PhilFleischmann

For a long term campaign, setting is king.  I'll give you that.  
 
If all I have is a rulebook (assume Champions Complete for the sake of argument) and an adventure, I can get started playing.  If all I have is a rulebook and a setting, I still need an adventure.  If I have a rulebook and a couple of adventures, I can start a campaign.  
 
Personal experience here.  I tried to run a Champions campaign.  I had players, I had characters, I had villains, I had setting.  I didn't have an adventure.  I bombed.  I didn't turn them in to Champions players.  This was the group I'd been playing D&D with for two years, starting with the D&D 5th edition Starter Set and the 5e Players Handbook.  
 
True, the Starter Set assumes the Forgotten Realms, but it gives about a page of countryside map, not much setting other than the actual areas the adventure takes place in, monsters, spells, the minimal rules needed to play characters up from 1st level to 5th.   To me, that is a complete game.  
 
This is not me saying what I think is needed.  This me saying what experience, successful and not, has shown me is needed.  The D&D 5th edition Starter Set is a complete game, IMO.
 
 
In order to get a successful product line, we need more people playing the game.  Period.  

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.

I would assign more faith in setting, if-  well:
Millennium City
Vibora Bay
That college Steve has up in the store
Atlantean Age
Valdorian Age
Turakian Age
Tuala Morn
Hidden Lands
Stronghold
Terran Empire 
Meriquai Falls
Johlros
Hell's Half Acre
Kazei 5
Widening Gyre
Monster Island
The Mystic World
Hudson City
Worlds of Empire
 
And I can't remember how many other setting books from even further back- 
 
Had attracted an audience larger than _us_.  By that I mean people already big into HERO. 
 
A setting is a picture of a place that you use as a backdrop for your story.  Yes; you need one.  But you don't need two-hundred-odd pages of a setting to sit down and play a game, or to even be interested in playing.  I started playing Traveller with the little black box.  There really wasn't much in there for setting. 
 
I started playing D&D with box whose color I don't remember, but I remember that the rules were thinner than the 1e Champions book (though it would be a year or two before I learned that), and the highest level listed in the book was _three_.   Yep.  Third level.  It didn't have _crap_ for setting, not even the vague inferences that having to join a service made about the Traveller universe.  The closest thing we had to "setting" for D&D was pencil and ink lines on graph paper. 
 
The list goes on, or course: Star Frontiers:  we don't like these worm-looking guys.  Have fun. 
 
Gamma World:  there was an appoclypse, maybe nuclear, not sure.  Anyway, mutants. 
 
Aftermath:  something really horrible has happened that has brought about the end of the world.  You decide what it was. 
 
Twilight 2000:  the war's over, and you're stranded in Poland.  No; there are no maps.  You don't have orders anymore, so....   Well, it's Poland.  Do what you ordinarily do in Poland, but with guns and maybe a Humvee.  A green one. 
 
Seriously.  And some of those games have launched legacies. 
 
Even Champions-- the game that we come here regularly to celebrate and discuss, had _no_ setting. 
 
First edition was published in '81. Seriously, damned near all of it: rules, Enemies 1, Escape from Stronghold (Hillariously subtitled "Adventure #1 for Champions" ) , and Island of Doctor Destroyer.   That was.... Setting, I guess? 
 
Even wieder was that all the published adventures throughout 2 and 3e were totally unrelated to each other.  I think Circle and M.E.T.E appeared in the same book, but had no relation to each other.  Same with Blood and Dr. McQuark:  neither was filled out enough to make a 24 page book on thier own,  UT if we combine them..... 
Scourge From the Deep was just _nuts_ if you wanted to work it into any cohesive setting (though it did give us the drowning rules). 
 
To be honest, that campaign book that came with Justice, Inc?  Dude, that was positively _decadent_ in terms of setting for the games then.  But we still play it. 
 
 
It was forty years ago, and we are still in love, so I'm thinking that "setting is nice" might be more appropriate. 
 
The problem with setting is best illustrated with the current HERO books, and that classic example of setring: World of Darkness (or Vampire, for those looking for a short handle). 
 
Yes, it blew up _tremendously_ huge, and some of that can be contributed to setting.  Timing and topic had a lot to do with it, but the setting was undeniably very popular.  There was tons of it!  The just kept pumping it out.  Hell, why add new races and new monsters?  Think of a monster?  Build a damned game around it and toss it in World of Darkness!
 
