Old Man

I'm probably the only being in the universe with this opinion, but I liked ECs and I hated to see them go. They certainly were a bonus for having a tight character concept, but I saw plenty of lazy and/or munchkin players who would absolutely have created random/patchwork characters without it. Either out of sheer laziness or to exploit some feature of the campaign, like having powers of as many different special effects as possible to try and exploit adversaries' disadvantages. ECs were also perfect for spell colleges in FH, giving cost breaks for common SFX and casting limitations without being insanely cheap like MPs.

As a counterexample, in 25 years of playing Champions and Fantasy Hero I think I wrote an adventure form scratch exactly once. All other sessions were straight out of published Champions or (gag) converted AD&D module. There might have been a Shadow World game in there somewhere. We just never had time to run a pure homebrew campaign of any kind, and that's even more true today than it was back then.

Heard on NPR this morning that a launch of a solar sail satellite is imminent--and that solar sails are highly reflective and that, therefore, this particular probe may be visible from Earth.

I've bought defenses with IPE before, but instead of making the character look more vulnerable, it made him look far more messed up than he really was after taking damage.

How is Zornwil anyway?

Come on man, I only get a half hour for lunch.

I didn't know you worked at Target. Which thread is this again?

Wait, what? Bankruptcy? Wth?

I never did like the way GURPS defined what would be powers in Hero terms. I really felt that it was closer to the AD&D spell list than to an actual system for defining game effects. GURPS sourcebooks are fantastic though.

Dreamliner sighting.

You do, but they tend to be highly powerful dudes who could easily have sufficient sorcery skill to offset any armor penalty. Conan has certainly cut down his share of sorcerers who ought to have been wearing armor if they could have. Game balance is not exactly "no good reason". OTOH it could be argued that some wizards don't wear armor because they don't need to. Force field or resistant defenses are really really cheap, especially if you can stick them in a multipower.

There can be only one?

The elevator shaft should be central to the building for structural purposes. As should the missile silo. Frankly the missile silo is much taller than necessary, since missiles like Poseidon exist that are ejected from their launch tubes by compressed gas immediately prior to ignition. Relocating these should recover valuable corner space in the building. Also questionable is the distance of the server room from the computer lab. Those ought to be closer together, and in fact the computer lab should be moved down closer to the other labs. And where is all the HVAC for the server room? In fact where is the HVAC for the whole building?

Hero 5th moved very strongly toward the tech-manual end of the spectrum. 6th is significantly better, but still not as atmospheric as Anima or anything by GW.

One thing that bothers me in rule books is a lack of fluff. If I want to read a dry tech manual I'll stay late at the office.

And not really relevant, but it appears the Colosseum in Rome had some elements of a clockwork Danger Room: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/secrets-of-the-colosseum-75827047/?device=iphone&=&=&c=y&page=1

Can't you guys just... let it go?

Such automata have some basis in mythology. Talos comes to mind. The ancient Greeks also built some very large war machines in reality--giant self-propelled siege towers, giant cranes for destroying attacking ships, and so on.

Well, Rogue specifically is kind of difficult. She's a huge VPP linked to a huge uncontrollable Drain/Transfer (bought way down on the time scale) and a huge uncontrollable non-EGO-based Telepathy. VPPs are not for rookie players. Working out exactly how the Transfer feeds the VPP, and how the resulting powerset works out, is not for rookies either. And to pay for all that she has enough limitations and complications to make her a near basket case. Hardly a knock against Hero, of course, since I can't think of any other game systems that could even come as close to modeling Rogue as we can. But it's still among the tougher Hero builds to define and play.

I guess Swedes are easily confused?

Never saw the Clooney version, but the original sucked. It did have things spontaneously appearing on an alien planet, though.

IIRC the "problem" with Rogue in Hero terms is that she's actually an extremely powerful character. So of course she has a very high CP total in order to accommodate a drain that'll suck an opponent down to nothing in a couple of phases, plus high level telepathy, plus a VPP that can permanently copy any set of powers. Admittedly those powers come with some big disadvantages and complications, but still.

It's hard to resist the temptation to model assassins guilds along the lines of certification requirements in IT. To maintain standing in one org I have to attend monthly seminars, build up a certain number of credits by writing articles or going to training, pay yearly dues, and of course I had to pass an exam in the beginning of it all. It just amuses me to think that assassins would have to sit through regular meetings about the creation and application of poisons, or the latest changes in city guard policy. That would be bureaucratic and not fun, but the exam/initiation part could be a good plot device.

Crowdfunding assassinations with bitcoins. Seriously.

This seems to be typical of French military operations throughout history--a base of highly motivated and effective soldiery consistently hamstrung by their own leadership and engineers. That started as early as Crecy and continued all the way through Vietnam.