Rusty AF Game Master Dragooned into new game. Gonna need advice.

[Scott Ruggels]

The last time I ran a game in Hero was around 2002, maybe 2003. The last time I played Hero was around the same time.   A few years ago, I fell in with a group  of people I met on Second Life, that wanted to play RPGs, while I was still in Los Angeles.  So I have been very happy being a player, with a fairly international group. We started with Fudge, but I wasn't much of a fan, But we played D&D 5e, after that. and most recently we are playing Traveller. 

Welllll......The GM doesn't want to be a forever GM, so he threw me to the wolves and fingered me to  run the next campaign, and if I was going to keep talking about Hero, that I needed to back up those statements and run Hero.  When  I asked about what sort of campaign the players wanted to run, to no surprise, they wanted a fantasy campaign with magic. The only thing I had that could be made ready in under a year was my old FH campaign from the 90's, and even then I did not have all of it. However, all of the material for that campaign was written for  4th edition Hero.

 

So, I have 7 players who have little to no knowledge of Hero, and I decided for ease of use would be to have them use the first version of Fantasy Hero.  It was what my background material was written for, and the page count for the rules was low.  However as character discussions expanded, Danger International, for Languages, and Justice Inc., for weird skills and talents were added into the mix. However, I heard from the players that the "conversational" tone of how the rules were written at the time, made it very difficult for the non-native English speakers to extract the numbers in the rules examples. This might be an indicator of how the rules should be written in the future, maybe?

 

The plan is to run the game in the Hero Mod in Tabletop Simulator. But  the Mod is dependent upon  Hero Designer to get items in and out. Now  The actual costs in HD are irrelevant to the mod, all thhey need are the DCs and Die roll ranges, as the point costs are built on 3e / 4e rules.  The problems I have is a basic inability to use HD due to the rather opaque user interface, as compared to the original Heromakr, which is what I use for this campaign. 

 

An example of the problem is one of the characters has a magic item.  It's a Dwarven made projectile launcher. it's a three barreled Snaphaunce pistol with magical enhancements for  accuracy and weather resistance, but can fire various projectiles (both magic and mundane) for various effects.  What I see this as, is a Multi-power, where the different projectiles are slots, one for each barrel, ready, but with more than three possible projectiles and the user has to pick which three.  I can't figure out how to build this out in HD, or if how I am approaching this is correct.

Man I am really rusty with all of this. having not touched the system in almost 20 years... That and my math skills suck.

 

 

 

 

 

[bluesguy]

I would be willing to help you out.  The fastest way would be with a Zoom call.  Heck we could even record it and post it for other folks.

[eepjr24]

I don't think I would be much help in HDC, I get by but seldom use it right now. However, I can point you to some nice starting adventurers for 5e that are easily translated over to FH. And I am working on translating the content for Sunless Citadel if you want to run an old school dungeon crawl. Hit me up and I can put stuff on Google drive or something for you. It's just Excel sheet templates, I have a tendency to build everything manually anyway.

 

And you can take a look at the threads I posted on map resources for some great battle maps.

 

- E

[Spence]

I do not use any of the remote style virtual applications so I will not comment on them.

 

But for  a general game I have a few points.

 

1) Character builds.  Go over their concepts (or characters if converting) and then go home and build them yourself.  Alone.  They do not know the rules and trying to build the character while also trying to explain the why's will only make things take longer and frustrate you.  Just do the build yourself.

 

2) Create a player character sheet that is stripped, stripped I say, of ALL BUILD ANNOTATION.  Just leave the info needed in actual play.  For variable items, for example a Flame Blast spell that is actually an energy blast, do not say energy blast.  Just say Flame Blast 4d6.  If it uses end add "1 End per 1d6" for example.  Add descriptions of how anything works geared to flavor and in game while avoiding build speak.   Have an full hero build style character sheet on hand for any after session explanations on Hero's build rules.

 

3) Gratuitous Preaching to the Choir    

Once you get past building and build annotation and just have the actual final needed to play info, Hero is one of the easiest systems to play out there.  That is unless you load it down with each and every possible optional rule.  But if you don't it is easy.  I would recommend not using any maneuvers and ht location for session 1.  Just the basics.  Then add in something each session until you have the full meal.

[pawsplay]

The pistol overall has 3 Charges. Each slot has three or less charges. If you insist on them being predefined but changeable, this would be a VPP rather than a multipower. I personally would handwave it and just do a multipower with each slot having three or less charges, and 3 Charges on the framework.

[eepjr24]

Also wanted to say I can boot up TTS and create a character to play around with if you just want to test some scenarios. I am vacillating between TTS and Roll20 for my next game so it would be a good exercise for me too.

 

- E