Rich McGee

Thanks to Rich McGee and I agree that Duke Bushido was the real winner. Also he is a coward making up some excuse about his phone just so he wouldn't have to pick an image! 😃
 
Sorry if this is a bit boring or convential of an image and I hope it hasn't been used previously, I just wanted to get something up fast to keep things going.

Cute.  Fortunately we have Lord Liaden's seasonal avatar to save us. 
 
Me, I'd just sic the Yule Cat on him.  The guy's been imprisoned since 1916.  It's been so long since anyone gifted him some new clothes Krampy might as well be a catnip mouse for the biggest and bestest of kitties.  If he's expecting to get let off as a professional courtesy from a fellow seasonal entity he doesn't know cats very well.

I find myself with less sympathy for those pining for the days when "our thing" was special and pointed at and laughed at.  I think I am happier with more people who are comfortable with superhero and gaming references, not least the appearance of NPC as a concept in random social media conversations.  I think there is more stuff for me to cherry pick and live off than in the old days when everything was specialist, expensive or home-made.
 
Obviously there are the issues like complete canon and I take great pleasure in educating newbies in the tyrrany of continuity.  I have been there, pined for completeness and then come out the other side, looking for complete stories that can exist.  I love asking those saying that batman should kill the Joker whether they would be happy knowing there would never be another joker story?  Some are but the majority want more stuff to watch and read.  Joker's continued existence is purely by commercial demand, not from any inherent flaw in Batman's priniciples or society as a whole. 
 
I want lots of stories, I want good complex series.  I am content for those stories to be coherent within themselves and owe no continuity to previous stories or to limit future stories by what they reveal.  I guess that is why I drifted into almost exclusively reading old stuff and Elseworlds stories.
 
However, the more people there are involved and interested, the more people there are who are likely to create in this space and, even if 90% of that is dross, it is still likely to be more than I had growing up.
 

Doc

As the saying goes, "We still know where the pitchforks are."
 
But societal collapse has never been a salutary experience for the bulk of the people involved, whatever started it and whoever perpetrated it. Mobs will turn on whoever they decide is to blame, whether they're responsible or not. People will flock to whoever appears strong enough to offer them security. Such "strong men" are usually ruthless and exploitive, and often ambitious, prompting factional violence over remaining resources. Much knowledge, practical, historical, artistic and philosophical, is lost in the chaos.
 
Something better may eventually emerge, but if it happened today it's unlikely our children and grandchildren will live to see it.

Eddie Blatnick was an average unremarkable guy who enjoyed tabletop war games and rpgs. They provided a bit of an escape from his mundane life. He was attending a convention and walking amongst the booths checking out figurines and games when he noticed a small unadorned table in the corner. He approached the table where a man was sitting behind three figurines on a small green felt strip. One of them caught his eye in particular.
 
"What is that?" 
 
The vendor looked up and Eddie noticed he had mismatched eyes, one dull brown and the other an odd sickly green. The vendor smiled at Eddie revealing a row of jagged yellowed teeth.
 
"That young sir is Goregnasher the Bloodhemoth."
 
Eddie stifled a laugh at the name, but found himself fascinated by the design. He purchased it, almost in a daze. That night he had a dream about his overbearing and bullying boss Mr. Purvis. Purvis was asleep in his bed when suddenly the wall exploded and Goregnasher burst in. Eight feet tall and bulging muscle the beast preceded to pummel and rend Purvis into an unidentifiable mass. Eddie awoke with a start, but found himself amused by his dark fantasy of revenge. Then his phone rang.
 
"Dude did you hear about Purvis? He's friggin' dead man. I hear it was like a truck smashed though his place. Crazy stuff, like blood everywh..."
 
Eddie hung up on his co-worker, his body numb and eyes wide with shock. He staggered into his living room and peered at the figurine. It was in same place on his shelf, but now fresh red "paint" adorned the axe and tentacled maw. His mind raced as he stared at it. Then, almost imperceptibly it seemed to move. Then to grow as if Eddie was willing it. He stepped back in fear, but there was a part of him, deep down, that began to ponder the possibilities that lie ahead.
 
