling something backwards.

What types of things that might come up in a fantasy game* ruin the immersive experience for you?  I'm not asking you to come up with just anything that *would* ruin it, but what actually has ruined it.  What have you actually encountered in play that disrupted your willful suspension of disbelief?
 
*And you can also include things outside of games, such as fantasy literature or movies or TV shows, etc.
 
For me, the main one is anachronisms - which is a very broad category.  It includes all of the following:
 
* Injection of sci-fi elements (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, anyone?)  I don't like ray guns and robots mixed with my rapiers and rakshasas.
* Magic items and spells that are simply modern-day technologies with a fantasy-colored coat of paint: Dragon-powered railroads, a magic spell that fills the roll of a cell phone, a "magic item" that is essentially a mechanical armored tank, complete with a 105 mm mounted "wand of fireballs".
* Modern-day sensibilities and memes.  In societal structure, government, religion, philosophy, etc.
* Anachronistic words and expressions.  I remember an episode of MST3K, "Quest of the Delta Knights" in which a character says, "This book is a blueprint for the future!"  To which, the other character should have said, "What the heck is a 'blueprint'?"  I've seen another fantasy setting that included a particular type of wizard specializing in mental manipulation called a "Mesmer", as if the word means "a person who mesmerizes others".  When actually "Mesmer" is the name of a 18-19th century doctor whose work led to hypnotism.  His name is where we get the word "mesmerize" - a word which should not exist in a fantasy world where this person never existed.
* References to modern-day scientific knowledge that people in the quasi-historical fantasy setting wouldn't have, such as the germ theory of disease, the fundamental laws of physics, cosmology, etc.
* Evidence of a lost civilization that had modern-day, or future technology.
 
Of course, anachronisms aren't the only category of immersion disruptors, but for me, it covers about 99% of the cases.
 
What are the immersion disruptors for you?  Anachronistic ones, or otherwise.  What things spoil the "fantasy feel"?

Are you OK with the weapons list in a typical RPG?  These tend to span many centuries, and often many cultures, as well.
 
It can be toughest to suspend disbelief in the areas one has the greatest expertise in.
 
To a couple of others,
 
 
I often question why we include word-play riddles.  The characters are not speaking modern English, are they?  By the same token, those Mesmers are likely pronounced completely different in the Common Tongue of some magical fantasy world.

For me: 
Fantasy settings that are assumed to be knockoffs of medieval Europe. Fantasy settings built on a medieval Europe model (feudalism) in spite of the fact that there's elves, dwarves, halflings, magic, dragons, quite probably flying mounts, teleportation spells, multiple gods that exist, etc. Fantasy churches that act like the medieval Catholic church despite being polytheistic, including/especially with clerics that follow the D&D model Arcane vs. divine magic divide, including healing magic limited only to divine Horses treated the way we treat cars IRL.  Everyone has one, everyone rides them everywhere they go, the only care they need is an oil change every 3000 miles a vague assumed "stable", they don't poo and pee all over the place, they don't smell like animal, they never get sick or injured or frightened MMO terminology.  (Examples: toon, alt, DPS, mobs, etc.) D&D model description of characters.  (By which I mean: in D&D, your character is a <level> <race descriptor> <class> with <magic items>.  Fantasy Hero would be <point> <race> <profession> with <special abilities, magic items, etc.>) Tolkien or D&D standard races, included without examination.  In other words, assuming that playing a fantasy game means you're figuring out what kind of elf you're playing before you know literally anything else about the game or the world.  (Why does this world have multiple intelligent races?) Fairy tale logic behind... anything, really.  Things like: gatherings of three, seven, or thirteen; monkey's paw wishes; evil wizards are ugly; some flavor of magic called "black" or "dark" is evil; etc. World design by trope checklist Anything that's already been done a million times before.  

I think you are now heavily into Duplication.  It should be reasonably expensive as you want to multiply the number of actions you get in a round, all under your control, replicating your powers.
 
as a GM I dislike one player being able to take more than seven or eight actions in a round, especially if everyone else only has three or four actions.  I even persuaded one of my players to take his SPD 12 speedster down to SPD 9 and only that far because I knew he was likely going to need 2 or 3 phases of recovering during a fight every turn.
 
Duplication also ramps up the number of actions per turn which can seriously slowdown a game and make other players get much less spotlight during the game.
 
