New to Fantasy Hero: seeking recommendations

[tikiman]

Hello, I have played Hero for a few genres but have never played/owned/used Fantasy Hero. I do not like D&D and class/level straitjackets and am thinking Hero may be a good alternative as many players enjoy the fantasy genre. I don't own 6th ed. Hero but have every other version, but prefer 4th and could probably do 5th if need be. Any ideas what material would be good for someone new to fantasy via Hero? Note: not interested in any published settings, just basic stuff to help get into the game, as I make my own from scratch with a pinch of whole cloth.

[Ndreare]

So let me ask you a couple of questions? Because these answers will greatly influence what is recommended.

 

What elements are you looking for in your fantasy hero game? Saying not D&D  is not enough information.

 

Are you looking for non-gaming related stuff? if so I recommend the Gentlemen Bastards, and Mistborn that will allow you to see the two most extreme forms of fantasy.

 

For gaming related as a default I would say Hero System and Fantasy Hero you should be good for developing your setting. But the following questions can help a lot. Also a premade setting can help give you ideas and baselines to glean from.

 

Do you want ubiquitous magic?

 

Are PC's allowed access to magic?

 

Do you have a setting in mind?

 

What level of challenge are you thinking for the players, fighting bandits on the road or fighting evil wizards bent on world destruction?

 

Does character growth matter? If you plan to run 10 sessions then growth will be very limited in any game, but if you plan to run for a year then it may be a good idea to start low and go up.

[tikiman]

Are you looking for non-gaming related stuff? if so I recommend the Gentlemen Bastards, and Mistborn that will allow you to see the two most extreme forms of fantasy.

 

No idea what those are. Novels? Only seeking game materials/aids.

 

Do you want ubiquitous magic?

 

No. Magic is rare, seldom understood, wonderful and frightening.

 

Are PC's allowed access to magic?

 

Yes. But only one would be allowed to be an actual wizard. Anyone else might learn a trick or two given time and experience.

 

Do you have a setting in mind?

 

Harryhausen Sinbad mixed with Conan, no elves/dwarves/hobbits, vaguely Middle Eastern locale, human-centric and occasional monsters. Most enemies are your fellow man. GURPS Arabian Nights is on hand for some of the background/setting.

 

What level of challenge are you thinking for the players, fighting bandits on the road or fighting evil wizards bent on world destruction?

 

All of the above as they gain in influence and power and if they are interested in it.

 

Does character growth matter? If you plan to run 10 sessions then growth will be very limited in any game, but if you plan to run for a year then it may be a good idea to start low and go up.

 

PCs start just a cut or two above the man in the street and progress from there. No "super heroes" like Aragorn and Legolas in the LOTR movies. A beginning party of four should think twice before taking on a dozen bandits.

[L. Marcus]

The Bestiaries are very handy -- for 5th Ed, there's the Bestiary (of course); Monsters, Minions, & Marauders; and Mike Surbrook's two-parter, the Asian Bestiary. The last one is very good for springing unusual surprises on your PCs.

[Christopher R Taylor]

You'll need a magic system, if you're going to have any magic, and I humbly suggest my Fantasy Codex for that

[Ndreare]

For what you are describing i would suggest getting the 5th edition book Valdorian Age. It will make a great starting point. I would also recommend the 6th edition Bestiary it has the combined material of three fifth edition books and conversion to the 5th edition can be done on a whim.

 

Sounds like you want the players to be 50+50 point characters. That will allow them to be a cut above the rest, but not able to get mouthy when outnumbered by guards.  

[NuSoardGraphite]

Yeah, sounds like valdorian age would be a good resource for you. sword and sorcery setting that may have some pregenerated stuff you can make use of that would likely make your life easier, even if you dont end up using the setting itself.

[tikiman]

You'll need a magic system, if you're going to have any magic, and I humbly suggest my Fantasy Codex for that

Is that a book or something online? I see there's something called Fantasy Hero Compendium, anybody know what that is?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Its a pdf you can buy from Hero Games in the catalog, almost 1000 spells and a magic system plus tips on building spells and using magic in your system and more.  The Compendiums were additional helpful information and spells for 4th edition Fantasy Hero (I wrote a few spells for that too).  Some good stuff in it, but the latest edition should have all you need in terms of ideas and information.  Of you could wait a bit for Fantasy Hero Complete, should be out some time late this year.  It will have a settting, spells, items, and all you need to run a FH game.

