Assumptions within HERO

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Also, even aside from initial character, CPs spent very rapidly scale one above the norm in a notable way. A 14- skill is impressive. It's easy to be able to be "exceptional" even if that doesn't mean "superior." You'd think it ought to be able to be easy, given the type of gaming (action/aventure).

[Robyn]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Also' date=' even aside from initial character, CPs spent very rapidly scale one above the norm in a notable way.[/quote']

 

Provided we grant that assumption about characters always gaining experience during play

 

McCoy gave a custom Disadvantage to my "sword" PC for never being able to gain experience. Instead of the XP going to my character, the XP went to its followers. The trick was that it could only have one follower at a time, and every previous follower joined the ranks of its Hunted . . .

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

That's interesting, to be honest I always felt it was more fantasy campaigns to differentiate the various races as well as for flavor purposes in any campaign, considering its low cost for what I (personally) would consider to be far too effective against such types of attacks, however unusual they might be (particularly as I don't see them as so extremely rare).

 

But maybe you're right. I just frankly never considered that.

 

And this is again why I think designers really should discuss intent and purpose.

 

While I, OTOH, would have thought any points spent on Immortal to be purely wasted. Never would have occurred to me that it would be a defense... never going to role play long enough for it to matter...and in 25 years of playing Hero... never have I seen someone use an "aging attack" in a game I've played in. I think this is one of those areas (transform attacks) that we shied away from, because the lack of SFX clarification and the jarring juxtaposition of such bizarre, fantastic, unreal bits like "My attack turns you into a log" was very disrupting of play in a system with such crunch, "realistic" focus on resolving cutting, bashing, burning, etc. The detail and grit that goes into martial arts... compared with the wide open, essentialy hand waving nature of "transform attacks" has never seemed to grok with any of the games or groups I've played in.

 

I realize this is something of a tangent to this thread... but your comments really made something click for me. This is one of those areas where I think Hero betrays it's inconsistencies. It is a system that seems to focus so much time and energy on the ability to properly model... oh say... a M18A1 claymore antipersonnel mine (with all the various limitations and advantages to crunch out the way a claymore really works) but then takes transform and basically says... "Uh... well... you're a log. Just... a log. Whatever."

 

This, I feel, goes back to your thread from a couple weeks ago about "Does Hero encourage more realistic games?" or whatever the topic was. I think this is the kind of situation that proves your point. It also reemphasizes the "human template" assumption, and I'd take it one step further, the "base reality" assumption. Hero is great at modeling (not perfectly but pretty well) stuff that we can relate to in reality. Guns and swords and knives and punches and sneaking and picking locks and leaping and running and swimming, etc. These work really well, just scale 'em up for supers, because for the most part we all tend to have a baseline "reality check" from which we extrapolate to game play.

 

Once we start moving away from reality the system gets more and more vague. We've never seen a "bio-electric sting" in real life, but it is close enough to other kinds of energy discharges that a basic rule like EB works. We really have NEVER experienced a person being turned into a log... then somehow becoming a person again... so while the system has very vague rules for it, there is no "feel" for what is really happening. What does the character experience? How do you role play that? What happens to the mind of the character in such a state? How does one "heal" from being a log?

 

All of those questions are often so disruptive of play (at least in my experience) that I realize now we've mostly avoided them in games. Hence, our games tend a bit more toward "real" because we tend to stick with gaming situations to which we can relate at least a little bit.

 

Sure Hero can let you have a situation where your character is turned into a log... but then the play group scratches its head and says, "Turned into a log... what does that really mean?" because reality doesn't provide anything upon which to base your reaction to the event.

 

"I'm a log... so I'm dead?"

 

"No, you'll heal back."

 

"I'll heal back? How does that work?"

 

"Uh... just does... says so here in the book."

 

"What?"

 

So taking this back to where it originally started... I think the "Life Support: Unaging" as a defense vs. Transform attack "Old Person" is brilliant. I never would have thought of it in the abstract, because I tend to avoid that kind of scenario in actual play... but I'd totally support that interpretation. (Also, that it requires understanding of game design intent to help with just such interpretations.)

 

cool stuff.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

I can't quite understand what how this relates to your initial post.

 

The discussion has been about what the design of the Hero System was intended for.

 

Zornwil and others thnk that the source material (action/adventure stories) is what the Hero System was designed to allow someone to mimic.

 

Therefore, one of the assumptions put forth was that the Standard Character, one which has no points spent on it, are above average.

