What should be DROPPED from HERO?

[RDU Neil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

I'd argue that Attack is actually a type of Transform. In fact, I bet it can be done with just three.

 

Move: Go from one point to another.

 

Transform: Change the abilities possessed by something.

 

Enhanced Senses

 

Transforms do not affect people but rather powers. Armor is a Transform that affects offensive powers (possibly only those with a certain SFX, possibly not) after they are used. Teleport is a Move with Ignore All Obstacles. An attack is simply a transform that removes Body and Stun.

 

Your idea radically changes the concept of Transform... and changes base mechanics of the game system, requiring attacks vs. attacks, etc. Going that vague takesk it away from a concept recognizable as Hero... where as the basic five... attack, defense, move, sense, transform... covers all the inherent abilities one can possess. (Remember, this is not about taking out stats and skills, which I feel function just fine... but rather reducing the "powers" to their core meaning. At least that is how I would interpret Five Powers Model in a serious way.)

[Agent X]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

I like how you said "a very idea"

 

 

A very GOOD idea?

 

A very BAD idea?

 

 

Nope... just a very idea.

 

Anyway, I'm with Rapier... Summon is just transform nothing into something... or moving an already existing something from there to here.

bad

[lemming]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Which I also find interesting' date=' as I could have sworn there was some ruling in the past that INTRODUCED the idea that Breakfall could be used for DFC. Don't know where I got that notion.[/quote']

Could be my game where I allow Multiple DFCs as well, but then I don't allow DFC against single shot attacks as a free get out of the way. Basically you can still dive, but it happens after the attack and you get a dodge bonus. Best use for DFC in my games are getting out of the way of the multiple explosions, etc...

[lemming]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Actually given how I really disliked how Regen became a subset of Healing with a load of adv & lim, I think I'm against the five power concept.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Actually given how I really disliked how Regen became a subset of Healing with a load of adv & lim' date=' I think I'm against the five power concept.[/quote']The problem is that Regen and Healing should both be applications of Transform.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Okay, for those of you advocating Transform to do everything (whether you're being tounge-in-cheek or not) answer this:

 

With Transform as it is now, you have to compare either the BODY of the resulting item or the character points in it with the current point totals, with the difference being used as a modifier as to how long it takes you to accomplish the Transform (that is, how many times you have to wallop the person or thing with the Transform in order to get it complete). In other words, it takes longer to turn an Average Normal-Man into a T-Rex (it costs more points) than it does to turn him into a dog.

 

Now, you're probably wondering...what's the thrust of this?

 

You can Transform one thing into another because you can build that thing with the Powers and get a point total.

 

If you try to represent everything with just Transform, are you really going to be able to do that? And if the answer is "yes", then every single 'Power' built using Transform is going to be a plumber's nightmare of tacked-on Advantages and Limitations.

 

Personally, I don't think it would work very well, and I have some reservations about it being able to work at all.

 

 

P.S. If you want to continue the reduction to absurdity, you don't need Movement has a power, either...you use Transform! You just Transform yourself (or another object) into something that is no longer at its previous location, but is instead occupying its new location...

[JMcL63]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Inches.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Okay' date=' for those of you advocating Transform to do everything (whether you're being tounge-in-cheek or not) answer this:[/quote']Did someone advocate using Transform for everything?

[CraterMaker]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

From Dr. Anomoly

 

 

"P.S. If you want to continue the reduction to absurdity, you don't need Movement has a power, either...you use Transform! You just Transform yourself (or another object) into something that is no longer at its previous location, but is instead occupying its new location... "

===========

 

Extra-Dimensional movement works better for this.. you just hop into another dimension where you're... over there. It works for getting dates, too ("I go to the dimension of Chicks Who Dig Me!")

 

CraterMaker

[GamePhil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Well, if you really wanted to reduce the game to its ultimate.. uhm... smallness, you could probably get away with:

 

Attack: To hurt or alter things.

 

Defense: To defend from Attack.

 

Movement: To get around, with inches also being modify-able to get odd things like EDM.

 

Skills: To get all those things where a straight roll is made to get an effect, including Skills (obviously) and Senses (Enhanced or otherwise).

