5th Edition Renaissance?

[Opal]

21 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Eh, D&D 5th ed is quite good at being what it is.

Which is a game of DM Empowerment and Caster Supremacy that, like the card game Munchkin, evokes the feel of TSR D&D.

 

Which turned out to be a good thing, when the 80s finally came back.

 

21 hours ago, DShomshak said:

D&D5 is now our go-to-game because it's easy to make characters, it's easy enough to run that even a novice GM can handle packaged adventures,

I hear longtime gamers say things like this and new D&Ders with nothing to compare it to agreeing.

 

I doubt there's any brand new RPgamers here to get a wrong impression, tho....

 

...but in almost any other context it's doing a disservice. 

[Sketchpad]

19 hours ago, DShomshak said:

4th edition will always be "mine" for sentimental reasons: I ran most of my Champions campaigns with it, and wrote Creatures of the Night and Ultimate Supermage for it. My ideal edition would be more like 4th than any other, though I would like some of the specific mechanics introduced in later editions. And keep one very useful feature from 5th: Sample Powers using each mechanic. Useful not just to see how the Powers and Modifiers worked, but to show the sheer *range* of what a Power, Advantage, Disadvantage or Limitation could represent!

 

As for attracting new players, I suspect Hero will always be caviar to the general. Character creation can be a lot of work, especially for new players. But as others have said, a rulebook that didn't read like a textbook would help; and well-designed, well-supported settings would help a *lot.* Returning to Exalted, the game's many flaws did not prevent it from being popular; as was the case for Vampire: the Masquerade and White Wolf's other games, all of which had less than stellar rulesets. (And I say this as someone who liked those games quite a lot.)

 

I agree that 4th edition had something special going for it. The rules weren't as heavy as they feel now, and there was some fun still left in the tank, even with the figured characteristics and such. As for the books, I've beat this dead horse a few times, but we just need a solid design structure for the books. Color books that have well laid out sheets and info. Support is also key, but the books need to stray from the text-book layout and come into a more modern graphic design. I ran Mutants & Masterminds for years partially because the books LOOK like a superhero game. 

 

16 hours ago, assault said:

There's no special sauce that will bring HERO into the big leagues, of course, but something that really grips and inspires people would help.

The standard Hero fantasy settings are a bit too generic for my tastes. There's a contradiction between providing "what people expect" (Elves and Orcs and Dwarves, Oh My!) and providing something that isn't just yet another version of the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk or Fill-in-the-blank.

It would need adventures though, and lots of them.

Simplifying character creation isn't too hard once you have a setting, and thus a finite number of options. There's a point at which something like the Champions Character Creation Cards would become possible.

 

I agree that we need more engaging settings and materials. But there are some "special sauces" that D&D has that few other games do: Critical Role. The idea that a bunch of voice celebrities come together weekly (for the most part) and run a game of D&D on screen for MILLIONS to view really has helped D&D out. A LOT. If Hero could tap into that kind of energy, it might see more people playing and getting excited about it. And not just with Champions, but with other settings as well. 

 

[Spence]

44 minutes ago, Sketchpad said:

Support is also key, but the books need to stray from the text-book layout and come into a more modern graphic design. I ran Mutants & Masterminds for years partially because the books LOOK like a superhero game. 

 

I tried M&M too.  I tried hard.  And a lot of that effort was because it looked like a superhero game.  The other was the M&M playable setting. Not just a setting encyclopedia plus villain pre-gens.  But a thought out new player entrance to their setting adventure/campaign.  Multiple sequential adventures to allow players to be heroes and GMs to get a taste of what a superheroic campaign feels like. 

 

My M&M game never got off the ground.  I just never connected with that condition system.  Super battles were just meh in comparison with a Champions battle.  I didn't get anything that resembled the satisfaction you get when a good hit sends someone through the wall.

 

Just one "condition" replacing another.

 

But boy howdy that setting and those book just POP superheroes.

