History of Star Hero help, please?

[Duke Bushido]

The other night I got my Champions 2e book and Star Hero 3e book back from my daughter. As I put them back on my game shelf, I noticed that I had Fantasy Hero 3e (gift; I don't really like fantasy as a genre), Fantasy Hero 4e and booth of the companions ("gifted" by way of a departing gamer who declared "I'm trying to lose weight for the move. Enjoy!"), and Fantasy Hero 5e (because my wife had read Star Hero 5e and wanted to read Fantasy Hero 5e). Seeing the Fantasy Hero books al lined up, and then the Star Hero books all lined up....

 

It made me wonder...

 

I bought Star Hero 5e when it came out, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I may use only a tiny percentage of it, but it was a great read and one of the best sourcebooks I've seen for HERO, ever. It looks odd sitting there next to my SH 3e, though, so I've been googling for a couple of evenings now.

 

There was no Star Hero for 4e, was there?

 

 

 

Anyone know for certain?

 

 

Thanks.

 

Duke

[megaplayboy]

I believe that's correct. SH 3rd edition came out just before 4th edition, IIRC, and then there was no 4th edition version, in part because of low sales for the 3rd edition of SH.

[Hyper-Man]

The list of different genres supported by HERO 4e did not include Star Hero.

 

The 1st edition of Star Hero was an all in one stand alone product released during the same era as Champions 1e-3e, Fantasy Hero 1e, Justice, Inc., Espionage! and Danger International.

 

Star Hero for 5e and 6e are similar to the Champions source books for those editions of HERO in that they did not include the core rules.

 

*The link in my sig below My gaming collection listed on RPGGeek.com contains every HERO product (including 3rd party) that I am currently aware of.  There is a small smattering of non-HERO stuff listed as well.

 

This post contains a pic of my current physical collection.
 

HM

[Lord Liaden]

The above posts are correct in that no Star Hero book was ever published for Fourth Edition Hero System. However, a manuscript for said book was in development, written by David Berge, Albert Deschesnes, and Shawn Wilson, and edited by Bruce Harlick. In 1994 a playtest text copy of that manuscript, along with a playtest updated starship combat system, was circulated to the Hero online community of the time. Shelley Chrystal Mactyre has it as part of the huge diverse archives from the classic Red October BBS, the hub of Hero net gaming back in the day, which she now generously hosts on her personal website. (Many rare gems can be unearthed from those files.)

 

The SH stuff has been freely available for download from that site for many years, so I can't see the harm in Attaching the ZIPs of them here:

STRHRO.ZIP

STARCMBT.ZIP

[Duke Bushido]

The 1st edition of Star Hero was an all in one stand alone product released during the same era as Champions 1e-3e, Fantasy Hero 1e, Justice, Inc., Espionage! and Danger International.

 

Star Hero for 5e and 6e are similar to the Champions source books for those editions of HERO in that they did not include the core rules.

Wow!

 

That's a lot of reading to catch up on!

 

My apologies for my incorrect use of "3e" on Fantasy Hero and Star Hero. I realize that they were technically each the first edition of those products; I based my terminology on the fact that they were released using 3e Champions rules, tailored to the settings. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.

 

 

The above posts are correct in that no Star Hero book was ever published for Fourth Edition Hero System.

 

 

Well that's what I figured, honestly.

 

Shame. Don't get me wrong: I rather liked the originals with their simplified game rules, etc, that made them complete games on their own. However, I liked the 4e genre book for fantasy hero (again, not my bag, but I enjoyed the amount of information and detail that was available. _Huge_ step up from its predecessor) and have always hoped that there was a similar product for my preferred genre.

 

Then having bought Star Hero for the 5e HERO, I _really_ wanted to know what might have been in a 4e-style Star Hero.

 

Oh well; such is life, I suppose.

 

However, a manuscript for said book was in development, written by David Berge, Albert Deschesnes, and Shawn Wilson, and edited by Bruce Harlick. In 1994 a playtest text copy of that manuscript, along with a playtest updated starship combat system, was circulated to the Hero online community of the time. Shelley Chrystal Mactyre has it as part of the huge diverse archives from the classic Red October BBS, the hub of Hero net gaming back in the day, which she now generously hosts on her personal website. (Many rare gems can be unearthed from those files.)

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply; I very much appreciate it.

 

And Lord Liaden:

 

The SH stuff has been freely available for download from that site for many years, so I can't see the harm in Attaching the ZIPs of them here:

Thank you a thousand times for this!

 

 

-----------

 

EDITED for formatting errors regarding multiple quotes

[Duke Bushido]

LL:

 

Loving it so far (just finished skimming it; going in for a full read probably tomorrow night).

