MrAgdesh

Some years back, I had someone refer to a "sandbox" campaign in contrast to a "rowboat" campaign.
 
The sandbox as he described it had players who would work together.  The game world was there, it had plenty of plot hooks, and the players/characters would decide their goals and which hooks to bite.
 
The rowboat was "You are in a boat on a massive featureless sea.  What do you do?"  Why you can pick any direction you want, with no idea what may be found, or even whether anything will be found, no idea where you came from or where you are going.  Have "fun".

Don't get me started.  I am a big naval history buff.  Not the Who's and Political Why's, but the technology and tactics of naval vessels pre-aircraft. 
 
I have been so disappointed by so called RPG Ship supplements that I honestly think the people who made them should be sued out of existence for stupidity or at least fraud for using the term Ships.  Just reading them is painful.
 
It is an RPG, so I am not expecting realism, but at least spend 2 minutes on Wikipedia to make sure that the three ships in the product existed within 500 years of each other.   It would be like making a gladiatorial RPG supplement that that takes place in ancient Rome and features races in the coliseum.   Your PC's get to choose between a Chariot, a motorcycle and a Formula One race car.  And then have the writers say "What?  Those have all been used in racing!" as if that means that makes it all good for ancient Rome.
 
I was thoroughly disappointed in the bait and switch fraud RPG called 7th Sea.  I backed it and even though they talked up the seafaring part, the game was basically "urban political three musketeers" with lip-service for the Sea's part. A whooping 14 pages out of the 296 page rulebook for seafaring.  And then they go for "vague narrative" with the eight ship "types" being drawn, apparently randomly, from a span of 500 years of technological development.  Not to mention the remaining 13 pages give an equally vague cursory skim over of ships and crews.  All in all, the game has literally nothing to do with seafaring beyond what the GM can create.  Totally disappointing.
 
I can understand keeping things to just enough detail to use in play.  Too much information is worse than to little sometimes.  
 
But if you claim your book is about breeds of dogs and then you start discussing Hereford, Angus, and Brahmas (breeds of cattle) then I will say your book is garbage.  Not matter how correct you are in the details about cattle.    When I buy a book about dogs, I expect dogs.
 
If you are an RPG writer and want to put out a D&D book of ships, at least take five minutes on wiki to make sure you are actually using period ships and not the USS Enterprise .   Wikipedia is not my choice for real information, but apparently it is 100% more informed than 99% of gamers, at least for this subject.  
 
Hmmmmm..... well that touched a trigger....
 
Rant over

I popped out to a nearby village games club last night to say hello and see what was going on. There were three tables of D&D players in the local bowls club (a small venue).
They guys have a 3 hour timeslot - 18:30 - 21:30 so get straight into it. I arrived at 18:45. By this time two new players had rolled up their characters and were, more or less, good to go.
 
Hero needs this. Somehow.
 
I'll be interested to see contributions to Hall of Champions, just to see what everybody considers normal or reasonable builds/levels of power. I've always thought that the NPCs in supplements were way too overpowered (*) - certainly for my style of play,  so if I want to use them, I have to tone them down. Which equals more work, less play.
 
 
(*) exception being Mike Surbrook's stuff.

Gnope. Sorry.

Gnope. Sorry.

Thank you all for the helpful tips!

1) I have several Battlemats in different scale hexes - for Champions I use 38mm hexes (1 1/2”) because that’s the scale of Heroclix and they are the figures I use.
For Fantasy Hero I am using 28mm heroic scale figures mounted on 30mm bases so I use 30mm hexes. I always equate the hex, whatever it’s real-world size, to 2 metres.
 
2) I write handouts for players with campaign info on them. I usually post these as PDF files on an FB group or blog site, along with adventure synopses so that people can refresh their memories. I run three systems a month and play in a fourth so each game runs once a month - having a reminder for people is crucial as not everyone takes notes and even those that did can miss vital points. 
 
3) I tend to write my own adventures with bullet points. I find it’s easier to pick bits out than from a wall of text. 