Doc
 
PS:  the problem with floating locations is that they belong to the person using the power, not to others.  I might be inclined to charge more for locations that could be used by other characters.  Indeed, the additional utility might warrant substantial increases but would need to think hard about numbers for that.
 
Doc

What types of things that might come up in a fantasy game* ruin the immersive experience for you?  I'm not asking you to come up with just anything that *would* ruin it, but what actually has ruined it.  What have you actually encountered in play that disrupted your willful suspension of disbelief?
 
*And you can also include things outside of games, such as fantasy literature or movies or TV shows, etc.
 
For me, the main one is anachronisms - which is a very broad category.  It includes all of the following:
 
* Injection of sci-fi elements (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, anyone?)  I don't like ray guns and robots mixed with my rapiers and rakshasas.
* Magic items and spells that are simply modern-day technologies with a fantasy-colored coat of paint: Dragon-powered railroads, a magic spell that fills the roll of a cell phone, a "magic item" that is essentially a mechanical armored tank, complete with a 105 mm mounted "wand of fireballs".
* Modern-day sensibilities and memes.  In societal structure, government, religion, philosophy, etc.
* Anachronistic words and expressions.  I remember an episode of MST3K, "Quest of the Delta Knights" in which a character says, "This book is a blueprint for the future!"  To which, the other character should have said, "What the heck is a 'blueprint'?"  I've seen another fantasy setting that included a particular type of wizard specializing in mental manipulation called a "Mesmer", as if the word means "a person who mesmerizes others".  When actually "Mesmer" is the name of a 18-19th century doctor whose work led to hypnotism.  His name is where we get the word "mesmerize" - a word which should not exist in a fantasy world where this person never existed.
* References to modern-day scientific knowledge that people in the quasi-historical fantasy setting wouldn't have, such as the germ theory of disease, the fundamental laws of physics, cosmology, etc.
* Evidence of a lost civilization that had modern-day, or future technology.
 
Of course, anachronisms aren't the only category of immersion disruptors, but for me, it covers about 99% of the cases.
 
What are the immersion disruptors for you?  Anachronistic ones, or otherwise.  What things spoil the "fantasy feel"?

I love seafaring and ships, but most of the ones in Fantasy RPG's are abysmal and written by people with 0 understanding.  Most of the Fantasy RPG's are throwing out ships and ship tech that is actually closer to that aircraft carrier than what they would have at the comparable setting. 
God save me from another 18th century tall ship in a 700AD setting, or even worse a 1200BC setting.  Yes, magic adds its elements, but for any small bit of sanity, just f'ing google the names of ship types that may possibly have existed within 500 years of each other.  It isn't hard.
 
Arrghhhhh,.... sometimes my eyes just want to bleed. 
 

I'm fine with scifi, given that I grew up on Might&Magic games.  It just needs to be integrated.  What I can't stand is modern tech.  No guns please, unless they shoot lasers. 
Magic as modern equivalent is just lazy worldbuilding, and I don't like it.  The things we have today look and work the way they do because of how things work, so replacing technology with magic will result in sweeping changes. 
I am not researching history for my elfgames thank you. 
I am not researching linguistic history for my elfgames either thank you. 
If a player knows a thing to be fact, they're going to have a hard time not using that fact.  The human brain just doesn't do "ignore this piece of information" well.  Either change the way the world works or let the way the world works be known, don't make me waste mental effort pretending to forget things when I should be pretending to be somebody else. 
See first. 
 
My personal "OH GOD NO"s are mainly Earth-things on not-Earth.  References, place-names, nationalities.  Accents is the big one.  When somebody gives their character a, say, German accent all I can think is "He's German!  Wait no there's no Germany." and my immersion shatters. 

This is a very good point, and you're probably at least 90% right.  As much as I would like to attract gamers to HERO as their first RPG, it may always be a small minority of the RPGers.  I know of one person who has played Champions, but never played D&D (or any other RPG).  But he's the exception.  I'm certainly not an exception.
 
So maybe the selling method is more along the lines of, "You've tried the rest.  Now try the Best!"

What types of things that might come up in a fantasy game* ruin the immersive experience for you?  I'm not asking you to come up with just anything that *would* ruin it, but what actually has ruined it.  What have you actually encountered in play that disrupted your willful suspension of disbelief?
 
*And you can also include things outside of games, such as fantasy literature or movies or TV shows, etc.
 
