Changes At Hero

[Jason S.Walters]

Hero Games has been around for 30 years with ups and downs. The economy's been pretty rough lately, as has the gaming market. With declining sales and fewer releases, Hero has reached the point where it's no longer possible to maintain a full time staff of three, so it's scaling back.


Darren and Steve will be departing December 2nd, with our thanks for a decade of hard work that gave us 108 books, and best wishes for their future endeavors, which may include producing new books under a Hero System license. We'll keep you posted on that.


Jason will remain to continue shipping books and handling day-to-day matters. Existing books will continue to be available for purchase, and the company will continue in business, just a bit more slowly. The online store remains open. Steve will continue to answer rules questions on the Hero boards as "the guy who wrote the rulebook."


We're looking into doing a Kickstarter to print Book of the Empress, since it's complete and ready to go.


For the near future Hero would appreciate your kind thoughts and your patience. Transition periods of this sort take time, and Jason has a lot of work cut out for him, so the support of our fans is much appreciated.


—Posted by Jason Walters, General Manager

[Jason S.Walters]

Okay, as you can all see I've created a new account and abandoned by old Secret Master account. So please don't send any questions there.

Go ahead and post whatever questions you may have at this thread and I will do my best to answer them. Moderators, I'll be hosting a Google+ Hangout later on this week so we can talk about what this all means.

Please be patient with me. This announcement is but one aspect of what I have to do in the near future, and I may not be able to spend as much time as I would like on the forums. But I will do my best to honestly and transparently answer every question you may have.

Jason Walters

[Steve]

That's a major surprise heading into the end of the year. :(

I hope Hero can keep going. I'm going to start buying anything I don't already have until I complete my collection.

[AndyStaples]

Wow. My sympathies that it has come to this, and thank you for all the great times I've had (and will continue to have) thanks to you, Darren and Steve. I'm pretty much a DOJ bunny, having only really got into Hero with 5th edition, and while I don't have every book by a long shot, my Hero collection is measured in feet of shelf-space.

I hope Darren and Steve will find something to fill their time (and their paypackets) quickly.

What will this mean for new books? Will it be licensed publications only or are there still plans to release through Hero Games after Book of the Empress?

[Hermit]

To say I'm stunned would be putting it mildly. I think for now I'll just say "Thanks" to all those who've been so kind and worked so hard to bring us so many great products.

[yamamura]

I want to say thanks too. It has been a great 10 years.

[name_tamer]

This must be a joke?

[ghost-angel]

Wow. Surprising. Good luck with everything going into the future.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Best of luck to HERO!

[Bloodstone]

Not sure what to say, but you have my support for Book of the Empress...

[JohnTaber]

Good thoughts and wishes to everyone involved with Hero. I think I will miss the yearly visits the most. Steve and Darren please let us know if you will be in the Bay Area so we can visit. :)

I too am curious as to the future of the company, IPR, and the Hero line. Hoping for some announcements in these areas soon.

[lemming]

Surprising to me as well, though understandable if I just look at how many books I've bought recently. (It's the internet, anecdotal evidence is the key!)

Bummer and I hope things turn around for everyone concerned.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Stunning for sure, but I suppose not surprising, given the state of affairs of... well, the world, basically. :( All the best to the whole gang. The DoJ era has been Hero's greatest IMO, and I hope there will be more Hero goodness still to come. :)

Though I understand if some things can't be publicly disclosed, I'm curious whether Darren & Steve retain their ownership stake in the company, and are only leaving in terms of no longer being employees as well, or if they will no longer have a share in the company either.

[torchwolf]

Well, I'm a bit surprised, but I can only say thank you for all the really extraordinary books, all of you.

Best of luck to Darren and Steve with future endeavors (and personally I hope for more books from you under whatever label).

And best of luck to Jason with the current situation, hope everything will work out.

I'll be staying a supporter. :)

[Susano]

Jason,
I hope to hear from you at some point about the future of IPR. Also, how will affect BlackWyrm (if at all?)

And, to those on the forum, I will continue to develop Hero material via 3rd party sources if it's at all possible.

[OddHat]

Thank you to Steve and Darren for bringing my favorite game back, and for doing such an incredible job so well for so long. Thank you as well to Jason for helping keep the lights on.

[SatinKitty]

Best wishes to Darren and Steve. Will you guys still attend Gen Con ? Thank you for the wonderful Dream Dates. Thank you also for all those tasty GM dinners you provided. I hope you both are moving on to good things. Again, best wishes.

[Steve Long]

Thanx for the kind words, everyone! I really appreciate 'em. Obviously this isn't the pleasantest of news, but sometimes life deals you a lousy hand of cards.

Regardless, I hope all of y'all will continue to support the HERO System. Run a HERO game. Teach a friend the rules. Buy some books you don't already have! ;) (Heck, buy some you do have -- I'm sure everyone's aware of my longstanding theory that you should buy two or three copies of all Hero books as a hedge against fire and flood damage. :hex:)



I hope Darren and Steve will find something to fill their time (and their paypackets) quickly.

Me too! ;)

Actually, if all goes well hopefully y'all can help with that. Once everything gets settled, I hope to continue my creative endeavors in at least two ways. First, I'll be trying to produce HERO System books by myself, under a license from DOJ (probably starting with Mythic Hero, or at least that's my current thinking). Odds are I'll do such books using Kickstarter, so please come off your support when those get started. I wouldn't be surprised if Darren has some ideas along similar lines.

Second, as some of you have no doubt seen from my occasional Facebook updates, for the past year or so I've been working on Fantasy fiction in my off hours, so I think the time has come to see if I can actually sell some of it. This is a sort of Golden Age for self-publishing, so I figure it can't hurt to dip my toes in those waters. I'll let you know when that gets rolling and I hope you'll give my stories a try. ;)

[Steve Long]

Best wishes to Darren and Steve. Will you guys still attend Gen Con ?

I can't speak for Darren, but for me I can say "not sure yet." Fortunately there's plenty of time to think about it and make up my mind. ;) I'd hate to miss seeing so many old friends, so hopefully I can jigger up some professional reason to attend.

[Enforcer84]

Said it in the other thread will say it here too:

Best of luck to you guys and thank you for being the center of my world (Game and Forums) for a long time.


Speaking of which, will the forums still be around?

[Darren Watts]

As Steve says, it's all way too soon yet to make any commitments, but I'm also looking at the wide new world of self publishing, and I'll be damned if I'm going to junk all the time I've spent on Golden Age and Silver Age Champions without a fight. ;) So I strongly doubt you've seen the last of us yet. dw

[Steve Long]

Speaking of which, will the forums still be around?

Absolutely! The company's not going away, Darren and I just won't be directly employed by it anymore. The fora are in no danger. I think it's safe to say all of us want to support the HERO System and the awesome Hero fan community as much as we can.

[Susano]

As Steve says, it's all way too soon yet to make any commitments, but I'm also looking at the wide new world of self publishing, and I'll be damned if I'm going to junk all the time I've spent on Golden Age and Silver Age Champions without a fight. ;) So I strongly doubt you've seen the last of us yet. dw

That's good to hear.

[Cancer]

:jawdrop:

Best of luck to Darren and Steve.

[Enforcer84]

As Steve says, it's all way too soon yet to make any commitments, but I'm also looking at the wide new world of self publishing, and I'll be damned if I'm going to junk all the time I've spent on Golden Age and Silver Age Champions without a fight. ;) So I strongly doubt you've seen the last of us yet. dw


Absolutely! The company's not going away, Darren and I just won't be directly employed by it anymore. The fora are in no danger. I think it's safe to say all of us want to support the HERO System and the awesome Hero fan community as much as we can.

*sniff* Awwww you guys!

GROUP HUG!

*initiates sweeping grapple, OCV:6*

[Steve]

With this change, what is the fate of Hero Designer and Simon?

[mattingly]

Also, how will affect BlackWyrm (if at all?)
BlackWyrm is still kicking, and will still produce licensed HERO System books. And novels (don't forget that we've also published three dozen novels in the past three years!)

[ShelleyCM]

Best of luck to everyone going forward. You all rock!

[Susano]

BlackWyrm is still kicking, and will still produce licensed HERO System books. And novels (don't forget that we've also published three dozen novels in the past three years!)

I best get back to Mythic America. And also see about those proposals for future products I mentioned.

[Dreamstreamer]

Steve, Darren, best of luck!

I guess this means no more Weekly Chats with Steve Long?

Will there be a market for more freelancers?

[Steve Long]

I guess this means no more Weekly Chats with Steve Long?

Probably not on a weekly basis, but I can probably arrange some chats from time to time. ;)

I'll let Jason comment on the issue of freelancers, since he's the one with all the info on such matters.

[AndyStaples]

Regardless, I hope all of y'all will continue to support the HERO System. Run a HERO game. Teach a friend the rules. Buy some books you don't already have! ;) (Heck, buy some you do have -- I'm sure everyone's aware of my longstanding theory that you should buy two or three copies of all Hero books as a hedge against fire and flood damage. :hex:)

By curious coincidence, I'll be running a game for a regular player and two noobs on Wednesday.

I'm confident enough that the noobs will enjoy it that I ordered two copies of the Basic Rulebook for them... along with the HS Grimoire book & PDF for me, now it's back in print.

And I'm currently filling up some 5th edition Fantasy Hero supplement PDFs in my cart. I figure Jason may be a little busy to pop hardcopies in the mail just now, and these ones aren't in book/PDF bundles anyway, so I can order the books later.

So... Teach the rules to friends. Check. Buy new books. Check. Buy extra copies of books I have. Check.

[optimusvx]

Real sad about the news. But anyway, Thanks and good luck! Champions forever!

[Steve Long]

I figure Jason may be a little busy to pop hardcopies in the mail just now

Oh, he can find the time to fill any orders we get, have no fear of that -- buy all the hardcopy books you want! :)

[Steve]

Can the Kickstarter approach also be done for Champions Villains 3?

[keithcurtis]

Sorry to hear this guys. Hero gave me my leg up into the RPG freelancer market. Glad to hear that you're not closing your doors, nor surreptitiously fading unannounced and unheralded. Best of luck in future endeavors.

Keith "Glad I got to see you all together at Gencon" Curtis

[The Main Man]

And my day started off so... positively... Best of luck to everyone indeed. Wish I could say something profound and genius right now, but I don't believe my roll is high enough for that. :P

Hopefully something good will come of this; something that carves a new path for the HERO System to travel.

[yamamura]

Well I for one do not plan to stop using the system. We have been playing here in Eburg for the last 5 years and will continue to do so. I will be keeping an eye open for the Kickstarter plan as at least 3 out of 4 in group wants to help out.

[GoldenAge]

All HERO, all the time!

Good luck guys!

[IndianaJoe3]

Well crap.

I realize that you guys have a better view of what's going on than I do, but the Core Rules being out of stock indefinitely (AFAIK) and the primary content creator getting laid off do not give me a good feeling.

Steve, Darren, good luck with your future endeavors!

[bluesguy]

Count me in for any Kickstart projects. I have contributed to a few in the past.

[Supreme Serpent]

Best wishes to all.

HERO's had hard times before, and while it may be Stunned now it has always been Persistent.

Here's to the next great Recovery!

[djkester]

Steve and Darren,

I look forward to finding the products you guys do make. Awesome quality in gaming products is hard to come by IMO and its clear from the Hero Games products you guys are doing a good job. Also, I have recently become aware of my need to move away from paper based books. Its becoming a bit of a strange thing for me to prefer PDFs. So I enthusiastically support self publishing.

[Hugh Neilson]

Good to hear that there will still be new products out there, even if the shrinkage of DOJ/Hero is sad news indeed.

As I read through the first pages above, I thought about GAC and SAC - perhaps a bit more free time will see those come to fruition.

Best of luck to both of you, and to DOJ. Keep us up to date on any independent endeavours!


Actually, if all goes well hopefully y'all can help with that. Once everything gets settled, I hope to continue my creative endeavors in at least two ways. First, I'll be trying to produce HERO System books by myself, under a license from DOJ (probably starting with Mythic Hero, or at least that's my current thinking). Odds are I'll do such books using Kickstarter, so please come off your support when those get started. I wouldn't be surprised if Darren has some ideas along similar lines.

Second, as some of you have no doubt seen from my occasional Facebook updates, for the past year or so I've been working on Fantasy fiction in my off hours, so I think the time has come to see if I can actually sell some of it. This is a sort of Golden Age for self-publishing, so I figure it can't hurt to dip my toes in those waters. I'll let you know when that gets rolling and I hope you'll give my stories a try. ;)


As Steve says, it's all way too soon yet to make any commitments, but I'm also looking at the wide new world of self publishing, and I'll be damned if I'm going to junk all the time I've spent on Golden Age and Silver Age Champions without a fight. ;) So I strongly doubt you've seen the last of us yet. dw

[megaplayboy]

Steve, Darren, best wishes in future endeavors. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next.

To everyone else, keeping the system alive is as simple as running your games, teaching the system to noobs, and writing a rule, sourcebook or adventure idea here and there. I know I'm going to be plugging away at it for a while. :)

[djkester]

Steve, Darren, best wishes in future endeavors. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next.

