Hero System: Beginner friendly?

[Chris Goodwin]

On 1/28/2021 at 6:20 AM, Duke Bushido said:

They are the same sort of thing that's stopping Jason.  It may be the same things stopping Steve; I don't know.  I have paranoid conspiracy theories about what's stopping Darren, and I suspect we all know what's stopping the guns-for-hire set as well.  I don't one-hundred percent know any of this, but I have reasonable theories.

 

Darren Watts is secretly a member of the Knights Templar?  I knew it!  

 

On 1/28/2021 at 2:22 PM, Duke Bushido said:

Okay, this time I am going to be that guy, if only because I recommended a lot until I actually tried to use it as a teaching aid:

 

HERO in 2 Pages is nothing more than an Order of Operations flow chart.  It contains no useful information as to actual "how to play" actually works.  Unless you already know how to play, or are at least familiar with the mechanics, H2P doesn't help with anything.

 

Certainly a Lite version could be written, but H2P isn't it.

 

I made How to Play HERO System over on DTRPG.  It's pay what you want!  

[Chris Goodwin]

On 1/29/2021 at 12:30 PM, Tjack said:

Duke Bushido has already explained to me in a previous post the actual status of the company. If you say that someone in an actual position to put out something with the company logo and not some well meaning guy off the street is on the case than I’ll back off and only offer good wishes and any help that would be appreciated.

 

If you go to DrivethruRPG, all of the Hall of Champions stuff is listed as published by Hero Games.  Hero Games gets money for it; in theory I as a writer with products on there also get money for what I sell, but in practice I get it all in DTRPG product.  

 

On 1/29/2021 at 9:42 AM, Duke Bushido said:

If skipping component and modifier builds, you can get it down to the size of Basic, no problem.

 

On 1/29/2021 at 10:05 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Without the powers and modifiers info I was able to squeeze Hero down to about 150 pages, including combat etc in Western Hero.  Powers and mods, frameworks etc take up a ton of space.

 

Dirty secret time.  My How to Play HERO System document plus the HERO System Resource Kit gets it even smaller.  If I were to write a 5th edition version of it, it would even match edition wise.  

[Tjack]

3 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

If you go to DrivethruRPG, all of the Hall of Champions stuff is listed as published by Hero Games.  Hero Games gets money for it; in theory I as a writer with products on there also get money for what I sell, but in practice I get it all in DTRPG product.  

 

 

 

Dirty secret time.  My How to Play HERO System document plus the HERO System Resource Kit gets it even smaller.  If I were to write a 5th edition version of it, it would even match edition wise.  

   That’s all well and good, and I wish you nothing but good luck.  But the project I’m talking about (and would be willing to help on) is a free giveaway sample that would be downloadable to entice new customers the way both D&D and Pathfinder have done to great success. 
   That’s why it would need some official sanction from the company to differentiate it from the crowd of gamer stuff on the ‘net already. 

[Chris Goodwin]

38 minutes ago, Tjack said:

   That’s all well and good, and I wish you nothing but good luck.  But the project I’m talking about (and would be willing to help on) is a free giveaway sample that would be downloadable to entice new customers the way both D&D and Pathfinder have done to great success. 
   That’s why it would need some official sanction from the company to differentiate it from the crowd of gamer stuff on the ‘net already. 

 

I've been harping on exactly this for years.  Yes, we do need exactly this.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

 

Dirty secret time.  My How to Play HERO System document plus the HERO System Resource Kit gets it even smaller.  If I were to write a 5th edition version of it, it would even match edition wise.  

 

 

Yeah, if all you wanted was "how to play the game" rather than "how to build a character or know what these things on a character sheet mean" (powers, stats, skills) then you can get it to a few dozen pages.

[Chris Goodwin]

19 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Yeah, if all you wanted was "how to play the game" rather than "how to build a character or know what these things on a character sheet mean" (powers, stats, skills) then you can get it to a few dozen pages.

 

Have you looked at it?  I go into all of that.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

Have you looked at it?  I go into all of that.  

 

No what I mean is describing all the stats, explaining what each skill does, telling how entangle works and all the ways modifiers affect it, how to build NND, etc.  The guts of how the powers etc work.  There's really no way to get that any smaller than Champions Complete does.

