2024 End Of Year Update From The Publisher

[Jason S.Walters]

Hello everyone. I'm writing you as 2024 comes to a close to draw your attention to our Patreon account, where we currently have 215 supporters, with 72 of them as paid backers contributing $5.00 a month to help us continue publishing and get the opportunity to comment on books as they go through the writing, editing, and layout processes. In the 43^rd year of its existence, Hero Games is still striving to publish and create new material for our fans, most of which is released through Patreon chapter-by-chapter to solicit fan input and let everyone know what we are doing before they become physical books. Much of this material is released to the paid (or “Heroic”) members as a reward for their being paid backers, and the more of them there are, the better the quality of work we can produce. So please consider joining to get more material made available to you.

 

Our current projects include Strike Force Organizations (which is in layout), Old School Enemies (which is being edited), Justice Inc, and Argent: The Power and The Profit. We have also been giving away Chris Hackler's fantasy setting for the Hero System Khymeria for free to all Patreon supporters section-by-section.

[Stanley T]

Looking forward to Old School Enimies. Figered Verb, Zero, and School House Rocky need someone to fight.

 

You mean... it's not about the enimies of the heroes of School House Rock? Nevermind.

[Jason S.Walters]

[DreadDomain]

Ok @Jason S.Walters you got me to join.

 

I am a very long time HERO fan who has grown disappointed about the state of HERO Games and the quality of the releases over the years, not over the content necessarily but more about the organization, the layouts, the arts and the overall look of said releases. It didn't feel like HERO Games was even trying to publish books that looked professionally done.

However, I feel that the trend has been improving since IHA and it seems to be getting better with each book since then. So I decide to support by joining the patreon.

I want to specifically call out the character sheet format seen in Victorian Hero, Silvestri and the preview of Strike Force Organization as a vast improvement over what we saw in Western HERO or IHA. I have long said that the character sheet is often the window from which the reader assesses the complexity of a game and the easier it is to digest and understand, the better.

I really like how you structured the sheet in much easier digestible chunks (Combat Value, Health and Recovery, Defenses, etc). The same goes for Bases, Computers and Vehicles (Power, Security, Operations, Personel, Movement, Propulsion, etc). Another decision you have made that I applaud, is removing the point cost of every single item, it greatly declutters the sheet. 

 

If I may, while the structure is excellent, I believe they take way too many pages on average, mainly because some of the fonts is too big (looking at SFO, the top part of the sheet and all the titles) and there are too many with spaces. Having a character sheet span multiple pages makes them difficult to absorb. I know SFO is already well into layout I don't expect it to change but for future releases could you look at making the sheets fit on one page (there will be exceptions of course)?

Based on the SFO format I suggest keeping mostly the same structure and:

• Making the "Name" block and font much smaller
• Making the titles font smaller
• Making the CV/H&R/DEF block 50% smaller (both vertically and horizontally) and use the empty column to include Movements
• Remove the Movement entries in the Powers section. The results should already be in the Movement section
• Merge Perks, Talents and Skills into a single 3-columns section (that reads top to bottom, left to right)
• To declutter, remove the advantage and limitation values (-¼). They are mostly only useful for points.
• Generally, make the line spacing smaller

I have randomly chosen a character that was spread over three pages, and I exported it in Word. I have done the steps above (using Arial 9 for the main text, Arial 10 for the titles and 12 or 14 for the names and characteristics.

It did fit on one page in Word (not sure how it would really fit in the layout) and is less spreaded out. 

The image above is no more than the current sheet with less white (and black) spaces, smaller spacing and smaller fonts for titles. Oh, and I removed many borders to clean it up further.

Anyway, just a suggestion.

 

Edited December 26, 2024 by DreadDomain