RDU Neil

I should note, there is also the 500 plus point Martial Artist in the campaign... and he is VERY differentiated. He has built a very broad character, with lots of non-combat skills, lots of weapons and gadgets and contacts, etc. He isn't nearly as powerful as the other big guns... and even a 350 pt martial artist who is extremely combat focused can threaten him. It's just how the player conceives of the character. Differentiation can only really happen when players "self limit" their characters for dramatic and role playing purposes. Trying to create metagame rules to enforce diversity can just complicate the gaming process, and backfire as well. C'est la vie.

This is an interesting question... so I'll pose one of my own. Is it 350 starting level that is the problem... or simply 350 points, period? I'll explain. I've got a long term campaign, and only now that some characters are reaching 500 plus do we begin to see the lack of differentiation. EB characters have all the same stuff... everyone can afford Power Defense and Mental Defense and movement powers... (justifiably within characater, as well.) This wasn't the case when our 275 pt. starting characters reached 350 with EXP. Differentiation was fine. I just wonder, if folks start at 350 (I'm still at 300 for what I consider a STARTING character. 350 is a character with some adventures under their belt.) are people likely to have all the best skills and powers, 'cause now they can afford them... right from the start? Everyone has stealth because it's so useful, when the brick might have gone without it at lower levels, even if justified in character. Again... this has only begun to HINT at being a problem in my campaign, because the big guns are a TK , a PSI and an EB... and while VERY VERY different in concept and history... at this point, they all have flight, force field, EB, mental defense, etc. They all have levels and combat skills, etc. It makes sense... as you'd probably have a difficult time separating out three veteran soldiers from each other, if they were inventoried on paper. Justifiably, each of these heroes can "do it all"... but from a game/drama stand point, it can begin to feel claustrophobic. It's like in the comics... in his own magazing, Iron Man can go toe to toe with Dr. Doom... but in the Avengers, the whole team is needed to go toe to toe. PCs in my game are to the point where they can easily be "the best of the best" in their own comic... and joined together, they are a bit redundant. It's an intersting conundrum... though again, I don't think starting point levels are the issue, except that you might reach this point SOONER, rather than later.

I'd highly suggest the original V&V boxed set adventure... though very similar to Island of Dr. Destroyer the villains in the book are excellent... and a friend and I translated them to Hero a long time ago. Very good "terrorist" supervillain types. Brave New World was just that... a great world to play in, but a total crap system... very limiting. If you have a lot of time and energy, translating that world into Hero would be a game I'd LOVE to hear about or play in. That world is full of the political changes and alternate history that could come about due to the presence of superhumans. Great stuff... sourcebook wise... but again, the system was horrendous and severely limiting.

A bit off topic... but then, hey, that's what threads are for... Nuahda and I game together regularly. We are very different ends of the spectrum in what we want out of the RPG experience. I'm the Hero System fan... where as James/Nuahda is really loving M&M and it's simple, four color experience. I'm not a four color fan at all. In fact, I GM Champions/Hero in order to tell stories and create a "super hero world" that is how I want it to be, not like the comics, where they drop the ball in many areas. Super pets and talking gorillas are a clear example of silly crap I just can not stomach. Early Ellis Stormwatch issues, where supers decide to make a better world, and the socio-political repercussions of such decisions are explored... well that is EXACTLY what I'd always wanted to see in comics. The fact that SAS is trying to do both... well, that concerns me. It might work... if the system if flexible enough... but it might not. The Authority/Stormwatch is about genocide and political assassination and superhumans lording over normals. Talking gorillas are a different world. I'll really be taking a look as SAS, now, that it looks like they are tackling a subject more to my liking, as opposed to their four color stuff, initially presented. I guess we'll see.

Currently testing M&M, as Storn is running it every other week, while I run Hero 4.5 (4th Edition, with only the 5th Edition changes that I like) on the other nights. Haven't played SAS, so I can't speak to it, but M&M is worth picking up for the sole reason that it is the only d20 system done correctly. It is d20 based, but takes it in a new direction that is quite smart... I just don't think it holds a candle to Hero... but is fun for quickie, very four color, games. It should be noted that SAS just got the rights to the Stormwatch/Authority characters and setting. Doing it in their Tri-Stat system. Also, the SAS Tri-Stat main book is in beautiful color, with great art, characters, setting, etc. As others have stated before, compare 'em at the store, and go with what inspires you.

The King is dead... ...Long live the king. In my campaign, a player came up with a 30 foot snake man, long before 3rd Edition came out, called Coil. We had no clue about King Cobra and his organization at that point. In years of playing, King Cobra became very prominent, as he proved to have created Coil (the character) who had, until that time, thought he was some weird alien. This set off a long battle between King Cobra and his COIL organization, and Coil the hero... who befriended Mongoose, and spent years taking COIL apart. It all came down to a full out assault on COIL's base in the Amazon, with the court split, some supporting King Cobra, and others supporting Coil... a one on one... fight to the death between our hero and the villain. He took the villains head... and the crown... and rule the growing nation of Coil Mutates that was taking over the Amazon basin. Very fun storyline, and a great way for a major PC to retire... taking over a kingdom and becoming a major NPC.