But it's gone now.  Sure: there are, just like HERO, some diehards still plugging along.  But for the most part, it's just as dead as HERO.   But how, with that amazing setting? 
 
Too damned much of it.  Too much setting, too much restriction imposed by the setting, too much sameness.  In short, people gobbled up every little thing they could read about it, and after the information overload, they just got tired of it. 
 
Why was Lugosi the best Dracula?  You didn't see anything!  You knew there was the monster.  You _saw_ the monster as he stalked his victim.  Then there was a close up on his grotesque and lurid grin, he hunched and dove--
 
And the scene cut, or his cape obscured eveything-  his directors knew that nothing was better than what the audience would invent in their own minds.  There was enough setting to get you moving, and nowhere near enough to mire you down. 
 
Complete?  Give me an adventure, or enough setting that I can make something appropriate to what's been give.  Don't give me two hundred pages of an entire world:  the party isn't going to walk too terribly far from the starting point, anyway, not for months.  Don't bother me with what I don't need. 
 
The most popular setting book of all time, according to some, was Greyhawk.  I owned it, as I am sure many of you did.  What was that little miniature staple-bound book, anyway?  Maybe 40 pages?  Sure, it grew, but it grew over time; it didn't beat the zeal out of me with six chapters on political intrigue and four more on tax-funded infrastructure.  I don't want to play Phantom Menace; I'll call you if I get bored. 
 
A setting is a backdrop for your adventures; it's nice scenery, and names for the places in the distance.  Other than that, at least for the first few months, it's an oil painting.  Stunning, if done well.  But no matter how well it's done, you can't play it.  Not even a little bit. 
 
So: nice, but _almost_ optional. 
 

A setting that some find intriguing, others will find off-putting.  A setting that some find compelling, others will find contrived.  A setting some find "epic", others will find boring.  A setting you - or anyone else - comes up with, that the author thinks is the greatest setting ever, a large percentage of the general potential gamer population won't like.
 
And the most obvious example of setting not being all that important is Champions - it's the real world, with superheroes.  You don't need a world atlas specific to the setting, because a world atlas for the real world works just as well.  The only "setting" bits are deciding what region of the world the PCs live in, which is presumably where the adventures take place (or at least start from).  Sure, there may be some secret criminal conspiracies going on that don't exist in the real world, but the players don't necessarily know about them when the campaign begins.  Likewise, with any good-guy superhero organizations.  Note that the setting of Marvel Comics has been quite compelling to very many people for many decades now, and it's still just the real world with superheroes, despite the existence of Ironman's armor, the various aliens that have invaded, magic, etc.  It's still just the modern-day real world, with all that stuff added.  And why is all that stuff added?  For the sake of the adventures.

No, it is not.  Adventure is King.  Getting people playing the game is King.  Supporting GMs is King.
 
As far as a "complete game" (defined as discussed in this thread) is concerned, setting is useful only to the extent that it exists as a place to put that complete game.  If all I have is an adventure with only an implied setting (see also any D&D module, ever) I can sit down and run a game with it.  If all I have is a setting with no adventure, I'm still stuck having to come up with a goddamn adventure.  
 
Want more players?  Get more GMs.  Want more GMs?  Support GMs.  Best way to do that?  Adventures, IMO.  We know they're not profit leaders.  They're still necessary.  
 
"Complete game" can stand in for "adventures", if by that we mean, an adventure with some pregen PCs, pregen monsters, enough implied setting to run in.  If that has to include a magic system then so be it.  I don't need to know the political situation between kingdoms X and Y and guilds zed and double-zed, to be able to run an adventure.  
 
I'm not trying to pooh-pooh setting, long term.  But I'm here begging for something I can break out and have six players playing in an hour.  I don't have time to come up with that myself, and I certainly don't have time to come up with that myself in someone else's setting.  

If the GM says the moon is made of green cheese, then the moon is made of green cheese.  The real moon that orbits our real world has nothing to do with the fictitious moon (or moons) that may orbit the fictitious fantasy world that we base our games in, or write novels about, or watch movies about.
 
The players also know that there's no such thing as magic, or dragons, or superheroes, or FTL travel.
 
... absolutely nothing about the fictitious fantasy worlds that we base our games in, or write novels about, or watch movies about.
 
Although I should mention, that I've been greatly enjoying your added details to the TA setting.

