Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

[buzz]

I'm just curious to see what kinds of "player fudge points" mechanics people have come up with for their HERO games. I.e., systems that give players (GM included) a resource they can spend to alter die rolls or change scene details.

 

I'd be happy to see RDUNeil or Storn outline the system of "bennies" used in their Secret Worlds campaign, as well as commentary from anyone who has used the method outlined in Pulp HERO (which I have not had a chance to go over thoroughly yet).

 

Thanks!

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I've used these in the past...

[Rapier]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I'm just curious to see what kinds of "player fudge points" mechanics people have come up with for their HERO games. I.e.' date=' systems that give players (GM included) a resource they can spend to alter die rolls or change scene details.[/quote']

 

I've tried a couple of things over the years but haven't liked any of them. When it comes right down to it, if the players are having a problem I give them a nudge or fudge a die roll.

 

One of the problems I had was that the players never used them. They were so worried that if they used it now, there would be a situation down the pike where they would need it more and wouldn't have it.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I used to hand out bennies: everyone got one or two per session, with occassional bonuses for particularly-good roleplaying. You could expend bennies to re-roll any one throw of the dice (ie: 3d6 counts as one throw). Worked allright, but wasn't quite what I wanted.

 

I was considering switching to something along the lines of Spycraft's "Action Dice" when Pulp Hero came out. Now I've started using Hero Points as described in PH. Been very happy with it so far, `tho I'm still noodling around with exactly how best to use them.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

One of the problems I had was that the players never used them. They were so worried that if they used it now' date=' there would be a situation down the pike where they would need it more and wouldn't have it.[/quote']

Yeah, I've noticed that too. But I figure that's okay; it means they only use them when it's REALLY important.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

Take a look at the "Secret Worlds" campaign log. It has what seems to be an EXCELLENT "drama system" outlined in it.

[Rapier]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I also ran into the problem of when to pass them out. If you give out one or two every game session, the players end up with this stack of things. People stop missing and rolling poorly because they just use up a "point" and reroll it.

 

Part of the whole dice rolling bit I love is that sometimes you can roll really ****ty. We've all been there in RL and I think that adds something to the game.

 

FYI, one of the things I was playing with was allowing rerolls of dice, but I've also played around with something like Derek's declare you are using your +3 card before you roll kind of thing.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I tried giving the players a couple of rerolls per session, and (depending on the player) they either never used it because "they might need it later", or they used them quickly and begged for more. Now I benevolently allow a reroll when it makes for a dramatic climax type of thing, but generally when they ask, no dice (pun intended). Of course as GM I fudge NPC rolls whenever it suits the storyline, which isn't too often but certainly more frequently than the players get a second chance.

 

________________________________________________________________

"Some people spread joy wherever they go. Others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

The approach that I've used in my games, pretty successfully IMHO , is essentially a synthesis of several other systems that fellow HEROphiles have described from their own campaigns.

 

The core of my approach is based on Jesse Zwerling's "Action Points!" system (his exclamation point, not mine) which can grant automatic successes for certain rolls, which other HERO variants which I've seen don't. I follow Jesse's guidelines for what the points can be used for, and when/how often. You can read about Action Points! on Jesse's pulp campaign website, "Thrilling True Tales," here: http://www.armlesstigerman.com/intro/pulp/playersguide.html

 

Action Points! do allow for "dramatic editing" of game continuity, but to a limited degree. I expanded the options for DE by using Donald Doepke's adaptation of "Inspiration Points" from White Wolf's Adventure! pulp game. It's the only circumstance under which I allow more than one point to be spent on a single action. Donald has a full DE chart on his own HERO pulp campaign website, "Amazing Adventures!" which you can scope out here: http://web.archive.org/web/20031216220545/home.earthlink.net/~ddoepke/amamechanics.html

 

When I started using a points system I noticed the same kind of problems that Rapier, bigdamnhero and Ockham's Spoon have: some players hoard them and are afraid to spend them, and may even feel helpless without them; while others never bother to use them. Then I came across Scott Bennie's "Luck Pool" system, a variant on Luck dice. I adapted Scott's Luck Pool, which has a set maximum size based on the number of dice someone buys, and a method of renewing the points in the pool independent of the GM handing them out. Thus a person can buy as large a reserve of points as they (and the GM) are comfortable with, or none at all if they don't want to use them. IMO this fits the "pay for what you get" philosophy of HERO.

