Discussion of Hero System's "Health" on rpg.net

[Tasha]

Yeah, I have had great success running Urban Fantasy with Hero System. Even using parts of OWoD as a basis for some of the supernatural beings. The thing is that OWoD is less than balanced and only really the original clans are fairly balanced with one another. It also suffered from newer published is the most powerful problem. Where as with Hero I can build Mages, Vampires and Werewolves that can work together and not outpower one another. It's all what you want to bring to the game.

[Nolgroth]

Tangent: But Fate is a system I just don't get. I don't mean its crunchy or complicated but there is something about that just don't click with me like I can't quite wrap my head around it. I do think some of getting system is like that. Some just mentally click more with how some people think than others. 

 

The biggest draw that Fate has for me is a deconstruction of what skills do as opposed to some ephemeral description. The Create an Advantage, Overcome an Obstacle, Attack, or Defend mechanic really sunk in how needlessly complex and empty Hero System skills feel to me. Sure, you have roughly 45 skills with sub-skills in the Knowledge, Profession, and Science categories, but it just comes off as gobblygook to me. I've always tolerated Hero's skill system, as it is part of a larger system that works. I've just never been satisfied with it.

 

In far fewer pages, Fate told me exactly what I could never put my finger on with regards to Hero skills. As for the rest of Fate, I grok it, but I like something a tad bit more defined. Between the two, Hero will get my play time investment. If there is a viable middle ground candidate, I might look very hard at that option. 

[phoenix240]

The biggest draw that Fate has for me is a deconstruction of what skills do as opposed to some ephemeral description. The Create an Advantage, Overcome an Obstacle, Attack, or Defend mechanic really sunk in how needlessly complex and empty Hero System skills feel to me. Sure, you have roughly 45 skills with sub-skills in the Knowledge, Profession, and Science categories, but it just comes off as gobblygook to me. I've always tolerated Hero's skill system, as it is part of a larger system that works. I've just never been satisfied with it.

 

In far fewer pages, Fate told me exactly what I could never put my finger on with regards to Hero skills. As for the rest of Fate, I grok it, but I like something a tad bit more defined. Between the two, Hero will get my play time investment. If there is a viable middle ground candidate, I might look very hard at that option. 

 

To each there own. I love Hero's skill system. For me its one of the best parts of the system and Fate's just left me scratching my head. But that was the point. Somethings are going to click with some people better than others. I don't think its a matter of Objectively Better (or Worse) in most cases. 

[bluesguy]

I wrote a whole document about how to do the old-school gritty, "low" heroic level games in Hero (the HERO System Low Heroic Protocols, right there in my signature).  

 

If I were to ever run a gritty low heroic game I would use your protocols.  Well done!

[Ninja-Bear]

Using prebuilt Powers is nice, and in some places can prove extremely beneficial; but Hero is about creating the Players vision, and even an introductory product should do what it can to present that.

What im advocating for would hopefully do both. Start with premade but also so how you can modify or create your own.

[massey]

Probably because there's a lot of work involved in creating flavor -- and people don't like to needlessly reinvent the wheel.

 

As an example, I feel that Whitewolf does a much better job of modeling vampiric/magic/werewolf roleplay than Hero Systems.  Part of this is that magic tends to entail a lot of loose mechanics (i.e. handwaving) -- i.e. it's imprecise but still within player-agreeable tolerances.  By contrast, Hero System is a very granular/precise system in terms of builds, powers, capabilities, and mechanics -- making it ill-suited to a game that feels like Whitewolf's do ...  unless the players are mostly VPP users (and are proficient at modeling appropriate capabilities) -AND- the GM spends an asinine amount of time pre-building clan templates, discipline tree templates, and special pre-built handlers for things like diablerie and paradox.

 

​Why would a GM spend a LOT of needless time/effort to recreate flavor when there's a system that's already built and balanced for it?  Frankly, if you want to play a game that feels like Whitewolf's do -- it's probably worth the investment in their products to conserve the time/effort of remodeling them...

