bigbywolfe Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 For some time now I’ve wanted to introduce my group to Hero System, but a combination of a long running campaign and lack of planning time on my part has meant I have not yet had an opportunity. I want to get something planned so next time we are missing a player or need a filler game I can be ready to run. My group plays a lot of “rules light” games like Savage Worlds, Cinematic Unisystem, and Cortex among others, so I want to ease them into Hero. My plan was to run a one or two shot adventure like one might run a convention game for newbies. Minimal optional rules, so no Hit Locations, Disabling, or Bleeding, et cetera. No Optional Combat Maneuvers unless the player specifically asks to do something like Choke. Probably even ignore tracking Endurance to minimize bookkeeping. I have very little GMing experience and while discussing my concerns, with a more experienced GM, for running Hero for five or six players it was suggested that instead of running a Champions game (my initial plan) I run Dark Champions or some other Heroic Level game. This would allow me to focus on teaching them the system, feature the utility of the Skills rules, and basically not have to deal with explaining five different sets of Powers for supers on top of teaching them everything else. I thought this was an excellent suggestion. However, I am utterly blanking on what sort of adventure to run. That’s the part I need help with. Here are the criteria I am looking for. A Standard Heroic level scenario that can be played in two 3 ½ to 4 ½ hour sessions. Modern (or near future) setting so I don’t have to introduce them to an entire world/setting on top of the new system. I’d like to avoid anything supernatural since our group has played a lot of urban fantasy lately (though I suppose not overt/“weird conspiracy” type supernatural might be alright). The easiest thing might be a special forces group with a grab the McGuffin type scenario, but one of our last campaigns was a Savage World Strike Force 7 game (G.I. Joe with the serial numbers scratched off and a bit more lethal) so I’d like to avoid straight military as well. So, any suggestions? Genre, scenario, characters, really I’m looking for anything and everything. If I can get even a basic idea that strikes my fancy I’m sure I can run with it and flesh it out myself, but I am currently at a loss. What’s the GM equivalent to “writer’s block”? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Folded Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Think "The A-Team", and adjust the darkness according to your wishes. Someone's in trouble, contacts the heroes for help, and adventure ensues. For plot specifics, watch any episode of any TV show that follows this basic formula. For character archetypes you have: 1) The Leader, based around Tactics, Deduction, INT and so forth 2) The Technician - lots of Mechanics and related skills 3) The Pilot - can drive anything with wheels, wings or tracks 4) The Bruiser - Combat Specialist, melee, ranged, or both, could be more than one of these 5) The Face - Interaction Specialist, high PRE, Conversation, Persuasion, Charm, et cetera Everyone should have a few Contacts in their field, and the Face should have lots of them. Since it's not intended to be an ongoing campaign, you can set the gear available as you like, and not worry too much about the specific cost. Give them a vehicle, a small aresenal and bad guys to shoot at. Also remember that success on their part may have a significant impact on whether or not they like the system, so don't be afraid to make the first couple of encounters rollovers for the PCs. Make the final encounter challenging, but not overly so, and they'll have a sense of satisfaction that will help you argue for more play in Hero System. Good Luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manic Typist Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Hm, how about some rough around the edges types who are called in by some beloved maternal figure from their past to rescue her granddaughter from some evil criminal types. You could set it in Chinatown, Little Italy, whatever. So they have skills for violence, but are NOT military. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… They could be freelancers. Maybe a Privat detective and some hired muscle searching for the girl? Not being militatry means they always need to know what they could get away with (i.e. is mook X going to call the police or is he part of a larger organisation?) I don't know how you played this "GI joe with serial numbers filed off", but maybe a unit that has free choice of how to deal with it's target. There might be an official leader, but mostly they do the stuff with group consensus and some real consequences if they fail (destroy battery X, or the assault force will get heavy losses from it). What might work for the motivation, can be a "go to point X to survive". The battlestar Galactica RPG had an introduction adventure in that tone (get to a very special ship during the initial attack). I think traveller had something similar (escape a mining base on self descturct and beat the traitor who rigged it). Zombie Apokalypses are great for this and can include non-shooting action. Make certain they either can include Complications with little problems and/or use less than standart complication points. Game mechanical complication may be better or not (depending on how well you can keep track of them). