REcommendations!

[LittleDevil]

Hello, every HEROphile in the thread!

 

I've recently come across the HERO system, and it's captured my interest.

So, I've decided that my Amith Yetheran campaign (think high magic, steampunk and wuxia) will be played with the HERO system.

My question is this: What books would be good to have for this kind of campaign?

 

FRED-RE is a must, of course, as I can't play without the core rules.

Fantasy HERO, to give me a couple of good pointers.

 

I'm not sure whether I should go with the UMA or Ninja HERO, or with both. What would be the most appropriate for my campaign?

 

Any other books I might find useful? The Grimoires or the Bestiary perhaps? Though, from what I've seen, it's not THAT hard to fix new powers or creatures, so these might not be needed. (Indeed, since I usually tend to micro-manage and write a lot down myself, they might be (nearly) totally worthless to me)

 

Also, I'm looking for good resource pages. Killer Shrike's and Surbrook's are damn good, are there any others like these? (I'm SO going to use Killer's Metier system, and probably a lot more.)

/Thanks in advance,

LittleDevil

[Captain Obvious]

Re: REcommendations!

 

If you already have very strong ideas about what you want, you might not need anything else.

 

If you might like some inspirational material and sample builds, then Fantasy Hero, Ultimate Martial Artist, Hero Bestiary, and Ultimate Vehicle are all good. Ninja Hero is probably pretty good for helping with wild martial arts moves...I haven't looked much at it, so I don't know for sure. Sidekick would be a good quick reference.

 

If you need more builds and ideas, then the FH Grimoires and the Vehicle sourcebook would be useful.

 

There's really nothing absolutely necessary aside from the core rules (and Sidekick is good enough to cover those), but the more other stuff you get, the less you end up having to do yourself.

 

Oh yeah, welcome to the game, and to the boards.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: REcommendations!

 

Welcome, LittleDevil! With a handle like that you should fit right in here.

 

Taking a somewhat long road to answering you: the 5ER core rulebook will have virtually all the game rules in it, so strictly speaking there'd be no need for additional books; you could build everything for yourself the way you want it. That would be a very time-consuming process, though. The various Hero Games supplementary books do a lot of that work for you, and offer advice, guidelines and examples on how to proceed. I'm just going to describe various books and other sources you could look into, and you can decide what sounds useful to you:

 

As a newcomer to the HERO System, you might want to take a look at the HERO System Sidekick, a condensed version of the ruleset specially designed as a teaching tool. It's not really a "lite" version of HERO, as most of the rules from the main book are included - it's just had the extensive clarifying descriptions and numerous optional elements paired down. It's a complete playable game in itself; you could actually use 90% of what's been published for HERO 5E with Sidekick alone. And it's only $10.00 US for 128 pages.

 

For wuxia elements, The Ultimate Martial Artist and Ninja HERO are both very useful, but each does different things. UMA is a vast compendium of many different martial arts styles, abilities and weapons, real and fictional, modern and historic, from around the world, described in game mechanic terms. NH is a book of campaigning advice, showing you how to emulate the conventions, plots and characters in campaigns for several different subgenres of martial-arts gaming, with sample characters for each, at power levels from gritty to near-cosmic. The two books actually complement each other very well.

 

For a fantasy milieu I think you could get a lot of use out of the Fantasy HERO genre book. That volume has tons of advice on worldbuilding, fantasy campaigning, and how to construct characters, races, and especially magic systems using HERO. (That magic chapter is probably the best I've seen anywhere, for any game.) If you're building your own campaign world this stuff would likely be very helpful.

 

Certainly the two Fantasy HERO Grimoires have a lot of pregenerated spells covering a wide variety of styles and flavors, so if you're interested in that they'd save you a lot of time; particularly since they tend to be most suitable to "high fantasy" campaigns.

 

For creatures I think I'd recommend the HERO System Bestiary before getting Monsters, Minions and Marauders. The latter book concentrates mostly on fantastical creatures and races, while the former has broader coverage: not only a good selection of fantasy beasts, but numerous real-world animals, dinosaurs, movie and sci-fi monsters. It also goes into great detail on typical animal abilities and how to build them in HERO, with many customizable templates. If you want to build or customize your world's fauna, this is the book for it.

 

Since you're interested in steampunk you'll probably want to create machines and vehicles: The Ultimate Vehicle does for vehicles of all sorts what the Bestiary does for animals. It has examples for everything from chariots to starships, with all the building guidelines and options.

 

Now let me point you to some websites that might give you ideas and assistance:

 

Wu-Xia Hero is a web sourcebook for martial arts campaigns, with particular emphasis on gaming in historical China. It includes character archetypes, how to build qi abilities, and many classic plot elements and genre "bits" from history, literature and film. The source material for China-base gaming is very extensive.

 

The Ultimate Grimoire is a large compendium of magic spells, weapons and gear, and artifacts of many types, suitable for high-fantasy gaming, plus advice on building your own (not nearly as rich as what's in Fantasy HERO, but valuable nonetheless.

 

Gothick Empires is a well-detailed high fantasy campaign world which manages to avoid a lot of "D&Disms" in characters and races. You might find quite a bit to mine from it.

 

From the same author comes Sengoku for HERO System. This is not a translation of the book of the same name from Gold Rush Games, but a complete web sourcebook in its own right for campaigning in feudal Japan. Again, this may merge with what you want to do on several points.

