Hero Games 2021 Update

[zslane]

17 hours ago, Spence said:

but 10 races/cultures, 12 vocations and 15 backgrounds is far too many for an entry to to a setting.

 

Vampire: the Masquerade demonstrates otherwise, I feel. It had 13 bloodlines, 13 disciplines, and a ton of history/lore. And yet it became an instant sensation.

 

It isn't about the amount of content or detail, but about how it is presented (and productized).

[Lord Liaden]

Yeah, it's like I always say. Everyone keeps trying to find the magic bullet, the missing ingredient that will make all the difference. There no way to tell if there even is one. Definitely some things are more helpful than others, and experience helps greatly in distinguishing them. But a "hit" is alchemy. There's no predicting it, though smart and knowledgeable people keep trying, but usually fall short. I give Hero Games management full credit for experimenting, but at this point any gains will be incremental at best for the foreseeable future.

[Ninja-Bear]

I know you guys are spitballing here with an introduction to Hero game. Here are my thoughts. Fantasy may not be the best choice. There is a movement out there referenced to OSR (old school revival). It harkens back to the simpler days of D&D. And one of the points of that is less “crunch”. So having a Fantasy intro doesn’t seem the best choice. If you were going to use Fantasy, why reinvent the wheel? Hero already has several perfectly good Fantasy games on which to pull from. I think an updated form of Western Shores is the way to go. It has plenty of information and it has a prebuilt magic system. I would think though a good pulp space, like Barsoom, would suit the intro game just fine.

[Hugh Neilson]

Agreed that pulling from an existing Hero setting would be the best approach for Fantasy.

 

I like Fantasy as it has broad appeal, but a different genre might be a better choice to capture a bigger % of a smaller market - existing gamers (Hero will not be the first RPG someone ever sees any time soon) interested in a specific genre.

[Lord Liaden]

I regretfully have to disagree with Ninja-Bear and Hugh. Fantasy is what sells the most these days -- everything else has become niche, and trying to capture part of a niche market would just mean selling less. DOJ tried that approach by releasing their 5E sci-fi line before their fantasy line, but sci-fi turned out to be their lowest seller. Hero already has as big a share of the supers niche as they're likely to get with Champions. If they want to introduce new gamers to the system with an intro game package, fantasy would probably have more pull. I notice that even in Champions Online, which is supposed to be a supers MMORPG, a great many of the players build fantasy-style characters and try to hammer them into fitting the genre.

 

The 4E Fantasy Hero genre book and the first Fantasy Hero Companion were originally conceived of as one volume, and together provide genre campaign advice, a setting, sample NPCs, a vast array of spells, a good selection of magic items and a solid bestiary. Throw in the 4E Hero System Rulesbook and a couple of adventures (I know two very good ones you could pull directly from Adventurers Club) and you have a readily-digestible package you could start playing quickly, and continue to play for years.

[Ninja-Bear]

@Lord Liaden,  I could very well be wrong. I just don’t know how much I’d trust by looking at online games. I wish video gamers would translate into table top players. And when I mentioned Sci-fi, I was thinking definitely John Carter/ Sci-fi Fantasy because it can offer a wide amount  of builds.  

[Lord Liaden]

Recognition plays a big factor IME. Relating that to Barsoom, look how badly the John Carter movie bombed.

 

But I've long dreamed of getting enough money to pay Keith Curtis to publish his Savage Earth campaign, full color and hardcover. It's Hero, it's glorious, and there's nothing else like it.

[Ninja-Bear]

4 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Recognition plays a big factor IME. Relating that to Barsoom, look how badly the John Carter movie bombed.

 

But I've long dreamed of getting enough money to pay Keith Curtis to publish his Savage Earth campaign, full color and hardcover. It's Hero, it's glorious, and there's nothing else like it.

Oh I’m not set on John Carter per se just something like it. Interesting isn’t it that you can pick Savage Earth up for Savage Worlds game but not Hero. The thing is if Hero does something, then the fan base needs to help promote it! Hero does have a great fan base but do we really help push the product? It may be me but CC/FHC are good books warts and all but you’d never no it by some of the thread responses. I’m not saying that we should acknowledge any  “warts” but we don’t need to focus solely on them either.

[Lord Liaden]

Were you thinking that Keith's Savage Earth has something to do with the Savage Worlds game system? If so, follow the link, it's for Hero 5E, nothing to do with Savage Worlds in system or setting.

[Chris Goodwin]

On 2/14/2021 at 4:50 PM, Spence said:

I hear what you are saying, but 10 races/cultures, 12 vocations and 15 backgrounds is far too many for an entry to to a setting.