 

As to whether the Character is "Important" or "Unimportant" to the storyline or not, the source material itself presumes the Character is important to the storyline. How this relates to the Hero System is that it is the responsibility of the Player and the GM to make sure that the character is important the storyline, not the game system.

 

A player could create a character that is comparable to Thor, but unless the Player and GM run the storyline so that the character has an effect, this character could still be considered unimportant.

 

The Watchers in the comics at most times are unimportant to the storyline of Spider Man. But when they actually intervene, then they become most important, almost to the point that they are the storyline.

 

Just My Humble Opinion

 

- Christopher Mullins

 

I do think that most "old school" RPGs (of which Hero is one) tended not to make any design implications toward the "importance" of PCs... for a variety of reasons, mostly because I think old school games were still very close to their war gaming roots where "charcters" were nothing more than expendable resources very much deprotagonized. These concepts are addressed a great deal more directly in much of new game design these days... not only explicit discussion of importance, but actual mechanics that allow the PCs to directly effect the game scenario (usually through giving players Director stance or some such).

 

It would be interesting to go back in time and discuss with Bruce Harlick about the assumed "importance" of the PCs, and whether that was even a conscious thought at all. Hard to think of a game based on superheroes where the PCs were not assumed to be significant, but who knows?

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

While I, OTOH, would have thought any points spent on Immortal to be purely wasted. Never would have occurred to me that it would be a defense... never going to role play long enough for it to matter...and in 25 years of playing Hero... never have I seen someone use an "aging attack" in a game I've played in. I think this is one of those areas (transform attacks) that we shied away from, because the lack of SFX clarification and the jarring juxtaposition of such bizarre, fantastic, unreal bits like "My attack turns you into a log" was very disrupting of play in a system with such crunch, "realistic" focus on resolving cutting, bashing, burning, etc. The detail and grit that goes into martial arts... compared with the wide open, essentialy hand waving nature of "transform attacks" has never seemed to grok with any of the games or groups I've played in.

 

I realize this is something of a tangent to this thread... but your comments really made something click for me. This is one of those areas where I think Hero betrays it's inconsistencies. It is a system that seems to focus so much time and energy on the ability to properly model... oh say... a M18A1 claymore antipersonnel mine (with all the various limitations and advantages to crunch out the way a claymore really works) but then takes transform and basically says... "Uh... well... you're a log. Just... a log. Whatever."

 

This, I feel, goes back to your thread from a couple weeks ago about "Does Hero encourage more realistic games?" or whatever the topic was. I think this is the kind of situation that proves your point. It also reemphasizes the "human template" assumption, and I'd take it one step further, the "base reality" assumption. Hero is great at modeling (not perfectly but pretty well) stuff that we can relate to in reality. Guns and swords and knives and punches and sneaking and picking locks and leaping and running and swimming, etc. These work really well, just scale 'em up for supers, because for the most part we all tend to have a baseline "reality check" from which we extrapolate to game play.

 

Once we start moving away from reality the system gets more and more vague. We've never seen a "bio-electric sting" in real life, but it is close enough to other kinds of energy discharges that a basic rule like EB works. We really have NEVER experienced a person being turned into a log... then somehow becoming a person again... so while the system has very vague rules for it, there is no "feel" for what is really happening. What does the character experience? How do you role play that? What happens to the mind of the character in such a state? How does one "heal" from being a log?

 

All of those questions are often so disruptive of play (at least in my experience) that I realize now we've mostly avoided them in games. Hence, our games tend a bit more toward "real" because we tend to stick with gaming situations to which we can relate at least a little bit.

 

Sure Hero can let you have a situation where your character is turned into a log... but then the play group scratches its head and says, "Turned into a log... what does that really mean?" because reality doesn't provide anything upon which to base your reaction to the event.

 

"I'm a log... so I'm dead?"

 

"No, you'll heal back."

 

"I'll heal back? How does that work?"

 

"Uh... just does... says so here in the book."

 

"What?"

 

So taking this back to where it originally started... I think the "Life Support: Unaging" as a defense vs. Transform attack "Old Person" is brilliant. I never would have thought of it in the abstract, because I tend to avoid that kind of scenario in actual play... but I'd totally support that interpretation. (Also, that it requires understanding of game design intent to help with just such interpretations.)

 

cool stuff.