 

 

 

44 minutes ago, Sketchpad said:

I agree that we need more engaging settings and materials. But there are some "special sauces" that D&D has that few other games do: Critical Role. The idea that a bunch of voice celebrities come together weekly (for the most part) and run a game of D&D on screen for MILLIONS to view really has helped D&D out. A LOT. If Hero could tap into that kind of energy, it might see more people playing and getting excited about it. And not just with Champions, but with other settings as well. 

 

While I don't think I have ever made it halfway through one of the CR play throughs, I cannot deny the popularity.  But I do think the CR portion is in response to D&Ds popularity, not the driver.

 

We've beaten the idea to death.   But Champions needs to take their existing encyclopedia and Bestiary/Villainiary and use them to build a playable setting.  Meaning dust off the reference textbooks and write a campaign book. 

 

M&M includes a great introduction campaign in the rulebook that serves two purposes.  How to play and a method to introduce new PCs into a campaign. 

 

My own Fantasy Hero (5thR) project is intended to be a way to introduce players into a small digestible campaign where they can experience the system in play and how things work.  Some century I hope to finish it. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I ran Mutants & Masterminds for years partially because the books LOOK like a superhero game. 

 

I don't really even know how to respond to this. 

 

But I do agree that it would be great to get famous people to do podcast games of Hero stuff, its just a question of figuring how the heck to get them to do it.  I tried to find some contact, some way to get a group to run Western Hero and basically it comes down to "don't call us, we'll call you"

[Opal]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

But I do think the CR portion is in response to D&Ds popularity, not the driver.

CR did have some success before D&D took off in ...2015?  Shortly after "The Demogorgon" became a household word.

[Sketchpad]

3 hours ago, Spence said:

But I do think the CR portion is in response to D&Ds popularity, not the driver.

 

Most definitely one of the drivers. With Matt Mercer working on some 5e stuff, as well as creating their own content for the game, I really don't think we'd see the surge in popularity without Critical Role. 

[fdw3773]

On 1/27/2022 at 3:24 PM, DShomshak said:

4th edition will always be "mine" for sentimental reasons: I ran most of my Champions campaigns with it, and wrote Creatures of the Night and Ultimate Supermage for it. 

In terms of sentimental reasons, it's 3rd edition for me. It was my first introduction to Champions and the Hero System in general, and I ran my first Fantasy Hero and Champions campaigns under those rules systems with many happy memories throughout high school and college. The Adventurer's Club Quarterly publications were also a real treat for me since they were hard to come by back then...as I get older nostalgia seems to be more important to me than the latest rules edition, it seems. 🙂

[Spence]

5 hours ago, Opal said:

CR did have some success before D&D took off in ...2015?  Shortly after "The Demogorgon" became a household word.

Huh? What?

D&D was a success with various celebrities ( not voice actors) admitting to playing years before that. Regardless of version D&D has been the leading, most popular and wider recognized rpg for decades.  It didn't suddenly appear after CR which has only been around as an actual anyone cares for a few years.  2015 sounds about right, maybe, not even a decade.  To be honest they really weren't a big enough deal to pop up on the radar of many of the table top gamers I knew at my FLGS till well into 2016.  Sure we'd have a console gamers mention it when they saw the D&D books on the shelf, after they realized the store was analog gaming not electronic. 

 

But CR really isn't the OMG holy savior of the universe of table top.   They have their followers true.  And it is a great way to draw in video game types to table top.  But they are not the great messiah.

 

I do find it amusing and a little sad how game history and content is being rewritten to suite the current crowd.

[zslane]

Well, even WotC seems to recognize the impact of online D&D streaming shows, and as far as I know CR is the most popular. Nathan Stewart is quoted as saying: “For the first time in our research, it used to be that friends and family were the number reason someone joined D&D,” Stewart said. “Now, the number one reason is ‘I saw someone playing online and I joined.’”

[Opal]

2 hours ago, Spence said:

Huh? What?

D&D's current success - it's selling at  level not seen since the 80s - maps to the 80s come-back heralded by the likes of Stranger Things, more than it does to the rise of streaming play, which started years earlier as part of a resurgence in interest in tabletop games, in general.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its all part of the puzzle and would definitely help Hero.