I think you are now heavily into Duplication.  It should be reasonably expensive as you want to multiply the number of actions you get in a round, all under your control, replicating your powers.
 
as a GM I dislike one player being able to take more than seven or eight actions in a round, especially if everyone else only has three or four actions.  I even persuaded one of my players to take his SPD 12 speedster down to SPD 9 and only that far because I knew he was likely going to need 2 or 3 phases of recovering during a fight every turn.
 
Duplication also ramps up the number of actions per turn which can seriously slowdown a game and make other players get much less spotlight during the game.
 
Doc
 
PS:  the problem with floating locations is that they belong to the person using the power, not to others.  I might be inclined to charge more for locations that could be used by other characters.  Indeed, the additional utility might warrant substantial increases but would need to think hard about numbers for that.
 
Doc

One of Matt Colville’s videos he stats that as a DM it’s fun to create a world (and do it) but realize that a lot of the info is really just for the GM’s amusement. The players typically don’t care.

I think that you have a point here.
 
Although we have a boom of 'normals' playing D&D, a lot of them are only casual roleplayers. They are people with a variety of pastimes who dip into the RPG hobby from other related interests such as console gaming, or  maybe watching 'Stranger Things'.
When we started playing D&D in the early 80's sessions would last the full 11 hours that we had the rooms at Uni and then we would go back to somebody's room on campus to discuss what had gone on.  Now, the students struggle with concentration on sessions lasting more than 3-4 hours. That, and they're tied with other pressing social engagements.
They obviously enjoy playing but its not the be all end all that it was to us. New players don't want to invest huge amounts of time and effort  in creating scenarios when they can just purchase them. Certainly this holds true in the local games clubs that I have recently visited. Whilst us older gamers may not have time to put our own stuff together due to life commitments I think that younger players are definitely more used to consuming than creating. To quote the Mandalorian; "This is The Way".
 

Isn't getting unStunned the end all and be all of that first Recovery?

Has anybody running a Champions game that allows Combined Attacks found them to be overpowered? I run one and haven't, although I must admit, they don't crop up perhaps as often as they could/should mainly because my players or I forget that this is a thing from 5E onwards - despite me having reminded them. 
 
I would like to thank Tywll for pointing out the 'claw, claw bite' routine above. I haven't run FH for a good while (since 4th) and the Combined Attack makes perfect sense.
 
Chris, in regards to Western Hero for 6E, maybe make some kind of statement that Combined Attacks (no penalty) are only really appropriate for inclusion in Highly Cinematic Campaigns?
 
(I'm currently running Aces & Eights: Reloaded. Very nitty-gritty and extremely lethal once the guns come out).

This may have been covered elsewhere in this thread, but as I understand it, one of the big limiting factors of combined attacks was that the powers had to be bought seperately. So for example you couldn't do a combined attack that was based on Strength with another attack based on strength (like hitting someone with a kick and a weapon) unless the GM allowed it. I don't recall where that rule is, whether it was a board clarification or actually in the rules. Like you, Combined attacks have always thrown me.  
 
The best example I can think of is those rare times Superman really cut loose, flying into someone with his fists while also blasting them with his eyebeams. That would be a combined attack. 
 
In a fantasy context, it does allow monsters to do the claw,claw,bite routine of DND, as usually their claws and bite are seperate power constructs. Though not necessarily at full strength, unless you are okay with that. 
 
I suppose the risk, the why you don't do it all the time, is that you are (potentially) gambling a lot of END on a single throw of the dice. But if built properly, there is no reason not to do it all the time...however, attacks build with reduced END and all that are probably going to be less effective than those that are full strength so you would end up with less effect. 

I made up a play aid to make old school Car Wars run a lot faster.  In a six player game, with four noobs and two rusty old farts, we got through a complete arena duel in about two and a half hours.  It shocked me how well that made it go. 

DoJ was formed to buy Hero Games from Cybergames. DoJ published 5e and lots of books. Those books stopped selling. To try and increase sales, they put out 6e. 6e didn't sell well enough and a decision was made at DoJ to de-emphasize Hero and focus on Indie Press Revolution which DoJ had purchased after handling much of IPR's warehousing and order processing. This was the point at which Darren Watts parted ways with the company and Steve Long was no longer full time as the Hero line developer. I think that was around the end of 2011. So, it's been about 8 years since the HERO System was really the focus of DoJ. We're about where things were in the late 90s (maybe a little better), but unless there are changes in priority at DoJ or they sell the system to a group that does what DoJ did in the early 2000s, it's probably best to consider Hero System to be a fringe RPG system that is largely being propped up with what is basically fan material.
 