For me, the main one is anachronisms - which is a very broad category.  It includes all of the following:
 
* Injection of sci-fi elements (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, anyone?)  I don't like ray guns and robots mixed with my rapiers and rakshasas.
* Magic items and spells that are simply modern-day technologies with a fantasy-colored coat of paint: Dragon-powered railroads, a magic spell that fills the roll of a cell phone, a "magic item" that is essentially a mechanical armored tank, complete with a 105 mm mounted "wand of fireballs".
* Modern-day sensibilities and memes.  In societal structure, government, religion, philosophy, etc.
* Anachronistic words and expressions.  I remember an episode of MST3K, "Quest of the Delta Knights" in which a character says, "This book is a blueprint for the future!"  To which, the other character should have said, "What the heck is a 'blueprint'?"  I've seen another fantasy setting that included a particular type of wizard specializing in mental manipulation called a "Mesmer", as if the word means "a person who mesmerizes others".  When actually "Mesmer" is the name of a 18-19th century doctor whose work led to hypnotism.  His name is where we get the word "mesmerize" - a word which should not exist in a fantasy world where this person never existed.
* References to modern-day scientific knowledge that people in the quasi-historical fantasy setting wouldn't have, such as the germ theory of disease, the fundamental laws of physics, cosmology, etc.
* Evidence of a lost civilization that had modern-day, or future technology.
 
Of course, anachronisms aren't the only category of immersion disruptors, but for me, it covers about 99% of the cases.
 
What are the immersion disruptors for you?  Anachronistic ones, or otherwise.  What things spoil the "fantasy feel"?

I would caveat that.  HERO is probably not for a group where NOONE has played TTRPGs before.  Given a good GM with HERO experience, willing to put in some groundwork, it is no worse than any other game.
 
Doc

I've never had any trouble separating DCV, PD and rPD, but some of my players are tripping over the overlapping terms.
 
Something I've found helpful:
OCV changed to Offense
DCV changed to Defense
PD changed to Physical Resistance (PR)
rPD changed to Armor - Players understand intuitively that body armor prevents lethal damage.  I miss the Armor power from earlier editions.  Yes, it overlapped resistant defense, but it was easily understood by the players.
 
Have you found any terminology / jargon changes that made the game easier for your players?

I would use Images. The powers that appear to come from the images would be bought with Indirect. 

OFF TOPIC:
 
Just a bit more about Everyway, and it's deck.  The game itself is almost the diametric opposite of HERO.  Everything is very free-form and not well defined.  All of the crunchy details and math are gone.  There are only four characteristics:  Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.  And there are no dice.  You might describe it as a fantasy role-playing game designed by hippies.
 
My copy of the game is packed away somewhere.  Let's see if I can remember all the cards.  They were organized into eight "groups" which aren't really like suits:
 
The "gods" (8):  War, Death, Knowledge, Law, Inspiration, Fertility, Trickster, Nature
The "mortals/planets" (7): Priestess (Moon), Hermit (Mercury), Peasant (Venus), Fool (Sun), Smith (Mars), King (Jupiter), Soldier (Saturn)
The monsters (6): Dragon, Gryphon, Unicorn, Cockatrice, Satyr, Phoenix
The "errors" (5): Drowning in Armor, Fearing Shadows, Overlooking the Diamond, Sewing Stones, Striking the Dragon's Tail
The seasons (4): Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
The animals (3): The Lion (body), The Eagle (mind), The Fish (soul)
The "parents" (2): The Creator (mother), The Defender (father)
The Usurper (1) - the Usurper card changes from realm to realm, and represents the unique influencing force that has a significant, if subtle, impact on the realm.  And the usurper may change when circumstances in the realm change.  If you were to make a Fortune Deck for the Turakian Age, the Usurper card would probably represent Kal-Turak himself.  But the usual Usurpers are not usually specific people or concrete things.

Oh my goodness, on that I have to agree. Now I see your point. That stuff irks me! I know the whole “class” system in D&D came from wargaming with different unit types, and so on. I just don’t know why it became standard, other than through sheer force of habit, and owning a huge RPG market share. 

I don't know. Does it really matter where they come from, as long as we get new players? Refugees may actually have a deeper appreciation of the options if they're coming from a system that didn't give them the flexibility they wanted. A brand-spanking new role player may never have considered the possibilities and so may not venture as far "out of the box" as someone who's been to the dark corners of that box and found it lacking.
 
