Rich McGee

Given that we're playing a system where we can build anything... why do we have to slavishly ape the conventions of the stories Gygax et al loved?  Even by 1978 or so, when Appendix N was compiled, fantasy had gone in new directions, and in the almost 50 years since then it's gone in a lot more new directions. 
 
If you like that, play it.  More power to you, play what you enjoy.  As you note, there are a whole lot of games and settings that cater to that.  But there's a whole lot more to the fantasy genre than the authors whose heyday was the 1930's to the 1950's.  We don't need to lick the boots of D&D anymore.

Sure, that trick's been around since before roleplaying as we know it even existed.  There were all sorts of play-by-mail military/diplomatic campaign games in the 70s that used real calendars, and some that invented their own fictional calendars for alien planets or fantasy/alt-history settings.  If Gygax and his circle weren't aware of such things when designing D&D I'd be surprised, although I don't recall ever hearing it mentioned. 
 
Hmm...did TSR ever publish actual Greyhawk/Krynn/Toril/etc. calendars for sale?  I don't recall seeing them - just art calendars that used real-world months, etc. - but they seem like the kind of thing Gygax would try to milk some extra sales.    
 
One of my more recent DMs used an online tool for generating your own fictional calendar, which could produce some pretty fancy output if you had the printer to handle it.  That was over ten years ago, and I'm sure the tools have gotten even better since then what with all the competing "worldbuilder" software out there. 

And here I thought that only happened in those crappy AIP Gamera dubs that got riffed on MST3K. 

Crooked Mick (Actual name Archie Green) took his handle from a Folklore giant of a man from his native Australia's tall tales. His power isn't nearly so fanciful. He can grow to forty feet tall, gaining great strength and endurance, but a side effect of the shift in size is that his features become far less symetrical, causing him to lurch (Though with his long strides he still moves faster walking than some men sprinting) and making his face just ODD looking as well as less attractive. That said, he's a good looking fella when at his normal 1.78 Meters with an easy going smile. Some mistake him for a rough around the edges chest thumper but in truth, he's got a brilliant mind with a deep education in archetecture and civil engineering. More than once, that knowledge has allowed him to shore up a crumbling building long enough for people to get out. He also is a fair swimmer, having  dived into flood zones and acted as a human life boat.

Curse you, Duke, there's coffee everywhere now. 
 
It's the look on the cat's face more than anything.  Presumably the monocle on the guy's left eye is cold.
Don't ruin this for me, I'm really enjoying the absurdist vision of legions of 5e PCs squashing berries into their eyes before delving. 

For me the problem with minis has historically been that I have a very clear mental picture of my character, and it's really, really hard to find a mini that matches.  It's a little easier in fantasy because of D&D support, but supers TTRPGs is relatively niche so it doesn't have the critical mass to support a wide range of miniature production.  3D printing with custom meshes (such as from Hero Forge) can get you close to exact, but it involves a nontrivial investment in time and money, even before you get to painting.
 
Printed cardstock is just so much easier to deal with.

All fantasy?  I disagree with that.

De gustibus non disputandum. 
 
What makes something classic fantasy?  Because those series were both in their heyday 40 years ago.  Look back at 1974 when Lovecraft, Howard, and Ashton-Smith were writing their stuff... and it was 40 years before that.  None of those guys had any illusions that what they were writing was high literature.  (The Hobbit was published in 1937, as well.)
 
I don't build puns into my games, but as I said up-thread, both of those are in my "Appendix N".  And I've actually run a Myth Adventures game in Fantasy Hero. 
 
How much immersion does it really take to "I just want to bash orcs?"  You can do that with hex-and-counter skirmish level wargames (and where did D&D come from?).  If you're using a relatively complicated, full blown RPG system like Hero for that, IMO you might be doing more work than you need to. 

My tolerance varies, but if the game designer/GM thinks Xanth and Myth Adventures are classic fantasy I'm out.

I can understand how most of the original post can be jarring but in any world where magic is plentiful the practitioners, particularly those not so good ones will seek to produce things they can sell to make a living. This in turn will inspire better mages to make new or better products to have a better living and so on. They may not call it the "germ theory of disease" but any healer mage of any notable ability  will study disease and one will eventually make the connection and pass it along. 
     What pops my button is slang and puns, bad puns. 

I blame the fans. 
 
