Hero Haters

[AnotherSkip]

Ah but one of the several new complexities is that there are advantage and disadvantage specific rules for each of the powers. certainly more complex in some ways than the initial format...

[zornwil]

Originally posted by AnotherSkip

Ah but one of the several new complexities is that there are advantage and disadvantage specific rules for each of the powers. certainly more complex in some ways than the initial format...

 

But that started earlier. Witness Entangle as the easy example.

[Greatwyrm]

I have yet to see anything at rpg.net that people there seem to like. But, hey, some people would complain if they were hung with a new rope.

 

As a newcomer to HERO, its biggest advantage is also its biggest problem for me. In HERO, you can build a power/ability to do just about anything you want. The corollary to that seems to be that you have to build just about anything you want. Sure, stuff like the USPD and FHG help, but there's still a lot of front-end work for a GM looking to start up a game.

[Just A Guy Name]

Originally posted by Greatwyrm

I have yet to see anything at rpg.net that people there seem to like. But, hey, some people would complain if they were hung with a new rope.

I know I would. Who wouldn't:confused:

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Greatwyrm

Sure, stuff like the USPD and FHG help, but there's still a lot of front-end work for a GM looking to start up a game.

I guess I never really think about the work involved when starting a Champs game. I figure for about $140.00 I can buy everything I need to play a Champions game (HERO System 5th Edition, Champions Universe, Millennium City, and Conquerors, Killers & Crooks), or for about $20.00 less I can buy what I need to run a D&D game (Player's Handbook, DM's Guide, Monster Manual, Forgotten Realms). It seems like both games to me require the same amount of work to get going. It seems to me that the only things really left in making a campaign beyond that point are to make adventure ideas (short-term and long-term) and to think about signifigant NPCs for the characters to interact with throughout the game.

 

It really seems to me that when you throw in USPD, or FHG, or the upcoming G&G and vehicle book that all the work has been greatly reduced. There doesn't seem to be hardly any work left in gaming, other than making signifigant npcs and adventures for the game.

[JmOz]

I disagree Mon,

 

In Champs, IF YOU KNOW THE GENRE & HAVE THE TIME, all you need is 5th edition. If you don't have the time pick up CKC, if you don't know the Genre, pick up Champions.

 

If you need a setting pick up Champions Universe and Millenium CIty...

[Monolith]

Originally posted by JmOz

I disagree Mon,

 

In Champs, IF YOU KNOW THE GENRE & HAVE THE TIME, all you need is 5th edition. If you don't have the time pick up CKC, if you don't know the Genre, pick up Champions.

 

If you need a setting pick up Champions Universe and Millenium CIty...

You can say the same thing about any game. If you know the fantasy genre all you need is the player's handbook for D&D. If you don't have the time pick up the Monster Manual. If you need a setting pick up Forgotten Realms (or any of the others put out by any other company).

 

WotC publishes material to make money, the same reason DOJ does. If you don't want to do all the work then you buy the material the companies publish. If you do want to do all the work yourself you don't. Ultimately it's that simple.

 

I think I read somewhere that 75% of the gamers use homebrew worlds. That means that 3 out of 4 perfer to do it themselves. There's nothing wrong with that.

 

I guess I would go back to my original point in this thread. If you think Hero is too complicated to do the work yourself, then buy the material so that you don't need to do all the work yourself. It's just sad to see people saying things along the lines of: Hero's getting too complicated for me. To which I respond: Hero is publishing books to take away the GM's workload. To which they respond: If I didn't want to do the work myself I wouldn't play Hero. That just seems like a Catch 22 to me.

[Bengal]

Now my wife wants to know how many points to have a costume that sticks to her, so she doesn't fall out of it when she's slugging it out with some bad guy.

 

Which is a less dumb question than it seems, since one of the NPC vigilante anti-heroes in the campaign has an attack that shreds clothing.

[GrimJesta]

Lately I'm feeling a little weird about 5E (with respect to earlier editions) and wondering if anyone else felt the same way, or if it was just me

 

Its not just you. My group still plays 4th ed. I just have the 5th book to steal a few rules mendments I made (like the cost of Eiditic Memory) and the clarifications on Change Environment.

 

 

At least the editions are similiar in many ways and I dont have to feel left out in the cold. It doesnt take much to backwards convert a newer suppliment.

 

 

-=Grim=-

[Greatwyrm]

Originally posted by Monolith

WotC publishes material to make money, the same reason DOJ does. If you don't want to do all the work then you buy the material the companies publish. If you do want to do all the work yourself you don't. Ultimately it's that simple.

 

I can agree with you, up to a point. Since I've started looking at HERO, I've been very impressed with the quantity and quality of supplements available. To be honest, though, I'd never have even seriously considered a fantasy game without FH, FHG, and MMM.

