Homebrewing a HERO System 2e

[Joe Walsh]

Project update:

- I've completed the tables pass

- My very kind wife is doing the "Make sure it's accurate to the original" pass. I'm not gonna lie, this step's going to take a while because it's very tedious.

- While she's doing that, I'm working on getting Merchants of Terror into text format.

 

[Joe Walsh]

Looking down the road, any suggestions on what to do with that outdated list of firearms on page 34? I enjoy target shooting, and I've owned Shooter's Bibles for decades, but I'm not qualified to pick out an iconic selection of current weapons from around the world and then identify their differences so they can be accurately reflected in the stats. For RPGs I normally just use an unbranded list of categories of weapons (a few revolver calibers, a holdout pistol, a few calibers of auto pistols, etc.) and then make some simple variations if they are needed for some reason in the game (a slightly less accurate X, a slightly more damaging Y, etc.). If a player wants some specific brand and model, I'm willing to work with them to come up with stats, but honestly I haven't had any player who wanted that since the early 90s.

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by GM Joe

[Scott Ruggels]

The Biggest changes since the first release of Espionage, in firearms, is the adoption of Special Operators accessories to the Military as a whole. The Discussion of the transition from the M-16 A2, which was top of the line when Espionage came out, to the M-4 carbine, with optics in 2007 is illuminating.

 

Since, the .45 disappeared, came back, then disappeared again.  Optics have been added to pistols, and all firearms have had Picatinny rails, and accessories like tunable infrared lasers, likes, Magazine carriers, and two and three point slings. The Callibers are mostly the same, as old, but the delivery is faster, and more accurate than it was in the 80s.

Looking at the Ukraine war, the modernization of the Kalashnikov platform has been uneven,with the AK-74, and AK-102 having just about the same performance, and anything later the power is degraded.

[Duke Bushido]

Also:

 

Consider keeping the old outdated list and just adding the new stuff to the list.  Also consider coming through the Armory or even 4e Western HERO for older or more exotic weapons.  If your goal is a 2e HERO System, then genre emulation ahould be easy, and a formatted weapons chart could hold what?  Sixty or more weapons on a single page, right?

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

2 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

The Biggest changes since the first release of Espionage, in firearms, is the adoption of Special Operators accessories to the Military as a whole. The Discussion of the transition from the M-16 A2, which was top of the line when Espionage came out, to the M-4 carbine, with optics in 2007 is illuminating.

 

Since, the .45 disappeared, came back, then disappeared again.  Optics have been added to pistols, and all firearms have had Picatinny rails, and accessories like tunable infrared lasers, likes, Magazine carriers, and two and three point slings. The Callibers are mostly the same, as old, but the delivery is faster, and more accurate than it was in the 80s.

Looking at the Ukraine war, the modernization of the Kalashnikov platform has been uneven,with the AK-74, and AK-102 having just about the same performance, and anything later the power is degraded.

 

Thanks, Scott! Interesting video. I don't really pay attention to the military side much any more, so that was new to me.

 

Hard to believe how much has changed even in the civilian world since I started shooting in the late 70s.

 

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Also:

 

Consider keeping the old outdated list and just adding the new stuff to the list.  Also consider coming through the Armory or even 4e Western HERO for older or more exotic weapons.  If your goal is a 2e HERO System, then genre emulation ahould be easy, and a formatted weapons chart could hold what?  Sixty or more weapons on a single page, right?

 

Sure, there are 50+ on the existing page in Espionage!, so adding a few more pages should give adequate coverage from the Civil War to now.

Justice Inc and Golden Age of Champions have plenty of firearms to choose from for the first half of the 20th century, so that's a blessing.

Star Hero gives us some future weapons.

The two problematic eras, to me, are Civil War through 1900 and circa 2020.

For Civil War through 1900, Western Hero 4e lists a good number of firearms, but the listings lack brands and models, a Size attribute, and use the 4e+ RMod instead of the 2e/3e-style. But in theory it shouldn't be too hard to pick out an iconic version of each listed firearm type and caliber and unilaterally assign the stats to that particular firearm.

Alternatively the more specific Western Hero 6e list could be drawn from. It lists specific brands and models. Otherwise it's like the 4e list in terms of what it contains, but of course the scale change will be an additional complication.

That still leaves the current era uncovered. Is there an easy source of Hero stats for that? I can resort to Guns! Guns! Guns!, but I'd really rather not.

