Darren Watts

Re: Don't be a hater! He's claiming ownership of seven words (Weak, Challenged, Average, Skilled, Competent, Legendary, Superhuman?) *That* seems like reaching... Nevertheless, I'll be happy to examine his proof. dw

Re: Don't be a hater! Oh, and on our chart "Legendary" goes from 21-30. Unless your claim is specifically on using the word "Legendary" as a level between "Competent" and "Superhuman." dw

Re: Don't be a hater! He has three examples. One seems to be somewhat similar (in that it involves a popular NPC becoming pregnant and the apparent father knowing nothing about it, though his is much more elaborate and involves time travel), one that doesn't actually exist in any book we can find, and the third is him taking credit for a idea that can demonstrably be shown to have been used for many years before he claims to have done it (frex, Western Hero, published in 1991, which I'm holding in my hand.) (And, he also accuses us of using his word-for-word in one place and changing it around in another.) This is a pattern? More importantly, this is the basis for making the most serious accusation you can make against a professional writer? Please. dw

Re: Don't be a hater! 1. I think everyone will agree that mysterious pregnancies are far from an unusual plot device in superhero stories. 2. You'll have to help me here- I don't see that plot seed in either Champions or CU. Not that it also doesn't seem like a pretty typical plot device for a robot-creating bad guy. And I wrote Giant Mechanon-Head myself. Sure, it's a nod to Brainiac, though I'm not aware his head was ever planet-sized. And comics creators I refer to always get thanked in the credits. 3. Umm, no. Various forms of that chart have existed since well before 1998. Several of the 4th Ed books had versions, usually written out instead of in chart form. And, as you say, this one didn't even have the same numbers for ranges as yours supposedly did. Steve wrote this one himself. At his desk, I imagine. Are you seriously suggesting we're incapable of coming up with an idea this simple and commonplace on our own? Anyway, I'm happy to give you the time you need to come up with actual documentation of plagiarism. Screen shots will do nicely, or if you have printed copies you can fax me. I'm afraid I can't simply accept your word as proof when you're throwing around accusations as serious as these. Otherwise, I look forward to your public and profuse apology. dw

Re: Don't be a hater! This is an absolutely preposterous and tremendously insulting charge with no basis in fact. Please back it up with some proof or apologize to the entire collection of staffers and freelancers whose reputations you've tried to tarnish. dw

Re: Tales Of The Gold Monkey FWIW, Diane used to watch it and enjoyed it, though mostly because she thought Collins was cute. Never saw it myself. dw

Re: Villainy Amok While nobody would be happier to have a Villainy Amok II then me, I do have to point out that we'll need to sell a lot more of #1 to justify a #2. So be sure to tell your friends how much you liked it! dw

Re: CU question for the developers Well, obviously I'm pretty fond of the ones who started out as PCs of mine before "joining" the CU- Dr. Silverback, Black Mask X, Queen Mara and Amphibian. For stuff I didn't write, Luther Black is my favorite bad guy of the new stuff, and probably Fiacho of the older. I'm also a big fan of PSI, but I did most of the 5th Ed revamp of those so they're kind of half-mine now. dw

Re: Golden Age Guardians of Liberty! Well, these are some of the PCs in the official Hero Golden Age playtest, so Pheemy (who is a tester) can't give out too many details. Since it's still pretty early in the playtest, we haven't even made it to the war years- we've been concentrating on character design issues first and then dealing with a few pre-war/late-pulp-era villains for flavor (mad scientists and leggy platinum-blonde jewel thieves so far have been popular, though we also had an abortive Lemurian invasion of California just to get the team together.) dw

Hey all! In case you missed it, Villainy Amok is both in our store and hopefully your FLGS by now. If you haven't taken a look at this book, I really recommend you check it out. Scott's done some excellent work and the book in my opinion is a unique resource for players and especially GMs in the supers genre. Please take a moment and have a look- I don't think you'll be disappointed. Thanks! dw

Re: Caveman Cortez Caveman Cortez is actually Jason's PC in our currently-running Golden Age campaign/playtest. Just so nobody thinks we stole the name/concept if he does make it into the book somewhere... dw

Re: Reality Storm: When Worlds Collide, Part II Nothing would make me happier than an RS sequel, but I think I can safely say that the sales on the first one have pretty much squelched the idea of doing any more. dw