The game didn't bill itself as build the game you want.  The game billed itself as build a superhero.
 
Shortly afterward, the game creators offered a tweaked version of the rules and said "build yourself a spy according to these rules."  Fans said "this is exactly like the superhero rules!"  but it wasn't.  Very, very similar, at least in key high-profile bits of the system, but not the same.
 
Then the original rules were tweaked again and they went back to "build youself a superhero."  Then those rules were tweaked and,altered here and there and we fot "build yourself a superhero," and more variants and twesking of the superhero rules and spy rules lead to "build yourself a sorcerer" and "build yourself a cold war operative" and "build yourself an intergalactic adventurer" and even "build youself a mech."
 
And each one of those rules sets was _different_ in fundamental-for-their-intended-purposes ways, while retaining a lot of key similarities to the rules set that inspired the tweaks.  Unfortunately, they were similiar where the system is the most obvious, which lead to a lot of claims of "it's the exact same game!"
 
Sometimes, this was hyperbole by folks who noticed the similarities; sometimes it was sincere from folks who sae the obvious similarities and too few of the differences.
 
One thing lead to another, and we have the world's biggest set of "build yourself a superhero" while we run around proclaiming "build anything you want!"  While each subsequent edition has gotten more and more complex, and has, in its own way, tried to invent a balance that has never once existed within the rules, very little has been done to move it away from superheroes fundamentally; there have just been a thousand options dumped on top.
 
For example:  weapons familiarity, strength minimum, martial Arts, magic schools, incantations, gestures, spell components-
 
Absolutely _none_ of these are  necessary to build "6d6 magic missile" or 3d6 HKA battle axe."
 
They are just a bunch of points-sucks (for "balance") and options laid on top of Optic Blast and WolverClone and called "fantasy stuff...."
 
You _can_ make fantasy, and you dont have to squint super-hard, but you do have to pretend a lot of options are absolutely necessary, and ignore that you are using a system that, no matter how hard it has tried, to this day is optimized to make superheroes.
 
 
 
 
 

Like Isaac Asimov said: 
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “eureka”, but “that’s funny”.

Thank you for that insight, Mr. McGee. But we've asked you not to leave your room before you've had your meds.

The Herculoids are definitely a super-team and the adults are all members, but Dorno and maybe Gleep feel like sidekicks or mascots most of the time.  Open for debate, of course - they do get a lot of screen time.  Tara gets enough autonomy that she dodges the "damsel in distress" trope almost all the time, even if a lot of what she does is yelling for help (an entirely sensible thing to do when your allies are nearly-indestructible and you are a squishy human).
Now how did I forget Hellcow?  I would have put him at the top of a super-bovine list myself until those Chick Fil A books came out, but those things are way better than they have any right to be.  Definitely not pets, though. 

Honestly, is Hellcow really any more peculiar than most of the stuff Steve Gerber was involved in creating?  Remember the Elf With A Gun?
 
Hmmm, I wonder what happens if you mix Hellcow vampire milk with the milk from those original Skrulls Reed hypnotized into turning into dairy cows and then left unmonitored in upstate NY for years (which worked out as badly as you'd expect - the eventual follow-up story made Carpenter's Thing seem tame)?  Maybe find some radioactive cereal to go with it and we're getting into Villains & Vigilantes random power generation territory.
 
I found that one of his most appealing characteristics.  He just never stops laughing as his opponents flail around helplessly trying to deal with him before he does something awful to them.  It's like watching a more jovial Golden Age Specter at work.
They reminded me of a slimmed-down Legion of Super-Heroes, which is solidly in the Good Thing category for me.  Enjoyed them a lot more than the later and very similar Teen Force, which fell flat for me.
 
On topic, does Jabberjaw qualify as a super-pet?  An amphibious uplifted intelligent drum-playing shark feels kind of super, and the show's villains were occasionally pretty supervillainous, at least up to Bind villain mastermind standards.  Certainly more super than Sebastian the cat over in Josie - although if they'd stuck with comic canon he'd have been a former warlock who granted Alexandra spellcasting powers when in physical contact.
 
Definitely an old fart. 

