rjcurrie

All you need to do is, as Christopher Taylor said above, is put a Limitation on the Force Field that says the actual defenses are equal to the character's current END. There is no Linked limitation needed or any complicated constructs. I think Christopher is in the right area with the value of the Limitation at +1/2.

Never mind.

I suspect most failures with a genre are due to poor GMing or the players not buying into the genre in question (and even that could be the fault of the GM). Note that I am including how HERO is used for a genre as part of GMing.

What do you mean? Most Hero GMs I know run Hero without a combat map (as opposed to a roughly sketched out match that shows approximately where things are). What are the issues that you are seeing that need to be dealt with.

Why? What makes you think that Gestalt belongs in Other Genres rather than Champions? Gestalt is still pretty much a superhero universe.

While 6th edition is not perfect, I see no need to put things like figured characteristics, Comeliness, Elemental Controls, and game inches back.

To be honest, I'd far rather see a book of adventure ideas -- maybe half a page each -- than one detailed adventure. Give me the basic idea for an adventure and I can flesh it out, most likely in play. Give me a detailed adventure and I have to read and absorb it and then adapt it to my world. And often the basic gist of the adventure gets lost in the details.

I find that the problem is that some newer versions of IE are somewhat incompatible with the board software and thus, don't include the quotes. I haven't seen the issue with Firefox or Chrome.

No real ideas on what it could be. And I'm not sure that any of the ones you list appeal to me. Of course, I have to admit that given the approach that Hero Games has taken on Kickstarter in regards to international shipping issues (and yes, I understand there are serious issues), I'm getting more and more reluctant to support anything they do there. I can't help but think that there has to be a better solution than treating international customers like second class fans.

As far as I know, none of them were written. I would suspect that, at most, there may have been some outlines or rough notes for some of them,

Okay, I have not thoroughly read this product, so I cannot really comment on its gaming contents. These comments are based on just a quick look through the PDF. However, on that alone, I would not feel comfortable in recommending that anyone purchase this product. One of the great things these days is how easy it is for anyone to create and sell a gaming product (especially in the PDF format). Unfortunately, this is also one of the worst things. That same ease of production and the willingness of many web sites to sell virtually anything without any concern as to its quality leads to consumers being asked to pay money for products like this one, which are simply not ready for prime time. Let's start with a minor nitpick. What's a vol? Yes, I know that it's meant to be an abbreviation for "Volume", but wouldn't that be "Vol."? And for that matter, I fail to see a good reason to call this "Vol 1" or even "Vol. 1" instead of "Volume 1". And to be honest, if that was my only issue with the product, I probably wouldn't have even mentioned it. But, in truth, maybe it's a warning sign about what lies within. First, let me say that I commend Greg Elkins for creating a gaming supplement. It's something that many of us talk about but only a few actually do. However, it feels to me like he stopped after the first draft. On the first page alone, there are numerous typos, awkward constructions, and seemingly missing words. He thanks both Jason Walters and Steve Long for their help -- actually, he "thinks" Steve Long and maybe that should be Dr. Jason Walters, since he is thanked for his "patients" -- but it seems that this help did not include the recommendation of getting an editor or, at the very least, a proof-reader. Or maybe they did make such a recommendation and Mr. Elkins chose to ignore it. And to be honest, this product seriously needed an editor. Mr. Elkins simply does not appear to be, at this time, a good writer. He may have interesting ideas, but unfortunately his awkward writing, lack or misuse of punctuation, and uncaught typos can make it difficult to get to those ideas. Much of his text, as I mentioned above, reads like it is a first draft that he never revisited. Now, to be honest, ideas are usually the key to a good gaming supplement and those with good ideas should not be discouraged from attempting to share them with others. However, it helps if the writer is aware of his limitations and also aware of how poor and sloppy writing can affect the reader's perceptions of the material. And that's where an editor can make a big difference. Heck, in some cases, simply paying attention to the changes that an editor makes or recommends, the original author can become a better writer. The product also has a very minimal layout (with the exception of the character sheets, which I will discuss later). All text is the same size and uses the same font. Only the use of bold and italics separate headings from body text. While, minimal formatting can be a valid choice, in this case, it only adds to the "first draft" impression and can be confusing in places. There is also a complete lack of page numbers, table of contents, or index. I can forgive the lack of an index, but I would still like to see a table of contents and page numbers. The character sheets included with the product were produced using HERO Designer and an RTF export format created by Shane Harsch. No credit was given to Mr. Harsch for the character sheet design and I am unsure, given the nature of freely releasing export formats into the wild, whether or not such credit is required. However, it would be nice to recognize the creators of these export formats when they are used in commercial products. Personally, I question the use of this export format, for three reasons. First, it does not include any real point costs for individual abilities, which I think is fine for sheets used in home and convention games; however, for a commercial product, I'd like to see the numbers. Second, the character sheet uses a layout that is completely unlike any character sheet that appears in any product for the HERO System. And finally, the sheet introduces new terminology such as INIT (for initiative),which is just DEX (probably modified by Lightning Reflexes). Again, without an explanation, things like this and the "to hit" rolls given can be confusing to readers who are used to the standard character sheet presentations. Perhaps, there should have been an explanation of how these sheets differ from the standard ones. I would also like to have seen Mr. Elkins edit the character sheets to clean up some of the rough spots that are a result of the limitations of either the export format or HERO Designer itself. For example, there are several places where a heading appears on a character sheet with nothing under it. My final complaint about the character sheets is the inconsistent abbreviation of "pounds". In some places, the acceptable, though technically incorrect, "lbs." is used, while in others, the incorrect "pds." is used. All in all, the product feels like it was simply thrown together with little concern for quality. And given that the "Vol 1" in the title would seem to indicate that Mr. Elkins plans to release more products, I can only hope that he learns from this experience and produces a better quality product next time. I also feel compelled to wonder if any standards exist whatsoever for products to use the HERO System license or be sold through the HERO Game store. Is HERO Games so desperate for products to sell that they don't care if the product has errors and inconsistencies on almost every page? I guess when it is described as an old fashion (shouldn't that be "old-fashioned"?) organization book, we should be thinking of such fourth edition classic as "European Enemies" and "The Mutant File". Do customers need to be wary of any item purchased through this store? That would be unfortunate, because it would mean that good products can suffer because of bad products like this one.

