Why We're Creating The 6th Edition -- Please Read Before Posting

[MilkmanDan]

My thoughts:

I have never played D&D 3.5E. Not once. Think I picked a book up at Barnes and Noble once out of curiosity, but put it down again. Just don't care to learn it. That being said, I could easily sit down right now and play it without instruction. Why? I played Baldur's Gate and KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights and a slew of other games based on the ruleset. WOTC was able to get their rules out there via computer games, and that familiarity I'm sure has made it a lot easier to sell their core rulebooks to people who already understand the basics. It makes it easier for new players.

Hero is not easy for new players. I love the crunchiness of it, but it's not exactly a pick up and play system--there are a lot of mechanics that let you do anything, but that same level of granularity makes it tougher.

Now, from what we hear, there will be a Champions MMO. Assuming it sucks over a decent percentage of people who play City of Heroes, you've suddenly got a huge chunk of people exposed to your rules. Furthermore, if it continues to get mentioned in the same breath as "the cancelled Marvel Superheroes MMO", there's more exposure--people will have more name recognition.

I'm probably making a series of assumptions, but, if this MMO uses Hero 6th's ruleset, you've got a potential new audience. You don't really have much of a new audience right now--hardcore Hero people will drag in new players sometimes, but you're not really going to grow the market. New rules + marketing via potentially popular computer game = new business. If those rules wind up being marketable for other games as well, then Hero can actually make a big splash in the market and move out of the relatively small niche it has now.

[Caped Crusader]

I'm not really surprised by this, The entire industry has shifted from focusing on making money by producing and supporting good games to trying to extract cash from the customers in the most efficient way possible by changing the material every 4-5 years. ("What?" You say? Isn't that what corporations are supposed to do? Yes, in a world where money is the *only* thing that matters... oh, wait...)

GURPS still hasn't recovered from their conversion to 4th edition. They're still replacing existing material.

D&D is looking like it's going to self-destruct with it's pushing of 4e.
(How many publishers were operating under the OGL that just got yanked out from underneath them?)

Now, it looks like Hero is going down the same road.

As to the person who said
"Furthermore, considering the kind of publisher that DoJ is, I'd be surprised if we don't see some kind of conversion book that will keep most of the 5th edition supplements useful. Heck, maybe it'll even be published as a free PDF."
Why would you expect this? They didn't do one for 4th-to-5th even though we asked for it multiple times.

And, yes, we're making a lot of noise about something that doesn't exist yet. But if we wait until after it hits the street our chance for effective feedback is gone.

I've been a Hero gamer since the first edition hit the street. If it turns out that my opinion doesn't matter to the people who publish it, there's really something very wrong here.
You can't exist if you annoy your existing customers in your attempts to gain new ones. In effect you are saying that the faithful customers who've kept your boat afloat for the last 25 years are worthless to you. That tends to p*ss people off.
If nobody cared, nobody would make any noise.

[MarkusDark]

I do not believe that Cryptic is using the Hero ruleset. And, if they were, I think that many things would not translate basically because most of the math will be done behind the scenes. Although I would LOVE to be able to tailor my MMO character as much as I can my tabletop ones, the character creation system for MMO's tends to be a bit simpler.

But I have also heard that there will be unprecedented character customization in this game (although that could just mean the costumes). In addition, I have heard that you will be able to actually design a nemesis for your hero that will show up from time to time to harass your character.

As for opinions mattering, that is EXACTLY what DOJ is looking for with the updates in 6th edition. Due to the change in the market as well as the MMO coming out, things need to be updated to better fit things. Some opinions may not be implemented as they do not mesh with the rest of the stuff that is happening. I know that eventhough I have played for over 20 years, I wouldn't expect them to change from d6 to d12 unless I presented a great proposal for it and got a majority of players behind me with it. A single opinion amongst thousands won't change much, but the more you have behind it, the more it will move.