[fdw3773]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:21 AM, Christopher R Taylor said:

While my favorite edition of Hero is 4th, 5th edition has way more content and a broader range of support material than any other edition.  I think 6th has a lot of great ideas that I strongly encourage people adapt to their favorite version at the least, but 5th has a ton of stuff to work with.

The more that I read 5th Edition materials and rules-heavy/textbook nature of the writing style in recent days, the more inclined I become to retrofitting and simplifying my 5th Edition materials to 3rd Edition (my sentimental favorite), especially to have pre-generated characters that are easy to read for brand new players with some of the mechanics from 5th and 6th Edition such as MegaScale and Unified Power, respectively.

 

Thanks for the advice!!! 🙂

[Tech]

Our campaign is heavily 4th with a alot of other stuff thrown in but almost no 6th edition. Got some 1st, 2nd, 3rd edition and considerable 5th.  I mean, a couple weeks ago, I ran a game where a villain with martial arts was still in 1st Edition martial arts and it didn't make one bit of difference for the game fun. So, yup, the systems can run together.

[Scott Ruggels]

Canned tuna, fresh tuna, they are still both fish, and I want beef!

[Asperion]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Canned tuna, fresh tuna, they are still both fish, and I want beef!

 

I'll take those tuna burgers from you if you're so frustrated about it. 

[Scott Ruggels]

9 hours ago, Asperion said:

 

I'll take those tuna burgers from you if you're so frustrated about it. 

Sure. Not to waste it.  I just don't like fish.

[Scott Ruggels]

Okay, so let's look at some rough history.

 

Paizo began, publishing Adventures for D&D 3.5.  But decided to go off on their own, and use the D20 license to publish their own system, we now know as Pathfinder. The product was a very Publishing adventures was supposed to be a losing proposition, but they made enough money to put out a magazine.  These magazines would put out Adventures that were linked to the Next issue of the magazine, and after a year, they would publish the adventures in a hardbacked book for $50, and start the next year's adventures in the magazine.   This has resulted in a very lush game world (Golarion) for Pathfinder, and a lot of material.  I do not know how well Second Edition is working out for them, but I would assume that since the stats in both editions are similar, if not the same, then the current published material should work. 

 

Now it has become evident, that the quality of computers has increased in capability since the early 2000s, pushing more work and productivity onto the rank and file worker, and sucking up vast amounts of time at home with ever more capable games.  So Marc W. Miller's  lament, that people don't have time for imagination seems apt.  IF we remember, both Traveller, and Hero were conceived as generic systems for running what ever you wanted to, but in Traveller's case, the player base became dependent upon published material, either modules, or magazine articles. Like Paizo, some of those magazine articles became collected into books.  Today you can see the fruits of that productivity in https://travellermap.com/, where the planets from  all the published Traveller material can be accessed on a single large, scalable, continuous map of all the Traveller sectors and subsectors.

 

Hero had a magazine for a while, but it went defunct with one of the sales, and did not continue.  Very little of that material was collected into separate books and adventures, but I also9 think Hero was a bit too early in the cycle to change the assumption that it was a system for home brew.  However there are a lot of questions on the Hero Discord about the original Champions Superhero group, and Millenium City, that there is interest in the published materials.  What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.

 

I agree, I think that a pathfinder style approach would mesh extremely well with Champions, setting up campaigns and a campaign world for players to run through storylines.  Its just a matter of people getting stuff put out.  Digging through the old adventures, digital Hero etc would reap a bunch of adventures we could at least update to 6th.

 

[Grailknight]

3 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Okay, so let's look at some rough history.

 

Paizo began, publishing Adventures for D&D 3.5.  But decided to go off on their own, and use the D20 license to publish their own system, we now know as Pathfinder. The product was a very Publishing adventures was supposed to be a losing proposition, but they made enough money to put out a magazine.  These magazines would put out Adventures that were linked to the Next issue of the magazine, and after a year, they would publish the adventures in a hardbacked book for $50, and start the next year's adventures in the magazine.   This has resulted in a very lush game world (Golarion) for Pathfinder, and a lot of material.  I do not know how well Second Edition is working out for them, but I would assume that since the stats in both editions are similar, if not the same, then the current published material should work. 

