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Great news Fantasy Hero fans!


quozaxx

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Just a few moments ago.  My son, asked if I would help him and his friend learn about D&D.  But, I told them that I play Fantasy Hero instead.

 

I told him the basic differences in the two games.  One has multiple types of dice,  the other only has 6 sided dice.  One has very limited things you can do or have.  Like, Wizards can only have certain spells at certain times in D&D, while FH is only limited by your imagination.

 

So, a week from Saturday, I'm going to set something up for them to play!!!!!  Granted I usually play Champions, but I as so stoked right now! 

 

I have tried to play champions with my son before, but he was too young.  Wanted all powers, and no Complications.  And wanted to do everything you could think of.  Plus, his attention span waned too much.

 

But, now, he's 15 and asked ME to help him and his friend play.  I am on cloud 9!  So, any advice?  I usually only play post-by-post and not face-to-face.

 

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Start small scale. Use the Nentil Vale from D&D 4E or something similar like the Western Shores campaign for whatever edition of Fantasy Hero was published with Hero 4th Edition.

 

Start with pretty basic write-ups and use experience as an award. It works for D&D and it also works for Hero. Run a few combats and tell a basic story. See how the players (your son and friend) interact with the world. Are they combat hungry or do they pick up on the social aspect. Tailor the game from there. Listen to their feedback and layer in additional combat or other rules as needed to adjust their experience.

 

Really not that much difference from play-by-post except faster. Of course, my standard, any format, advice always stands. Keep a small rogues gallery handy. Use existing write-ups when possible to speed things up. Keep it fun for everybody to include yourself. Maps and monsters can usually be found online. I think there are even a few sites that have paper "miniatures" that you can print and use with a battle map of some sort. rpgmapshare.com has plenty of maps to use. Print out the Hero in 2 Pages document for the players and as a reminder of the mechanics for yourself.

 

Relax. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're about to solidify your title as the "cool dad." :)

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My advice:

 

Start them with prebuilt characters, maybe with a little room for customization for once they get the hang of it.  

 

Start them off with a basic combat scenario, weighted for them to win, but not easily.  

 

Know their characters so you can offer them options:  "You can use your Distraction ability against that guy to give your buddy there +2 to his OCV!"  

 

You might tell them up front you're going to use, or not use, certain rules (i.e. hit locations, bleeding, disabling) in the interest of getting to the overall basics of the game.  Or maybe let the players use them against the NPCs, on the theory that any rules that help them out against the enemy are more likely to be remembered.  

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I agree with what people are saying here as a foundation.

 

-Premake characters for them to learn with: simple, easy to read sheets.

-don't bother with hit locations, endurance, disabling/impairing, bleeding, etc  for the first session.  Each session add in another rule as they learn the game, until they have a handle on it all

-Simple, low powered start off.  They're used to being level 1 characters to begin with, so don't throw them 175 points, go with 100 or so and have them begin as just starting heroes.

-Focus on combat at first, so they jump right in, no matter how cliche (remember, at 15 I suspect he doesn't even know most of the cliches anyway).

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And make the most of the fact that XP can be used for whatever they want, and they don't have to wait until a "level" is gained in order to make improvements to their characters. Because I guarantee you that after the very first session, they are going to have a list of things they want to add or change about their characters (add mostly, I'm betting). And that's where the beauty of Hero System XP comes in. Any time they complain that their character can't do something (yet) that they want to do, make it clear that they can add it to their character as soon as they've earned the XP to do it, which doesn't usually take very long in Heroic level games where almost everything is a Skill or a Talent or in a VPP.

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Hey, aren't you the guy who was running Dragon Clans? That might be a good place to start them. Tell 'em it's something you have ready to run, and we can move on to something more human-shaped later. Unless they decide they really like dragons, and I suggested it in the first place because what 15 year old doesn't love dragons?

 

I agree it's a good idea to start out 1) simple and 2) low powered.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders if Dragon Clans can fit into any of the established settings, maybe right off the map....

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I don't think they are quite ready for Dragon Clans.  I am going to start them out with 2 of the characters in the Fantasy Hero book. Of course, I'm not going to tell them they are female characters, as i will cut out the picture and have them pick a name for them.

 

Now, I do know that I am used to the post-by-post setting.  Where I can roll the dice roller, take my time in reacting to what they just did, take my time in coming up with a response, and so on.

 

Where a face-to-face game, I need to be a lot more flexible and on my toes.  You realize how long it has been since I had to count dice? 

 

So, this will be a challenge.  I think the last face-to-face game I did was back in the 1990s, before my son was even born.  And I wasn't the GM at the time!

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Maybe it is a bit easier when you're running a Heroic level game where the range of character/monster options is somewhat limited compared to a supers campaign. But there are still plenty of ways a GM can stumble and faceplant if they aren't experts with the system and/or are unwilling to put in the time to fully prepare for each session.

