Darren Watts

Re: Hey Darren Watts! All right, I'm here already. I think Archon and Thalya would count as "above average" Empyreans- while there are certainly several more powerful than them, considerably more are weaker. A "typical" Empyrean is built on about 400 points, though pretty much any member of the race who's actually got a name and backstory so far is built on more, sometimes a lot more. I'm just starting Champions: Hidden Lands now, though my first concentration is currently on Atlantis. I'll be knee-deep in Empyreans in about 2-3 weeks, though. dw

Re: What are these Ages exactly? I've posted these before, but here are the definitions I intend when I use the terms. Your mileage may of course vary. Platinum Age: Pre-Superman. Includes the pulps, pre-supers comics, and oddities like Dr. Occult and Slam Bradley. Golden Age: Begins with Action Comics #1, June, 1938 and the introduction of Superman. Ends in 1951 when All-Star Comics becomes a western and the Justice Society is no longer published. There's a brief interregnum, when Superman, Batman, Superboy and Wonder Woman are pretty much the only superheroes standing. Silver Age: Begins with Showcase #4, fall of 1956, and the introduction of Barry Allen as the second Flash. There are two dates for when it ends, and I like both: Kurt Busiek says it's the death of Gwen Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man #121 (1973), which is the first pointless, non-instructive death of a major character in mainstream comics. The other choice is Green Lantern #85 (1971), where Green Arrow catches Speedy shooting heroin, the first example of a formerly pristine good guy sinking to such depths. Some people subdivide the Silver Age from the Marvel Age, noting that Fantastic Four #1 changed the face of comics so much that it's a separate era, but I think that's just quibbling. Bronze Age: Picks up where the Silver Age ends, and runs til the mid-'80s and the formation of Image Studios in 1991. Everything after that is the current age, whatever you choose to call it. (I prefer to wait till it's over before naming it.) dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Of course. We're looking for thoughtful and honest reviews, not puff pieces. Right now we're filled back up on our quota of comped reviewers, so we're going to see how these guys do before taking on any more. Not that we won't continue to appreciate and note others who take the time to do quality reviews of our products- if we need any more regular reviewers, those guys will be the first ones we contact. dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Absolutely, if there are items in particular you're not interested in reviewing, let Tina know and she won't send it to you, which will keep you from getting the "no-review" Red Pen of Doom. dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Getting new books is not a reward for previous reviews. Having done previous reviews shows that you at least have the ability and drive to get competent, intelligent reviews finished and published. That just gets you on the list. Then we send you new ones so you'll review those. Not reviewing the new ones we send you gets you booted off the comp list, not to mention generating bad karma that will lead to your favorite sports team losing and people sitting behind you in movie theaters talking on their cel phones. And yeah, it'd be great if people only did reviews out of altruistic support for the industry as a whole, but alas it doesn't work that way. If people only did reviews of books they bought themselves, already-popular lines would dominate review lists even more than they already do, and reviews generally wouldn't happen until too late after a book came out to generate much additional interest. Not to mention, since most review sites don't generate any (or enough) revenue to pay for reviews, you're asking for people to write reviews (and therefore provide several services- to the publisher for promotion and the reader for information) out of the goodness of their hearts (not to mention only reviewing products they were willing to pay for, which would skew the samples.) Sometimes they do it anyway, which is nice. But it's not reliable. So, we send free review copies to people who've shown an interest in and talent for reviewing. It's part of our marketing budget, and honestly it's one of the most cost-effective ways we could spend the money. This particular call for reviewers happened because our list of reviewers clearly needed refreshing- most of the copies we were sending out weren't getting reviewed, and the slackers needed to be purged. Hopefully, some or all of the new reviewers we've picked up here will stick around for the long term, providing the fans with thoughtful insight and information about the books we publish. dw