 

Now it has become evident, that the quality of computers has increased in capability since the early 2000s, pushing more work and productivity onto the rank and file worker, and sucking up vast amounts of time at home with ever more capable games.  So Marc W. Miller's  lament, that people don't have time for imagination seems apt.  IF we remember, both Traveller, and Hero were conceived as generic systems for running what ever you wanted to, but in Traveller's case, the player base became dependent upon published material, either modules, or magazine articles. Like Paizo, some of those magazine articles became collected into books.  Today you can see the fruits of that productivity in https://travellermap.com/, where the planets from  all the published Traveller material can be accessed on a single large, scalable, continuous map of all the Traveller sectors and subsectors.

 

Hero had a magazine for a while, but it went defunct with one of the sales, and did not continue.  Very little of that material was collected into separate books and adventures, but I also9 think Hero was a bit too early in the cycle to change the assumption that it was a system for home brew.  However there are a lot of questions on the Hero Discord about the original Champions Superhero group, and Millenium City, that there is interest in the published materials.  What was once true, that Adventures do not sell, is no longer the case, and that I would suggest something like the Paizo model be taken up, but in PDF form.  Adventures published in chucks, and then gathered at the end of a scheduled time period into a whole.  People don't have3 the time to Homebrew any more, and those that do, could help out by writing it down and publishing a PDF through Hero.  Somethi9ng like Champions Begins is a great start, but there should be a money making product for the company that helps the Novices along, after CB.  These are just my suggestions, but I would like to hear other ideas.
 

 

Hero should definitely do this but even if it acquires the means do we have the will. The Paizo model worked because it was truly a single developed world. Hero has historically not even attempted this. It would take planning the adventure from start to finish and keeping a tight control on PC and NPC power levels. The writer(s) would have to coordinate closely so that each others' beginner/mid-tier/powerful/ultra powerful challenges would be consistent and compatible across their works. Differences like the disconnect from the 4th edition CU in the US to the 4th Champions of the North(one of my all-time favorite modules but c'mon the Geodesics are a threat there)  have to be addressed at the publishing level. And it has to be handled in a way that the customers will accept. No problem, we're all unified in our way of building things, right?(Please don't die laughing.) 

 

The published modules are all like that though. They supposedly take place in the same universe but aside from a cover blurb, they don't state the power lever of their adventures and even if they did there are no consistent examples.  The Enemies books have such a gap between the low and high ends of the power scale that they are difficult to use as resources. Especially when Hero refuses to publish just one or two powerful mentor/legacy supers that would explain how the world has not fallen under the schemes of the existing world beaters. From my experience,  Paizo adventure paths take about 1-2 years to play from start to finish. Given Hero's experience system, I think it would take 3 times that to take 400 point newbies to the point where they could even think of going after Dr. Destroyer( to be fair, he got out of hand in 4th but he was still a reasonable progression from 3rd, but jumping from 20 to 30 DC's was all Steve Long).

 

It's doable, I'm open to volunteering my time and ideas and the clubs section of the Boards would be a good workspace but the first things we'll need are a world and power levels we can mostly agree on.

[Scott Ruggels]

31 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

Hero should definitely do this but even if it acquires the means do we have the will. The Paizo model worked because it was truly a single developed world. Hero has historically not even attempted this. It would take planning the adventure from start to finish and keeping a tight control on PC and NPC power levels. The writer(s) would have to coordinate closely so that each others' beginner/mid-tier/powerful/ultra powerful challenges would be consistent and compatible across their works. Differences like the disconnect from the 4th edition CU in the US to the 4th Champions of the North(one of my all-time favorite modules but c'mon the Geodesics are a threat there)  have to be addressed at the publishing level. And it has to be handled in a way that the customers will accept. No problem, we're all unified in our way of building things, right?(Please don't die laughing.) 