Initially you only really need  a few.  For example 4 vocations (Fighter Type, Rogue Type, Mage Type, Healer/Support Type), 4 races/cultures (human, elf, dwarf and other but something known and common), 4 basic backgrounds (maybe city, wilderness, frontier and sea/coastal). 

 

To me this hearkens back to ye olden dayes of FH 1e... four vocations (five if you include the worked example Vikings), three race packages (elf, dwarf, halfling)... we were left to figure out our own backgrounds.    We had a couple of GMs who came up with their own (including Christopher Taylor's Jolhros campaign materials which date back to then).  Something like 30 sample spells, 28 sample monster writeups (including a lot of "men as monsters" -- bandits, ruffians, enforcers, and so forth), nine magic items (with their associated "create" spells, which I didn't count in the above).  Most of the games I played in had the players creating their own spells and the GMs creating their own monsters.  

 

Incidentally, the "extras" download package for Fantasy Hero Complete includes more sample professional, racial, and background templates, probably approximately as many sample character and monster writeups, and probably approximately as many magic item and spell writeups.  

[Sketchpad]

Honestly, while I like some of the generic nature of Hero, I agree with @DreadDomainabout games that use Hero as an engine rather than a complete building set. When I first started playing Hero, it was with Champions and the innuendo of a setting that the initial editions had with it. When 4th ed made an attempt to consolidate everything, it drew me in more. In fact, I would say 4th ed was the sweet system for me in so many ways. The design of the books was basic, but there was a nice flow to it. The art was solid, the covers were awesome, and the content was fun. Sure it could be a generic superhero game, but there was still some setting stuff there for anyone needing it. I think @zslanehit the nail on the head a bit when he mentioned presentation. I won't go into a design rant here, as I'm sure you can find one of mine in other threads, but the books need to look better. Not just some colored fonts and occasional art, but actual page layout that is indictive to the genre its portraying. Look at D&D5e, Pathfinder, Mutants & Masterminds, and pretty much anything released by Modiphius. There's some great design work that goes into their books, and that's a steep hill to compete with. But not impossible. 
Rather than another Fantasy Hero Complete or Star Hero Complete, I think it'd be great to have "The Forbidden Realms RPG" or "Imperial Treks of the Battlestars RPG" that give the basics on Hero, while also giving a campaign to fly right into. These could be supported by a few ancillary books that add fun elements to the games, while also giving neat examples to work from. Maybe "Magic of the Forbidden Realms" or "Mecha of Empire" books would be great sellers because the expand on the info in the main book. In the same respect, a "Champions RPG" that looks more like the 4th ed book with maybe a bit more setting info and design to it could be a big seller. 

[Ninja-Bear]

14 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Were you thinking that Keith's Savage Earth has something to do with the Savage Worlds game system? If so, follow the link, it's for Hero 5E, nothing to do with Savage Worlds in system or setting.

I swear I saw Savage Earth for Savage Worlds. 

[Spence]

On 2/15/2021 at 10:44 AM, zslane said:

 

Vampire: the Masquerade demonstrates otherwise, I feel. It had 13 bloodlines, 13 disciplines, and a ton of history/lore. And yet it became an instant sensation.

 

It isn't about the amount of content or detail, but about how it is presented (and productized).

Instant sensation is not really true. 

In has accrued a following over the near 30 years it has been out.  But I can clearly remember it as the only RPG that would get itself banned from gamestores and cons, not because of the game itself, but because the players.  One, they didn't seem to realize that the backstabbing and infighting was a game and not real life.  And two, the 100+ average summer temperatures in the area I was living in the early 90s wasn't really conducive to wearing heavy black long coats 24/7.  I actually first became aware of the game when the store pulled it from the shelf when the players belligerence was spilling into the store and the owners had had enough. Not mention it wa the first time I had ever seen a "no shower, no service" sign at a gaming shop.

At the time I thought it was a one off, but over the next few years I found it was a semi-common occurrence. 

 

These days it appears the fan base has fixed itself and you don't see idiots knocking things over and actual fights breaking out over a brouhahahaha blood fued.  But I do know a few small groups that still play.  They all are 100 positive that the game is not player versus player backstabby.  And yet every single session I sat in on included a players PC being killed, cursed, destroyed or in some way eliminated by another player.  The entire sessions consisted of players maneuvering to take out other players.

 

Over the last 20 years this has repeated at games across the US as well as overseas. 

 

If you like it, good on you.

