What rpg.net is saying about 6th edition

[fredrik_nilsson]

This was the only constructive I could find on page six…

Re-costing things to make sense.

DEX is ridiculously undercosted. 1 DEX costs 3 points and gives: 1/3 of a universal OCV level (value 5/3 pts), 1/3 of a universal DCV level (value 5/3 pts), and already it's more than paid for itself before we even get to 1/10 of a SPD (value 10/10 pts), 1/5 of a DEX-based Skills level (value 5/5 pts) and a point of initiative (value ???). DEX is worth 5-6 points per point, almost twice what it actually costs.

CON is also undercosted, but also almost superfluous. 2 points of CON buys 2.1 points of figured stats, and a point of stun threshold... and nothing else. You could seriously eliminate CON altogether, set stun threshold based on BODY (or some proportion of STUN), and just make people buy the figured stats.

This is handled in another thread.

[CourtFool]

If you, like many gamers, have experience in police, security or the military, use of acronyms is SOP.

This from people who have no problem with LOL.

[Susano]

I wouldn’t agree in this. Most Hero Gamers are fully aware of this. The problem is that non-hero gamers think that it takes time away from the storytelling part (which depends totally of the gaming group). If I were Steve Long, I would mention a few lines of that it (game #2) is a game played on the boards, but not so much outside the boards.

I disagree. I built characters for fun, for years, before there was a HERO Boards. I know others who have done the same.

[nexus]

I’m not really certain what he means here, for me this doesn’t really make sense. What am I missing?

The Power Missile Deflection in Hero is basically a Block Maneuver like in hand to hand combat except you can use it against Ranged attacks. He's suggested consolidating those abilities in some fashion since they're closely related mechanically.

Frankly, I'm not getting the acronym's thing. Practically all games are chockful of jargon including some of the rpg.net Darlings. (Weapons of the Gods, Exalted, even a few of the "rules-lite" games), a few of them start using it -before- its defined. And if Offensive Combat Value and Hand to Hand Killing attack was spelled out every time there'd be just as much complaining about the overly wordy rules and "textbook" feel of the game. Hell, for that matter, the internet is full of acronyms and jargon with new ones popping up every other day. WTF? Amitrite? LOL!

[nexus]

I disagree. I built characters for fun, for years, before there was a HERO Boards. I know others who have done the same.

Same here. I've got folders full of characters I did for fun.

[Susano]

The Power Missile Deflection in Hero is basically a Block Maneuver like in hand to hand combat except you can use it against Ranged attacks. He's suggested consolidating those abilities in some fashion since they're closely related mechanically.

Frankly, I'm not getting the acronym's thing. Practically all games are chockful of jargon including some of the rpg.net Darlings. (Weapons of the Gods, Exalted, even a few of the "rules-lite" games), a few of them start using it -before- its defined. And if Offensive Combat Value and Hand to Hand Killing attack was spelled out every time there'd be just as much complaining about the overly wordy rules and "textbook" feel of the game.

Oh, and if Weapons of the Gods is an rpg.net "darling" then someone has a very skewed idea of what represents a clearly-explained rules system. WotG is a beautiful book, with great flavor text and the like, but I'll be damned if I know how you really create a character or run the system. Seriously. They make these jumps from A to B to D and for the life of me I don't see C in there anywhere.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Nothing of use was found on page seven, so these are comments regarding page eight.

I'm in the same boat as Buzz.

The thing that Storn Cook refers to is that this time Hero System needs a more through overhaul than last time and I agree with them both.

I haven't read through the thread yet... but if it's not fully backwards compatible, I'm not buying any HERO 6th edition stuff.

Well, I’m not so sure about this one. If Hero Game saves too much of the old stuff for backward compatibility, why should they go to sixth edition? Still I don’t want to change the game beyond what’s recognizable either.

- now there's a suggestion for HERO - make 0 end the default, and just give limitations for 'costs END' - nothing kills a superhero combat like "OK...I need to mark down 3 END for my strength and 6 more from my Flaming Fists of Fury...now I get a Recovery so I get six back..."

I fully agree. Cost END should be a limitation for all powers, with 0 END as the default.

[SAVeira]

Same here. I've got folders full of characters I did for fun.

Mark me down as the same as well.

[nexus]

Oh, and if Weapons of the Gods is an rpg.net "darling" then someone has a very skewed idea of what represents a clearly-explained rules system. WotG is a beautiful book, with great flavor text and the like, but I'll be damned if I know how you really create a character of run the system. Seriously. They make these jumps from A to B to D and for the life of me I don't see C in there anywhere.

Totally agreed. I love the book, love the genre, the setting seems awesome. I have yet to figure out the rules work beyond a vague notion. The book introduces concepts pages before they are ever defined, for one thing but I didn't want go off on a tangent about it.

[nexus]

The big issue here is that you can't please everyone and generally if you try you end up pleasing no one. DOJ is walking a tight rope between those extremes. While rpg.net could provide some insights, well, I'm just going to say it most of the vocal posters there seem to desire some very different things out of their gaming experience. Thats not a bad thing, fun is subjective but adjusting Hero to fully fit their wishes might (probably, IMO) would make the game somewhat unrecognizable and lose allot of the old guard.

