What makes Hero System, Hero System?

[Joe Walsh]

What are the essential qualities, as you see them, of Hero System?

 

And, what makes Hero System unique?

 

I have my own answers, but I'd like to hear what you think.

[Nolgroth]

The Power Construction system is the heart 'n' soul of Hero.

 

Everything else is just gravy.

 

 

EDIT: I'm also going to go out on a limb and say "Champions" is what makes Hero System, Hero System. There have been some valiant attempts to downscale Hero from the Superheroic to the Heroic, but the game's superheroic legacy is always lurking there.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Point buy, complications, constructing abilities from the ground up with modifiers and powers, the speed system, defenses rather than avoidance, and the OCV/DCV conflict

[Nolgroth]

Agreed with the Speed system. That is also a very uniquely Hero thing, in my experience with RPGs.

[Vanguard]

EDIT: I'm also going to go out on a limb and say "Champions" is what makes Hero System, Hero System. There have been some valiant attempts to downscale Hero from the Superheroic to the Heroic, but the game's superheroic legacy is always lurking there.

 

Which, when it comes right down to it, is my biggest complaint about the Hero System.

 

No matter what genre you try to play, the Superheroic roots of the game is always there, lurking in the shadows.

 

So it feels as if the system only seems to function properly if you're playing Superheroic.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: HERO being only for Champions

I love superheroes and comic books but I also love playing HERO with heroic level characters. I like all the high crunch dials turned up to the max which is not something that works well in most superhero settings at all. HERO may not do high crunch realism as well as a few other other systems (GURPS?) but it has a much bigger sweet spot of possible variety imo.

 

To me HERO is about options and granular detail.  The rules provide a blank slate of both with which a GM can then define for a framework of campaign rules that the Players and GM can use to create a story with some wild and vivid combat scenes.  That blank slate I mentioned also gives HERO a unique ability to be used as a common denominator of comparison between characters and abilities from a wide variety of other systems.

 

HM

[bluesguy]

Hero is flexibility. 

 

If you can imagine it, Hero is designed to let you build whatever you imagine.

[Spence]

The build system and the speed system. 

 

The first allows me to make anything with in a relatively balanced system.

 

The second eliminates the generally broken "initiative" systems used in other games.

[Mister E]

This forum.

[Nolgroth]

So it feels as if the system only seems to function properly if you're playing Superheroic.

 

If you come to understand that Heroic level characters can never interbreed with Superheroic, there are actually ways to tweak the system to get what you want. We'll have to have a discussion about that somewhere that doesn't intrude upon this topic.

[Joe Walsh]

Lots of great answers so far!  Thank you.

 

I would add the damage system.  In particular, the separation of BODY and STUN is a key piece of Hero System, to me.  It's one of the things that keeps me returning to the game, year after year, over the decades.

 

Well, that and the physical act of rolling fistfulls of dice and counting up the pips, then counting them again just looking for 1's and 6's.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree, I left that off but Body/Stun/END is a big Hero thing for me.

[NuSoardGraphite]

EDIT: I'm also going to go out on a limb and say "Champions" is what makes Hero System, Hero System. There have been some valiant attempts to downscale Hero from the Superheroic to the Heroic, but the game's superheroic legacy is always lurking there.

This is the problem I have with Hero is that the default assumption is that one is playing superheroes. That can be frustrating for those of us who use it for mostly Heroic level play because it works very, very well at that level. It only has problems if your default assumption is that of supers level play and your approach to the mechanics comes from that perspective.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I've never had any trouble with how Hero scales down to normal people from superheroes.  Its just a matter of turning some dials and flicking some switches.

 

With how games have borrowed elements and concepts from Hero so much, its harder these days to make the argument but I used to be able to convert D&D players to hero pretty easily by the various superior mechanics.

[NuSoardGraphite]

To me, the essential qualities are:

 

1: Reasoning from effect. The mechanics and sfx of powers and ability are seperate allowing the powers construction system its level of versatility without needing to simulate every conceivable variation of a power based upon its sfx.

 

2: the speed chart. Its brilliant.

 

3: its no limit scalability. Few other games can do it so well as Hero does

 

4: its flexibility. I find that I can simulate any situation without issue in Hero. Its not unique in this ability, but there are many games out there that lack this basic flexibility in their gameplay.