Absolutely - you don't have to wait for a splatbook to publish a feat - you can get the design system and build the abiity YOU want right now, or tweak an existing build just so (a cone of ice splinters, for example, or I want a Cold Sphere to emanate in all directions).  You decide how much, or how little, of the game design you want to take on.

If no one minds a diversion from theology 😛 , I'd like to revisit Turakian Dwarves for a moment, with an eye toward those character role-playing hooks Nolgroth was interested in.   Of all the Dwarf realms listed on TA p. 34, Deepingdelve is the only one not given a name that sounds like it's taken from the Dwarven language, Ghoralzod. In that language, Deepingdelve is known as Zorak-Zar, "ancestral fortress." P. 33 notes several other ways that Deepingdelve is exceptional: it's generally considered the largest, richest, and most powerful Dwarf kingdom; and "To some extent, all Dwarves consider the King of Deepingdelve their leader, and accord him great respect."
 
To me, all this implies that Deepingdelve may have been the first homeland of the Dwarves, perhaps even the site where their legends say they were created. If so, it would also be a fitting seat for the Zegtarzeg ("priest of priests"), highest priest of the Dwarven branch of the High Faith. (See p. 222 sidebar.)
 
But that might have prompted another reason why Zorak-Zar is commonly called Deepingdelve -- resentment. Perhaps Dwarves from Deepingdelve consider themselves a cut above the rest of their kind, and rub their noses in it with smug condescension whenever they meet... to the point that most Dwarves avoid referring to the "ancestral fortress."
 
It also wouldn't be improbable for another group of Dwarves to suffer the opposite problem. Azarthond on the continent of Mitharia is the only above-ground Dwarf kingdom in the world. Its inhabitants dwell in walled cities much as Men do; except for those whose longing for their ancestral mountain halls prompts them to carve dwellings out of the Gormandar Hills. For my own use of TA, Dwarves from outside Azarthond treat their surface-dwelling kin with a measure of scorn, referring to them as "hill dwarves" (to borrow a term from D&D).
 
 

I mostly agree with this and I am a software engineer.  Just not the right kind of software engineer.
 
Learn completely new languages to create my own export format or edit how existing templates are built?  To play a game?!  Unlikely.
 
I have, however, taken Tasha's Ultimate export format and edited the color scheme more to my liking.  I may eventually get to editing it further to create a "player friendly" version of the sheets which hides base & costs columns to cut down on the wall of numbers.

I absolutely agree.  It is now a waste of paper and ink.  A box at the start with a link to internet text and a video of people playing the game would be MUCH more valuable.
 

I don't know.  But I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be in the order I presented them.
 
You might present a base character first - the default, generic guy with all 10's in his characteristics (except SPD and the others that don't start at 10).  And talk about what this character can do.  He can Run at a certain speed.  He can punch for a certain amount of damage.  He rolls 3d6 to determine if his punch hits hit target.  He can pick up a rock and throw it as a range attack.  He can use some other object of opportunity as a weapon.  He can dodge, block, dive for cover, etc.  He can Haymaker, he can Push.  He can hold his phase or his attack action half-phase.  He can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.  He can make presence attacks.  He is assumed to be a "normal" person within the setting, so he has a job and a life and a background, and therefore, he has some default everyman background skills.  And whatever default non-background skills he should have.  And how he uses those skills.  Anything else?  He can decide what to do from moment to moment, just like any other free-willed person.
 
Then say, "But your character isn't like this ordinary person.  Your character is a HERO!"  And you can have ability scores higher than 10, and you can have additional powers, and skills, etc.  And all these things are worth a certain number of points, so that you and your other players are all equally powerful heroes (otherwise it wouldn't be fair).  And the GM decides how many points you have to spend, and you can buy whatever you like, as long as you can afford it.  And you can take Complications that will make your characters more distinctive, while also giving you more points to spend.
 
This.  Electronic, clickable links.  How many people into RPGs, or who want to get into RPGs, don't have some kind of computer that can open a PDF on?  I don't know how innovative it is, but it really should be done this way.  Who uses a hardcopy encyclopedia anymore?
 
And the whole "What is role-playing?  What is a role-playing game?" thing should not be part of the rule book/PDF at all, but should be available for free download/viewing on the website of EVERY RPG publisher. (And no, it doesn't have to be the exact same one for each.)