[Caped Crusader]

"if this MMO uses Hero 6th's ruleset"

I read a message from Steve somewhere else here that stated the MMO will *NOT* use the Hero ruleset. Kind of a shame, really, as Neverwinter Nights was the game that taught some folks I know the d20 system, breaking a kind of a logjam on that system.

[ghost-angel]

None of my posts are intended personally. I just think this is a place to discuss changes, and complains should go in the Company Forum.

[Simon]

Congrats to all the people who've "been participating since the discussion board opened"... that's nice.

A prime example of what I stated folks should be avoiding.

People: please keep this civil. If you cannot discuss options and ideas like sane, rational people then you should not come into this forum -- it will not end well.

[nexus]

"if this MMO uses Hero 6th's ruleset"

I read a message from Steve somewhere else here that stated the MMO will *NOT* use the Hero ruleset. Kind of a shame, really, as Neverwinter Nights was the game that taught some folks I know the d20 system, breaking a kind of a logjam on that system.

I remember seeing something along those lines too. Shame though, that would be so cool. I'd probably scrape up some cash to give it a whirl if it was but I seen where coding the Champions rules would be problematic at best.

I have heard Cryptic is going for a more open ended system than COH but that's probably getting off topic. Sorry

[caris]

caris, although I don't agree with your idea of breaking out 6E into an entirely new system, your response was very well-put. In the absence of being able to actually provide you any rep, I'm giving it to you on the honor system which means that the next person who does give you rep, for whatever reason, actually comes from me. Just keep that in mind.

Also, as my LOL account stated above, I don't want you silenced but I don't see how 'I'm leaving!' is really helpful.

Akiva, I’m going to have to take you through a bit of an arcane journey, through my thought processes. People have been known to be scarred by trips through my head, be prepared.

From a business perspective, there is only one reason to produce a Hero System 6th Edition, to sell a Hero System 6th Edition. Now, I do not think it is a good idea to assume that Steve, Darren and the rest of DOJ only use business reasoning in their decision. I think that they do have aesthetic and other types of reasons for the decision, which is not a bad thing. I do not care about those other reasons, because those other reasons don’t really relate to whether or not Hero Games will be able to at some point produce a book that I want to purchase. All I care about is will sales of this book help DOJ be able to pay the bills, when it comes to choosing books to print , etc.

There are a lot of ways to divvy up the world of people that DOJ hope will buy 6th and the books derived from it. The one that seems most relevant to me is: current customer base, and the rest of the world. Presumably, DOJ should be attempting to get the largest amount of both those two groups possible, with the desired outcome being 100% of both. Now the truth is that we both know that they will not be able to get 100% of both groups. So DOJ has to look at what amounts of both groups is going to get them the optimal sales results in both the short run and the long run (optimal does not necessarily mean the largest amount of sales).

DoJ is doing a new edition. OK, a new edition means changes. Most likely results are your customer base is going to be divided into some proportions of favorable, neutral and negative in varying degrees. How this is going to actually impact their purchasing you can not know without input for a sample of that audience. You need to know what things will cause what amount of people to be more likely to buy, what will make them less likely to buy, what are the deal breakers and get an idea of what the potential populations are. All of this data helps you decide things related to your goals with your customer base. This is why, I am stating things like: SPD is a deal breaker for me. If published write ups for 6E characters do not include SPD, than I will not be purchasing any 6E product. It is also helpful to know how your product and activities are being perceived. So as harsh as Caped Crusader’s opinion of the decision to produced 6E is, Steve, Darren, et al need to hear it. How much note and weight they give to any one or even any thousand opinions, well that is their judgment call to make.