 

Edited May 1, 2023 by GM Joe

[Scott Ruggels]

Another YouTube channel, C&Rsenal, has been doing a deep dive into firearms from the US Clvil War, through the end of WW1. In general, there are broad trends. Up to the beginning of The Civil War firearms were muzzle loading, cap lock single shots. Right at the dawn of the war cartridge breech loaders started to appear, but were eschewed by the army, as the necessity of war meant they had to issue the service weapon everywhere. It was bad enough, that the base rifle was used up to the Spanish American war in 1898. They were converted from muzzle loaders, with the Allyn conversion to the Trapdoor Springfield. After the civil war Cartridge firearms superseded cap locks, and to increase rates of fire, tubular magazines, first seen in Henry Rifles, in 1858

and carried up through to the French Lebel rifle in 1888, and we still see them in shotguns today. The lever action and tube magazine were superseded by the bolt action box magazine and packet (stripper) loading.  The afore mentioned lebel was developed in 5 months, to take advantage of the new secret flat shooting smokeless powder. That secret lasted a year. This forced every other military to adopt new rifles. John  Moses Browning became active around then and led the slow transition from revolvers to semi-automatic pistols, the rifles.  Smokeless powder also made machine guns possible.  Hiram maxim’s prototypeswere functioning by 1885, but only functional after 1889 when smokeless became common.  This brings us to The First World War. 
 

A sampling: 

 

[Joe Walsh]

Here's a spreadsheet with the firearms data from Espionage!

 

If someone would like to add the data from Justice Inc (pp 61-62), and update the Espionage! entries to include the "First Made" year, that would be a big help.

 

Firearms for Hero System 2e.xlsx

[Joe Walsh]

Thinking about this a bit more...

 

Any list of firearms is going to be instantly out of date in the real world, and any generic RPG could be set in any arbitrary place or time, so to me there's a good argument for keeping the firearms generic and letting brands and models be set dressing.

 

So with that in mind, here's my first stab at a way to approach generic handgun design abstractly but with enough detail to cover the broad use cases:

Quote

Revolver capacity:
Compact: 5 rounds
Mid-Size: 6 rounds
Full-Size: 8 rounds

 

Semi-automatic pistol capacity:
Compact: 6+1 rounds
Mid-Size: 10+1 rounds
Full-Size: 15+1 rounds

 

Compact handguns have barrel lengths 2"-3", SIZE 0, and get RNG MOD -1/1"
Mid-Size handguns have barrel lengths 3"-4", SIZE 3, and get RNG MOD -1/2"
Full-Size handguns have barrel lengths 4"-5", SIZE 5, and get RNG MOD -1/3"

 

Standard caliber handguns yield 1D6+1 damage with STR MOD 0 and STR MIN 8.
Small caliber handguns grant EITHER next-higher capacity OR -2 to SIZE, but yield 1D6-1 damage with STR MOD -1 and STR MIN 5.
Large caliber handguns EITHER next-lower capacity OR +2 to SIZE, but yield 1 1/2D6 damage with STR MOD +1 and STR MIN 10.

 

Magnum adds +1 DC and +2 STR MIN.

 

Revolvers add +2 to STR MIN and +1 to SIZE.

 

Primitive firearms get -3 or more to OCV.
Pre-WWI firearms get -2 to OCV.
Pre-2000 firearms get -1 to OCV.

 

Otherwise, quality of design and manufacturing determines whether a gun is -1 OCV, +0 OCV, or +1 OCV as compared to its peers.

 

Semi-automatic pistols can be fitted with a variety of accessories such as silencers, scopes, and sights.

 

Properly maintained revolvers do not jam. Improperly maintained revolvers jam on a 17.

Properly maintained semi-automatic pistols jam on a 17. Improperly maintained semi-automatic pistols jam on a 16 or 17. (As per the normal rules).

 

From there it can be scaled up to long guns with greater RNG MOD, higher capacity, automatic/burst fire, higher damage classes, etc.

 

I don't have any plans to change the way Espionage! approaches shotguns.

 

Thoughts?

Edited May 2, 2023 by GM Joe

[Duke Bushido]

5 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

If someone would like to add the data from Justice Inc (

 

Firearms for Hero System 2e.xlsx 10.42 kB · 1 download

 

 

Gun:  1d6 RKA + (1d6-1d6)

 

Big gun: 2d6 RKA + (1d6-1d6)

 

Shot gun:  pick one of the above, add reduce Pen ans Reduced range.

