Ideas for a short (4-hour) one shot for a group of new players

[RPMiller]

The game went well! Unfortunately, we lost about 2 hours trying to get Foundry to cooperate and get things set up, but they enjoyed the game, and were pleasantly surprised by how flexible Hero was compared to D&D, and they were able to do stuff without having to come up with crazy house rules and such. We are going to finish next Saturday, so I have a week to try to get Foundry to work better - if I can. Just wanted to give all of you a huge THANK YOU! for the scenario and character recommendations and such. It really helped a lot.

[Lord Liaden]

On 3/4/2023 at 9:14 AM, Mark Rand said:

Squirrel Girl's character sheet is on Mike Surbrook's site.

 

I should have looked closer, but I assumed there'd be no character sheet for Squirrel Girl, because she's a joke character with enough plot armor to wrap a battleship. But that sheet is actually a pretty good template for a starting superhero.

[RPMiller]

40 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I should have looked closer, but I assumed there's be no character sheet for Squirrel Girl, because she's a joke character with enough plot armor to wrap a battleship. But that sheet is actually a pretty good template for a starting superhero.

Yup. It worked well. I'm in the process of recreating the HDC file though because the one on Surbrook is corrupted and won't load. Ran into a weird talent though: "7pts. Beast Speech: Only Squirrels (-1)" No clue what that talent is supposed to be. I thought maybe Universal Translator, but the points don't work and the talent doesn't have a roll. Any ideas?

[Lord Liaden]

Beast Speech is a Talent debuting in the Fantasy HERO genre book for Fifth Edition, p. 103:

 

"Like Dr. Doolittle, the character can “talk to the animals.” This doesn’t guarantee they’ll respond, be amicable, or comply with his requests, but it often helps to establish friendly relations... particularly if the character offers the animal some food. When a character uses this Talent, he speaks to the animal with his normal speech (which other characters can hear, and understand if they know it). The animal responds using its speech, which sounds like ordinary animal sounds to others (barks, meows, growls, squeaks, and the like), but which the character can understand as speech.

When a character purchases this power, the GM must decide how well animals communicate. It’s most fun, and most in keeping with the genre, to make them nearly as intelligent as humans (if not equally or more so), and thus to allow them to communicate with full comprehension. Gamemasters desiring greater “realism” may have animals’ conversation turn constantly to subjects that interest them (e.g., food and warmth).

Of course, this Talent is not necessary in Crossworlds or High Fantasy games with talking animals; everyone can already speak to animals in such settings."

Beast Speech Cost: 15 Character Points (bought as Telepathy 5d6 (Animal class of minds), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½); No Range (-½), Communication Only (-¼), Incantations (throughout; -½), Visible (-¼))

 

I don't own the 6E version of FH, so I can't speak to if or how it's presented there.

 

[RPMiller]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Beast Speech is a Talent debuting in the Fantasy HERO genre book for Fifth Edition, p. 103:

Thanks for the info, LL. I should have thought of that book, since it is right there on my shelf. I guess the genre books didn't make it into HeroDesigner? I'll build it accordingly.

 

Just looked in the 6E version. It has it as well.

[Duke Bushido]

On 3/4/2023 at 1:11 AM, Lord Liaden said:

 

I would love to see someone extract the fourteen Champions adventures from DH, tidy them up to make them 6E compatible (not much to do beyond updating character sheets), and publish them as a single volume. That's exactly the kind of product so many of our fellow Herophiles repeatedly assert that they want and need. All the adventures are quality product, with nearly everything included to run them "out of the box" with minimal setup.

 

Agreed.  Same with Adventurers Club. 

 

I expect that given the nature of magazines built as anthologies by community contribution that there are too many copyright hurdles.  Even if there are comparatively few legal hurdles, I see many, many ethical ones. 

 

 

[RPMiller]

Steve was putting out anthologies from Digital Hero, if memory serves. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

I would love to see someone extract the fourteen Champions adventures from DH, tidy them up to make them 6E compatible (not much to do beyond updating character sheets), and publish them as a single volume.

 

The only challenge is the cover and the art, its a couple week job otherwise.  I might consider that, but its worth realizing that at least some of the adventures are specifically copyrighted to the writer in these magazines.

[Lord Liaden]

Christopher, do you have information to that effect from someone in the company? When I wrote my own article I was informed that with publication it would become the property of Hero Games, and no alternative arrangement was mentioned.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I don't know, I just noticed some of the Digital Hero adventures had copyright information on them from the writers.  Whether that is binding or not, I do not know, but I always try to notice and heed that kind of thing, being a creator myself.

[Lord Liaden]

I'll run the question past Jason, see what he advises.

[RPMiller]

We had our second session yesterday. They are sold on Hero and will be giving it a more thorough run now. They were extremely impressed by all the stuff they could do. A big surprise came when I asked Squirrel Girl to make a Smell PER roll, and they were amazed that was a thing. LOL

 

One important take away was that if you aren't using a VTT that fully supports Hero you are going to waste a great deal of time. I'm hopeful that the developer for the Foundry Hero Module will be able to get it working 100%. Other than that one, I think the only options are Roll20 and MapTool. Never played with Roll20 so not sure how integrated it is. Used MapTool a bunch, but admittedly it can be difficult for me users to get up to speed with it.