 

Here's where you can read about Scott's Luck Pool, and (very cool) Luck-based Talents: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=440594

[MitchellS]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I think Pulp Hero's HAP system, in conjunction with power skill, makes a fairly efficient "hero point" system. While it's not as versatile as M&M's creative players and GM's can get fairly close.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I just use the Luck variant (generally with Standard Effect, 3pts per die) where you can spend 'Luck Points' to reduce the result of your 3d6 roll (in most cases; the Hit Location chart being the big one) on a 1 for 1 basis.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

My Pulp Hero GM hands out two poker chips per game session (more to characters with Luck) we can use for bonuses to rolls or to alter events in the game to our character's benifit (but wait, the weapons dealer here is an old friend of mine...). The exact effect if a bit undefined and typically just means a player can turn a failed roll into a successful roll with a chip most of the time. If the roll is nearly impossible, a chip might only make the attempt possible or two chips guarenteed.

 

In my own Champions/Mystic World campaign, I don't use chips or tokens or such, but simply allow my players to make suggestions of what could happen. This never affects die rolls of any kind though; just the general events of the game. Things like "wouldn't it be cool if so-and-so showed up" or even "I just know that That Guy is behind this" are all welcomed. Not all such suggestions are used, but if any given suggestion is plausable and entertaining, there's a chance I'll use it.

[Rapier]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

Things like "wouldn't it be cool if so-and-so showed up" or even "I just know that That Guy is behind this" are all welcomed. Not all such suggestions are used' date=' but if any given suggestion is plausable and entertaining, there's a chance I'll use it.[/quote']

 

Actually, I have to say. Wait. That's not even near a sentence...oh well.

 

I always work off an outline. I don't spend a lot of time delineating each and every breath. It's a waste of time. BUT, some of the most favouritest games (from my players' standpoint) are those games when I picked up on clues they made during the game and implemented it.

 

For instance. The players are running around in a fortress and player X says, oh man, wouldn't it suck it the villain hid Y behind door Z? Sure enough, behind door Z is Y. Player X feels vindicated and important to the story and the rest of the party is in awe. It's a pretty minor thing, but it makes the players feel better. I had no specific plans, but it makes the entire game run like it more of a story teller type where everything fits in nice and tight.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

Actually, I have to say. Wait. That's not even near a sentence...oh well.

 

I always work off an outline. I don't spend a lot of time delineating each and every breath. It's a waste of time. BUT, some of the most favouritest games (from my players' standpoint) are those games when I picked up on clues they made during the game and implemented it.

 

For instance. The players are running around in a fortress and player X says, oh man, wouldn't it suck it the villain hid Y behind door Z? Sure enough, behind door Z is Y. Player X feels vindicated and important to the story and the rest of the party is in awe. It's a pretty minor thing, but it makes the players feel better. I had no specific plans, but it makes the entire game run like it more of a story teller type where everything fits in nice and tight.

 

Same here for the most part, only I've let slip my secret to the players and they know that sometimes they aren't being really smart or really lucky (or even having a clue about the way I think), I'm just giving them what they want. Since they know that's how I do things, they can make requests.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I've used a couple of different dramatic editing schemes.

I used to go with an Hero Point system, where points could be bought with XP (2 HP's/point, in advance, or 1 HP per xp spending on the fly) and used to rewrite bad things happening.

 

Didn't have any issues with it, but eventually cam up with a system I liked better and that felt more in tune with HERO.

 

Pushing your Luck

 

Working off a base assumption that everyone has some luck or unluck...even if just the everyman default of 0d6 of each.

 

Anytime someone REALLY needs something lucky to happen, they can "push their luck", and force one or more "luck level" successes, exactly as if they had rolled successful luck dice. Good roleplaying may reduce the number of successful dice needed to pull off whatever they need. GM's call is final, as always. I use the existing Luck & Unluck tables to get a gauge for needed levels... and keep in mind when the player pipes up. Its easier to get lucky and turn a hit into a non damaging blow, for instance, than to wait and find out that said hit has killed you.

 

The trick is this... You can succeed with more luck than you have. But your luck WILL run out. Any positive Luck dice you have bought that were used in the push are out of commision till you get your luck back... and if you go negative you just acquired some short term Unluck dice.

