Is Hero still your "go-to" rpg system?

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Tech said:

I'm glad to say that I reintroduced the battlemap to our players years ago for Champions and they enjoy it. Of course, since then I've had to create 200+ paper minifigs. Having the bad guys place layed-out in front of them makes for a lot more interesting; you get to see just far you can actually move on a half-move, etc.

 

I find games without maps to be incredibly annoying.  Without a map every fight becomes a super mushy game of mental Calvinball which means I have to interrogate the GM every phase.  Can I reach the bad guy?  Is anyone blocking my shot?  Is there any useful terrain?  How many bad guys can I catch with this AOE effect?  It becomes much easier to take another swing at the guy in front of me and I'm instantly bored.

[tkdguy]

My HERO group preferred the theater of the mind style of play, but since we played in a classroom, we used the chalkboard to note our positions during fights. I don't remember if we drew terrain; we probably just sketched vague shapes for  important features.

[Tech]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

I find games without maps to be incredibly annoying.  Without a map every fight becomes a super mushy game of mental Calvinball which means I have to interrogate the GM every phase.  Can I reach the bad guy?  Is anyone blocking my shot?  Is there any useful terrain?  How many bad guys can I catch with this AOE effect?  It becomes much easier to take another swing at the guy in front of me and I'm instantly bored.

 To each their own. For our campaign, it becomes impractical to have a map for every encounter. We may have several areas the heroes go to where a  

 fight takes place; the last one had 4 different fights. We're used to using our imagination for non-battlemap adventures. The GM has enough on his plate without having to find/create/search for a picture for every place. But that's us.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I have played a bunch of other modern systems and while each has their nice features or ideas, none of them are superior to Hero overall for me, at least.  I see no reason why on earth I would ever change to any other game except to just try it out or for a specific play session.

[Rich McGee]

There's really no One Right Answer to whether you play theater of the mind or on a map with most systems, but some game engines call for precise measurements and positioning more than others.  I'd put Hero down as one that favors a map by a fair margin, but it doesn't require it as much as (say) D&D 4e did.  13th Age proved that you could write a very similar game to 4e D&D while avoiding strict mapping altogether, but it took a ground-up rewrite to accomplish.  Similarly, there are systems where a detailed map is going to get in the way more than it helps a lot of the time - and TotM doesn't mean you never use simple sketch maps, anyway.  A "soft" engine like Forged in the Dark doesn't call for detailed tactical maps and miniatures very often, if ever, and I can't imagine playing Masks on a grid map because the fighting just isn't the focus of the game.

 

The best approach is probably to be flexible.  Even if you almost always map things out, some tactically simple fights (eg weak opposition, a very one-sided surprise attack, or a singular foe without much terrain) might be resolved faster without bothering to lay everything out.  Groups that usually use TotM combat will still find some complex or movement-intensive battles do call for at least a sketch map and some tokens, even if it requires some quick house rulings on distances and speeds.  If you're always doing one approach or another it's probably a matter of your table's tastes more than the game engine requirements - and you may be spending time you don't need to, either in map setup or in arguing about positioning in TotM play.

[Cygnia]

I really wish I was better at mapping things out.  It isn't so bad for 7th Sea, but crunchier games like Champions and D&D really benefit from knowing how to do battle maps.  And yeah, there's Roll20, but for face to face tabletop, it's not so easy...

[Chris Goodwin]

DrivethruRPG has quite a lot of free maps to download, and quite a lot more that are very inexpensive. 

 

My biweekly group uses a Chessex mat and wet erase markers, and sketches out maps quickly whenever we need one.  We usually have one we're referring to when we're drawing them out.  (This is always an open book test!)

 

I used the Tech Underground map from Robot Warriors to represent an underground former Rebel base in my Star Wars Hero game, and I did exactly that when they needed it: sketched it out on the mat. 

[Gauntlet]

On 11/28/2023 at 1:13 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I have played a bunch of other modern systems and while each has their nice features or ideas, none of them are superior to Hero overall for me, at least.  I see no reason why on earth I would ever change to any other game except to just try it out or for a specific play session.

 

I definitely have to agree with you. Problem is most young players really just want to play a video game, not an actual role-playing game. They want it short and simple. I have played the new D&D and the reason they need to have 50,000 different character types is that each character is pretty much the same. And to actually look at it, in many ways D&D is more confusing than Hero, with each character type being completely different and nearly impossible to tell which would be more powerful as there are plenty of character types that are almost completely useless. But I have found a good note. That players as they get older do find the repressiveness of some of those simple game to no longer be fun and go to more interesting games, such as Hero, where you can actually make the character you want, not just something listed in a book the same as every other one.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 11/28/2023 at 10:41 AM, Old Man said:

 

I find games without maps to be incredibly annoying.  Without a map every fight becomes a super mushy game of mental Calvinball which means I have to interrogate the GM every phase.  Can I reach the bad guy?  Is anyone blocking my shot?  Is there any useful terrain?  How many bad guys can I catch with this AOE effect?  It becomes much easier to take another swing at the guy in front of me and I'm instantly bored.