Re: Lots of questions from a lost gamer... Hey Jonny! While I can't give out too much in the way of private sales numbers and the like, I can give you some info on the company's history. Hero Games was originally founded in 1980 and Champions, their first game, was released in early 1981. The game was originally designed by George McDonald (who, as I understand it, worked out the point-buy system and superpowers structure during some boring lectures) and Steve Peterson (who took George's basic framework and added the "conflict resolution" mechanics, the CV and die roll structure) with later contributions from Ray Greer and several others. Since a superhero game needs to be able to handle the widest possible range of abilities and possible settings, it turned out to make an excellent base to become a generic setting, applicable across any genre, and over time that's what it's become. While fairly successful, all of the founders had other jobs and were unable to devote full-time hours to running the company, so a series of licensing deals left management in other hands on and off throughout the '80s and early '90s (the ICE years and afterwards), until the company was sold outright to Cybergames in the late '90s. There it languished a bit as Cybergames went through some difficulties, and we purchased it from them in 2001. We released the 5th Edition of the rules, written by Steve Long, in March 2002, and have released about thirty supplements across several genres since. We don't give out proprietary sales info, but Comics and Game Retailer , a well-known industry magazine, publicly prints estimated sales figures from reporting stores on a monthly basis. Though not exactly scientific, they're pretty much the best the industry has to go on. They rank RPG sales by company, and in those monthly rankings we've been as high as third and as low as eleventh since 5th Ed was released. The posters above are correct- though Star Hero itself (the genre book, and along with either 5th Edition or the easy-play Sidekick rules all one actually *needs* to play sci fi) is one of our best-selling books, the various setting and support books for the line have not done as well, and we only plan limited additional support for those settings (probably in the neighborhood of 1-2 books per year.) However, a lot of our general "system support" material is as useful for Star Hero as it is for any other genre, so it's not as though the line is starving. We love the setting stuff we've produced (by great writers like Jim Cambias, Steve Long and Allen Thomas), and we have no intention on giving up on it entirely. My current theory runs a bit like this: most sci-fi gaming fans fall into one of two groups- people who want to play in a specific, beloved setting (usually involving a license, like Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, Farscape, etc.) or a long-established game world (like Traveller); or people with strong new ideas for a setting and want to do most of that design work themselves. Both of those fans, if they want to play Hero, need the core book and Star Hero, but beyond that new published settings are of limited use to them, no matter how good they might be. (Which is why excellent sci-fi products like Blue Planet or our own Terran Empire have not had the success to match their critical acclaim.) I'll let other people handle the Hero vs. GURPS debate, since I'm obviously biased (though I've written for Pyramid and remain a tremendous fan of Steve Jackson Games in general.) When it comes to who has more support, though, all I ask is that you compare what we've put out since we started to what they've released in the same time frame- we can't be expected in thirty months to have a line as complete as what they've done in a dozen years. We're gaining on 'em, though. dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! You guys rock. Keep spreading the word. dw

Re: Got my 'damaged' books today... They won't be half-priced for very much longer, though. Once we're through the sale the books will return to their customary "$5 off," still a fine bargain for what everyone agrees are perfectly usable books. Thanks to everyone who helped us clear the space! dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Unless you can impress us with the number of new visitors to your site that would be newly exposed to Hero, probably not. Not that we wouldn't like a review from you there, too, but we won't hand out freebies for it. dw

Re: Hero Needs Reviewers!! Myself, I don't see a problem with it. I'd mention in the review that you'd had paying work from us, so people concerned about bias could have the info up front. But I don't think anybody sees a GURPS review from Ken as biased if it's not a book he worked on, frex. dw

Okay gang, gather round for a second, cause I've got a proposition for y'all. As you may have noticed, Hero doesn't get it's fair share of reviews in online fora. Oh, Butch Curry takes care of us over at Gaming Report most of the time, and Ken drops the odd Hero project into "Out of the Box," but really, the two largest repositories of online reviews on the net are ENWorld, which is (as you'd expect) D20-centric, and RPGNet, which is, well, a mixed bag at best. We've had a great deal of trouble getting our products reviewed over there, and it's starting to bug me. So here's the proposition. Those of you out there who like to write, write up some reviews of our products. We're not looking for puff pieces- we want thoughtful, coherent reviews. We expect most will be generally positive, since we think we do pretty good books, but if you didn't like a book and have a good reason why, that works just as well. Then, go out and get it published. RPGNet is a good place, since they're most obviously missing Hero stuff, but other sites are good, too. Pyramid even pays a little for theirs. ENWorld if you can get it, Gaming Report, Pen & Paper, wherever rpg gamers gather counts. If you can get some stuff published in print magazines and the like, that counts too, though we're not really missing those as much. And this applies even to our friends in foreign lands, though we're much more thoroughly reviewed, say, in France than we are in America when you consider the number of copies we sell in each locale. Once you've established you can write thoughtful reviews and have the gumption to go out and get 'em published, we'll add you to our reviewer-copy mailing list. That's right, free books. As long as you keep getting reviews published, you keep getting free books. If you stop reviewing them, we'll stop sending them. It's really that simple. "But Darren," you say, "I'm not a great writer!" Well, first off, practice writing can only help everybody. Secondly, you don't need to be Dostoevsky, or even Ken Hite, to write a review worth reading (though, hmm, anybody know if ol' Fyodor is taking submissions?) All it takes is an opinion, the ability to string together some sentences in order, and then getting off your duff and getting it submitted. And hey, once you've gotten the hang of it, you might start hearing from the Distinguished Competition about reviewing their stuff too. Go ahead, we won't tell. Remember, it starts on your end. No free books until you review one you paid for (or acquired by other nefarious means, I suppose.) Then contact us and let us know where to find your review once you get it published, and boom! You're a reviewer, joining the long and healthy line of freeloaders currently receiving copies of choice Hero product gratis. How can you possibly pass this up? dw

Re: Secret Crisis Info requested Alex Jiminez played a fabulous Gene Simmons, complete with fire breath and battleaxe/bass. I am, of course, an enormous fan of "Phantom of the Park." dw

Re: Well of Worlds and the Dreamtime The Well of Worlds will get a bit of expanded treatment in Champions Hidden Lands, which is the nex book I'll be working on once I finish Vibora Bay in a couple of weeks. dw