 

Perks: Flat cost abilities that require no roll and have a specific effect.

 

All but the last one would have some set cost structure, with the Perks being somewhat arbitrary (possibly fixable, but this is what I'm coming up with in five minutes without being entirely serious about it). None of these would be directly based off of any Power in the current work (probably), but would be designed in such a way as to allow the current Powers to be built from them (or something very close to them).

 

No one would ever use this, though, they'd use a game system built using it, one that would look a lot like HERO, most likely. There may be some point in creating a more unified and balanced system (though not much more, since it is already so close), but beyond that the idea is likely to remain in the realm of theoretical gamer goofiness.

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Actually given how I really disliked how Regen became a subset of Healing with a load of adv & lim' date=' I think I'm against the five power concept.[/quote']

That's a good example of how any sort of "fundamental HERO" or five power concept has to be written to explain how to break out things into more-elaborated/realized powers in a game-effective way. Better said, any true toolkit system would need rules on how you derive a power like Aid from the base Transform power, and then how you would derive a power like Regen from Aid, and then how you could cost each.

 

I view the Regen mistake as one of balance, efficiency, and playability all sacrificed inappropriately to consistency. (Of course "mistake" is my opinion/view as well, not a fact) Any toolkit system needs to explain mechanisms for how to balance all these components and deliver a gaming system that works reasonably well.

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Well, if you really wanted to reduce the game to its ultimate.. uhm... smallness, you could probably get away with:

 

Attack: To hurt or alter things.

 

Defense: To defend from Attack.

 

Movement: To get around, with inches also being modify-able to get odd things like EDM.

 

Skills: To get all those things where a straight roll is made to get an effect, including Skills (obviously) and Senses (Enhanced or otherwise).

 

Perks: Flat cost abilities that require no roll and have a specific effect.

 

All but the last one would have some set cost structure, with the Perks being somewhat arbitrary (possibly fixable, but this is what I'm coming up with in five minutes without being entirely serious about it). None of these would be directly based off of any Power in the current work (probably), but would be designed in such a way as to allow the current Powers to be built from them (or something very close to them).

 

No one would ever use this, though, they'd use a game system built using it, one that would look a lot like HERO, most likely. There may be some point in creating a more unified and balanced system (though not much more, since it is already so close), but beyond that the idea is likely to remain in the realm of theoretical gamer goofiness.

This is basically what I'm trying to say in my posts on this (as I try to be clear), it's not a playable system as such, as you say. Instead, this is what I mean by it being a true toolkit - you build playable systems from it. And any such "fundamental HERO" toolkit would then include a thorough explanation of how you would build HERO itself from this core set of basics.

 

The idea is that you could, instead of building HERO as we know it, build another game system with the same core metavalues and essential basis but that might look quite different - such as using this toolkit to build a HERO d20 system, where the die rolls themselves are based on single d20 rolls and you have a class system and so on (to the extent those things could be done from this fundamental toolkit, obviously the underlying assumptions are different in some ways from d20 and as a result, ultimately, you could not build d20 AS SUCH from the toolkit, but something that looks similar in many ways - perhaps).

 

The biggest value would really be from an academic perspective - it would become MUCH easier to analyze how "correct" various interpretations and specific actual derived HERO system rules are as against the actual fundamental building blocks. Right now those fundamental building blocks are only implicit, and half of our arguments center around our mutual inability to agree on what the true core underlying toolkit even is.

 

And such is a barrier to gaming theory re HERO and ultimately a barrier to building a coherent meaningful HERO gaming system. Given that this is true of pretty much every other sophisticated gaming system, such as d20, it's representative of a more generalized inability in our field of study on RPGing, and it's in general an indication of our inability to build and grow true gaming toolkits. And until we can take this academic an approach, we can never build a TRULY coherent and meaningful gaming system, as we're ALWAYS working on unstated assumptions and a non-agreed upon core.

 

d20 like HERO has a fundamental basis from which it EVOLVED, but that evolution was UNINFORMED by any sort of underlying toolkit with very clear and stated metarules. Instead, BOTH HERO and d20 have simply been patched and enhanced as what is really nothing more than a hacking process, a largely nonscientific process of "try this, try that."