 

Sawed off shotgun: as above, but remove range and add AOE Cone.

 

Machine gun:

 

Pick Gun or Big gun.  Add Autofire to taste.

 

 

There.  Every possible HERO System gun should be in there somewhere.

 

 

[Joe Walsh]

48 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Gun:  1d6 RKA + (1d6-1d6)

 

Big gun: 2d6 RKA + (1d6-1d6)

 

Shot gun:  pick one of the above, add reduce Pen ans Reduced range.

 

Sawed off shotgun: as above, but remove range and add AOE Cone.

 

Machine gun:

 

Pick Gun or Big gun.  Add Autofire to taste.

 

There.  Every possible HERO System gun should be in there somewhere.

 

Best firearm system ever, Duke!

 

As an aside, it's so funny that Espionage! is like, "Don't use guns! Secret agents who use guns have already failed and will bring down the wrath of the universe on themselves!"

 

Also Espionage: about half the illustrations are of guns, an entire page is filled with guns stats, there are special combat rules for guns, all other equipment is generic (including vehicles) but each firearm is a specific brand and model (is there even a legit use for a Weatherby Mk V Silhouette in the game?) etc.

 

Also Espionage, also: Throwing is almost always referred to as "throwing grenades" -- and when guns will cause issues with covert operations, you know grenades are gonna be A-OK!

 

(I know -- there's extensive coverage of firearms because Espionage! was intended to be the heroic-level modern version of Hero System, with a secret agent theme so that it's a game first and a toolkit once you've learned it (and only if that's what the purchaser wants it to be), but still, on the surface it's pretty funny.)

Edited May 2, 2023 by GM Joe

[Scott Ruggels]

Duke!! You forgot the stun mod adds to those large, Imperial of Colonial era projectiles, like the .45ACP, the Webley, the Rast & Gasser, the large Colt Walker and Dragoons, and the Mars Pistol. You know how much I love the stun lotto! One of the reasons I avoid 6e! 
 

I would even say that the amount of body done was higher (but with reduced penetration, though still with an added stun mod) for the black powder long guns like the Enfield Snider, the 1861 Springfield, or the 1851 Enfields. (Also the range mods are shorter than the smokeless cartridge rifles), so there is a bit more variation.  

Edited May 2, 2023 by Scott Ruggels

[Scott Ruggels]

Duke, and Joe, it’s not the variation of damage that identifies the weapon, but the variation of Range mod, stun mod, base accuracy, rate of fire, weight, and date of manufacture.  Also in some cases an unsupported long gun with a long lock time, may trade an OCV bonus for an OCV penalty due to flinch or wobble if it does not go off faster than the operator expects.  

[Duke Bushido]

You guys are _right_!

 

Really Big Gun / long gun:  3d6+(1d6-1d6) RKA

 

 

Tiny Gun:  1d6-1d6 RKA (negative results means gun exploded in user's hand, doing damage results per the roll)

 

 

Reduced velocity projectile:

 

Reduced Penetration and +2 STUN Multiplier. Automatic weapons may jam from reduced gas pressure failing to complete cocking cycle)

 

 

 

In all seriousness, though, Scott is right.  The rub is that real-world weapons _do_ deliver a wide range of "damage points;" we tend to sort of forget that "lethal and above" is precisely that.  It doesn't really matter how much _more than dead_ the target actually is (except in Fantasy).  Dead and so-dead-he-doesn't-know-it-yet are modeled exactly the same.

 

The problem only really exist if you let armor get stupidly unrealistic:  my Kevlar vest has DEF 30!  I have extra armor on my skin but if I call it "Luck" I can keep it, right?

 

That sort of thing.

 

Screw it; we're going with the suitcase nukes!   Break out those "throw grenade" rules again....?

 

 

(How far do you have to throw one to give yourself time to kiss yourself goodbye?)

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by Duke Bushido

[Joe Walsh]

54 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Duke, and Joe, it’s not the variation of damage that identifies the weapon, but the variation of Range mod, stun mod, base accuracy, rate of fire, weight, and date of manufacture.  Also in some cases an unsupported long gun with a long lock time, may trade an OCV bonus for an OCV penalty due to flinch or wobble if it does not go off faster than the operator expects.  