 Irs ! Exactly. A good hunk of my gaming revolves around tactical puzzles, which were a centerpiece of the team based fights in Champions. I need that map and counters/Miniatures. THeater of the mind for me is just not compelling for combat. It can be for dialogue, but not when it gets to combat.  I had problems with some war game rules and as a result I got into WW2 Re-enactments.  It made a lot of the tactical choices a lot clearer.

[Gauntlet]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 Irs ! Exactly. A good hunk of my gaming revolves around tactical puzzles, which were a centerpiece of the team based fights in Champions. I need that map and counters/Miniatures. THeater of the mind for me is just not compelling for combat. It can be for dialogue, but not when it gets to combat.  I had problems with some war game rules and as a result I got into WW2 Re-enactments.  It made a lot of the tactical choices a lot clearer.

 

Plus, with miniatures and such you got something to paint and show.

[Khymeria]

5 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

I have played the new D&D and the reason they need to have 50,000 different character types is that each character is pretty much the same. And to actually look at it, in many ways D&D is more confusing than Hero, with each character type being completely different and nearly impossible to tell which would be more powerful as there are plenty of character types that are almost completely useless. But I have found a good note. That players as they get older do find the repressiveness of some of those simple game to no longer be fun and go to more interesting games, such as Hero, where you can actually make the character you want, not just something listed in a book the same as every other one.

I was one of the contributors and playtesters for 5E D&D for WotC from the beginning and the first half of the edition cycle, and what you have said about D&D being more confusing than Hero System is spot on. Hero System, learn the rules and put some effort into really learning character creation and your done. In D&D, everything works differently, every class ability, spell, racial ability, magic item, and monster. Each has statistics, just like Hero System, but each also has the dreaded text to be interpreted, misinterpreted, misconstrued, and the second paragraph, the one that has the negative, always gets forgotten by the player and you have to go and look it up, and interpret it, misinterpret it, etc. D&D/Pathfinder appear to have a million options, but if you have to take them to keep up with the neverending encounter scale and the rest of the party, are the really options? If 80% of the advanced paths and feats for martial characters require either Power Attack or Weapon Focus, then is it really an option. If there are a million different choices that will never get chosen, then they are just noise. I will take the system that lets me and my players build exactly what we want, learn one system for everything, and the system is a formula that is consistent in nearly everything in the game. 

[Rich McGee]

11 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

Plus, with miniatures and such you got something to paint and show.

I grok that.  

 

I'd say I'm surprised relatively few supers gamers use minis, but until HeroClix came along the market was never very well-served.  Old Glory's Superfigs range is by far the largest non-Clix range, and it didn't come along till ~2000 and hasn't had a new fig in well over a decade, and before that I don't think any line offered more than 20-24 unique sculpts.  Many older systems came with generous supplies of counters or standee pawns as an alternative too - V&V was particularly good for nicely drawn flat counters, and Cardboard Heroes had a good selection of pawns - so there was maybe less call for actual minis.  3D printing (both home printing and services) has helped quite a bit but I still don't see a lot of figs on supers tables.

[Old Man]

12 hours ago, Khymeria said:

I was one of the contributors and playtesters for 5E D&D for WotC from the beginning and the first half of the edition cycle, and what you have said about D&D being more confusing than Hero System is spot on. Hero System, learn the rules and put some effort into really learning character creation and your done. In D&D, everything works differently, every class ability, spell, racial ability, magic item, and monster. Each has statistics, just like Hero System, but each also has the dreaded text to be interpreted, misinterpreted, misconstrued, and the second paragraph, the one that has the negative, always gets forgotten by the player and you have to go and look it up, and interpret it, misinterpret it, etc. D&D/Pathfinder appear to have a million options, but if you have to take them to keep up with the neverending encounter scale and the rest of the party, are the really options? If 80% of the advanced paths and feats for martial characters require either Power Attack or Weapon Focus, then is it really an option. If there are a million different choices that will never get chosen, then they are just noise. I will take the system that lets me and my players build exactly what we want, learn one system for everything, and the system is a formula that is consistent in nearly everything in the game. 

 

And this is why my blood boils every time I hear someone complain that Hero is too complex.  The time I tried to play Pathfinder 2e it took me days (not an exaggeration) to wade through the classes, subclasses, traits, feats, skills, specializations, and spells to make a character that still didn't fit the concept in my head. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

And this is why my blood boils every time I hear someone complain that Hero is too complex.

 

Right.  People view D&D as simple for one of two reasons:

1) familiarity; its easy because you have been playing it for a long time and are very used to it

2) nostalgia to when it was actually a simple system back 40 years ago.

 

Hero is simple to play, if a bit crunchy to build a character.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, Rich McGee said:

I grok that.  

