RDU Neil

That's part of ranged attacks now - Spreading to enhance OCV. 

I guess I live in a bubble. 
I usually don't have issue with players having problems with the actual play rules.  In game to hit, OCV, DCV, etc and such.  Heroes play rules are pretty simple.  Far more simple than Pathfinder or Shadowrun.
 
The major problem I see it players bail during chargen.  The system can build anything.  But if the new player has had zero exposure to the game in play, it is really difficult for them to apply the build rules in constructing a concept.
 
Run them through a simple session with pregens so they can experience the game in actual play. THEN they will be ready to be guided through a build.
 
Just an opinion.

And by the way, I've run out of "likes" for the day, the last two days. So if I don't react to your post, "thanks" just the same! I'll give you all a blanket "like" and try to keep up as much as I can. Thanks so much for the input!

Totally get where you are going with this... I've just had way more success with this as Step 2, rather than Step 1. Get a game or two under their belts with a pre-gen, hand-over character. Some players immediately start to grok it and  want to build their own... others may never want to... they stick to "I want a character who basically does X & Y... and feel this way and that... and..." and then I build it.

When it comes to OCV/DCV... I still think it is possible to start out. "You want to roll low for hitting... high for damage." Done. They roll, you tell them if they hit or succeeded.
 
Funny how "Stealth is 14 or less" never seems to cause problems, but rolling low to hit is a nightmare.
 
Then, if they want to know "How does it work?" then you can say something like. "Because we use 3d6, 11 is the median score you are likely to roll... So 11 is base and add your OCV you have your Attack number. Write that down. Now, going forward simply subtract what you roll and that tells you the Defense number you hit. So a low roll... subtracting less... leaves you with a higher remainder."   But do NOT say all this unless they ask, and only do it outside the game.
 
I've played with plenty of people who are happy with "I rolled X... did I hit?" and are ok with nothing more than that for years of gaming. They are ok with maneuvers, too... because they get the basics... "This maneuver means more damage, or puts the guy on his back, but there are penalties to hit... this other maneuver gives me bonuses to hit, but lower damage... etc."  That intuitive stuff comes quickly, as long as it isn't buried in formulas and numbers... at least in my experience.

Also, it has been said several times here (myself, Killer Shrike, Deglar) that I don't want it to get lost... I really REALLY think the best way for newbies is to "Just describe what you want to do... and then I'll talk about the rule that best captures that maneuver. You'll catch on to what the rules are doing as we use them."  And do the same yourself as GM. "The bandit sees you draw you sword and is attempting to slam his shield down on your sword arm. Basically he is trying to knock the sword out of your hand rather than really do damage, so this is a Disarm maneuver, which some characters have. If he hits, instead of doing damage he gets a bonus to his STR vs. STR roll to knock your sword away."

That should lead to things like, "I don't have Disarm... can I do that?" and "Yes, you can try, but since you are untrained, it will be harder to do. It defaults to a Grab roll then STR vs. STR without bonuses." (the idea that most answers to "Can I try that maneuver?" in HERO is "Yes... you just might not be very good at it based on your skills, etc." 

And hopefully this leads to, "Can my character learn Disarm?" and now we off and running. "Absolutely... that kind of thing is exactly what EXP is for. Your characters learn new skills and maneuvers and knowledge, especially in cases like this where there is good reason for him to train/learn this maneuver."

Story and description first... make it cool... then bring in the rules. Personally, I often try to emphasize that I prefer "the rules to be invisible." I much prefer a dramatic, descriptive statement than looking in the rule book. "As you play, you'll learn a lot of the basics and start to realize when certain maneuvers are better than others, but the rules should never over-rule what is dramatically appropriate."
 
That might not be your play style, but I certainly emphasize it in mine and have found new players tend to respond to that well.

When it comes to OCV/DCV... I still think it is possible to start out. "You want to roll low for hitting... high for damage." Done. They roll, you tell them if they hit or succeeded.
 
Funny how "Stealth is 14 or less" never seems to cause problems, but rolling low to hit is a nightmare.
 