There's really no One Right Answer to whether you play theater of the mind or on a map with most systems, but some game engines call for precise measurements and positioning more than others.  I'd put Hero down as one that favors a map by a fair margin, but it doesn't require it as much as (say) D&D 4e did.  13th Age proved that you could write a very similar game to 4e D&D while avoiding strict mapping altogether, but it took a ground-up rewrite to accomplish.  Similarly, there are systems where a detailed map is going to get in the way more than it helps a lot of the time - and TotM doesn't mean you never use simple sketch maps, anyway.  A "soft" engine like Forged in the Dark doesn't call for detailed tactical maps and miniatures very often, if ever, and I can't imagine playing Masks on a grid map because the fighting just isn't the focus of the game.
 
The best approach is probably to be flexible.  Even if you almost always map things out, some tactically simple fights (eg weak opposition, a very one-sided surprise attack, or a singular foe without much terrain) might be resolved faster without bothering to lay everything out.  Groups that usually use TotM combat will still find some complex or movement-intensive battles do call for at least a sketch map and some tokens, even if it requires some quick house rulings on distances and speeds.  If you're always doing one approach or another it's probably a matter of your table's tastes more than the game engine requirements - and you may be spending time you don't need to, either in map setup or in arguing about positioning in TotM play.

Although it really is a crocodile and not a gator, I will give this to Rich McGee.
I liked the references to luggage, his shorts (which are Egyptian) and the other bits and pieces.
 
So Rich take it away !

For what it's worth- and I think Chris Goodwin might remember this- I have a spell that grants night vision that requires taking an ember from a fire and pushing it into your eye.  That eye has _only_ night vision until it is healed.
 
 
 
Glad I could help, Sir (presumed; apologies if I am in error). 
 
 
 
 
Yeah; I am pretty sure it isnt too far removed from what you would see if your proctologist stood you in front of a mirror.... 
 
 

Kaboobie was a camel with wings, so I guess that might be considered "super." It was certainly a pet, unless your resistance to horses as pets extends to camels.   But I wasn't counting Shazan! because, as I'm sure you'll agree, he was the star and hero of that show, and the humans were his sidekicks (although they technically counted as his masters). Once Shazan was summoned, he never needed help from anyone to deal with whatever menace threatened them.
 
And the Galaxy Trio were my second favorites, as well. Genuine superheroes in space. And another group I would have liked origin stories for.
 
(Geez, we're a bunch of old farts for remembering all this stuff.) 👴

I had to look that up, I had no idea that was a real thing. I still have trouble believing it's a real thing. 🥴

I'm inclined to agree, although I do have a soft spot for the Galaxy Trio, which seemed to be trying harder than most to actually have some plot and worldbuilding, so the gap between Herculoids and them at second place isn't as big for me.  The only thing that even sort of resembles Herculoids that I can think of would be Marvel's Brute Force, which certainly has the "strange super-animals" routine going on (cyborgs in this case) but is a little weak on the human side of things - and the animals talking ruins the effect.
 
I wonder, does Kaboobie over on Shazzan count as a super-pet?  I suppose it's not really a supers cartoon anyway - much closer to the formula of Moby Dick, really.  Or Dino Boy in the Lost Valley - which included its own pet in the form of Bronty.

They probably added the berry because all the non-demis were tired of doing this:
 

The Herculoids was far and away my favorite of the H-B superhero cartoon series. AFAIK it's a unique concept -- I've never seen anything else like it. I would have loved to see an official origin story for them, because their background is quite mysterious. The animals are unique creatures, while Zandor's family appear to be the only humans on planet Amzot.
 
I've been thinking about pets in the official Champions Universe. We've already had mention of Witchcraft's cat familiar, Sunshine. Robert Caliburn of Vibora Bay keeps a miniature dragon he calls Nicotine, comparable to Shadowcat's pet Lockheed. The Mexican superhero Macahuitl is accompanied by Timin, a "spirit eagle" gifted to him by the Aztec god of the dead. During the Hero Universe's pulp era, the mysterious fighter of crime mundane and supernatural, the Raven, protected Hudson City with the aid of, among others, his raven ally Cagliostro. While it's not exactly a "pet" in the traditional fauna sense, the robot Gokin is the companion and protector of the Japanese inventor hero, Gadget Boy.

Scooby Doo?

Didn't they recover that version of Bat-Cow from an illegal slaughterhouse or something?  Pretty sure the dietary conversion came from firsthand experience with an abattoir and the pet was a side effect.
 
Nowhere near as dangerous as the Tick's Man-Eating Cow, of course.  And the Chick Fil A super-cows from the promotional comics are nobody's pets.