Whats' the Hero System Value Proposition?

[Joe Walsh]

We have periodic discussions on here about what should be done to get more people playing Hero, but I don't recall anyone talking about why anyone would want to play Hero instead of any of the other RPGs.

 

What do you see as the compelling reason(s) people should play Hero instead of something else?

 

Keep in mind it can't be, "You can make any kind of character you want!" because you can do that in a lot of other RPGs.

 

[Chris Goodwin]

You can play any genre you want, without having to learn a new ruleset.  

 

You can build an ability or character type that neither the designers nor the GM had ever considered, with some assurance that if the points work out it will be balanced.  In other words, if you want to play a potion maker you can play a potion maker, without having to figure out what pieces the designers gave you that sort of look like a potion maker.  You can start out as a potion maker.  You can say "Hey, GM, I want to play a potion maker," and if the GM gives the okay you can create your potion maker. 

 

It's not just that you can build anything you want; you can build anything you want that someone else hasn't anticipated.

[Joe Walsh]

Sure, but I can do all that with Fate, or Fate Accelerated, or any number of other games. And I can do it more easily with them.

[Chris Goodwin]

True.  Fate is one of a trio of systems that straddle the "indie-traditional" divide, the other two being Powered by the Apocalypse and Cortex Plus, that some people have difficulty getting their minds around.  Then again, Hero has some of that as well, mainly with the math.  

 

So, if you want a traditional RPG that does what I mentioned, that's Hero.

[Joe Walsh]

What I'm trying to get at is, when we Hero fans are on other boards, and people say "I want a system for space pirate cat women" or whatever's on their minds, how best can we approach that? What is the strongest argument for using Hero, given today's RPG market? Is there an argument strong enough to outweigh the baggage associated with the Hero brand and and very real "but it's a huge pile of rules" issue? And where does Hero fit into the ecology of RPGs?

 

I think if we had a cogent, relevant argument for Hero, it would be helpful when we want to evangelize the system.

 

I just haven't been able to come up with one on my own that's not terribly baroque.

[Chris Goodwin]

What I'm trying to get at is, when we Hero fans are on other boards, and people say "I want a system for space pirate cat women" or whatever's on their minds, how best can we approach that? What is the strongest argument for using Hero, given today's RPG market? Is there an argument strong enough to outweigh the baggage associated with the Hero brand and and very real "but it's a huge pile of rules" issue? And where does Hero fit into the ecology of RPGs?

 

I think if we had a cogent, relevant argument for Hero, it would be helpful when we want to evangelize the system.

 

I just haven't been able to come up with one on my own that's not terribly baroque.

 

I get it, and I agree.  

 

It's a traditional RPG with tactical elements, rules crunch, and switches you can flip for high action or gritty.  It's points build, skills-based, effects-based, with bell-curve task-based resolution.  It handles supers and high powered cinematic action very well.  It scales down to dark, gritty, and deadly pretty well.  Prevailing wisdom says that GURPS is better for dark 'n gritty while Hero is better for high power and action; I largely disagree with that.  GURPS may be slightly better than Hero with all of the switches flipped, but Hero is damn fine.  Where GURPS comes out ahead -- and I want to stress: GURPS comes out way, way ahead here -- is that they have a free taster that you can download, build characters, and play a session, and you're playing GURPS.  GURPS with a lot of its switches flipped to off, true, but it's GURPS and you can try it without having to risk a penny.  This is not a selling point for Hero, but it's the truth, and we're losing people at that last fork in the road.  

 

For someone coming from D&D, Hero isn't a foreign country the way that Fate, PbtA, and Cortex might be.  

[Doc Democracy]

Well, the proposition for players is indeed that you can play any character you want, and that is true of several other systems.

 

What HERO provides that those others do not is a GM proposition which is that you can play any game you want. Because all the levers are exposed, it is pretty easy to change the fundamentals of the game being played, increasing grit or cinematic tendencies, dialling up or down the importance of particular powers/skills/characteristics, making the damage or fatigue tracking more or less detailed.