 

When you have provable deities that hand out magic to their followers, the relationship is now inevitably going to be transactional rather than faith-based.  Their followers will do (or not do) things the god wants only in proportion to the benefits it offers (or punishments it withholds), and if the deal isn't satisfactory they'll find another god offering a more attractive deal.  Even if you've got some sort of divine serfdom system going where mortals are trapped by birth and can't easily change from one deity to another, they can still deny worship and refuse to obey if their god's demands are too exacting - which presumably weakens the deity and leaves them open to their rivals, who are certainly going to be interested in poaching followers in serf-worshipper situation.
 
Whole lot of problems waiting for deities who prove themselves.  Familiarity breeds contempt and exploitation, not blind faith.
 
The obscure Nexus: the Infinite City RPG had a good spin on this.  The game setting is a pandimensional metropolis where lots of deities try to operate, but the only ones that succeed understand how to bargain with worshippers and market themselves on a competitive market.  One of the most popular gods is Stleb, a cosmic horror/vampire worm thing that understands publicity and market trends well enough that it out-competes almost all the nicer gods by offering reliable healing, warding, and luck services - all for the low cost of what amounts to a harmless blood donation. It even splits the take with the Red Cross, who act as its collection and fulfillment agency in partnership with Stleb's priests.

That fact that both approaches work fine is a real selling point of HERO.
 
Mechanically, the barrier option could be stuck in a multipower if you wanted so you could make ice (solid, so decent DEF) and steam (a heat damage area damage effect) out of your water if it fits the power/spell concept.  That would be kind of neat. 

Bad news for those of,you who like to read absurdly long posts; great news for those of you who do not! 
 
 
Phone is going into the shop tomorrow; don't know how long,it will be there.  Last,time,was about three weeks, and I have no reason to assume that this time won't be the same.
 
I have not fallen out of love with you people; I am just offline.
 
Enjoy it fully!
 
 

 
 

Right.
 
The problem,is the ensuing discussion about what is _most_ correct; asking "how to" is like taking the NCLEX all over again:
 
Every answer is correct, but which is _most_ correct?  For my money, it's the simplest.  I have an appreciation for elegance.  Thus, in this case, I would probably use Change Environment or, if using it defensively, to with Doc's Barrier suggestion.
 
However, I in actuality do neither, because about the time 4e hit shelves, I snagged a copy of Fantasy HERO (the original; not the 4e one), and _immediately_ cribbed the Create rules into the Champiins rules.  For me, that is the most elegant solution for creating something.   Apparently after publishing 6e, Steve decided it was, too, and tossed a variant of them into one of the APGS.
 
 
 

🎄 Naughty! - A Metahumans Rising Adventure
After a century of imprisonment Krampus emerges from his icy tomb, and this year everyone is on his naughty list. Can the heroes save the world before this Christmas spirit turns everyone to coal?
 
Itch: https://housedok.itch.io/naughty
DTRPG: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/462526/Naughty--A-Metahumans-Rising-Adventure
 
Help Spread The Word:
Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/housedokpro.bsky.social/post/3kfnx6ubphi2c
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HouseDokPro/status/1731381414820803025

It's not the hypothetical owl stealth that matters (which doesn't apply anyway since the hybrid can't fly - owls are not especially quite on the ground), it's the neck rotation and incredible night vision that also picks out movement well thing.  Hypothetically it's harder to sneak on an owlbear than a regular bear, which makes it a superior guard animal.  If anything the bear's own stealth is probably helping the owl parts hunt better, since it's at least somewhat akin to an owl's game plan - just with less swooping and more charging and mauling involved. 
 
I've seen a few rulesets that gave them limited gliding abilities that restores swooping as an option, which would go a fair ways toward making these things less absurd.  Bears climb trees quite well, making reaching a position to swoop from easy enough.
 
It's also quite likely that the intent was get a fully flight-capable hybrid out of the experiment and this is the best they could do.  Wizards are usually not aeronautical (bio)engineers. 
 
Or the original creator really, really wanted something special for a rug in their love nest and had a fur-and-feathers fetish.  If you think the owlbear's weird you should see his chinchillafinches and hamsterobins.
 
Mind you, the whole concept only makes sense to people who've been huffing too much yellow lotus dust.  More sane wizards just build animated statues and the like when they want a guard.  The really sarcastic ones sculpt them to look like owlbears.  