I would say little to no hope. Perhaps another company might be able to reach a deal with Hero Games to produce such materials. But I would say that unless there is a major shift in philosophy at Hero Games, such products are unlikely to produced by them. I think what you are likely to see, from Hero Games, is complete games with both rules and settings, like Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, and Monster Hunter International. I'm not sure they see a market for supplements and are willing to leave that kind of thing to third party publishers. How is releasing a chapter at a time cheap? Are you suggesting that each chapter be sold individually, so as to raise the money to produce the next chapter?

My guess is that he means obtain the rights to adapt an existing IP. I think Cryptic might only need to give permission if they want to package it as a "Champions" product. If they just packaged it as a Hero Games product, they may not need their permission. But I am not fully aware of the terms of the Cryptic-DoJ deal. It's also possible that Jason means the permission of the Hero Secret Masters -- the people who actually own most of Hero.

There is a big difference between the two. In 4th edition, the book Dark Champions was about playing Iron Age or "gritty" Batman or Punisher style superheroes. That was why many of us objected and thought it was confusing. If the previous book hadn't existed, there would have been less objection. Although I think the fact that many of the genres that are covered by Dark Champions are not what I would consider dark.

And then there's people like me who don't want to be bothered with detailed publish setting because we don't want to spend time learning it. However a book of setting ideas, each about the length (or maybe a little longer) of Hermit's post above would be great. Maybe present the basics and then leave a number of questions for the GM to decide as he fills out the setting. Personally, I make a few basic decisions about my world when I start the campaign and then fill it out as I go. When somebody asks about something, I'll make a decision then and there. For example, if someone asks about aliens and I haven't already determined player creation whether aliens were publicly known or not, I can say something like one of the following: * Sure, there's the <alien race 1>, <alien race 2>, and <alien race 3> (making up names as I go) * Yes. There are aliens known to the general populous. I'll get you the details next session. * Well, there are rumors in the superhero community that Mighty Man may be an alien. * Well, rumors say that Ultra Woman had some kind of strange encounter in space. * None that the general public knows about. * You haven't heard of any aliens even from your top secret government sources. In all cases, I've said something about aliens in the universe that I should expand upon between sessions. I may have also laid down possible future plotlines with my answers. Essentially, for a lot of things, until I need them I don't worry about them. For example, why worry about detailing that mysterious top secret government agency that may be up to no good until something happens to bring them in contact with the player characters in some way. And if you find you're regretting some of your "on the fly" decisions, there are always ways.to rectify it. For example, let's say you hastily call an alilen race "Spatulans" from the plaent "Spatula" and you decide you'd like to change it. Maybe one of the aliens tells the players "Look, I know you Earthers are used to calling us Spatulans from the planet Spatula, but I really wish you wouldn't. Our leader makes one sarcastic comment at a press conference and suddently six billion Earthers are calling us that. ..." For me, as a GM, I enjoy the process of discovering the Universe along with my players. It feels like a comic book universe to me where you learn bits and pieces as you go along. Similarly, as a player, I usually don't want to know more than what my character knows.

Incidentally, I suspect that Steve Long's name was only included on this document as a courtesy because he wrote the orginal material (6E) that this borrows from. I'd be very surprised if he actually had anything to do with it at all.

This is somewhat a false premise. I suspect overall poor sales of all Hero products has more to do with the lack of new Champions material than the fact that Cryptic owns the IP.

Remember when people are talking about Dispel breaking foci, they're not talking about the focus going away and the player having to buy the power all over again. They're talking about requiring repairs being needed to get it going again, which is part of the deal with foci. Sometimes you won't be able to use them.

Yup. It's basically the origin of a replacement character.

Find a more mature group to play with. Oh, you mean actual children -- never mind.

Give that you mention hde, I assume that you are actually referring to Hero Designer export templates. You'd probably be better served by posting in the Hero Designer forum. People there can help you with modifying an export template or perhaps would be willing to make the modifications for you. Export templates (.hde files) themselves are plain text files that can be edited in any editor designed to handle plain text (for example, Notepad). There is some information on creating Export Templates in the Hero Designer documentation.