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The Hero System is bland and over complicated


RPMiller

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

Killing attacks, decent STUN and CON, and good defenses would probably achieve that goal. The "Buffy" game that I was playing in had a high blood count as well. We ended many games wondering if everyone was going to make it. In fact, my character died once even. I think there was another party member death as well, but I'm not positive because we came so close to death so many times.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

So Hero Games has already done what you've asked. Twice. Time will tell if they decide to do anymore like this in the future.
While I have no doubt that the two products are well written and a good example of what folks are talking about, to me the two genres for the books are kind of niche. No offense Darren, but I seriously doubt I will ever have the need or desire for Lucha Libre HERO. Just not my style. I know so little about PS238 that I wouldn't know if it was a worthwhile setting to explore. What HERO honestly needs is something more mainstream. A fantasy or sci-fi setting would be ideal. Even Dark Champions or Pulp would do the trick and require less setting explanation.
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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

So Hero Games has already done what you've asked. Twice.

While I have no idea that the two products are well written and a good example of what folks are talking about' date=' to me the two genres for the books are kind of niche.[/quote']

Yeah. I think I saw a copy at my FLGS. I'll be checking it out to see if they develop the setting as richly and complete as what was suggested.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

While I have no idea that the two products are well written and a good example of what folks are talking about' date=' to me the two genres for the books are kind of niche. No offense Darren, but I seriously doubt I will ever have the need or desire for Lucha Libre HERO. Just not my style. I know so little about PS238 that I wouldn't know if it was a worthwhile setting to explore. What HERO honestly needs is something more mainstream. A fantasy or sci-fi setting would be ideal. Even Dark Champions or Pulp would do the trick and require less setting explanation.[/quote']

 

PS238 is Pre-Teen Champions. Instead of High School kids, it's middle school, 9 or 10 year olds with super powers. Most of them are the children of adult supers.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

PS238 is Pre-Teen Champions. Instead of High School kids' date=' it's middle school, 9 or 10 year olds with super powers. Most of them are the children of adult supers.[/quote']Thanks for the information. Again, that just reinforces my overall opinion. As a nearing 40-year old man, I have no recollection of what made me tick in my pre-teen (or even teen through twenties) years and have no real desire to play in such a setting. Again, I have no doubt that the supplement is well written and produced, it is just designed for a tightly defined genre. If the ball were in my court, I would create a fantasy introduction to HERO. Take the Basic Rulebook, rip out powers that are unneeded for fantasy (FTL I'm looking at you), remove all the existing samples that are not relevant, throw in a couple of powers/power mods that I think are necessary for genre simulation (Time Limit being the most obvious) and create a small setting. You would need a magic system, equipment lists and a small sampling of monsters. Have little sidebars referring to other products like HERO 6E for even more crunchy rules goodness, Fantasy HERO for information on how to design your own setting/magic system/campaign, and the HERO System Bestiary for more of those wonderful little monsters everybody needs to slay.
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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

How did you do this?
More of dumb luck thing. I have a character, Bloodbath, made for a team to take out. Unfortunately, the team came at him one at a time. Several were unconscious. I was using the bleeding rules. Last player went down after knocking Bloodbath out.
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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

"Your characters use their movement to approach a couple of hundred of bases. Npc's moves back and fourth between them occidental using their wealth perk to get temporary powers through different focuses. A group of npc's with visible hand killing attack approach you. They make it clear that you will follow the community predominate psychological limitations, or you will get a hunted limitation."

LoL! LoL!

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

Steve comes up with great settings (I feel) I'd love to see him make one using the Hero System rules as a fully self-contained game. One book, pick up and buy. Specific rules and setting all together. Maybe his Stormlords idea? Just fully flushed out and expanded.

