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What sort of Fantasy Hero products would you prefer to see published?


Christopher R Taylor

Fantasy Hero Product Publication Poll  

50 members have voted

  1. 1. What Fantasy Hero Products do you want to see published?

    • Adventures (modules)
      27
    • Sourcebooks such as spells, templates, tradeskills, etc
      25
    • Bestiaries and manuals of monsters
      24
    • Maps and generic settings
      15
    • Campaign settings
      29
    • Variant Fantasy products (urban, superheroic, horror, etc)
      15
    • Character collections (NPCs, starter PCs, enemies, etc)
      14
    • Urban Fantasy
      8


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My next big book after the bestiary will be a big sourcebook on tradeskills and such for my campaign setting, but in between I think its going to be modules, at least 2.  I think Fantasy Hero is a terrific product that needs more support and drop-in adventures would be a big help toward that.

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I'd like to see something akin to a "Game Master's Guide" -- something that goes beyond defining the core rules of the system and gives more detailed advice on how to apply those rules.  The examples in the core rule books are decent, but often only hint at the things a GM -- particularly one new to the system -- should know in order to set up and run a successful campaign...And the core rule books are HUGE...too much to absorb quickly.  Having the information a GM needs distilled and well-indexed would be invaluable.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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  • 2 weeks later...

The scheme I have is to set up all the background and support material to run stuff in my game world (spells, loot, monsters, etc), then release a "Player's Handbook" type book with the basic setting and house rules, templates, races, etc in it.  With all that, I can start releasing cheap web-only location write ups of areas, adventures, and that kind of thing in the setting.  But its going to take a few years to get it all established - I'm a one man operation and I can't do this full time.  I sell books, but not enough to buy groceries with ;)

 

So I've got a sort of schedule set up of big books interspersed with adventures, to keep the content flowing.  Its going to be 2016 or later by the time I can get to the Player's Handbook at this rate.  But hey, I'd rather do it slow and good than fast and shoddy.  And I have a lot of Champions stuff I could put out too, such as a really interesting golden age campaign.  Some day I'd love to put out War Hero with basic rules and methods for running a game in a military campaign setting, then have supplements of various eras, so you could have one for Vietnam, Napoleonic, Alexander's wars, WWI etc.  Probably not a very big market but it would be interesting to me at least.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The obligatory books full of toys. (Monster book, magic items book, spell book etc) and beyond that, settings books out the wazoo. specifically one giant setting with a crapton of expansions for it.

 

A players guide kind of book with expansion material for "Fantasy Hero" genre book would be cool too as long as the material is interesting and unique (new templates, skill expansions, new ideas for magical systems, expanded weapons and armor lists, additional adventuring rules etc)

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  • 8 months later...

Sort of; they are broken down into groups of similarly-themed spells (elemental types, summoning, war magic, nature magic, etc) but that's mostly for sorting and the way the magic system I included works.  You can use them as hard and fast colleges or just use them as a way of finding and categorizing spells if you want.

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The scheme I have is to set up all the background and support material to run stuff in my game world (spells, loot, monsters, etc), then release a "Player's Handbook" type book with the basic setting and house rules, templates, races, etc in it.  With all that, I can start releasing cheap web-only location write ups of areas, adventures, and that kind of thing in the setting.  But its going to take a few years to get it all established - I'm a one man operation and I can't do this full time.  I sell books, but not enough to buy groceries with ;)

 

 

 

I read this and say "finally".   The biggest problem with Hero settings overall has been its extremes.  Either no setting at all, or an extremely in-depth detailed to the point of unplayable setting.     A setting has to start at an easy entry point or in other words from a generic starting point with some flavor added.  It has to be playable by a group where only the GM and maybe one player has bothered to read anything about the setting. 

 

Once the players all get hooked, they will actually begin reading the background material. 

 

D&D, Pathfinder and 13th Age, to name some of the current popular sword swingers, are essentially set in the same world.  From a beginning players view point.  Even in the game that pushes active impact by the gods/powers, 13th Age.  The initial response is, yah, sure Death god it is, check.  Let’s play. 