 

If the GM is up for the customisation, both the players and GM get the game they want but it remains fundamentally HERO.

 

Customisation at every level is my mantra.

 

 

Doc

[Eisenmann]

I'm exploring Hero because I want to run a campaign where the characters will change over time, where the players will have a lot of options for crafting their character.

I've played (and hacked) a lot of Fate. It's fun and it's easy to make it fit a concept. But, for me, a few problems have appeared when using it. I'm often running 1 on 1 games and it doesn't work that well, with the generally expected flow of Fate points via compels and tagging. Also, if the player doesn't embrace the rule of kewl then the game can become difficult for the GM to keep pushing forward. Also, the skill pyramid can feel constraining over time. It's really not that difficult to push a small set of powerful skills to the top of the pyramid. Not that removed from here is that characters tend to change over time, rather than grow. Another aspect (see what I did there?) is very particular to me, I'm a bit burned out on Fate. I love it, but y'know.

I've played a lot of OSR games, where fantasy can be played at the drop of a hat, but for the idea in my head, I don't want to start the PCs out as rangers, wizards, fighters, and thieves. Certainly I can have them all start out as 0-level classless characters, but a PC at the 'normal' level in Hero is more durable, considering the nature of the damage system.

I'm looking for enough flexibility to create the magic system for my setting idea that's more game than hand-wave. I'm just not there yet, even though I've been a member since 2006, when I first bought Hero Sidekick.

[zslane]

The value proposition is that you can build anything you want (be it a character or an entire campaign) and feel confident that there will be effective balance between all the elements due to the point-build system.

 

And while you can certainly say that other games have point-build systems, in my view none of them are as thoroughly vetted or well-designed as the Hero System; they always break down in some fundamental way that the Hero System simply never does. That's why the HS delivers unequalled confidence in the game you end up playing. If you can imagine it, you can make it, and it will work. Yes, it takes a little bit of (design) effort, and you have to master the system first, but the payoff is huge.

 

Also, if you are looking for a game with an intrinsic cinematicism, no other system scales up from Normal to Cosmically Powered as cleanly and effortlessly as the Hero System.

[Christopher R Taylor]

You can play any genre you want, without having to learn a new ruleset.  

You can build an ability or character type that neither the designers nor the GM had ever considered, with some assurance that if the points work out it will be balanced. 

 

 

I think this sums it up perfectly.  Other games let you build characters, or have systems to build things.  Hero is almost a meta system, in that its the skeleton on which a system can be built.

[massey]

Hero does supers better than any other system.  Hero does other genres either as well, or almost as well, as systems dedicated to that genre.

 

 

If you love D&D fantasy, then Hero isn't going to steal you away from D&D.  If you love, god help you, a game like RIFTS, then Hero isn't going to do RIFTS better than RIFTS.  But if you ever wanted to play a fantasy game that had D&D elements, but also let you do other things?  Hero can do that.  You want to do a post-apocalyptic magic/sci-fi game, but without RIFTS' terrible balance issues?  Hero can do that.  No other game system can do as many genres as well as Hero.

[Cantriped]

Hero System is really good at letting GMs run a campaign set in the world of their favorite fiction without needing specific supplements. For example, many years ago I played Naruto Hero. Hero is also quite adept at allowing players to play a character modeled off of their favorite fictional characters.

[Tasha]

We have periodic discussions on here about what should be done to get more people playing Hero, but I don't recall anyone talking about why anyone would want to play Hero instead of any of the other RPGs.

 

What do you see as the compelling reason(s) people should play Hero instead of something else?

 

Keep in mind it can't be, "You can make any kind of character you want!" because you can do that in a lot of other RPGs.

You can build the campaign of your dream, switch genres as often as you like. All without needing to learn a new game system.

 

The Game also defaults to a more cinematic feel that allows for PC's mistakes to not be immediately deadly. With that you can add included variations to both increase or decrease lethality.

 

That I can build the character of my dreams without having to take stuff that was part of someone else's vision of that kind of character.

 

Hero System is Freedom.

[Hyper-Man]

What other systems refer to as 'hacks' to get them to simulate other genres is just fine tuning in HERO.