 

There are a few areas on Michael "Ninja HERO" Surbrook's excellent website, "Surbrook's Stuff," which could be usefull. His writeups of Creatures from Myth and Legend are derived from many sources. There are several categories in his HERO System Source Material that would fit, including spells and magic artifacts, martial arts packages and powers, and expanded armor and weapon tables.

 

I'll try to think of anything else you might be able to use.

[John T]

Re: REcommendations!

 

Welcome to the boards!

 

Welcome, especially, to the HERO game system!

 

Not much I can add to the advice already given, except perhaps "Buy everything! The more the players support the game, the better it gets!"

 

Just kidding... mostly.

 

Seriously, though, I've got dozens of books for each of about a dozen games, and I never really know when I'll be looking through one book and read something that gives me an idea for another game. It's especially handy when it IS the same game (system).

 

John T

[LittleDevil]

Re: REcommendations!

 

For wuxia elements, The Ultimate Martial Artist and Ninja HERO are both very useful, but each does different things. UMA is a vast compendium of many different martial arts styles, abilities and weapons, real and fictional, modern and historic, from around the world, described in game mechanic terms. NH is a book of campaigning advice, showing you how to emulate the conventions, plots and characters in campaigns for several different subgenres of martial-arts gaming, with sample characters for each, at power levels from gritty to near-cosmic. The two books actually complement each other very well.

 

For a fantasy milieu I think you could get a lot of use out of the Fantasy HERO genre book. That volume has tons of advice on worldbuilding, fantasy campaigning, and how to construct characters, races, and especially magic systems using HERO. (That magic chapter is probably the best I've seen anywhere, for any game.) If you're building your own campaign world this stuff would likely be very helpful.

 

Certainly the two Fantasy HERO Grimoires have a lot of pregenerated spells covering a wide variety of styles and flavors, so if you're interested in that they'd save you a lot of time; particularly since they tend to be most suitable to "high fantasy" campaigns.

 

For creatures I think I'd recommend the HERO System Bestiary before getting Monsters, Minions and Marauders. The latter book concentrates mostly on fantastical creatures and races, while the former has broader coverage: not only a good selection of fantasy beasts, but numerous real-world animals, dinosaurs, movie and sci-fi monsters. It also goes into great detail on typical animal abilities and how to build them in HERO, with many customizable templates. If you want to build or customize your world's fauna, this is the book for it.

 

Since you're interested in steampunk you'll probably want to create machines and vehicles: The Ultimate Vehicle does for vehicles of all sorts what the Bestiary does for animals. It has examples for everything from chariots to starships, with all the building guidelines and options.

 

Okay, now you guys have made me want to go out and buy all these books. Damn you for that. =)

Thanks for the advice of all of you, it's been a lot of help. I was mainly looking for books that provided world- and campaign-building ideas, a few (or a lot of) pointers, some nice crunchy material that could provide some inspiration, and things like that.

 

At the moment, the list looks like this:

5th ED-RE,

UMA and Ninja HERO,

Fantasy HERO,

TUV and the HERO System Bestiary.

Maybe the second Grimoire. (Naming magic, rune magic, song magic and professional magic is a lot more interesting than the things you find in the first Grimoire, with the exception of Alchemy, from what I've seen in reviews and such.)

If I get around to starting my space-opera mecha campaign, I'll probably pick up Star HERO as well. It's not like I don't have the cash.

 

Thanks for the tips, everyone, and thanks a lot for the websites, Liaden, I hadn't found a few of those before, and they look rather interesting.

 

EDIT: Just sent an order for Sidekick (it will have to do until October), UMA, NH, FH, TUV, the Bestiary and Grimoire 2. Though, unfortunately, they will not arrive for quite some time =(

 

/ everyone,

LittleDevil

[Steve Long]

Re: REcommendations!

 

Okay, now you guys have made me want to go out and buy all these books. Damn you for that. =)

 

Good job, LL!

 

Seriously, Little Devil, welcome to Hero! We hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to post them -- almost everyone around here is friendly, informative, and eager to help newcomers learn the ropes. You're also welcome to e-mail me directly with questions at SteveL@herogames.com, if you prefer.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: REcommendations!

 

Just sent an order for Sidekick' date=' UMA, NH, FH, TUV, the Bestiary and Grimoire 2. [/quote']

 

Damn!

 

Well, I'm sure you'll find you got your money's worth. Everything that I've seen from Hero lately has been of the highest quality.

[lazarus]

Re: REcommendations!

 

I've got Sidekick - awesome read, FH - about a third of the way through, one of the best books ever, and Bestiary - again, really good.

 

They're all really well written. I do think the Bestiary is worth it, just for the sheer amount of critters in it. Nevermind the "templates" (also known as Package Deals elsewhere...) for these things. There is an app'x showing use of these. I was not disappointed at all with this purchase, or, indeed, any of the others. Even if I never use the HERO system, since everything's pretty well detailed, it can essentially be converted over to any other system easily enough.

 

Laz can't wait for 5ER

[zornwil]

Re: REcommendations!

 

You've gotten great advice, I just want to add welcome, also, Little Devil!

[pson]

Re: REcommendations!

 

Just sent an order for Sidekick (it will have to do until October)' date=' UMA, NH, FH, TUV, the Bestiary and Grimoire 2. Though, unfortunately, they will not arrive for quite some time =([/quote']

 

If you're not out of money by now, may I suggest that you look att Hero Designer 2. It's wonderful to be able to create a beastie or NPC in a few minutes and the battle sheets are nice as well.

 

Besides, it's fun to play with.

 

Regards, P:son