If you are going to make any meaningful changes, which I believe Steve will do, you are going to probably loose some of your customer base. This means that you need to bring in new customers to add to the customer base, preferably more than you loose. Which you will notice why there are discussions about how to make the rules more appealing, and timing the release with the opening of Champions on-line. This is where I really disagree, and why I made the statement that I did about rather than going with a new edition go with a new system. I am admitting that I was wrong back at the beginning of the Fuzion debacle, when I thought that just a new marketing plan was all that Hero needed. DoJ has pretty much followed what I thought would be the best possible marketing strategy to grow Hero. I don’t really feel that Hero has grown all that significantly, and that the only thing to blame is Hero itself. I honestly think that all the stuff that I love about Hero, what makes it the great system for me that it is, is a turn off to the majority of the gaming market. So yeah, I don’t think that an improved layout, better art and changes that still leave it backwardly compatible with the existing Hero System will be able to do that. I think that to grow their customer base, DoJ has to in some way have a radically different rules set than the current version of Hero. I’d rather see a “sister” system come into being than to loose my current Hero. I’d also rather see Hero Games continue as something other than a charity case supported by a group of obsessed gamers who buy stuff just to keep the company open, than keep Hero around.

Probably too negative, somebody report me to the mods, please.

[nexus]

I think you were really quite eloquent and made quite a few points that I can agree with.

[dsatow]

Personally, I rather see a single core rule book rather than two, and have it cut to the chasse for experience people like me.

Second, I'd like to see Genre books which do not include every option imaginable for that genre but allow a new person to start playing quickly. Include the basics of the game system in each genre book but not all the mechanics. New players rarely care how to make a fireball so as to make a new spell. They'll just use the stock.

Create supplements in either genre or core rules to expand each. Use the genre books as advertizing to sell the core book.

As far as 6e is concerned, I like the even numbered books better than the odd ones so I am hopeful!

[vincemcd]

Fuzion gained us simplicity, but cost us in raw modeling power - I couldn't do certain things anymore with it, which is definitely *not* what I want with 6th. Hero with just one or two attack powers and a stat removed and a few oddball Advantages folded into others is still Hero, not Fuzion II: Electric Boogaloo. I'm arguing for cleanup, not wholescale slash-and-burn revision.

This is a point I agree strongly with. My most recent supers games (it's been a while) were run with Fuzion's base rules, combined with HERO 4th Powers rules to get back the granularity and "sanity" that Fuzion's Powers rules lost.

I've been tempted back to HERO recently, but the complexity of the rules in-play (not character creation) has kept me away. The apparent necessity of the many "Ultimate" books is another thing that's turned me off. If HERO 6th can address these points - and it looks like it has the chance to based on what little Steve has published so far - then this will likely go from being a temptation to a done-deal. And even if it doesn't, I'm no worse off, and I hope that it works well enough to make enough folks happy with the changes.

[Akiva]

Akiva, I’m going to have to take you through a bit of an arcane journey, through my thought processes. People have been known to be scarred by trips through my head, be prepared.

Although I understand what you've written, and even if I did agree this was the best course of action, the problem you're overlooking is the cost of maintaining two product lines. Each group of people are going to expect a certain amount of support and x number of supplements published per year. So, instead of supporting one primary game line, you're now supporting two. This would create an overhead that most companies, especially in this current climate, cannot sustain.

Of course, I realize that a new edition will create a schism in the HERO community. I've seen it happen before with AD&D, with Shadowrun, with Rolemaster, with just about any game that has had more than one edition. People who are against it behave as if it's the end of the world and people who are for it act as if the world is just about to get better for everyone and they pretty much are never able to see eye-to-eye. This kind of apocalyptic hand-waving from those who are against it is rather typical but, for every person who says something like 'a change in SPD is a deal breaker for me', there are probably three people who don't play HERO because the way SPD is handled now is a deal breaker for them. Ultimately, DoJ already has your money.

Let me put it another way: after a certain amount of time has passed, a game system is going to get as many players as it will realistically get to make it economically viable without some kind of shake-up whether it's having its rules licensed into some computer game that ends up being massively popular or a new edition. DoJ publishing some new niche supplement isn't going to generate much revenue and it certainly isn't going to drum up interest from gamers who have already passed judgment on HERO. Sure, the Champions MMORPG, assuming it is ever released, might generate interest in the Champions universe but, as I understand it, it's not even going to use HERO rules so it's not going to really draw people into HERO. In fact, this kind of MMORPG-to-tabletop gambit is what D&D 4e is hinging upon; the new edition is based around MMORPG-style LFG pick-up play. I personally think that it's going to work but it's not going to be the so-called 'watershed' for D&D or the gaming industry as a whole that that 3e was. Do you think HERO should hedge the same bet?