 

One of the things I hated about Post-Apocalyptic Hero was that it had several interesting settings that were given very little space. Probably most annoying was Tobacco Road being limited to just a few pages. I'd love to see any of the settings in that book given their own book.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

Again' date=' I have no doubt that the supplement is well written and produced, it is just designed for a tightly defined genre. [/quote']

 

To me, that is the ideal one book game - a very tightly defined genre. The tighter the genre, the easier it is to assess the necessary rules and examples, and whay can be culled as not needed for that genre/setting.

 

If the ball were in my court' date=' I would create a fantasy introduction to HERO. Take the Basic Rulebook, rip out powers that are unneeded for fantasy (FTL I'm looking at you), remove all the existing samples that are not relevant, throw in a couple of powers/power mods that I think are necessary for genre simulation (Time Limit being the most obvious) and create a small setting. You would need a magic system, equipment lists and a small sampling of monsters. Have little sidebars referring to other products like HERO 6E for even more crunchy rules goodness, Fantasy HERO for information on how to design your own setting/magic system/campaign, and the HERO System Bestiary for more of those wonderful little monsters everybody needs to slay.[/quote']

 

It would be interesting for someone to go over 6e (or the basic rule book) with an eye to how much space would actually be saved by eliminating those sections not relevant to their chosen genre to assess how big this book would have to be.

 

I think this is an exercise which could be done, but I suspect it would require culling not only "rules that are not used in this genre" (FTL for fantasy being a great example), but probably a lot of other items which, while desirable, aren't essential (as an example, perhaps we remove some combat maneuvers, like Strafe and Pull a Punch, and delete Martial Arts entirely, for our Western European Fantasy Game - those wanting skilled warriors buy skill levels and those wanting the more unusual maneuvers upgrade to full 6e). Other games often add such rules in later supplements. Hero is at least almost complete unto itself, so if we want to squeeze in a setting, gear/spells/powers, some opponents and maybe an adventure or two, we have to cut something.

 

Another approach would be to forget any rules modifications and use the Basic Rules book (foregoing some customization in favour of having the pre-made rules) and add a "Fantasy Book" that incorporates portions of a genre book (including any items needed for genre simulation), a small setting including magic system, equipment and opponents, and perhaps an introductory adventure. You can then create a similar Supers book, Star Hero book, etc. for desired genres. The books can be offered alone (so buyers of more than one genre/setting don't need to keep buying Basic Hero) and bundled with Basic Rules.

 

The real question is whether the sales would justify the work. I suspect Steve and Co. have formed the opinion it will not - it's far from the first time an approach like this has been suggested. Of course, nothing would stop an enterprising writer who thinks this is a great idea from talking licensure with Steve.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

Like, Werewolves, Mages, Mummies, Vampire Hunters, Changelings, Revenants maybe?

World of Darkness is an OK generic system when you leave out the blood points, or replace them with something else like they did in their other major lines.

 

So all of those are in the same setting: World of Darkness. Let me try and explain myself better:

 

Mechanics:

These all use the system of "roll some d10s, get some hits", but that is like saying HERO is "roll 3d6, roll low". When you look at Disciplines, Gifts, Circles? (whatever that Mage thing is), Spells, Those things hunters get that I think are abilities?, Whatever changelings get (and Revanents which is Vampire for people who want to see the sun but get pwned by real vampires), they are all different. They each use different "powers" and use different "skills" (the defalt character sheets actually do have different skills listed). They also use different "play the way we want you to" mechanics (Paradox, Humanity, Balance, Sanity, Mummy Humanity). And they all have different points: Blood/Rage/Gnosis/Paradox/etc. You get these points for different things and spend them differently.

 

The only thing they have in common is attributes, willpower, and health levels (but those greatly change). So mechanics wise, they are actually pretty different (besides the d10 hits thing). Think about it in HERO if you actually used a different book full of powers for each genre. That would be fairly different. You'd have "Space Movement Powers" (running in Space!) and "Pulp Movement Powers! (running in Nazis!).

 

So they actually do have different games. The core mechanic is as similar as d20 modern and D&D (roll d20, add some number to it).