But I was always drawn to the cooperative nature of RPGs.  I am repelled by RPGs based on PvP.

 

[HeroGM]

Also Vampire didn't introduce all of those at once. A book here and a book there detailing things.

[Lord Liaden]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I swear I saw Savage Earth for Savage Worlds. 

 

Perhaps you're thinking of Broken Earth, the post-apoc game setting licensed for the Savage Worlds system. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126143/Broken-Earth-Savage-Worlds

[Duke Bushido]

And finally:

 

It would be more appropriately named "Vampire: the Marketing."

 

Remember when it came out?  Pop culture was nuts for all things Vampire. Anne Rice was Still a hot seller, the hipsters were still pretending Buffy was a niche, and there was a brief revisit to goth style in the youth.  As Spence noted, it wasn't marketed to typical RPG players; it was marketed to fang bangers and daydreamers who were spending those vampire bucks.

 

And when the winds shifted, WW sailed beautifully, socializing and generally de-monsterizng werewolves in the same way when Shark boy started taking off his shirt regularly.  I don't remember just which way (I had lost interest in Vampire for the exact dame reasons Spence pointed out: the people playing were... Well, the polite southernism is "touched a bit."), but WW made a pretty deft shift to ride the tide of Blair Witch, and that was every bit as in-and-out as it should have been.

 

For those who stuck with it, they kept grinding out supplemental material, all of which amounted to more versions of the same thing that sold, and the fans kept buying.

 

It makes all the WOD stuff less an exercise in how to make a game that appeals to RPG fans and more of a treatise on "how to cash in on a trend at just the right time."

 

I know there have been hundreds of discussions here on how HERO should have capitalized on the Marvel movies, but there is just no way that would have worked: you want instant recognizability and a rules set that can be picked up, learned, and played by any group of never-played-an-RPG-before types in a weekend, a week at most.  White Wolf did that very thing.

 

The "HERO System" just won't work that way, and each new revision moves it further from having any hope of ever working that way.

 

A superhero game powered by HERO?  That might have worked, but only had HERO had a chance in Hell of licensing known characters.  Nobody saw Golden Heroes or Prowlers and Paragons making any new splash via the popularity of the Marvel Movies, right?  Supers is a super-crowded market; fantasy is a super-crowded market; steampunk has played out; the last good pulp was Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (don't question it!  Just watch it again, with more seasoned eyes!) or possibly Sid and Marty Croft's Land of the Lost, though Brendan Fraser's Mummy movies were awesome; sci-fi that says Star Trek squeaks by; sci-fi that says Star Wars does extremely well, but only Disney makes money on anything Disney owns.

 

Ultimately, its like any other 'going viral' event: we can sit here and armchair just what needs to happen when and why, but its a matter of a perfect storm of random factors-

 

Remember the one true 5e powered-by-HERO game?  MHI?  Well-loved franchise; an author who is almost his own caricature; books still selling great guns?

 

After the deal is made, the author pulls a stunt that tanks his popularity, and the game went nowhere.

 

There is no magic balloon to carry HERO onward and upward; there is just a lot of hot air about what the ideal solution is.

[Spence]

12 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

There is no magic balloon to carry HERO onward and upward; there is just a lot of hot air about what the ideal solution is.

 

Hey......

 

I think I may resemble that remark

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Perhaps you're thinking of Broken Earth, the post-apoc game setting licensed for the Savage Worlds system. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/126143/Broken-Earth-Savage-Worlds

Possibly. 

[Ninja-Bear]

27 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

There is no magic balloon to carry HERO onward and upward; there is just a lot of hot air about what the ideal solution is.

Oh I agree about the magic bullet if it’s going to be anything it’s going to be the fan base. What I’m thinking though is what can we do now? Well I’ve said it before we have 3 books out on the market that are geared for new people to get into Hero which are Basic, CC and FHC and there is no support for them otherwise. So why don’t we as a group make some stuff for them? I was thinking something like Character builds and or actual campaign game guidelines? I’m guilty of this myself. Back when Basic came out, I bought it to build sample characters for this purpose. I got paralyzed because I was so stuck on building a correct build and *gasp* what would happen if someone went to see that in the 2 vols. They could’ve built it a different way? Bottom line is if we the fan base ain’t excited why would potential new people be?

[Duke Bushido]

Sorry, Spence;

 

That wasn't for any one person.  It was a reference to the rotational cycle of this topic.

[zslane]

43 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

It would be more appropriately named "Vampire: the Marketing."

