Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I've made mention of it on the boards before, but I just don't like the way the game has become a non stop stream of books that are nothing more than feat/prestige class/domain injection systems and nothing more. There just isn't the same focus on story telling that there used to be.

 

TB

 

I can see that argument. However that is one of the things I like about it. Like HERO I want my mechanics and my flavor/story to be completely seperated and compartmentalised - I think the D&D/d20 mechanics have too much setting involved in them. When it comes to D&D I only buy rulebooks - setting and adventure books I usually ignore.

Matter of taste.

 

As to the original question -

39 years old.

Discovered Champions in late '85 when I was 18, just about 19. First few weeks of my first year at University - the Univerisity of Oregon game club. started with 2nd/3rd cusp. The perfect bound 3rd edition had just come out, IIRC, but noone in the group had it yet - I was the second to buy it (I would have been first but the GM bought it a day or two before me). I remember the GMs disapointment that the rules from Champions 2 and Champs 3 were not included. So we used the green and yellow book with Champs 2&3.

 

One of my best friend's son is a D&Der, but hearing about HERO/Champions he is interested (as is his group to a lesser extent), so I am thinking about running a session or two with prebuilts to give them a taste. He's 17.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I'm 38.

Discovered Champions in 1987, when I was 19, during my first few weeks at San Jose State University. Our group was also using 3rd Edition Champions along with Champions II and Champions III. I'd been playing AD&D since 1981, and continued to play AD&D for fantasy until the mid-1990s. Since then, I've used the HERO System for everything I've run. I like the divorce of game mechanics and special effects, as well as the divorce between game mechanics and setting.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

Here is a previous poll on this subject, with a (relatively) good sized sampling and detailed results: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32079

 

Of course any survey based on this community is unreliable, because it's from the small segment of HERO gamers that posts to this website, and the even smaller number who see this topic and respond to it.

[Rails]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

Although I don't know the exact ages, my gaming group breaks down like this:

2 Players in their mid-20's

4 Players and the GM in their early- to mid-30's. (Four of us met during college and are kinda the core of the group.)

1 Player in his early-50's.

[Lysando]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I just turned 36 (-sigh-). I've been playing RPGs for 26 years or so, started with DnD. Started with Hero in the last 7-8 years, with 4th ed. Play some GURPS also, but not often enough to justify the 90+ GURPS books I own. When I originally began I really didn't like HERO very much. It was too complicated for my little brain. But that is what my friends were playing so that is what I played. As time passed I learned the system better, and understood what it was trying to accomplish better. If I have a choice I would probably use GURPS for any campaign I would GM, but as I learn more about HERO that would might change. HERO impresses me more the more I use it.

[Edsel]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I am 43 years old. I have been playing role-playing games since the early days of D&D back in the 1970s. Champions was the first non-D&D RPG that I ever played and I started with the old 1st Edition Champions book (I still have it).

 

I have played dozens of different systems over the years. All versions of D&D (D&D, AD&D, upto and including 3.5), GURPs, Chaosium, Warhammer, etc. If it is out there there is a fair chance I have given it a try. I like seeing new systems emerge since it gives me a chance to try something new. The one thing that I loath about d20 and the OGL is that they have become the borg of the gaming world. I wonder how many game systems have never seen the light of day simply because it was easier to produce an OGL book instead of trying to experiment with something new.

 

Though I like trying out new systems and experimenting I have found that most gamers don't share this view. Most of them don't have the time to learn lots of different systems. Instead they prefer to have a single unified system (Hero, GURPs, OGL, etc.) with which they can do anything. If I have to play a single system Hero is going to be it. In my experience it is far and away the system I have enjoyed the most. I once ran a pretty long-term GURPs campaign but I was never really a fan of the D20 system. I think that is probably because I generally don't like level-based systems (although there are a few things levels work well with).