 

Champions in particular has been hard to run since I started playing with the 2nd edition. Running a single superhero effectively is challenging enough as it is. Running an entire team of supervillains, plus their thugs, to their maximum effectiveness against the heroes is not for the faint of heart. Every single GM I ever met who said it was no big deal pretty much sucked (compared to the few really talented GMs I had the pleasure of playing with back in the day). Downplay the duties of proper Hero System GMing at your own peril...

 

I think it is smart to give them pre-made characters to start with. That guarantees right off the bat that they are playing with non-abusive characters which properly match the genre and fit into the game world. You'll still need to carefully police how they use their XP though. It also means you'll have strong familiarity with what is on each character sheet and make effective use of things like Danger Sense, Hunteds, etc.

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Maybe it is a bit easier when you're running a Heroic level game where the range of character/monster options is somewhat limited compared to a supers campaign. But there are still plenty of ways a GM can stumble and faceplant if they aren't experts with the system and/or are unwilling to put in the time to fully prepare for each session.

 

Champions in particular has been hard to run since I started playing with the 2nd edition. Running a single superhero effectively is challenging enough as it is. Running an entire team of supervillains, plus their thugs, to their maximum effectiveness against the heroes is not for the faint of heart. Every single GM I ever met who said it was no big deal pretty much sucked (compared to the few really talented GMs I had the pleasure of playing with back in the day). Downplay the duties of proper Hero System GMing at your own peril...

 

I think it is smart to give them pre-made characters to start with. That guarantees right off the bat that they are playing with non-abusive characters which properly match the genre and fit into the game world. You'll still need to carefully police how they use their XP though. It also means you'll have strong familiarity with what is on each character sheet and make effective use of things like Danger Sense, Hunteds, etc.

I'm glad I didn't say it was easy, 'cause then I'd suck. In my experience, being a good or bad GM has nothing to do with the system being used. The GMs that I've been impressed with over the better part of 4 decades haven't been good because of the system, but because they made the games fun--kind of the point of this whole RPG thing. As I've learned more and more over the years, I realized that those GMs weren't perfect, and they certainly didn't run all of the opponents "to their maximum effectiveness."  That didn't make them bad GMs. And I've certainly played games that were every bit as "complicated" as Hero.

 

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this other than I don't understand why you keep harping on how hard Hero is. That's an incorrect stereotype IMO. So while I won't say it's easy, I won't say GMing Hero is hard. Which brings me back to my earlier statement that Hero (or any game system) is as hard as you make it.

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I'm not perpetuating some stereotype, incorrect or otherwise. I am only speaking from my own 30+ year experience. The complexity of Hero System characters, superheroes in particular, makes running the game as a GM very difficult. The only way to make it easy is to not utilize every power on the villain sheets, to ignore lots of rules, and not think deeply about what action each villain/thug is going to take to give the heroes a real challenge. "Good" Champions GMs do all the work necessary to make it look easy despite the fact that is most certainly is not.

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I'm not perpetuating some stereotype, incorrect or otherwise. I am only speaking from my own 30+ year experience. The complexity of Hero System characters, superheroes in particular, makes running the game as a GM very difficult. The only way to make it easy is to not utilize every power on the villain sheets, to ignore lots of rules, and not think deeply about what action each villain/thug is going to take to give the heroes a real challenge. "Good" Champions GMs do all the work necessary to make it look easy despite the fact that is most certainly is not.

My problem with your position is that you seem to think (in posts throughout these boards) that this is a Hero-related issue in some way. Again, your definition of "good" and "suck" can apply to every game system I've ever seen. We'll have to agree-to-disagree on your interpretation of those terms as related to GMs.

 

No need to reply as this is OT. We should be encouraging quozaxx in his current endeavour.

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One thing you might want to know, is that I think my son's friend wants to know how to set up a game and thus become a GM.  He has never even seen a game being played before as far as I know.  He even asked where to get the "board" for D&D from.

 

So, I offered to GM their very first game.  And I do intend to have them play a very simple short game so they can get their feet wet, and then if he is still interested, go into more detail about how to build things.

 

Oh, how I wish Fantasy Hero Complete was ready for them.

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My position applies to any game system with the same level of depth and detail as the Hero System powers and combat mechanics. There really aren't any others. Every other system out there, especially every other superhero game out there, is substantially simpler (though M&M comes close). That makes the Hero System--and Champions in particular--unique in the degree of effort required to GM it optimally.

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My position applies to any game system with the same level of depth and detail as the Hero System powers and combat mechanics. There really aren't any others. Every other system out there, especially every other superhero game out there, is substantially simpler (though M&M comes close). That makes the Hero System--and Champions in particular--unique in the degree of effort required to GM it optimally.

 

I don't really agree. I very rarely get to play Hero these days, so when we use the system, I GM. As a GM, one of the things I like about Hero is that it's such a simple system to run. Character generation can be complex, yes, but the system itself uses a fairly simple, linear consistent game structure, which makes it easy to manage on the fly. That's one major reason it's remained my go-to system for games. The last time I ran a game, I didn't have my books with me, and to honest, didn't need them, even though we ran multiple combats in a variety of environments, plus a deal of non-combat activity (sneaking around, gathering information, building stuff, etc)

 

cheers, Mark

 

cheers, Mark

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