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Democracy Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… I found an ideal genre to draw people in was Pulp. It has the opportunity to do bog standard hero level characters but have room for exotic material in the shadows of the game. people love two-fisted crime-fighters, you have the whole of Doc Savage, The Shadow and even Indiana Jones to draw on for stuff and some of the old Adventurers Clubs have some decent adventures in them. I found the Hawkes Phantom in Adventurers Club #5 to be an excellent introductory adventure actually. My big thing is customising the character sheet to keep the numbers visible to the minimum required. Once they are playing and wanting to change things you can lift the hood and let them peer inside.... Doc PS: when people are learning a new system the adventure needs to be broad - subtleties get easily lost when they are still struggling to work out their OCV from their PD and SPD. A simple bank robbery with a twist can work pretty well. Use Villainy Amok to choose a DIY adventure and then twist it with something. And remember it is a one-off with all of the disposability that that entails.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reality Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… More generally, I use the Snowflake method for devising my campaigns (google "snowflake method" for details). Basically, follow the following steps for devising your adventure: 1) Write a one sentence summary of your adventure's plot in the following format: "A character or characters in a setting encounter a disaster, and must accomplish a goal or face a dire consequence." 2) Expand the above sentence into four sentences; three disasters (each building on the last) and an ending. 3) Expand each of the above four sentences into a paragraph contains four sentences. 4) Repeat step three for each of the above sixteen sentnces. 5) Do a scene-by-scene breakdown based on the paragraphs you wrote in step four. 6) Write the adventure, adding in all game elements & character sheets. You can flesh out your characters between steps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christopher Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Champions 6E 154ff has the "Champions Instant Plot Generator". While you said "no supers", I think that one is useable regardless of genre. especially the "Events of the Story"-table can be universal... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbywolfe Posted October 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Thanks everyone. Longer response and more thoughts when I'm on an actual computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LordGhee Posted October 18, 2011 Report Share Posted October 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… I like asking the player who was in the background "who do you want to be?" I have gotten as answers Robbing Hood: a Fantasy Europe game proceeded 2 years with encounters with Richard the Lionheart and all his Family, a demon, vampire, Knights templar, Irish bards and Faries. A god: he got to be son of Hercules in a age of heros campian of Mythic greece (that book came out during the campain) for 2 years A dective: the other players heard this and started to design charaters to play a pulp game resulted for 2 years Matthew Smith of Mars: Flying Pirate ships, aliens with many arms and plots followed. A Jedi: Three games of 6 weeks over three summers that where outstanding, THE GATHERING STORM, THE JEDI WAY, THE EMPIRE RISES. A Musketeer: last summer movie game of 6 weeks:The Founding of the Musketeers and the answer Ku Fu movie (okay but what kind. . . ) Kung Fu movie with magic the group stated as they reached for the rules, and created Kung Fu heros, reseach of movies and china quickly followed. I have told them design a FBI Agent and they must have this package. game followed the FBI vs red cape, hit chick and the mob. I have told them give me some mercenaries from 1964 (ex WWII) for a game The Heart is Darkest in Africa. this game was stated to be a Dark Champions Grene and you all are Mercenary. It was also different in that everyone bought followers because they had to sleep and need some one to wacht over them. The British sargent with his two Thompson SMG Gunners , the Austrlain sniper with spotter and radio man, the German tanker with panzer and crew ("Mien Panzer do not scrath it- he bought a m3 scout car the most powerful armour in the congo.") the Ducth corpal with Mortor Section and the American deserter with his high tech M-60 (he had light sleep). surprisingly no one killed a player ( 50 million in diamonds on the line lots of trying). So ask them hopefully one will say I want to be a cowboy and the orthers will chime in hey I can be an Indian, a gambler ect. Lord Ghee Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gojira Posted October 19, 2011 Report Share Posted October 19, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… My first thought was that you should ask the players. This is a big advantage of Hero, it does many types of genres well. There's an opportunity here to let your players experience some new types of games. I found an ideal genre to draw people in was Pulp. It has the opportunity to do bog standard hero level characters but have room for exotic material in the shadows of the game. This was my second thought. Especially if you are having writers' block, pulp has several pulp adventure PDFs that will help you out. I'd recommend The Voodoo Cross, as the MacGuffin could easily be moved to any campaign city. Pulp can be run as a shooting, fist-swinging adventure, but it could also be a Who-Dunnit, where the characters spend time investigating a single location over a few days, or feature exotic locales, or weird science, or almost anything really. Besides Pulp and street level heroes, there's Fantasy. A low level fantasy campaign would allow you to showcase skills and character development, much like Dark Champions. An off shoot of fantasy, Urban Fantasy, had a fun genre book. Urban Fantasy has four mini settings, which might help with your writers' block. Then there's wilder stuff like Post Apocalypse. That book has several mini settings, six total I think, including a Gamma World homage that looked like a lot of fun. Pitch some ideas to your players, see what interests them. Then try to work out a setting and an initial adventure. If you have a more experienced GM handy, he (or she) could be an invaluable resource for polishing the result. Don't forget to use them if you can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsatow Posted October 20, 2011 Report Share Posted October 20, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… I agree about doing a simpler heroic game and while I like pulp not as many people are into it (don't see why though). Another genre would be the kung-fu movie treatment. A good gamer one is Bloodsport with the Kumite tourney. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbywolfe Posted December 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 17, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Wow, didn't mean to leave this thread for so long. Thanks again for all the advice and tips everyone. Well, our current long running game is on hiatus as finals approach for the college students in the group and people are busy with holiday stuff, so we are basically running filler games until February when we will begin the next "season" of our main campaign. I am slotted to run the last couple weeks in January. I took some of the advice offered above and talked to the group more. The most enthusiasm was for a "lost world/journey to the center of the earth" jungle adventure type pulp game. Further discussion revealed there seemed to be more interest in a turn of the century/Victorian era for time period. Now I don’t think I could adequately run an urban/gas lamp Victorian game, but for a jungle exploration/lost world type game I don’t think setting it around 1900 instead of 1920s-30s will make much difference other than available equipment, so I’m going to go with it. I’ll be posting the basic outline I’m thinking of and probably ask for yet more advise tonight when I’m a little more awake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ninja-Bear Posted December 17, 2011 Report Share Posted December 17, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Bigbywolfe check out in the free stuff link on the Hero main page and scoll down to find Hero System Genre by Genre. It lists them all. Plus you can print of just the Pulp section to hand out to players, and it even has a pregenerated character Murdock (Don't know why but for 5thed rev, you get referenced to Randal Irons) who is and explorer and it has an explorer template. I believe all the characters are still for 5th ed. Hope that helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bolon Posted December 18, 2011 Report Share Posted December 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Personally, Hero works well for Champions with maybe lower level super-heroes as more creative but since you don't want to bog them down, you can do almost anything that would work. If you don't like the A-Team situation, try Burn Notice. A friend actually created a Star Wars with Hero because it was easier to handle all the different Jedi powers in the game. He used a template with all powers on it via Hero Creator and then just added the skills desired and removed what they didn't have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gojira Posted December 18, 2011 Report Share Posted December 18, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… I took some of the advice offered above and talked to the group more. The most enthusiasm was for a "lost world/journey to the center of the earth" jungle adventure type pulp game. Inner Earth is a short PDF adventure for Pulp Hero, it does the "center of the Earth" thing, although it's a single adventure and not a full treatment. https://www.herogames.com/viewItem.htm?itemID=201053 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Waters Posted December 20, 2011 Report Share Posted December 20, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… You can not give the impression that Hero is a complicated system that you are simplifying for your players because: a) they will not think they are actually playing Hero, not really, and it isn't a complicated system Hero is a rich (for which you could read 'complex') character generation system attached to a straightforward set of rules that work very well for 'Heroic' gaming. The most important thing about a pickup game is that you have pre-generated characters and that you have really thought about them. Most of the problems that groups encounter with the game could have been avoided with intelligent character design. For example, I tend to play superhero games and I tend to use a 'full normal' rule set i.e. Endurance and such included, but optional rules like bleeding and hit locations not included. If you are playing with a new group and you do not want to bother with the Endurance rules book keeping, but you may want to introduce the idea of Endurance later on (especially as you think that you might also want to use the pushing rules and they do not work so well without Endurance), build the characters with '0 END' on all their powers and their basic Strength and Running. The Endurance rules are still there, you just don't need to bother with them, as no one is actually using END. Also think (I'm assuming that this is going to be a somewhat combat oriented game), you want to think about defence and Stun and such so that combats are snappy without being too random. Work out where you want to be and it becomes obvious where you should start Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigbywolfe Posted December 24, 2011 Author Report Share Posted December 24, 2011 Re: Inexperienced GM introducing group to Hero and having writer’s block… Well, "later tonight" turned into "next week" as far as my posting went. Work sucks and being sick is worse...long week. Anyway, I started a thread going into more game specifics in the Pulp forum, both to possibly attracted more people/opinions, and to not clutter the General board with my discussion. Thanks again to everyone who has commented so far. Any advice, comments, et cetera, are of course still welcome. Here's the thread: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/88029-Victorian-quot-lost-world-quot-Hero-System-introduction?p=2260019#post2260019 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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