Re: Secret Crisis Info requested Yeah, the Secret Crisis of Infinite Wars was a gag event I ran in the old DOJ campaign. Basically, it was an excuse to insert a bunch of entertaining people into the story and have players take a break from their own characters for an extended adventure. It seems the Master had run a complicated scheme to steal control of the Timestream from Entropus, the cosmic being who keeps all the paradoxes created by time travel from destroying the universe. (This was played out in a sidebar mini-campaign set in the Victorian era, where my players played the Lone Ranger, Kwai Chang Caine, Sherlock Holmes, a vampire slayer, and one or two other characters, but never actually met the Master, who was secretly behind the whole affair.) With the Master now controlling the universe, time began to go kablooey, with dinosaurs fighting Vikings in the cities. (This is the story in which Secret Master, who was playing Bulletproof, famously wrapped himself in sausages to get the attention of a tyrannosaur in Brooklyn. "Sausage Armor" has been a cherished running joke in our campaign ever since.) Doctor Who and a few other characters gathered an army of heroes from throughout time, including our PCs (who were Golden Age characters), divided them into teams and sent them on specific missions to oppose the Master's forces at key points in history. Among the characters my PCs got to play for a session or two were Steve Austin, Flash Gordon, assorted Lensmen, their own children or grandchildren, and even the superpowered members of KISS, while battling Cybermen and a mind-controlled Godzilla. It was a pretty whacked-out arc, but the players seemed to have fun. Obviously, printing any of those details is pretty much verboten, but the Secret Crisis itself lives on. dw

Re: Tell me a little about Champions? Champions is a genre book, specifically the overarching genre of superheroic adventure, so to answer your question it's more like Fantasy Hero or Star Hero. If the name "Champions" didn't have so much brand value, we might have called it Super Hero. (And probably gotten a cease-and-desist letter from Marvel and DC.) Aaron and Steve dissect and discuss everything that goes into creating superheroic games and campaigns, from character design to plotting to making great villains. dw

Re: Need Help From LSH Fans: Nemesis Kid writeup And he didn't always get stats better than his opponents- only if his opponent's enhanced stats were part of their "powers," a pretty loosely-defined term. He got better DEX and CVs than Karate Kid, but while fighting Projectra, he got immunity to illusions only, allowing her to beat him physically with her own recent non-super karate training. dw

Re: A Justification for Galactic Federation So go get all yer pals to buy Galactic Champions and convince us it needs another sourcebook. While Galactic Champs isn't doing badly, at least so far it isn't selling well enough to justify making it the head of a new line... dw

Re: Galactic Champs and time travel It shipped about a month ago, Zen. Have your retailer contact us directly if he's having problems finding it, and we'll be happy to steer him towards distributors that do carry it. dw

Re: Galactic Champs and time travel I think you guys are confusing the "in-game" explanation with the "metagame" one. Nobody (or, at least almost nobody) knows that the reason the laws of physics change is the changing level of magic in the universe. Dr. Destroyer builds devices based on the way physics works in the universe. Those laws are the way they are because of ambient magic, but it doesn't mean that his devices are "based" on magic in any way. dw

Re: Spiderman Vs. Firelord As I recall, he not only caught him in an exploding gas station (which, while not stopping him, at least fazed him), he also lured him into a building that construction workers were about to collapse and dropped that on him too. Only after all that (plus sending him into the East River to retrieve his staff after Spidey took it from him, which means exposure to enough toxins to take down anybody short of Galactic Herald status) did he flip out and hit him several dozen times in a few seconds, knocking him out. And he wasn't out for long, while Spidey was bushed. When Firelord came around he was spoiling to continue til Hercules and Starfox threatened him. Spidey's a tough SOB. IMO, it's much more implausible when the Enforcers give him trouble then when he rumbles with the big guns of the Marvel Universe, no matter what he himself thinks of the odds. dw

Re: Best/Worst Galactic Champions The thing about Bulletproof is, he needs to be played by a tactically smart player. He's the king of using the environment as a weapon, and in GC, there are usually plenty of high-tech devices and vehicles that can be blown up, crashed or otherwise used as weapons, especially if you're willing to take the pain alongside your opponent. When Jason played the Golden Age version of the character in our original DoJ campaign, he was famous for getting "behind the wheel" of any number of vehicles he only had a rudimentary idea of how to operate, and promptly crashing them, causing massive amounts of damage only he could walk away from. (As the joke became more stretched, it started to get that Simpsons vibe where any impact would cause any vehicle to explode in a fireball, including cars, boats and even a camel.) dw

Re: Locations in 'The Mystic World'

Re: That Mechanon fella jest ain't right: a roleplay question See, I've been saying we need a Giant Mechanon Head plush for months now, and they call me crazy. Crazy! But throw in, say, Grond, Silverback and Harbinger, now you've got a line! ("He's the Harbinger... of adorableness!") dw

Re: Reagan's Alien fighters And some more: During a screening of "E.T." at the White House in the summer of 1982, Reagan leaned over to guest Steven Spielberg and whispered, "You know, I bet there aren't six people in this room who know just how true this really is." At least, according to Spielberg, who told the story to documentary producer Jamie Shandera. dw

Re: Disadvantages for Pyro IIRC, the comic version of Pyro had a Public Identity as a trashy novelist. dw