 

It isn’t till later when the players become invested that they actually start reading up on the Icons and designing PC’s that actually make real use of the Icons and their influence on PC design and actions. 

 

I love the Tuala Morn setting but it is next to useless to me to run.  In order to make a good PC the players need to have a basic understanding of the world they are creating the characters for.  If I am making a character born and raised in a world that character should have all that worlds common knowledge. D&D and such do this by simply sharing the same starting point for the last 20-30 odd years.  Tuala Morn is different.  In Hero’ quest to demonstrate just how cool it can be, they immediately pick the top of the learning curve and scare off the starters.  Tulas Morn is extremely detailed and the only way to accomplish this, dispensing the common knowledge, is for all the players to read and understand that world.    Players will not invest that time to read some 300 pages until after they like the world. 

 

A great setting establishes enough of a framework to be called a world/setting, but leaves as much as possible undefined.  The current D&D is doing this now.  There is a general map of the world that has great areas undefined.   Sure there is a city marked on the map, but no real details about the city.   Instead of heavily detailed setting information they are bucking the prevailing “truth” that adventures do not sell, by releasing that detail as part of adventure books.   The players “learn” about the expanding detail on the world as they play in a campaign.   Their first actual setting book releases in November.  So the game has been out and in play since July 14 (or Aug 14 if you do not consider the Starter Set a game) and they are finally getting around to what could actually be called a setting book.  And it will only detail a small part of the overall world.  

 

No real time but you still want to run a D&D game?  Here is the Sword Coast. 

Want to run D&D, but with your own stories and ideas?  Here are the core books and a 95% empty world to fill.  Have fun!

 

This is what Fantasy Hero needs.  Most GM’s want to build stories.  They don’t want to have to create all the swords, creatures and spells.   They will want to tweak them though.  This is where Hero could steal the market.  In all the other games, tweaking stuff is based on “best guess”.  In Hero tweaking is the core assumption. 

 

Anyway, I wanted to say I picked up both Elenthar’s Tower and Two Kings Keep and I can say I really liked them.  A lot.  Especially since you have discovered that a PDF doesn’t kill tree’s.  The adventure layout is designed with the understanding that a GM using it will need to printout certain pages.  All the NPC’s and handout are each on one page.  I can actually print out the NPC’s and all the information for each one is on one page, not one column on page 32 and the rest on page 33.   

 

Woot!  Very well done layout from the GM’s perspective!

 

So I've got a sort of schedule set up of big books interspersed with adventures, to keep the content flowing.  Its going to be 2016 or later by the time I can get to the Player's Handbook at this rate.  But hey, I'd rather do it slow and good than fast and shoddy.  And I have a lot of Champions stuff I could put out too, such as a really interesting golden age campaign.  Some day I'd love to put out War Hero with basic rules and methods for running a game in a military campaign setting, then have supplements of various eras, so you could have one for Vietnam, Napoleonic, Alexander's wars, WWI etc.  Probably not a very big market but it would be interesting to me at least.

 

 

War Hero?  Yes please.  Can I have my copy now?

 

I really get tired of people saying Dark Champions is all you need.  Warfare is not just a list of weapons and combat rules and game rule maneuvers.     Most modern movies focus on the personal stories and ignore the why’s and how’s of things that happen.   And if course the big stick college driven idea that all military are idiots and evil.  Even in the Avengers the “Why yes I’ll just nuke New York City on command” went by with nary a WTF from the audience.  Because the lowbrow military would indeed just wipe out their own without question.  Anyway I digress.

 

A War source book would be great.  Methods to simulate different eras for combat, both at the skirmish level  (just the PC’s) and at the larger levels with the PC’s as part of a larger unit or army.  

Just watch some of the great adventure movies of the past and near past and the possibilities are endless.

Some of the old (30’s-40’s) Cary Grant and Rock Hudson war movies that take place in India, Africa or WW1 are great RPG sources. 

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Wow thanks a lot for your thoughts on my publications.  I put a ton of work into layout and design trying to make a standard template to use that will be as easy and useful as possible for the GM to take advantage of.  Its why I made the Bestiary the way I did: one monster/page.

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