[Hugh Neilson]

On 1/31/2021 at 10:15 PM, Tjack said:

   That’s all well and good, and I wish you nothing but good luck.  But the project I’m talking about (and would be willing to help on) is a free giveaway sample that would be downloadable to entice new customers the way both D&D and Pathfinder have done to great success. 
   That’s why it would need some official sanction from the company to differentiate it from the crowd of gamer stuff on the ‘net already. 

 

While that may be the ideal, Chris is suggesting taking action to attract new players, rather than waiting around to see whether the resource-strapped Hero Games will do so at some point down the road. 

 

I'm not sure how "pay what you want" works, but I'd hope someone can download it for free (if they s choose), decide "hey, this was really good" and go back and make a payment. 

 

20 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

No what I mean is describing all the stats, explaining what each skill does, telling how entangle works and all the ways modifiers affect it, how to build NND, etc.  The guts of how the powers etc work.  There's really no way to get that any smaller than Champions Complete does.

You can't get it smaller than 6e if you want to describe every nuance, interaction and corner case that 6e describes, yet it was somehow possible to get it down to 64 pages in the First Edition, complete with two samples of character design, a sample combat and several sample characters.  D&D and Pathfinder both have huge rule sets, yet they carve the system down to its core.  They do so by leaving out many options which gamers can choose to purchase later.

 

The challenge for Hero is that, if we were to attract a bunch of players for "Powered by Hero Fantasy" with half a dozen pre-fabs PCs, some adversaries and a short adventure or two, and they play the game and want more, they will not want the Big Blue Tomes.  They will not want Fantasy Hero Complete.  They will want more pre-fab packages, spells, etc. etc. all pre-built for them, possibly with the ability to custom-build their own characters, as well as options for more powerful abilities they will acquire with experience.  They will want "the rest of the rules" - how do I do this thing that was not in the download because we carved it out (no doubt there is a way to do it in Hero).  And they will want more pre-fab adventures.

 

Paizo and D&D have all those things waiting for purchase. Hero does not. It's pretty clear Hero lacks the combination of resources and desire to build one or more "Powered by Hero" games.  Such a project would likely incorporate:

 

 - a world setting, all Hero System dials pre-set;

 - a rule book containing all of the rules relevant to the game and those pre-set dials (not construction rules, but the "run the game" rules and the rules for the abilities included in the game);

 - one or more sets of enemies/monsters (one would do at the outset);

 - one or more magic systems;

 - numerous pre-fab races, character backgrounds, occupations, etc., complete with choices for abilities (e.g. spells, warrior tricks, super-skills, etc.) - not builds, just what they do in-game - a spell would look a lot like a skill (here is what it does; here is what you roll; here is what it costs, assuming a point-buy model);

 - at least one long-term "Adventure Path";

 - and then we can carve it down to that small downloadable sampler with a mini-adventure ideally leading into that Adventure Path.

[Chris Goodwin]

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I'm not sure how "pay what you want" works, but I'd hope someone can download it for free (if they s choose), decide "hey, this was really good" and go back and make a payment. 

 

Correct, and I encourage doing that.  Or not feeling bad if you can't or don't want to pay anything at all.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

I see the simple campaign in three stages:

 

1) an intro packet, super simple, with pre-made characters and enemies, with a tutorial that gives a step by step method of learning how to play the system

2) a simple campaign packet with everything minimal a player and GM needs to play Champions or what have you but with all the core information and options, but stripped down as simply as possible, plus an adventure, and a method of stringing printed adventures together into a storyline/campaign

3) the full printed information with all the rules, dials, bells, whistles, etc so that people can get that if they want to have all the best info and options at their fingertips.

 

And yes, more adventures, more modules, more stuff to do with the system instead of just the system.  I know that they do not sell all that well, but I also know that game systems and rulesets don't sell that well without something to do with them, which means adventures.  I'm doing my little part to create all this, but we need others to do the same.

 

If it takes the fan base dragging the carcass of Hero over the line so that the company can get the cash, motivation, and focus to do more, I say that's what we do.

[Ninja-Bear]

Btw I think Red Raptor is a villain in Challenges for Champions.