 

Right! Broadly speaking, the gun's a delivery system, the round determines the effect of impact, and the operator and environmental factors determine how effective the delivery is and how close to full potential the damage is.

 

In the 80s, I loved the detail some games brought to bits of firearm combat. I thought Twilight 2000's accuracy system for automatic weapons fire was very cool. I still do, kinda -- I just wouldn't want to use that sort of system any more, even if my players would be interested in it.

 

These days, I think Classic Traveller got it about right. You get hit, you're probably going down, and you're probably out of the fight.

 

Edited to add: That said, when writing up the above bare-bones system for firearm design, I was tempted to separate the weapons from the rounds, and offer stats for standard, hollow point, etc., mix and match as long as the caliber is the same, etc. Still am, kinda, but I'm not sure the extra detail would be worth it. What do you think?

Edited May 2, 2023 by GM Joe

[IndianaJoe3]

19 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Another YouTube channel, C&Rsenal, has been doing a deep dive into firearms from the US Clvil War, through the end of WW1. In general, there are broad trends. Up to the beginning of The Civil War firearms were muzzle loading, cap lock single shots. Right at the dawn of the war cartridge breech loaders started to appear, but were eschewed by the army, as the necessity of war meant they had to issue the service weapon everywhere. It was bad enough, that the base rifle was used up to the Spanish American war in 1898. They were converted from muzzle loaders, with the Allyn conversion to the Trapdoor Springfield. After the civil war Cartridge firearms superseded cap locks, and to increase rates of fire, tubular magazines, first seen in Henry Rifles, in 1858

and carried up through to the French Lebel rifle in 1888, and we still see them in shotguns today. The lever action and tube magazine were superseded by the bolt action box magazine and packet (stripper) loading.  The afore mentioned lebel was developed in 5 months, to take advantage of the new secret flat shooting smokeless powder. That secret lasted a year. This forced every other military to adopt new rifles. John  Moses Browning became active around then and led the slow transition from revolvers to semi-automatic pistols, the rifles.  Smokeless powder also made machine guns possible.  Hiram maxim’s prototypes were functioning by 1885, but only functional after 1889 when smokeless became common.  This brings us to The First World War. 

 

I've been noodling around with a revised firearm list for Hero for some time. I'd broken it down to the following eras:

• Archaic (pre-1820)
• Percussion caps (1820-1857)
• Metallic cartridges (1857-1884)
• Smokeless powder and WW1 (1884-1918)
• WW2 (1918-1945)
• Early Cold War (1945-1973)
• Late Cold War (1973-1990)
• Modern (1990-present)

[rravenwood]

1 hour ago, GM Joe said:

Edited to add: That said, when writing up the above bare-bones system for firearm design, I was tempted to separate the weapons from the rounds, and offer stats for standard, hollow point, etc., mix and match as long as the caliber is the same, etc. Still am, kinda, but I'm not sure the extra detail would be worth it. What do you think?

 

Take a look at Danger International, pp 55-56 "Special Shells".  (As a side note, I recall being inspired by that and making a selection of different arrowhead types for my Fantasy Hero campaign decades ago.)

[Duke Bushido]

Regarding the firearms list:

 

Consider making it  perhaps a 4-page (_at most_) appendix.  Rather than brea I ing them up by type or size, consider breaking them into 20 or 25-year blocks.  Thus, if I wanted to play a western, I have the appropriate items in one block.  Same with cold-war era espionage or modern guerilla warfare.

 

Meant to quote it, but forgot:

 

Rgarding secret agents without guns:

 

Guns are for your James Bond types.  Sure; they're agents.  However, it is absolutely no secret.

 

I suspect the emphasis on "sont use your gun" was to prevent a covert up from becoming a raid wherein the players cover everyone, steal the diling cabinet and leave in under two minutes.

 

Though there is also the notion that a gunshot or forty might bring unwanted attention, and just how good is your cover when the French version of CSI starts poking about and asking questions?  Like "why do you have a gun?"

 

 

[Scott Ruggels]

6 hours ago, GM Joe said:

 

Right! Broadly speaking, the gun's a delivery system, the round determines the effect of impact, and the operator and environmental factors determine how effective the delivery is and how close to full potential the damage is.

