What have you used Hero for?

[Chris Goodwin]

The "Modern and Realistic" thread got me to thinking. Toadmaster, a ways back on that thread, wrote:

Personnally I find HERO works very well for these games. Its not just these boards, i've found many gamers have a snobbery against these types of games as unworthy of being RPG's and many on these boards will argue that HERO is terrible for them, don't believe it.

I've never met a genre Hero didn't like. Some of what I've played in Hero:

• Four color superheroes
  
• Somewhat deadlier superheroes
  
• Wild Cards
  
• Teen superheroes
  
• Many Fantasy Hero games
  
• Fantasy Hero game based on FGU's Bushido
  
• Fantasy Hero game based on Robert Asprin's Myth series with a distinct Star Wars flavor
  
• Several different translations of Battletech to Hero
  
• Generic giant robots (Robot Warriors)
  
• Old West
  
• Paranoid/gonzo conspiracy a la Illuminati
  
• Modern military action adventure
  
• Translation of WW's Vampire (that itself started as a modern day with magic game a la GURPS Technomancer)
  
• Space opera
  
• Pro wrestling
  
• Something odd we called "Death Wish", essentially 10 point characters, no powers or disads, dropped on a map and forced to fight to the last man.
  
• Weird dimension hopping uhhh...weirdness
  
• Ninja Hero (I was one of the Hiro Brothers)
  
• I missed out on the Ghostbusters game, but wanted to do one myself.

What have you used Hero for, as player or GM? In your opinion, did it "work" for that particular campaign, genre, or setting? Why or why not?

[GradonSilverton]

99% Conversion of the origional Cthulhu....
All that remained was the precentile Dice for Sanity...

This covered all aspects....20's, Teen, Ect.

Worked absolutly beautifully.....

Now as for my characters....well if you'd played Cthulhu, then you know what happened to every single one of them.

[JohnTaber]

Boy...I've done a lot of fun stuff with Hero. I'll only mention campaigns I have run.

+ Champions - From 200 to 500 points. I've run campaigns where superheroes are brand new and get their powers from one source and I've run the more standard stuff. I've probably run at least 4 or 5 different Champions campaigns over the years.

+ The Network - Sort of a secret band of folks who want to see the world improved. Based on Danger International and a game played by the old guard Hero folks and Doug G.

+ Fantasy Hero In Harn - I've run 3 or 4 extended campaigns in Harn in different areas (knights, frozen wastelands with vikings, etc...). I've even run games where the PC play familiars of a powerful mage who gets kidnapped...THEN they get to play the archmages who they save.

+ Von Braun Covenant - A sort of X-Files meets V. One of my favorites.

+ Alien Legion - Military star hero with aliens all over the place. Tons of fun.

+ The Canon Club - A group of mystery solvers. Great fun.

+ Time Travel DI (Danger International) - My most requested con game. Characters appear at a place in time where something is wrong that must be righted. Sort of Time Bandits and Sliders. The PC currently include folks like an NFL football player, a Victorian actress, a 6th century Chinese monk, and a 1920's australian tracker.

That's what I can remember right now... GO HERO!

[MarkusDark]

I am currently using Hero to balance the short leg of my sofa.

[Yamo]

Horror. Lots of horror. Some fantasy and Star Wars, too. I've been wanting to do sci-fi ever since I got Star Hero, but I haven't got around to it yet.

[Toadmaster]

Funny the past couple of days I've thought about posting a similar post. What I've played with HERO.

Supers (I played a fair amount of Champions until DI came out, very little since)

Fantasy (several D&D Grayhawk based campaigns, plus a number of generic fantasyhero campaigns) this is probably what I've used HERO for the most.

Military

Anti-terrorist

Spy / espionage

lots of Aftermath, Morrow Project and Twilight 2000

A few Call of Cthulhu games

A few pulp games loosely following the Indiana Jones theme

Stalking the night fantastic (modern horror)

A WesternHERO campaign (well ok a few sessions)

A dimension hopping / time travel campaign (I played a 2m tall jet black lizard necromancer named Nerbert who was armed with a Galil ARM and a S&W .44 magnum) unfortunately this game fell apart after a few sessions (the GM flaked out).

A few scifi StarHERO type games (although we didn't have StarHERO since it didn't exist.

A toon game

I've also played in quite a few one shot games of various genres, the heyday of my HERO gaming was in the days of DI, JI and FH3 so its been alongtime for some of the games and I know I'm leaving some out. By the time HERO4 came out we were primarily into FH and Postapacalypse games. Unfortunately I haven't had the chance to break in Fred.