To everyone else, keeping the system alive is as simple as running your games, teaching the system to noobs, and writing a rule, sourcebook or adventure idea here and there. I know I'm going to be plugging away at it for a while. :)

Yes, HS is not a dead system. Its just a company in transition from what has been to what will be. I see nothing as lost for me. I'll be introducing more people to Hero System in 2012. :)

[Lucius]

HERO Will Rise Again!: Regeneration (1 BODY per Year), Can Heal From Fuzion, Can Heal Market Share, Resurrection, Conditional Power As long as the fans don't give up ((Hero fans give up? Never); -0), Inherent (+1/4) (40 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Year, -6), 1 Charge which Recovers every >1 Season (-4), Restrainable (Only by means other than Grabs and Entangles; -1/4) Real Cost: 3

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary declares a Depression, and not just in an economic sense

[Scott Heine]

Bittersweet news indeed. So very sad to see the ending of any chapter like this, but thankful for years and years of great memories (and shelves and shelves of great products), not to mention friendships with some truly wonderful people! Trusting that there will be great adventures ahead in the lives of all the Hero folks, and looking forward to sharing in the fun wherever that may lead.

Scott

[GamePhil]

Sorry to see you go, hope things go well. Good luck to the former Secret Master.

[Susano]

Steve, Darren, best wishes in future endeavors. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with next.

To everyone else, keeping the system alive is as simple as running your games, teaching the system to noobs, and writing a rule, sourcebook or adventure idea here and there. I know I'm going to be plugging away at it for a while. :)

My website will still remain alive and kicking. And will still take submissions.

[TheQuestionMan]

Son of a B@%$#! Now we need information about Kickstart and how it will work for us.

Make mine a HERO, by HERO Games.

QM

[Jomster]

All the best to everyone for the future. It's been a stunningly good decade Hero-wise and here's to another, albeit under a different model.

Great to hear the forums are continuing and looking forward to more kickstarter info! :)

[tomd1969]

Well, darn it. :cry:

I wish everyone luck in their future endeavors.

[John T]

Well, as much as I'm disheartened by the news, we've all survived "dark ages" before (yes, I'm looking at you Fuzion...). I'm just glad I toddled back to the forums before that, or I'd have been completely floored. :p

[KawangaKid]

I rather liked Fuzion (some of it anyway). But I have long been worried about the financial health of the company given the downturn in the economy.

Hope you're giving some thought to exploring not just the quickstarter model but also other models out there in the indie realm of rpgs.

No real solid thoughts, but here's to HERO!

[John T]

Oh, I picked up the Fuzion books myself. Had some nice art, a few story ideas... and the expense supported the survival of the setting. But it was never the Hero System.

[Thanee]

Sad news, indeed.

My best wishes for the future of the HERO crew and those who have been working so hard for so many years now to provide us with endless hours of fun.

Bye
Thanee

[Steve Long]

Once again, thanx for all the kind wishes, folx!

Also, as Darren posted on another thread, in a predictably Murphy-esque fashion Jason's experiencing some computer troubles. He'll be back online to respond just as soon as possible, but in the meantime asked me to pass along the following:


1) We are determined to get and keep the core library - HS1, HS2, and Champions - in print and available to retailers at retailer rates.

2) HS1 & HS2 aren't completely out of print. In fact, HS2 is still in print, and copies of HS1 with damaged covers are still available at 50% off.

3) We are working on a new 3rd Party licensing deal that publishers should find *highly* attractive.

[death tribble]

so the website is ok for the time being ?

[GoldenAge]

so the website is ok for the time being ?

That's the big question. I use the HERO system once or twice a week... But I visit this site several times a day!!!

[megaplayboy]

That's the big question. I use the HERO system once or twice a week... But I visit this site several times a day!!!

Well, Jason assured everyone that Steve would still be answering rules questions--which pretty much requires that there be a forum. I wouldn't assume that means the forums will be around forever, but it's reasonable to assume there won't be any sudden surprise shutdowns without plenty of advance notice.

[kahuna's bro]

ank you for your contributions gentlemen

[Simon]

No worries on the site/forums going away - they're here to stay for the foreseeable future.

[tkdguy]

Steve and Darren, you'll be missed. Thanks for everything.

[Patriot]

So...like how many books do we need to buy to fix this financial issue?

[RexMundi]

Well, weathered every Champions/Hero speed-bump since I got my hands on 1st Ed way, way back in the day. Sorry to hear about the Darren and Steve moving on to other things, but I'm still all HERO all the time as well. Here's to wishing *raises the Makers Mark neat* Darren and Steve the best, and of course, HERO and Jason will still have our support as well.

Now to find more copies of the Core books......

~Rex

[death tribble]

No worries on the site/forums going away - they're here to stay for the foreseeable future.

But if you dn't ask you don't get an answer.

Thanks Simon. This helps a lot.

[Chris Goodwin]

There is no doubt that the news is sad, but the HERO System has survived not only Fuzion but Cybergames. I'm reasonably convinced that if it could come back from that then it can probably survive something like an asteroid strike. The cockroaches will one day be playing HERO System...

[Steve Long]

so the website is ok for the time being ?

Well, I can't speak for the company anymore, but I don't see it as a "for the time being" thing. I think the website, and the awesome fan community it supports, are "OK," period. Among other things, the site provides Hero with its Online Store, after all.

[Steve Long]

So...like how many books do we need to buy to fix this financial issue?

Many, many more, beginning in let's say 2005. ;)

But in the meantime, I think that stocking up on any existing products you don't have, and picking up new books like BotE when they're released (or supporting them via Kickstarter, which is essentially the same thing), will go a long way toward helping Jason and keeping things going.

And of course when Darren and I each get around to doing licensed supplements and suchlike, we'd appreciate your support as well. :)

[GoldenAge]

It's amazing how tempered this community's reaction to the news has been. Other places there would have been screaming and cries of the sky falling. But not here, just appreciation for jobs well done.

HERO fans are a hardy lot. :)

[Lord Mhoram]

It's amazing how tempered this community's reaction to the news has been. Other places there would have been screaming and cries of the sky falling. But not here, just appreciation for jobs well done.

HERO fans are a hardy lot. :)

I think it is just experience - we lived through Fuzion and Cybergames. This ain't nothing compared to that. :)

[steriaca]

Buy some books you don't already have! ;) (Heck, buy some you do have -- I'm sure everyone's aware of my longstanding theory that you should buy two or three copies of all Hero books as a hedge against fire and flood damage.

Hard to buy books when you can't find anybody in Milwaukee selling them. And, as you know, old Mill town is not in any ways a small town. (Well, it is also not Chicago eather, but that's another story.) I'm worried. I despertly want to pick up the Basic Charater Book, and the Hero System Martial Arts book, at least. And I want to write for the company (using the libary computer and a word prossing program). If there is no company, how can I write for the company? You don't have to pay me (just give me one copy of the finished book).

*sigh* If times are even toughter for the 'cockroach of gaming', how are things doing for WotC?

[Chuk]

Surprised to hear this but I probably shouldn't have been. Here's hoping the changeover is successful and so are all the people who have brought us so much good gaming (started in '82 myself, I think with Champions II...)

[Narf the Mouse]

Best of luck with your future endeavors.

[Patriot]

I was under the illusion that the MMORPG was going to help sales. Was that an incorrect assumption?

[Myrlyn]

First, thank you to Darren and Steve for all of your many contributions to the Hero System, and for helping to resurrect this game that many of us love so much (I'm an old school gamer who started playing Champions back in eighth grade with the first edition of the game). I wish you both well, and am sorry to see you leave the company, but will look forward to the possibility of some additional licensed materials from you.

Now here's a few questions for Jason:

1) So are Steve and Darren still part owners of Hero?

2) Are there other "Secret Masters" that retain partial ownership of Hero?

3) Will other books that made it to PDF make it to published hard copy formats (and yes I'm asking about Villains Vol. III)?

4) If core books aren't selling as desired, how are sales of adventures, etc.? Are there opportunities for other types of books that may still sell in this difficult economy?

5) Other than cut backs, what's the long term strategy for the company (and yes, I understand this may be a work in progress right now, but I'm curious)?

Thanks,
Keith

[Patriot]

Besides buying books, is there a way we can invest in the company?

[Martin2]

Good luck to all HERO people (employed by, writers and future writers and players etc).

Keep on playing and keeping HERO alive :)

[Rigel]

Though I generally dislike "me too" posts, I would like to join the chorus of fans who appreciate what Darren, Steve, and DoJ did to resurrect the greatest RPG system around. The DoJ era of Hero Games has been a prolific and wonderful time for fans old and new.

I guess now it's time for me to finish the CLOWN 6E manuscript. :)

[Thag13]

First of all, Thanks go to Steven and Darren for all of their hard work, and years into the company. I do hope to see your names on other material, and I will buy and support you.

To Jason, keep up the good work and I will do my best to support Hero, and continue to buy material, and keep introducing folks to the system.

To SImon, thanks for addressing the web site issues. I hope some agreement can be made to keep up this amazing site.

Things change, and I do think Hero can come back stronger than ever....

[Susano]

Hard to buy books when you can't find anybody in Milwaukee selling them. And, as you know, old Mill town is not in any ways a small town. (Well, it is also not Chicago eather, but that's another story.) I'm worried. I despertly want to pick up the Basic Charater Book, and the Hero System Martial Arts book, at least. And I want to write for the company (using the libary computer and a word prossing program). If there is no company, how can I write for the company? You don't have to pay me (just give me one copy of the finished book).

*sigh* If times are even toughter for the 'cockroach of gaming', how are things doing for WotC?

Purchase online if you can. As for writing for HERO, I think it'll be easier to work with people like D3 and BlackWyrm, who are/will be producing 3rd party products.

[yamamura]

Steve with the slowing down of books, I am guessing that the get your/friend's name in a book list for donators probably won't get touched? Sad if that is the case but I totally understand.

[Arc Esu]

I've only been with Hero since 5e, so in many ways Steve and Darren are Hero Games to me. Thanks to both of you for all the hard work and dedication over the years. Hero won't be the same without you, but it will live on. To quote Winston Churchill, "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

[Steve Long]

I am guessing that the get your/friend's name in a book list for donators probably won't get touched?

Not necessarily. I still have that list and will provide it to Jason whenever he's ready for it. The trick is that even at the best of time Hero only does so many books where peoples' names can be easily inserted. I got one into BotE, for example, but that was all because it's not a book focused on (a) good guys, or (b) humans. ;)

It's also possible that Darren or I might arrange to put peoples' names in appropriate licensed supplements we do, provided the people in question were willing to have us do that.

[yamamura]

Not necessarily. I still have that list and will provide it to Jason whenever he's ready for it. The trick is that even at the best of time Hero only does so many books where peoples' names can be easily inserted. I got one into BotE, for example, but that was all because it's not a book focused on (a) good guys, or (b) humans. ;)

It's also possible that Darren or I might arrange to put peoples' names in appropriate licensed supplements we do, provided the people in question were willing to have us do that.

I for one would have no problem with that. It would be cool to see my other friend's name in ink whether part of the Champion Universe or other supplement.

[CorPse]

Wow.

In a world where nothing lasts forever, 10 years is a hell of a long time.

Thanks guys for getting the beast back on its feet and breathing so much life into it.

Maybe Steve will have the time to go on Jeopardy now...

cP

[Dreamstreamer]

What about the friday updates on the Hero Games home page?

[Tasha]

I was under the illusion that the MMORPG was going to help sales. Was that an incorrect assumption?

You mean the MMO that went to Free to play in it's first year? I doubt that Cryptic is adding much money to Hero's business beyond what they paid for the Champions IP.

Well change is change. It will be interesting to see where things go from here.

Steve and Darren's time at Hero has marked the most prolific amount of game material being published for the game in all of Hero's History. It's too bad this happened before everything was converted to 6e. At least we did get Fantasy Hero and Star Hero before it all ended.

[Goradin]

Thanks for all the hard work, Steve and Darren. I hope that with this bad news becomes a golden opportunity for the two of you to exploit.

I really hope to see Villians 3 even if it's in B&W. I plan to buy Book of the Empress.

This economy stinks. Again, thanks for all the great material. I been a hero player since 82. Count on my wallet for those licensed products.

[Trencher]

Hero games have been in harsh weather before and will return to form it just needs the right set of books. I hope Hero games give Steve Long and other Hero system veterans free use of their license, it worked for DnD third edition!

[Ranxerox]

Will Hero have a table in the Dundracon dealer room? Every year I buy a couple of Hero books there, but if you aren't coming I will just order them online.

[Lucius]

There is no doubt that the news is sad, but the HERO System has survived not only Fuzion but Cybergames. I'm reasonably convinced that if it could come back from that then it can probably survive something like an asteroid strike. The cockroaches will one day be playing HERO System...

Have you noticed that the Extra Limbs Power text defines that Power as the way to get extra limbs, but as far as I see nowhere in the rules does it specify how many default limbs you get for free before it counts as "extra?"

Lucius Alexander

the palindromedary wants to buy extradimensional travel and just skip ahead to better times.

[schir1964]

My prayers go with you Steve and Darren.

- Christopher Mullins

[Susano]

Have you noticed that the Extra Limbs Power text defines that Power as the way to get extra limbs, but as far as I see nowhere in the rules does it specify how many default limbs you get for free before it counts as "extra?"

Actually, I think it does say anything over 4.

[Lucius]

Actually, I think it does say anything over 4.

Not under the Extra Limbs Power description in 6th ed.

Which means Chris Goodwin's mutant postapocalyptic roaches won't even have to change the wording.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedaries might change a few things

[marc]

limbs start at 5 .. head arm arm leg leg

[Trencher]

Rules discussion in the "the company is in trouble" thread. The more tings change....

[gojira]

:jawdrop:

Best of luck to Darren and Steve.


Yeah, this. ^

Fare well wherever you fare, Steve, Darren, Jason and Tina. I hope everything works out for the best.

[Ninja-Bear]

Let me too, add to the well wishing. I'm sadded, but not too surprised though. Steve thanks for answering my rule questions. (Seriously, how cool is that?)

