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Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?


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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

I pretty much use 5th, but like LL above I keep a few elements of 4th (specifically Damage Shields, Regeneration and Instant Change). I use the 5th ed FH book, but I adapt/use stuff from the earlier versions (including the old Magic Items and Spellbook).

 

I run my own world, so I don't use any setting material out for the current version of FH - but I do use the Grimoires, Enchanted items, and NPC books.

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

I moved up the 5th just recently and My 10 year old son inherited my 4th edition rulebook which he runs his game with.

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

We have been playing in the Western Shores with 5th Edition rules for almost 2 years, was great fun.

Right now we're playing the famous enemy within campaign from Warhammer with 5th Ed. rules with some house rules, what started beeing even more fun :)

I have both grimores but never used them (2nd one was quite disappointing in my eyes), as we used old FH magic in Western Shores and now use conversions of the warhammer spells and magic system of the 2nd edition.

A book I really love is Monsters Minions and Marodeurs :-)

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

I actually prefer the feel and the concepts in the first Fantasy Hero edition but it didn't play as well as the present edition. There are bits and pieces of the 4th edition rules I use still though.

 

Same for me. I use original FH for inspiration but 5E for rules. It was the game that lured me away from D&D. It is very cohesive and had a unified theme, sort of a mix of Tolkien (done right) and the dark ages. 4E and 5E were very generic and more D&Dish, and just didn't grab my imagination. I also love the 1E magic items book, some very original stuff in there.

 

Original FH renamed some of the powers (frex. "ward" instead of "force wall"). That adds a ton of flavor but kind of isolates it from the Hero community. Community wins out.

 

I love the original money system, and the way expendable foci were done. Still use that as a house rule in 5E.

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

I was looking over the various versions of FH recently. I bought a copy of First Edition FH with the character sheet in the back. Hero games should have kept it. It was pretty easy to follow.

 

I'm trying to RELOCATE an interesting version of a Fantasy hero re-write. About 10+ years ago I bumped into a guy that had a hero re-write in a 3 ring binder. He gave me his copy because he realized how into FH i was.

 

I thought it was called renaissance hero or something like that. It was FH with out magic, though I cant really remember if it had magic in it now. IT was about 100 to 120 pages long pages long. Unfortunately I lost it in my moves. Has any one ever seen it? or played it? I remember it being typeset, or printed out on a nice printer.

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

I was looking over the various versions of FH recently. I bought a copy of First Edition FH with the character sheet in the back. Hero games should have kept it. It was pretty easy to follow.

 

I'm trying to RELOCATE an interesting version of a Fantasy hero re-write. About 10+ years ago I bumped into a guy that had a hero re-write in a 3 ring binder. He gave me his copy because he realized how into FH i was.

 

I thought it was called renaissance hero or something like that. It was FH with out magic, though I cant really remember if it had magic in it now. IT was about 100 to 120 pages long pages long. Unfortunately I lost it in my moves. Has any one ever seen it? or played it? I remember it being typeset, or printed out on a nice printer.

 

It wasn't this, was it?

 

It has the distinction of being, so far, the only Hero System/Fantasy Hero "heartbreaker" in the wild. (See also)

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

The magic system discussion on that second link is extremely interesting.

 

Yeah - the first of those options is actually an oldie: it's exactly how magic in C&S worked. Unfortunately, magic is C&S was almost unplayable - we had to call Emergency more than once when a player collapsed, barely breathing after trying to read the magic rules*.

 

But I actually like the basic idea: letting players master "elemental forces" which they then combine to make "spells". I had one shot at such a system in my Hero version of Runequest sorcery, where sorcerors started with a little VPP and then a "two powers at a time" Aid that let them bulk up their VPP and one power - so that they could take their puny little "create flame" spell and pump it up to make a powerful EB, or one that was long ranged, or could shoot round corners, or area effect, etc. Or they could just turn it into a long-burning lamp.

 

Sounds cool, but I have never actually played it, so I dunno...

 

cheers, Mark

 

*OK, not really. It just felt like that....