 

An example...

 

Your character falls out of an airplane without a parachute. He has 1d6 Luck.

This is a classic, straight-out-of-the-book, case of needing 3 dice of Luck to come up to get out safely. You push your luck to survive. You get one auto success from Pushing your die of Luck, and still need two more Succesful Dice of Luck. These come around as 2d6 of Unluck now.

*Bam*... until your luck balances itself out, you are now unlucky rather than mildly lucky... but you also survived falling out of an airplane without a chute.

I let the Luck return usually around each significant turing point in the story, but this varies. The more I harsh on a character with the newfound unluck, the faster they return to their "base" luck status. I'll also arbitrarily use the opposite... I don't really call it anything, but think of it as Fate (basically GM mandated Auto successes on Unluck) to work just the opposite way either "healing" back pushed luck, or to even on occasion let an otherwise unlucky character to get the rare shift in his luck.

 

Arrgh... I just realized I'm too tired to put his down as coherently as I'd like...

but you shoud get the basic idea, eh?

[Ndreare]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

The scheme I found was most successful and have used plenty in my games was a luck based variant.

 

I use a “Karma†system. The way karma works is the number you have is your max. a player recovers karma at the beginning of every session, for doing heroic things and whenever hey do something making the game fun for others.

 

Every one has a base Karma for every five points in their most expensive trait. A player may buy up to twice his base karma for 2 points each (in example a luck based character).

 

 

The things Karma Can Do

 

1: Allow for a Reroll of a single die. (So for three karma you could reroll all together on an action roll.)

2: Allow for a minor Scene change (there is a steam pipe behind the bad guy)

3: Allow for a “Natural†+1 to a roll. (As in if you roll a 5 you could use two Karma to make it a Natural 3 which is a crit.)

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

We use "Hero Points"

 

Every character begins play with 1 Permanent Hero Point

 

In a non-Combat situation, a Hero Point can do 1 of these:

• Double a Characteristic for 1 action
  
• Double the number of dice in a Power for 1 action
  
• Character's next roll automatically succeeds (Skill check, Characteristic check, etc.)
  
• Reroll a failed roll or check
  

 

In a Combat situation, a Hero Point can do 1 of these:

• Add 25 Active Pts to an existing Power or Char for 1 action
  
• Character's next roll automatically succeeds (Attack roll, Skill check, Characteristic check, etc.)
  
• Reroll a failed roll or check
  
• Next Attack roll AGAINST the character automatically misses
  
• Character's STUN = 25, END = +25 (fades in 1 minute)
  

 

Characters may only ever expend 1 Hero Point per any given action

 

Hero Points "recover" at the end of an adventure or, rarely, more often at the GM's discretion (usually in a long story arc).

 

Characters may purchase extra Permanent Hero Points at a cost of 25 points each.

 

Characters may purchase Temporary Hero Points at a cost of 5 points each [this is figured as purchasing a 25 point Power with the Limitation "1 Charge Never Recovers (-4)"]

 

Once used, Temporary Hero Points are gone...they do not recover.

 

Temporary Hero Points may be awarded at the GM's discretion, usually for acts of extreme bravery or risk to self on behalf of others. (And considering that superheros do this kind of stuff on a daily basis, it's got to be something really spectacular to earn a free THP.)

 

The maximum number of Permanent Hero Points a character may have is equal to their Reputation Level + 1

 

The maximum number of Temporary Hero Points a character may have is equal to their Max Permanent Hero Points + 1

[Kabluey]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

Just tonight I used a new system for the first time called Luck Chips. I stole the basic idea from someone on this board (though for the life of me I can't remember who) but I modified it heavily. Basically, there are four different colored chips (I'm using poker chips), with each successive color more useful than the prior. For instance, a white chip - the least useful - can either allow you to re-roll until you get a lower roll, or you can change one die to a 1, or a few other things. A red chip (the next highest) allows you to actually remove a die from a 3d6 roll, or you can increase your damage, etc. The green and black are likewise more useful than these. For each level of Luck (and all players get one level for free), you roll 1d6 and get to pull that many chips out of a bag, randomly getting any of the above colors. I even populate the bag with chips based on their usefulness, with the least usefulness having the most chips.