 

Also remember none of these games play nice when you mix them together. It's really hard to have a vampire, a werewolf, and a mage all adventure together because their power level is so different (and I'm assuming combat optimized characters). Even different Were creatures are different power levels. I've played games that were: "were-cheetah kills everything, then were-wolves are sad because +4 STR is not as good as +4 DEX".

 

Setting: They are all in "ostensibly" in the same world of darkness. Either that, or they are all in different but similar worlds of darkness. Either of those answers supports my point that VtM is a game with a spoon fed setting. Sometimes you can go to the Umbra, or Chicago, or Egypt, but they all are either the same setting or unique settings per game. And then you have Demon which just messes everything up (why is there God in my Gaia?)

 

Notice how if you just take the VtM book (no others) and try to use a different setting, such as "Vampires in Space!" or "Vampires who fight Nazi's" or "Vampires who run around in Exalted", you have no support. That's because the setting is World of Darkness and you are spoon fed it.

 

Remember my point is not how well the system preforms in different genres, but if you are spoonfed World of Darkness

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

The real question is whether the sales would justify the work. I suspect Steve and Co. have formed the opinion it will not - it's far from the first time an approach like this has been suggested. Of course, nothing would stop an enterprising writer who thinks this is a great idea from talking licensure with Steve.

 

As pointed out previously in this here thread, been there, done that:

That is basically what we had with 3rd edition, Champions (supers), Espionage (spies / action, later absorbed into DI), Fantasy Hero (fantasy), Justice Incorperated (pulp), Danger International (Modern action), and Robot Warriors (giant robots).

 

In lieu of doing that again, I think they might be better off pushing the Hero System Basic Rulebook more.

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

I agree:

 

Basic Hero is the book to use, add in a intro book for the genre designed to go along with Basic Hero, shink wrap them at a minor discount, or sell them at full cost seperatly. Make the intro book have something to entice established hero gamers (a new sub-setting of the primary hero setting for the genre, like a new city or kingdom, or region, etc...)

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Re: The Hero System is bland and over complicated

 

These all use the system of "roll some d10s, get some hits", but that is like saying HERO is "roll 3d6, roll low". When you look at Disciplines, Gifts, Circles? (whatever that Mage thing is), Spells, Those things hunters get that I think are abilities?

...

The only thing they have in common is attributes, willpower, and health levels (but those greatly change). So mechanics wise, they are actually pretty different (besides the d10 hits thing).

 

Oh, I disagree completely. While the mechanics of different kinds of creatures' powers are a bit different, they have enough similarity in how you resolve actions to be able to work well together. I've played and GMed many a mixed-"class" World of Darkness game. While not all of the types intermix extremely well, that's more a function of their storylines and particular disadvantages than system IMO (e.g. Vampires and Werewolves are basically supposed to hate each other, Vampires are out of action half the day's cycle, etc.). There was also tons of attribute, skill, combat, and action mechanics that were identical no matter what type you were playing (while the actual skill lists may have changed slightly between different types, you could always mix and match where needed, and the differences really didn't have any significant affect on playability or how the different types worked together).

 

In the "Old World of Darkness" there was so much similarity that you could shake your head and sigh at how much was reprinted between the different books. In the "New World of Darkness" they tried to collect a lot of the similarity into one common book and leave the rest in the particular creature type books, but they flubbed it BIG TIME IMO (by also D&D/WoTC-ising the system to death).

 

The system could also be used for different genres pretty easily (with some minor tweaks to things like Paradox for Mages and such). I've done this myself. However, as far as how the books are actually printed, I agree that there is definitely and purposefully an expectation that one specific setting and genre are used. So the WoD system definitely is generic, but it definitely does take some mental effort to separate the system from the source material. And it's not quite the generic system Hero is. Way looser in feel.

 

Hmm. Bit of a ramble, but I think it's basically parseable.

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