In my prior supers campaign, we actually had Dr. Time, who could make anything younger or older, along with traveling in time himself. So it came up a lot and we were careful to understand his effects. The SFX and mechancal interactions aren't important to this thread, it's just to note that I did have to deal with it once. I didn't have NPCs purchase immortality, although then again I don't stat out NPCs to that extent, frankly. When Dr. Time faced Bogeyman and tried to make him "several centuries" it just didn't, in this case, have any impact as the NPC's back story is that he's an elemental who has been around since the creation of humanity (however you date that one...).

 

But you're right, anyway, this is really interesting, glad you called further attention. To me, it also points to a likely disconnect, and one related directly to "why do we use this game." I don't pretend to know the answer...but ultimately, the issue/question of the interplay of things like immortality and transforms and so on has to be answered with that point in mind.

 

Well, need to not spend too much time thinking about it at the moment as I have other priorities here at work.

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

I do think that most "old school" RPGs (of which Hero is one) tended not to make any design implications toward the "importance" of PCs... for a variety of reasons, mostly because I think old school games were still very close to their war gaming roots where "charcters" were nothing more than expendable resources very much deprotagonized. These concepts are addressed a great deal more directly in much of new game design these days... not only explicit discussion of importance, but actual mechanics that allow the PCs to directly effect the game scenario (usually through giving players Director stance or some such).

 

It would be interesting to go back in time and discuss with Bruce Harlick about the assumed "importance" of the PCs, and whether that was even a conscious thought at all. Hard to think of a game based on superheroes where the PCs were not assumed to be significant, but who knows?

You bring up another interesting point. It wasn't particularly uncommon in early Champions play for the same results as any other RPG - violence and death, even for the PCs. If a play group really played with traditional Silver Age ethos in mind, that didn't happen, but otherwise we've seen on these boards and heard elsewhere of such events. And that is related to the lack of clear, game-directed place of PCs and story protagonists in the game world. Of course, in the original Champions setting it was fairly easy to engineer the supers to ignore mundane threats, especially back at that time as the system had fewer options, with no Power Defense/Power Attacks dimension whatsoever, and Teleport and UAO of that variety not even in existence. So at least the level of lethality was really about super PCs versus normals and where super NPCs might be equal to super PCs (as for lethality to the PCs), generally.

 

I think these last few messages speak to the fact that any fundamental revisiting of how HERO works, such as could occur, say, for a 6th edition, should start with "what is the real intent and scope of this game." And I think, unlesss HERO is only supposed to produce a "how to build a game" toolkit, it's not to be the "ultimate gamer's toolkit," but rather to define that within a specific and meaningful context beyond the marketing statement and taking the overall intent that I know Darren and others have with that and fixing it to a particular purpose/level.

 

Then again, the so-called "generic" systems are all fiercely proud that their systems support "any" level of gameplay. I just think that's a mistake, fundamentally, one which dooms those systems to various failures at certain levels.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Then again' date=' the so-called "generic" systems are all fiercely proud that their systems support "any" level of gameplay. I just think that's a mistake, fundamentally, one which dooms those systems to various failures at certain levels.[/quote']

 

Amen brother Zorn!

[schir1964]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

No! I will have it all I say! Everything! I will have my cake, and eat it too, defying realitly! It's all mine!!!

 

< ahem >

 

Sorry.

 

- Christopher Mullins

[yamamura]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Sure Hero can let you have a situation where your character is turned into a log... but then the play group scratches its head and says, "Turned into a log... what does that really mean?" because reality doesn't provide anything upon which to base your reaction to the event.

 

"I'm a log... so I'm dead?"

 

"No, you'll heal back."

 

"I'll heal back? How does that work?"

 

"Uh... just does... says so here in the book."

 

"What?"

 

So taking this back to where it originally started... I think the "Life Support: Unaging" as a defense vs. Transform attack "Old Person" is brilliant. I never would have thought of it in the abstract, because I tend to avoid that kind of scenario in actual play... but I'd totally support that interpretation. (Also, that it requires understanding of game design intent to help with just such interpretations.)

 

cool stuff.

 

Or if you don't allow the heal back option there is "the princess kiss the log trick":D ie. the all or nothing method. But it still doesn't answer the question what does it mean to be a log (or a stone statue in the case of Medusa). Is the person out of play until the time a reversal spell or a princess happens by? So I think make some interesting points and I can agree with them.

[yamamura]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Amen brother Zorn!

 

Ditto!

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Or if you don't allow the heal back option there is "the princess kiss the log trick":D ie. the all or nothing method. But it still doesn't answer the question what does it mean to be a log (or a stone statue in the case of Medusa). Is the person out of play until the time a reversal spell or a princess happens by? So I think make some interesting points and I can agree with them.