 

I'd say I'm surprised relatively few supers gamers use minis, but until HeroClix came along the market was never very well-served.  Old Glory's Superfigs range is by far the largest non-Clix range, and it didn't come along till ~2000 and hasn't had a new fig in well over a decade, and before that I don't think any line offered more than 20-24 unique sculpts.  Many older systems came with generous supplies of counters or standee pawns as an alternative too - V&V was particularly good for nicely drawn flat counters, and Cardboard Heroes had a good selection of pawns - so there was maybe less call for actual minis.  3D printing (both home printing and services) has helped quite a bit but I still don't see a lot of figs on supers tables.

 

For me the problem with minis has historically been that I have a very clear mental picture of my character, and it's really, really hard to find a mini that matches.  It's a little easier in fantasy because of D&D support, but supers TTRPGs is relatively niche so it doesn't have the critical mass to support a wide range of miniature production.  3D printing with custom meshes (such as from Hero Forge) can get you close to exact, but it involves a nontrivial investment in time and money, even before you get to painting.

 

Printed cardstock is just so much easier to deal with.

[Rich McGee]

2 hours ago, Old Man said:

For me the problem with minis has historically been that I have a very clear mental picture of my character, and it's really, really hard to find a mini that matches. 

My answer to that problem for ages now has been to stare at my minis collection and online catalogs for a while until I find a mini that inspires me to design a character and work from there.  The fact that I'm not shy about making conversions and resculpting helps with that.  One could argue that it's putting the cart before the horse, but it's led to some entertaining characters for me over the years.  Take inspiration where you find it and all that.

 

And as you said, 3D meshes have changed the picture on what's available, and will continue to get better at that.  Supers are still tragically underserved compared to D&D-ish fantasy, but things are slowly improving for us lead-head roleplayers.

[Gauntlet]

There is nothing wrong with using folded paper figures. They are easy to get and to make and work very well.

[Rich McGee]

5 minutes ago, Gauntlet said:

There is nothing wrong with using folded paper figures. They are easy to get and to make and work very well.

I didn't say there was.  There's nothing wrong with counters either, which are even easier to get and make and store.  Miniatures are a more expensive and less convenient option, but some of us enjoy painting them enough to more than compensate for that.  It's a hobby of its own, and supers RPGs call for so few of them compared to (say) playing Warhammer 40K that putting together a reasonable collection is hardly onerous, and single player character fig is trivial effort for most painting hobbyists.

 

Also nothing preventing you from using all those options together.  Even I don't want to drag enough agent figs to fill a VIPER base around with me when I've got a kajillion V&V uniformed mook counters handy.

[Sketchpad]

7 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Right.  People view D&D as simple for one of two reasons:

1) familiarity; its easy because you have been playing it for a long time and are very used to it

2) nostalgia to when it was actually a simple system back 40 years ago.

 

Hero is simple to play, if a bit crunchy to build a character.

 

Except that D&D5e is getting new players consistently. So if it is more complex than Hero, something else is helping to bring people in. I've always seem D&D/Pathfinder around the same complexity as Hero, just in different manners. For example, having conditions actually can make a game flow better... BUT players need to know and understand what those conditions are. In the same respect, having to mold an ability to emulate conditions can be a bit of a head scratcher from time to time. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

So if it is more complex than Hero, something else is helping to bring people in

 

D&D has a reputation of being easy to play and learn.  To the extent people have even heard of Hero, it has a reputation of being horribly crunchy and difficult to learn.  The things I listed are where that myth comes from, which new players are told all about if it comes up.  I don't think D&D is more complicated than Hero, but easily as complicated.

[Ninja-Bear]

My brother was given 5th Ed D&D and yeah it’s more complicated than the older editions. That might be why that there a subset that love the even rules lighter game such as Maze Rats and Cairn. I think that you can go the opposite direction and be too rules lite.

[Scott Ruggels]

Agreed. 

[Gauntlet]

6 hours ago, Sketchpad said:

 

Except that D&D5e is getting new players consistently. So if it is more complex than Hero, something else is helping to bring people in. I've always seem D&D/Pathfinder around the same complexity as Hero, just in different manners. For example, having conditions actually can make a game flow better... BUT players need to know and understand what those conditions are. In the same respect, having to mold an ability to emulate conditions can be a bit of a head scratcher from time to time. 

 

D&D gets the players because they have the money for lots of adds, not because of the value of the game.

[Old Man]

15 hours ago, Sketchpad said:

 

Except that D&D5e is getting new players consistently. So if it is more complex than Hero, something else is helping to bring people in.

 

D&D has a critical mass of people to teach other people how to play.  That's the main reason; I don't know anyone who learned how to RPG just from a book.  D&D also has celebrities playing D&D on youtube, entry-level boardgames that ease boardgamers into D&D, kids playing D&D on Netflix, and oodles of name recognition. 

[Gauntlet]

8 minutes ago, Old Man said:

 

D&D has a critical mass of people to teach other people how to play.  That's the main reason; I don't know anyone who learned how to RPG just from a book.  D&D also has celebrities playing D&D on youtube, entry-level boardgames that ease boardgamers into D&D, kids playing D&D on Netflix, and oodles of name recognition. 

 

They in some respects have gotten themselves to be the "Cool Thing To Do".