 

Alas, for all the great advice and suggestions, this book, too, lacks the simple common-sense piece of advice I usually give to players wanting to come up with their own alien races:

 

Don't name the planet, the race, or even the character _anything_ that requires sounds the race is incapable of making.

 

(I'm looking at you, George Lucas! "Chewbacca" the "Wookie" from "Kasheek," indeed.... >:/ )

[Tasha]

re Nomenclature of Editions. We tend to refer products pre 4e as the first edition of that product. Because the rules were stand alone and not part of a unified rules system. ie Espionage, Justice Inc, were technically based on 2nd edition of Champions plus Champions II. Fantasy Hero 1st Edition, Danger International, Robot Warriors, Western Hero etc are based on Champions 3rd edition. Again those rules are all referred to the first edition of the product because of being stand alone. A good rule of thumb to differentiate between the two editions, if it came in a box and was staple bound it's 2nd edition (ex some copies of Champs 3rd ed). All of the perfect bound editions of games released before 4e are all based on 3e Champions, but don't require it to be played.

4e changed the Hero system into a Unified Rules system with Genre Books tied into that edition. So the products released during that time are tied into 4e to make the relationship to the Generic Rule edition clear. ie Fantasy Hero 4e is technically the 2nd edition of Fantasy Hero, but that's confusing because the product needs 4e Hero System to be used.

[Lord Liaden]

Just to add a clarification to Tasha's helpful post: To be precise, the rules for any of Hero's stand-alone genre games previous to Fourth Edition weren't really "based" on any particular edition of Champions, except to the extent that they shared a number of common system features, particularly the way Characteristics were bought and how they affected each other. While they were all labeled as variations of the Hero System, the games were all unique, similar but not really interchangeable. They came with many assumptions intended to reflect the writers' preconceptions as to how their genres "should" be played. Mechanically, Fantasy Hero spells or Justice Inc. "Weird Talents" were not constructed the same way as Champions Powers; weapons and gadgetry in the other games didn't employ the Champions Focus classifications; Martial Arts from Danger International functioned very differently from how they did in Champions; the mecha construction system in Robot Warriors bore little resemblance to vehicle stats and rules in any of the other books. Each game included unique Skills, Modifiers, and Disadvantages, and sometimes ones with similar names or in-game functions were bought or operated differently.

 

Champions went through three editions while the other genre games were still in their First Edition, which is why they're often referred to that way. Fourth Edition Champions was actually the first iteration of Hero System to take all of that, combine and harmonize many elements, completely redesign a number of things like Vehicle rules, to make the universal Hero game system we've all come to know and love.

[megaplayboy]

Star Hero for 3d edition had some funky system for calculating the cost of various tech items, based on the real and actual point costs, IIRC.

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks to all of you.

 

Yes; while I was posting, I realized my error but (to my shame) it was easier to explain why I did it that way than it was to re-write the whole post. My apologies again.

 

 

Star Hero for 3d edition had some funky system for calculating the cost of various tech items, based on the real and actual point costs, IIRC.

Size Change, Cost Change. If it was handheld (ish), it was by a "this many AP = this mass at this price."

If it was ship-mounted, it was "x64." Not really sure why, but it was.

 

 

For what it's worth, I don't have a lot of genre books, etc-- I just like sci-fi enough that I picked up the 5e Star Hero. The 1e Star Hero was a gift a couple of years after our Sci-Fi campaign began, and since our original campaign (the one that still runs) wasn't really "ship based" (though there are some ships in it), we didn't switch over. That, and everything felt, as MPB noted, "funky."

 

Like most other people using Champions way back in the day, we figured out pretty quickly that the system as-presented was pretty much universal, and switched all of our gaming to Champions early on.

 

Haven't regretted it a bit!

 

(well, there's a slight granularity loss and "normal level" characteristics, but other than that-- good stuff! )

[Lord Liaden]

LL:

 

Loving it so far (just finished skimming it; going in for a full read probably tomorrow night).

 

Alas, for all the great advice and suggestions, this book, too, lacks the simple common-sense piece of advice I usually give to players wanting to come up with their own alien races:

 

Don't name the planet, the race, or even the character _anything_ that requires sounds the race is incapable of making.

 

(I'm looking at you, George Lucas! "Chewbacca" the "Wookie" from "Kasheek," indeed.... >:/ )

 

Glad you're enjoying it. Makes digging it out worth the effort.

 

Re Chewbacca, I always assumed those names were the closest approximation human articulators could come to the sounds Wookies make. Rather like when some comic book tries to spell out Godzilla's roar:

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Oh yes; I totally get it.

 

And I tried to accept it on those grounds-- and for a great deal of things, I'm cool with it.

 

But then there are those instances like Chewbacca: Nothing in any of the heard-by-the-audience "language" of any wookie has anything even close to a "K" sound in it.