Regardless, I just want new players! Bring 'em on!

The average person watches more online video than they have read books.
 
I am not saying do not explain what RPGs are or how such things work.  I said save the precious book real estate for long term useful stuff that everyone who buys the book will read/consult multiple times rather than a section that RPG newbies might read once.
 
Have the text online, have a couple of good videos showing the game being run, characters being built and combat being run.
 
I would have no more than one side talking about RPGs in general, probably much less.  Everything in THIS game should be about THIS game.
 
Doc

True.  So what lead the person who knows absolutely nothing about RPGs to buy a Hero System game?  They aren't sitting at the grocery store checkout or the bookstore waiting for an impulse buyer to grab one on a whim.
 
I think a broader "about the game" discussion (probably an expansion of the back cover text (or, viewed another way, the back cover text is the elevator pitch of the detailed "value proposition" in the book itself) would be a better focus for this brief section of the game.  You can sneak some "what is an RPG" in there, but we also get "you get what you pay for and pay for what you get", "simulate cinematic fiction" and, for this complete game, the type of game it is designed to deliver.  For the system as a whole, it's "the toolkit to customize your Hero System game, or even build your own game from the ground u".

All that bolded stuff is "setting".  It's not a huge setting, much less a full-blown detailed world filled with nations the PCs will probably never visit and NPCs they will likely never meet.  It's enough setting to play the game.  Of course, if the players want their own backstories, that also carries some setting.  My character can't come from a desert tribe without a desert, occupied  by some tribes.
 
What we don't need is a huge, fully realized world.  We need just enough setting to play.  More can follow, whether published or home-grown.

I'm not sure we even need that.  We have plenty of system, stripped down or maximized.  I don't think we even need to reprint rules.  I'm happy enough if book X plus Champions Complete (or Fantasy Hero Compete or 6e1/6e2 or Basic or...) equals complete game.

To look at it from a different direction: the $13.95 or so I spent on the D&D Starter Set drove about another $150-200 in sales to WotC.  It would have been really nice if I could have driven that money toward Hero Games instead. 

That sounds like a fine way to sell movie tickets or adventure novels.  Our primary goal is to get people to play the game.  Those are very different things.  I know a woman who was a big Doctor Who fan (old-school, Don Baker - which was all there was at the time.  She went out and bought the Doctor Who Role-Playing Game from the 1980's because she was intrigued by the setting.  But she never actually played it, because she wasn't necessarily into role-playing, and even to the extent that she might have been, she would have preferred not having to be so restricted by the setting.  She already knew the story of Doctor Who, and it's not any fun to just play out the script that you already know.  If we get a gaming group together, and we all love Doctor Who, and want to play this game, only one of us can be the Doctor.
 
Tolkien's Middle Earth is one of the most popular settings ever, but it's never been all that popular for role-playing games.  A Twilight sparkly-emo-vampire setting might also bring in girls, but I don't know how many will actually play in it more than once, and I don't want to play in it at all.
 
Actually, they do.  As anyone who played D&D prior to, say, 1990, can attest.  Adventures existed in a vacuum.  Many of them.  You play the game, you play the game some more, you enjoy the game, you really get into the game, you play lots of adventures, and only then do you wrap a setting around the adventures - maybe.

That sounds like a fine way to sell movie tickets or adventure novels.  Our primary goal is to get people to play the game.  Those are very different things.  I know a woman who was a big Doctor Who fan (old-school, Don Baker - which was all there was at the time.  She went out and bought the Doctor Who Role-Playing Game from the 1980's because she was intrigued by the setting.  But she never actually played it, because she wasn't necessarily into role-playing, and even to the extent that she might have been, she would have preferred not having to be so restricted by the setting.  She already knew the story of Doctor Who, and it's not any fun to just play out the script that you already know.  If we get a gaming group together, and we all love Doctor Who, and want to play this game, only one of us can be the Doctor.
 
Tolkien's Middle Earth is one of the most popular settings ever, but it's never been all that popular for role-playing games.  A Twilight sparkly-emo-vampire setting might also bring in girls, but I don't know how many will actually play in it more than once, and I don't want to play in it at all.
 
Actually, they do.  As anyone who played D&D prior to, say, 1990, can attest.  Adventures existed in a vacuum.  Many of them.  You play the game, you play the game some more, you enjoy the game, you really get into the game, you play lots of adventures, and only then do you wrap a setting around the adventures - maybe.