Experiences teaching people Hero Game system

[Nolgroth]

Very succinct description of combat options. I'm very impressed. Thank you.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I cleaned it up a little, added two more bits "opponent is faster than you" and "opponent fights better than you" and its in the file downloads now.  Working on a fillable stripped down fun and easy character sheet for champions and fantasy hero both.  Its cleaner if there's no boxes and stuff, but not as easy to fill in.

[Sean Waters]

My experience of introducing people to Hero has taught me that, whatever you do, you can't let them read the back cover or paraphrase it to them in any way.  The moment you tell people that 'This is a system where you can build any character you can imagine', you had best prepare for a hefty session of clarification and disappointment themed along the lines of '...if you have enough points'.

 

First time out, just had them pre-built characters and get on with it.  Hero is a very good gaming system in its own right, the character creation part is great fun too, but not essential to enjoying the game.

[Alcamtar]

I always teach Hero with an inverted combat roll:

 

1. Roll 3d6

2. Add your OCV

3. Subtract 10

4. The result is the highest DCV you hit.

 

Easy to grasp, fast to calculate.

 

[Mister E]

Pre-built characters are gold.

 

HEROSystem is not finished. Asking a new player to make a character is like asking that person to make a whole new game.

[Joe Walsh]

Yeah, teaching people Hero system should be just teaching them how skill rolls work, how combat works, etc. No way should a newbie be asked to create a character.

 

Fortunately, Hero System is simple, outside of character creation.

[Ninja-Bear]

For a intro fantasy game I had premade characters but each had a couple of skill lists to choose at the time of the game. I had all dwarfs and four classic classes. Also each dwarfbwas built as a typical dwarf.

[zslane]

Immediately upon buying Champions, back in 1982, I became addicted to creating characters. And I didn't have anyone "teaching" me how to do it. Perhaps this is a good guage of just how needlessly daunting the rules presentation has become over time (especially post-4th edition).

[Christopher R Taylor]

I dunno, the basic mechanics of building a character haven't changed really.  There are more options but its the same basic process.

[zslane]

Indeed. So how did the game go from being one in which creating characters could become an addicting activity after just one read-through of the rulebook to one in which "newbies" can't even begin to wrap their heads around it? As you say, basic process hasn't changed. But what has changed is the way the rules are written/presented. And therein lies the problem, I believe.

 

Maybe the more streamlined Complete edition(s) of the rules will help bring the presentation of the rules to something more manageable for newbies.

[Sean Waters]

I dunno, the basic mechanics of building a character haven't changed really.  There are more options but its the same basic process.

 

True, but look at the page count and the length of each entry.  Look at the number of points you now use to build superheroes with.

 

Sometimes a clot of simple things look like a complicated thing.

 

I mean, I agree with you: I can build a Hero character from scratch using a pencil and paper and not referring to any books, by and large, unless I want to do something odd, and I can't do that with many other systems, because there is a more logical way to build characters in Hero than in other games BUT there is a big threshold to get over to get to that point in terms of ploughing through the books to see what all the options are.  Gosh, what a long sentence.

[Joe Walsh]

I think the Basic Rulebook does a fine job of distilling the big books o' rules into a reasonable length. But most of the people I know don't even bother to read basic instruction manuals and would balk at being asked to read even a 16-page rulebook, let alone the 64+ page rulebooks we've dealt with all our gaming lives. If I want them to play, I have to make it easy for them. So that's what I do.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree, we're dealing with people who culturally have a shorter attention span and practiced less personal creativity than when Hero first came out - people can concentrate and read, and can be creative, they're just really rusty at it.

[zslane]

If that's the sort of player that dominates the hobby today, I'm glad I'm not a publisher, that's all I got to say.

 

I'm also glad I don't have to GM them either...

[Scott Baker]

This is why video games "teach" you the game controls as you play. No one (an exaggeration, I know) bothered to read the manuals. Which led to a bonus for the publishers. They no longer had to put manuals in with the products, so they saved on the cost of publication.

[Sean Waters]

I think the Basic Rulebook does a fine job of distilling the big books o' rules into a reasonable length. But most of the people I know don't even bother to read basic instruction manuals and would balk at being asked to read even a 16-page rulebook, let alone the 64+ page rulebooks we've dealt with all our gaming lives.

 

...

 

Well, yes, but culturally acceptable in the wider context of social interaction, for all that lack of attention span.  At least we were

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, I got a FB update of a funny cat.  What were we talking about?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Read a Cracked article some time.  They've perfected the method of discussing actually fairly deep and thoughtful topics in the guise of being goofy and breaking it up regularly with silly images.  That's the template I have in mind for a Champions 101 sort of book.  Its a bit longer that way, but within 3-5 pages you should be able to teach the very basics of the rules and have fun at the same time.

