New GM seeking advice for a light-powered HEROS campaign

[Glenson]

Greetings, everyone.

I was recently asked by a friend of mine to learn more about Heros and GM an email based campaign. I have a general story in mind, but was advised to post here to get more information on how to run it.

What I had in mind was a group of normal human beings drawn, a call if you will, to come to a certain bank that is being robbed. Recently discovering powers, and an emblem burned into their wrists, they attempt to thrawt the robbery. When questioning the guy in charge, he just smiles, says something cryptic, and then vanishes like dust.

I was thinking of having the stories behind the campaign be episodic, with appearances from the mysterious robber, and a looming threat from elsewhere.

I can provide more details, if needed.

Please, if you wish to comment, please do so.

[mikesama]

Just remember the useful rules of running a hero game.

1: It's fine if it's easy at first, not only do the PCs not mind getting a cakewalk but it's easier to ramp up difficulty than ramp down without some strange explanations.
2: Villains steal stuff, including good tactics used by the Heroes, if you're ever in a jam use their own tactics against them.
3: Don't always hit their vulnerabilities, unless they took a vulnerability thats really common (vulnerable to physical HKA's you say, don't laugh it happened at a con game)
4: Set limits and don't hesitate to turn down a character concept that you were going to okay just because it's 'built within the rules' there are warning and stop sign powers which as a GM you are completely justified in saying 'NO' to.

[Glenson]

Thank you very much! The advice was great, and will come in handy

[Nolgroth]

Welcome aboard Glenson.

In a lot of ways, we are geared towards answering specific scenarios/concept questions. If ever you have a question about how to do something, post a thread. You'll get way more than you bargained for.

[Psybolt]

Always be ready to adjust your story if your players do something you didn't expect. It is a good idea to have plenty of ways to move your plot.

I have always liked a mystery in the role playing and Hero allows for that. I tend to give a lot of red herrings to have my players try and figure out what is going on. Balance that with progress so they do not get frustrated.

[ghost-angel]

What kind of hard parameters are you thinking of using?

As in points, disads, allowable concepts, etc?

Hero is geared towards making a Campaign do what you need it to. If you leave it too wide open things get confused very quickly.

[Sean Waters]

The best advice I can give to new GMs is don't let new players (or sneaky old players) near the character creation rules.

There is something about a role player told that they are playing a system that allows them to build anything - they feel the need to test the claim. That often means that you wind up with erm...interesting characters with lots of twiddly bits. That means a lot more for you, the GM, to worry about when you are running the game.

Tell them that, for this first game, you'll be making the characters for them. That also sounds like a lot more work for you, but it is not, because you'll be using some pretty basic templates, a brick, a brawler, a blaster and a brain. Give them each one (1!) interesting signature power, and (this is important) make sure they (and all other characters in the game who are ever likely to be in combat) are SPEED 4.

Start off simple.

One or two villains and a bunch of agents.

Make the villains simple too; a brick (NB it is a great idea to have all your villains have 20pd/ed, because that is a really easy number to subtract from rolled damage - I'm assuming that is a reasonable defence value for your game). Don't start characteristic inflation from the very beginning of the game - only increase characteristics if it is appropriate to do so for the character concept (you may need to use a pretty broad definition, or a campaign reason, to have decent CON and, maybe PRE values though). Try and make almost all the powers the characters use regularly 0 END.