Then, if they want to know "How does it work?" then you can say something like. "Because we use 3d6, 11 is the median score you are likely to roll... So 11 is base and add your OCV you have your Attack number. Write that down. Now, going forward simply subtract what you roll and that tells you the Defense number you hit. So a low roll... subtracting less... leaves you with a higher remainder."   But do NOT say all this unless they ask, and only do it outside the game.
 
I've played with plenty of people who are happy with "I rolled X... did I hit?" and are ok with nothing more than that for years of gaming. They are ok with maneuvers, too... because they get the basics... "This maneuver means more damage, or puts the guy on his back, but there are penalties to hit... this other maneuver gives me bonuses to hit, but lower damage... etc."  That intuitive stuff comes quickly, as long as it isn't buried in formulas and numbers... at least in my experience.

Also, it has been said several times here (myself, Killer Shrike, Deglar) that I don't want it to get lost... I really REALLY think the best way for newbies is to "Just describe what you want to do... and then I'll talk about the rule that best captures that maneuver. You'll catch on to what the rules are doing as we use them."  And do the same yourself as GM. "The bandit sees you draw you sword and is attempting to slam his shield down on your sword arm. Basically he is trying to knock the sword out of your hand rather than really do damage, so this is a Disarm maneuver, which some characters have. If he hits, instead of doing damage he gets a bonus to his STR vs. STR roll to knock your sword away."

That should lead to things like, "I don't have Disarm... can I do that?" and "Yes, you can try, but since you are untrained, it will be harder to do. It defaults to a Grab roll then STR vs. STR without bonuses." (the idea that most answers to "Can I try that maneuver?" in HERO is "Yes... you just might not be very good at it based on your skills, etc." 

And hopefully this leads to, "Can my character learn Disarm?" and now we off and running. "Absolutely... that kind of thing is exactly what EXP is for. Your characters learn new skills and maneuvers and knowledge, especially in cases like this where there is good reason for him to train/learn this maneuver."

Story and description first... make it cool... then bring in the rules. Personally, I often try to emphasize that I prefer "the rules to be invisible." I much prefer a dramatic, descriptive statement than looking in the rule book. "As you play, you'll learn a lot of the basics and start to realize when certain maneuvers are better than others, but the rules should never over-rule what is dramatically appropriate."
 
That might not be your play style, but I certainly emphasize it in mine and have found new players tend to respond to that well.

When it comes to OCV/DCV... I still think it is possible to start out. "You want to roll low for hitting... high for damage." Done. They roll, you tell them if they hit or succeeded.
 
Funny how "Stealth is 14 or less" never seems to cause problems, but rolling low to hit is a nightmare.
 
Then, if they want to know "How does it work?" then you can say something like. "Because we use 3d6, 11 is the median score you are likely to roll... So 11 is base and add your OCV you have your Attack number. Write that down. Now, going forward simply subtract what you roll and that tells you the Defense number you hit. So a low roll... subtracting less... leaves you with a higher remainder."   But do NOT say all this unless they ask, and only do it outside the game.
 
I've played with plenty of people who are happy with "I rolled X... did I hit?" and are ok with nothing more than that for years of gaming. They are ok with maneuvers, too... because they get the basics... "This maneuver means more damage, or puts the guy on his back, but there are penalties to hit... this other maneuver gives me bonuses to hit, but lower damage... etc."  That intuitive stuff comes quickly, as long as it isn't buried in formulas and numbers... at least in my experience.

Also, it has been said several times here (myself, Killer Shrike, Deglar) that I don't want it to get lost... I really REALLY think the best way for newbies is to "Just describe what you want to do... and then I'll talk about the rule that best captures that maneuver. You'll catch on to what the rules are doing as we use them."  And do the same yourself as GM. "The bandit sees you draw you sword and is attempting to slam his shield down on your sword arm. Basically he is trying to knock the sword out of your hand rather than really do damage, so this is a Disarm maneuver, which some characters have. If he hits, instead of doing damage he gets a bonus to his STR vs. STR roll to knock your sword away."

