RDU Neil

Wolverine/Punisher/bad-ass is just the logical extreme of the whole super-hero concept. "I am stronger, better, than everyone else, and I enact violence to make things right, and I'm the judge of what is right, because I'm the hero." Super-heroes are a classic tautology, "I do the right thing because I'm the Hero. I'm the Hero, so what I do is right."
 
And if you love the whole Superman/Cap ethos of "I will not abuse my power!" then getting all down on the "sparkly vampires" is hypocritical, because the whole point to the Cullin clan in Twilight was exactly that... vampires with great power making the decision to live a moral life, do good, not abuse their power, etc. Sure the books were terribly written, but so are most comic books. I'd think folks here would be praising them for their appropriate morals and upstanding ethos.
 

Sure... he has all the money in the world... and trying to bribe the agents works sometimes... and as noted above, sometimes it doesn't. And when the news gets ahold of the fact that his companies are employing known criminals and murderers (the villains let them know) and some take his money and stab him in the back, etc.
 
Also... infinite wealth does not mean, buy anything he wants without repercussions. Also... this is role playing. Doing it once in a while is dramatic. Min-maxing is not, so it doesn't happen. If players don't know how to control themselves for the betterment of the drama, you shouldn't be playing with them.
 
Edit: Or, if he wants to abuse wealth as a power, hit him with a custom power Drain: Infinite Wealth, and suddenly he's broke!

Sure... he has all the money in the world... and trying to bribe the agents works sometimes... and as noted above, sometimes it doesn't. And when the news gets ahold of the fact that his companies are employing known criminals and murderers (the villains let them know) and some take his money and stab him in the back, etc.
 
Also... infinite wealth does not mean, buy anything he wants without repercussions. Also... this is role playing. Doing it once in a while is dramatic. Min-maxing is not, so it doesn't happen. If players don't know how to control themselves for the betterment of the drama, you shouldn't be playing with them.
 
Edit: Or, if he wants to abuse wealth as a power, hit him with a custom power Drain: Infinite Wealth, and suddenly he's broke!

My sister lives in New Zealand and has lived in Australia. Our family had a poster in our pool table room given by Kiwi's to us... it said the following...
 
The Rules of Cricket
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in.
Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out.
When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out.
Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in.
There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game

But would you really say, "Huh... none of you bought wealth, so you don't have money for tickets... so I guess we don't play this game because it is happening in Italy."
 
Really?  Getting to Italy is just the scene setting up front at the start of the evening's play session... then you go from there.
 
Are you really making your players role play out how they scrounge together enough money for airfare?

If the story is about the investigation, then the characters are just in Italy... set the scene with cool images of Rome or wherever and go! If the adventure is something far away and it would be out of the dramatic storyline to have the PCs involved... then it isn't the adventure. You do a different story.
 
I will admit I really don't get where you are coming from on this.

White Ops Avengers:
 
Captain Hydra
US Agent
Master-Man
Hate-Monger
Donald Pierce
 
 
 
What?

Be honest: You're just trying to lure him there so your wildlife can eat him.

JUST FUNDED! WOOT!

In my case, it was the internal consistency that was the problem.  
 
Champions, 3rd edition, was a different game from Danger International and from Fantasy Hero, 1st edition.  To me, it was fine that they had different sets of rules.  For the most part, perfectly compatible; a lot of the optional dials-and-switches type rules in 4th through 6th editions are almost word-for-word identical to their first-gen counterparts.  
 
To me, the parts that are different serve a purpose in their difference.  Champions, the 3rd edition core rulebook, didn't need or have an extensive skill list, because finely detailed extensive skills weren't the point; the point was the things that your character can do as a superhero.  It told the GM how to do skills, including importing them from Danger International if you wanted, but an optional way to handle them if you didn't (and the Champions II supplement added most of those in anyway).  Champions wasn't just "a superhero RPG powered by the HERO System," it was a dedicated superhero game that happened to use a house system.  Fantasy Hero used a lot of the same basic mechanisms, but added its own tweaks that worked for fantasy games.  Likewise for Justice Inc. and Danger International.  If you look at, say, Runequest/Call of Cthulhu/Superworld, you can see something similar.  
 