 

The Paizo modules were over-written for a reason, in that there were several ways to solve each encounter.  Elsewhere in these fora, in the "Quotes from the game" there is a lengthy series of postings by DrHoz detailing encounters and events in the Paizo module "The Mummy's Mask".  Now I have been a player in the same module, but our play experiences had been vastly different.  The general inciting events were the same for the both of us, but as his group took the diplomatic approach, and ours too the Socerors Blazing, and swords swinging approach, we met different NPCs and had different "paths" amongst the parts of the adventure.
 

What this would mean is that solutions or blocks would have to be written as if  there were imbalanced parties of Superheroes, going up against the encounters, and taking that into account, so there are different ways to resolved the encounters, (though I would advise against a lot of puzzles and riddles, as most players despise those, or at least the ones in several online groups I play with do).  This would probably involve each incident starting with the same inciting incident, but then the membership of the villains they are put up against may have to be adjusted according to the player character composition.  The Paizo Adventure Paths, while written down, are surprisingly free of railroad tracks, which made for a game that enhanced the GMs reputation. 

 

31 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

The published modules are all like that though. They supposedly take place in the same universe but aside from a cover blurb, they don't state the power lever of their adventures and even if they did there are no consistent examples. 

 

The Paizo module were written for a Class and Level based system. Hero is Point based. Also in general Champions Characters advance slowly. More later, addressing your next section.

31 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

The Enemies books have such a gap between the low and high ends of the power scale that they are difficult to use as resources. Especially when Hero refuses to publish just one or two powerful mentor/legacy supers that would explain how the world has not fallen under the schemes of the existing world beaters. From my experience,  Paizo adventure paths take about 1-2 years to play from start to finish. Given Hero's experience system, I think it would take 3 times that to take 400 point newbies to the point where they could even think of going after Dr. Destroyer( to be fair, he got out of hand in 4th but he was still a reasonable progression from 3rd, but jumping from 20 to 30 DC's was all Steve Long).

 

 Again, Hero is a Point Based system.  Just put down a point number, and Damage class bracket on the module, as Character Progression is different, and slower than in Pathfinder.  As such you cna do various things such as indicate milestones during the adventure to award  XP, or follow general game guidelines of around 2-3 XP per session. THe other thing that can be done is keep the sections of the module shorter, so that the characters are for the most part, the same from start to finish, aside from buying off Complications, adding a few skills, or levels, or what have you.  Conversely, one can write a set of Modules for a set power level that loosely inter relate with ones written for higher ones, So that  the GM and players can hit two, or three modules in the same power band, before taking a step up to the next one.  This would take a lot of coordination and planning, but could work. I  didn't say that the Paizo model would be good for a one to one transfer, but as an inspiration for more of an organized approach to Hero adventures.

 

31 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

 

It's doable, I'm open to volunteering my time and ideas and the clubs section of the Boards would be a good workspace but the first things we'll need are a world and power levels we can mostly agree on.

 

[Grailknight]

I said doable, I never said easy.

[Scott Ruggels]

3 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

I said doable, I never said easy.

Well like any task, just break it into smaller subtasks. It will take longer, but the tasks then become manageable and achievable.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

The Paizo model worked because it was truly a single developed world. Hero has historically not even attempted this.

 

Well they have maintained a "Champions Universe" since what, 4th edition?  So there's a setting.

[Lord Liaden]

42 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Well they have maintained a "Champions Universe" since what, 4th edition?  So there's a setting.

 

The current official Champions Universe is the most fully-developed superhero setting outside of the Big Two comics publishers, in every way. All the material is there to draw from, to create whatever's desired.

[Duke Bushido]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

The current official Champions Universe is the most fully-developed superhero setting outside of the Big Two comics publishers, in every way. All the material is there to draw from, to create whatever's desired.

 

 

Here's an ugly thought---

 

though before I go any further, for the purposes of full disclosure:

 

I really, really, _really_ don't like the published setting.  

 

So there; that's out there.

 

Now moving beyond that:

 

Howzabout building a setting that is different from the one that HERO doesn't actually own anymore?  Something that can be entirely theirs, or at least available not at the whim of a videogame company?