That should lead to things like, "I don't have Disarm... can I do that?" and "Yes, you can try, but since you are untrained, it will be harder to do. It defaults to a Grab roll then STR vs. STR without bonuses." (the idea that most answers to "Can I try that maneuver?" in HERO is "Yes... you just might not be very good at it based on your skills, etc." 

And hopefully this leads to, "Can my character learn Disarm?" and now we off and running. "Absolutely... that kind of thing is exactly what EXP is for. Your characters learn new skills and maneuvers and knowledge, especially in cases like this where there is good reason for him to train/learn this maneuver."

Story and description first... make it cool... then bring in the rules. Personally, I often try to emphasize that I prefer "the rules to be invisible." I much prefer a dramatic, descriptive statement than looking in the rule book. "As you play, you'll learn a lot of the basics and start to realize when certain maneuvers are better than others, but the rules should never over-rule what is dramatically appropriate."
 
That might not be your play style, but I certainly emphasize it in mine and have found new players tend to respond to that well.

When it comes to OCV/DCV... I still think it is possible to start out. "You want to roll low for hitting... high for damage." Done. They roll, you tell them if they hit or succeeded.
 
Funny how "Stealth is 14 or less" never seems to cause problems, but rolling low to hit is a nightmare.
 
Then, if they want to know "How does it work?" then you can say something like. "Because we use 3d6, 11 is the median score you are likely to roll... So 11 is base and add your OCV you have your Attack number. Write that down. Now, going forward simply subtract what you roll and that tells you the Defense number you hit. So a low roll... subtracting less... leaves you with a higher remainder."   But do NOT say all this unless they ask, and only do it outside the game.
 
I've played with plenty of people who are happy with "I rolled X... did I hit?" and are ok with nothing more than that for years of gaming. They are ok with maneuvers, too... because they get the basics... "This maneuver means more damage, or puts the guy on his back, but there are penalties to hit... this other maneuver gives me bonuses to hit, but lower damage... etc."  That intuitive stuff comes quickly, as long as it isn't buried in formulas and numbers... at least in my experience.

Also, it has been said several times here (myself, Killer Shrike, Deglar) that I don't want it to get lost... I really REALLY think the best way for newbies is to "Just describe what you want to do... and then I'll talk about the rule that best captures that maneuver. You'll catch on to what the rules are doing as we use them."  And do the same yourself as GM. "The bandit sees you draw you sword and is attempting to slam his shield down on your sword arm. Basically he is trying to knock the sword out of your hand rather than really do damage, so this is a Disarm maneuver, which some characters have. If he hits, instead of doing damage he gets a bonus to his STR vs. STR roll to knock your sword away."

That should lead to things like, "I don't have Disarm... can I do that?" and "Yes, you can try, but since you are untrained, it will be harder to do. It defaults to a Grab roll then STR vs. STR without bonuses." (the idea that most answers to "Can I try that maneuver?" in HERO is "Yes... you just might not be very good at it based on your skills, etc." 

And hopefully this leads to, "Can my character learn Disarm?" and now we off and running. "Absolutely... that kind of thing is exactly what EXP is for. Your characters learn new skills and maneuvers and knowledge, especially in cases like this where there is good reason for him to train/learn this maneuver."

Story and description first... make it cool... then bring in the rules. Personally, I often try to emphasize that I prefer "the rules to be invisible." I much prefer a dramatic, descriptive statement than looking in the rule book. "As you play, you'll learn a lot of the basics and start to realize when certain maneuvers are better than others, but the rules should never over-rule what is dramatically appropriate."
 
That might not be your play style, but I certainly emphasize it in mine and have found new players tend to respond to that well.

I have one player in my current campaign with no prior experience with the system, so I started off by having him give me a description of what he wanted his character to do with no reference to game mechanics.  Then I built a character to match what he;d described.  He wanted a character who used real world firearms which are a bit underpowered for superhero games, so I built a VPP that only changes in the workshop/arsenal, gave him a list of the weapons he could use at the start, and told him that when he wanted something special he could give me a description and I'd work out the stats.  Admittedly, I have a table full of gamers with decades of gaming experience and only one is unfamiliar with HERO, but designing a character based on the player's verbal description might be a good alternate to a pregenerated character.