 

But I have two limiting factors. First, you can save chips from session to session, but you can never have more than your max Luck roll (e.g., 6 for 1 level of Luck). Second, when you use a chip, it comes to me the GM and I can then use it at some future point against the players.

 

We used it tonight for the first time and it worked very well. When the players needed to make their rolls, they could use a chip. And then later I got to use the chips to make things harder for them when things were going a bit too easy. Worked very well for us.

[rjcurrie]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I have to admit that I never use any such systems. A big part of that is that I don't really like them as a player. As a player, I like to play the character and any advantages the character gets should come from the situation itself and the character's actions. Things like Hero Points are just too "metagame" for my liking -- they involve decisions by the player that are not the decisions of the character. Besides, I like the risk of failure.

 

As to how this affects my games, I really don't know. You'd have to ask someone who's played in my convention events about that.

[Robyn]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

First off. Just sayin'. The abbreviated line for this in the forums index is "Tell me of your Hero...", which makes it sound like you're asking us to tell you all about our characters. Not what it's about, and it's easy and quick to figure out, but it throws me every time I see that as the latest post in the System Discussion forum

 

The ruleset I'm converting from, for the DERPG, uses two sides of skill levels; a Rating, which holds steady, and a Pool, which can have a maximum of the rating. Points from the Pool can be spent to reroll dice (a single d6 is used for resolution) or force someone else to reroll dice, and it's possible that I could copy over this reroll mechanism nearly unchanged, giving people a point for rerolls with each skill level they bought (rerolling fumbles costs extra, rolling a critical success can bring back points).

 

The DERPG also had something called "The Rule of Underlying Justice", which established justice as "a hidden cosmic principle, something both impersonal and unreliable". Direct cause and effect was absent, the PC's would gain negative Sympathy Points for immoral actions, and if something bad had to happen, it would avoid those with the most positive Sympathy Points and tend to repeatedly target those with the most negative points, to show that the cosmic force of Justice had it out for the PC. This could be tilted more towards the good and kind side of Mercy, so when the PC's are looking up at the skies (and their players are looking at the Gamemaster) and both are going "This is hopeless, please make this just a bit easier!", I and the appropriate Cosmic Force can oblige . . . if they've been behaving.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I have to admit that I never use any such systems. A big part of that is that I don't really like them as a player. As a player, I like to play the character and any advantages the character gets should come from the situation itself and the character's actions. Things like Hero Points are just too "metagame" for my liking -- they involve decisions by the player that are not the decisions of the character. Besides, I like the risk of failure.

 

As to how this affects my games, I really don't know. You'd have to ask someone who's played in my convention events about that.

I'm in the same state of mind as you ... I don't like them.

 

The one thing I have seen that's similar is a different use of the Luck Power.

 

taking it to a Meta-Game Level: At the begining of each session/scenario roll 3D6 for each Die Of Luck, write the number down. Any time you roll you can switch out one of your Luck Rolls for one of your other Rolls.

 

An alternative was to roll 1 Die for Die Of Luck, you can swap that number for one die in any Roll to change the end result.

 

It worked OK and was a clever use of Luck.

[buzz]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I was considering switching to something along the lines of Spycraft's "Action Dice"...

I was thinking about this as well, BDH, namely subplots, conflated with M&M's complications. I like the idea that the GMs use of a PC's disad earns the PC a "hero point" or whatever. I also thought about combining this with crits and fumbles. When the player rolls a fumble (i.e., the 18 auto-failure), they earn a fudge-point for use in a later scene. When they crit (i.e., a 3 or under 50% of what they need; whatever is being used), the GM earns a fudge-point to use in a later scene.

[buzz]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

I have to admit that I never use any such systems.

Not to derail the thread, but I tend to like mechanics that bring fudging (on both sides of the screen) out in the open. I also like the idea of players having some ownership over the dramatic aspects of play. Given that HERO is supposedly intended for "cinematic" adventures, I think it's entirely appropriate to allow for some sort of player-fudge mechanic.

[buzz]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

Also... general thanks to everyone who has posted so far. Great stuff!

[Nevenall]

Re: Tell me of your Hero Point/Dramatic Editing mechanics

 

In my Star Wars campaign I use the variant of the Luck power that gives you a total you can use to modify rolls. As the GM I tell the players when they can roll their Force dice and the points last for the rest of that scene.

 

So far it's worked very well.