First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

[Korvar]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Your VPP privileges have been revoked.

[Egyptoid]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

any followup from Syndir ?

 

did he have his meeting or did Brief-case run him off?

[aylwin13]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Looks like his last post was last Thur. and he stopped by on Fri.

 

Maybe g-a stuffed him in a briefcase.

[lemming]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

It's all in the presentation.

yep

[ghost-angel]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

any followup from Syndir ?

 

did he have his meeting or did Brief-case run him off?

 

yeah, it was me. whatever.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

If GA did "run him off" (and it seems unlikely), I would have to attribute that to GA clarifying that the core precepts of Hero are incompatible with the game style he was looking for. I don't think he's the only person who had that viewpoint - I think I expressed it, and I think Treb may have expressed it.

 

The ultimate answer, to me, is that Synder may have needed to twist so many of the rules that the game wouldn't be recognizable as Hero afterwards anyway, so why not start with a system closer to his desired result and spare himself some agony. If GA did "drive him off", I think that was ultimately doing him a favour, not doing him or DoJ a disservice.

 

Sadly, I have repp'd GA for something too recently...

[Egyptoid]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Ghost-angel, where would we be without you ?

 

besides if the kid aint tough enough, he needs to find out sooner;

Gming hero is hard work...

[aylwin13]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Sadly' date=' I have repp'd GA for something too recently...[/quote']

I got 'im for ya.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I got 'im for ya.

 

 

Are we actually celebrating the fact that we might have made someone's time on the board so difficult that they decided not to play here any more?

 

Believe me, I understand Sindyr was difficult to talk to (and sometimes rude) but come on....

 

Doc

[Hyper-Man]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I agree.

 

Someone I showed this thread to suggested that Sindyr may speak English as a second language. I can't be sure either but it would explain a great deal as we were pointing out very subtle points that might not translate as well as we'd hoped.

 

[aylwin13]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Are we actually celebrating the fact that we might have made someone's time on the board so difficult that they decided not to play here any more?

 

Believe me, I understand Sindyr was difficult to talk to (and sometimes rude) but come on....

 

Doc

Absolutely the opposite Doc. I was Repping g-a for the same reason that I was reading in Hugh's post. For explaining (better than I could have) that maybe HERO wasn't the system for the game that Sindyr seemed to want to run/play in. It has nothing to do with chasing a potential new HERO gamer away. That would be the last thing I'd want to do. I'm sorry if that's how it appeared.

[casualplayer]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

That's a bag of road apples. HERO can do anything, including what Sindyr had in mind. There were just repercussions to his decisions, some that he realized and some that he gave the impression that he had overlooked. Since he wanted to deviate dramatically away from the standard, hard-coded 350 super he was going to have to retool all the support structure, but it could be done and it could be done with HERO.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Absolutely the opposite Doc. I was Repping g-a for the same reason that I was reading in Hugh's post. For explaining (better than I could have) that maybe HERO wasn't the system for the game that Sindyr seemed to want to run/play in. It has nothing to do with chasing a potential new HERO gamer away. That would be the last thing I'd want to do. I'm sorry if that's how it appeared.

 

 

I'm pleased I asked the question rather than threw accusations then. My apologies if it felt like I was accusing...

 

Doc

[ghost-angel]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

awww. you guys rock.

 

I'd be kind of saddened if I "drove him off" as that's not really my end desire. I just think he was setting himself up for failure for a large number of reasons. What he wanted, ultimately, is easily done with Hero - just not by the way he was going about it.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

That's a bag of road apples. HERO can do anything' date=' including what Sindyr had in mind. [/quote']

 

Hero can do anything. Some things Hero can do are more easily and better accomplished by other systems. If you want a system which is not crunchy or granular, a different system may be preferable.

 

I'm typically confused by people who want to use Hero to recreate another game, mechanically rather than the feel and setting. If you like the other system's mechanics, play the other system and save yourself a lot of work.

 

Now, often the approach is "The system sucks, but this one mechanic really works nicely and I want to import it to Hero, because I like the Hero system.". Great. Sindyr is looking for the system that will best support his vision. If that's not Hero, how are we doing him any service by twisting his arm to play in a system that, ultimately, may not be the best to suit his needs.

[incrdbil]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I'm not sure any game system would have made Sindyr happy. He seemed to want one that was far too nebulous, and allowed immediate reinvention, and effects derived from justification, nopt balance. I don't hink it was a disservice if he was convinced hERO wasn't the game for him, I dont think any game, as written will satisfy him. MEGS doesn't even come close to the convoluted and contrary conditions he expressed, and I think anythign he does will quickly become a heavily house ruled kludge of rules that could probably be done better by the old TOON system of wierd situation resolution: 1d6 roll, 1-3 you can do it, 4-6 you can't.