You remind me of an anecdote:
 
I got into roleplaying quite by accident.   I love dice.  I mean I _love_ dice.  I had a rather extensive dice collection at one time (no; not just the pillow sack full; I mean an actual collection: dice whittle from bone certified back to the 1700s; iron dice cast and beaten into shape, actual bone "dice"  from hip bones of deer, etc.  They appear in every culture, every period.  Surely no one person travelled the globe and introduced them to everyone else.  There is something that draws us instinctively to the randomness of dice.
 
I guess it's the "randomizing" element of dice that... well, Hell; I'm too damned old to care what anyone thinks of me at this point,  I never cared much at any other point, so let me just say it:  there is something mysterious about dice.  We can predict and average and graph, but we can't tell what any individual throw is going to do.  Combine that with the history of dice-- dice-based fortune telling and even gambling seem to predate recorded history-- and you get people deciding their fortunes-- even their fates-- on one unguessable roll.  On purpose!  People who have made a decision to let the random action of the universe decide what their lives will be---
 
It's...  well, it's more than "romantic;" it's _haunting_.  I've been fascinated with them since I was just a little kid-- I mean that first board game with the colored die: move to the next space with that color.  It was spellbinding-- I controlled everything.  I could pick the die up-- I could pick it up the same exact way every time; shake it the same exact way every time.  Throw it onto the board and it was _different_.  Nothing I could do would control the result.  I had complete control of everything right up until I tossed it into the air
 
and the universe took over....
 
 
I never got away from it.  To this day, rolling dice is just the greatest mystery, and as an adult, and understanding the math-- the averages, the graphs, the potentials, the tilt of this and that and the angle or roundness of the vertices and weight and size of the die---- 
 
and knowing that when I throw them, it's all meaningless.
 
When I think about it too hard, it's scary, in a humbling "we are but specks in an infinite cosmos" sort of way.
 
When I just enjoy waiting for the next roll, guessing what it will be, and waiting-- over and over again-- until I'm right....   There's a childish joy; my joy, from the child in me that still remembers how exciting that first colored die was---   and I _love_ it.
 
 
 
At any rate, I had a rather extensive dice collection by the time 77 or 78 rolled about.  I had moved, made new friends, and had dice randomly displayed here and there.  "Oh, cool!  You must really love games!"
 
Well, I like dice.
 
"Dude, you have a _lot_ of dice!  Have you ever role played?"
 
I did a couple of stage productions in school.
 
"No; I mean like where you and your friends-- have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?"
 
Ehhh...  _sort of_....?  Nothing great.  I don't really think that's my thing.  I'm not really into hobbits and elves and crap.
 
"No; I mean the way you play: you make up a character and act out like what that character would do or say of how he would react; have you ever done that?"
 
I did a couple of stage productions in school.
 
"No; Dude; you are not getting this.  It's like making up an adventure movie, only you come up with your own lines and stuff as you go."
 
So...  like a party game?
 
"Kinda; yeah.  But then you want to do something, right?  So you can't just decide that you _do_ it; you just say you _want_ to do it, then you check your skill level"
 
My what, now?
 
"You have like skill levels and things that tell you kinda how good you are at stuff.  If something is sort of easy, then you get bonuses; if it's hard, then you get penalties."
 
Penalties?  You lost me.  If I'm good at it, why are there penalties?
 
"Because you need a target number."
 
And what's that?
 
"Well you have to roll that number or better on the dice--"
 
Dice?
 
"Right.  When you want to try to do something, you roll the dice, and they will tell you if you can do it or not."
 
The dice decide?
 
"Right.  You take your target number and your bonuses or penalties and then you let the dice decide---"
 
Tell me more.  No; wait!  _Show_ me......
 
"Sure!  My buddies Kevin and Jim have been itching to get a Traveller game up, but we haven't finished the D&D module yet--- Hey!  Do you like science fiction?  Like spaceships and aliens and stuff?"
 
 
And that did it.  Right there.  I didn't sit down because I wanted to be the next Conan or Legolas; I didn't want to be the next Magic Space Wizard.  I wanted to let the dice decide my fate.....
 
 
And I've never regretted it.  
 
 
Now over the years-- between friends, family, nieces and nephews, moving, giving things away, -- life in general, very little of my once-prized dice collection remains (I have a couple of hammered iron dice, a couple of antler dice, and a very few others still left), but it's amazing how many _more_ dice I have now than ever before!  
 
I just _love_ dice.  
 
This only seems to apply to dice, though.  Card games suck the blue ones on a donkey.  >:(   They freakin' _wish_ they were dice!
 