 

I believe that Champions is the best Superhero game out there. I have given M&M a try, I even bought a copy of the limited 2nd Edition printing. I learned the M&M system and played it a few times with my friends but it just didn't take hold with me. I guess I just kept thinking how I could do all this stuff with Hero System instead. I pretty much had the same feeling with Silver Age Sentinels, GURPs Supers, The various DC supers incarnations, Marvel Superheroes, V&V, etc.

 

Of course I haven't been involved in a Superhero game for a couple of years now. Our group currently either plays Fantasy Hero or my Dark Champions (heroic) game.

[input.jack]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

Im 41 () and have been a gamer since 7th grade, back in 1976. I began playing D&D back in the "three tan booklets in a white box" days, and have been a serious gamer ever since.

 

I started playing Champions in 1981 or 82. In fact, I even had a chat with George MacDonald about the way Strength scaled up when I was working at The Game Shop and he came in as a customer, about a year before it went to print. (Im embarassed to say I remember telling him that if lift went up exponentially, damage going up in a liner fashipn didnt make sense, and that it would never work.)

 

My core game group has two people in their 20s, five people in their thirties, and me, although we seperate into different groups to game on different days of the week, depending on availability.

 

I worked in a game store (The Game Shop) when I was in high school, and have played or owned just about every game system I could get my hands on from about 1976 to about 1990. As soon as I started writing up my first character for HERO (well...Champions), I knew Id found the system for me.

 

Basically, HERO just makes more sense than other game systems. You can define your character the way you want to, mechanics and special effects are seperated so that you can call your EB fire, ice, cosmic energy, a wet mackerel, or whatever, you can knock someone out without hurting them, you can hurt someone you didnt mean to by hitting them too hard, armor keeps you alive but often wont keep you conscious (very real), and you can play anything from cavemen to high fantasy to modern special forces to superheroes to cyberpunk to Star Trek, and it all works.

 

Its just a b**ch to have to write everything up in.

 

The majority of my game group prefers the HERO system to any other system. One of us prefers BESM because hes a huuuuuge anime fan, and likes the looser rule system. Two of us prefer d20, because one is a professional d20 writer and former WOTC staffer (Owen K.C. Stephens, of Star Wars d20 fame, among many other things), and the other is his wife Lj.

[Korvar]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

37 in June, first saw Hero as Fantasy Hero in 1989 or so. Been a Herophile ever since.

[JohnTaber]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

40, old as dust. Been playing Hero for a long time...

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

31; started playing Champions / HERO System in 1990 -- so 16 years.

[Alibear]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I am 34 and started playing champions about 20 years ago. I bought Champions II soon after. I have converted about 15 D&Ders to Hero in my time GMing.

 

I still play my original character once every few years when I meet up with my original GM.

[CBikle]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

One of the main hurdles with Hero System is that it looks harder to learn than it really is.

 

Once you have CVs and the damage system worked out, everything else falls in place.

 

The Hero Designer software makes it very easy to design characters (you can see the changes as you make them)

 

Also very useful are the Gadgets & Gear, USPD and the Ultimate series of books which are very useful for new players. Really, these are the kinds of books the original Hero Games should have put out in the first place in the 80's and 90's.

[CBikle]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

Oh. And 39, been playing since the first light gray edition with Holocaust on the cover (of course he didn't have a name back then).

[Silbeg]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

One of the main hurdles with Hero System is that it looks harder to learn than it really is.

 

That is definitely true. It has been my experience that it is really no more difficult than other systems.

 

Once you figure out 11+OCV-roll = DCV hit, you have attacking down.

 

From there, it is learning to count BODY, and remembering that most rolls are 3d6, with low being good.

 

I have run HERO games at a local convention (Con of the North) a few times (though not recently), and even novice HERO players were easily able to pick it up!

 

CharGen is the most difficult part of the system, yet it is the most rewarding. The trend in the industry seems to be point-based systems, and HERO has been doing it that way since 1981!

[CBikle]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

The other test of fire for new Hero players is how they react to the Speed Chart.

 

As a tip to new Hero GMs, probably best to avoid a first game that involves mounted and/or vehicular combat.

[Ramius]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I'm 31.