[zslane]

Knowing and understanding the rules is certainly a prerequisite for creating a character. But using the power system effectively is a separate skill. It is a kind of modelling, where you take an idea you have in your mind and convert it to the corresponding powers and modifiers. We talk about how to simulate an ability with the system (e.g., "How do I build a Portal Gun?"), and there are usually many ways to build the same thing, and that's where modelling skills come in.

 

I don't think learning the basic rules is the biggest issue for newbies, though it is definitely a substantial problem. The biggest issue is the "How do I build it?" dilemma, which is a dilemma of creative modelling. I think engineers have an easier time with this because they are accustomed to taking a box full of parts and assembling them into the thing they envision in their heads. For those where this kind of intellectual activity is not second nature, the Hero System character building process is going to be challenging no matter how digestable you make the core rules.

[NuSoardGraphite]

My suggestion is to run a very low powered game at first. start your players off at 50+50 (100 total points) that way thay cant afford to min max beyond a certain point.

 

This will essentiallu force them to learn the system to survive, and it wi also teach them over time the effectiveness of the numbers in the system. after getting some experience, and understanding that with your Gm style, min maxing is not necessary, there characters will become more reasonable over time and thwn you will be able to increase your starting points for future campaigns.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree wholeheartedly.  Start small with simple characters involving very basic, straight forward powers.  Build them to be as easy to learn and use as possible, and you can branch out from there.

[bluesguy]

Keep the comments coming.  If people do come up with products ($ or free) to help people learn Hero Game System I would be very interested.

 

Again my main reason for asking has to do with helping new players get started in playing RPGs using Hero.  Learning how to GM and how to GM using Hero is a different conversation entirely.

[Chris Goodwin]

I had the thought of creating some cards to use as play aids, mainly for actions.  Each of the basic and optional maneuvers would have a card, and you could show it when it's your turn.  I did a search this morning for something similar, and found that @Zane_Marlowe had done something similar a couple of years ago.  The thread is here, including an HD export and MS Word mail merge to turn the export into cards; that thread is archived, so it's not possible to necro or respond to it.  There are still-active links to the files on Dropbox, though.

 

I plan to take a look at them later to see how closely they match what I was looking for, and to maybe modify them to whatever extent they didn't match what I wanted.  My idea was that you'd export your character from HD, and it would generate cards that would show your actual modified OCV and DCV when you perform the action.  There'd also be condition cards for being stunned, unconscious, grabbed, Flashed, Entangled, and so forth, and action cards for half and full moves, and half- and full-Phase delays.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

That kind of thing probably would go over well with a lot of players, since they've grown up in a sort of multimedia crayons and construction paper sort of world.  The theater of the mind we can teach, but it might require some tools to get them there.

[Chris Goodwin]

That kind of thing probably would go over well with a lot of players, since they've grown up in a sort of multimedia crayons and construction paper sort of world.  The theater of the mind we can teach, but it might require some tools to get them there.

 

Even as an experienced Hero gamer I want to try these with an entire group and see how it works at the table.  

[mhd]

I think looking at video games as close relatives isn't without total merit. I wouldn't go overboard, as that's really not a good place for innovation in general (still hell-bent on classes & levels, for example). But regarding character creation, there's certainly a trend towards simplicity and less front-loading. I remember when basically every game required you to create 6 (six!) heroes from scratch, and a wide variety of races and classes was a major selling point. But when games centered more on personal plots, they focused on you creating your own alter ego, with the rest of the party being basically NPCs, cf. Ultima/Baldur's Gate.

 

And nowadays, it seems we completely ditched character creation in AAA computer games. Maybe you pick a class, but that's about it. The games are still crunchier than a lot of the tabletop RPGs, it just comes later and usually is more structured (ability/perk trees).

 

There haven't been many attempts to recreate this. I regard D&D's feats system as something similar, as earlier "heartbreakers" often added plenty of class abilities or point-buy talents/advantages, but rarely ones that you can get after character creation. That has changed a lot. But even in more rules-lite games, there's still plenty to before you can slay your first goblin. HERO certainly not being an exception.

 

But I would say that there are possibilities. We already "break" the strict point buy rules in heroic games (equipment, some magic systems), we could go further. Although this would probably only work with some mechanical support, whether that's a well-made check list, ability/perk cards or a more incremental Hero Designer.