 

if you need adventures I have a few on my website, they're built for 5th edition but they're free.

[bluesguy]

I used the Valdorian Age campaign setting for 3 years.  It is an excellent setting.    Monsters - very rare.  Magic - rare & dangerous.  It is an excellent product sold by Hero Games.

 

Here would be my suggestions:

• If you can wait, get the Fantasy Hero Complete book.  It is a Kickstarter project that is suppose to finish at the end of the year.  The product will be sold here when it is done.
• If you can not wait, then get a copy of Fantasy Hero.  It has what you need to start your game.  Between Fantasy Hero and the Valdorian Age you would be set.
• Bestiary + Grimore I or Chris Taylors Fantasy Codex for spells.  Again all items you can buy from Hero Games.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I recommend both the Grimoire and my book, there's very little crossover and it gives you a mountain o' magic

[Markdoc]

Actually, before looking at gaming books, I'd think about what kind of game you want to run. What's the background? What's the overall feel you want? Is dungeon-crawling and monster-killing a major part of the game? Or is it rogues and intrigue? Or exploration and politics? From that we can recommend what would be helpful.

 

Cheers, Mark

[L. Marcus]

Actually, before looking at gaming books, I'd think about what kind of game you want to run. What's the background? What's the overall feel you want? Is dungeon-crawling and monster-killing a major part of the game? Or is it rogues and intrigue? Or exploration and politics? From that we can recommend what would be helpful.

 

Cheers, Mark

See post #3.

[BhelliomRahl]

In my opinion the main books you want is Fantasy Hero (excluding Core Book), the 6th Edition PDF is available from the Hero Store.  Noble Knight might still have a 4/5/6th edition of Fantasy Hero.  The book contains a number of Templates/Packages for race, profession and culture/region.  If you cannot find what you want it a good starting point.

 

The 6th Edition Book contains examples on about 15 Magic Systems and techniques for creating a balanced system.  Again it has some nice examples which you can use or modify as required.

 

It also has suggestions on developing civilizations; history, culture, economics, government/politics and religion.

 

If you are planning any large scale battles it also presents a system for Mass Combat.

 

The Bestiary, Equipment Guide and Spell Grimoire (all editions) are excellent books for saving time, you do not need them you can create everything yourself but the simple fact is why spent weeks on this when someone has already done the work for you.

[Markdoc]

See post #3.

Yeah, I was kind of asking for more detail. "Harryhausen Sinbad mixed with Conan" sounds like a game I'd play in a heartbeat, but that mixed with GURPS/Arabian nights actually sounds kind of high fantasy, with plenty of monsters, which to me doesn't gibe well with "Magic is rare, seldom understood, wonderful and frightening". 

 

You could - easily - put those together, but the devil, as always is in the details.  I ran a one-off game for some friends years ago, and since I wanted high magic, but didn't want to change the background (Pseudo-Byzantium/Levant) I wanted to keep it rare. Solution? Inspired by the evil sorceror in Harryhausen's "Golden Voyage" movie I required spellcasting to use BOD ("life-force", in-game) instead of END. That made magic a rare and precious commodity: potentially extremely powerful but also not something you'd call on unless you really had to, since you harmed yourself, each time you cast a spell.

 

But in some ways, that's an extreme solution, since it really hampers PC sorcerors. It was fine for a one-off, and I'd happily run a whole campaign like that, but you'd need player buy-in upfront. It certainly would not be suitable for many games. So having a better idea of what the OP wants would help us make suggestions. If as written "Most enemies are your fellow man" then the bestiary is actually going to be of relatively little use (you'd get all the monsters you need in Fantasy Hero) - Monsters, Minions, & Marauders or Valdorian Age would be a far better buy. If magic really is rare, the published grimoire books - which tend to contain a lot of high-active point spells - would not be much use either.

