Steve: Delegating Authority?

[Lord Liaden]

Sounds like being able to pass some of the work on appeals to you.

After all, what's the fun of being the boss if there's no one for you to be over? ;)

(BTW I look forward to seeing some of the fruits of Allen's labors.) :)

[Steve Long]

What's fun is passing on the work I don't like. I still hold on to the work I enjoy. Now I just have Allen to help out with other stuff. ;)

To give you a concrete example, I would ordinarily have required probably 10-14 days to edit and develop Champions Battlegrounds, much of that time wasted re-formatting things due to peoples' general inability or unwillingness to follow the Writer's Guidelines. Thanks to the fact that Allen did a hard editing pass on it and took care of all that for me, it's going to take me three days (at most) to edit the book. That's an extra week or more in which I can write The VIPER Sourcebook, or start on the FHG, or update the Online USPD, or a zillion other things. Heck, at some point he may save me enough time that I can write Sidekick. ;)

Time is the one thing I am perpetually short on. Having someone to save me some is a godsend!

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Steve Long
To give you a concrete example, I would ordinarily have required probably 10-14 days to edit and develop Champions Battlegrounds, much of that time wasted re-formatting things due to peoples' general inability or unwillingness to follow the Writer's Guidelines. On a related note (not my reason for posting, but while I'm here), I'd like to offer any necessary apologies for whatever failure I had in this when writing TUV. I just had such a hard time changing gears from 4th Ed standards to 5th Ed, with nothing but FREd and the WG to guide me.... :eek:
Heck, at some point he may save me enough time that I can write Sidekick. Since this isn't the first reference I've seen to this, but haven't heard anything specific about it, I have to ask... what is Sidekick? :confused:

[Monolith]

Originally posted by BobGreenwade
Since this isn't the first reference I've seen to this, but haven't heard anything specific about it, I have to ask... what is Sidekick? :confused:
Sidekick is a rules-lite version of FREd that could be used as a simpler way to introduce new players to the HERO System. Something along the lines of the original 64 page Champions book with all the normal rules but less options and optional rules.

[Lord Liaden]

Monolith has it right, but I should add that Steve has proposed making it a free downloadable PDF. :)

[Derek Hiemforth]

Yeah, it's analogous to something like SJG's GURPS Lite rather than a different, supposedly easier, system like Fuzion or like Basic D&D was to AD&D.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden
Monolith has it right, but I should add that Steve has proposed making it a free downloadable PDF. :)
While I have nothing against a free version of the rules I personally feel DOJ should print Sidekick and sell it at the FLGS. Even though there is not much profit in a 64 page book there are a great many gamers who either do not have access to the internet to download a pdf or avoid pdf material entirely because it is not paper.

I would be happy to have it in any form, and I would even print it out for potential new gamers, but I would much prefer it to be a "real" book. I guess I am just old fashioned when it comes to game books. :)

[BobGreenwade]

Thanks for the data, everybody... I didn't mean to start a debate.... :D

[JmOz]

I would sugest instead putting a "Cover Price" on Sidekick (Based on what using a printer would cost, maybe a slight mark up) and allowing FLGS to sell printed versions, most have a computer and printer, and if they can get reinbursed for the expense then I think most would be willing to print it up for a customer. Still make it available as a free download, just make it easier for a retailer to recomp his expense for printing it for a customer...

[Lord Liaden]

Most of us who would want to GM a game using the HERO System would have been motivated enough to buy FREd in the first place. Certainly the Sidekick could be helpful to a new HERO GM getting his feet wet in the system, in which case IMO asking him to pay for the rules twice would be unfair (and unlikely to sell.) OTOH, I was really thinking that the Sidekick would be most useful for GMs trying to get a game started with players new to HERO, who are sometimes intimidated by the cost, complexity and sheer bulk of FREd. For this purpose the free Sidekick format would be ideal: the GM can download it, print out a bunch and hand them out to his players (maybe for a small contribution to cover printing costs.)

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Lord Liaden
For this purpose the free Sidekick format would be ideal: the GM can download it, print out a bunch and hand them out to his players (maybe for a small contribution to cover printing costs.)
I have nothing against a free pdf (free is one of my favorite words) but half of my players do not have a computer or access to the internet. Free means nothing to them, and all the other gamers like them, if they can never get to it.