 

Now if the game doesn't have a specific flavor to it -- meaning it's not intended to feel like VTM, MTA, CoC, D&D, etc ...  then a generic toolbox is probably the way to start.  And as an aside, while Hero Systems is suitably generic, the very names of its powers naturally lend themselves to a Superhero feel ... which is why it's commonly cast in that mold even though it can do/be so much more.  (That's really its origin shining through, even today, I think...)

 

Hero is not going to do World of Darkness better than World of Darkness.  Hero is not going to do D&D better than D&D.  If that specific system is what you want, then that's the system you should use.

 

However, you can pretty easily do a WoD-style game in Hero.  It's not difficult to make vampire and werewolf PCs with weird powers and run them around.  I think the system mechanics would be cleaner and better balanced than the White Wolf system.

 

What a lot of this boils down to, is that there is a difference between the game mechanics and the setting.  Hero has some really good game mechanics, but most of its settings are too generic.  There's a lot of "oh you can make any kind of game you want", but no really compelling existing settings.  It wasn't the D10 game system that made WoD popular, it was the game world.  Hero doesn't have any really great game worlds.  Its settings are all fairly generic.

 

That hurts Hero, as does the desire to leave the "toolkit" open and visible all the time.  If I'm playing a fantasy game, I don't want to be told all the different ways that you could create a magic system.  I just want a cool and unique magic system.  I want somebody to have already done the work, and present it to me in an interesting way.  I don't need to see "costs end, incantations, gestures, requires a skill roll" written on every single spell.

 

 

Instead of:  Fireball -- 7D6 Energy Blast, Armor Piercing, AE: Hex, Incantations, Gestures, IIF expendible material components (easy to obtain), requires a skill roll (-1 per 20 APs) (70 Active Pts, 35 Real Pts)

You could have:  Fireball -- 7D6 normal damage.  Hits all targets within a hex.  Targets get half defense against this attack.  7 Endurance, -3 to skill roll

 

 

If you know the game system well, the first version makes perfect sense to you.  If you don't know it well, it's cluttered and can be confusing.  The second version is much simpler to understand for players who don't know it backwards and forwards.  Besides, once you have settled on a magic system, it's not necessary to see how the gears work.  This is a matter of presentation, which is an area where Hero has been lacking for a long time.

[Surrealone]

What a lot of this boils down to, is that there is a difference between the game mechanics and the setting.  Hero has some really good game mechanics, but most of its settings are too generic.  There's a lot of "oh you can make any kind of game you want", but no really compelling existing settings.  It wasn't the D10 game system that made WoD popular, it was the game world.  Hero doesn't have any really great game worlds.  Its settings are all fairly generic.

 

That hurts Hero, as does the desire to leave the "toolkit" open and visible all the time.  If I'm playing a fantasy game, I don't want to be told all the different ways that you could create a magic system.  I just want a cool and unique magic system.  I want somebody to have already done the work, and present it to me in an interesting way.  I don't need to see "costs end, incantations, gestures, requires a skill roll" written on every single spell.

 

Yup, the flavor/feel is, I believe, the key reason why people use other systems rather than honing a generic one to simulate them.  A GM can certainly create templates and do it all with Hero System, but it's a pile of work to flesh out the backdrop/setting.

 

It's also fair to include mechanics in flavor/feel to some extent -- as playing a d10 game has a different (and simpler, in terms of math) flavor/feel to Hero's 3d6 (and d6/DC) approach ... which is yet again different from old school AD&D's chest-o-dice approach using d2-d100 (which, could all be expressed in d100 if you recall).  I point this out because a common complaint about Hero is how 'mathy' it is.  Personally, I am not bothered by its math, but there IS a lot more of it than in other systems -- specifically due to the precision of the system as compared to others.  i.e. Hero feels precise enough to model something in wargaming fashion ... because it is ... whereas WoD, AD&D, etc. don't feel that way ... because they aren't.  (A round is 10 seconds?  Seriously, 10 second increments versus 1 second segmentation???  No competition in terms of precision... but it comes at the cost of more effort.)

[Chris Goodwin]

What im advocating for would hopefully do both. Start with premade but also so how you can modify or create your own.

 

I'm advocating for enough to get people hooked and learn the system and learn the context of half of the jargon and abbreviations, before they get slammed with the more difficult other half.