 

In the 80s, I loved the detail some games brought to bits of firearm combat. I thought Twilight 2000's accuracy system for automatic weapons fire was very cool. I still do, kinda -- I just wouldn't want to use that sort of system any more, even if my players would be interested in it.

 

These days, I think Classic Traveller got it about right. You get hit, you're probably going down, and you're probably out of the fight.

 

Edited to add: That said, when writing up the above bare-bones system for firearm design, I was tempted to separate the weapons from the rounds, and offer stats for standard, hollow point, etc., mix and match as long as the caliber is the same, etc. Still am, kinda, but I'm not sure the extra detail would be worth it. What do you think?

 

Hero is NOT a Modern, Minimalist, Fiction forward, system. It's a "Universal" system, and that sort of detail would be necessary, especially following the tool box template.

Now rather than sneaky Spy stuff, I tended to run Espionage and D.I. as "modern Mercenary" where it was a Tactical Waregame in a central American Jungle, with Roleplay to give context to the upcoming fights.  As a game, and run at conventions it worked quite well as a Schwazeneggar, or Stallone Movie simulator for entertainment and fun.  You are correct about classic Traveller, and even Mongoose Traveller.3e fits that definition. If guns come out there, most people would put their hands up, as survival was questionable at best if the other guys started shooting. But is that the game you are aiming at?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah the only way we ever played Danger International as action adventure stuff like Terminator vs Miami Vice, that kind of thing.  It would work fine for spies, we just didn't have any interest in hard core espionage.

[assault]

Ignoring guns for the moment: Package Deals are a big thing. If you have a tight focus - CIA agents, in the case of Espionage, it's easy to fix. But if you have a broader focus, things get weird. You get duplication and potentially double dipping.

Suppose you have a package with characteristic requirements. Suppose your packages include duplicated skills (Weapons Familarity is likely). Suppose your package includes Disadvantages of the same category of those in other ones.

Characters will need to be recalculated because of those.

It's a pain, but can be handled. You just need to handle them.

[Joe Walsh]

14 hours ago, rravenwood said:

Take a look at Danger International, pp 55-56 "Special Shells".  (As a side note, I recall being inspired by that and making a selection of different arrowhead types for my Fantasy Hero campaign decades ago.)

 

Thanks! That'd slipped my mind yesterday. It's in Espionage!, too, of course. I even have a note to update the first sentence's description of AP bullets to something like, "This includes bullets with high-density penetrator cores jacketed by copper or a copper alloy." rather than the existing sentence that's (quite naturally) stuck in the early 80s.

 

A hollow-point category could be added these days, of course. I'm not sure about doing that, but it's on my list for consideration. How would you address that issue -- or would you feel a need to address it?

 

13 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Regarding the firearms list:

 

Consider making it  perhaps a 4-page (_at most_) appendix.  Rather than brea I ing them up by type or size, consider breaking them into 20 or 25-year blocks.  Thus, if I wanted to play a western, I have the appropriate items in one block.  Same with cold-war era espionage or modern guerilla warfare.

 

That would be ideal! I'd love it if there was time for that. At the least I'd like to include the 100% compatible JI list, as well as Wild West and Near Future lists if at all possible. I'm still hoping someone who is more enthusiastic about this aspect will pitch in, but I assume that like me most just don't have the time.

 

 

13 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Meant to quote it, but forgot:

 

Rgarding secret agents without guns:

 

Guns are for your James Bond types.  Sure; they're agents.  However, it is absolutely no secret.

 

I suspect the emphasis on "sont use your gun" was to prevent a covert up from becoming a raid wherein the players cover everyone, steal the diling cabinet and leave in under two minutes.

 

Though there is also the notion that a gunshot or forty might bring unwanted attention, and just how good is your cover when the French version of CSI starts poking about and asking questions?  Like "why do you have a gun?"

 

Exactly! Espionage expresses concerns for all those scenarios, and the combat example even includes some gunplay that leads to disaster. The book points out that firing a gun in a foreign country is a bad idea, leaving dead bodies behind is even worse, and doing any of that while engaging in espionage should be avoided if at all possible. It counsels using brains instead of firing bullets, pointing out that most people if held at gunpoint are going to want to avoid being killed and will cooperate as much as they can. Plus, if you get a reputation among enemy agents as a killer, they'll be more likely to take you out if given the opportunity. There's lots of advice like that in the book, and I absolutely love it because that's how I've been running espionage scenarios for the last 20+ years. It tickles me that I finally caught up to where HERO was in 1983.