I played in a Champions game last night and ran my Danger International game today, and I have one piece of advice based on experience that I think will help.
 
Don't use OCV.  Add 11 to it and call it Attack Roll or Attack Value or something similar, and have that show up on the character sheet.  Maybe a couple of adjusted values for 1/2 OCV and 0 OCV, if those ever come up in play.  
 
That seemed like the hardest concept to get across.  Start with 11!  Add 11 to your OCV!  
 
No, just add 11 to it to begin with, and put that on the sheet, in big bold letters impossible to miss.

Boy, that Kathleen Kennedy just wrecks everything that she touches!

The fact that you even noticed this indicates we are from two VERY different planets.

One thing maybe as important as the rules is whether they've played a RPG before and have some idea what they're supposed to do.
 
I had a Fantasy Hero group once who I started off as escaped slaves on a pirate ship which had been set on fire accidentally during the escape. The ship was just off the coast of an unknown land in one direction, no features visible in any other direction. The ship had no life rafts or boats on it.
 
The three players are trapped on the prow of the ship by the pirate captain and some crewmen. Only three enemies at a time could reach the players. This was an introductory combat to give them a feel for the system while trapping them in place so they wouldn't have to worry about movement, being flanked, excessive equipment, or anything complicated. Every few phases a piece of burning debris would fall from the masts and sails to hit a combatant, causing either physical or energy damage. Obviously from my descriptions and from what I explicitly said, the ship wasn't going to last long.
 
The combat went okay and the players won. Then stayed on the ship. And stayed on the ship. And stayed on the ship despite getting hit by ever-increasing amounts of burning debris. The players couldn't figure out what their characters should do about them being on a burning ship with a grassy shore being a hundred yards away and with them not being weighted down by any significant amount of possessions. Let me note that one of them, the healer/druid, was a former D&D player and all three had WoW experience. None of them thought to check the dead enemies for loot.
 
And they couldn't figure out that they needed to get off of a ship that was fully engulfed in flames until after they'd all taken unnecessary burns.
 
Once they finally swam to "shore", I described that they were actually standing in water amid salt water grasses which stretched endlessly to the north and south. But to the east about a mile, they could see that the grass ended, transitioning into some hills. So the players discussed for 30 minutes, no joke, which direction their characters should go and finally decided to go north.
 
They'd started early in the day and trudged northward all day and coming close to the end of the day, I pointed out to them that since they were wading through endless (explicitly endless) salt marshes with a very few scattered trees that there was no dry place for them to camp, except for the land which continued to be clearly seen about a mile away to the east. So they discussed it and decided to find a tree which they could climb to spend the night. And despite me telling them at intervals that they had BODY damage which wasn't going to heal anytime soon naturally and that the druid had free healing spells, nobody wanted to perform or get any healing spells.
 
Anyway, I ended up having to put them on railroad tracks until they got enough of an idea of what to do that I didn't have to tell them what to do in order to reach the meat of the adventure. I guess if I'd told them that the hills had a bright yellow exclamation mark for a quest marker that they would have moved immediately in the direction I wanted them to go. But I kept thinking that even though the world was a sandbox that they'd instinctively want to do the interesting things rather than all the obviously boring things.
 
TL;DR
If they're new players, tell them what to do then let them decide how to do it, if the only other choice is to let them drive you crazy.

Thanks, @Killer Shrike, for the encouragement. I’m used to spending so much time on the forums with people who have mastered the rules that I forget that I don’t have to be one of them. I’ve got the ball rolling with some people, and I’m in the process of narrowing down what sort of game they’d like to play. Then I’ll be off and running, for better or worse. I can’t see how we won’t have fun in the end. Thanks for reminding me to just have fun. 