[The Main Man]

Hero games have been in harsh weather before and will return to form it just needs the right set of books. I hope Hero games give Steve Long and other Hero system veterans free use of their license, it worked for DnD third edition!
That's what I was thinking: an OGL like that of either D20 or FUDGE could be just the ticket.

[Lord Liaden]

Say, what's up with Fred Hicks? He's been another key member of the Hero team.

[Dreamstreamer]

I believe Fred is hired to do the layout on a book-by-book basis. He does head up a lot of work for his own company, Evil Hat (http://www.evilhat.com/home/), and I love his blog, Deadly Fredly (http://www.deadlyfredly.com/).

[Lucius]

So if Steve Long isn't Line Developer anymore, who is?

Or does the Line go unDeveloped for a while?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary was hoping Steve Long would expand to become a Plane Developer, but that might make his name change to Steve Long&Wide

[Lucius]

limbs start at 5 .. head arm arm leg leg

Not that I doubt you, but do you have a cite for that?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary says Vol 1, P 226 is a cite for sore eyes

[Susano]

So if Steve Long isn't Line Developer anymore, who is?

Or does the Line go unDeveloped for a while?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary was hoping Steve Long would expand to become a Plane Developer, but that might make his name change to Steve Long&Wide

I think there will be a time of reorganization before these questions can be answered. However, if there is only Jason, then it sounds like he's it. But, he might farm out projects to others.

[archermoo]

I think there will be a time of reorganization before these questions can be answered. However, if there is only Jason, then it sounds like he's it. But, he might farm out projects to others.

On the flip side of that, Jason has stated that Steve will continue answering rules questions. :) But yeah, I'm guessing that things like that will be a bit softer for at least a while.

[HeroTina]

Hello Everyone: Jason Walters here! The website seems determined to keep me locked out no matter which of my accounts I use - and Dan is on vacation right now - so I've logged on using my wife's account to answer as many questions as I can. If don't get to yours this posting, I apologize; there are an awful lot of them.

1) Steve and I are working on a new Hero System license which we believe will be advantageous to potential publishers, as well as encouraging them to make their books available through the Hero Store. I will post it in its entirety when it is finished and has been approved by our investors so that all of you can review it.
2) We are going to be working with a new printer that Darren has found to get the core library back in stock (though, admittedly, the new versions of these books will most likely be in black and white). We currently consider 6E1: Character Creation, 6E2: Combat & Adventuring, Champions, and Hero System Basic Rulebook to be the core library.

If sales go well, we may bring other 6th edition titles back into print using this printer as well.

3) Of those four titles two – 6E2: Combat & Adventuring and Hero System Basic Rulebook – are still very much in stock, and damaged copies of 6E1: Character Creation are available at half-price. Only Champions is *fully* out of print in physical form.

4) Steve and I will be working on getting a Kickstarter together to launch Book of the Empress. If that goes well, we will consider another Kickstarter for Champions Villains Three: Solo Villains. If that also goes well we will see what we see. Steve may choose to write some more Hero books and release them in that manner. Possibly Darren and I will too - it’s all about demand at that point.

5) I will be working to make certain that physical copies of Hero System 6th Edition books are still available to fans. I have several potential options for pursuing that goal, but we’re going to have to crunch the numbers and see what works. You will know more as I know more.

6) The website isn’t going anywhere. In fact, we have every intention of maintaining Hero Games as a going concern. We’re just going to have to see what that means based on book sales, fan enthusiasm (which, bless you all, seems to still be high), and the like.

7) We have a plan for keeping Hero books in your FLGS. (In fact, at the moment no economically feasible option for achieving that goal is off the table.) But it may take a little while to implement, so please be patient with us while we work toward that goal.

8) If I haven’t answered your private communication, it’s because I can’t get at it yet. Feel free to email me at midianranch@gmail.com.

Jason Walters

[Lucius]

Thank you

Lucius Alexander

And a palindromedary

[kahuna's bro]

whats a kickstartetr /

[Ternaugh]

whats a kickstartetr /

Crowdsourced fundraising for projects. Can be for publishing a book, or supporting a play, or developing a product. Usuallly, there's a dollar target, and multiple levels of investment. I'd assume that for a book, we'd see an entry level PDF, then a book for a few bucks more, then bundles for more still. Larger donations might mean special "swag", as well.

Their website is here: http://www.kickstarter.com/

JoeG

[kahuna's bro]

thanks

[megaplayboy]

Hmm. 161 projects listed under "RPG". Average funding target looks like 3-10k. One project got funded at 50k! Makes me curious what sort of funding range would be required for, say, a 300 page softcover hero product...

[djkester]

Jason

Thanks for the details. I am looking forward to hearing more.

Steve, Jason, and others involved, if the goal is to move to a third party development license this will distribute the ownership of the IP to more of an Opensource model. I like it. :)

I hope that the solution you propose will help the would be authors and developers understand the company's overall marketing strategy for these third party products. Especially sense selling them through the Hero store would of course be the best for everyone.

Also, I hope that details about the review and approval process are included. One problem I think would be authors have is they don't understand the time and energy to get a product from initial draft to ready for release and without a clear understanding of expectations it is likely hard to hit.

[bigbywolfe]

Not that I doubt you, but do you have a cite for that?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary says Vol 1, P 226 is a cite for sore eyes
The default Hit Location Chart comes to mind...

[Lucius]

The default Hit Location Chart comes to mind...

A good point.

Lucius Alexander

we need a hit location chart for a palindromedary

[megaplayboy]

A good point.

Lucius Alexander

we need a hit location chart for a palindromedary

Location 3-5: head
Location 16-18: head

[Escafarc]

I thought extra heads were built with Duplication?

[Bloodstone]

I thought extra heads were built with Duplication?

That's one way of doing it...

And while the default human template assumes 5 "limbs", we typically only invoke extra limbs power when said limbs are manipulatory or combat worthy.

Many tails and extra arms are thus considered extra limbs most of the time, while more decorative tails (like dogs), wings and additional legs are often not.

But we should probably take this sort of discussion to another thread....

[Kaze9999]

Hello Everyone: Jason Walters here! The website seems determined to keep me locked out no matter which of my accounts I use - and Dan is on vacation right now - so I've logged on using my wife's account to answer as many questions as I can. If don't get to yours this posting, I apologize; there are an awful lot of them.

1) Steve and I are working on a new Hero System license which we believe will be advantageous to potential publishers, as well as encouraging them to make their books available through the Hero Store. I will post it in its entirety when it is finished and has been approved by our investors so that all of you can review it.
2) We are going to be working with a new printer that Darren has found to get the core library back in stock (though, admittedly, the new versions of these books will most likely be in black and white). We currently consider 6E1: Character Creation, 6E2: Combat & Adventuring, Champions, and Hero System Basic Rulebook to be the core library.

If sales go well, we may bring other 6th edition titles back into print using this printer as well.

3) Of those four titles two – 6E2: Combat & Adventuring and Hero System Basic Rulebook – are still very much in stock, and damaged copies of 6E1: Character Creation are available at half-price. Only Champions is *fully* out of print in physical form.

4) Steve and I will be working on getting a Kickstarter together to launch Book of the Empress. If that goes well, we will consider another Kickstarter for Champions Villains Three: Solo Villains. If that also goes well we will see what we see. Steve may choose to write some more Hero books and release them in that manner. Possibly Darren and I will too - it’s all about demand at that point.

5) I will be working to make certain that physical copies of Hero System 6th Edition books are still available to fans. I have several potential options for pursuing that goal, but we’re going to have to crunch the numbers and see what works. You will know more as I know more.

6) The website isn’t going anywhere. In fact, we have every intention of maintaining Hero Games as a going concern. We’re just going to have to see what that means based on book sales, fan enthusiasm (which, bless you all, seems to still be high), and the like.

7) We have a plan for keeping Hero books in your FLGS. (In fact, at the moment no economically feasible option for achieving that goal is off the table.) But it may take a little while to implement, so please be patient with us while we work toward that goal.

8) If I haven’t answered your private communication, it’s because I can’t get at it yet. Feel free to email me at midianranch@gmail.com.

Jason Walters

Thank you so much for everything you guys! Long time fan of Champions and Hero System back to 1981, and will definitely keep the faith no matter what the future holds!

I do have two questions for your consideration when you are able:

1) Will DOJ continue and add support for previous editions the way that White Wolf does for their games and Catalyst does for Shadow Run and Iron Crown does for their games just to name a few? There are fifth edition and older products available in hard copy in the online bookstore that are not available in PDF. I realize this would not be a big priority, but it might be a viable model to let licensees provide new content while gradually expanding the PDF rule sets to cover all the previous editions and publications. I don't know if 'Valdoran Age' even sells 1 copy a year, but getting it into PDF would be a one time cost and then even miniscule sales would still be a sales? Same thought for back filling Hero Designer packs for products that don't have them.

2) Will the new, generous licensing be made available for older editions? Traveller Hero from ComStar and Echoes of Heaven from Final Redoubt for Fantasy Hero for example were both extravagantly well done Fifth Edition Hero licensed products that were discontinued for Hero System when their licenses lapsed. I would love to see them become available again, especially through the Hero Games Online store!

[Kaze9999]

One other question, is there a plan to straighten out/streamline the arrangement with Dan for Hero Designer payments so hopefully it would help justify his developer time on it? I think that especially as we move to a more 'e-publishing' model, Hero Designer support is a huge advantage to Hero System consumers, and I would love to see Dan incentivized to explore more development of the tool set, maybe even in a cloud-based software as a service option?

Oh, and would it be possible to position the store for all PDF with a strong 'print on demand' partnership with a third party?

[Steve Long]

Makes me curious what sort of funding range would be required for, say, a 300 page softcover hero product...

I can't speak to what DOJ is thinking along these lines. But I can give you my perspective on it insofar as potential projects I have in mind are concerned.

The answer is: it depends on the amount of work required to create that book. Things that have to be factored in include:

1. My time and effort to write the book. If it's a big project (like Mythic Hero, for example), then I have to calculate X months' worth of "salary" for me, since otherwise I'll have nothing to live on. For a multi-month project, even paying myself at skimpy gaming industry wages that's still going to come to a lot of money right off the bat.

2. The cost of art, if the book is going to include art.

3. The cost of printing the book.

4. The cost of shipping the book.

5. The cost of any "extra" rewards given to high-level pledgers (say, a free t-shirt with the book's logo on it, or the extra shipping costs for sending me books to autograph).

6. The fees taken out by Kickstarter and Amazon Payments for providing the service in the first place.


When I actually launch one of these Kickstarters, part of the pitch will involve breaking these expenses down more precisely to show you "where the money's going." After all, you're being asked to pledge your support, so you should get some idea of what you're paying for! :) For big projects* I suspect that they're going to require so much money that I will have difficulty funding them -- I imagine it will astonish some observers what it actually costs to produce a major RPG supplement, and some simply won't believe it at all. But it costs nothing to run it up the flagpole and see what happens. ;)



*: Let me head one suggestion off at the pass right now -- "Well, can't you just break it up into smaller pieces and do a Kickstarter for each one?" The answer to that is -- probably not. I have considered that, and haven't entirely dismissed it, but there are a number of factors arguing against it. First, HERO fans don't seem to like that approach (for example, I'll bet there are more than a few of you out there who haven't bought any volumes of Champions Villains yet because you want to wait until they're all available). Second, it's probably going to cause some people not to pledge to any of the projects at all, on the thought that they can "just wait and get it when it's all compiled into one book" (much the same way that many comics readers these days don't buy individual issues, they wait for the trade paperback compilation). Third, doing that eats up a lot more of my time on administrative matters, making the whole project less profitable. Fourth, I like doing big projects; splitting a book like MH into multiple "pieces" weakens the impact and value of it not only for me as a creator, but I suspect for many potential backers as well.

[Steve Long]

Lest I sound entirely negative -- which certainly doesn't mirror my feelings about upcoming projects! -- I should point out that there's a happy flip-side to the Kickstarter coin. While on the one hand a project might not get sufficient funding to launch, it's also possible that it gets much more than it initially asked for.

One of the great things about exceeding a goal (besides the obvious) is that as the project goes on, if it meets its first goal early I can add other goals. For example, if my target of X is reached within ten days, I can update the Kickstarter to say, "Hey, we're doin' great, and now, if we reach x + 50%, I'll make the book a hardcover!" (or "I'll make it full color!" or "everyone gets an extra copy!" or "everyone gets a 2X t-shirt with the book's cover on it!" or whatever else seems like it might encourage more pledges without unduly increasing my workload or inhibiting my ability to make a profit ;) ).

[Narf the Mouse]

Good to know the cloud seems to have a silver lining. :)

[djkester]

Steve,

Thanks for the great post. I appreciate knowing your perspective. Working in an industry that is currently filled with free work (mobile applications) i experience the effect of sticker shock on people as well.

I'll be interested in the Kickstarter project when you get them going. Also, with printing run costs added to the mix a Kickstarter project would be much larger. I would like to see you put up one project to pay for the development of the book/material and one to pay for the initial print run. If you contribute to the first (at some minimum value) you get a PDF if you contribute to the second (again at some value level) you get a book. If the second project doesn't get funded then you'd need to go the way of the Print on Demand for books unless DOJ or other company wanted to fund the initial print run.

[optimusvx]

Without sounding too impatient (though I am) when will we see Book of the Empress up at Kickstarter. I also assume that it will include pdf and book bundle; or one of the other options.

[Steve Long]

Thanks for the great post. I appreciate knowing your perspective. Working in an industry that is currently filled with free work (mobile applications) i experience the effect of sticker shock on people as well.

Yowch! I can imagine.