[Christopher R Taylor]

That hurts Hero, as does the desire to leave the "toolkit" open and visible all the time.  If I'm playing a fantasy game, I don't want to be told all the different ways that you could create a magic system.  I just want a cool and unique magic system.  I want somebody to have already done the work, and present it to me in an interesting way.  I don't need to see "costs end, incantations, gestures, requires a skill roll" written on every single spell.

 

When I built the Codex, I supplied an optional suggested magic system, along with notes on how to build your own.  The spell write ups are in digest form as a list, then descriptive, but each description starts with a simple description of the spell with stats, a full description, then the crunchy build afterward.  The theory is that new or more casual players can just use the first parts and ignore the builds, while GMs can know the full build.

[Joe Walsh]

"Nerd Rage" can be awful. I've indulged in it more times than I like. 

 

One of the things the 1980 article mentioned was people writing "Cancelled" on convention sign-up sheets for games using systems they didn't like. "I don't like that game, so no one should be able to play it" is such an awesome attitude...

[Chris Goodwin]

One of the things the 1980 article mentioned was people writing "Cancelled" on convention sign-up sheets for games using systems they didn't like. "I don't like that game, so no one should be able to play it" is such an awesome attitude...

 

...Wow.  This actually explains a lot about our hobby.  Nerdwars in fandom letter columns became nerdwars in RPG magazines became nerdwars on Usenet and mailing lists and forums.  

[massey]

I ran a D20 Modern horror game several years ago.  My players really liked it, but they had a tendency to, umm, die a lot.  So the campaigns were always short-lived.  When I ran the game, I had to make a lot of decisions on how the world functioned.  It was necessary for me to understand the hows and whys of the game, so I knew what would happen if the players went off the rails.  Once I decided how something worked, that became an underlying rule of the game.  For instance, spells like "Fireball" don't exist.  Since they don't exist, I don't have to worry about a player learning how to cast it.

 

Some of my decisions on the world:

 

-The supernatural messes with technology.  That's why pictures of Bigfoot are blurry.  That's why your car dies when the campfire killer is chasing you.  Tech just isn't reliable when creatures are around.

-Everything is just a bit worse than in the real world.  Cops are a bit lazier, and a bit more crooked.  People are less likely to help you if you are stranded.  Crime is a little higher.

-Horror movies are not popular.  Other than some of the classics (the Universal monster movies, Jaws, Rosemary's Baby), they generally don't exist.  As movies.

-People prefer to block out supernatural events.  Some deep part of them may believe, but they really don't want to think about that.  It's a coping mechanism.

-Cops and FBI types will believe the "rational" explanation, even if it's fairly far-fetched.  Mauled body + werewolf tracks = "who let those damn teenagers mess around my crime scene?"

-Obvious, public supernatural encounters (a werewolf mauling people downtown) are very rare, and get swept under the rug by people who don't want to think about it.

-The news tends to ignore reports of monsters as hoaxes.

-Monster hunting organizations tend to fail.  The people in them don't live long, but sometimes they leave good notes.

 

On magic:

 

-Magic is evil.  There's very little you can do that won't have very negative consequences.  Spells to imprison bad things are the only things you can probably cast safely.

-There are no casting classes, no level-based magic.  Someone who finds a spellbook can cast anything they want out of it, provided they're willing to take the risks.

 

On the cosmos:

 

-Cthulhian entities existed, but are likely dead, and not really summon-able.  Cults are wasting their time if they're seeking to cause Armageddon.  Of course, even dead, they're dangerous.

-Christian-style demons (like in the Exorcist) are more common.  Of course, they are liars, and will deliberately muddle things for the players.

 

On monsters:

 

-Werewolves, vampires, etc, tend to follow the old Hollywood rules, but sometimes they don't.  Effectively, they have different bloodlines that will determine how they behave.

-"Infectious" monsters normally don't have a desire to go out and form an apocalypse horde.  Most monsters are horrors on a personal level, not extinction threats.

-Monsters are supernatural, not scientific.  A werewolf doesn't have werewolf DNA.  A vampire doesn't have a virus.

-Monsters leave little in the way of scientific evidence.  Security cameras go out, or they don't get a clear view of events, etc.

