New to Star Hero

[verbosity]

Back in the day, I used to play Gamma World, Traveller, and Star Frontiers. I was also a Champions fan somewhere about 1983-86. I'd like to get back into gaming, particularly Sci-Fi, that being my favorite genre.

I've never seen Star Hero, would some of you long time players offer up how Star Hero expands on Fred? Are you satisfied with it? What makes it worth buying? What do you wish were included but is not? Are there good supplements for it? If I try it, is there a campaign or setting that I might look at to get things launched?

Thanks in advance.

[BlackCobra]

It has lots of interesting new rules for space-specific things. Suggestions on how to do interstellar communication, ship's engines, alien races, gadgets and all that good stuff.

It really makes me want to run a sci-fi campaign again.

And it's really thick. Much thicker and more chock-full than I was expecting.

[Lord Liaden]

Star HERO expands science-fictionally on FREd in ways almost too numerous to mention: guidelines for many types of sub-genre (military, exploration, cyberpunk, post-apoc, and more), for building aliens, using technology, generating alien worlds, dealing with the environment of space and alien worlds, archetypal character templates, plus sample equipment and starships. The quality and completeness of the book are, frankly, exceptional.

The samples of tech are not extremely numerous, but more can be found in various supplements: more starships in The Ultimate Vehicle now available, and many more to come in The Vehicle Compendium scheduled for early next year. And in May, Hero Games is scheduled to release a sci-fi gadget compendium, The Spacer's Toolkit

There's a very complete (and from most reports, excellent) campaign setting recently released, called Terran Empire. It covers several centuries in the history of Earth's interstellar empire, through periods both enlightened and despotic, so that you can choose an era that best suits what you want to play. It also describes the other major alien civilizations in the galaxy during this period.

You can read more on these and other HERO products by clicking on the "Our Products" link at the left of this page.

[Syberdwarf2]

Originally posted by verbosity
Back in the day, I used to play Gamma World, Traveller, and Star Frontiers. I was also a Champions fan somewhere about 1983-86. I'd like to get back into gaming, particularly Sci-Fi, that being my favorite genre.

I've never seen Star Hero, would some of you long time players offer up how Star Hero expands on Fred? Are you satisfied with it? What makes it worth buying? What do you wish were included but is not? Are there good supplements for it? If I try it, is there a campaign or setting that I might look at to get things launched?

Thanks in advance.

Sci-Fi is also my favorite genre. When I recently learned back in Sept '02 that FREd had been released, I decided to give it a try because everyone I talked to said that things were made much more clearer and cleaner. I was amazed. I started thinking of all of the neat things I could do with it.

That was also the same time I started collecting the DVDs for my favorite (at the time) TV show, Andromeda. I started doing writeups for a space campaign when I heard SH was coming out.

I ended up doing a homebrewed campaign instead of a straight TV rip-off, but still managed to do plenty of plagiarism...

The sheer amount of information alonme makes it worth buying. If nothing else it is an amazing read. Even if I hated HERO system, (which I don't, but that's neither here nor there) I would read this book.

I wouldn't really say that it expands on FREd as far as rules. But it offers up a vast wealth of stuff on which to build a sci-fi game. Star HERO is as important IMO to sci-fi gaming as Champions is to Supers.

It has aliens, ships, equipment, sugestions on creating societies/civilizations, new alien races, and cross-genre gaming. It offers some rules for mecha. It has an extensive section on random sector generation for if you want to make up your own star systems.

Do I like this book? You bet your FREd I do....

[Grymlynn]

There's that way cool sector/system generator software available for download FREE in the "Free Stuff" section. There are plans for two more Star Hero genre books this year (and next), I believe. The support is there, and the product is TOP shelf. Now is absolutely the time to start a Star Hero game in Hero...

[Nolgroth]

The Sector Generator program really comes into its own when used in conjunction with star mapping programs like CHVIEW or IFOS. IFOS does have it's own random system generator, but it's probably not tailored to HERO as much as the Sector Generator program is. The big downside is manually entering each star and it's accompanying satellites. The end result is really quite nifty though.

-Nolgroth