Is there hope? Personally, I doubt it. Other than D&D, which is always more of an exception than a rule, are there really any other traditional RPGs for which companies are publishing regular materials. I think the increase in RPG sales is larger due to D&D and Pathfinder. Other than that, I think any increase in interest is in lighter and more narrative driven systems.  That, and tailored indie-style RPGs which are really designed to give players a specific experience and not really for long-term campaign play --- more something you pull out, generate characters, and play for a few hours to create a specific type of story.

I joined this group and have gotten some absolutely incredible maps including animated maps for people that play on screen tables. This is just one was one that I am going to use and fairly time/genre generic but there are hundreds of all types. The Reddit group is r/battlemaps/ 
 
I am not in any way associated with the Patreon or even know who they are. I just grabbed one of the maps I downloaded and liked to show an example.
 
Enjoy!
 
 

Those divers are just plain superhuman! I'm a pretty fit guy for my age - whenever I go swimming (which most recently has been in the Balearic, Adriatic, and Aegean seas) I have found that in recent years, the increased salinity of the Med in general has meant that in order to dive maybe only 10-15 feet of water to the ocean floor (I swim close to the shore) is a herculean effort. What hurts the most is that in order to go lower, you have to exhale excessively in order to sink down (the buoyancy of the salt is staggering), almost to the point of emptying your lungs. This is self defeating as you then have no spare oxygen to be able to swim and explore whilst down there. In other words, holding your breath is one thing. Holding it whilst exerting yourself is ridiculously hard (and not recommended generally,  but I always like to think of those times when these sort of things might come in useful - and as a firefighter conservation of air is something I practice).
Back to the case in (game) point. Yeah, I agree with Doc that 2 minutes in a *cinematic* game is not unreasonable. There are a good number of films where normals get up to all sorts of shenanigans underwater (rescuing people from sunken vehicles etc), hell, even *seeing* underwater (without goggles), is pretty impossible, but that doesn't make for a good movie.  😉

Those divers are just plain superhuman! I'm a pretty fit guy for my age - whenever I go swimming (which most recently has been in the Balearic, Adriatic, and Aegean seas) I have found that in recent years, the increased salinity of the Med in general has meant that in order to dive maybe only 10-15 feet of water to the ocean floor (I swim close to the shore) is a herculean effort. What hurts the most is that in order to go lower, you have to exhale excessively in order to sink down (the buoyancy of the salt is staggering), almost to the point of emptying your lungs. This is self defeating as you then have no spare oxygen to be able to swim and explore whilst down there. In other words, holding your breath is one thing. Holding it whilst exerting yourself is ridiculously hard (and not recommended generally,  but I always like to think of those times when these sort of things might come in useful - and as a firefighter conservation of air is something I practice).
Back to the case in (game) point. Yeah, I agree with Doc that 2 minutes in a *cinematic* game is not unreasonable. There are a good number of films where normals get up to all sorts of shenanigans underwater (rescuing people from sunken vehicles etc), hell, even *seeing* underwater (without goggles), is pretty impossible, but that doesn't make for a good movie.  😉

Those divers are just plain superhuman! I'm a pretty fit guy for my age - whenever I go swimming (which most recently has been in the Balearic, Adriatic, and Aegean seas) I have found that in recent years, the increased salinity of the Med in general has meant that in order to dive maybe only 10-15 feet of water to the ocean floor (I swim close to the shore) is a herculean effort. What hurts the most is that in order to go lower, you have to exhale excessively in order to sink down (the buoyancy of the salt is staggering), almost to the point of emptying your lungs. This is self defeating as you then have no spare oxygen to be able to swim and explore whilst down there. In other words, holding your breath is one thing. Holding it whilst exerting yourself is ridiculously hard (and not recommended generally,  but I always like to think of those times when these sort of things might come in useful - and as a firefighter conservation of air is something I practice).
Back to the case in (game) point. Yeah, I agree with Doc that 2 minutes in a *cinematic* game is not unreasonable. There are a good number of films where normals get up to all sorts of shenanigans underwater (rescuing people from sunken vehicles etc), hell, even *seeing* underwater (without goggles), is pretty impossible, but that doesn't make for a good movie.  😉