I have yet to find a genre I was interested in that I couldn't use HERO for. Some games are better for some aspects, particularly detail but I've always been satisfied with HERO.

[Super Squirrel]

I have used Hero for the following:

Evil Superhero Campaign

Lethal Game Show

Murder Supernatural Mystery

Standard Superhero

Anime Hero

Post-Apoc Campaign (x2 at once)

I used UMA as a mouse pad. It was a great replacement for the Psionics Handbook.

[Victim]

Nothing, unfortunately.

I can't even find games online, because I prefer play by post to chat based games.

[Super Squirrel]

Originally posted by Victim
Nothing, unfortunately.

I can't even find games online, because I prefer play by post to chat based games.

Have you tried www.herocentral.net yet?

I have an online game there Pits of Teska that could really use one more player. It isn't a long term campaign but it would help one of my players out greatly to only have to play one character instead of two. At this point in the game, I'd let you create your own instead of using the second one he made.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Hmmm...lets see:

Standard Superhero (champions universe)

Gritty Superhero (Based on Image/Wildstorm's STORMWATCH comic)

Scifi (Space Opera)

Cyberpunk

Fantasy (both Low and High)

The Five Star Stories (Very powerful Heroic or low Superheroic campaign that combines Fantasy, Scifi, mecha and superpowers into one kick ass campaign setting...based on a popular Manga)

Tentative plans for the future include:

High Fantasy (based on ICE's Shadow World setting)

Space Opera (original setting: Dark Universe)

Anime Cyberpunk (based on various anime and manga such as BGC, Appleseed, Angel Cop, GiTS etc)

Lots more Five Star Stories...

[NuSoardGraphite]

Oh damn!

I forgot about my Sengoku game! Heck, that was one of my best games! I can't believe I forgot about that one...

Also, I have definate plans to run a Wuxia game based in 15th century China. Got a good storyline laid out based on some actual historical events...

[AGLAR]

Originally posted by NuSoardGraphite
(CHOP!!!)
Anime Cyberpunk (based on various anime and manga such as BGC, Appleseed, Angel Cop, GiTS etc)

GiTS?

[Tetsuyama]

GitS = Ghost in the Shell (manga by Masamune Shirow, published in the US by Dark Horse Comics, anime available on DVD and VHS from Manga Entertainment directed by Mamoru Oshii). Good cyberpunk stuff -- heavy on the cyberware, the characters are all a little estranged from the man on the street, but the world isn't too dark because they actually work for a pretty hardcore agency that provides good backup.

[Monolith]

Gee, compared to you guys I seem simple.

I've used HERO for:

• Champions (mostly four-color, but some Dark).
• SciFi (just started a new TE campaign; in the past I have done Star Wars Hero many times).
• Fantasy (not much, but some).
• Pulp (not as much as I would like! Did a short-run game where everyone played one of Doc Savage's aids).
• Western (what can I say, Young Guns was a favorite of mine at the time).

That is about it for me. Like I said, I'm simple.

[RDU Neil]

... as well as some others. Working with Storn, we tried to create a "fantasy martial arts" campaign... to incorporate the feeling of "wire fu" type of movies we'd only just discovered back in '92 and the like.

Decades of Champions... standard superheroes that grew into what I'd call "science fiction supers" where issues like law and sciene and society and politics begin to be radically affected by the existence of supers.

Lots of FH... which I like... but I can understand why others don't. Hero System can make magic feel like super powers way too easily, and you have to do a LOT of tweaking to make it feel "magical" again.

Lots of Detective/terrorist/cops/ex-military DI type stuff (as per my original thread).

Low level "agents in a super world" sub campaigns... as well as "black ops supers" in my main superhero world.

Star Hero, and even more so, Cyber Hero... which takes some tweaking, but I love Hero System for these games.

One thing I've not seen mentioned is Shadowrun. I never liked the FASA system... but darn it if Hero didn't do that "cyber magic" genre better than anything. In that kind of world, where magic is more of an occult science, with lots of controls, Hero worked really well... and you could balance mages and cyber samurai and elven rangers with MP-5s and orcish tank drivers AMAZINGLY well in Hero.

Cyberpunk as a genre has slowly been dying since the end of the '80s. The hey-day '90s made all the computer geeks rich and important, so they lost the "isolated against the world of corporations" feel... as they BECAME the corporationas.

Maybe now... with a good, facist Republican administration and Congress... we can get back to the good ol' days of oppression and ostracism like the Reagan/Thatcher era I grew up in. hoo boy... cyberpunk all over again.