 

Oh... really good point on the "out of play" issue. This is one of those unstated, very unclear areas. When is a character "out of play"... or in other words... the player has no say in their character?

 

A couple of places Hero makes clear statements... like with Berzerk. PC is no longer under control of player. But otherwise???

 

As with most games, death is assumed to be "character is out of the game" but this has never been specifically stated... and in Hero there are all kinds of comments in various books about "Maybe the character isn't really dead and the GM can make it a radiation accident" or something like that. Even Hero doesn't define the base, default result of death clearly from a game POV.

 

Again... not saying that there shouldn't be flexibility in what it means... but the request for design intent is really asking "What is the default starting place for flexing?"

 

As for Transform... it is rationalized in the system as a form of killing attack... "If you can do enough to kill the character, you can transform them." Great on the surface... but already you break from this by allowing them to "heal back" when a KA that did that much damage wouldn't allow the opportunity to heal.

 

A lot of this goes back to the assumption question. Base assumption is that we all know what "dead" means and all agree on what effect that has on the game... but that is rarely the case. Even if the character is effectively removed from game... what about the player? What about the effect on situation and scene? Transform only takes these questions to a messier place as it opens up a lot of very gray areas much more highly subjective than "dead or alive."

[Lemurion]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

It can be argued that death is nothing more than a minor transform. Living human to dead human.

 

Having said that, I've never been comfortable with using Transform to any great degree. I limit myself (and by extension most of our group's HERO play) to rules that I feel comfortable using and running.

 

To me it's all part of the fundamental premise that HERO System is a gamer's toolkit. I have a whole bunch of tools in the kit, but that doesn't mean that I use all of them all the time. I use the ones I need to tell the story that keeps the players and myself entertained so that we have a good gaming experience.

 

That's another fundamental premise of the HERO system: That you use it to create an entertaining experience for the game group. We play because we want to, to have fun and enjoy ourselves.

 

(I also think that's why most of us get into debates like this).

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

It can be argued that death is nothing more than a minor transform. Living human to dead human.

 

EXACTLY!! By many interpretations of Hero this is not a silly or "you're just being ridiculous" type of statement. Since death of a character, what it means mechanically and what it means for the interaction of the player and play group, is not at all defined... how is "cosmetic transform into dead human" any more ridiculous than "You heal back from being a log!"

 

It isn't... but there are assumptions. Assumptions that death is... well... death. Like in the real world. Happens... person is gone... doesn't come back... all that they were, are and ever would be is ended. Non-existence.

 

Then Hero says, "But sometimes it isn't this way..." without ever defining what the play experience of character death should be. Does the player have to leave the table? Does the character respawn four blocks away with only a knife and pistol? What affect on the SIS?

 

See, this is where the request for Design Intent comes from. It is saying "Please clarify the underlying assumptions!" It is saying that we shouldn't have to argue and debate over whether the "base reality" and "template human" are assumptions... Hero should define these things.

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Amen brother Zorn!

There was a discussion of this, in part anyway, at a seminar at DunDraCon, Ken Hite was there discussing the topic with Darren Watts and Steve Long and I believe that it was supposed to be Sean Fannon but he didn't show for that one, or I might be mixing up my conferences very easily (I know he was in the "what's hot" presentation with Darren and Ken, I am thinking somehow he wasn't in the other one I'm mentioning here). Anyway, Ken proposed basically that BRP caters better to the lower end while Savage Worlds is a full grain up, so to speak (not his words), and HERO delivers on the superhero end and he was skeptical but open-minded on the whole when compariing it to lower-heroic action such as BRP manages. Of course, Steve and Darren were pretty adamant they felt HERO manages all reasonable levels without any disadvantage compared to Savage Worlds, GURPS, or BRP. But I believe that if we admit to differences in play experience (which they didn't, quite), then there are necessarily qualitative differences in quality for those particular play experience differences. Then again, as usual in such conversations, I don't feel I made a very good point on this.

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Oh... really good point on the "out of play" issue. This is one of those unstated, very unclear areas. When is a character "out of play"... or in other words... the player has no say in their character?

 

A couple of places Hero makes clear statements... like with Berzerk. PC is no longer under control of player. But otherwise???

 

As with most games, death is assumed to be "character is out of the game" but this has never been specifically stated... and in Hero there are all kinds of comments in various books about "Maybe the character isn't really dead and the GM can make it a radiation accident" or something like that. Even Hero doesn't define the base, default result of death clearly from a game POV.

