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Hero Action Points are Standard now?


Ndreare

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Nothing is mandatory in Hero, every book makes that clear. Hero Action Points are optional because all rules are optional. They're just presented as a standard part of the base rules package now.

This.

 

But there is a movement in the RPG fandom that wants to adhere to RAW no matter what. Its disturbing to me, but whatever floats peoples boats.

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Which is funny when you consider that one of the 'rules as written' was that GMs could change the rules however they wanted. He didn't adopt his 'one true AD&D' stance until 3rd party companies started releasing compatible materials.

 

Still the whole RAW thing seems to come in cycles. I recall it being pretty big in the early aughts (among other times) as well. It seems the pendulum swings between free-form ad-hoc play to RAW and back again every few years.

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Are there variations to genre where it would be inappropriate? Such as, for example, a game so gritty that living and dying by your die rolls is to be expected?

 

Possibly. Certain Dark Champions, Post-Apoc Hero, or Fatnasy Hero games, for example,.

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If you're going to make it up as you go along, what's the point in rolling dice in the first place?

 

HAP are not a case of making it up as you go along. In my expereince, players us their HAP when they really want to succeed at a task or during critical moments when they want to do extra damage to a foe. I also see them not spend them becasue they want to wait "just in case". To me, it adds an extra layer of player invovlement, where they can affect the story in a postivie way, which is a good thing, since the story is about them and their actions. It allows for more heroic stunts and the ability to pull of critical, just in-the-nick-of-time, type actions.

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We have used a Luck/Fate mechanic ever since our group fell in love with it in Fuzion. It just amazed me they decided to make it the standard assumption. The majority of Hero players I have met outside of my group have been much more into the gritty, let the roll decide side of things.

 

How do these changes happen without us catching on?

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We have used a Luck/Fate mechanic ever since our group fell in love with it in Fuzion. It just amazed me they decided to make it the standard assumption. The majority of Hero players I have met outside of my group have been much more into the gritty, let the roll decide side of things.

 

How do these changes happen without us catching on?

 

For me the addition almost slid by without noticing.  I had already adopted a version of Bennies (the Savage Worlds version of Hero Action Points) and to be frank, mine are much more versatile that HAP's as written.   I actually use them in not just Hero, but in my D&D 5th Ed game too.   

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah that's long been with us.  I remember in Dragon Magazine E. Gary Gygax writing that if you didn't play AD&D exactly by the rules, you weren't playing AD&D at all.  He wrote several articles on it, it was like a pre-internet fight.

 

Which is funny as AD&D was a somewhat contradictory amalgam of house-rules from assorted designers' tables writ large.

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It's a tool for players to emphasize what's important. If people are in that "no, I want to see what the dice say" moment, then they don't use them. In general, one of the things that recommends Hero IMO, is that it emphasizes the character as more important than the dice roll. D20 - really, any linear randomness system - values the result of a die roll above what the character is good/bad at. 

 

For something more pulpy, or for old-school groups that really enjoy that "the dice say what they say" style, then you maybe don't use those. Just a style thing. 

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Any GM I trusted*, I would be more than happy for them to roll perception for me. Any GM that I didn't, I wouldn't. But then again, I'm likely to be leaving that game very soon, if history is any indication.

 

* - Trust in this case, is exclusively in a gaming context; it has no real bearing on the character of the individual as a human being. 

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