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

But I actually like the basic idea: letting players master "elemental forces" which they then combine to make "spells". I had one shot at such a system in my Hero version of Runequest sorcery' date=' where sorcerors started with a little VPP and then a "two powers at a time" Aid that let them bulk up their VPP and one power - so that they could take their puny little "create flame" spell and pump it up to make a powerful EB, or one that was long ranged, or could shoot round corners, or area effect, etc. Or they could just turn it into a long-burning lamp.[/quote']

 

Interesting idea (and repped). I've long been trying to come up with a "noun and verb" magic system for Hero, and I think this has given me the impetus. So, you have a VPP for each "noun" you can use (each noun is its own pool, I think) and the skills usable for manipulating the pools are the "verbs". So you might have a Fire pool and the Create, Control, and Sense skills; a Create Fire spell would be pretty straightforward, while a Control Fire might give you some Telekinesis; a Sense Fire could either tell you where a fire is, or it could be set up as a passive fire detection that will awaken you if your house is burning.

 

Bears more thought.

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

Interesting idea (and repped). I've long been trying to come up with a "noun and verb" magic system for Hero, and I think this has given me the impetus. So, you have a VPP for each "noun" you can use (each noun is its own pool, I think) and the skills usable for manipulating the pools are the "verbs". So you might have a Fire pool and the Create, Control, and Sense skills; a Create Fire spell would be pretty straightforward, while a Control Fire might give you some Telekinesis; a Sense Fire could either tell you where a fire is, or it could be set up as a passive fire detection that will awaken you if your house is burning.

 

Bears more thought.

 

If you haven't, check out the game Ars Magica (assuming it still exists). I used to have that book, ages ago, so the game might not still be alive, or be radically different, but back then it used to have a killer magic system. Spells were basically what you describe: verb + noun. So a "create life" spell would heal you, a "destroy fire" spell would lower the room temperature, etc. Might be a great resource for you!

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Re: Do any of you still play 4th edition and FH Circa 1990?

 

Interesting idea (and repped). I've long been trying to come up with a "noun and verb" magic system for Hero, and I think this has given me the impetus. So, you have a VPP for each "noun" you can use (each noun is its own pool, I think) and the skills usable for manipulating the pools are the "verbs". So you might have a Fire pool and the Create, Control, and Sense skills; a Create Fire spell would be pretty straightforward, while a Control Fire might give you some Telekinesis; a Sense Fire could either tell you where a fire is, or it could be set up as a passive fire detection that will awaken you if your house is burning.

 

Bears more thought.

 

Yep, you could basically do it like that. The rules I drafted are here:

http://www.geocities.com/markdoc.geo/Gaming_stuff/Runequest/heroquest.htm

and are pretty RQ specific, but could easily be amended in the way you describe. IIRC correctly, the skills were:

Intensity (make more powerful: ie - increase active points)

Range (self 'splanatory)

Duration (self 'splanatory, though this was also used for adding modifiers like persistent, continuous, etc)

Multispell (in the original for combining the spells you know: in Hero system, for adding power modifiers to make "new spells")

 

 

If you haven't' date=' check out the game Ars Magica (assuming it still exists). I used to have that book, ages ago, so the game might not still be alive, or be radically different, but back then it used to have a killer magic system. Spells were basically what you describe: verb + noun. So a "create life" spell would heal you, a "destroy fire" spell would lower the room temperature, etc. Might be a great resource for you![/quote']

 

Yep: when I was thinking about this system, Ars was one of the influences, together with C&S. I've often thought it would be cool to run a party with multiple sorcerors using this system and see what they could do, because in concert, they can use their "Aid Spell" power on each other....

 

The rules set a limit on how far you could go in terms of raw power and the fact that it would take multiple casters collaborating over a period of time, limits its combat effectiveness, but it would allow some awesome out-of-combat magical effects - it'd have a very different feel to traditional fantasy: something more like "Rhialto the Magnificent", I suspect

 

cheers, Mark

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