In first-gen era, the games themselves were designed using the core "Hero System" and their own sets of assumptions; each game did its own thing and did it well.  In 4th edition, suddenly we had the fully internally consistent "HERO System" that tried to do everything, and did most of it, pretty well, but you did it all starting with one set of assumptions.  The most unsatisfying games I had were when I tried to run first-gen style non-supers campaigns with people who started with 4th edition; even when I'd write up in campaign documents what I was trying to run, even when I'd use the campaign design sheets, the underlying assumptions tripped us up.  I was trying to run one style of game, they were trying to play a different one.  I was trying to run low powered, primarily skill-based games, and they were trying to figure out what powers their thief should have and how many points they needed for their Multipower.  
 
The truism around the webs is that Hero is best for superheroic games, and GURPS is best for gritty games.  I honestly never found that to be the case, until 4th edition came out.  The group I used to play with in the late eighties, firmly in first-gen era, was an organized group that had five sessions in a weekend; Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening.  I was part of that group for about three years, and the system of choice was almost exclusively "Hero System", meaning the first-gen games.  We played ridiculous numbers of different campaigns; some of which went on for two years, some of which went on for two sessions, but 95% of which were one or more of Champions, Fantasy Hero, Danger International, Robot Warriors, Justice Inc.  Each of the games -- even different campaigns using the same game! -- had its own flavor, and own assumptions.  For instance, Fantasy Hero 1st edition didn't include the Martial Arts rules by default.  The assumption was that you were playing swords and sorcery types, with weapon skills represented by specific fantasy-flavored optional maneuvers.  In a Fantasy Hero conversion of FGU's Bushido RPG, I played a ninja (it was the 80's, don't judge) with Karate from DI, so I asked the GM, who chuckled at my kewl-ninja-wanna-be-ness but said yes, I can do that.  If he'd said no I wouldn't have had Karate.  And it was no big deal either way.  You started with the particular set of assumptions in the game you were playing, and asked the GM to go beyond them; it's easier to give than it is to take away. 

Nowadays?  It's one system, one set of assumptions.  The assumption is that everything in the book is fair game; for instance, if want to run a low powered Fantasy Hero game reminiscent of the first-gen days, I can write up a campaign rules document that clearly says "No Martial Arts," and no to a dozen other things, but I guarantee every character will have Martial Arts and at least half of the other things on my "no" list.  And I'll get all kinds of pushback about how this is just his combat style, it's not really a Martial Arts form, and I'll just toss the character sheets back and never run the game. 
 

Well, that's that.
 
I honestly doubt our nation will survive the next few years. Not in any form that's worth calling America, anyway.

Yeah... was reading this here... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/26/democrats-primaries-upset-joe-crowley-alexandria-osacio-cortez?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=279391&subid=24646434&CMP=GT_US_collection
 
And I don't see why this is a bad thing. It is exactly what the Democrats need. Assuming the staid leadership realizes it. She may not be a Dem party member, but as Crowley did, the Dems should back her fully.
 
As Old Man said, the Dems have become Republicans (while the Republicans have become extremists in many cases) and that is the problem. The whole country has swung so far to the right, that Hillary is considered a liberal. (She was a Goldwater Girl for christsakes!) I mean, I voted for her as the best candidate for the job at the time, but I really don't like the mainstream Democratic ties to Wall Street and the like. I'm much more of a Democratic Socialist in leaning, but not a Bernie-Bro ideologue. The fact that Bernie is considered "radical" is just another indication of how far the Center has swung right.

'Effing Canadian optimism!
 
 
 
 
?

Yeah... was reading this here... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/26/democrats-primaries-upset-joe-crowley-alexandria-osacio-cortez?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=279391&subid=24646434&CMP=GT_US_collection
 
And I don't see why this is a bad thing. It is exactly what the Democrats need. Assuming the staid leadership realizes it. She may not be a Dem party member, but as Crowley did, the Dems should back her fully.
 
As Old Man said, the Dems have become Republicans (while the Republicans have become extremists in many cases) and that is the problem. The whole country has swung so far to the right, that Hillary is considered a liberal. (She was a Goldwater Girl for christsakes!) I mean, I voted for her as the best candidate for the job at the time, but I really don't like the mainstream Democratic ties to Wall Street and the like. I'm much more of a Democratic Socialist in leaning, but not a Bernie-Bro ideologue. The fact that Bernie is considered "radical" is just another indication of how far the Center has swung right.

Chris,
I would "like" your post because I appreciate all the detail, but I'm out of "likes" for some reason. 
 