I started playing HERO 2-3 years ago after stumbling on to Surbrooks site looking for fodder for a Silent Mobius type campaign.

 

I use it for everything that I run now

[Silbeg]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

As a tip to new Hero GMs, probably best to avoid a first game that involves mounted and/or vehicular combat.

That would be the case for almost every gaming system I have ever seen...

 

If it is easy to do vehicular combat, it is usually not very satisfying to play it.

[SuperKlaus]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

21 yrs ftw

 

I wanted a superhero RPG after Spider-Man 2 came out and remembered the name Champions, voted best RPG ever in an old issue of InQuest. I weighed it against Silver Age Sentinels through info online and it won (very wise decision in retrospect!). I bought a copy of Champions from some schmuck in Canada who overcharged me on the exchange rate, not realizing that it was a "genre book" and not the whole deal. I stuck with it though and reverse-engineered as much of the rules as I could from reading the book's examples and got myself a Big Blue Book a month or two later. Now I've got a large and growing 5E library and I'm a solid convert. My friends are not so convinced just yet but I'm working on 'em, buying additional 5ERs if I gotta. I also taught the game to some Scots! I feel like a missionary.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

Just turned 40. (The convertible is back-ordered. )

 

Started playing RPGs c1976 with the first D&D books. Played the first editions of just about everything that came out in the early days, but somehow missed Champions. In the mid-80s in college, I was attempting to design my own RPG system to "fix" all the things I hated about D&D. A friend suggested "Oh, you'd like Fantasy Hero." He was right. Played Hero nearly-exclusively from that point until recently, when I got into a d20 group. Still far prefer Hero, because it works for cheesy superhero games as well as it does for gritty street-level action.

 

The rest of my group is mostly late-twenties to early-thirties. But I've taught Hero to people of all ages; most people can pick it up pretty quickly as long as you don't overload them with too many details & options right off.

[Lumbering Ox]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I've generally been lucky. Those I've introduced the game to were motivated to learn the full game, either because they saw up front it was better then D&D and they were good players, or because it would allow them to better rape the system and they were bad players. It is getting people to switch that is hard, in the attutude of, it works well enough why fix it.

 

I guess I started around 19 or 20 with the stand alone FH book, I am 36 now, but I spent much much more time not playing hero then hero, due to a lack of GMs.

[CBikle]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

That would be the case for almost every gaming system I have ever seen...

 

If it is easy to do vehicular combat, it is usually not very satisfying to play it.

 

I agree, but it gets a little tricky in relation to the speed chart.

 

Take for example, a scenario you'd be very likely to see in a Western Hero type game:

 

A group of bandits start riding alongside a train with the intent of robbing it.

 

It doesn't sound like it, but there's a lot of tricky stuff there. You have to deal with the relative DEXes and SPDs of the bandits, the horses and the train itself.

 

Even GMs (myself included) with lots of experience with the Hero System will tend to wing a lot of this stuff, just so things don't get too bogged down.

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

36 years old, roleplaying for 25 years, Hero for 21 years.

[Anatosuchus]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I'm 34, and bought HERO 5th last year. I had a really old FH for years but never actually played it. Amongst my gaming group, I am the one most likely to mess with new systems. Most are pretty hidebound not in that they object to new systems, but they never put in the effort to learn them so they are still asking "what do I roll for this?" 10 games into a campaign.

 

HERO is the published system closest to what I want in a game (I think) though of course nothing is perfect.

[Vestnik]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I'm an unusual case -- played RPGs when I was younger (much younger -- I was 20 then, 35 now), recently discovered PBEM and rejoiced during a pre-middle-age-crisis. I live now in a country where RPGs practically do not exist, so I was ecstatic to be able to reestablish the bond. ALWAYS loved Hero -- though it was just "Champions" then.

[pointyman2000]

Re: Casual Survey: Age of players and Hero's utility vs. other games

 

I'm 25 and I've been playing HERO for about 2 years or so. I liked it because of the "build anything" aspect.