 

Again... not saying that there shouldn't be flexibility in what it means... but the request for design intent is really asking "What is the default starting place for flexing?"

 

As for Transform... it is rationalized in the system as a form of killing attack... "If you can do enough to kill the character, you can transform them." Great on the surface... but already you break from this by allowing them to "heal back" when a KA that did that much damage wouldn't allow the opportunity to heal.

 

A lot of this goes back to the assumption question. Base assumption is that we all know what "dead" means and all agree on what effect that has on the game... but that is rarely the case. Even if the character is effectively removed from game... what about the player? What about the effect on situation and scene? Transform only takes these questions to a messier place as it opens up a lot of very gray areas much more highly subjective than "dead or alive."

It would be interesting to revisit Transform as applying its own series of Powers, Disadvantages, and so on. But one other critical problem in the system is that Disads are not really useful in balancing against Powers, Characteristics, and so on very well. They're fine for what they are in defining PCs and moving them into play, and creating incentives for plot hooks by the player's own desires for his character's storyline. But you can't grant a Disad to someone, really, of "Acts like a dog" and "Looks like a dog" and have that balance realistically at all against their power set. And of course mechanically if a Transform moves the character's powers into NCC land, then there's the issue of calculating all those effects, and so on, and so on.

 

It is interesting that in a system where we have people debating fiercely over individual pistol abilities and where people argue over STUN lottos, we all tend to say, "Well, you know, he's a log, you know what that's like, let's just move on..."

 

In my own campaigns, from the beginning and as a default rule, I have always made it so that unless otherwise defined and accepted, a Transform still leaves the victim with all relevant CPs and unless otherwise defined those resort ot defenses, essentially. That was merely to allow for the excuse of why a Transformed being might survive for so long and why it shouldn't be a prelude to further misuse. Not that I did anything mathematical re this or set it up beyond a very fudgy rule as stated.

[Lucius]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

EXACTLY!! By many interpretations of Hero this is not a silly or "you're just being ridiculous" type of statement. Since death of a character, what it means mechanically and what it means for the interaction of the player and play group, is not at all defined... how is "cosmetic transform into dead human" any more ridiculous than "You heal back from being a log!"

 

It isn't... but there are assumptions. Assumptions that death is... well... death. Like in the real world. Happens... person is gone... doesn't come back... all that they were, are and ever would be is ended. Non-existence.

 

Then Hero says, "But sometimes it isn't this way..." without ever defining what the play experience of character death should be. Does the player have to leave the table? Does the character respawn four blocks away with only a knife and pistol? What affect on the SIS?

 

See, this is where the request for Design Intent comes from. It is saying "Please clarify the underlying assumptions!" It is saying that we shouldn't have to argue and debate over whether the "base reality" and "template human" are assumptions... Hero should define these things.

 

And here I have to disagree.

 

What does it mean to die? What does it mean to come back to life?

 

To some extent, I frankly think that is obvious. If you are "dead" - even if it's from, say, a Suppress BOD - you stop breathing, fall down, don't move, and don't interact meaningfully with the game world except as an inanimate object.

 

But beyond that, and especially if we want to say this is NOT exactly the case (such as asserting that a non-material aspect of the character remains on the scene and aware of events) I think the LAST thing we need is clear definitions from the game system. These things SHOULD be decided by each play group, for each play group, and indeed, the answers won't necessarily be the same from game to game.

 

You can have one set of assumptions for a superhero game, another for a commando campaign, still another for a fantasy world with lots of undead or a game where hauntings are common and some characters are spirit mediums.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Having a near palindromedary experience

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

EXACTLY!! By many interpretations of Hero this is not a silly or "you're just being ridiculous" type of statement. Since death of a character, what it means mechanically and what it means for the interaction of the player and play group, is not at all defined... how is "cosmetic transform into dead human" any more ridiculous than "You heal back from being a log!"

 

It isn't... but there are assumptions. Assumptions that death is... well... death. Like in the real world. Happens... person is gone... doesn't come back... all that they were, are and ever would be is ended. Non-existence.

 

Then Hero says, "But sometimes it isn't this way..." without ever defining what the play experience of character death should be. Does the player have to leave the table? Does the character respawn four blocks away with only a knife and pistol? What affect on the SIS?

 

See, this is where the request for Design Intent comes from. It is saying "Please clarify the underlying assumptions!" It is saying that we shouldn't have to argue and debate over whether the "base reality" and "template human" are assumptions... Hero should define these things.