I should also state that I LOVE the Avengers. It is the one Marvel Comic I follow faithfully, through good and bad... I even have a beat up copy of #1. The Avengers, IMO, is the perfect "high level Champions" kind of superteam. (Storn, your Vector, along with Locke, Thermal, and Vengeance... are to the point where I think they could easily stand with the current Avengers. 500+ points or so, seems about right, IMO) I just used JLA vs. Power Company, since they both exist in the same "universe" and folks around here often comment on Batman or Superman or the other "mega big gun" characters. This is panning out like I thought it would. Most games don't play in the mind bendingly over the top type, JLA level. Some in our gaming group think Nobilis or Amber would be the way to play JLA. Forget points and dice... it's all in the concept. Not to my tastes, but could be interesting.

Exactly my take, Major Victory. I enjoy reading the JLA, but I get inspired to game by reading Power Company, or the Avengers. (No matter how George Perez does it, I will not be convinced by this upcoming JLA vs Avengers comic, if the JLA doesn't just walk all over the Avengers. They are just in a completely different power level, IMO.)

The gods of old have returned in my Champions campaign... but off the top of my head, only twice have actual Gods been played as PCs. Originally, a player wanted to play Ra, of the Egyptian mythos, and created a basic energy blaster, light and heat guy. No big deal, we were immature in our gaming concepts, and he was only played once. Later, Storn wanted to play an Egyptian type, and ended up with Osiris... the god himself, but bound to a mortal shell, so seriously depleted in power. (Standard 275-300 starting point level.) This Osiris would transform between a historian/doctor type and his God form, where he was still the doctor, but would occasionally slip with lines like "I guard the doorway to the next realm! I am the judge!" and stuff like that, scarying the doctor personality quite a bit. I reintroduced Ra, at that point an NPC, but fully powered up, who chided Osiris for hiding in a mortal frame. The doctor never believed he was the real Osiris. Osiris later died, during the Destroyer Wars, battling Gigaton to a standstill and collapsing a mountain on them both... killing himself and stoppign Gigaton. He was first casualty of the Destroyer Wars... and Storn and I have often talked about bringing him back, as Osiris has a history of dying, and being reconstituted... granted missing a crucial piece of his anatomy, but we won't go there... ... maybe. For the gods, I've used the suite of powers introduced in the Greek Pantheon supplement, since I think it fits most "old pantheon gods" which could shapeshift, etc. I don't think any real "god" in that sense is less than 1000 points, but often they are not just pure power. They have dozens of abilities and powers and knowledges, and a PC of 500 pts or so, might be able to challenge them in combat. Demi-gods are another issue, and I would build them on the same point base at super heroes. In fact... one undercurrent going on in my game, is that in this new age of heroes, we are really seeing the birth of new gods, to rival the old gods. This has really come about now that some major PCs are over 500 pts, and climbing. Still, they have a LONG way to go.

Again... sweet picture, Storn. The color selection is very interesting. Had never pictured the "goo" stuff on her... but this is much more demonic and nasty. Tres cool.

Yep... you are correct again. The "Veto" is a tactic... not a reasonable argument for a lousy rule. I'm 100% behind you on that one. It's not a matter of being a stickler for the rules, but being a stickler for consistency in the rules... at least for me.

In our game, we have the running joke as follows... New female PC or NPC shows up. Character description of clothes, hair, ethnicity, equipment, attitude (shy or forward, etc.) alll comes first, and then we end, usually the whole group in unison, saying, "And because this is a comic book... she's a KNOCKOUT!" So unless a female character is noticably unpleasant to look at, or is extraordinarily beautiful, we just assume she's good looking, and move on to what she is really about. It's kind of a reverse "lookism" issue, since "If everyone is beautiful, it's not an issue at all." Same goes for male characters, really. They are all perceived to be handsome, in their own way, unless determined to be otherwise.

Actually, in a storyline I ran, a character from an alternate earth (previous campaign world) had to hunt down all the "mystic villains" that had followed him from the old world. He had to fight to the death, Black Paladin, Slug, eventually Dark Seraph... and the Aesesinos worked well in that campaign. (Not the Main... but the others). Best moment was a scene on the Amazon river with a powerful shaman type. They were swarmed by summoned mosquitos that began to attack and bite and blind and smother them. Vengeance, the main character, a modern day warrior, sword, gun, martial arts type, didn't have anything to fight such a swarm... so the mage had to take care of it... but Vengeance made an amazing perception roll to see Mosquito zipping in for a kill strike through the swarm. He fast drew his sword, struck... rolled a 4, did 18 Body or something, and resheathed his sword in one motion... slicing the three inch Mosquito in half. One shot, one kill... and Vengeance cleaning the tiny remains off of his body armor was VERY funny. See... the Asesinos could be very useful as villains. (Actually, Stalker, Muerte Obscuro and Ocelot were good foes for that series of adventures.)