 
Dude, I am _really_ sorry about that.  I may have to erase all of it and just start here, at the actual anecdote:
 
I once had (and still have most of) a set of about two-dozen bright yellow dice with oversized black pips.  When I was teaching new players, I would insist they use these dice, as they were _much_ easier to read, meaning that I or any of the other players could help them determine their successes and failures until they got the hang of it.  One player jokingly referred to these dice arranged in a neat rectangle as "the school bus," and the name has just stuck, given that they were used mostly for the purposes of education (no one picked them on purpose:  they were called "the school bus;" that should tell you immediately just how damned unpleasant they were to look at!    ).
 
 
I had a problem player many years ago-- you may have heard me mention Davien a time or two.  It was absolutely _astounding_  how phenomenally well he rolled, and how his success always seemed to be proportionally to both the smallness of his dice and his distance away from other players.  (Weird, right?!).  I got sick to death of it, and one day I stumbled across a set of twelve dice in "school bus" colors---  30mm dice.  
 
"Here, Davien.  You wanna play; you use these dice.  Period."
 
It took about fifteen minutes before someone coined the phrase "the short bus."    
 
 
 
{EDIT}:  Thread Tax:
 
What makes a game "complete?"
 
Damned if I know.  But I know when it ain't!  
 
 
seriously though:  having everything you need to play a game:  An understanding of the world-- mood, attitude, grimness--- Look at HERO 6e: all the talk about having a hundred dials and switches you can throw and twist and boom!  Instant game!
 
Well a "complete game" is one that has _done_ that already:  It has all the switches thrown and dials set to create a defined world and a defined tone and gives you enough setting and background to place yourself _in_ that world, at least enough to feel like you are a part of it.  There is enough "here is how the world works" to get you going (I really don't need every single detail; just give me enough to get the feel for it; I can wing the rest), preferably some sample characters and information on them; enough NPCs to people at least one adventure, and ... well, _at least one adventure_.  Two or three is better, even if they are short and simple, because they tend to reinforce what the world is.  Sure, if there's only one adventure, it's better to be a bit more detailed, and preferably open-ended so I can just sort of bump along continuing it until I can get something together on my own.
 
Instead of fifteen optional ways to do something, I want something that says "in this world, it's done this way."  Less generic; more specific.  If HERO core rules get any more "universal and generic," they won't need cover art; they will need a white cover with black letters that says "Game Rules."  Package it in white box labeled "Game; boxed set" and include a 36x48 sheet of white paper that says "Map" and white-covered book of Mad Libs that says "Scenario."
 

P1:  It's really more about awful presentation than it is size.  In a good rulebook, reading from front to back will introduce concepts and rules in the order needed to understand and play.  Sadly, very few TTRPG rulebooks have good or even decent presentation, instead spreading things out in nonsensical orders. Chargen before rules, for example. 
P1': In the past I've fit all the rules needed for combat on the front of a sheet of paper, all the rules needed for non-combat on the back, and power writeups on 3x5 cards. 
P2: Champions doesn't have a setting?  Isn't the setting just "the world, but with supers"?  I agree that an adventure or two in the book would be nice. 
P3: I'm not aware of any major product that ships "complete" with pregens, an adventure, a setting, etc.  D&D 3.5 didn't.  D&D 5 doesn't.  What you seem to be getting at is the lack of supplemental support. 
P4: This is again presentation.  It's very easy to fit a description of a power on a 3x5 card or a quarter of a page.  And you can put the formal writeup on the back! 

Yes.  You're the third person to mention them, I think.
 
Some complain that they are unrealistic, but that really doesn't matter.  There are lots of unrealistic things in HERO, like Teleportation and Telekinesis.  If you can imagine it, you should be able to build it in HERO.  It doesn't matter how realistic it is, what matters is how useful it is, and that it should have a cost commensurate with its utility.

When I was working on my World Beneath the Sun setting, one thing I noticed was that in a lot of the fiction and myths I enjoyed, wizards usually did not have lots of spells. Like, one wizard might be able to turn into a wolf, another animates little wooden dolls, etc. It was kind of freeing to work with that kind of concept. One of the bigger obstacles is that wizards of that sort are often trying to steal each other's formulae and secrets. So I ended up using a VPP approach for "academic" spells with lots of requirements, like having to find or invent new spells, and then separately a system for minor magics and signature spells. By using a Magic skill roll, I tried to make it where wizards were specialists, but they could cast other spells with effort. 