 

cheers, Mark

[Christopher R Taylor]

Well in the Sindbad movies and Conan books there were plenty of monsters but few people knew or could use magic.  So you'd want a low magic campaign with freaky creatures and maybe a few very rare magic items with limited uses or heavy drawbacks.  If that's what you're after a bestiary or two, and a very simple magic system is fine.

[drunkonduty]

I also like the magic system as outlined in Valdorian Age. It's all about owing favours to various spirits, godlings and demons. You can keep it simple, as it is outlined in the book, and just make it a tally of points. As the tally goes up you owe bigger and nastier favours to the powers that be. By performing favours you lower the tally. You can make it more complex by keeping a list of separate beings to whom the sorcerer owes favours and even letting the spirits play politics among themselves.

[shuddemell]

You'll need a magic system, if you're going to have any magic, and I humbly suggest my Fantasy Codex for that

I do as well, it would be an excellent way to get a magic system up and running in no time.

[Markdoc]

I also like the magic system as outlined in Valdorian Age. It's all about owing favours to various spirits, godlings and demons. You can keep it simple, as it is outlined in the book, and just make it a tally of points. As the tally goes up you owe bigger and nastier favours to the powers that be. By performing favours you lower the tally. You can make it more complex by keeping a list of separate beings to whom the sorcerer owes favours and even letting the spirits play politics among themselves.

 

I used a variation on this in my last campaign: I wanted one school of magic to be a risky affair, so I adapted this idea. The mechanism was that magicians of this school of magic chose a "patron" (and sometimes several patrons) - otherworldly beings who could teach spells, often quite powerful spells. All these spells required a skill roll - if the roll was failed, that triggered a side effect (specifically a transform). The transform slowly twisted the caster, either physically or mentally. The transform could be healed by several routes. Performing a service for your patron was one way. You could also persuade/trick someone into accepting your psychic debt ("Scapegoating"). This made mages of this school powerful but feared: they often performed strange irrational actions, they had converse with creatures from beyond the veil, they often had odd or even horrifying mutations or quirks, etc.

 

It worked rather well.

 

cheers, Mark

[drunkonduty]

Sounds good, Markdoc.

 

I've tried a couple of times to get a campaign using the Valdorian Age magic system up and running but a lack of player buy-in has made them fizzle out. Shame, it'd be a lot of fun. Especially after the sorcerers have had time to build up uninteresting array of debts. 

[bluesguy]

Sounds good, Markdoc.

 

I've tried a couple of times to get a campaign using the Valdorian Age magic system up and running but a lack of player buy-in has made them fizzle out. Shame, it'd be a lot of fun. Especially after the sorcerers have had time to build up uninteresting array of debts. 

Why did they object?

[drunkonduty]

Oh I think it was a lot of things about the style of the game I was trying to run.

 

Most of the players just wanted to play dungeon crawling DnD where ay even vaguely suspicious NPC could be killed with impunity. True murder hobo style.

 

I wanted to run a role play heavy game with lots of intrigue, politics and evil lurking in the shadows. I called it  "Jane Austen's Cthulu." I was pretty pissed off; I had been very clear about the style of game I wanted to run from the get go.

 

Ah well. I might try to run it again when one of my current campaigns comes to an end.

[bluesguy]

Most of the players just wanted to play dungeon crawling DnD where ay even vaguely suspicious NPC could be killed with impunity. True murder hobo style.

 

 

Well let them murder the wrong NPC.  Said NPC should have some very powerful friends who capture the PCs at a later date (many sessions later).  They should be tried, found guilty, and then executed.

 

Then everyone can begin to create a new character.

[drunkonduty]

I did something like this. The PCs decided to get revenge* on a local gang boss by attacking him in his home above the pub in which his gang hung out. They got away with it but one of them (the main instigator) damn near died doing it. Since the campaign had no magical healing his character was going to be bed-ridden for about 2 weeks (and barely mobile for another month.) Meanwhile events in the game continued to happen. I gave the player the option of playing an NPC and giving me a hand with the game but he decided whining and having a hissy fit are the more mature options.

 

*I can only assume the thing they wanted revenge for was the gang boss's refusal to be killed in a bar brawl the PCs had started. A bar brawl they only survived because the gang boss was reluctant to kill a priest.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The upcoming Fantasy Hero Complete will have a magic system built in that you could try as well.