Nonsense. I've always found that the best way to do most things is to do a little research to get broad strokes and then just throw yourself into it, fail, adapt, then try again. Repeat as necessary. We're talking about playing a game, not launching yourself in a rocket over a ravine. The Risk / Reward ratio is in your favor here; just go for it.
 
 
The genre you are most comfortable with generally, and that you are excited to run a game in.
 
 
Yes, definitely do pre-gens. And don't try to be clever or cute with the character builds. Make a list of the most archetypal character types for the setting you intend to run and knock out one of each kind right down the line, no fancy bull$#!%. Make sure each of them has something to offer, something to differentiate them, but are otherwise bread & butter, basic builds.
 
 
Don't teach. Just start a low-risk combat on Phase 12 and call down the DEX order. 
 
 
I highly recommend "in medias res" as an intro. Get people into it right away. 
 
 
Mastery is overrated. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. The best way to start is simply to start. Keep it simple, and go. Imagine the events of the play session to be a movie. If the movie is boring, you're doing it wrong. Just wing it. Learn as you go. Don't be afraid to get it wrong. If you run into something you don't know, either take a beat to look it up (or have someone else at the table look it up while you keep the plates spinning) or just make a ruling "for now" and keep the tempo going.
 
 
Nothing. That's already a lot of information to slap on the average person. Pick or make a character sheet template that has the info you want on it, and run with just that. 
 
 
You're getting lost in details. 
 
Have players explain what they are trying to do, interpret that into rules or rulings for them on the fly, and apply whatever rules you know off the top of your head or can quickly look up. Anything else, just wing it. Look up anything you were unsure of before the next session and if you got it wrong, admit that to the players next time and present how it should have worked and how that sort of thing will be resolved thereafter. GMing 101. 
 
 
If you intend to use 6e-based rules, then don't muddy the waters. Go forth as you intend to continue.
 
 
The main problem is your own lack of confidence. Worry less about mechanics and more about fun. Be confident in your ability to entertain your players for a handful of hours. The game you choose to do that with is just a tool, but its your own ability to frame an engaging adventure and keep things moving along that will be the difference between a good or bad experience for the group...not your grasp of rules. 
 
Just tell your players up front that you are learning the game too and wont always get it right, and promise to do your best. That's all they can reasonably ask of you.

I am so glad to see another version of San Angelo hit the street.  I have four of the books and the two short products and am really stoked to see another version being  made.
 
But to the point.
Detail is very important.  But for me one of the most important features is a usable map of the city and good area map of the areas around the city.
 
The one RPG city that I religiously use for any modern game.  And by modern I mean the 1940's to near future.  That city is Hudson City.  And the biggest reason is the big map.  The county map frankly sucks as a resource, but that city map is awesome. 
 
Why?  It has all the streets with names.  I say again it has a complete usable street map with names.  The blocks are there and major points of interest are marked like a modern physical street map.  This gives the GM solid and easily accessible locations while leaving all of the actual buildings/structures undefined and open for them to put their own spin in without having to worry about needing the players to ignore something.
 
And one of the biggest points is the map (color) is of a high enough resolution you can zoom into any part of it, grab a screen shot and print it without it losing resolution when printed out.    I have a poster sized version I put in a poster sleeve that I lay on the table and people can write on it with dry erase without damaging the map. 
 
I can really use the HC map in game by zooming in and grabbing locations for the scenario. 
 
Trying to come up with logical street names over a campaign is not as easy as one would think, and having a map that actually has them really makes a city seem real.  When players look at the big map of HC on the table they see a city map, not a map of an RPG city,
 
OK, the preaching is over
 
 
 

Ah.  I went to the first edition Fantasy Hero and found the equivalent paragraph; a lot of verbiage was taken straight from one book to another.  The paragraph in FH reads: 
 
 
Missing text bolded by me.
 
Edit to add:  The text is the same in Danger International... I'm confident that that's what it was intended to read in Justice Inc.

It was written by Aaron Allston, so there were no mistakes, only nuances you couldn’t possibly understand . . . .  

Was this a deliberate mis-spelling or have the Kree adopted a new logo?
 

Because it belongs here as well...

Because it belongs here as well...