 

He seemed to want the benefit of having rules without having to actually stick to them or follow them. Maybe there's a game like that, but for whatever he wanted, HERO wasn't it, and it would have been to no ones benefit to pretend otherwise.

[Egyptoid]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

his ideas work, if you toss out points

[Trebuchet]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

his ideas work' date=' if you toss out points[/quote']Yeah, but points are a pretty central feature of Hero. It is one of the first "point based" RPG systems. If you both toss out points and create Absolutes, are you really playing Hero at that point; or a new game system loosely based on Hero?

 

Unlimited (ie no points) and absolute abilities suggests a game called Gods & Demigods; not Hero. Isn't there an official Dragonball Z RPG already?

[JmOz]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I think there is...and I think it is powered by a hybrid of the Hero system and Interlock...but I could be very wrong about it...

[Vondy]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

That's a bag of road apples. HERO can do anything' date=' including what Sindyr had in mind. There were just repercussions to his decisions, some that he realized and some that he gave the impression that he had overlooked. Since he wanted to deviate dramatically away from the standard, hard-coded 350 super he was going to have to retool all the support structure, but it could be done and it could be done with HERO.[/quote']

 

I agree in principle, but hero is complex enough, that you actually have to understand its underlying premises and have solid experience with it before attempting to use it for what amounts to a radical departure from its normative baseline. I agree with you that hero can be made to do anything, but you have to be an experienced journeyman (or even a master) with the system to do some of the things sindyr wanted to do. An apprentice would likely find such an attempt a disaster and decide the system didn't work rather than concluding they needed to learn more.

[Vondy]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I'm not sure any game system would have made Sindyr happy. He seemed to want one that was far too nebulous, and allowed immediate reinvention, and effects derived from justification, nopt balance. I don't hink it was a disservice if he was convinced hERO wasn't the game for him, I dont think any game, as written will satisfy him. MEGS doesn't even come close to the convoluted and contrary conditions he expressed, and I think anythign he does will quickly become a heavily house ruled kludge of rules that could probably be done better by the old TOON system of wierd situation resolution: 1d6 roll, 1-3 you can do it, 4-6 you can't.

 

He seemed to want the benefit of having rules without having to actually stick to them or follow them. Maybe there's a game like that, but for whatever he wanted, HERO wasn't it, and it would have been to no ones benefit to pretend otherwise.

 

FATE - with an altered ladder.

[Karmakaze]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

See, I was just thinking that he needed a little real-time play to get used to the concept of reasoning from effect. It takes some getting used to if you're accustomed to having all that be "under the hood". After a little hands-on experience, some of those issues may just resolve themselves.

[Sean Waters]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

I'll say this; Sindyr posted some threads that provoked long, detailed and interesting discussions. Hopefully he's just busy with that real life thing that keeps getting in the way of gaming, and will be back.

[Navar]

Re: First meeting of game group to consider HERO System

 

Sindyr (first off I love you name, and enthusiasm) I understand that you may have left, but hopefully this will address most of the issues you have come up with on the boards, and in reading this might be bolstered to return. This is long, but you mentioned a lot of long issues during your tenure.

 

I have another route to go with a lot of you suggestions, and I know I am kind of late to the party as it were.

 

One question I have is how old are you. I am sorry if this has been addressed before, but you seem rather young. I am also sorry if you are 25+ and you consider this insulting. I do not intend it to be. Your comments about evolution, Christianity, and heresy among others let me to this conclusion.

 

Your lack of knowledge of physics is astounding though. The first problem that I can see with a lot of your power ideas is that they aren’t logical extensions of existing powers. Steamteck hit the nail on the head with the lit match into the fuel tank thing, but there are even more problems.

 

#1 Gasoline (all flammable liquids for that matter) isn’t flammable. Only its vapors are. When something burns it is actually the vapors burning and being sucked from the liquid in question. Gasoline vaporizes readily we call things that do this “volatile” the problem with volatile flammable liquids is that they displace other gases. Gases have 2 limits when it comes to flammability. These two limits are called the lower explosive limit and the upper explosive limit. The lower explosive limit is the minimum amount of flammable vapors needed for the material to ignite. Conversely the upper explosive limit is the point when the vapors have displaced too much oxygen to support combustion (much less ignite.) There is actually a video on the internet of a man dropping a source of ignition into a Gasoline tanker. It causes a flash fire of the vapors then it goes out. There is no Terminator style explosion.

 

You could teleport lit matches into a Gasoline tank all day long and it would never ignite.

 

#2 What if the fuel tank on the car in question is a diesel tank. Diesel is much less volatile and even under good conditions (open air, plenty of oxygen) you would probably not get diesel to ignite with a match. (It would be like throwing a lit match at a puddle of water.)