 

 

10 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Now rather than sneaky Spy stuff, I tended to run Espionage and D.I. as "modern Mercenary" where it was a Tactical Waregame in a central American Jungle, with Roleplay to give context to the upcoming fights.  As a game, and run at conventions it worked quite well as a Schwazeneggar, or Stallone Movie simulator for entertainment and fun.  You are correct about classic Traveller, and even Mongoose Traveller.3e fits that definition. If guns come out there, most people would put their hands up, as survival was questionable at best if the other guys started shooting. But is that the game you are aiming at?

 

Not at all.  I was just saying that if someone's looking for realism like I used to in the 80s, I believe the Traveller approach is going to be more in line with reality than a lot of the other approaches we've seen over the decades. Of course Hero's explicitly more aligned with reality as portrayed in popular fiction, so we don't need to worry about adhering to the brutal realities of real-world combat. Personally as a GM I frequently use doses of pseudo-realism to make things less lethal (like making sure even the cannon fodder enemies have some sense of self-preservation and do respond to fear, pain, and shock; and encouraging players to track wounds individually and heal them individually, so that a character with paramedic/first aid/healer/etc. skill can do a lot of repair to smaller wounds after combat).

 

 

10 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah the only way we ever played Danger International as action adventure stuff like Terminator vs Miami Vice, that kind of thing.  It would work fine for spies, we just didn't have any interest in hard core espionage.

 

Isn't Danger International just great for that? Of the similar games like MSPE and the like, it really hits a sweet spot and includes so much great info. L. Douglas Garrett did a great job of massaging the core HERO System 3e ruleset into a fantastic and complete RPG for a good variety of scenarios.

 

But I also like the Espionage! method of saying "Here's this game that's made for espionage role-play, but if you'd like to you can use it for any modern role-playing scenario you care to name" because this method gives more of a hand-up to beginning GMs. Unfortunately the tighter the focus, the more restricted the appeal (and did anyone really think that cover art would help sell it? Oh well, that's another subject ).

 

(To be clear, I've no ambition to recreate DI (or late-3e/4e/5e/6e Hero System, for that matter). Other people could do a better job at that, for sure. I just want a game that's in line with 2e sensibilities, but which has been edited and laid out better than the original, that's had its potential explored a bit more, and that's easier to read and use than the existing Espionage! game and its scanned PDFs of daisy-wheel-printed pages.)

 

 

5 hours ago, assault said:

Ignoring guns for the moment: Package Deals are a big thing. If you have a tight focus - CIA agents, in the case of Espionage, it's easy to fix. But if you have a broader focus, things get weird. You get duplication and potentially double dipping.

Suppose you have a package with characteristic requirements. Suppose your packages include duplicated skills (Weapons Familarity is likely). Suppose your package includes Disadvantages of the same category of those in other ones.

Characters will need to be recalculated because of those.

It's a pain, but can be handled. You just need to handle them.

 

You're exactly right, and it's something I've been wrestling with a bit. At the moment I'm thinking the best thing to do would be to include only agency-based character types, with a chapter on each that's similar to the CIA chapter included in Espionage: a chapter on police, one on private investigators (who work for a large agency or law firm), one on investigative reporters, etc. Keep the core game support restricted to characters that report to a specific authority and who can engage with the brownie points system, keeping things the same across the board, just with a different focus. I'd include a broader array of character types (and therefore lean more on the GM like we do with the toolkit versions of Hero System). But, who knows? It's still early days. How would you approach it?

Edited May 3, 2023 by GM Joe

[Christopher R Taylor]

I really do wish someone would rebuild DI, just the basic "here's how to do it in Hero" template for heroic adventures, then release books covering different time periods so you could apply it to 1930's pulp and detective, 1940's war time, 1950s-60s spy stuff, 1970s kung fu action, 1980s action adventure movies, etc.  Just short books with a quick overview of the world, some adventure seeds, equipment, costs, etc for each era.

 

This is not really in my sweet spot like Western Hero was or I'd give it a go.  Steve Long could pull it off, for example, if he can find the time.

Edited May 3, 2023 by Christopher R Taylor

[Joe Walsh]

I haven't shared this in a while, so here's my current development notes. Note that I do plan to stick with the Espionage! versions of the Language and Martial Arts skills. They are important to the appeal of Hero System 2e to me.