I'll be interested in the Kickstarter project when you get them going. Also, with printing run costs added to the mix a Kickstarter project would be much larger. I would like to see you put up one project to pay for the development of the book/material and one to pay for the initial print run. If you contribute to the first (at some minimum value) you get a PDF if you contribute to the second (again at some value level) you get a book. If the second project doesn't get funded then you'd need to go the way of the Print on Demand for books unless DOJ or other company wanted to fund the initial print run.

I've thought of that too, but I'm concerned that approach would consign the "let's print this book" secondary Kickstarter to almost certain failure (particularly given that the bulk of the costs, i.e., keeping me from starving, would be incurred even if only a PDF were produced).

Still, you never know how I may decide to go in the end. And one virtue of the Kickstarter model -- if I try one that fails, there's nothing preventing me from dialing it back and trying again in a different/more "restrained" way, if I think success is likely the second time 'round. ;)

[djkester]

Steve,

I agree their is risk to the learning curve of running Kickstarter projects. One thing to mitigate that would be to find a mentor who has been using kickstarter already. I saw a project today up there for a comic book. The presentation and rewards packages were well thought out. I would hope that some of those folks would be available for some mentoring at least via email.

Also, in regard to the second project. I would expect that if you break the project into two parts it complicates the revenue model pretty extensively. I had started to write more on that but in the end went the way of keeping my post short and leaving out the discussion on pricing the two efforts. The major issue is as you pointed out, the cost of the project is tied mostly to the one time development costs. The cost of book printing is mostly recoverable assuming you have enough sales channels with buy commitments. It might be best to save the print side of the project for the company side of your business where the purchase of the print run can be leveraged against future earnings from the book sales. Even though there is a risk to having books you can't sell simply having had enough interest in the original project to fund it should indicate the level of overall interest and allow you to do an effective risk evaluation on the print run and size.

I for one am mostly interested in the PDF versions. With my iPad I'm moving away more and more from my books to using it for looking things up and reading. Although I plan to purchase several copies of the Basic book for the table when we are playing.

If you can't tell I'm fascinated by the changes going on at DOJ and for the Hero Games product line.

[Gary Ciaramella]

OMG... I logged on to read the latest update and I was... Is this a joke?

This is terrible... I am so sorry that Hero is going through this downturn. A Hero Games without Steve Long is... flabbergasting!

I wish I could have bought more books along the line... I understand the concept of the downturned economy though. I for one, promise to continue future Hero Games products, in house and 3rd party as well, more than I have.

I want to see Hero Games around for a long time, with Steve and Jason as a part of it once again.

[tkdguy]

Thanks again for everything, Steve! We'll miss you.

[wazza]

IMHO Steve IS Hero Games. Goodbye Champions et al...

[John T]

What was it before Steve got there?..

[Dust Raven]

Well, as much as I'm disheartened by the news, we've all survived "dark ages" before (yes, I'm looking at you Fuzion...). I'm just glad I toddled back to the forums before that, or I'd have been completely floored. :p

Well, I hadn't toddled back yet, so colored me floored. I'm glad the company will still be around, but I'm kinda sad I wasn't able to do my part in buying more books. Odd thing is, I have an opportunity to start a new campaign with some local friends, none of which have any books (save for a few 5th edition rulebooks).

[Darren Watts]

A Hero Games without Steve Long is... flabbergasting!... I want to see Hero Games around for a long time, with Steve and Jason as a part of it once again.

Dude, I'm standing right here! ;) dw

[djkester]

Darren, your part at DOJ was mostly invisible to me. I look forward to hearing more about your up coming gaming industry work.

[Susano]

Darren, your part at DOJ was mostly invisible to me. I look forward to hearing more about your up coming gaming industry work.

Well, for what it's worth, it wasn't to me.

[CourtFool]

Fare thee well, Darren and Steve.

[djkester]

Well, for what it's worth, it wasn't to me.

@susano,

I realized after your post. My post could come across as a slight. I sure didn't mean it that way. I just haven't had a chance to read or share with Darren while Steve's roll was very visible to me.

@Darren I am sure that your efforts will be greatly missed at the company. As I recall Steve's report on your activities being that you were very busy.

[Susano]

@susano,

I realized after your post. My post could come across as a slight. I sure didn't mean it that way. I just haven't had a chance to read or share with Darren while Steve's roll was very visible to me.

@Darren I am sure that your efforts will be greatly missed at the company. As I recall Steve's report on your activities being that you were very busy.

I also realize that I have worked and talked directly with Darren from time to time, most at Conventions. So I have a different perspective on things.

[Gary Ciaramella]

Dude, I'm standing right here! ;) dw

Forgive me, I mixed up the names... I meant you. :D

[tkdguy]

Best of luck, Steve and Darren. Please drop by from time to time.

[Patriot]

Does someone have a link ( or just more info ) about jumpstart?

[Warp9]

Thanks for all the cool books guys!

[megaplayboy]

While I definitely think that Steve should resume working on the next couple books he was planning to write, and that Darren should go ahead and get Silver and Golden Age Champs sourcebooks ready to go, perhaps it would be prudent, going into the new year, for Hero to put up a poll asking people what products they'd most like to see in the next year. I know, for example, that I'd really like to see the Hero System Vehicles book and the Cthulhu Hero and Horror Hero books. I suspect there'd be more than slight demand for Hero System Weapons(vols. I-III? or one giant hardcover?) and a couple other potential releases. Unfortunately, I doubt there'd be enough support for a 3rd APG any time in the next couple years, or for SH setting books. But perhaps whatever doesn't generate sufficient demand could provide incentive for the "amateurs" and DIYers to take up the slack and collaborate on their own unofficial (and, most likely, free) products.

[Dreamstreamer]

Does someone have a link ( or just more info ) about jumpstart?

I believe you meant Kickstarter, right? Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/

[Doc Quantum]

You're all being very brave about this, so I'll perform catharsis on your behalf.


:weep::weep::weep::weep::weep::weep::weep::weep::w eep:



(falls on floor. beats head, fist and heels against floor while doing the Darth Vader "Nooooooo!" over and over)

There. Sniff. I feel better. How about you?

I discovered Hero when it was in the 4th edition under Iron Crown. The Fuzion setting was interesting but it didn't seem to really fit, imo. Then Steve Long & Co. came in and turned it into a setting I love. I'm serious when I say that the entire official setting has done more than anything else to make me appreciate good literature just from searching for ideas.

Steve and Darren, I'm sure we'll all be internet-stalking you in the future so keep up the good work and good luck!:thumbup:

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Besides the obvious negatives for all involved, the other really bad thing for me is that I really wanted to see Mythic Hero printed...but given the available info..that's not on the immediate drawing board. "shrugs"

[Greywind]

Does someone have a link ( or just more info ) about jumpstart?
www.jumpstart.com

:p

[Roth]

Holy Mother Goddess! I'm sad to hear that the economy has effected the company that badly and I hope that everything turns out okay for you guys in the end. I've been playing the game for... not as long as some and longer than others, and this past 10ish years have been brilliant. Thanks.

[Lord Liaden]

Haven't really expressed myself on this thread before now, because I've been processing this information, as well as recovering from feeling like I was punched in the gut.

Although I've played Hero Games almost since the first year of Champions, my serious involvement with the Hero gamer community began with this website and these forums. I signed on during the beginning of the Cybergames death-spiral, only to witness the resurrection of the company under DOJ.

The past decade has been a time of considerable trial for me. During that time the fascinating and exciting worlds and adventures spun by Hero Games, and interactions with its outstanding creative personnel and fan community, on this site and by other means, has often been a comfort and refuge. Somewhere I could go to talk about and share the hobby and other interests I love, where I didn't have to dwell on my own problems. I also gained the opportunity to contribute to the hobby and community in my own small way, which has been a great privilege.

I'm very grateful to all of you for this gift. (Yeah, I know the company was charging me for most of this stuff. It's a metaphor, you Philistines.) :p I wish the DOJ alumni great success in their future endeavors, and look forward to more of their quality HERO product as time and resources permit. So long, and thanks for all the fish. ;)

[Doc Quantum]

We've wandered in the wilderness before(post-ICE) and HERO is still around. We'll get through this.

[Steve Long]

While I definitely think that Steve should resume working on the next couple books he was planning to write, and that Darren should go ahead and get Silver and Golden Age Champs sourcebooks ready to go, perhaps it would be prudent, going into the new year, for Hero to put up a poll asking people what products they'd most like to see in the next year. I know, for example, that I'd really like to see the Hero System Vehicles book and the Cthulhu Hero and Horror Hero books. I suspect there'd be more than slight demand for Hero System Weapons(vols. I-III? or one giant hardcover?) and a couple other potential releases. Unfortunately, I doubt there'd be enough support for a 3rd APG any time in the next couple years, or for SH setting books. But perhaps whatever doesn't generate sufficient demand could provide incentive for the "amateurs" and DIYers to take up the slack and collaborate on their own unofficial (and, most likely, free) products.

There are a few things to consider here.

1. It's absolutely true that Darren and I are both always interested to hear what Hero fans have to say! I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of running a poll at some point to ask for input on potential future projects I might write as a Hero licensee.

2. However, it's also true that I prefer to work on projects that are of greater interest to me personally (for obvious reasons ;) ). And there are some I just don't feel qualified to write for whatever reason, regardless of how many folx want 'em. Conversely, there are some that suggest themselves as possibilities because they'd be so easy to do that they're worth a shot even if there's not a huge outcry for 'em in a poll.

3. Let's not discount the fact that Kickstarter itself has a sort of poll-like function -- if enough people don't want a project, it doesn't get funded and doesn't happen. Obviously it helps to have information in advance, but with Kickstarter the proof is very much in the pudding, as they say. ;)

4. I don't think I'm stealing any of Jason's thunder to say that Horror Hero and Cthulhu Hero are pretty much off the table at this point. Both involve working with a freelancer (Ken Hite), and obviously right now the money's not there for such outside expenses. I won't say never, and I won't say it might not be feasible via Kickstarter or the like at some point, but I suspect that Ken has enough people offering him work that he doesn't need to depend on such vagaries.

5. An APG3 is absolutely impossible right now. I cleaned out my file of notes and ideas for APGs writing APG2; there's simply not enough material/ideas of quality to make a book. It will be several years before that could even be considered, IMO.

6. I would love (love, love, love) to write a "HERO System Weapons" book (and for that matter a "HERO System Armor" book); I've wanted to do that for years. Unfortunately I estimate it would take 6-8 months of my time, and I doubt a Kickstarter can raise enough money to support such a project. Just funding Mythic Hero is going to be tough enough. ;)


This is an intriguing enough subject that I think I'll head over to the Discussion board and post a brief description of projects I'm thinking about. It won't be a poll but people are welcome to come chime in. ;)

Edit: Here's the aforementioned thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/87827-Possible-HERO-System-Supplement-Kickstarters-From-Steve-What-Interests-You?p=2252224#post2252224

[Killer Shrike]

Wow...I'm surprisingly bummed by this news.

Thanks for all the great books, and general toil to keep the HERO System going in all of its crunchy mechanical glory. It's been an awesome, epically badass, ride. Steve & Darren, I wish good fortune on your future endeavors.

[Bazza]

We currently consider 6E1: Character Creation, 6E2: Combat & Adventuring, Champions, and Hero System Basic Rulebook to be the core library. To paraphrase Steve from about 10 years ago, I take it the core library is the "New Fred"? :)

(Hope Mr Long got a laugh at that)

Thanks to DoJ, and the writers, artists, Andy, for the books and all the ideas contained within fuelling my imagination over the years. And hope that Hero Games, Darren and Steve find success in the future endeavours -- that goes without saying but i said it anyway.

And thanks to the Hero Community, I've met some of you in person, and if I make it back to the States, would love to met the friends I've made on these boards face-to-face and catch up.

Thanks for everything. :cheers: :celebrate

[Bazza]

Lest I sound entirely negative -- which certainly doesn't mirror my feelings about upcoming projects! -- I should point out that there's a happy flip-side to the Kickstarter coin. While on the one hand a project might not get sufficient funding to launch, it's also possible that it gets much more than it initially asked for.

One of the great things about exceeding a goal (besides the obvious) is that as the project goes on, if it meets its first goal early I can add other goals. For example, if my target of X is reached within ten days, I can update the Kickstarter to say, "Hey, we're doin' great, and now, if we reach x + 50%, I'll make the book a hardcover!" (or "I'll make it full color!" or "everyone gets an extra copy!" or "everyone gets a 2X t-shirt with the book's cover on it!" or whatever else seems like it might encourage more pledges without unduly increasing my workload or inhibiting my ability to make a profit ;) ).

Tip: Neil Gaiman regularly retweets* requests for kickstarters. This being one potential way to reach more people and help get funding.

Including something related to Mr Gaiman's self-interest or stuff he has created/written and I'm sure you will get retweeted* -- like American Gods Hero, or Coraline Hero :)

*Using Twitter of course.

[djkester]

6. I would love (love, love, love) to write a "HERO System Weapons" book (and for that matter a "HERO System Armor" book); I've wanted to do that for years. Unfortunately I estimate it would take 6-8 months of my time, and I doubt a Kickstarter can raise enough money to support such a project. Just funding Mythic Hero is going to be tough enough

Steve please keep this on your list...

[MrAgdesh]

Kickstarter has worked for Dennis and Shane at ArcDream in getting "Through a Glass Darkly" out for the Delta Green fans, so I'm sure that there will be more than enough demand for HERO stuff.

Best of luck to everyone.

[gojira]

4. I don't think I'm stealing any of Jason's thunder to say that Horror Hero and Cthulhu Hero are pretty much off the table at this point. Both involve working with a freelancer (Ken Hite), and obviously right now the money's not there for such outside expenses. I won't say never, and I won't say it might not be feasible via Kickstarter or the like at some point, but I suspect that Ken has enough people offering him work that he doesn't need to depend on such vagaries.