 

I see a lot of "I hated all that vampire stuff" ranting there, but the truth is that White Wolf produced an extremely popular line of TTRPGs, and any publisher who wants to know how to present and produce successful TTRPG product lines would do well to learn from their success. It was not just about being in the right place (culturally) at the right time. It was also about how they executed their vision and turned it into products that made White Wolf a publishing juggernaut.

[Duke Bushido]

On 2/17/2021 at 2:43 PM, zslane said:

 

I see a lot of "I hated all that vampire stuff" ranting there, 

 

 

I have no idea how.  This will the eighth or ninth time i've commented-- on this very board-- that I really enjoyed the system, the setting, and the game; it will be the fourth or fifth time I mentioned playing it biweekly for the better part of a year, and we had a blast until toward the end.

 

The vampire thing wasn't a turn-off; the politicking  sort of was.  The fans definitely were.  Eventually, as players we got tired if the constant political intrigue, and as GMs, we got tired of having to constantly come with up intrigue and soap-opera subplots.

 

It wasn't vampiric things that bugged us; it was politics, which is the same thing that bugs us about most contemporary fantasy settings.

[Lord Liaden]

Gee, Duke, you suddenly read like you're steriaca.

[Duke Bushido]

Couole of things to follow up with: I typed biweekly when I meant twice-weekly.  Sorry about that; I was in a hurry to get headed home.

 

The rise and fall of our vampire game:

 

My brother D picked it up, loved it, pushed it at me.  I read it, liked the simplicity of the system and the consistent use of flavor throughout the book, and the extremely high production values, so I pitched it to my group and he pitched it to some of his friends, and within two weeks, we had a game group going.

 

The new-to-RPG folks got into PVP stuff right away; those from the regular group who wanted to give this game a try helped us guide them away from that: it was pretty rare for my regular players to not have characters with a noble or heroic bent to them, but even when they chose to be the villains, they were always a team.  We got the new people to understand that PVP wasnt cool, and we played on.

 

After a month, someone pointed out that there was a sign up at the game store in Savannah with a couple of GMs who wanted to start V:TM groups, and one was on Saturday (we played Wed and Friday).

 

We opted To drop our game to just Friday and all seven of us slipped into the Saturday game.

 

That rocked on for maybe four months, and one of my co-GMs stated that he was having "creative burn out" from trying to come up with constant political machinations that could be subtle, powerful, well-concealed, and still somehow discoverable by our plucky band of would-be-Princes.

 

We understood, and he bowed out of collaboration and running.  About a month after that, at the Savannah game, we lost a couple of players and gained a couple.  Without trying to add any insult, they were a strange style combination of Goth and Punk and generally just irritating people (like going-out-of-your-way to be irritating, as opposed to personality clash).

 

After three sessions, they had a fair hand on the game, and the PVP started.  After a few sessions of that, we brought up pregame that we were fine with the murdering and backstabbing and double-dealing and all that, but not with the PVP.

 

The PVP continued another couple of sessions until my brother D and his friend J had gotten a belly full of it, and proceeded to demonstrate how skilled RPG players can abuse the Hell out of the meta if they want, and showed these two just what PVP could look like.  I didn't approve (still don't: unless it's something we've discussed before hand related to your character and everyone involved agrees, I do not condone PVP in my games, even as a player.)

 

So these two get huffy and drop the usual "bunch of geeks anyway" nonsense, and we inherit three new players from the other Savannah game, which had concluded a couple weeks before.

 

All were new to RPGs, but had just loved trying this game and wanted to play again.  

 

And the PVP started within _minutes_, and when they weren't backstabbing the party (but never each other), they were talking about all the fun they had in the previous game, running around and forming teams and offing each other and breaking alliances-  it was like Survivor, but with murder.

 

Two more of our people dropped out before too long, and just stuck with the Friday game at my place.

 

D and I agreed after six or seven months that we, too, were getting hard pressed to keep the intrigue fun and interesting:  there are only so many ways to wrap the same mcguffin, after all.

 

One of the players who had dropped out of the Savannah game during the second round of drops mentioned a sign up at the Statesboro game shop, and one more dropped out of Savannah into Statesboro (we had one who also joined and was now in three games a week).

 

Eventually reports filtered back that there were _four_ games going on in Statesboro, and people got hyped.  D and I even talked about just wrapping up the current arc and ending this campaign to let somwone else invent the politics for a while.

 

That was when we also both admitted that we were starting to get a little worn out on political intrigue as a whole.

 

Maybe Two months later, we did just that, even as reports from the 'Boro came back detailing PVP being the norm, poor grasp of RPG conventions, and games devolving into massive brooding and fashion talk, makeup sessions, etc.