 

HM

[Lucius]

I'm exploring Hero because I want to run a campaign where the characters will change over time, where the players will have a lot of options for crafting their character.

 

I've played (and hacked) a lot of Fate. It's fun and it's easy to make it fit a concept. But, for me, a few problems have appeared when using it. I'm often running 1 on 1 games and it doesn't work that well, with the generally expected flow of Fate points via compels and tagging. Also, if the player doesn't embrace the rule of kewl then the game can become difficult for the GM to keep pushing forward. Also, the skill pyramid can feel constraining over time. It's really not that difficult to push a small set of powerful skills to the top of the pyramid. Not that removed from here is that characters tend to change over time, rather than grow. Another aspect (see what I did there?) is very particular to me, I'm a bit burned out on Fate. I love it, but y'know.

 

I've played a lot of OSR games, where fantasy can be played at the drop of a hat, but for the idea in my head, I don't want to start the PCs out as rangers, wizards, fighters, and thieves. Certainly I can have them all start out as 0-level classless characters, but a PC at the 'normal' level in Hero is more durable, considering the nature of the damage system.

 

I'm looking for enough flexibility to create the magic system for my setting idea that's more game than hand-wave. I'm just not there yet, even though I've been a member since 2006, when I first bought Hero Sidekick.

You're like my reflection.

 

I've been a Hero fan for years, but only recently discovered Fate and am interested in exploring it and using it to run fantasy. It fascinates me because it is so much like Hero, but at the same time so fundamentally different.

 

But as for what Hero does that no other game does - it's like Fate but with lots and lots of "crunch" while still having a consistent underlying system that is much less complex than it appears to be. I have compared Fate to a kind of blurry lens that reduces everything viewed to simple shapes, like looking at the Mona Lisa and seeing just a smiley face -

Hero is the opposite - instead of broad strokes it calls for nailing things down fairly precisely. By default there is little fuzziness or blur. Things can get very granular. If you look at Monster Hunter or Dark Champions for example you can see every freakin' model of fire arm made and every variation of ammunition defined to be in some tiny but measurable way different from the others. In fate it's "you got a gun? Cool. you can use Shoot Skill to attack someone up to 2 zones away. Have fun." That's probably great for a lot of people but not for every gamer.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Then again, neither is a palindromedary

[zslane]

I think GM Joe is looking for the Hero System's unique selling proposition.

[Eisenmann]

I think GM Joe is looking for the Hero System's unique selling proposition.

 

Turtles all the way down?

[Joe Walsh]

Yes, exactly, zslane!

 

I'll try to put something together based on the responses here:

 

Hero System is a traditional role-playing game which offers a complete RPG toolkit in its core ruleset. That core toolkit can be used to mechanically define any type of character or object, and although it defaults to cinematic play, can be used to play in any genre and with any level of realism.

 

Thoughts?

[Chris Goodwin]

This is just kind of off the top of my head...

 

Randomizers:  Uses d6 only.

 

Resolution:  Task-based.  Skills and stat rolls are 3d6 roll low and are based on the stat involved via a formula.  Combat is 3d6 roll low, with a formula similar to d20's combat formula inverted for low rolls.  A common house rule for combat is to roll high using the d20 combat formula.

 

Character creation:  Point-based.  Characters can gain additional points by taking Complications/Disadvantages.  Non-supernatural heroic characters come in at around 175 points.  Superheroic characters can come in at around 425 points.  

 

Character abilities:  Stats, skills, talents (binary or based on rolls), perks (binary or based on rolls), effects-based powers.  All of these are bought out of the same pool of points.  Things like superpowers, psionic abilities, spells, magic items, or high-tech gadgets are all built using the effects-based power system.

[Joe Walsh]

Maybe I'm off in the weeds here, but I thought of a further elaboration of my attempt, above:

 

Hero System is a traditional role-playing game which offers a complete RPG toolkit in its core ruleset. That core toolkit can be used to mechanically define any type of character or object based on its effect in the game world, and although it defaults to cinematic play, can be used to play in any genre and with any level of realism. Hero System hides nothing, exposing everything to the user so that nothing beyond the core rulebook is needed.