Re: A Quick Question for Steve or Darren They are in fact flintlocks, as it says under "Appearance"; the matchlock reference in the character sheet is in error. dw

Re: Champions Universe Help Well, lessee. Diadem is the mentalist of the Sentinels, but she won't get a writeup until CU2 comes along. She's the daughter of the 70s hero Mountain and a graduate of Ravenswood, with a pretty standard suite of mentalist powers (no Mind Control, though.) There's also the various members of UNTIL's Project: Mind Game, particularly Fujibayashi Tora. dw

Re: My two cents Okay, let's nip this little fracas in the bud. Neither owner posts on the board or works for Hero in any manner. They simply prefer their privacy and don't want to be solicited by other people in the industry seeking investments. dw

Re: My two cents

Re: Alrighty, who here speaks (or can at least fake) Arabic? While I'm at it, Korean and Malay speakers would be handy too. dw

I need some translations for Champs Worldwide and my Google-fu has failed me. dw

Re: Tentative 2006 Schedule The "Plot Seeds" book listed above is actually called "Villainy Amok," by your friend and mine Scott Bennie. dw

Re: Hudson City Sightings Well, they're also at retailers in SF is what I meant. Since they shipped from Berkeley, that's not a surprise. Let us know when they show up in your neck of the woods... dw

Re: Hudson City Sightings Well, they're here in SF... dw

Greetings, Herophiles! We wanted to talk to all of you about a change in our sales strategy that we're introducing, effective today. First, a little background. Those of you who pay attention to the gaming industry probably heard the news in early January about how Guardians Of Order was scaling back operations drastically. Up until then, GOO was a small company — about Hero's size, in fact. Now it's a company of one, struggling to survive in the gaming industry. All the people at GOO are our friends, and we wish them the best going forward. But more to the point, we don't want something similar to happen to us. While we haven't suffered from the American/Canadian exchange rate problems that have plagued GOO (which is located near Toronto), the steady downturn in RPG sales over the past 18 months or so has really begun to put the squeeze on us. It doesn't seem to have much to do with us in particular — nearly every company in the industry's feeling the pinch. Nor does it have anything to do with the specific books we've chosen to publish during that time; from, say, 2002 and early 2003, our sales are down proportionately across the board, regardless of product line or subject matter. We could discuss a lot of theories about the situation, but regardless of what explanation you prefer, RPG sales are far below what they were even a couple of years ago. As we told you when DOJ bought the Hero Games assets three years ago, we're in this for the long haul — and that remains true. We want Hero Games to be an ongoing concern, able to publish high-quality RPG products month after month, year after year, without any difficulties. While we're not in trouble yet, from our position in the cockpit, Steve and I can see the ground getting a lot closer than we're comfortable with. If things keep going the way they are, the blunt truth is that Hero Games won't remain an ongoing concern — it will, sooner or later, grind to a halt. The way things stand right now, sales of our books simply aren't high enough to sustain the company in the long term. To keep the unthinkable from happening, we've come up with a lot of ideas and strategies to try to improve our efficiency and, most importantly, increase revenue. A lot of them are behind-the-scenes sorts of things that won't necessarily be apparent to you, the fan and customer. But there are two of them that focus specifically on you, and that's what this (now rather long-winded) announcement's all about. There are two things we'd like you to consider doing to help Hero Games keep going along the road it's been traveling for the past three years: 1. If you can, please buy more books. We understand that many of you can only buy a certain number of books, and we definitely appreciate that you spend some of your hard-earned dollars with us. But if you're considering buying some of our books that you don't already have yet, now would be a very good time. 2. More importantly, please consider buying your books directly from us, through the Online Store (or, if appropriate, at a convention where we've got a booth.) This is one of the real linchpins of our new strategy, for the simple reason that we make a lot more money per book that we sell directly than we do on books sold through distributors and retail stores. As many of you know, in the past, we've encouraged our customers to buy from local retailers instead of buying from us, offering the Online Store as a sort of last resort for people who didn't have a local retailer they wanted to shop with. We still believe that quality, professionally-run retail gaming stores are an important part of the RPG industry, and we still intend to sell our books through them. But the simple truth of the matter is that sales of our books through traditional methods isn't going to support Hero Games in the long term (not unless there's a rebound in the size of the RPG market, as some people believe there will be). Therefore we're reversing our policy and saying: if you can, please buy books from our Online Store (or our convention booth) instead of any other source. The way the distributor-retailer sales system works, we only get a percentage of the cover price for each book. When sales are relatively strong, as they were in 2002 and early 2003, that's enough to sustain a company of Hero's size. But when they take a dip — and over the past 18 months they've certainly taken a dip — supporting Hero Games starts to become problematic. Sales through the Online Store don't suffer that problem. We get 100% of the cover price of a book. Keeping the company going on that amount of money is much easier. For example, if even half of you who now buy our books from retailers were to switch to buying from our Online Store, it would increase the amount of revenue we earn per book by 75%! To encourage Online Store sales, we're taking several steps: 1. Effective immediately, we're going to start putting all of our books in the Online Store as soon as they become available to retailers. We are not going to make them available before retailers get them — that wouldn't be fair — but we're not going to delay for a month or more the way we have in the past. 2. We will no longer charge shipping and handling on Online Store sales of more than $20 US (which is to say, virtually all of our sales, since any book we sell costs more than that). If we're going to ask you to buy from us instead of them, it's only fair that you not have to pay more to do so. So, no matter whether you buy one book or ten, they'll come right to your door for the same price you'd pay at a store. 3. We are going to offer for sale more Online Store-only items, primarily PDFs of existing books and related products. We're getting that started today with the release of The Ultimate Martial Artist on PDF, and we'll roll out others in rough order of how well they've sold as we have time — we don't want to bring the production schedule to a halt just to produce PDFs, particularly when getting one ready only takes a little time and can easily be fitted in between other projects. 4. We're going to devise more bundles and other "buy a group of related items together for a discount" packages. 5. As part of our new PDF push, we're revising our policy on multiple downloads of our electronic products: you'll now be able to make multiple downloads if you like. That way if you lose a PDF for some reason, you can get a replacement without any difficulty. Similarly, if we get reports of errors or problems in a PDF, or want to correct newly-found typos, we can make the changes, and you can download the new version if you'd like to So that's pretty much where things stand at this point. We hope you'll be able to help out and shift at least some of your purchases to the Online Store so we can keep revenues high enough to see us through the tough times to what we hope will be much better times in the future. As always, thanks for your enthusiasm and your support. dw (Quick edit from Steve: if you have a comment or question, please post in the "Company Questions" thread of the same name -- it's easier for us all to keep track of one thread than several. )