And it still might not bring in many new players. Rpg.net represents a different "school" of gamer, IMO, but it's not necessarily more mainstream than the Hero boards. Frankly, the mainstream are the vast majority quietly playing The double D game.

[Paragon]

Oh, and if Weapons of the Gods is an rpg.net "darling" then someone has a very skewed idea of what represents a clearly-explained rules system. WotG is a beautiful book, with great flavor text and the like, but I'll be damned if I know how you really create a character or run the system. Seriously. They make these jumps from A to B to D and for the life of me I don't see C in there anywhere.

Well, don't forget that RPG.net is a very large populace with a wide variety of tastes. The people who are WOTG fans may not be the ones bitching about clarity.

There's been a certain hostility toward Hero on there for a long time, probably on the simple basis that high-crunch games aren't a big favorite there; its actually less severe than it used to be. But the raw variety of gamers and expectations there mean any thread on it is going to get some really wide reactions, some of them irrational, some rational only within a certain mindset.

That said, they're probably closer to what the gaming populace as a whole views about Hero than anyone on here is likely to be, for self-evident reasons; that doesn't mean they're necessarily particularly close (given demographics, you'd probably get a better overall picture from going on ENWorld) but there it is.

[steamteck]

One of the most appealing things about the storyteller system is how easy it is to introduce casual (or even new) players. Basically just describe how dice pools work and give them a pre-made character sheet. That is not possible in the hero system as it is today.

.

Maybe its a veteran gamer thing but my group grasped HERO quicker than Storyteller. ( and hated hated hated Storyteller once they got it but that's not relevant) I know there's always an exception to the rule.

Still the point is valid but I think its presentation as much as anything even D&D/D20 has tons of arcane abbreviations. still little slimming might be needed but nothing radical.

[nexus]

Well, don't forget that RPG.net is a very large populace with a wide variety of tastes. The people who are WOTG fans may not be the ones bitching about clarity.

There's been a certain hostility toward Hero on there for a long time, probably on the simple basis that high-crunch games aren't a big favorite there; its actually less severe than it used to be.

The reaction to Hero has gotten better on rpg.net as I've said before but its still something of a whipping boy. At least now you can actually start a thread about Hero that doesn't collapse into a flame war three or four pages in. It's more a casual dismissal and disregard than out and out hostility now except for a few individuals that act like they caught Steve Long sleeping with their SO then he fled the scene their car and ran over their dog in the process.

Some of them are ex Hero fans, but its painfully obvious many of them haven't done more than flip through a Hero book, if that much and our parroting the same tripe they've heard.

[Paragon]

Maybe its a veteran gamer thing but my group grasped HERO quicker than Storyteller. ( and hated hated hated Storyteller once they got it but that's not relevant) I know there's always an exception to the rule.

Still the point is valid but I think its presentation as much as anything even D&D/D20 has tons of arcane abbreviations. still little slimming might be needed but nothing radical.

I think its mostly the perception that you have to understand the guts of Hero before you can use it effectively. I think there's about three reasons for that:

1. Hero has a lot of moving parts compared to many games; using Storyteller as an example, for the most part, you have attributes and skills (which operate usually on about the same scale and use the same nomenclature), Backgrounds and Kewl Powerz. The latter are usually incredibly idiosyncratic, but there's no question in most of them that you're only going to engage with a sharply limited number, probably constrained by earlier character choices (Exalted being the obvious exception to that).

2. Character Generation is pretty much freeform. That's a virtue to most of us, but it does up decision load; its always going to be easier to just decide how to distribute within subcategories than to have one big pool and have to decide what gets what. It also constrains characters more, but that isn't necessarily a big deal to some people.

3. Hero Characters are usually relatively advanced out the gate. I suspect if D20 characters were all built at 12th level, you'd get a lot of bitching and moaning there, too, but most people get to get into it gradually, because they start out at the bottom where there's relatively few things to keep track of. Even a heroic scale character, on the other hand, has a lot of capability and a lot of options at build.

This is aside of the presentation and math issues; like it or not, a lot of people clearly don't like dealing with division or multiplication in character generation, and the 4e and up books could be pretty intimidating (ironically, I think one of the virtues of 5e hurt it here; all the examples bulk the book up non-trivially, and on a cursory glance can make the text appear even more dense than it already is; the fact they make it far easier for a newbie to figure out what to do with it once he's chewing through it doesn't help that).

[Paragon]

The reaction to Hero has gotten better on rpg.net as I've said before but its still something of a whipping boy. At least now you can actually start a thread about Hero that doesn't collapse into a flame war three or four pages in. It's more a casual dismissal and disregard than out and out hostility now except for a few individuals that act like they caught Steve Long sleeping with their SO then he fled the scene their car and ran over their dog in the process.

There's always some people who just have a hate-on for a given game system for one reason or another, just like there's always some people who are kneejerk defenders. Both tend to be drawn out by dedicated threads.