I also do not think the main purpose of Sidekick is to make established players jobs easier (estabished GMs are already going to teach new players the things they do and do not want them to know about the game). I think the main purpose for Sidekick is to make the game easier to learn for someone who knows nothing about the HERO System and does not have an experienced player there to teach them. Sidekick should be the HERO System's water-wings. :)

As far as being forced to buy something twice to get more information, that just seems like the nature of the business. If someone pays $16.95 for a 64 page Sidekick and then decides 6 months later to buy FREd for $39.95 then that is just an investment into their gaming future. I paid $40.00 for FREd and then $25.00 for UMA just to get more martial arts information. You always pay more to get more useful information. And think of it this way, it is much better for people to pay $16.95 and decide they do not like something than to pay $39.95 and learn the same lesson. :)

[Nato]

If one of the purposes of Hero Sidekick is to attract new players to the Hero system, I think it almost NEEDS to be in print and in stores. Give it amazing cross-genre cover art and market the bejezus out of it. While giving it away for free as a PDF is a noble gesture, I don't think that way will pick up as many newbies. If they don't play HERO already, then they most likely don't go to the website. Sure, they'll hear that they can get it online, but a lot will forget to go home and check the site out. Just seems that you'd loose a lot of potential impulse buyers that way.

Heck, what about a comic-book sized fastplay intro like the SAS book. I think it was only a few bucks right? Prolly not near enough room.

Actually the 16.95 price that Monolith used as an example sounds reasonable.

Just thinking out loud I guess.

[Lord Liaden]

Okay, I can see the position of people who believe that Sidekick should be a book that people will see in game stores, so that it encourages them to buy more HERO stuff. However, IMHO there's more than enough books in game stores now to make Hero a visible presence. I don't think that I would be happy to pay $16.95 for a stripped-down version of the system, and then find out that to use its full potential I'd have to buy "the rest" of the system for an additional $39.95. (And that's just in the U.S. market - it's even steeper in Canada.) ;) Yes, I know that game lines like D&D charge a lot for multiple rule books, but one of the selling points of Hero Games is that you need only the main rulebook to play.

OTOH, I could see someone from the Legion of Heroes running a Hero demo printing up a bunch of these to hand out to prospective players, and perhaps charging a couple of dollars a copy. If you make it clear that this is only a sampling of the real (impressively packaged) rulebook, I don't think there'll be any misconception about the quality of the game line based on this.

I do still believe that Sidekick would be more use to a GM breaking in new players to Hero. And while not everyone has access to a computer to download this for themselves, I'd bet that almost everyone involved in this hobby has access to someone who has access to a computer.

That's the way I see it, anyway, but I respect anyone's differing opinion. :)

[Fitz]

If Sidekick is supposed to make it easy for new players to enter the wonderful world of HERO gaming, I think it needs to do more than just present a stripped-down version of Fred. It needs to showcase HERO's strengths -- primarily, the universal nature of the system -- and provide immediate access to a HERO System game with minimal preparation by the newbies.

To that end, I think that it should include:
i) Basic combat rules
ii) Basic information on character creation, with emphasis on Skills and Powers relevant to the.....
iii) Pregenerated characters for use in....
iv) Pregenerated scenarios for a range of different scenarios; say, Star Hero, Fantasy Hero, Champions (the biggies) and maybe a couple of minor genres such as Horror and Pulp (?)

As a side note, a lot of the work on generating these scenarios could be taken off Mr Long's broad, muscular, manly shoulders by farming it out to the assembled HERO multitudes in the form of a competition? My own scenario-generation skills are pretty puny compared with some other GMs I've played with, but I'd stretch my creative legs for the opportunity to score a sourcebook or subscription to Digital Hero or something, especially now that I'm poor as a churchmouse :)

Apart from stuff directly relevant to these scenarios and the characters provided for them, most of the information should be provided in the form of teasers to encourage punters to lash out their cash on Fred and the sourcebooks for their own favourite genres. By that I mean that in the character descriptions, possible variations on the archetypes could be mentioned, referencing things like Perks and Talents which they could find out about by buying the Big Black Book.

Ideally, I'd also like to see cardboard fold-up miniatures for al the pregenerated characters as well, but that would probably push the production cost up past a reasonable entry-level *, which brings me to my next point:

It needs to be CHEAP. Really cheap -- the punters aren't getting a complete game system here, they're getting a taste of the action. It's important that they don't feel ripped off. I'd like to see it on the shelves for $10 or thereabouts. It needs to be cheap enough to fall into the impulse-purchase range (and even at $US10, it's going to end up at about $NZ20 or more here in New Zealand).

I agree with those who think it should be marketed as a printed booklet, but I think it would be a good idea to provide it as a free download as well.

* Maybe if the back cover consisted of the fold-ups..... ? That could provide a bonus to encourage the purchase of a printed booklet over a downloadable PDF.