This also comes back to where HERO likes to try its best to be agnostic about roleplaying and somehow (much as GURPS tries) to be a sort of "mechanics only" system. It's clumsy, ultimately, as elegant as much of the system is, as we get into the issues around the Adjustment powers and why/how we should change END useage, just as examples. I see the END issue as representative because of the system's toss-off "you can just play without END if you want" juxtaposed with its detailed and points-rationalized approach to it up until that "oh, never mind" statement - we know it's a bow to "playability before consistency" but we are left scratching our heads a bit as to why this component is given so much explanation but then it's really just not worth bothering about unless we "want to" use it. What is the design statement? At the very least, we are told one VERY important thing - that END is NOT a fundamental part of the system. We certainly aren't told, as a toss off, "you can just eliminate combat rules and use the skills for social combat." Because the system DOES encourage a specific combat-oriented RP - even if it doesn't want to overtly admit it.

 

But the results are a good mix in some effect and echo the "SFX divorce" theme, in that essentially HERO gives a very solid baseline (right/wrong/indifferent, and not to suggest that it's always realistic just because it's solid) for what we know as real and peters off quickly the less real we know something to be. This has its own interesting play experience by-products, in that as HERO gamers we DO expect a certain physical reality for bullets and swords but as soon as we walk in the door to someone's game we know all bets are off when it comes to how Transform and other esoteric powers act.

[zornwil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

And here I have to disagree.

 

What does it mean to die? What does it mean to come back to life?

 

To some extent, I frankly think that is obvious. If you are "dead" - even if it's from, say, a Suppress BOD - you stop breathing, fall down, don't move, and don't interact meaningfully with the game world except as an inanimate object.

 

But beyond that, and especially if we want to say this is NOT exactly the case (such as asserting that a non-material aspect of the character remains on the scene and aware of events) I think the LAST thing we need is clear definitions from the game system. These things SHOULD be decided by each play group, for each play group, and indeed, the answers won't necessarily be the same from game to game.

 

You can have one set of assumptions for a superhero game, another for a commando campaign, still another for a fantasy world with lots of undead or a game where hauntings are common and some characters are spirit mediums.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Having a near palindromedary experience

But why should the mechanics be different? Or, rather, what mechanics come into play and what is their rationale? Do they matter? In a supers game, do we just waive death except when desired, as that is really how it works? But the system does NOT work this way - it declares "you are dead, even in a supers game." Can we just ignore that?

 

As you say, death is easy to imagine. Being a frog, well, what does it mean? What if your jump was great as a human - should you have proportionately great jump as a frog? Should you be a super-frog? The attacker paid only to alter you in "a fashion"; what are/should be the boundaries?

 

It's been stated that the rationale of Transform's cost was predicated on KA because killing something is about the worst you can do. Yet a Transform can easily be a far worse life for a PC, since death, in some games, gets you a quick rescue from the after-life whereas Transform might actually leave you abandoned for several sessions, perhaps all sessions.

 

The point is, is death or disablement or transformation or the like of any meaning mechanically? Does this game have a functioning meaning to character death or not? If not, we should just have a rule that is a carte blanche, "-2X BOD is GM and player disretion," not "-2x BOD is death." That alone defines almost perfectly what you ask for.

 

(BTW, I am not opposed to the play group defining that experience - I am just saying that while I agree, the book actually is so ambivalent I don't know that it intends this, or if it intends that "death is always real, you just might have a "get out of jail free" card depending on play group". That being said, sure, in point of fact groups often make their own decisions about the ultimate consequences)

[Manic Typist]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Perhaps this is another assumption within the system: When necessary, players/GMs will ignore the system.

[RDU Neil]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

But why should the mechanics be different? Or, rather, what mechanics come into play and what is their rationale? Do they matter? In a supers game, do we just waive death except when desired, as that is really how it works? But the system does NOT work this way - it declares "you are dead, even in a supers game." Can we just ignore that?

 

As you say, death is easy to imagine. Being a frog, well, what does it mean? What if your jump was great as a human - should you have proportionately great jump as a frog? Should you be a super-frog? The attacker paid only to alter you in "a fashion"; what are/should be the boundaries?

 

It's been stated that the rationale of Transform's cost was predicated on KA because killing something is about the worst you can do. Yet a Transform can easily be a far worse life for a PC, since death, in some games, gets you a quick rescue from the after-life whereas Transform might actually leave you abandoned for several sessions, perhaps all sessions.