So many things you described, like all the different campaigns (OMG we played the hell out of Danger International!) and such from the '80s... but I never had the issues that you described when we translated to 4th. It could come down to differences in expectations. I never tried to spell out huge campaign limits and write down significant house rules, and it wasn't until 4th Edition that we began playing Fantasy Hero in depth. I think that, while there were times where certain applications of powers broke the feel of the game (the use of force field by a mage and a character with wings, both of which were really over-powered), but I never ended up with player push back or frustration on that, as the "table" generally agreed pretty quickly that "whoa... that just isn't right" and we changed things.
 
With supers, we felt the 4th Ed expanded skill list was cool, but not necessary. It wasn't until 5th that I felt the expectation had changed from "General broad skills, and you can get specific if you want" to "Must deconstruct all skills into fifty different knowledge skill specifics for every possible situation"

The whole separation of Heroic level vs. Superheroic really worked for us. Over time, there were always questions of "Is this balanced?" but I never felt that it was up to a rule set to proscribe the kind of game to be played, but that Hero let us find our own.
 
Perhaps it was that I always wanted my Champs campaign to actually do away with most comic book tropes (or at least question them) and move more into the "people with powers in a chaotic, dangerous world" type of campaign. On the surface, you had costumes and code names, but wrestling with issues of the law and vigilantism, killing or not, how to use your power to change society, not just beat up bad guys... what were the ramifications for normal in a world of supers, etc.  Those things were essential to the game, and I don't think could have been done with Champions as it was originally envisioned, that enforced tropes like secret id's, DNPCs, etc.
 
Ultimately, I always found that rules and systems only went so far, and nothing in the book was ever considered absolute. What happened at the table determined what was right... work it out in play... then capture any change that meant to the rule set. This type of thing lead to dumping END as too much boring math in game, dumping the Speed Chart because it made SPD not just powerful, and the chart resolution clunky, but enforced some players as having more face time in the game than others.

Eventually, it is all about the players. I found a good test. Give a prospective player the BBB, have them read through it a bit, and then, "Tell me what you think?" If they say something like, "So it seems like I can play any cool character... like this guy who fights occult crime like the Shadow, but with magical trinkets instead of guns" and I'd feel they have a good chance in the group. If, on the other hand, they say, "So it seems that the character I should play has desolidification and ego attack, affects real world, because then I can attack everyone, but never be touched, right?"   Then I take the book back and say, "Effort appreciated, the exit is over there."
 
It was a good test about whether people wanted to role play, or game the system.

the Kickstarter just broke 19k!

As for this... uhm... who DIDN'T playa ninja in the '80s?
 
I mean... who doesn't play ninja's now? Ninja's are freakin' awesome.

Seriously, one of the characters in my very deadly serious, modern campaign of guns and martial arts and X-files weirdness plays a ninja. A very traditional ninja, with very traditional ninja skills, and a very traditional silenced 9mm pistol.
 
 

Chris,
I would "like" your post because I appreciate all the detail, but I'm out of "likes" for some reason. 
 
So many things you described, like all the different campaigns (OMG we played the hell out of Danger International!) and such from the '80s... but I never had the issues that you described when we translated to 4th. It could come down to differences in expectations. I never tried to spell out huge campaign limits and write down significant house rules, and it wasn't until 4th Edition that we began playing Fantasy Hero in depth. I think that, while there were times where certain applications of powers broke the feel of the game (the use of force field by a mage and a character with wings, both of which were really over-powered), but I never ended up with player push back or frustration on that, as the "table" generally agreed pretty quickly that "whoa... that just isn't right" and we changed things.
 
With supers, we felt the 4th Ed expanded skill list was cool, but not necessary. It wasn't until 5th that I felt the expectation had changed from "General broad skills, and you can get specific if you want" to "Must deconstruct all skills into fifty different knowledge skill specifics for every possible situation"

The whole separation of Heroic level vs. Superheroic really worked for us. Over time, there were always questions of "Is this balanced?" but I never felt that it was up to a rule set to proscribe the kind of game to be played, but that Hero let us find our own.
 
Perhaps it was that I always wanted my Champs campaign to actually do away with most comic book tropes (or at least question them) and move more into the "people with powers in a chaotic, dangerous world" type of campaign. On the surface, you had costumes and code names, but wrestling with issues of the law and vigilantism, killing or not, how to use your power to change society, not just beat up bad guys... what were the ramifications for normal in a world of supers, etc.  Those things were essential to the game, and I don't think could have been done with Champions as it was originally envisioned, that enforced tropes like secret id's, DNPCs, etc.
 