 

I feel this both defines Hero and lists the ways in which it differs from Fate, Savage Worlds, GURPS, and the rest.

 

What did I leave out?

Is there a better way to say it?

[DreadDomain]

Maybe I'm off in the weeds here, but I thought of a further elaboration of my attempt, above:

 

Hero System is a traditional role-playing game which offers a complete RPG toolkit in its core ruleset. That core toolkit can be used to mechanically define any type of character or object based on its effect in the game world, and although it defaults to cinematic play, can be used to play in any genre and with any level of realism. Hero System hides nothing, exposing everything to the user so that nothing beyond the core rulebook is needed.

 

I feel this both defines Hero and lists the ways in which it differs from Fate, Savage Worlds, GURPS, and the rest.

That's a good stab. I feel it should also highlight HERO's scaleability and capacity to model any power level. It is a very big differentiator from GURPS.

 

Something else to consider, and I am not sure how to convey it properly, HERO strikes a balance between consistency of mechanics while keeping the individual flavour of the sub-systems. To express it differently, in HERO, various sub-systems have different flavours. Martial Arts, Presence attacks, Mental powers, all feel distinct in their application and how they impact the game. In other games (Mutants & Masterminds, Fate, Heroquest, Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, etc...), they are merely trappings with a very high level of mechanical sameyness. At the same type, in HERO, they do retain a high level of cohesion and balance in the sense that they follow the same mechanical logic (roll versus target, roll effect, deduct defense, apply effect) and seamlessly integrate together. In contrast, a game like GURPS have very distinct sub-systems (magic, imbuement, martial arts, powers, tech, ritual magic, etc) that are highly individualized. They do not necessarily balance well together and a high level of gm overview is required to combine them in the same game.

[zslane]

It might be useful to write a single paragraph that describes how the game uniquely feels to learn and play.

 

A lot of folks won't necessarily grasp the benefits of the features described, but if you can put it in terms of how the game feels to play--along with what is so unique about that feeling--then you really have something to sell with.

[Chris Goodwin]

Everything your character can do is written on the character sheet.  Actually having to look something up in the books happens very seldom, unless someone needs a clarification or has forgotten a rule.  

 

Crit successes and fails are a lot more meaningful, because they're a lot more rare.  To me, the 3d6 bell curve just feels right.  

 

While it's not impossible, you're a lot less likely to lose a character to bad dice rolls in Hero than you are in a lot of other games.  

 

When playing any HERO System game, ever, I've almost never had to ask the GM if I could do something.  I might have to ask, is there a <thing> here in the scene, but most likely, if it makes sense for it to be there then yes it is.  But I pretty much know what my character's capabilities are, because they're all right there on the sheet.

[Hyper-Man]

Something else that is somewhat unique to HERO is that each player can define the special effects of what it 'looks like' their character is doing down to the point that two mechanically identical character can 'appear' to have quite different abilities. A very simple example is a character that literally Blocks punches with his chin.  Even though I've been playing HERO from the earliest days I really didn't fully grasp this until I started using Hero Designer and got into the habit of giving unique names, above and beyond the the mechanical ones, to as many character abilities as I could.  And this is not just limited to Champions/supers.

 

HM

[Sam On Maui]

HERO is a very internally consistent tool-box system that lets you do the same sort of things more narrative RPGs do (ie, define everything), but gives you more structure to do so. Likewise, because everything can be well defined? It gives a greater sense of "world" like more traditional RPGs, but lets you see "under the hood" at how it works and gauge things for yourself rather than "just trust us" or leaving you wondering how powerful something really is. Additionally, once you learn it? The rulebook isn't needed often at all. Compare that to games like Pathfinder, D&D, etc., which are very reference heavy.

 

I've tried running Marvel Heroic Roleplaying before, and while we had fun? The fact was it was too unstructured for some of the players. Likewise, I abandoned Pathfinder because we were constantly having to stop the game to look stuff up.