Those divers are just plain superhuman! I'm a pretty fit guy for my age - whenever I go swimming (which most recently has been in the Balearic, Adriatic, and Aegean seas) I have found that in recent years, the increased salinity of the Med in general has meant that in order to dive maybe only 10-15 feet of water to the ocean floor (I swim close to the shore) is a herculean effort. What hurts the most is that in order to go lower, you have to exhale excessively in order to sink down (the buoyancy of the salt is staggering), almost to the point of emptying your lungs. This is self defeating as you then have no spare oxygen to be able to swim and explore whilst down there. In other words, holding your breath is one thing. Holding it whilst exerting yourself is ridiculously hard (and not recommended generally,  but I always like to think of those times when these sort of things might come in useful - and as a firefighter conservation of air is something I practice).
Back to the case in (game) point. Yeah, I agree with Doc that 2 minutes in a *cinematic* game is not unreasonable. There are a good number of films where normals get up to all sorts of shenanigans underwater (rescuing people from sunken vehicles etc), hell, even *seeing* underwater (without goggles), is pretty impossible, but that doesn't make for a good movie.  😉

https://www.outsideonline.com/1784106/how-long-can-humans-hold-their-breath
 
I reckon 2 minutes in a cinematic game looks reasonable, if not slightly stingy.
 
Doc

So...I'm not an expert by any means but I do happen to have some actual experience in this area. I grew up in southern Florida on the water, learned to swim before I could walk, and spent a lot of time swimming in my youth. While in the Marines, I easily passed swim qual one (which is the top standard qual level) with no effort at all and was invited to an advanced course. So, take this with a grain of salt, but this is what I remember...
 
It isn't the lack of oxygen that is your initial problem, it's carbon dioxide build up. Most people with a sedentary life style have a surprisingly low tolerance for it and will suffer from this before running out of oxygen. So, if an average non-athletic person with "meh" cardio gets in the water and tries to hold their breath even without swimming...just go under and hold...they might have trouble holding their breath for even a full minute. There is also a psychological aspect...people who haven't made a habit of pushing their body to its limits often think they are capable of less than they are...so our example average breath holder might come up for air before they strictly speaking need to because holding your breath is both uncomfortable and because they are worried they are going to drown...which would tend to push the time lower.
 
But personally I would expect a healthy athletic person with good cardio...a runner, jogger, athlete, etc...to last between a minute and a half to two minutes while swimming underwater, and I would expect an active swimmer who has made a practice of extending their ability to stay under to last longer. 
 
YMMV

This.
 
With Hall of Champions I expect very different submissions from people as to what they expect is reasonable under the system. Perhaps a little foreword from each writer with "Why the characters and scenario are designed this way" and scalable options would help. 
 
 

I popped out to a nearby village games club last night to say hello and see what was going on. There were three tables of D&D players in the local bowls club (a small venue).
They guys have a 3 hour timeslot - 18:30 - 21:30 so get straight into it. I arrived at 18:45. By this time two new players had rolled up their characters and were, more or less, good to go.
 
Hero needs this. Somehow.
 
I'll be interested to see contributions to Hall of Champions, just to see what everybody considers normal or reasonable builds/levels of power. I've always thought that the NPCs in supplements were way too overpowered (*) - certainly for my style of play,  so if I want to use them, I have to tone them down. Which equals more work, less play.
 
 
(*) exception being Mike Surbrook's stuff.

It never bothered me much to be out of a fight like that, because I would just watch and enjoy the talk as a player, but I know it is usually very annoying and frustrating for players -- or they get out their distraction box and stare into it instead of paying attention to the game "dude, I'm unconscious, I won't know what is happening and besides I gotta respond to this text and watch a cat video!"