 

 

 

Now, those are the decisions I made on the game.  You don't have to agree with how my world works, you don't have to set yours up the same way.  But any game setting needs to have some sort of rules on how it operates.  The Hero system doesn't determine any of that stuff for you.  WoD does.  D&D does.  Shadowrun does.  Those are settings, as well as game systems.  I think any Hero setting needs to do the same, even if that comes at the expense of the "do anything you want" aspect of Hero.  In a way, Hero is like a guy who is terrified of commitment.  Eventually he has to make a decision and settle down.

 

If I were doing a Hero version of the above game, it's not necessary to include the entire game system.  I might make 15 the highest stat for players (very normal characteristic maximum), because they aren't supposed to be much more than dead camp counselors.  I probably wouldn't include most Hero Powers.  In fact, it's probably not necessary to include any of them in the basic rules.  When a monster has a Power, the description of how it works is included.  A setting book should be a complete game, but it doesn't need to include the complete Hero system.

[bigdamnhero]

In a way, Hero is like a guy who is terrified of commitment.  Eventually he has to make a decision and settle down.

Heh, well put. I actually like that aspect of the core rules, but you're spot-on that once you get into world-building, you have to make choices. Hero talks about doing that, but the published settings haven't always done a great job of demonstrating how you do that.

 

As for your Urban Fantasy rules, I think they're good and in many cases practically necessary for the genre. Especially the "people/media tend to ignore the supernatural" which is just about the only way to justify why the world still looks like ours on the surface. (A friend and I joke that's how we know we don't actually live the the Dresden Files universe; because in our world large swaths of the population assume supernatural explanations anytime they can't explain something.)

[Tasha]

Hero is not going to do World of Darkness better than World of Darkness.  Hero is not going to do D&D better than D&D.  If that specific system is what you want, then that's the system you should use.

 

However, you can pretty easily do a WoD-style game in Hero.  It's not difficult to make vampire and werewolf PCs with weird powers and run them around.  I think the system mechanics would be cleaner and better balanced than the White Wolf system.

 

What a lot of this boils down to, is that there is a difference between the game mechanics and the setting.  Hero has some really good game mechanics, but most of its settings are too generic.  There's a lot of "oh you can make any kind of game you want", but no really compelling existing settings.  It wasn't the D10 game system that made WoD popular, it was the game world.  Hero doesn't have any really great game worlds.  Its settings are all fairly generic.

 

That hurts Hero, as does the desire to leave the "toolkit" open and visible all the time.  If I'm playing a fantasy game, I don't want to be told all the different ways that you could create a magic system.  I just want a cool and unique magic system.  I want somebody to have already done the work, and present it to me in an interesting way.  I don't need to see "costs end, incantations, gestures, requires a skill roll" written on every single spell.

 

 

Instead of:  Fireball -- 7D6 Energy Blast, Armor Piercing, AE: Hex, Incantations, Gestures, IIF expendible material components (easy to obtain), requires a skill roll (-1 per 20 APs) (70 Active Pts, 35 Real Pts)

You could have:  Fireball -- 7D6 normal damage.  Hits all targets within a hex.  Targets get half defense against this attack.  7 Endurance, -3 to skill roll

 

 

If you know the game system well, the first version makes perfect sense to you.  If you don't know it well, it's cluttered and can be confusing.  The second version is much simpler to understand for players who don't know it backwards and forwards.  Besides, once you have settled on a magic system, it's not necessary to see how the gears work.  This is a matter of presentation, which is an area where Hero has been lacking for a long time.

 

You may have hit on why Champions is the game that people think of. There have been decent Champions universes. The characters from those Champions worlds have always been fun and compelling.

 

 

[Chris Goodwin]

Now, those are the decisions I made on the game.  You don't have to agree with how my world works, you don't have to set yours up the same way.  But any game setting needs to have some sort of rules on how it operates.  The Hero system doesn't determine any of that stuff for you.  WoD does.  D&D does.  Shadowrun does.  Those are settings, as well as game systems.  I think any Hero setting needs to do the same, even if that comes at the expense of the "do anything you want" aspect of Hero.  In a way, Hero is like a guy who is terrified of commitment.  Eventually he has to make a decision and settle down.