Re: What gives? (Gadgets and Gear) Well, you can always buy everything we have directly from us at Ye Olde Hero Store elsewhere on this very site... dw

Re: Champs Worldwide: Whaddya want? 1) I promise that ethnic stereotyping will be kept to as much of a minimum as I can manage. Characters will not necessarily be tied to their country's mythologies. 2) We will be statting out a great many of the heroes and villains already mentioned in Champs Uni. 3) No luchadores (but keep your eyes peeled for more info on this important topic. ) 4) The range of power levels will be similar to that of CKC- while the most common point level will be 350, there will be plenty more powerful than that and 1 or 2 less so. 5) There will probably be a USPD-style "UNTIL document" format tying the whole thing together, but no guarantees on that til I start actually trying to write the thing. 6) There's a limited amount of space to devote to in-depth studies of national character and superhero relations, but we'll try to paint some broad strokes for ya. And no room for non-adventuring metas- that's a whole book unto itself someday. This is primarily a character book, not an agency book or gazetteer. 7) Atlanteans (and Wanambi Man, so there, nyahh) turn up in Hidden Lands. More Aussies will in fact show up here. dw

Hey all! I'm about to start working on Champions Worldwide, the next supers sourcebook, so it's time to chime in with your thoughts. Here's the basic specs: between 75-100 characters total, from around the world but not including the UK and Canada (since both will eventually get their own sourcebooks.) It'll lean somewhat more heavily on the bad guys, but there will be a solid mix of heroes in there too. Organizations, government teams, and other "Superhuman World" stuff will also be covered, though we're not going to go into numbing detail or try to define the entire Tiger Squad roster. Good guys get full write-ups in the front, but the bad guys only get publically-known info there; full sheets and nasty secrets go in the GM's Vault. So let's hear it! dw