Would this be a better project for Jason then?

Contact Ken Hite, get him to pencil in, say, next April. Then start the kick starter project. If funds aren't there in 45 days, call Ken and say the deal didn't go through. Otherwise, tell him the money's there and to ink in those dates.

In my mind, I imagine this is just the sort of project that Kickstarter is intended for. Stuff that you're really not sure if it could happen, but might be really popular if it does take hold.

I'm not going to speculate on what hiring an outside writer adds to a project. Kickstarter provides the extra cash that's needed, or it doesn't. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

[gojira]

OK, one last thought by moi this morning.

Unlike a lot of truly small companies, you guys already have a store and credit card processor. Kickstarter's fee seem high: 5% from them and then 3%-5% from Amazon, according to the Kickstarter website.

While kick starter seems good for "mind share," those fees seem like a lot of dough. For large projects (say $50k), up to 10% is $5,000, which to me sounds like shipping costs, or somebody's wages for 2-4 weeks. Kickstarter might be useful tool for small projects, but for larger one's I'd try to direct people to an item in your store. This may require a bit of thought how to market, but I think it's worth considering. 5,000 bucks is 5,000 bucks.

[azato]

I am very interested in one of the books you mentioned. So interested that art and an index are not a factor for me. If it were formatted decently in MSWord...and dumped into a PDF I would be happy. While having all the goodness is great, and I like the eye candy and extras, if that came between me getting the book and me not getting the book, throw it out.

I bring this up because there appears to be two different tiers possible....one with less cost and time for you, that would need to be sold at a lower cost (but maybe at better margins) or the opposite. So maybe to recoup your time into this project you could first offer an "ugly duck" version (maybe through kickstarter...maybe through Hero...whatever) and then come back later with one packed with art and goodness...perhaps offering a discount to those who bought the ugly PDF.

[Bazza]

With apologies to Freddie (the song being written for Queen's audience):


Darren's paid the dues
Time after time
Steve's written the sentence
The book finished in rhyme
The bad economy
A master villain or few
We've had our share of ups and fuzion -
And we've come through

The Hero System will go on and on and on

We are the champions - the heroes
And we'll keep on surviving - till the end -
We are the champions -
We are the champions
No time for Dr Destroyer
'Cause we are the champions - of the RPGs -

[Gnaskar]

...

****.

Words cannot describe how I feel right now. But I guess that goes for all of us. It feels surreal.

I leave for a HERO gaming group in an hour, and I have another on Friday. We'll keep going; you can be sure of that. I've introduced a dozen people to the glory of hero system and I don't intend to stop spreading the word now.

As for the kickstarter project(s), just let me know when and where to donate.

Best of luck to Darren and Steve, and, possibly more importantly, let us know whenever you have something to sell, so we can buy it and recommend it to our friends.

[Darren Watts]

As for me, I'm not taking requests yet. Hero books will definitely be among the things I'm working on, and Golden Age and Silver Age would be at the top of that list. I may also be working on a few other projects, of varying degrees of relation to the Champions Universe, depending on how some deals I'm talking with people about work out. I have no illusions that I can write fast or well enough to sustain myself solely as a freelancer in the gaming industry, though, so I doubt I'll be anywhere near as prolific as the esteemed Mr. Long. dw

[JamesG]

Just... wow.

Best wishes and sincere thanks to all involved with Hero Games. I'm a member of a twice a month Hero gaming group, but we never switched over from 5th to 6th so I have not bought much product in awhile. So I can't help feeling I'm a (small) part of the problem that led to this. And that saddens me.

[Balabanto]

Well, I'm still freelancing superhero adventures through Blackwyrm. King of the Mountain will be available at DunDraCon, ideally. Dave hasn't given me enough of a firm date, however, I have seen the art and the cover before it's been colored, and it looks fantastic.

I'm still working on Imaginary Friends. This adventure is going to be a huge bear of a book. It's got an entire organization, 23 character sheets, five maps, including a map of a base of the organization, and all sorts of cool stuff.

Since Journey to the Center of the Earth won the poll contest, that's next up.

Then I'm doing one for Jason and Tina. I made them a promise and I'm going to keep it.

It's called "A Bridge Too Far."

I won't tell you a thing about it, except that it won't be as long as any of the previous three, but it does, like the previous, shorter Unkindness, address an issue that hits people in the ethics. Ideally, by the end of 2012, all this stuff should be in the can. I can't make promises, though. I'm not as prolific as Steve, nor as legendary as Scott Bennie, nor as personable as Darren. But I'll do what I can to keep Hero alive, one superhero adventure at a time.

[Susano]

Well, I'm still freelancing superhero adventures through Blackwyrm. King of the Mountain will be available at DunDraCon, ideally. Dave hasn't given me enough of a firm date, however, I have seen the art and the cover before it's been colored, and it looks fantastic.

I'm still working on Imaginary Friends. This adventure is going to be a huge bear of a book. It's got an entire organization, 23 character sheets, five maps, including a map of a base of the organization, and all sorts of cool stuff.

Since Journey to the Center of the Earth won the poll contest, that's next up.

Then I'm doing one for Jason and Tina. I made them a promise and I'm going to keep it.

It's called "A Bridge Too Far."

I won't tell you a thing about it, except that it won't be as long as any of the previous three, but it does, like the previous, shorter Unkindness, address an issue that hits people in the ethics. Ideally, by the end of 2012, all this stuff should be in the can. I can't make promises, though. I'm not as prolific as Steve, nor as legendary as Scott Bennie, nor as personable as Darren. But I'll do what I can to keep Hero alive, one superhero adventure at a time.

On a similar note, I have this thread: where I ask opinions on my future BlackWyrm projects: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/87845-Susano-Considers-His-Next-Possible-Projects-(What-Do-You-Want-To-See-)

[mudpyr8]

To pile on with Blackwyrm, Balabanto, and Susano, Legendsmiths is still working on Narosia. Our new work schedules are more conducive to getting stuff done and we are making more progress than ever. After Narosia I already have a number of projects lined up, so we'll see where that gets us. If Cyberhero still ends up on the schedule, I will have a project to compliment it.

[Graviton]

Just read the news...I'm saddened too. Truly the end of an era. I was playing HERO before it was HERO, and I'll be playing it until they pry my rulebook from my cold dead fingers. Thank you Steve and Darren for your love of and resurrection of the system. I'm glad you won't be completely gone!

I'm doing my part, I've been running two new players for the past couple of months now, and they're loving it.

Good luck to both of you, and to HERO Games!

[Susano]

To pile on with Blackwyrm, Balabanto, and Susano, Legendsmiths is still working on Narosia. Our new work schedules are more conducive to getting stuff done and we are making more progress than ever. After Narosia I already have a number of projects lined up, so we'll see where that gets us. If Cyberhero still ends up on the schedule, I will have a project to compliment it.

I also intend to develop some material for D3 games. And would love to work with anyone who's creating new Hero material. Provided I have the time.

[Steve Long]

I'm doing my part, I've been running two new players for the past couple of months now, and they're loving it.

That's what we like to hear! :hex:

[HeadClot88]

I am going to get a bunch of Hero Games for Christmas that is one thing for sure!

FOR HERO!

[Steve Long]

I know Hero will appreciate that, HeadClot -- thanx!

[zornwil]

I just heard the news, sorry. Certainly wishing the company/Jason all the best in the next phase and of course wishing all the best to Steve and Darren, wherever your next ventures take you.

[Hawknight]

I've been buying Hero stuff since 1983 with the box set. I have and always will promote to any and all that this system is the easiest and most fun to utilize. I will still play and continue to buy until I have it all (HEROmon!! Gotta get them all).

To the Hero Staff -You rock, and no matter what or where you end up, I will try to purchase your efforts. You have given me so much that I may not use as written, but my world's have been built with your efforts. Thank You. Good luck and buy you soon. To Steve - Dark Champions since the fourth edition is still the ultimate genre to play and when I read Daredevil, Batman and Punisher, your visions of Hudson City are how I translate the stories to game play. You are the Master and we all hope to reach your Yengtao Temple and study under your guidence.

To the Players and Board watchers keep the faith and stay strong (100 STR usable only to keep the faith). This is not the first time Hero has had to reorganize, but they need to and we need to be ready to support and proclaim to everyone when it happens. The best marketing any game company has is the Players who love the game.

Heroes Assemble! Make Mine Hero! It's Heroing Time! I'm a Dark Champion! Chose a saying and tell the world.

[Lucius]

I just heard the news, sorry. Certainly wishing the company/Jason all the best in the next phase and of course wishing all the best to Steve and Darren, wherever your next ventures take you.

Zornwil? I haven't seen you in ages. where have you been?

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary gravely greets Zornwil by saying "we need your Power now."

[zornwil]

Zornwil? I haven't seen you in ages. where have you been?

Just generally doing other stuff, out of HERO as mentioned at some point as I therefore didn't have a real reason to spend time on the boards. Hope you are well!

[Damon Griffin]

I think it's probably been seven or eight years since I visited these boards -- long enough at any rate to have had my status reset to New Member with 1 post despite a join date in 2003 (can't believe I still remembered my password after all that time) -- but I've been quietly keeping up with purchases of HERO releases as they came. I just picked up APG II and will continue to look forward to any and all new products for 6th Edition that manage to make it out into the light.

Meantime, I finally convinced a couple of my fellow fantasy gamers to give HERO a try. So far they're being very cautious and, I'm afraid, may not be any help keeping things moving forward, as they're mainly looking for deals on 5th Edition stuff. For example both of them took advantage of HERO bundles offered through gamerati.com -- the first of these being an "Ultimate _____" bundle that was offered Nov 2nd. Neither of them has received those books. (Their other order was for the bundle of five pre-made villains, monsters, etc. from Nov 16th, so that one's not yet so late as to be of real concern, especially given the situation at HERO.)

I understand shipping will continue at a slower pace and we need to be patient, but I wondered if it's likely to be very much slower (for the HERO shipping "department" of one) through third parties like this, given that everything I've ever bought through gamerati.com has shipped pretty quickly.

[djkester]

Jason, I'm hoping that the home page updates don't go stagnent. I know you guys are down to a skeleton crew but honestly the home page updates can't take to long to do and they grow stagnant very quickly. Looking forward to an update there even if its just a short report.

[mayapuppies]

I also intend to develop some material for D3 games. And would love to work with anyone who's creating new Hero material. Provided I have the time.
Yeah, we're still going. We're currently in the process of re-organizing and re-branding ourselves. This is unrelated to Hero Games and more due to our changing of publishing methods and planning for the opening of a brick and mortar game store.

We're changing our name to D3 Adventures and have gained an actual creative director (Brett Barkley) to team up with Gordon Feiner and myself on the new look for both the company and the books and a new website. I'll post a longer and more detailed explanation once we have gotten further along.

[Dreamstreamer]

Neither of them has received those books. (Their other order was for the bundle of five pre-made villains, monsters, etc. from Nov 16th, so that one's not yet so late as to be of real concern, especially given the situation at HERO.)

I understand shipping will continue at a slower pace and we need to be patient, but I wondered if it's likely to be very much slower (for the HERO shipping "department" of one) through third parties like this, given that everything I've ever bought through gamerati.com has shipped pretty quickly.

Odd. I've received BOTH bundles. I paid for the faster shipping on the first bundle and Media Mail for the second. I received the second one earlier this week. Have you tried PMing Jason?

[Doc Quantum]

My hat's off to the DOJ, Inc management team. It seemed to me that you guys were expanding while other companies were scaling back or shutting down. Even with whatever you sold the IP to Cryptic for, it still surprises me how long you've gone before reaching this point. My employer is a little more open and transparent about its management practices than most, so I learn a lot about the behind-the-scenes issues just by keeping my eyes and ears open. When I think about the kind of economizing and juggling you must have to do, I have to say you guys are brilliant. I have no doubt that when the economy recovers, HERO is going to grow bigger than ever.

Good work, Jason, Steve, Darren and others whose names I don't know!

[Doc Quantum]

On a sadder note, purchasing HERO books allowed me to kill two birds with one stone. I could support a system and company I like and my FLGS at the same time. Space and budget considerations meant that my game book purchases were limited to HERO system books and issues of Knights of the Dinner Table with an occasional pdf from Steve Jackson and Drivethrurpg. Now I'll continue to purchase HERO pdf's but that doesn't help my FLGS, much. That sucks on the local front.

[Zen Archer]

I was so surprised by the news I had to de-lurk and register.

I haven't gamed in years, but I still buy the occasional book for reading material. That includes, and still will include, HERO products.

Best to all in your current and future endeavors, and thanks for all the imagination-sparking your work has provided over the years.

[Darren Watts]

Apparently I now need to start my account over. This is so far the most depressing part of all this, weirdly. dw

[Greywind]

At least you haven't been dis-membered, Darren.

[itsalwayssunny]

I don't follow the business news on here so that's a bit of a shock. Hope everything works out. I love the Hero System, it's my all-time favorite and I've played, jeez, 50-100 different RPG systems in my time.

--Kap

[Damon Griffin]

Odd. I've received BOTH bundles. I paid for the faster shipping on the first bundle and Media Mail for the second. I received the second one earlier this week. Have you tried PMing Jason?

Update: Pre-gen character bundles arrived yesterday; still no sign of the Ultimate bundles from two weeks earlier. I can suggest to my friends that they PM whoever's left handling the shipping for HERO, but the bundle that was received was evidently sent from gamerati, so likely all anyone at HERO could tell them is when gamerati was supplied with the books for all the orders taken at that time. Seems doubtful now that HERO would even have known who was ordering the bundles.