 

Honestly, I'd actually be more forgiving if Lucas had given in with what he claims (I use the word claims, because it's Lucas, whose "on the record" comments seem to pretty much simply mirror popular image and add the phrase "that was my original intention all along; that's what I wanted to do." Except for who shot who and when, of course)--

 

anyway, _claims_ that it was his original intention for Endor to have been the planet of the Wookies. I would have had an easier time with that: I could rationalize that "well, some of the sounds Wookies have made can be strung together to _sort_ of sound like "Endor." And I suppose someone else named them "Wookies" for personal reasons, and they're just too polite to correct anyone." But I'm still stuck with the Chewbacca" as a name when the entire language sounds like knee-walking drunks who have stapled their tongues to the floor of their mouths.

 

Just doesn't make sense.

 

(understand two things, though:

 

First, this is not as bile-filled as it may (or hopefully, may not) come across in writing. It's really just a pet peeve thing and not something I'm standing on a chair screaming about)

 

Second: Chewbacca is not even the worst occurrence of this; I selected it _solely_ because I assumed it to be the most well-known to people hanging out on a science fiction message board. )

[Ninja-Bear]

Well in some cultures its acceptable to have more than one name. So Chewbacca could be his name in Basic.

[Tasha]

Well in some cultures its acceptable to have more than one name. So Chewbacca could be his name in Basic.

Also I will point out that place names aren't always taken from the Inhabitant's Language. ie Germany is called Deutschland by German Speakers,  We used to call Japan, Nippon, Also sometimes names become mutated by when translated to another language or changed entirely depending on the translator's ability to hear and their biases.

 

I suspect that Endor is the name given to the planet by the Republic which wasn't taken from the Ewok Language. Kashyyyk is probably a corrupted form of what Wookiees call their planet, There are thousands of years of history in the Star Wars universe. Also, unlike Star Trek Klingons, Lucas has never made any effort to turn wookiee howls and growls into anything resembling a language. So it's hard to know what IS and isn't a phoneme because there isn't anything consistant. Pretty much the same with any spoken StarWars language. It's all gibberish sounds with no real effort into making something that could be a language.

[Nolgroth]

It's all gibberish sounds with no real effort into making something that could be a language.

 

A point that is inordinately annoying to me. A point driven home by Star Wars the Old Republic where every character that "speaks" Huttese says the exact same thing but with different subtitles. Frickin' Far Cry Primal made up its own language based on some proto-European roots. It was a simplistic language, but still allowed for actual concept and communication. This was done for a video game. How difficult would it be to do for a multi-billion dollar franchise like Star Wars? <grumble> <grumble> <grumble>

[Tasha]

A point that is inordinately annoying to me. A point driven home by Star Wars the Old Republic where every character that "speaks" Huttese says the exact same thing but with different subtitles. Frickin' Far Cry Primal made up its own language based on some proto-European roots. It was a simplistic language, but still allowed for actual concept and communication. This was done for a video game. How difficult would it be to do for a multi-billion dollar franchise like Star Wars? <grumble> <grumble> <grumble>

 

It is one major difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. In Star Trek they actually did make up languages for aliens, when the aliens actually spoke a native language.

[zslane]

[Troll Alert]

 

The Star Trek languages are the work of amateurs compared to Tolkien's languages of Middle-Earth.

 

[/Troll Alert]

[Nolgroth]

[Troll Alert]

 

The Star Trek languages are the work of amateurs compared to Tolkien's languages of Middle-Earth.

 

[/Troll Alert]

 

Agreed wholeheartedly.

[Lord Liaden]

Literally so. Professor Tolkien was a professional philologist.

 

Although to be fair, Marc Okrand who invented the Star Trek languages is a doctor of linguistics.

[Duke Bushido]

A bit OT, but given how the question has been answered (I need to mark it that way, don't I? oops! ) and the conversation has flowed to an interesting point, I'd like to ask this:

 

Why are the books for speaking Klingon as common as dog droppings in larger book stores yet the ones for speaking Vulcan never seem to see reprinting?

[zslane]

Because Vulcan has not caught on with nerd pop culture the way Klingon has, and so there is little commercial incentive to write or publish such books. Simple marketplace supply and demand, I imagine.

[dmjalund]

Because Vulcan has not caught on with nerd pop culture the way Klingon has, and so there is little commercial incentive to write or publish such books. Simple marketplace supply and demand, I imagine.

Logical

[Lord Liaden]

Vulcans are all about discipline, self-control, and responsible behavior. Klingons are all about passion, kicking ass, and taking no guff. 'Nuff said.

[zslane]

Vulcans have sex only once every 7 years. Who wants to board that cultural train?

[Lawnmower Boy]

Vulcans have sex only once every 7 years. Who wants to board that cultural train?

 

I'd kill for that much action.