BT is one of those games (like HERO) where remembering the rules from first edition means you're about 90% of the way to knowing the rules to the most current edition 40 years later.  Not unchanging at all, but skeletal framework of the game stays the same.
 
Veteran BT gamer tip - when you finish moving a unit, take a few seconds to write down both their offensive shooting mod (based on whether you walked/ran/jumped) and the defensive target mod (based on actual hexes moved with a bonus for jumping) on the unit record sheet somewhere.  You'll want two columns (or rows) and enough vertical (or horizontal) room to do that every turn, and it's usually a good idea to cross out the last activation's mods when you add the new ones just for clarity.  Saves a lot of time figuring mods later.  Some folks mark the mods next to the minis with specially colored dice instead or as well (which is easier on everyone since your opponent can just look at them rather than having to ask you) but they do add to the "crap on the map" problem and can easily get knocked around to the wrong face by accident during play.

I just got together with an old friend and played a short game of Battletech. Man, I know my wife jokes that I’m old, but my attention span was short. I was remembering rules 30 years ago but could remember how far I moved in the Turn and kept constantly looking up modifiers on movement. Even though I moved roughly the same each time. We both were counting on fingers to hit numbers.  I was a blast for sure and can’t wait to play again. I did happen to pull the luck shot of the night. My Stinger fell because it lost a leg so from Prone I rolled a Head shot on his Commando. Now it was only a MG but still. We both had some wild rolls.

As someone who started from the very beginning, I'm still vaguely baffled that people (self included) ever accepted all the TSR class/level cap nonsense.  The moment 3.0 dropped and they were gone almost everyone I gamed with breathed a huge sigh of relief and thought "Finally!" instead of feeling any sense of loss.  The edition wasn't perfect by any means, but it was incredibly popular after a long period of watching D&D fade into near-irrelevance, especially with younger gamers.  
 
It's not like the game was particularly balanced at any point in TSR's run, level caps and class restrictions or no.  Taking them away did make humans even less attractive, but even with them in place I remember way too many parties composed largely or purely of demihumans, particularly in AD&D.  I knew a DM who used humans as the sword-fodder (as in, people-shaped foes that were supposedly guilt-free to kill because they were innately hostile others - which was its own type of problem, but common thinking in the 80s and 90s) in their games.  Why use the usual orcs, goblins, etc. when they had no human PCs to object?  And elves!  Dear Gygax, elves and half-elves were everywhere in multiple flavors.  There was a reason the old ads for the Talislanta RPG had "No elves!" as a major selling point.    
 
Spot on about "losing the magic" when there are too many nonhumans.  Greatly prefer (say) Glorantha  where the nonhumans are truly strange and alien and it's rare to see even one as a PC with a human party.  When the trolls are easier to understand (and roleplay as) than Dwarves or elves you're doing something right to maintain the wonder - and then there's the stranger stuff like newtlings and baboons and morokanth.

Easy enough to find.  "Dynamic Duo Studios" has other art online.  They also seem to have faced a lawsuit from DC Comics, although it may have been dropped without going to court - not paying for access to that info and digging it up free is more trouble than I'm willing to go to, but it's the first thing that comes up on several search approaches.
 
He is, of course, an orphan, last of his species, sent to Earth as an infant from a dying world, escaping mere minutes before its destruction.  His rocket arrived on Christmas night, narrowly avoiding a collision with a certain airborne sleigh over the state of Kansas.  Concerned, Santa Claus followed the tiny ship down, discovering the child within and carrying him back to the North Pole where he lived for years as adopted child.  The young Clark Kringle developed amazing powers at he grew up in the magical environment of Santa's workshop, and upon reaching adulthood was deputized to provide backup for his adoptive father on that busiest night of the year.  The job had simply gotten to be too much for the old man as the world's population grew into the ten digit range, and Clark was uniquely qualified since he didn't need a sleigh or reindeer team to make his share of the deliveries in a timely fashion.
 
Driven by his conscience, Clark spends much of rest of the year opposing evil-doers as Santaman, greatly assisted by his access to the Naughty or Nice List.  When he isn't battling hatred and injustice he spends his time in the workshop, doing the work of a thousand elves all by himself.
 
So Lord Liaden, who's my guy?  I played your game.    
 