I knew this info was out there somewhere. Thanks for doing the work for me, Emerged! If you are ever in Ann Arbor, I'll buy you lunch. You earned it. (By the way, I find that we agree on many of the same issues... like the Defender Exploit and Megascale and the Regeneration fiasco. Your statement that "if you don't like it, veto it" is not an excuse for an illogical, poorly designed rule is so true. It is my biggest beef with 5th Edition, in that Steve and company went to such lengths, like Healing/Regen, to make them logically consistent at the expense of loaded complication, but then drop the ball on things like Megascale and Multilform, etc.)

Thanks Eric... So... basically, when I created this character, I was in the midst of exploring the effect of alien races on earth's culture and metahuman population. My main rift was to take all the "aliens" from Classic Enemies or other supplements, and make them more than the cookie cutter characters they were. All these Aliens, Hurculon, Thok, Quasar (from Serve & Protect), and others, were actually "Ambassadors" from the Confederation... an alien conglomeration/government that was watching Earth (for many reasons to complicated to go into here) and were waiting for the time to introduce themselves openly. This has happened, and the UN has recognized these Ambassadors, and the Earth has found out that there is a wider universe out there to join. (Colonization, space travel, ambassadors to the stars, have all begun to take place, with the PCs leading the way, in many cases... my super hero world becoming a super science fiction world, really.) Hurculon, being human looking, had long involved himself in human affairs, traveling the world, running businesses, etc., and Thomas "Demon Star's" mother was an affair he had. The fact that, born from that affair, was the legendary Dazeurian warrior they called the Demon Star, was a bit of a surprise. (Again, in the RDU, Hurculon's race is very human like, except for this revered "mutation" that appears every few generations.) The best part of the character is that he is a very normal, friendly, respectful 19 year old... inside the seven foot tall alien mutate ultimate warrior body. It's a hoot to watch Eric play him. Also, in our last game, Demon Star, for the first time, came into contact with an ancient, racial enemy, the Thanes or Arcane (see Alien Enemies) and went absolutely nutso berzerk without any clue as to why. The nice kid was shocked and horrified at his destructive and deadly behavior. (Normally he has a strong code vs. killing.) Further adventures, if and when we get to them, should be interesting.

Just a note on the characters history... I made him up on the fly, as a "one shot" character for Eric to play. He's got an interesting history, tied into NPCs in my game. Storn drew him PERFECTLY. I described him, and the picture came out EXACTLY like I'd always envisioned him. That is rare, but I love it when it happens. Too sweet, Storn. Eric has then taken him and run in making him a really interesting addition to the RDU.

Well Storn... we'll see how Geist functions, tomorrow, when he visits the LA Basin and the remains of the city. Oh... 3.5 million dead might have a few things to say to him. Heck... he might go insane his very first adventure! Fun, fun!!!

Storn... you did draw the original version of the Dark Champions cover... and it ran on a Game Shop News cover... and in a Hero advertisement, I believe. It was very similar, and the final cover was basically a redo of your work. I've got that piece at home (a copy) I believe. I'll look for it, tonight.

Licenses? Maybe I've missed commentary from Steve et al., about this... but why doesn't Hero look to acquire some licenses, like GURPs. Specifically, coming out of this thread, I would think a Hero System version of Shadowrun would be amazing. All the cool world building stuff is done... and could just have Hero stats of main characters added to it. I'd buy it in a flat second. Of course, some other company might have the rights to Shadowrun, and I'm just oblivious... 'cause I don't buy many game products outside of Hero. Anyone know what the status of the Shadowrun franchise is, these days?

It is my great pleasure... ... to have gamed with Storn for many years. He is always doodling at the games, and comes up with fun sketches, or photo copies of other pictures that I can use to enhance my games. I'm very lucky, that way. These days, I can get by in other games without character images... but Champions is so visual, and I've benefited from Storn's art for so long, I find it tough to run games withOUT character drawings, anymore. Love the Kirby-esque dude, Storn. One more image to flesh out our 100 member UNITE team, eh?

Yes! RE: the -1/4 limitation We did something similar... but I added on an extra limitation for "removable" in the case of folks who could have their limbs taken away/off. Almost a focus limitation... since we did have one character end up in a room, with both his legs removed, and was stuck until he could get rescued. Still, it was -1/4 for everyone's cybernetics... and if they wanted something to further limit them... it was optional, rather than required. Too many limitations, and folks were walking around with pocket tactical nukes for 1pt a piece!