 

Quote

HERO System 2e Development Notes

 

Espionage 1.0:
Text document containing the complete text of the original game.

 

Espionage 1.01:
Fix all punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors in the document.

 

Espionage 1.02:
Make fixes for consistency and accuracy as follows:

 

Skills:
    Add Conversation and Persuasion to the Anyone skills.

    In the Languages skill, alter the list of more difficult languages to be: Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean. Multiple sources (including Rosetta Stone) support this change for accuracy.

    Page 16, Paragraph 1: Under Transport Skills, change "a car" to "personal automobiles" so it is more in line with the existing Ground Vehicles list.

    In Weapon Familiarity, include the fact that everyone is assumed to have Weapons Familiarity with Clubs (as mentioned in Combat) given that the default ability to drive a car is mentioned under Transport Skills.
    
    In Other Skills, note the base Running (6") and Swimming (2") rates in their respective entries.

Combat:
    Page 36, Paragraph 4, Sentence 1: Change the sentence to read, "This includes bullets with high-density penetrator cores jacketed by copper or a copper alloy."
        Also add hollow point vs. standard rounds?

Vehicle Combat:
    Page 50, Paragraph 1, Sentence 2: Delete this sentence, then add a new one after the sentence on Combat Vehicle Operation: "Characters without Combat Vehicle Operation who have the appropriate Transport Skill have a Control Roll of 8-."
    
Espionage II (new supplement) subjects:
    New "Combat" Skill: Brawling (from Justice Inc/Fantasy Hero/DI).
    
    New "Other" Skills: Contacts, Favors, Perks (from DI/Star Hero).
    
    New Package Deals: Detective (from AC #1); Forensic Scientist; Private Investigator (from AC #3, but assume they work for an agency or law firm to preserve the "agent" theme); Investigative Reporter (that works for a newspaper, again to stick with the agent theme). Cross-check required characteristics and skills with web searches for the occupations and with what's in other games that have templates (BRP, etc.). Break each category out into its own chapter, like the CIA chapter in Espionage! but with the associated templates also included.
    
    How to create package deals (drawn from Star Hero, which has a cleaner explanation than DI).
    
    Abstract vehicle chase & dogfight rules from Danger International.
    
    How to import Disadvantages from Champions, Champions II, Champions III (halve the points, rounding in up in favor of the character)
    
    Conventional Healing & Minor Wounds rules from FH 4e (p 93) or Western Hero (p 49)
    
    Using different starting character point values (mainly 25 or 75, but also lower or higher values). NB: Was the original halving of Disadvantage values due to the halving of starting character points from 100 in Champions to 50 in Espionage?  If so, should they have been adjusted to reflect the higher starting values of JI, FH, DI, etc.? Would raising the starting points and adding new categories of things to spend points on like those games did best be served by using 75% of the Champions points for disadvantages work better?
    
    Expand on the Dependent NPC categories (Competent, Normal, and Incompetent), how to create such characters, templates for them, etc.
    
    Firearm lists to supplement the early-80s list included with Espionage!:
        WWII Era List from The Golden Age of Champions? It lists specific name-brand Revolvers, Auto Pistols, SMGs, Machineguns, Shotguns and has the same data as used by Espioniage!
            
        Interwar Era list from Justice Inc? It lists specific name-brand revolvers, auto pistols, SMGs, military rifles and carbines, big game rifles, automatic rifles and light machine guns, heavy machine guns, and shotgus with the same data as used by Espionage! A few go back to the post-Civil War era.
        
        Post-Civil War era from Western Hero? 4e Western Hero lists generic weapons that would have been available in the post-Civil War era, while 6e Western Hero lists specific weapons that would have been available in the post-Civil War era, but there is a scale difference to deal with.
        
        For a circa 2020 list of weapons, what could be used as a source that would be easy to translate into Hero 2e terms?

 

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by GM Joe

[assault]

I'm not a fan of introducing another set of Disadvantage values. Two is quite enough, if not too many.

[Duke Bushido]

Eh.

 

I may be weong about this, but sisnt 6e do away with the half value for third and fourth instances; quarter value for fifth and sixth?

 

If that is the case, and you too about through editions, that would be a third way to handle disads; Joe is just sticking with what is already there.