 

All of this being said, it's not as if I'm suggesting HERO (or d20 for that matter) is inherently deficient in a way that makes it unplayable or unenjoyable. I'm simply suggesting that there's room here for a break-through improvement that changes the way we view and execute our gaming system.

 

Just think, if only 1000 of you would send me $100 a year (adjusted for inflation) I would be able to quit my job and spend time on this...the dream can be had! This is a call to action! I have a PayPal account! (Oh, and of course there's at least half a dozen others who should really be doing this, so if only another 6000 of you would also contribute, we'd be able to do this right, opening up the HERO RPG University...)

[Kristopher]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Just to include another voice in the debate...I'm utterly against the "Five Powers" idea. I'm still conflicted on what happened to Instant Change and Regeneration. I totally reject the notion that eliminating/combining scads of powers will make HERO leaner and/or easier.

 

The more often something requires multiple advantages and limitations to simulate what used to be a seperate power, the fatter, more difficult, and more complex the system becomes -- not to mention the extra lines all the entries take up on a character sheet.

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Just to include another voice in the debate...I'm utterly against the "Five Powers" idea. I'm still conflicted on what happened to Instant Change and Regeneration.

I already commented on Regen - brief comment on Instant Change - it should have been turned into a Talent and then recosted at its traditional value IMHO.

[rjcurrie]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

The Five Powers approach is a good idea ...

 

... if you want Hero to have an even smaller market share than they already do.

 

Given that many people already feel that you need to do too much work as a GM before you can use Hero, can't you imagine how they would react when you tell them that you have to basically design the system first as well.

 

Also, in order to make such a system really work, you would need to change everything to either be addition or multiplication not the mixture of the two that now exists. Unless you are saying that the GM defines all Powers in his game and those are the only ones allowed with no further modification.

 

For example, if one GM defines Flight as Movement in Air that costs No END -- giving a base cost of (Move Cost) * (1 + Flight Adv +No END Adv) while another GM defines Flight as Movement in Air that costs END for a cost of (Move Cost) * (1 + Flight Adv). Now, if in the second GM's campaign, a player wants Flight with No End, then he needs to buy the No END Advantage, for which he will effectively pay ((Move Cost) * (1 + Flight Adv)) * (1 + No END Adv) which will yield a different number than what the player in the first campaign paid.

 

There also problems based on what a GM chooses as the base unit for a Power. For example, in one campaign, the GM chooses 1" as the base unit of Flight. If we assume that Movement costs 1 points per inch and Flight is a +3/4 Advantage, then one unit of Flight would cost (1 * (1 + 3/4)) or 1.75 points which would round to 2 points per 1" and 10" would cost 20 points. If, however, another GM choses 10" as the base unit of Flight, then the cost would be 17.5 points which rounds to 18 points for 10". And these problems would still exist even if you went to a fully multiplicative system.

 

Rod

[Rapier]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

The "H." Let's drop the "H." Then we can sound like the British crowd.

 

 

'Ero! It's my favourite RPG!

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

The Five Powers approach is a good idea ...

 

... if you want Hero to have an even smaller market share than they already do.

 

(snip)

 

Was anyone suggesting that the "Five Powers" approach REPLACE HERO as we know it? This is an open question. As I hope was clear, I was not, I was and have continued to promote it as an ADDITIONAL document, the "here's the toolkit under the toolkit" book, but IMHO an extremely important one for the future of our "industry" (I hate that term, but I also hate "hobby").

 

I didn't get the impression (most) others were thinking of it as a replacement - ?

[lemming]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

I view the Regen mistake as one of balance' date=' efficiency, and playability all sacrificed inappropriately to consistency. (Of course "mistake" is my opinion/view as well, not a fact) Any toolkit system needs to explain mechanisms for how to balance all these components and deliver a gaming system that works reasonably well.[/quote']

I thought some more about it and came to something like what they did with Talents could of been done with Regen. It's all the clutter that I object to, but the streamlined versions would work.