 

Maybe my situation is unusual. I'm a new convert. I'd most likely be GMing for a group that has never played the HERO system, in any incarnation. I'm feeling pretty confident in my grasp of the basic rules, but I'm still overwhelmed by the options. Maybe it's just still being a newbie that makes it look more daunting than it is.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Greatwyrm

I can agree with you, up to a point. Since I've started looking at HERO, I've been very impressed with the quantity and quality of supplements available. To be honest, though, I'd never have even seriously considered a fantasy game without FH, FHG, and MMM.

 

Maybe my situation is unusual. I'm a new convert. I'd most likely be GMing for a group that has never played the HERO system, in any incarnation. I'm feeling pretty confident in my grasp of the basic rules, but I'm still overwhelmed by the options. Maybe it's just still being a newbie that makes it look more daunting than it is.

We all started the same basic way. The game has always been daunting. It's an acquired taste.

 

I personally don't believe a person should start playing FH without the FH, the Bestiary, FHG, and MMM. But I also don't think a new GM should be playing D&D without all three of their CORE books too. A D&D GM wouldn't want to make up 500 monsters for his players to fight or create 1,500 spells for his wizard/clerics to cast. No same person other than Steve Long likes to do all that work.

 

The supplements are published to "supplement" people's need to do work for themselves. By spending $25.00 you save yourself literally hundreds of man-hours. This is the same reason WotC or White Wolf or any other publisher produces material. Everyone publishes books to save gamers time. I respect that and accept it. I don't frown on it because I want to do all the work myself because I'm a good Hero gamer.

[Lord Liaden]

Not to sound disrespectful of people who are unhappy with the way HERO has been developing under DoJ's direction, but I just feel that we're getting (most of) the best of all worlds these days. I mean, before FREd came out people had vigorous disputes over the interpretation of various rules, and how handle areas that the rules didn't deal with or dealt with only vaguely. To a large extent Fifth Edition addressed the issues raised by those disputes. Okay, so some people found the resulting rules edition too complex, especially when it comes to attracting new gamers. We're now getting the streamlined Sidekick ruleset at least partly to address that complaint.

 

For years many HERO gamers expressed frustration at the lack of support materials for their games, and the amount of work that was often needed to prepare for a campaign using HERO. Well, now we have setting books, genre books, pregenerated-stuff books to make things easier for those people. It's kind of boggling to me if I hear someone complain that there's now too much of that kind of material, because they prefer to build these things themselves.

 

To my way of thinking, DoJ has gone farther than most RPG companies to give their fans choices as to what they want to use, while keeping the various materials consistent with each other. Hero Games has become like a buffet: take what you like, leave the rest. Just because a particular sourcebook, item build or rule is "official" doesn't mean you have to use it as-is, or even at all.

 

The "official" stuff provides a common basis for people to switch from one GM's campaign to another, or resolve disputes over how something should be done; but if your gaming group is relatively insular that needn't be considered. If a particular gamer feels compelled to account for all the official rules, or acquire all the official books, just because they are official... really, can the game company be held to blame for that?

[Badger]

Monolith I think you meant sane person instead od same person;)

 

But who said Steve Long was sane LOL.

 

 

Anyway on a serious note I gravitated to HERO because of the flexibility of creating "my own genre" so to speak. When you look at other games like D&D and Star Wars it is fairly genre-specific IMO. With HERO it is a do-all system to me and where I could create and mold my own world to the game I want. Course I guess to some that would be the reason to not like but for me......

 

And I actually like creating a new monster or type of energy blast or spell, etc. Course 500 new monsters as you said might be a bit much. For me it would be boring and unimaginitive to go completely on the supplements material.

 

And finally I liked math in school (at least until I got to algebra and geometry) so that makes even more fun.

[devlin1]

Originally posted by Bengal

Now my wife wants to know how many points to have a costume that sticks to her, so she doesn't fall out of it when she's slugging it out with some bad guy.

 

Which is a less dumb question than it seems, since one of the NPC vigilante anti-heroes in the campaign has an attack that shreds clothing.

 

What the frell kind of game are you playing? Look, whatever you and your good lady wife get up to in your own time... that's your business.

[devlin1]

Originally posted by zornwil

But that started earlier. Witness Entangle as the easy example.

 

Agreed. People used to make up modifiers that were specific to individual powers all the time. 5th Ed. just takes those commonly-used homegrown modifiers and codifies them into the published rules. Seems like a good thing to me.

[Bengal]

Originally posted by devlin1

What the frell kind of game are you playing? Look, whatever you and your good lady wife get up to in your own time... that's your business.

 

We're playing a game unlike the dungeon crawling she's used to is all. She can't go to the store and buy herself a 2d6 RKA without paying points for it, she can't loot and permanently add to her arsenal a force field belt, she's having trouble undterstanding why she shouldn't just kill the bank robbers... and so on. We're just working on genre conventions and game mechanics differences.