Ah, well.

[incrdbil]

Gah. Poked my head in, and saw this. I wish my best to everyone involved; the company that has produced so much great stuff that sits on my shelves, and is nestled in many hard drives, and the people who have worked hard to bring me wonderful ideas all bundled up and ready to go.

Sadly, I wont have a chance to do any gaming for the next year, but I hope to return to any HERO system game in 2013.

[mayapuppies]

Update: Pre-gen character bundles arrived yesterday; still no sign of the Ultimate bundles from two weeks earlier. I can suggest to my friends that they PM whoever's left handling the shipping for HERO, but the bundle that was received was evidently sent from gamerati, so likely all anyone at HERO could tell them is when gamerati was supplied with the books for all the orders taken at that time. Seems doubtful now that HERO would even have known who was ordering the bundles.

Ah, well.
Gamerati orders are shipped out of the same warehouse. Jason Walters is the man to contact and he will know.

[djkester]

Things have been a bit quiet from the company. I hope that in this time of transition you guys can find a way to keep up with community involvement.

[ngross]

Yep. I imagine that everyone is still thinking on what to do now.... And I also blame the craziness of the holidays.

As stated before somewhere else, I do hope that they keep up with the Friday updates on the front page. Even if it just to say "Go support these Kickstarter projects". Or even to spotlight a licensed HERO product for that week.

[Gwarh]

I'm late to the party (thankfully it's not a wake)

I started playing the HERO system back in 83? with the Colour Cover of the Champions rulebook. And it's been my favorite Game Engine ever since.

Thank you to all of you, Jason, Tina, Darren and most of all Steve for re-invigorating the HERO brand with the excellent 5th ed run of books and now the 6th Ed.

I bought a ton of 5E books and almost all the 6E books sofar. Looking forward to the Kickstarter projects too and will do my best to support those as well. I think the KickStarter model will be a great way to go. I've already bought the e20, DCC RPG, HackMaster newest ed, and Adventurer, Conqueror, King systems on that model and it seems to work great. Both for the Investors and Publisher. I think the model will serve you well.

Best of luck to everyone in their further adventures and thank you most of all for keeping the site going. The HERO forums are one of my favorite game communities on the web.

[kehrer1701]

My first exposure to RPG's was the Champions Blue Book. I still have it and still feel that was the best into to roleplaying games ever! Please keep in touch with the players to let us know what is going on and tell us how to help (yes, I just bought a bunch of Hero Games products as my own Christmas present to me).

[MorpheousXO]

So Sad! Best of luck to everyone, and I can't wait to see what comes out next!

I'm still relatively recent to HERO (came in just at 5th edition revised), but I fell in love with the system immediately! Due to the stinking economy I haven't been able to buy much, which made me sad anyway, and now this. Punch to the gut indeed. Still, I'll keep on trucking, and hopfully some day I'll find a group to play HERO with! Party on!

[Chris Goodwin]

Just curious as to whether there's any new news, new information, etc. The news post on the Hero Games main page is from November 28.

[ned-kogar]

Bloody Hell.

I've not visited the forum for while, and this is genuinely surprising news.

We played a nice chunk of Hero this weekend, and were all marvelling at how strong the system is, especially in this edition.

The last 10 years of Hero have been excellent.

Thanks for all your excellent work(s), and here's to the future.

Ned

[The Main Man]

I had an idea that I suppose I could share to see what everyone else thinks.

While I'm not so sure the HERO system is doomed so much as altering its organization and business model, what can we do add a community to really sell people on the HERO system. I would argue that demos and con games are not enough when compared to how many people that the internet can reach. Not that they don't help of course.

If one accepts that, if something can be done, can we try to band together to create something free for all to use?

I think of NaNoWriMo and see potential reengineering to the HERO system's ends. I think of communities like that of Risus and FUDGE, in which all kinds of free material is by the community, for the community. We have this forum, but is it really enough? We need to reach out, shouldn't we?

What if we had different "HERO Challenges" every month? This month, all participants have to build X, this month we all build a kind of character, this month we create a mini-setting - all in the name of material that helps all HERO players help support the system while enjoying toolkitting with it at the same time.

What ya got? Thoughts? Comments? Tomatoes?

[Steve Long]

Main Man, I think that's an idea worth discussing, but a lot of folx probably won't see it buried here on page 14. Try starting a separate thread on the Discussion board -- you'll likely get more input. ;)

[itsalwayssunny]

I had an idea that I suppose I could share to see what everyone else thinks.

While I'm not so sure the HERO system is doomed so much as altering its organization and business model, what can we do add a community to really sell people on the HERO system. I would argue that demos and con games are not enough when compared to how many people that the internet can reach. Not that they don't help of course.

If one accepts that, if something can be done, can we try to band together to create something free for all to use?

I think of NaNoWriMo and see potential reengineering to the HERO system's ends. I think of communities like that of Risus and FUDGE, in which all kinds of free material is by the community, for the community. We have this forum, but is it really enough? We need to reach out, shouldn't we?

What if we had different "HERO Challenges" every month? This month, all participants have to build X, this month we all build a kind of character, this month we create a mini-setting - all in the name of material that helps all HERO players help support the system while enjoying toolkitting with it at the same time.

What ya got? Thoughts? Comments? Tomatoes?

I think demos and con games don't do much. I've never been to a con in my life, and have no intention of ever going to one. Most gamers I know haven't been and aren't interested in that.

I think getting the books on the shelves where you can find them regularly (usually I see some books, not all, and never the whole game--D&D is same way where I never see all the required books at one time!) at a lower price point (lose the hardcovers and color, maybe) at more places (Toys R Us, for instance, used to carry D&D stuff) would be useful. It's hard to get people into a hobby when they can't find the books without massive effort.

The Internet would be great, especially if there was a way to locate groups you could join to try the game before committing to investing hundreds of dollars.

[Susano]

I think demos and con games don't do much. I've never been to a con in my life, and have no intention of ever going to one. Most gamers I know haven't been and aren't interested in that.

I think getting the books on the shelves where you can find them regularly (usually I see some books, not all, and never the whole game--D&D is same way where I never see all the required books at one time!) at a lower price point (lose the hardcovers and color, maybe) at more places (Toys R Us, for instance, used to carry D&D stuff) would be useful. It's hard to get people into a hobby when they can't find the books without massive effort.

The Internet would be great, especially if there was a way to locate groups you could join to try the game before committing to investing hundreds of dollars.

Here on the east coast, the attitude, at least among my gaming group, is 180° the opposite. Many of us enjoy gaming cons, especially GenCon, which saw nearly a dozen people from my local gaming circle attend this year. I've also run some con games, with the result of people becoming interested in HERO as a result (using a readily accessible setting [Left 4 Dead] helped.)

Getting books on the shelf is an issue and seems to have been for years. A lot of this has to do with how the industry distributes product, but I'm not going to go into that right now. Suffice to say, on-line sales of books and product seems to be the way to go for HERO. As for a lower price point—people in my area have commented on the lack of hardbacks, color content, and the like as a strike against Hero, especially when one looks at 4E, Pathfinder, Shadow Run, and the WH40K line of RPG books from Fantasy Flight.

Personally, and this is a bit of a pipe dream, I've long hoped/wished that DOJ/Hero could latch onto a secondary product(s) and sell those to supplement the main line. Much like how SJG uses Munchkin to support things like GURPS 4E. I recall that back in the day, Car Wars was the big cash cow for SJG and allowed him to produce vanity projects. Of course, this would have required DOJ to be interested in becoming a board/card/whatever game company, which they weren't interested in (AFAIK.)

[djkester]

The crowdsourcing of development of game content is the way to go. Leave a few smart people to market, package and distribute physical products while allowing the majority of people to enjoy the work of creating. I for one am a big believer in the book industry overall approach. Most authors write their first book without any form of payment and then on future runs they are getting paid based on historical revenue for their products. It puts the onus on the author to create the right product and the publisher just handles the business end of it. I believe in this model there is a great potential. The only thing currently missing from this model in RPG Now, Amazon, and other digital and stores and print on demand services is the marketing and sales support. Without good marketing you don't reach customers.

[megaplayboy]

I think it'd be nice if they made some glossy color city street maps, bank interior maps, etc. for use with any Superhero RPG. Not crazy about any sort of card or dice game, though maybe a Heroclix style miniatures game involving CU or CO figs might be fun.

[Susano]

I think it'd be nice if they made some glossy color city street maps, bank interior maps, etc. for use with any Superhero RPG. Not crazy about any sort of card or dice game, though maybe a Heroclix style miniatures game involving CU or CO figs might be fun.

It's also a crapshot. Who knew that Magic: the Gathering would ever be so popular?

[Ghost Archer]

It's also a crapshot. Who knew that Magic: the Gathering would ever be so popular?

Me. Saw it the day those stupid things appeared in the hobbyshop I was running. I hate being right.

[The Main Man]

Main Man, I think that's an idea worth discussing, but a lot of folx probably won't see it buried here on page 14. Try starting a separate thread on the Discussion board -- you'll likely get more input. ;)

Good idea. I'ma do just that...

[Kaze9999]

It's so hard to know what will sell and build a broad following; Personally I bought adventures rather than supplementary rules or Hero Universe supplements, so the earlier iterations that focused on adventures were kind of a heyday for me; I thought that's what we needed more of, but I recall Steve saying that the adventures didn't sell well.

I know Hero has the reputation for its adherents all wanting to build their own adventures from the tools, but I personally always thought that high quality adventures that could be run 'off the shelf' made the game easier to introduce and easier to spread.

[Susano]

It's so hard to know what will sell and build a broad following; Personally I bought adventures rather than supplementary rules or Hero Universe supplements, so the earlier iterations that focused on adventures were kind of a heyday for me; I thought that's what we needed more of, but I recall Steve saying that the adventures didn't sell well.

Not just HERO, I know someone at FFG who said that about Dark Heresy as well.

[gojira]

I'm a little surprised myself, I would have thought that pre-fab adventures would sell well for the work they save. But I guess my opinions are atypical.

[Beast]

When I helped run the Gaming House in Pasadena ,I ordered maybe a dozen to 1/2 a dozen adventures when they first came out more if it sold out fast
But after 3 to 4 months nobody wanted them, so I did not order any more unless it was a special order

This was back in the mid to late 80's before PDFs and tablets
they might make a comeback ,but their shelf life would be better served as cheap PDFs with no dead tree versions


It's so hard to know what will sell and build a broad following; Personally I bought adventures rather than supplementary rules or Hero Universe supplements, so the earlier iterations that focused on adventures were kind of a heyday for me; I thought that's what we needed more of, but I recall Steve saying that the adventures didn't sell well.

I know Hero has the reputation for its adherents all wanting to build their own adventures from the tools, but I personally always thought that high quality adventures that could be run 'off the shelf' made the game easier to introduce and easier to spread.

[Dreamstreamer]

This was back in the mid to late 80's before PDFs and tablets
they might make a comeback ,but their shelf life would be better served as cheap PDFs with no dead tree versions

This is my feeling, as well. I know I would appreciate adventures that had all of the work done, especially if it came with maps. If the maps were image files, they could be used with online tabletops or printed up for physical handouts. Also, having all of the necessary characters already statted out and ready to print on demand would be handy, more so if they had a standard character sheet and a quick, cheat sheet that could be printed up for expected combat, reducing the amount of page flipping.

[megaplayboy]

I think it's good to sell a "pack" of introductory adventures, so that new groups can have some material to start with. But I suspect veteran Herophiles do a lot of DIY adventures and campaigns, so the adventures have limited to no appeal to them.

[itsalwayssunny]

The problem with selling the books online and a potential customer not being able to flip thru them first is that many (me, for one) don't want to risk their money on a product based solely on reviews (like Amazon's model). And even when you're able to see sample pages online, it's not enough to take the plunge sometimes (at least not for me). There are many books that look interesting but I can't afford to spend $30 and then find out the book stinks.

And the trouble with the PDFs, at least for me, is that I don't want to stare at a computer screen to play a game with my pals, and the price of ink and printing makes the PDFs sometimes cost nearly as much as a real book (depending on their length). If I'm going to end up paying that much, I'd rather have a nice book I can put on my shelf instead of flimsy sheets in page protectors bound in a spiral folder.

Maybe I'm not normal, though.

Money being what it is for me, I basically can only afford to buy Hero products used, which means Hero doesn't get anything out of it except a fan. If the price points were lower and the products were accessible for me to look at them before buying, I'd probably buy a lot more from the actual company instead of the used book market.

--Kap

[Balabanto]

Marketing problems include:

1) Paying for the PDF if you buy the dead tree version. This is a HUGE turnoff. If you go to Paizo and buy the dead tree version, they GIVE you a PDF. This is the way to go. Reward the dead tree people, because you still have to pay if you go PDF only.

2) Poor marketing choices. Covers need to be gorgeous, well drawn, etc. Don't leave rules supplements out and concentrate on settings here. Fantasy Hero was a really pretty cover, but the Hero System core books were difficult to look at and intimidating to observe. People are more visually oriented than ever. Pretty pictures sell more copies than thousands of words do. Target a wider audience by shrinking the rulebook. Most people don't want to read seven hundred pages just to learn the rules. I realize that this is not actually the case, but that's what most people think when they see this edition of the game.

3) Unnecessarily dense wording. Cut out everything that looks like a run-on. Then hire a copyeditor to edit what's left.

4) Go back to the entertaining examples of earlier editions. The current batch of examples lack the humor necessary to get people through the complex mathematics. I'm serious. Things were much easier to comprehend when all the examples were joke characters like Doc Ravage, Man of Tin, Doctor Pseudopod and Norse Storm Hammer God. Laughter cures complexity and helps people understand things.