 

If I were doing a Hero version of the above game, it's not necessary to include the entire game system.  I might make 15 the highest stat for players (very normal characteristic maximum), because they aren't supposed to be much more than dead camp counselors.  I probably wouldn't include most Hero Powers.  In fact, it's probably not necessary to include any of them in the basic rules.  When a monster has a Power, the description of how it works is included.  A setting book should be a complete game, but it doesn't need to include the complete Hero system.

 

The setting for Danger International was more or less the TV version of the real world, circa 1986.  Miami Vice, Magnum PI, MacGyver, Airwolf, maybe the A-Team.  People with skills and guns.  It was open to supernatural, high-tech, and weirdness, but it essentially said use the powers from Champions or Fantasy Hero or Justice Inc. if you want that stuff.  Point range would be approximately 50+50 up to 75+75 in 5e scale; most of our games used 100 points as a base, but the Disadvantage values were halved, so 75+75 would about hit it. 

[zslane]

I kind of feel that the World of Darkness is a pretty good example of how mechanics play an important role in promulgating the feel of the campaign setting. The ill-fated GURPS Vampire books represent a valuable lesson on why generic systems with their own play bias don't always fit a highly specific campaign setting. I read through that book and immediately recognized it was a failure of translation. For instance, there is no way that the Ventrue would have been the clan that they were supposed to be in the WoD if their powers didn't work as they do in the Storyteller System. GURPS Vampire put Skill Rolls on every vampiric power, which meant Ventrue Princes could actually fail to activate their Presence disciplines. Doh!

 

Anyway, my point is that any time you intend to build a campaign setting with a very specific feel, you had better be very clear on how your chosen system mechanics are going to support that feel. It isn't just a matter of labeling spells to eliminate the generic power names, or creating race and career templates that conform to the setting. It is also making sure that things like there being no absolute effects won't undermine some important element of the world's physics (e.g., perhaps certain divine relics never miss their target, even on a to-hit roll of 18), or making sure that dragons can somehow claw/claw/bite/tailstomp four different targets in a single Phase because that's what dragons do in the game world. Etc.

 

A generic system is great, but it takes pretty expert hands to craft it around a rich campaign setting and its more unusual aspects without introducing too much extra complexity or violating everyone's existing understanding of the generic system's core mechanics.

[massey]

I agree on most of that. Generic systems have to work hard to make sure they translate things properly. I don't know the first thing about the GURPS system, but I have seen a lot of failed conversions out there. Trying to mimic game mechanics too precisely, or not precisely enough, can result in a really poor translation.

 

I can just imagine people trying to make a relationship between Storyteller dots and active points in a power. That would really not work well at all. There are different underlying assumptions in the game systems.

[phoenix240]

When it comes to translating abilities from another system into Hero it takes some understanding of the difference between Hero mechanics and other home system are going to impact how the ability functions. "Claw/Claw/Bite" style attack patterns takes place over turns that, in Hero, represent more than one phase phase so are probably better represented in Hero as additional Speed, perhaps only to attack or assumed to be part of the creature's base Speed. The important part (IMO) is translating "This beast is a deadly opponent with multiple ways of inflicting lethal damage)" then literally translating how it functions in it home system. 

 

IOW, its possible to be too literal when translating from one system another. If something can attack 4 times a round in its home system (where rounds are maybe 6-12 seconds long) might not be best shown by giving it the ability to act 4 times a Phase in Hero System. That's something books like Fantasy Hero should cover for their genres. I was under the impression that various "X" Hero books were pretty good sellers in their own right and they generally seemed well received though they weren't setting books though some contained some suggested setting. 

 

Is the idea to split that up more? 

[phoenix240]

One of the things the 1980 article mentioned was people writing "Cancelled" on convention sign-up sheets for games using systems they didn't like. "I don't like that game, so no one should be able to play it" is such an awesome attitude...

 

And unfortunately its quite common IME. Another is "I love cupcakes and I hate brownies. Why aren't these brownies!?" complaints demanding that something change completely to appease your particular tastes. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Meh, that's what multiple power attacks are for.

[zslane]

I was using the failed translation of the WoD into the realm of GURPS mechanics only to illustrate a point: that mechanics and setting are sometimes closely tied together, and that one can not always easily separate the two the way a generic system expects to be able to most of the time.