 

The point is, is death or disablement or transformation or the like of any meaning mechanically? Does this game have a functioning meaning to character death or not? If not, we should just have a rule that is a carte blanche, "-2X BOD is GM and player disretion," not "-2x BOD is death." That alone defines almost perfectly what you ask for.

 

(BTW, I am not opposed to the play group defining that experience - I am just saying that while I agree, the book actually is so ambivalent I don't know that it intends this, or if it intends that "death is always real, you just might have a "get out of jail free" card depending on play group". That being said, sure, in point of fact groups often make their own decisions about the ultimate consequences)

 

Thanks... I wrote poorly in that initial comment. My point being that Hero doesn't really state what "death" means in any mechanical way. It is the old school basis for the game, which didn't speak to role playing or effect on the player, how the player interacts with the other players... metarules. Doesn't have to be super advanced mechanics... but stating that "normally death means a character is no longer in the game and the player should make up a new one or be allowed to play an NPC for the remainder of the session. The character normally doesn't return to play unless there is a GM decision to provide and in game reason to do so. Death removes a character from player control." etc., etc.

 

Discussing what is the default game effect for character death in Hero does not limit many variations and play group decisions... it merely provides the default position where GMs and players can decide to diverge.

 

As you say, it is old school "role playing agnosticism" which is the issue... because such a concept is just not tenable in role playing design anymore. The game has assumptions on this, probably hidden even from the game designers past and present. Why not explore them and put this out their for GMs and players to use as a foundation to make their own game decisions?

[Robyn]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Perhaps this is another assumption within the system: When necessary' date=' players/GMs will ignore the system.[/quote']

 

Yes, and this was a serious problem for gaming in general (even outside HERO), though most everyone intelligent enough to realize it could be difficult just thought "Noone could be stupid enough to get stuck on this."

 

To be fair, I think HERO states something to this effect within the rulebook (at the very least with its constant reminders to take into consideration such factors as "game balance" and "dramatic sense"), but it was difficult in the past for many players (and GM's) to get past such an omission.

[OddHat]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Thanks... I wrote poorly in that initial comment. My point being that Hero doesn't really state what "death" means in any mechanical way. It is the old school basis for the game, which didn't speak to role playing or effect on the player, how the player interacts with the other players... metarules. Doesn't have to be super advanced mechanics... but stating that "normally death means a character is no longer in the game and the player should make up a new one or be allowed to play an NPC for the remainder of the session. The character normally doesn't return to play unless there is a GM decision to provide and in game reason to do so. Death removes a character from player control." etc., etc.

 

Discussing what is the default game effect for character death in Hero does not limit many variations and play group decisions... it merely provides the default position where GMs and players can decide to diverge.

 

I thought the HERO rule was that, when the character dies, the player dies, and the body is ritually displayed at the gaming table?

 

No?

 

Oy,

[Lucius]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

As you say, death is easy to imagine. Being a frog, well, what does it mean?

 

Actually, I’m not sure “death is easy to imagine” compared to being frog.

 

What if your jump was great as a human - should you have proportionately great jump as a frog? Should you be a super-frog? The attacker paid only to alter you in "a fashion"; what are/should be the boundaries?

 

I think part of the reason why these issues are not addressed more thoroughly in the core rules is that those rules are ALREADY pretty monumental in length, and I suspect it was assumed that if a player or group WANTED to have Transformations in their game, they must already have some idea how exactly they want it to work. In point of fact, the text under Transformation is ALREADY so extensive it includes details like “Transformation may not add skills to a target beyond what the character with the Transformation attack personally has,” a fine example of a rule I have every intention of ignoring – because frankly I have no clue why it should be there as a universal rule.

 

Or are you saying that what is needed is an explanation for things like that – reasons given for why the rule is what it is? Sometimes that would be nice, but again, that’s still more space taken up in the book.

 

 

It's been stated that the rationale of Transform's cost was predicated on KA because killing something is about the worst you can do. Yet a Transform can easily be a far worse life for a PC, since death, in some games, gets you a quick rescue from the after-life whereas Transform might actually leave you abandoned for several sessions, perhaps all sessions.

 

This is something else I don’t understand. It seems to me that any game with a “quick rescue from the afterlife” is just as likely to have dispels and countertransformations and other “quick rescues from life as a frog, or log, or cloud of fog.” If __I__ have a gripe with Transformation, it’s that it’s not permanent ENOUGH. It’s supposedly based on Killing Attack, yet a Killing Attack of that much damage will, well, kill you, whereas a Transformation always has SOME defined way of being undone.