[Balabanto]

I think it's good to sell a "pack" of introductory adventures, so that new groups can have some material to start with. But I suspect veteran Herophiles do a lot of DIY adventures and campaigns, so the adventures have limited to no appeal to them.

This is why I try to make the most reusable supplements possible. I don't want people to have supplements they use once and shelve.

[Jhaierr]

When I first heard the news I was speechless. I do realize that Hero is not gone, but it is emotional nonetheless. In tribute to the last decade of Hero, I submit this picture of my bookshelf.

41075

(Pulp Hero is in my bookbag right now, and I loaned my Basic 6th book to my boyfriend to read.)

[hartm1967]

Marketing problems include:

1) Paying for the PDF if you buy the dead tree version. This is a HUGE turnoff. If you go to Paizo and buy the dead tree version, they GIVE you a PDF. This is the way to go. Reward the dead tree people, because you still have to pay if you go PDF only.

2) Poor marketing choices. Covers need to be gorgeous, well drawn, etc. Don't leave rules supplements out and concentrate on settings here. Fantasy Hero was a really pretty cover, but the Hero System core books were difficult to look at and intimidating to observe. People are more visually oriented than ever. Pretty pictures sell more copies than thousands of words do. Target a wider audience by shrinking the rulebook. Most people don't want to read seven hundred pages just to learn the rules. I realize that this is not actually the case, but that's what most people think when they see this edition of the game.

3) Unnecessarily dense wording. Cut out everything that looks like a run-on. Then hire a copyeditor to edit what's left.

4) Go back to the entertaining examples of earlier editions. The current batch of examples lack the humor necessary to get people through the complex mathematics. I'm serious. Things were much easier to comprehend when all the examples were joke characters like Doc Ravage, Man of Tin, Doctor Pseudopod and Norse Storm Hammer God. Laughter cures complexity and helps people understand things.


These are all great points.

I always buy the paper versions of books if given the option; the PDF is helpful to have, but I want to hold and look through a physical product. The thing I like about Paizo is that their Core Rulebook and several other books have inexpensive PDFs -- $9.99. That makes it inexpensive and enticing to check out the game on PDF, enticing enough to invite purchase of the paper copy (which is how I started into Pathfinder). If the PDF is almost as expensive as the physical product, I am far less likely to purchase it.

I just realized that I have had the PDF for Champions Villains vol. 3 for about a year now. I really hope that HERO does a Kickstarter project to publish the printed version -- really would like to complete my set!

[megaplayboy]

One fairly basic suggestion to Jason--update the main page! It's late December, almost 2012, and if the first thing people see when they get to the HG site is an announcement dated November 28, 2011, the longer that remains there without an update the more it starts to look like an obituary notice. Even if there's not much to report, it's good to let people know the company is still moving forward and updating the site regularly. :)

[hartm1967]

I do miss reading Steve Long's update every Friday morning...

[Lord Liaden]

I just realized that I have had the PDF for Champions Villains vol. 3 for about a year now. I really hope that HERO does a Kickstarter project to publish the printed version -- really would like to complete my set!

I remember Steve Long writing recently he believed, from remarks he's heard and read, that quite a few people were holding off buying any of the Villains trilogy in hardcopy until they could purchase the complete set. If that's the case, printing Vol. III could translate into substantially more sales than of just that book.

[Kaze9999]

Thank you very much for the update on the front page, Jason! You da Man!!!;)

[Goradin]

I have to wonder if people simply didn't think we needed a new edition? While I have lived and bought them all, I think this clearly hurt WOC with their 4th edition of D&D. From what I have heard old school gaming made a comeback and pathfinder really hurt 4th edition sales. The 5th edition was one of the best editions of any game system I have ever seen, I liked the 4th Dark Champions Stuff better, but I loved the 5th edition of HERO System.

I bought the other villian books but too be honest I never switched over to 6th edition in my game because the third book is in many ways the most important. I still harbor hope that we will see that book. I have most of the 6th Edition books though but it felt unsupported with the lack of book three.

[megaplayboy]

I have to wonder if people simply didn't think we needed a new edition? While I have lived and bought them all, I think this clearly hurt WOC with their 4th edition of D&D. From what I have heard old school gaming made a comeback and pathfinder really hurt 4th edition sales. The 5th edition was one of the best editions of any game system I have ever seen, I liked the 4th Dark Champions Stuff better, but I loved the 5th edition of HERO System.

I bought the other villian books but too be honest I never switched over to 6th edition in my game because the third book is in many ways the most important. I still harbor hope that we will see that book. I have most of the 6th Edition books though but it felt unsupported with the lack of book three.

Que? What's "book three"?

[RexMundi]

Que? What's "book three"?

I second that?

~Rex

[Susano]

Que? What's "book three"?

I think he means Champions Villains Volume 3.

[megaplayboy]

I think he means Champions Villains Volume 3.

Okay, but I'm not really sure why that would be the most important of the 3 CV books--the first one is master villains and the second one is villain teams. I think "solo villains" is only the most important if 1) you're running for fairly small groups(2-4 PCs) and 2) you tend to run scenarios where there's only 1 or 2 solo villains to deal with, rather than a team or a master villain.

[Beast]

I would not say we need a new edition
what we need is a 4th ed Hero System SIZED book(250 pages no genres,short examples and discriptions, no fluff)
in a not so scary package(not taking up 1/2 of a backpack)
1 book in say the 35 to 45$ range
the big books are nice but way to much for those get scared by the 9lbs of dead tree and 80$ investment



I have to wonder if people simply didn't think we needed a new edition? While I have lived and bought them all, I think this clearly hurt WOC with their 4th edition of D&D. From what I have heard old school gaming made a comeback and pathfinder really hurt 4th edition sales. The 5th edition was one of the best editions of any game system I have ever seen, I liked the 4th Dark Champions Stuff better, but I loved the 5th edition of HERO System.

I bought the other villian books but too be honest I never switched over to 6th edition in my game because the third book is in many ways the most important. I still harbor hope that we will see that book. I have most of the 6th Edition books though but it felt unsupported with the lack of book three.

[kehrer1701]

One of my favorite HERO books of all time is the 4th edition Champoins Hardback, or big blue. I think that layout maximized it all.

[Derek Hiemforth]

I would not say we need a new edition
what we need is a 4th ed Hero System SIZED book(250 pages no genres,short examples and discriptions, no fluff)
in a not so scary package(not taking up 1/2 of a backpack)
1 book in say the 35 to 45$ range
the big books are nice but way to much for those get scared by the 9lbs of dead tree and 80$ investmentWhat we need are millions more people playing pen-and-paper role-playing games.

There's all this speculating about what Hero Games could have done differently, or should do moving forward, in order to enable some big surge in the popularity of the Hero System. I simply see no reason to think that any of these things are true, or that any of them would work. The Hero System, much as we love it, is -- by nature -- a game that appeals only to a certain percentage of RPG players. And it appeals very strongly to those it does appeal to, which probably means it will never completely go away. But as far as I can tell, the percentage of RPG gamers who choose the Hero System was never any higher than it's been during the DOJ era at Hero Games. The raw numbers of Hero players were probably higher at some points (especially in the 1980s), but only because the total number of RPG players was also higher.

Sure, optimizing the presentation in one way or another might (or might not) make a little difference. It might enable the Hero System share of RPG players to climb from 2% to 2.5%. But I just don't see it ever suddenly catching fire and becoming the game most gamers pick (or even that a much higher percentage of gamers pick. Which wouldn't necessarily mean that the company couldn't be successful... if the total number of gamers was higher. Niche products are fine, if the larger market you're a niche within is large enough. If you can sell a product to 1% of computer users, you'll be a millionaire. If you sell a product to 1% of left-handed red-haired male Aleutian foot-fetishists between the ages of 30 and 33 who were born on Thursdays and drive Subarus, you'll go broke. :winkgrin:

There's nothing wrong with offering our opinions about what we might think the best product strategies for the company are, but let's not kid ourselves that they're going to have a major impact. They won't, because their lack isn't the primary problem. The hobby is slowly dying. That's the primary problem...

[Beast]

Derek

if the numbers have not really changed then
having a not so scary product might help

But what we have right now is a 2 book 800+page monster and a 132 page magazine
people look at that and cannot believe HSB can do even a good fraction of 6th ed 1 and 2
it is a big turn off along with the cost
and having a reasonably sized book won't scare people off, as to only those that have a fetish for lots of examples and wearing out their backs

I don't hate 6th ed
I want to play Hero System
right now I'm in 4 games on Hero Central and 1 face to face game here in SoCal
only 1 of those games is 6th ed(HC)
all the rest are 5th ed

If the hobby is dying ,then scaring anybody with a huge core set is not going to help
Both HSB and 6th ed 1 & 2 have their place
It is just my feeling that a 250 page sized book would help where 80$ and 800+pages scares players away

What we need are millions more people playing pen-and-paper role-playing games.

There's all this speculating about what Hero Games could have done differently, or should do moving forward, in order to enable some big surge in the popularity of the Hero System. I simply see no reason to think that any of these things are true, or that any of them would work. The Hero System, much as we love it, is -- by nature -- a game that appeals only to a certain percentage of RPG players. And it appeals very strongly to those it does appeal to, which probably means it will never completely go away. But as far as I can tell, the percentage of RPG gamers who choose the Hero System was never any higher than it's been during the DOJ era at Hero Games. The raw numbers of Hero players were probably higher at some points (especially in the 1980s), but only because the total number of RPG players was also higher.

Sure, optimizing the presentation in one way or another might (or might not) make a little difference. It might enable the Hero System share of RPG players to climb from 2% to 2.5%. But I just don't see it ever suddenly catching fire and becoming the game most gamers pick (or even that a much higher percentage of gamers pick. Which wouldn't necessarily mean that the company couldn't be successful... if the total number of gamers was higher. Niche products are fine, if the larger market you're a niche within is large enough. If you can sell a product to 1% of computer users, you'll be a millionaire. If you sell a product to 1% of left-handed red-haired male Aleutian foot-fetishists between the ages of 30 and 33 who were born on Thursdays and drive Subarus, you'll go broke. :winkgrin:

There's nothing wrong with offering our opinions about what we might think the best product strategies for the company are, but let's not kid ourselves that they're going to have a major impact. They won't, because their lack isn't the primary problem. The hobby is slowly dying. That's the primary problem...

[Derek Hiemforth]

Derek

if the numbers have not really changed then
having a not so scary product might help

But what we have right now is a 2 book 800+page monster and a 132 page magazine
people look at that and cannot believe HSB can do even a good fraction of 6th ed 1 and 2
it is a big turn off along with the cost
and having a reasonably sized book won't scare people off, as to only those that have a fetish for lots of examples and wearing out their backs

I don't hate 6th ed
I want to play Hero System
right now I'm in 4 games on Hero Central and 1 face to face game here in SoCal
only 1 of those games is 6th ed(HC)
all the rest are 5th ed

If the hobby is dying ,then scaring anybody with a huge core set is not going to help
Both HSB and 6th ed 1 & 2 have their place
It is just my feeling that a 250 page sized book would help where 80$ and 800+pages scares players awayI don't disagree with you, exactly. I'm just saying, there was a time when the size of the core rulebooks didn't scare people off, and AFAIK, the percentage of gamers that played Hero System wasn't any higher then than it is now.

I'm not saying that I wouldn't like to see a smaller version of the complete rules. Quite the contrary; more than once I've advocated a book that contains the whole system, but is presented in the more terse manner that Hero System Basic is presented in. I just don't think it would result in a noticeable increase in Hero System players.

There seem to be ideas floating around, in this thread and other similar ones on the boards now, that offer ideas which may be good ideas in and of themselves, but where it's sort of being implied that (if implemented) they could have a big effect on the success of the company. That's the connection that I don't think is realistic. Because the "problems" these ideas are aiming to solve (or, perhaps more accurately, the changes that their advocates hope would be improvements) aren't the biggest problem (as I see it).

Again, the Hero System has never accounted for a large share of the RPG playing populace. Not at any of the many different lengths the rules have been. So I'm very skeptical that their "market share" could be drastically increased. And as the RPG market continues to shrink, well... There you go.

None of this means the Hero System is going to die or anything. It just means that it's a niche part of what's already a shrinking niche hobby, and it's almost certainly reached the point where it won't support itself as a full-time business. As a labor of love, or a part-time gig, or what have you? Sure. But there's no big untapped horde of gamers out there somewhere who would flock to the Hero System if only the rule books were shorter... :winkgrin:

[Hugh Neilson]

I'd have to agree with Derek. The problem is the size of the market, far more than Hero's share of that market. Like most RPG's, Hero isn't an "entry level product". It's not on the shelf in Wal-Mart or book chains or Toys R Us waiting for someone who wants to try this RPG thing. It's in the specialty game stores waiting for existing RPG players to discover as an alternative to the system that brought them into the RPG hobby.

How many posters would cite Hero as their first RPG experience? Of those, how many picked it up off the shelf and learned to play (versus learning from an experienced gamer or gaming group who passed along their system of choice, but also likely did not begin their TPG hobby with Hero)?

WoTC and Paizo are putting out "beginners boxes" to attract new gamers to the fold. They have the market penetration that this might be valuable. Where would the Hero Basic Box be sold that people not already interested in RPG's will run across it?

