Opal

So, I suppose the things from past editions I find "better" in some sense than later ones might be, relative to: 6th: Power Frameworks, Figured Characteristics, Disadvantages. 5th: Package Deals? 4th: 5 Apt/DC standard (HA, TK, & Martial Arts), Skills (going all the way back to 1st, really). TBH, I have trouble remembering exactly which things changed when from 3rd-5th, and am not that familiar with 6th. The big issue for me has long been skills. From Champions II introducing an open ended set of ittybitty 2 pt skills "2pts, Norse StormHammer God's secret ID is a doctor!" to 4e folding all the other games' skills together, leading to needing to invest like 100 points in being a doc or lawyer in your secret id... Original Champions had a handful of super-hero-appropriate skills at 5 or 10 points, and if you took em all and 3 or so overall levels, you were incredibly skilled. That's the direction Hero should have stuck with, a manageable, *finite* list of broad skills covering everything Optionally, you could break out open-ended specialized little ones, if you wanted, (I don't want "Detective," I just want "extensive study of tobacco ash" in my back pocket).

In 1981, the AD&D DMG had been out for 2 years, and the first solid "skill-based" RPG, RuneQuest, had been out for 3. Still the early days of the hobby, for sure.

Funny, that'd've made a good illo of a minor NPC in my last Champions campaign. Her name was Hex, tersely described in my notes as "young witch, with attitude."

The Lioness At first feared as a villain when she began gathering together followers from different countries and of different backgrounds, including traditional enemies, this sorceress was recruited into The AAF, defusing the situations. Her followers now work within the borders and laws off their respective nations, working to stop poachers and protect the environment. The Lioness is so named because she would frequently assume that animal form. Her other unique power is the ability to instantly teach anyone a mysterious common language. Aside from that she has typical, broad but not extremely potent magical abilities.

My last campaign, the heroes were given an old building to use as a base. Of course, in my home town, "old building" can mean built in the 60s.

Vanish Mike "Mickey" Huter was an ok-looking, slightly intelligent, moderately athletic young man of good family who should have easily made something of himself. But little Mickey was a sensitive boy, always picked on, never aplying himself, and his life spiraled into depression and misery. He sought out the Great Beast thinking he could at least make a tasty snack for some monster rather than killing himself to no purpose at all. Instead of being put out if his misery, he was subjected to psuedo-matter. Vanish is still basically humanoid, though everything about him looks subtly off, like an uncanny valley effect. A third eye (on an extensible stalk) allows him to see through solid objects, and where he can see, he can go, without bothering about the points between. His new flesh reacts to intense emotion by fading from view, then, in extreme cases, reality, becoming insubstantial. He has no offensive powers - he can't teleport or re-solidify in someone to shock their system or anything, and his physical abnormalities don't include claws/fangs/tentacles/poison. He's still miserable, of course.

You might expect "The Demon Lords" to be a violent street gang or, perhaps, actual demons. But, no, they're young nerdy supervillains inspired by the demon lords & princes of the 5th edition of the world's most popular tabletop RPG. Aside from being obliged to use the name of a D&D demon like Demogorgon, Orcus, or ... IDK, I can't spell the others that come to mind... anything goes.

Champions is what got me back into the superhero genre, at all, so most likely I'd have kept playing fantasy & sci-fi games until I got into Storyteller with Mage... ...which, BTW, had a magick system that essentially ran on special effects, like Hero.

The anti-supers team could have gadget pools and/or variable f/X powers. They research their targets and hit their vulnerability/susceptibility/doesn't-work-in-blank-limitations....

So, I apologize if this is obvious nd has already been said repeatedly: Like any other perplexing perennial dysfunction endemic to our hobby, It's all D&D's fault. The vast majority of us come to the hobby through D&D, and it forms our expectations for good or ill. Tolkienesque Elves are just another annoying part of that. And, if you just can't stand that or anything else about D&D, you probably just walked away from the hobby after a session.

Brace was an action to do that. I seem to remember you could use flight to keep yourself stationary vs knockback... ...IDK if that went away, I may be remembering 3rd ed or earlier...

Space COP (Cyborg Over-Person) People say "Mad Scientist," like it's a standard thing, but some are crazier than others. The lunatic who transformed down-to-earth rocket scientist Yu Tu into a "Bionic Superman" must have been about the craziest. When he transforms his super-powered alter-ego looks comically like he's just wearing a silver & red rubber suit with a zipper down the back and a helmet with oversize glowing lenses that should be impossible to see through for eyes. His size also changes to match the threat du jour, whether that's central-casting humanoid aliens or kilometer-tall kaiju. His protective energy field looks suspiciously like a matte line. In addition to superstrength, flying into space, and projecting ravenning beams of energy that only ever seem to blow up scenery near the target, his helmet has a universal psychic translator that causes anyone he speaks to to understand him - but as if he were speaking in a bombastic old-timey version of their native language (he hears translated replies as if sung in traditional Chinese opera). Ironically, some alien races seem to respect that mode of communications. Yu Tu carefully maintains his secret identity - not out of fear for his loved ones (he has no family and is asexual & aromantic), but simply because the whole thing is just too humiliating.