 

Then again, long ago after Champions III came out with the very first Transform power for the system, and when the first edition of Fantasy Hero was in use, I was told by a player that her group had decided that a Killing Attack _IS_ a form of Transformation “Person to dead person” and that the defined counter to it was that someone with a sufficiently high Clerical Perk (I don’t know if we had “perks” as such, but the idea was to spend points on the privilege of being a High Priest) could undo it.

 

But my point is, I really don’t see a Transform as “worse” than killing a character – ever.

 

The point is, is death or disablement or transformation or the like of any meaning mechanically? Does this game have a functioning meaning to character death or not?

 

Okay……I’ll admit, I don’t think the game ever quite specifically states that if your BOD goes to –X where “X” is your beginning total BOD, you have to lie down, shut up, and generally stop being a character and start being a corpse. I guess it never occurred to me that such things DON’T go without saying. I mean, if I’m told in game “Your character is now dead” it wouldn’t occur to me to go “Okay, but I still have STUN and END so I’m still conscious. Now I’m going to try a haymaker with my sword attack…..”

 

 

If not, we should just have a rule that is a carte blanche, "-2X BOD is GM and player disretion," not "-2x BOD is death." That alone defines almost perfectly what you ask for.

 

 

As I understand them, what the rules now state is “-2x BOD is death.” Is there something about this that people are finding hard to understand? Are we really getting lots of players whose response to “you’re dead” is “Okay, I’m going to try a PRE attack and then cut loose with another Stellar Photonic Blast at the biggest bad guy….?”

 

 

As you say, it is old school "role playing agnosticism" which is the issue... because such a concept is just not tenable in role playing design anymore.

 

It’s not? Why not?

 

 

 

I thought the HERO rule was that, when the character dies, the player dies, and the body is ritually displayed at the gaming table?

 

No?

 

Oy,

 

I guess the problem is, apparently, that it doesn’t explicitly state that this ISN’T the rule.

 

Apparently, NOTHING can really go without saying. Next we're going to have to define "unconscious" and make it clear that this generally means not moving, not attacking, not talking.....

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary observes that it depends on what your definition of "is" is.....

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

Then Hero says, "But sometimes it isn't this way..." without ever defining what the play experience of character death should be. Does the player have to leave the table? Does the character respawn four blocks away with only a knife and pistol? What affect on the SIS?

 

See, this is where the request for Design Intent comes from. It is saying "Please clarify the underlying assumptions!" It is saying that we shouldn't have to argue and debate over whether the "base reality" and "template human" are assumptions... Hero should define these things.

 

I'm jumping into this as I read instead of waiting to the end.

 

I'm not sure that HERO should define this. I think that this is the responsibility of the player and GM to use their tools responsibly.

 

A player comes to the GM and asks for a spell/power/talent that turns targets into a log. The GM consults the rulebook and says, yeah - 4D6 Transform should do it. Bad GM! Bad Player!

 

The GM and player should be coming to the problem of what exactly does the player want and how does that work in the context of their game/group. The player might indicate that the spell would work so that the target becomes a block of wood and would remain so. The GM would say well that sounds like a killing attack to me - instead of turning into a bloody mess the target turns into a log. If the player said that water from the Sparkling Stream would return the log to its original form then it is an all or nothing transform.

 

Hero is responsible for mechanics but a lot of what you are asking for IMO is SFX and that, again IMO, is the place for players and GMs.

 

 

Doc

[yamamura]

Re: Assumptions within HERO

 

If __I__ have a gripe with Transformation, it’s that it’s not permanent ENOUGH. It’s supposedly based on Killing Attack, yet a Killing Attack of that much damage will, well, kill you, whereas a Transformation always has SOME defined way of being undone.

 

Funny thing is when I do Transform for a power whether an enemy or a PC, I never use the Heal back method. It has never made much sense for most powers. I have always used the All or Nothing Method. Take for example the idea of a Boy/Girl Gun that changes a target into the opposite sex, all you need to do to reverse the effect is to shoot the target again with said weapon. Or if I have a spell that changes a ragged old dress into a ball gown perhaps at a set time the spell reverses let say midnight (somebody should write a story about that).

 

One of the question that is still be pondered is the transformation of a living creature into an inanimate object. When done so, what is the state of the individual thus transformed? Does their soul move on or are they trapped in a limbo state until such a time that either the transformed is removed or the item they have become is destroyed?