[megaplayboy]

I think you could sell a "Basic Set"(likely for Champions, with a color map, plastic miniatures, the basic Hero rules, and a mini-campaign sourcebook with ready made adventure arc, ala "Viper's Nest") for 20-40 bucks, retail, at Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, Toys R Us, etc. A "Hero System Intermediate Rules" Softcover, and optional box set(with GM screen, more maps and minis) could also be available at the same retail outlets. In theory you could create Fantasy, Sci Fi and Pulp versions of the Basic Set, or instead you could integrate the basic Hero rules into the sourcebooks, with notes for the intermediate rules options. Finally, you could have a ginormous Special Edition Hardcover Hero System Advanced Options book, 600+ pages long, filled with everything from the two APGs, the best options from the Ultimate series, a comprehensive martial arts maneuver list containing everything from HSMA and Lucha Libre Hero, old stuff from the Hero System Almanacs and elsewhere--pretty much every conceivable rule variant, new power idea, etc. to fully satisfy the most hardcore Hero grognards. Sell it for an obscene amount of money--80 to 100 bucks, half that much for the PDF. You only need the basic set to play, if you want to tinker a bit you can get the intermediate rules, and if you want to witness the power of this fully operational battle stat--er, ruleset, then buy the Big Monster and feel content to know the Wordcount is with you, the Toolkit flows all around you.

[Simon]

I think if you were to look at that as an objective (potential) investor, you'd be looking at an obscene risk that quite simply has little to no chance of paying itself off in any meaningful form.

You're talking about investing money in a tabletop RPG at a time when tabletop RPGs are in a severe decline (giving way to online variants like MMORPGs and their ilk).

You're talking about investing money in a printed edition of a book at a time when printed books are in a decline (giving way to the e-book market).

You're talking about investing money in distribution of a printed edition of a book to have it carried in major retailers' brick and mortar stores at a time when major retailers' brick and mortar stores are in a decline (giving way to online sales and marketing).

Rule one for investing (or making money in general): know your market.

[megaplayboy]

Honestly, I think as an investor you'd have to do it as a "labor of love" (i.e., a loss leader) rather than a true financial venture. You'd have to expect to lose money for 2-3 years before (maybe) breaking even, or losing money more slowly. What would it take to fund a 3-5 person operation for 2-3 years, producing 6-12 books a year? I'm guessing somewhere in the mid-six figures(10,000+ per book, plus any regular salary for employees, plus physical work space overhead).
How many people still play Hero regularly? I'd guess that number is less than 10,000 nationwide, maybe still less than 10,000 worldwide. I had the impression 3rd and 4th edition Champions sold in the tens of thousands, so that's a good indicator of industry decline(which, oddly enough, seems to mirror the decline in the comic book industry as well).
Did we pick up any new players via Champions Online? If so, how many? Hero doesn't release sales figures, so it feels like we're all just fumbling about in the darkness here.

[Simon]

So scale back your expectations. You don't invest the money (or time) into a venture that you know is going to fail to return that investment. Even for a labor of love.

Is there still a market for Hero? Certainly -- but I would posit that it's not as printed books in brick and mortar stores. As stated by others, it's a small percentage of a niche (and declining) market. That is highly unlikely to change and any plans should not predicate themselves on any greater market share.

[Susano]

I'll point out that looking at D&D 4E and Pathfinder for ideas is not a good one. Both companies have far more fans than Hero and sell far more product. They can afford to put out the starter box sets because of the built-in market for all things D&D. Instead, Hero should consider Exile Games -- who put out one high-quality hardbound book a year. Or, look into pure PDF and POD marketing. Also, Kickstarter programs for things like GM's screen and dice. You want HERO Dice? Pony up a donation so they funds will be there to make them.

Personally, I'd love to have a net worth sufficient to allow me to restart HERO in the style I'd like to see it have. But we have to be realistic and understand the market is changing as well as the technology used to deliver to that market.

[Hugh Neilson]

Honestly, I think as an investor you'd have to do it as a "labor of love" (i.e., a loss leader) rather than a true financial venture.

If it's not a true financial venture (which can include a loss leader if it will turn a profit from other products), then we're not talking about an investor. We're talking about a hobby business. That takes someone with deep pockets and an absolute love for the underlying project.

While Hero doesn't release sales figures (and they aren't any of our business - it's their company), clearly the sales figures were not enough to support three full-time employees.

I think the Kickstarter program will be an interesting experiment. I also think it's a wakeup call as to the true costs of shipping for many of us. If Hero avoids the costs of discounting from cover price for distributors, perhaps some of those funds can be redirected to lower cost shipping, but really that's the closer customers being asked to subsidize the ones who live further away, so I'd suggest an across the board reduction in the cover price is a better approach than discounted/free shipping.

[megaplayboy]

I think it might come down to deciding what can be financed as physical product(i.e., hardcover or softcover books) and what can be done as PDF/E-Product. If it comes down to E-Product not being viable because the producers still need to get paid, then I think it's prudent to look at fan-made free e-product as a potentially viable alternative. On the down side, product quality of fan produced work will be uneven, editing may be inconsistent to non-existent, and there probably won't be much product art or nifty text formatting. On the up side, if it's free, it's free, and you really can't beat that. An e-reader may become a de facto requirement to keep up with the Hero System.
On top of this, there's 3rd party licensees, but that still runs into the same problems that in-house physical product does.
I happen to think there's a great untapped pool of fan talent/creativity out there, and it's often been made manifest on these boards. Imagine if you were a new gamer, told there's 10 or 20 or 40 physical books for the system, plus another couple dozen PDFs, plus 10 or 20 3rd party products, and then you were told there's a dozen or more free fan-made PDFs(rules options, sourcebooks, adventures, writeups, etc.) available, you'd be pretty psyched. Even if you couldn't afford a bunch of stuff, having the free stuff available would help flesh out whatever it was you needed.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Here's another sobering factoid about the current realities of the RPG market...

A local game store (and this is the most well-known, well-established store in the area, not some obscure hole-in-the-wall card shop) made a blog post today talking about their 2011 year. In it, they mentioned that the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was far-and-away their best-selling RPG product of the year.

They sold 78 of them.

Think about that. Pathfinder is the biggest thing in RPGs in several years, outselling D&D 2-to-1 in some areas. And the core rules for it -- the book you'd obviously expect to be the biggest-selling book -- sold a grand total of 78 copies. For the whole year.

Back in the heyday of AD&D in the late 70's/early 80's, I bet there were mall toy stores that sold more than 78 copies of the AD&D Player's Handbook in a week. Things just ain't what they used to be... :)

[Derek Hiemforth]

As far as Kickstarter goes, another huge benefit I see to it, is that they aren't stuck having to guess (however educatedly) what books the fans might want. Although BotE obviously doesn't fall into this category, they could do Kickstarter proposals just based on the product pitch, and let the response to those pitches dictate the books they write and publish. They don't have to guess (in advance) which product the fan base wants the most, and therefore which one they should be sinking resources into. With Kickstarter, they're not only getting the resources up front, they're (just as usefully) getting the knowledge up front of whether or not there's enough interest in a product to proceed with it...

[megaplayboy]

As far as Kickstarter goes, another huge benefit I see to it, is that they aren't stuck having to guess (however educatedly) what books the fans might want. Although BotE obviously doesn't fall into this category, they could do Kickstarter proposals just based on the product pitch, and let the response to those pitches dictate the books they write and publish. They don't have to guess (in advance) which product the fan base wants the most, and therefore which one they should be sinking resources into. With Kickstarter, they're not only getting the resources up front, they're (just as usefully) getting the knowledge up front of whether or not there's enough interest in a product to proceed with it...

Well, that's true. OTOH, we the fans are still limited, in terms of "official" product, by what Steve (and Darren, and maybe 3rd party licensees) are actually willing to write about. We're unlikely, for example, to see Mr. Long cranking out Anime Hero or Mecha Hero any time this existence. Also, as Steve has mentioned, a master guidebook to weapons in Hero system would take half a year and probably would cost too much to do, even using Kickstarter.

So it seems to me that, if the fans want something badly enough, in some cases they may have to do it themselves.

[Susano]

Here's another sobering factoid about the current realities of the RPG market...

A local game store (and this is the most well-known, well-established store in the area, not some obscure hole-in-the-wall card shop) made a blog post today talking about their 2011 year. In it, they mentioned that the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was far-and-away their best-selling RPG product of the year.

They sold 78 of them.

Think about that. Pathfinder is the biggest thing in RPGs in several years, outselling D&D 2-to-1 in some areas. And the core rules for it -- the book you'd obviously expect to be the biggest-selling book -- sold a grand total of 78 copies. For the whole year.

Back in the heyday of AD&D in the late 70's/early 80's, I bet there were mall toy stores that sold more than 78 copies of the AD&D Player's Handbook in a week. Things just ain't what they used to be... :)

Derek, I'm not sure even back in 1979 hobby stores were selling 78 copies of the PH in a week. That's 10 a day, and that's a bit much. 78 a month, perhaps. But also realize that back in 1979, the hobby store I went to had D&D, Traveller, and.... ... yeah, that's about it. Today, you have Pathfinder, and D&D4E, and Hero, and GURPS, and FFG's WH40K RPGs, and Traveller, and HEX, and WoD, and....

There are a lot of systems to chose from. And 78 copies is still around 1.5 a week, not bad for a $50.00 book. Not to mention the APG, the various Bestiaries, and all of the other books PH puts out.

Curiously, at GenCon, the number of new systems seems to be rising. Mainly because modern publishing allows people to produce decent product without spending an arm and a leg. That and you see a lot of indy games meant for niche markets (just about anything put out by IPR, for example.) And some of these (Fiasco and Dresden RPG) sell very well. However, none of this changes the fact that tabletop RPGs are not as dominating as they once were and console and PC games are the dominate force.

[Chris Goodwin]

It seems obvious to me that if you want to get more people playing the HERO System, the best way to do that is to reduce the barriers to entry. And if you want to, for the company, increase cash flow, consider that any work done for one edition, or for that matter for one system, is pretty much sunk.

Freeing up the system as much as possible would be an obvious and definite way to reduce the barriers to entry.

[Susano]

If it comes down to E-Product not being viable because the producers still need to get paid, then I think it's prudent to look at fan-made free e-product as a potentially viable alternative. On the down side, product quality of fan produced work will be uneven, editing may be inconsistent to non-existent, and there probably won't be much product art or nifty text formatting. On the up side, if it's free, it's free, and you really can't beat that. An e-reader may become a de facto requirement to keep up with the Hero System.

You mean, like the stuff on my website?

[megaplayboy]

You mean, like the stuff on my website?

Yeah, that's a good example. I think it'd be good to have some sort of central clearing house for fan-made work, where work-in-progress could be posted for feedback, material could be sorted by topic, title, author and genre, and pdfs and HD files could be available for upload/download. I have a couple things I'm working on right now, I know JmOz is working on a street supers sourcebook...having a single place where new and veteran players could go to get stuff, or at least a central place where links are posted, would be helpful in terms of keeping the existing community active and maybe even expanding it a bit.

[Derek Hiemforth]

78 copies is still around 1.5 a week, not bad for a $50.00 book.I think it depends on how you look at it. The area where that store is the primary hobby game retailer has about a quarter of a million people. When the biggest/best store in an area that size can only muster up 1.5 sales per week of their best-selling RPG product, that seems awfully niche-y to me. :)

[Susano]

Yeah, that's a good example. I think it'd be good to have some sort of central clearing house for fan-made work, where work-in-progress could be posted for feedback, material could be sorted by topic, title, author and genre, and pdfs and HD files could be available for upload/download. I have a couple things I'm working on right now, I know JmOz is working on a street supers sourcebook...having a single place where new and veteran players could go to get stuff, or at least a central place where links are posted, would be helpful in terms of keeping the existing community active and maybe even expanding it a bit.

We could talk to my provider about expanding my setup to include something like that.

[Derek Hiemforth]

It seems obvious to me that if you want to get more people playing the HERO System, the best way to do that is to reduce the barriers to entry.But where are these "more people" supposedly coming from?

People who don't already play hobby games? In that case, it's hard to see how the Hero System is likely to steal newbies from the much more well-known and well-funded games like D&D, given their ability to get products on shelves in mainstream retailers (not just hobby shops). Since of course, people who don't already play hobby games have little reason to come upon products in a hobby game store.

People who play hobby games, but not RPGs? Hmm... Maybe some. Best way to go about that would seem to be an aggressive program of running Hero games in retail gaming space and at conventions (though some of the presentation ideas folks have been discussing could be useful in this regard too). 'Course, Hero tried to do this already with the Legion of Heroes, and AFAIK, it didn't make much of a dent.

People who already play other RPGs? Again, maybe some. But then you run into the issue that RPGing as an entire hobby is shrinking. So to some extent, trying to get a slightly larger slice of the shrinking RPG pie sort of strikes me as trying to get the most comfortable deck chair on the Titanic... :winkgrin:

I honestly don't mean to be Doctor Doom & Gloom... I'm just trying to be Ranger Realistic. Assuming that Hero fans aren't numerous enough to make a big impact on the health of the hobby as a whole, I think there's a limited amount we can do to change the playing field in terms of market size. And history shows little reason to be too optimistic about what we can do in terms of market share.

So if we hypothesize for a moment that we can't drastically change the circumstances, do we have any useful ideas about what could be done to maximize success given the current circumstances?

[tiger]

One option would be to set up a thread/poll on the site of what supplements people would want to see/buy.

This doesn't add to the number of gamers, but would give Hero/DOJ and idea of supplements people want.

[itsalwayssunny]

One option would be to set up a thread/poll on the site of what supplements people would want to see/buy.

This doesn't add to the number of gamers, but would give Hero/DOJ and idea of supplements people want.

I think that's a good idea, but I'd need to know more than the title of the supplement to say if I'd be interested. Maybe there could be a brief (even just a sentence) description of what it would include.

For instance, I saw something about "The Turakian Age" (or something like that). That means zilch to me and doesn't get me interested enough to try to find out more about it.

--Kap