 

And, as Spence mentioned, there was talk of palpable funk.  You can only wear a long coat so long in Georgia before your skin will tear from the sheer force of the sweat pressure, and caked white make up doesn't really help the pores.

 

Still, we were really just _done_ trying to re-spin "major vampire power move behind zoning ordinance 146!" And such.  Besides, we had found a place to wind down and end on a high note, and we took it.

 

Our gang of players hadn't become Princes; there wasn't a ruler among them.  They had, however, become a force to be reckoned with, and there were nervous rumors about them--  anyway. We ended the campaign.

 

The Savannah game was devolving each week: S and I were the only two of our group still remaining, and the replacement players were-  the only way to phrase it nicely is to say that they made sure everyone saw them playing Vampire and brooding about having to be here with "normals"(though there was some other, presumably goth-specific word that clearly meant "unhip").

 

The PVP had pretty much taken over the game at that point, and the only reason I still showed up was because I was vested in the story and wanted to make it to the conclusion or die trying.  S had given up.  She still played, but it was mostly because she had now become curious to see if any of the other players would be successful at killing her.  Again, this was just a matter of an experienced gamer having a leg-up over someone following just the Rool of Cule.  She had, by the time she just gave in to get out of the game-and if I remember correctly; it has been a while- sixteen PC kills under belt.  She never went looking for them, but she found herself targeted quite regularly (it took a while for either of us to figure out that these guys thought this was somehow "flirting" with her).  Eventually, when she became aware of being stalked (yet again, and ehy), she simply announced "why sneak up on me?  Beg for it, and my blood is yours."  (I only remember that because it was so damned weird until I realized that she was talking player-to-player).

 

I did join the Statesboro game the week after we wrapped our game (thr one I was running in Hinesville).  Three weeks after S left the Savannah game, I played my second (and next-to-next-to-last) Statesboro game, and dropped out of the Savannah game when-

 

Okay, non-smokers who live in cold weather country:  have you ever noticed just how freakin' grotesque the air is around smokers in the winter because it doesn't occur to them to wash the jacket that they have been smoking in for the last two months?

 

I realize that most people will never have any reason to learn this, but sweat works the same way!  If you wear a greatcoat in sweat weather, for weeks on end, you will attain a level of fetid that can only be described as "gagnificent."  They seated a new player who was _truly_ gagnificent, and I didn't last another thirty minutes before I decided I would instigate some PVP of my own just to discourage him from coming back.

 

As I said, I don't do PVP.  As soon as I realized I was considering it as a means of nasal (and throat, really.  Just like a smoker's winter coat, you could _taste_ the stench just by being too close), I announced that the death of his closest friend (S's character) had been to much, and he leapt into a blast furnace at the foundry below which the party was currently building fortifications.

 

Two more nights in Statesboro, and I quit that game, too.

 

Like I said: it wasnt the game.  I enjoyed the game.  It wasn't the vampire schtick.  I mean-- they're a staple of Fantasy anyway; I was familiar with them.  It was the bulk of that game's players that pushed me off of it.

 

 

On 2/17/2021 at 7:40 PM, Lord Liaden said:

Gee, Duke, you suddenly read like you're steriaca.

 

Touch screen phone, an autocorrect that studied English as a third language, and I am not quite in the habit of carrying my reading glasses everywhere I go.  Hell, I am barely in the habit of remembering they exist!  It's a very recent addition to my collection of afflictions, and I haven't gotten the swing of it yet.

 

 

 

[Spence]

6 hours ago, zslane said:

 

I see a lot of "I hated all that vampire stuff" ranting there, but the truth is that White Wolf produced an extremely popular line of TTRPGs, and any publisher who wants to know how to present and produce successful TTRPG product lines would do well to learn from their success. It was not just about being in the right place (culturally) at the right time. It was also about how they executed their vision and turned it into products that made White Wolf a publishing juggernaut.

 

No, not anti-neckmuncher. 

Just anti-Player-versus-Player.

 

Yes they did some good things, publishing wise but they are hardly a powerhouse.  They skirted dissolving by going all electronic (no print) and now they are dependent on Modiphious to put out their books.   After their initial run, most of their books are re-writes for the next rule version.

So not a powerhouse.

 

But they do put out some good looking books and like Duke Bushido noted, the system mechanics are actually pretty nifty. 

Now all they need to do is put out a setting that does not involve mind numbingly boring POLITICS firmly entwined with PvP murdering. 

 

I could get behind that.