Back by popular demand! This file, which is also available for free from the Hero Games Online Store, contains all the errata known to me as of today.
 
If you find an errata in the core rulebook which isn't listed here, please PM me to inform me about it. Please don't post it here, because I may not see it. Sending it to me directly ensures that I won't overlook it.
6E Errata 2020-02-09.pdf

I wouldn't give much of a Limitation for "Only to teleport to this thing I can trivially move".  Take, for example, your own example! 

I think his point was that he wants more granularity - not complete coverage.  If you want a character that's especially difficult to stun with physical attacks, but not with energy attacks, et al.
 
The limitation on CON for "Only to Avoid Being Stunned", I would put at -1/4 at most (and more likely -0, but that's just me).
But the limitation on PD for "Only to Avoid Being Stunned", should be quite a bit higher.  -1 at the very least, and probably more like -2.

Yes.  You're the third person to mention them, I think.
 
Some complain that they are unrealistic, but that really doesn't matter.  There are lots of unrealistic things in HERO, like Teleportation and Telekinesis.  If you can imagine it, you should be able to build it in HERO.  It doesn't matter how realistic it is, what matters is how useful it is, and that it should have a cost commensurate with its utility.

Yes.  You're the third person to mention them, I think.
 
Some complain that they are unrealistic, but that really doesn't matter.  There are lots of unrealistic things in HERO, like Teleportation and Telekinesis.  If you can imagine it, you should be able to build it in HERO.  It doesn't matter how realistic it is, what matters is how useful it is, and that it should have a cost commensurate with its utility.

In most fantasy worlds, it's not propaganda.  The gods actually did create the world - just like in all historical mythologies - on which all fantasy RPG gods are based.  Assuming we want to emulate that style of world, then the gods actually are gods, and they actually have god-like power, and they actually created the world.  Where does magic come from - particularly "divine" magic?  Is the fantasy world based on a circular "perpetual magic machine"?  People give the power to gods by worshipping, and then the gods grant magic power to the worshippers.  So none of it is real, but somehow real magic effects happen.  And how exactly can gods gain power from mortals'worship?  Because the mortals believe that's how they get their power?  And the gods have to conform to the beliefs of mortals?  It seems to me, the farther you follow this idea, the more in unravels into ridiculousness.
 
I don't actually see anything in the Turakian Age that says that the gods get their power from the worship or faith of mortals, but perhaps I missed it.

Not to beat yet another dead horse, but why would anyone "create" an evil god in a pantheon? Or if some people believe in an evil god, why would they include that god in their own pantheon, which they presumably created?
 
Christianity didn't arbitrarily introduce, and therefore "create," Satan as a source of evil. Satan already exists in the Hebrew text, but it means "accuser" or "prosecutor" in many cases, meaning a person who accuses (in some cases it refers definitely to a specific accuser against God). Since Israelis are "people who wrestle with God," the role of struggle with and against God is part of the story that has always been told. "Satan" is either a human with grievance against God, or the embodiment of the fallen angel, Satan, defying God. So the stories precede Christianity, which is notorious for borrowing from many other cultures in defense of their so-called monotheism. 
 
HOWEVER, the stories go a long way toward demonstrating that these sorts of deities come about because of belief, not the other way around, so your point is still solid. I don't want to get too far into the theology of specific religions, since that's totally off topic, and it's really not all that important in game terms, and it's not an issue I'm anxious to stand and defend. In the big picture, as I said, Mr. Carlyle helped me make a lot of sense of the idea of gods emerging from a culture. The particulars are mostly going to be a function of poetic license. 

Which of course begs the question: what are they worshiping as a group if there is not yet something to worship? At least in my understanding, worship actually needs an object of worship. Maybe I’m trying to make too much sense out of a fictional notion . . . ?

I’ve been skulking this thread, and am coming late to it, so forgive my tardiness for this comment. Thomas Carlyle wrote a book called Heroes and Hero Worship discussing how fame can lead to this sort of level of “worship.” The first chapter is a discussion of how Odin rose from a historical figure to actually become a god, and it is fascinating. 
 
I never really enjoyed the deities and similar stuff in fantasy because it always seemed a little (a lot?) contrived. The idea of a God’s power depending upon worshipers seemed kinda cheesy and paradoxical to me because why would anyone worship a god who is not yet powerful, and how could a god become powerful if he does not yet have worshipers?! But Carlyle at least helped me make sense of it for the first time in my life.