J'hain Ps'mhiss, the Vegan Vindicatrix A shape-shifting alien anthropologist from the Vega system, J'hain was surprised to immediately discover some of her people hiding in plain sight, using their powers to assume outlandish forms instead of blend in with bland humanoid appearances, and openly declaring their origin - even if the humans mispronounced it as Vee-gan. So when Vegan Rising put out a plea for help, she showed... it took longer than you might think for her to realize her mistake, and by then she was in too deep with a band of dangerous fanatics.

D&D's current success - it's selling at level not seen since the 80s - maps to the 80s come-back heralded by the likes of Stranger Things, more than it does to the rise of streaming play, which started years earlier as part of a resurgence in interest in tabletop games, in general.

CR did have some success before D&D took off in ...2015? Shortly after "The Demogorgon" became a household word.

Which is a game of DM Empowerment and Caster Supremacy that, like the card game Munchkin, evokes the feel of TSR D&D. Which turned out to be a good thing, when the 80s finally came back. I hear longtime gamers say things like this and new D&Ders with nothing to compare it to agreeing. I doubt there's any brand new RPgamers here to get a wrong impression, tho.... ...but in almost any other context it's doing a disservice.

Ki Lyme was a petite, green-clad martial artist with the ability to cause mildly debilitating illness in her opponents (or any one she touched). In her new diminutive size her martial arts are useless (except when other 'Mites' get too annoying), but her host is more or less continually victimized by her mysterious disease-like power, which proved difficult to diagnose, or even confirm that the symptoms are real.

Oh, don't get me wrong, D&D was always a bad game - it's saved from being the worst TTRPG of all time by the existence of things like Spawn of Fshawn and FATAL - it's just that, out of that load of fetid dingos' kidneys, its 4th edition was the least fetid. I'm never dismayed at the range of experiences people report having with RPGs, from treasured experiences playing terrible games like D&D, to hellish experiences playing good ones like Hero. A good enough GM can salvage anything, and a bad enough one (or a single malicious player, or even just a bad day) can ruin anything.

Heh, Hero was so far ahead of its time there's no difference. Not entirely joking. Like, 4e D&D was the most flexible, most-nearly-balanced, version of D&D ever, and it did it by dipping it's toes in powers with special effects. I suppose it's also worth noting that 5e D&D achieved great success by reaching all the way back to its earlier forms and ditching all the best stuff from 3e & 4e.

And, you could "sell back" all your figured from CON for a 1 point gain, so get all the points you wanted, limited only by shame (without breaking campaign limits like STR would). In the first ed. After that, you couldn't "sell back" more than one figured stat, so the bug was fixed. Figured stats became just another cost break, like Power Frameworks, and on basically the same scale. Honestly, they served a purpose. Having 60 points in several powers is just nothing like as OP as having 90 points in one. They're discounts for being rounded out a bit rather than diving down the hyper-specialization rabbithole, a real problem in build systems that you rarely are addressed.

It did change in the oughts, characters became more customisable, especially for the brief run of the last ed. But current D&D, 5e, is consciously designed to evoke the classic versions of the TSR era. It doesn't have THAC0, and wizards don't technically 'fire & forget' anymore, but armor, not skill, still makes you harder to hit, and fighters are still tough early on while wizards still get new spell levels every-other level and leave them in the dust. Its still classes and levels and extremely limited in what you can do to create the character you want.

4e did adopt the more granular skill system collectively by ither hero games at the time. Earlier martial arts were more like adding to your STR in 50% increments, which was not very granular, at all. The 3-5 pt manuever martial arts were a little bit like having an attack multipower with you STR & DCs as the reserve. Which is a little whack, sure.

I've often thought it would be nice to have broader skills that are more expensive but subsumed all the lower-point specialuzed and open-ended ones. To be a specialist you'd buy a narrower, lower point skill, and levels. But to be broadly competent, and have a specialty you're particularly good at, you'd buy the high point skill, but some extra lower-point levels in the specialty. Instead of scads of little knowledge and professional skills and whatnot.

I had occasion to do that, just inverted AC, and it worked. Only works at the lowest levels, though. 3e D&D did introduce a lot of 'build' options, and 4e even allowed something comparable to hero "special effects." But the current edition walked back or bowdlerized all that, and is a lot more like say, AD&D, again. (At least AC isn't back to lower is better.) The current D&D, 5e, is very nearly as bad an introduction to the hobby as AD&D was. It's like a hazing tradition, just because we survived it, doesn't mean we should inflict it on others. (And, staring with Hero could work, just start with pregens who are all the same speed 😊 ) Wow, too much D&D, sorry, but from 2000 on, for various reasons I've found myself playing & running a lot more D&D than Hero. 😧

I started with 1st, with the typewriter-looking font, but by the time I got to play it, 2nd was out, then 3rd by the time I got to play in regular games. By then, GMs I gamed with were mixing skills &c from the other Hero games as well, and it was messy. 4e, the BBB, feels like the definitive edition that brought it all together. But even with the BBB, it seemed like skills were getting out of hand, and it was taking far too many points to just be generally competent at whatever throwaway background or secret id you might have. 5th seemed even worse that way, what I've seen of 6th looks to be far beyond the pale. Sometimes I think even the small handful of skills in 1st would be preferable.