 

Easy enough to find.  "Dynamic Duo Studios" has other art online.  They also seem to have faced a lawsuit from DC Comics, although it may have been dropped without going to court - not paying for access to that info and digging it up free is more trouble than I'm willing to go to, but it's the first thing that comes up on several search approaches.
 
He is, of course, an orphan, last of his species, sent to Earth as an infant from a dying world, escaping mere minutes before its destruction.  His rocket arrived on Christmas night, narrowly avoiding a collision with a certain airborne sleigh over the state of Kansas.  Concerned, Santa Claus followed the tiny ship down, discovering the child within and carrying him back to the North Pole where he lived for years as adopted child.  The young Clark Kringle developed amazing powers at he grew up in the magical environment of Santa's workshop, and upon reaching adulthood was deputized to provide backup for his adoptive father on that busiest night of the year.  The job had simply gotten to be too much for the old man as the world's population grew into the ten digit range, and Clark was uniquely qualified since he didn't need a sleigh or reindeer team to make his share of the deliveries in a timely fashion.
 
Driven by his conscience, Clark spends much of rest of the year opposing evil-doers as Santaman, greatly assisted by his access to the Naughty or Nice List.  When he isn't battling hatred and injustice he spends his time in the workshop, doing the work of a thousand elves all by himself.
 
So Lord Liaden, who's my guy?  I played your game.    
 
 

This image doesn't really fit with the game, since we all know who it is; but it is a superheroic image, and it is the season, and Duke Bushido asked about it in relation to the version that's my Christmas avatar. So it seemed appropriate to leave it here.
 
I took the image off the Internet randomly, years ago. I'm afraid I don't remember where it's from, and I couldn't find it again. But here's the whole image I saved, touched up a bit for clarity.
 

Toth was amazing, its sad how little of his design and style ended up in Space Ghost because its such a killer concept.

My brother was a big Chronopia fan, they had some great minis but I don't know if its even around any more

It's the exact same situation as you see in the miniature gaming end of gaming.  Everyone (including many non-gamer folk) has heard of Games Workshop/Warhammer.  A disturbing number of minis gamers have never played a game from another company, and few don't even know there are other companies.  They're the biggest fish in a smallish pond, same as WotC/D&D is.
 
The fact D&D is far more than what either WotC or TSR publish is perhaps the most noteworthy difference between the two situations.  Even before the OGL there were hundreds of unlicensed 3PP things made for D&D, which is part of the reason TSR stands for They Sue Regularly for older grognards.  Since the OGL, that number's jumped by an order of magnitude or two and shows no sign of slowing even as 5e staggers from WotC's PR disasters of the last few years.  I can think of over a dozen OGL retro-clones of various editions of D&D, and hundreds more indie games using the license for all it's worth - and not just for fantasy, either.  A lot of the comments on this thread are talking as though 5e is D&D, when it's just a part of a much larger whole that's largely escaped the control of Hasbro/WotC. 
 
By comparison Warhammer is much more fully controlled by GW, even though it faces real competition from deliberately compatible miniatures ranges that gets worse every day as improving 3D printing tech is altering the face of minis gaming forever.  Closest parallel to that for RPGs is the increasing trend toward online play rather than face-to-face, something that got ahuge boost from teh pandemic.        
 

Alex Toth may be the biggest detectable influence on my art style. Back in the day I would be lying on the carpet infront of the TV watching these with a small sketch bad, and a handful of pens and pencils. He was drawing right up to his end, and did designs for shows up until the 90's, though he slowed way down after the death of his wife, who started as the H-B Receptionist.

Dude, you _gotta!_
 
This is my all-time favorite thread, and I only play for fun; I never want to win, because I am _horrible_ at the "find an image" part!  (To be fair, I am equally-horrible at judging, because I have so much fun seeing everyone's personal interpretation of the same image).
 
 
You gotta do it! 
 
 

I can see why now. 

I can see why now. 

A great deal of H-B's success with those shows (as well as many of the characters in them) can be credited to Alex Toth, who was hired by H-B after seeing his earlier work on Space Angel - where his art and plots almost managed to overcome the truly pathetic animation budget.  Given better resources to work with he produced wonders for H-B, including Space Ghost, Herculoids, Birdman, the Galaxy Trio and Dino Boy.  Safe to say that without him H-B would have been a very different company, and not for the better.