Perhaps, if the gaming industry were in better shape, DoJ could afford to run two lines of what is essentially two variations on the same system. I suppose if the gaming industry were in great shape, WotC could publish D&D 4e and then, as many people would love, resurrect the D&D Rules Cyclopedia as D&D Classic and support them both. But, we both know that it isn't going to happen. It's simply not feasible. Do you think that DoJ can pull off what no other major game company can?

The bottom line is that 6E is happening whether people like it or not. And, all of the doomsaying and gnashing of teeth isn't going to change that. I can guarantee you that Steve didn't just announce this without thinking about everything we've already talked about. When they sat down and began to earnestly discuss the possibility of a sixth edition, you can bet that someone at the table said, 'You know, this is going to piss a lot of people off,' or, 'You realize that this is going to cause a huge rift amongst our players.' But, regardless of the friction that was inevitable, they were compelled to do it anyway. And, as has been pointed out, they're doing it for financial as well as creative reasons. There are obviously flaws with the so-called 'best RPG ever published' and these flaws can possibly be addressed. Will it be done so to please everyone? No, that's impossible. But, it's a risk that needs to be taken.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that people who refuse to upgrade lose is the possibility of new rule options from supplements published after 6E is released. Nothing's stopping people from ignoring the 6E core books and buying only the supplements and ignoring the rules-specific stuff or adapting it for 5E. Other than that, people just seem to take it as some kind of personal insult which confuses me.

No matter what, all of these issues have already been considered by people who have far more experience running a gaming company than we do. These people, remember, have gone through five revisions before, each of which probably caused the same kind of schism amongst the player base.

Anyway, I agree with you that both sides of the argument should be heard but I'm also quite sure that all of this was considered and expected by DoJ.

[Bygoneyrs]

Speaking both for myself and my 13 yr old son that has gotten into RPGing using 5ed R...after have baught (67) Hero System books that are all 5ed R, and having been a Champions player since v2...I think I have earned the right to state my feelings about the new 6ed HS. Now 2.5 yrs ago, I bought my son Chanpions 5ed and started buying him everything else that was 5ed R. Thus that is hoe I have come to have so many Hero System's books today.

Now I have been playing RPG for 32+ yrs now. I started with D&D, Traveller, and then Gamma World..folled by Champions. I have been extremely lucky to always have extra money to dump into buying everything. Thus I have a HUGE library of gamming stuff, and have bought alot of other stuff from lots of other systems too, for reference materials. Now about 3 yrs gao, I started buying everything under the sun for 3.5 ed D&D so I could rework my 25+ yr fantasy campaign, and then last summer they anounced 4ed D&D. I decided having gone from AD&D, to v2.0, and v2.5, skipped v3, and finally v3.5 d20 system...that v4 was Not For Me. I refuse to dump that amount of money again into a gaming system, to buy all the old stuff reworked again for a new system.

So when I discovered that Hero Systems had Fantasy Hero, Traveller Hero, and finally PAH...I was convinced HS v5 was for me. I even taught my own son to use HS 5ed R quite well, he doesn't want simpler rules set. So now Steve Long has decided to do what WOTC did, damn to core long time customers and create a new rule system v6 and what rewrite and reprint the same old stuff again for the next 2-3 yrs starting in 2009.

I have lost interest in buying any more v3.5 d20 D&D stuff, and now buying any v5ed R stuff seems kinda pointless, but my son having not been through this before states lets buy all the remaining v5 stuff and just forget about the v6 HS. he states very few kids want to be bothered learning this stuff and it is mostly the older gamers buying the stuff anyway now. If they want to piss off those that have the money and can buy the books, so they can make the game easier for some to play that can't buy the books in the first place then let him. Wisdom from a 13 yr old RPG kid, seems quite sound and on target. So I might buy the remaining v5 ed R products, but I am not sold on the need for v6.