 

It seems that whenever someone gives you a solution to your problem that you don’t like you just discount it. You have done this with VPPs. I am new to this board, but an RPG vet (much like you.) and I have never made a character concept (not in Aberrant, Mutants and Masterminds, or the Marvel RPG system) in which I needed a VPP. I am a smart player though and I build my character with limitations. Several people have suggested that you put this idea out of your head for a while and try the system as written for a while to see if it really is a problem, because from most of their (and my) views it isn’t a problem because we know the system better than you. In fact the only concept for HERO I have come up with that needed a VPP was a Mimic character.

 

Also in your absolute effects thread you kept ignoring the plethora of people telling you about the wonderful absolute effects sidebar in the Fantasy Hero book (Page 250-1.) If you work with the GM or the players in advance then your entire absolute effects idea is worthless. You just set world benchmarks and life goes on. In our world nothing can move faster than light (lets say) so by definition light is the fasting thing on the planet. In a game one could implement the same speed limit and as long as a character could move as fast as light they would be the fasting thing in that game.

 

What makes the Fantasy Hero system so sublime though is that it does scale. Lets say you want to be invulnerable and the Ref decides that 100 points in armor will mean that nothing in the world will ever inflict damage on you, THEN you are invulnerable, “absolutely.” Why? Because when you were making your character that is what you and the Ref decided on. If you only have 200 character points than that ability might be balanced, but if you have 1000 then it isn’t. In that case the Ref might say that you have to buy 800 points of armor to be invulnerable. This is not so much a limit on the world as you might think, and it doesn’t really effect game play either. You discounted this idea early because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear, but despite that fact, this is the system you were looking for.

 

You posit things like “disallowing all non prebought effects” yet that doesn’t actually happen in any HERO game.

 

You also seem to assume that both the player and the Ref are stupid. You say that the player won’t know the limits of the character when play begins, yet I for one have never begun a game not knowing my exact limits.

 

You also have made some conflicting statements like “NO ONE IS ASKING FOR OMNIPOTENCE.” then saying “I want a power that will allow me to Teleport anything from my home.” In the hands of a smart gamer the latter sentence is omnipotence.

 

One thing you seem to not be able to get your head around is that versatility = power.

And asking for a power with infinite versatility is just asking for a character with infinite power.

 

An overriding theme of several of your posts is that you awfulize everything. It is almost like without your special absolute effect, even if you and the Ref agreed before hand, the Ref is going to screw you over and for no good reason inflict damage on your invulnerable character. If my Ref kept doing this to me, I would just quit the game. We agreed that I was the fastest, why can’t I catch this other speedster? If the answer is “Because he is faster than you” then we will have issues. If this happens over and over again then we are going to have to talk and I may change my character or find a new game. I am not going to try to tie his hands so he cannot do this to be. I trust the people I play with.

 

You have an example of a speedster, but I have just created a speedster that I love, without a VPP. In fact there are character databases in several places on the internet that show a HUGE variety of speedster characters without VPPs, and one can assume that the people that made/play the characters are happy with the results. What effect would be so out of left field that a speedster wouldn’t be able to pull off with an EC and an MP?

 

You mention MEGS a lot, but that is just a completely different system, and I think you need to stop thinking in terms of MEGS and start thinking in terms of HERO. MEGS uses a logarithmic scale to ensure that everything scales, but also (according to wikipedia) in a fight between two characters whose powers differ by several orders of magnitude the lesser one would “at least able to hold out for a while.” This leads me to believe that powerful characters aren’t that powerful.

 

In comic books or any fictional narrative for that matter situations come up where a character that in an RPG might do something that is MUCH smarter/more powerful. The best example of this (IMHO) is Silver age Superman. IIRC his powers included the ability to fly in outer space and locate someone just by listening for their heartbeat. He could move so fast time would appear to stop, and he had heat vision. With these 3 powers alone he could overcome any foe, but also he more or less cannot be hurt (not true invulnerability mind you, but I argue that true invulnerability doesn’t exist in comics) and he could travel back in time to fix any mistake he may have caused. Now a player in an RPG with these powers is even more boring than superman had become. Superman had become so powerful that the writers couldn’t even write stories for him anymore with any sense of conflict. This is why balance is so important. What might seem like an innocuous little nothing of a power to you might make the character all powerful in just a few sessions. That is why the HERO system exists like it does. As the Ref you don’t have to come up with every possible way a power can be used before the game starts, but you can have a good handle on its limitations, and limit it based on how many points you think it should cost (with guidelines in the HERO book.)

 

In Hero System, if you want a hero that can do certain *effects*, you simply buy those effects as per normal. If you want you hero to be able to have a certain *power* and be able to do any effect with that power, even if you don't think of the effect on character creation but later, you *have* to get a VPP.

 

As a final thought this quote is false.