[devlin1]

Originally posted by Bengal

We're playing a game unlike the dungeon crawling she's used to is all. She can't go to the store and buy herself a 2d6 RKA without paying points for it, she can't loot and permanently add to her arsenal a force field belt, she's having trouble undterstanding why she shouldn't just kill the bank robbers... and so on. We're just working on genre conventions and game mechanics differences.

 

Okay.

 

But.

 

There's a guy in the game who destroys clothing? Drain BODY, Only vs. Textiles?

[dstarfire]

I think one reason hero draws so much flak is that it's supposedly a "universal" game system. To any experienced gamer, that translates as either incredibly complex, very math-intensive, or pretty lousy at everything. Unfortunately, that's all true for beginning hero players (unless they're using it for it's original purpose of comic-book superhero).

 

It's a well known fact that you can do one thing very well, a few things pretty well, or you can do everything poorly. This concept is a core principle of every functioning game system out there. Yet hero claims to exceed this limitation in reality (which is much more limiting and complex than any game system), even though it applies it to the game world. Pick any genre of any "universal" game system, and there's a system that does that genre far better than the "universal" game system. I'd rather have to learn a new system than use one that functions very poorly in the current genre.

 

There's also the fact that it's a point based system, and most players have had a few bad experiences with point based systems.

 

There's many other frustrating flaws in hero, but I'd rather answer the question than rant about my frustrations with the hero system, which is what all the negative talk is: people ranting about their frustrations with xyz system.

[Grymlynn]

Dood, that sounds a little like flame bait. However, I will answer that I don't believe that D&D or whatever does fantasy better than Hero, because when I run a fantasy game, I want more control over the monsters and magic than you get from taking the standard delivered with the system. I make sure the magic matches my game world exactly, and you can't do that unless you can luck upon a specific genre book that matches what you're planning, or can create a magic system whole cloth out of rules you already know...

[Max Callahan]

Originally posted by devlin1

Okay.

 

But.

 

There's a guy in the game who destroys clothing? Drain BODY, Only vs. Textiles?

 

I would expect this is a special effect of the attack, not the main property of the attack. It's very genre for more "realistic" super-hero games to have characters outfits get destroyed during combat as a character might be indestructible, but their outfits aren't.

Also consider that the rule for foci is "Any focus which provides defenses to a character is automatically by any attack which hits the character". So that Def 6 kevlar a character is wearing breaks the first time they get hit (now it does say the next sentence that to speed play and not always break armor you can ignore that rule, and I've never seen it used, but it is the default rule).

[Hugh Neilson]

Originally posted by Max Callahan

IAlso consider that the rule for foci is "Any focus which provides defenses to a character is automatically by any attack which hits the character". So that Def 6 kevlar a character is wearing breaks the first time they get hit (now it does say the next sentence that to speed play and not always break armor you can ignore that rule, and I've never seen it used, but it is the default rule).

 

Hmm...what happens if we apply this in Fantasy Hero? The first time BOD gets through, your armor is destroyed.

[DrFurious]

Originally posted by dstarfire

I think one reason hero draws so much flak is that it's supposedly a "universal" game system. To any experienced gamer, that translates as either incredibly complex, very math-intensive, or pretty lousy at everything.

It may not be because it pretends to be a universal system but rather that the system seems to exclusively encourage debates and endless discussion on effect building. A survey of the posts on the boards here shows that the vast majority of them involve rules questions, tinkering, how-to-build, etc. A tool-kit system such as Hero is designed to provide this.

 

Do all gamers want this? No. Can they appreciate it? Maybe. Would they rather have original and inspirational material rather than more rules? Probably.

 

!DrFURIOUS!

[nexus]

Originally posted by DrFurious

It may not be because it pretends to be a universal system but rather that the system seems to exclusively encourage debates and endless discussion on effect building. A survey of the posts on the boards here shows that the vast majority of them involve rules questions, tinkering, how-to-build, etc. A tool-kit system such as Hero is designed to provide this.

 

Do all gamers want this? No. Can they appreciate it? Maybe. Would they rather have original and inspirational material rather than more rules? Probably.

 

!DrFURIOUS!

I prefer rules and how to from my gaming system. I can come up with material myself. I come to Hero for rules to work what I create in play.

[Lamrok]

It depends on the gamer. Some gamers look on canned game settings with disdain. They'd prefer running something entirely of their own creation. They'd like to be able to switch genres without requiring everyone in their group to buy new materials. Universal systems fit these folks pretty well.

[nexus]

I will say this. I do think Hero is universal. It does most genres well, some passably. But of course, a system created for a specific genre is going to emulate it better than a generic system. Unless that specific system is very poorly designed. But Hero, IMO, does acutally work better than a number of specific systems I have tried.