Now being a old Traveller player, I will buy the rest of Traveller Hero products and the New Era 1248 line until Avenger's/ComStar licence expires in Oct 2008. After that I will most likely start buying Martin's new space system of Far Avalon. I will also buy MonGoose games Traveller and T5 as well too. As for Hero Systems v6, well I might discontinue to spend my 2-3,000+ US dollars a year on any of their products and just focus of Traveller and Far Avalon too. The Traveller material will always be a resource for HS v5ed R.

So lets here some real v6 rules changes so we can chew on them then!!!

Penn

[misterdeath]

I posted a modified version of this at my other home, but I think it might be good here too...

I've got a different perspective. About three months ago, I picked up the game again after a 3ish year layoff, so I could run Hero Supers in the Gestalt Universe for the guys at the gaming store. None of whom have ever played Hero. Most of whom only have played D&D 3.5. One guy's played Palladium Supers.

The first thing I realized is there's too much legacy crap.

Advantages and Limitations on Powers, yet Disadvantages for the character? Why not Advantages and Disadvantages on the Power and Limitations for the Character, especially since half of them are called Limitations anyways? Because when they created the system in '82 that's what they came up with.

Why fractions, not decimals? Because.

Hexes/Inches as a unit of measurement? That's the way it was done in the 80s. At least it stays 2 meters, rather than being 10 ft indoors and 10 yards outdoors. Well, unless you've got Megascale, then all bets are off.

What's the u in the Multipower stand for? Ultra, but now the slots are called Fixed. Why isn't it an f, since Multi slots are m's? Because in the olden days, you labeled things in your elemental control with letters, not a numbered list, and you could get to f that way, and it might be confusing.

But they did away with the lettered lists? Yep, but they didn't change the multipower description.

What's Comeliness do? Nothing, except bragging rights.

Why's it there in a system that prides itself on it's mathematical modeling, and you get what you pay for? Shrug.

___
After the Fuzion Debacle, where while most of the things people were complaining about were fixed but the changes were too much and the implementation was too poor, only a few things were changed in Hero5. Some of which are better, some of which not so much.

But Hero5 is basically the same game as Hero4 (where I really started playing). Cleaning the system of some of the legacy crap, tightening it up mathematically, to make it easier for the new players to pick up and run, like the ones hopefully coming in with the MMO, so they don't say, "Huh, why? That doesn't make a bit of sense," is a very good thing. But, it's going to have to fundamentally remain Hero.

I'm one of the few people that'll admit to liking Fuzion. But even I don't particularly want to see Nukular, or Fuzion II, Electric Boogaloo, or Antymatter (Y, because it's cool) or whatever it'd be called.

I don't envy Steve having to walk the line between making the system easier and more accessible, and keeping the rabid fan base mostly intact.
____

One thing I'd like to see is something proposed most recently by Toadmaster, that Genre simulation be given a little better treatment. In a gritty military game, the Tank has stats X, In my GI Joe campaign Y, in Supers Z. (He used M-16 as an example.)

You can use Hero to do any Genre, that doesn't mean the numbers all have to be the same in every genre.

D

[tiger]

Well, I'll throw my two sense in so everyone might want to duck!

I personally am a bit sick of the constant reworking of systems that seems to have gotten a hold of the gaming industry over recent years. Just when you start to pick up books, and the prices seems to be increasing, they rework the system and you have to start over.

Having said this, it has been quite a few years since fred or fred II, revised edition, has came out. There are a lot of rules, new talents, perks etc scattered over different rulebooks. It would be nice and very handy to have them all located in one new book.

Over the years lots of questions have risen, just check the rule FAQ, so clarifications and possibly a few rule changes could be in order.

I just hope the DOJ will not follow the tread of "reworking" all the books and then releasing them again.