 

Forget about translation from another system for a moment: imagine a literary source, or maybe even a campaign setting entirely of one's own invention, where ancient dragons can attack four times in the time it takes any other species to attack only once (where some species could have a SPD of 4, in which case even a SPD of 12 for our dragon isn't enough). In this case it isn't a matter of matching attacks/second or attacks/minute from some other system. It is a conceptual benchmark that is being targeted. Sometimes a system's mechanics don't support every concept easily right out of the box. When that happens you have a choice.

 

You either hack the game system to accomodate the concept, or you alter your campaign setting to only allow that which the mechanics natively support. Depending on the setting and the feel you are going for, the latter can be pretty disastrous as GURPS Vampire demonstrated. That wasn't a failure of translating mechanics per se, but a failure to realize how vampiric disciplines worked in the World of Darkness and to find a way of preserving those concepts using the GURPS mechanics.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Call of Cthulhu is another game that doesn't translate well into other systems.  You can simulate it with Hero but it doesn't feel the same as just using CoC.

[phoenix240]

It matters but its highly subjective, IMO. The WoD players that tried Hero versions of their character better than the original as they felt the played more like imagined vampires and were wolves should without the Storyteller-isms. The dragon that attacks multiple times in the time in space of time it takes most being to attack ones would have high dex, high spd and possibly other abilities (area of effect, autofire, linked attacks of levels eith Multi Attack to make them more effective) to represent that in Hero. 

 

But, no, nothing is going to be perfect for everybody and everything. 

[Tasha]

I was using the failed translation of the WoD into the realm of GURPS mechanics only to illustrate a point: that mechanics and setting are sometimes closely tied together, and that one can not always easily separate the two the way a generic system expects to be able to most of the time.

 

Forget about translation from another system for a moment: imagine a literary source, or maybe even a campaign setting entirely of one's own invention, where ancient dragons can attack four times in the time it takes any other species to attack only once (where some species could have a SPD of 4, in which case even a SPD of 12 for our dragon isn't enough). In this case it isn't a matter of matching attacks/second or attacks/minute from some other system. It is a conceptual benchmark that is being targeted. Sometimes a system's mechanics don't support every concept easily right out of the box. When that happens you have a choice.

 

You either hack the game system to accomodate the concept, or you alter your campaign setting to only allow that which the mechanics natively support. Depending on the setting and the feel you are going for, the latter can be pretty disastrous as GURPS Vampire demonstrated. That wasn't a failure of translating mechanics per se, but a failure to realize how vampiric disciplines worked in the World of Darkness and to find a way of preserving those concepts using the GURPS mechanics.

 

All that proves is something that I have always known. GURPS is great for super gritty realistic games, but really falls apart for games that are outside that kind of feel. Hero would do a much better job of simulating OWoD than GURPS. Also, I thought that even the GURPS community thought that the GURPS vampire and Werewolf was not executed well. You are just showing that bad writing and an inability to understand both rule systems is as much to blame than a failing of a system.

 

IMHO If you want to argue feel coming from one system to another. D&D in direct conversion tends to have real issues when ported to other systems like Hero, Savage Worlds and GURPS. All of those systems look at the effects and how they balance against one another for 'power'. D&D seemingly was decided by fiat and seat of the pants as to how powerful certain abilities were vs others. The classics are AD&D Magic Missle and all versions of the Sleep spell. (OD&D Magic Missle required an attack roll to hit). Sleep can put over a dozen opponents to sleep, leaving them open to having their throats slit by enterprising PCs. Magic Missile is hard to do in any system that doesn't allow GM/Rules fiat for what hits. So conversions of those two to hero will always be different.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Games like World of Darkness take hand waving to Kermit the Frog introducing the Muppet Show levels of excess.  Any "storyteller" system is basically leaving the game in the hands of the most abusive, munchkinny type.  It can work if everyone is a fang-packing super deep role player, but if someone likes to crunch numbers and find advantages, they'll dominate the game.  Not my favorite style of rules.  Hero dampens that down by making things more codified and precise, which is a better end result, and role playing is wholly distinct from the ruleset.