Being the other half of the co-GM with Storn... we are purposely playing both systems, in the same campaign world, to see what we like and dislike. Storn has made most of the points already... as we each run a game that fits to our personal style. I love HERO, and have never seen the need to use another system... but I've learned to enjoy playing other systems in order to steal occasional ideas from them. Ala Hero Points... I long ago stole the Deadlands "Chip" concept and ported it to Hero in place of the old Luck rules. It has worked tremendously for our group... and in fact is MORE flexible than Hero Points in M&M. (We are currently playing M&M "by the book" in order to see what works and what doesn't, rather than start tweaking with House Rules right from the beginning, as is our tendency.) M&M has many "1st Edition" flaws, like contradictory statements, and unclear concepts... but so did early Champions editions. Because of this, as Storn pointed out, it is very easy to make an unbalanced character... either over or under powered. My example is my character, who was originally built in Hero system. A cybernetic martial arts guns and knives chick called Cyber Blade. When I translated her STR over I wasn't sure what to do. I gave her 1 level of Super Strength in M&M, thinking that was close to a 30 STR in Hero. Now, in Hero 30 STR with Martial Arts can be very effective... but in M&M, I've found myself bouncing off of a couple of villains, and only by spending Hero Points to reroll, hoping for a critical, could I hope to hurt the villain. OTOH, as Storn pointed out, Cyber Blade was taking out well trained agents (not thugs) with one shot. That seemed out of character as well. In the end, my only concern with M&M is that the level system, as simple as it is, doesn't have a concrete balance of threat level. As pointed out before, a PL 11 character can easily be completely immune to a PL 10 character... rather than "just a little better" which the level difference implies. I've also not found M&M to be any faster in combat, because we still spend a lot of time looking up "What does that power do?" in the book... where I have had the basics of Hero memorized for years, and only now have to check a few new 5th Edition rulings to see if I like them, or want to ignore them. That changes the "speed of combat" issue quite a bit, but then I've rarely run long combats, and as a group, the players and I really try to avoid "war gaming" and strive to keep combat fast paced and dramatic. Good players make any system "the best."

I haven't checked out Kazei-5, but it sounds like I should. Just a caution, if you are thinking about digging up the original Cyber Hero. While it has some great ideas... and I used it to death a decade ago... it is horribly flawed in it's use of the Hero System to build cybernetics, guns, etc. It is kind of the poster child, IMO, of how the flexibility of Hero can go horibbly, horibbly, wrong. I'm a KISS kind of guy (Keep It Simple Stupid) and Cyber Hero complicates things to a degree I found unneccesary. Again... you can get some great ideas from the book... but I'd caution against using it as the "bible" for Hero System cybernetics, etc. I'd really stay away from their deck building and net running concepts, and find something more simple and straight forward. (Example, what we did, was use a modified multi-form to exemplify your persona on the web. The points you spent on Multi-form were basically your deck, and then you built a skill/power character that existed only on the web, and functioned in that world, ala Snow Crash. Simple and intuitive, and allows the GM to create an entire fictional universe inside the "net", which can be a campaign all to itself.) Good luck with your game, however you end up running it.

All the same for me... ... as well as some others. Working with Storn, we tried to create a "fantasy martial arts" campaign... to incorporate the feeling of "wire fu" type of movies we'd only just discovered back in '92 and the like. Decades of Champions... standard superheroes that grew into what I'd call "science fiction supers" where issues like law and sciene and society and politics begin to be radically affected by the existence of supers. Lots of FH... which I like... but I can understand why others don't. Hero System can make magic feel like super powers way too easily, and you have to do a LOT of tweaking to make it feel "magical" again. Lots of Detective/terrorist/cops/ex-military DI type stuff (as per my original thread). Low level "agents in a super world" sub campaigns... as well as "black ops supers" in my main superhero world. Star Hero, and even more so, Cyber Hero... which takes some tweaking, but I love Hero System for these games. One thing I've not seen mentioned is Shadowrun. I never liked the FASA system... but darn it if Hero didn't do that "cyber magic" genre better than anything. In that kind of world, where magic is more of an occult science, with lots of controls, Hero worked really well... and you could balance mages and cyber samurai and elven rangers with MP-5s and orcish tank drivers AMAZINGLY well in Hero. Cyberpunk as a genre has slowly been dying since the end of the '80s. The hey-day '90s made all the computer geeks rich and important, so they lost the "isolated against the world of corporations" feel... as they BECAME the corporationas. Maybe now... with a good, facist Republican administration and Congress... we can get back to the good ol' days of oppression and ostracism like the Reagan/Thatcher era I grew up in. hoo boy... cyberpunk all over again.

Re: Re: Don't panic... Ah... well, I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan... so it would be a long drive for just one comic. Sorry.