Ultimately, I always found that rules and systems only went so far, and nothing in the book was ever considered absolute. What happened at the table determined what was right... work it out in play... then capture any change that meant to the rule set. This type of thing lead to dumping END as too much boring math in game, dumping the Speed Chart because it made SPD not just powerful, and the chart resolution clunky, but enforced some players as having more face time in the game than others.

Eventually, it is all about the players. I found a good test. Give a prospective player the BBB, have them read through it a bit, and then, "Tell me what you think?" If they say something like, "So it seems like I can play any cool character... like this guy who fights occult crime like the Shadow, but with magical trinkets instead of guns" and I'd feel they have a good chance in the group. If, on the other hand, they say, "So it seems that the character I should play has desolidification and ego attack, affects real world, because then I can attack everyone, but never be touched, right?"   Then I take the book back and say, "Effort appreciated, the exit is over there."
 
It was a good test about whether people wanted to role play, or game the system.

Interesting... as I loved 4th Edition for its internal consistency... allowing for much less problems at the table and in character construction... though I'd loved 1-3 leading up to it. It just seemed the logical, over-arching concepts finally clicked into place with 4th. I hated where it went in 5th... never ever used the Fuzion stuff... and really only like 6th for the removal of figured characteristics.
 
My perfect Hero system (barring some massively new narrative stuff I've never seen before from Ron in the new stuff) is 4th Ed with non-figured characteristics.

Would be interested in your exact problems with 4th that you didn't have earlier?

My "why's were posted on the front, in response to the News article this week about backing. Essentially, I'm interested in seeing how modern game design (emphasis on play and narrative) can be applied to Champions through someone like Ron, who was/is at the forefront of such thought and design. I've made a lot of changes to my use of Hero over the years, mainly downplaying anything overtly mechanical and gamist, and layering in narrative mechanics like bennies/story chits/director stance things on top of what I like about the system.
 
I like Hero for the 3d6 roll and task resolution functionality. I like the skills, skill levels, combat maneuvers, martial arts... because they make for very detailed and nuanced fight scenes that are dramatic/cinematic and descriptive. I like "reason from effect" to a point. I like the Characteristics, especially now that they are not "figured"
 
I dislike the point buy system as it has evolved. It has become a programming language appealing to folks who "run the math" and try to "program the perfect character" and has no emphasis on actual play. It has developed an over-engineered philosophy of deconstructing everything into so many subcategories for skills abilities that are just the player demonstrating their research or personal knowledge (Let me list the 49 things a lawyer actually knows... vs. Lawyer 13-) that it has become pedantic. Hero ultimately became much better at 'Heroic level' games than Supers, where it started, because deconstructing and systematizing superheroes just serves to point out all the silly, stupid inconsistencies in most superhero concepts and stories.
 
I'm hoping for some really cutting edge concepts in non-traditional Hero mechanics... example: where Endurance is a matter of constant, incremental adding and subtracting now, I'm hoping for mechanics actually about the in play dramatic effects of "going all out" and exhausting your character, etc.

This is text, there is no tone. Read everything I write neutrally.

Yeah, honestly, man, I'm pretty sure I'm not built on 400 points.

I don't fall into that category. I never really liked the original at all... too cheesy. I loved the cast of the new one. It had plenty of heart and actual pathos and grim violence, and the heroism we saw came from a real place, not generic TV hack writing. 
 
It was flawed in many ways, but infinitely better than the original.
 

Well, he does get pretty tiny. 
 
 
Pathetic loser man?  It's Ant Man and the Wasp, not Florida Man and the Wasp...

I don't find it 'bad' but I was surprised, and more than a little impressed.
 
I do agree the Democrats have become , in their way, almost as (Or perhaps just as much) corporate owned as the Republicans. So yes, I like what I hear about this woman spurning corporate donations. 
 
The Democrats have lost a lot of the trust they had from blue collar workers. They need to get it back if they hope to swing things around.
 
Of course, my own biases against monopolies and big biz maybe blinding me to some real politik

Just over $17200 with just over two days to go.  Kicktraq has the upper side of the trend line over the goal, so it's definitely possible!  
 
Seeing if this works..