 

So one could have a five powers version and then the derived versions further down. If you wanted to, you could refer to something as Defense, Costs End, Resistant or just say Force Field.

[Sean Waters]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

The "H." Let's drop the "H." Then we can sound like the British crowd.

 

 

'Ero! It's my favourite RPG!

 

Gor blimey, guv'n'r, luv a duck, wot a fing t' say!

[RDU Neil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Was anyone suggesting that the "Five Powers" approach REPLACE HERO as we know it? This is an open question. As I hope was clear, I was not, I was and have continued to promote it as an ADDITIONAL document, the "here's the toolkit under the toolkit" book, but IMHO an extremely important one for the future of our "industry" (I hate that term, but I also hate "hobby").

 

I didn't get the impression (most) others were thinking of it as a replacement - ?

 

I certainly wasn't. I just think the Five Powers Model is the perfect organizing model for the Hero system.

 

Each power falls under one of the Five Meta-Powers. The basic 1 per 5 is the model for attacks, the basic 1 per 1 is the basic model for defense, etc. Then you'd still have all the other separate powers as already listed in Hero... just categorized differently, and their structure bought with the based model in mind.

 

If, in the example of Regen, you actually need to create a new, playability, static effect that isn't really a lim or adv under Transform... just state that. It is still based on Transform... but deviates in the following ways for playability and flavor... This would provide a model for consistency, and a model that can be consciously deviated from with an explanation.

 

This gets away from Zornwil's explanation of how Hero was "hacked" together. (A great explanation by the way...) It still allows for those exceptions, it just makes sure they are deliberate and clear... not just stumbled upon.

 

My take anyway... YMMV.

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Gor blimey' date=' guv'n'r, luv a duck, wot a fing t' say![/quote']

:rofl:That struck me just right.

 

PS - and reminds me of Eddie Izzard's funny send-up of Dick Van Dyke's silly accent in Mary Poppins.

[zornwil]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

I thought some more about it and came to something like what they did with Talents could of been done with Regen. It's all the clutter that I object to, but the streamlined versions would work.

 

So one could have a five powers version and then the derived versions further down. If you wanted to, you could refer to something as Defense, Costs End, Resistant or just say Force Field.

What I particularly object to is with Regen they built a kludgier version, trying to compensate with the post-12 time chart thing, and they did not succeed therefore in creating a reasonable GAME-CONSISTENT power (which was the intention, I assume) - instead they merely created a different inconsistency, even if technically one "less" inconsistent.

 

Ultimately, and I just don't have the mental bandwidth at the moment to satisfactorily even make an attempt, what I think the whole Regen thing begged was a fundamentally deeper examination of "so why does this seeming inconsistency work SO well?" and then coming up with what probably should have been a more fundamental revamp of Aid/Healing/Regen to more properly holistically address all issues. Especially given that Healing vs. Aid has its own sorts of kludginess still.

 

I think the fundamental issue is that way back the Adjustment Powers were grafted onto the existing system without being fully thought out - understandably of course (it all SEEMED so simple, didn't it?). And now as we try to streamline the system and make it coherent and not just a series of nothing but exceptions, we're encountering the results of that system hack.

[Kristopher]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

IMO, it's really not necessary to make all the powers fit a "meta-toolkit" that keeps everything double-perfect consistent.

[rjcurrie]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Sorry, the impression I had was that people wanted to have the "Five Powers" toolkit and then have the Hero System as sort of an example of that toolkit in action. In any event, other than my first somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment about Hero sales, my points are still valid if you start exposing some kind of metasystem.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO?

 

Was anyone suggesting that the "Five Powers" approach REPLACE HERO as we know it? This is an open question. As I hope was clear, I was not, I was and have continued to promote it as an ADDITIONAL document, the "here's the toolkit under the toolkit" book, but IMHO an extremely important one for the future of our "industry" (I hate that term, but I also hate "hobby").

 

I didn't get the impression (most) others were thinking of it as a replacement - ?

Aha...so if HERO is like a programming development tool (like a C++ development system) you'd like to see the either (a) the assembly language used to write the development tool or ( the microcode for the processor on which it runs, depending on just how you want to look at it.

 

Gotcha!