[NuSoardGraphite]

If you come to understand that Heroic level characters can never interbreed with Superheroic, there are actually ways to tweak the system to get what you want. We'll have to have a discussion about that somewhere that doesn't intrude upon this topic.

That can work together just fine. Its just that superheroic characters will run circles around the Heroic ones, which is as things should be. I find it quite fun to take Superheroic characters and to put them in a world with Heroic level rules....i.e. Hit Locations, Impairing rules, Bleeding etc. The end results are quite visceral which is what I was going for.

[zslane]

I had the same sort of problem with GURPS. The Hero System is biased towards cinematic reality whereas GURPS is biased towards mundane reality. I play RPGs to create a shared cinematic experience, and so I am a Champions devotee rather than a GURPS devotee. In fact, for many years I kind of despised GURPS for its mundane orientation and inability to scale up to epic cinematic levels (which include genres like space opera, not just superheroes). To me it was always "the boring Hero System."

 

It never occurred to me that anyone would want to use the Hero System for something that was inherently non-cinematic. As others have discovered, even "heroic level" games feel decidedly cinematic despite the lower point totals and optional rules. The optional rules pretty much just add detail, they don't turn the Hero System into GURPS (and thank god for that). If you're trying to use the Hero System for "gritty realism" then, IMO, you're using the wrong tool for the job because the system simply has too much cinematicism in its DNA.

 

So for me, Champions is the Hero System, and what makes it special is: its cinematic bias, its point-buy system, the Disadvantages system, the separation of BODY and STUN, the OCV/DCV mechanic, and the Speed Chart. Pretty much what everyone has mentioned already.

[Nolgroth]

It's not just "realism" vs. "cinematic reality" though that certainly plays some part in it. There is a granularity issue as well. Whether that be the Strength chart or how Skill rolls are determined. Look at the Bleeding rules. For those to really be taken seriously, a Heroic character has to be near death anyway. Hero can be used successfully for Heroic tier playing, but out of the box, there are too many scaling issues. I think the biggest deterrent to embracing that idea is a very misguided perception that you can mix characters from different campaigns. I believe that is a false perception. Hero provides a common language to communicate to each other with, but each campaign is its own dialect of that language and each GM interprets the Hero syntax in their own way. We wouldn't have House rules nor need GM arbitration if that were not true.

[Joe Walsh]

The Hero System is biased towards cinematic reality whereas GURPS is biased towards mundane reality.

 

That's it in a nutshell.  You can do anything with either system, but they both have their biases. At some point, you're twisting the system into pretzels to get it to do what the other one does naturally. That's why I'm a fan of both.

 

(Besides, 3d6 roll-under systems should stick together!)

[Nolgroth]

It's funny. I know next to nothing about GURPS, as a system. I have a few of the Transhuman Space books for GURPS but I have only mined them, looking for ideas.

[Christopher]

What are the essential qualities, as you see them, of Hero System?

 

And, what makes Hero System unique?

 

I have my own answers, but I'd like to hear what you think.

The avoidance of several big mistakes I see in the systems I played before:

- Non-Transparant Balancing. In Shadowrun being a free AI or spirit costs a ton because of a big "immortal" ability. That I would not even want it for my AI/Spirit characters was not even considered. In Hero I can just choose to not buy it. Or sell it back.

Making your own classes in D&D or spells in Shadowrun? Forget it! You won't be able to wihout endangering the blance.

 

- No artifical balancing limitations. Essence loss and Magic/Resonance loss in Shadowrun. "The no arcana magic and armor" and bonus stacking rules of D&D. Instead all atribute points are consided the same, regardless of level.

 

- it rules by common sense and balance, rather then explicitly "can't" or can. In those systems that say "you can not" or "it works exactly like this" there are often hour long discussion about the interpretation of the rules. Exploiteable flaws that can be found and have to be fixed.

Rules Lawyering at it's finest. Often pointless because they miss the core issue of game balance and fun for everyone in the discussion. I feel I have much to offer the Shadowrun community now with the "Hero Mindset".

 

- it let's armor reduce damage. This is a particular peeve I have with D&D. Also the only system I ever played that had this wierd design decision.

 

What I do not like:

- the speed chart/general combat resolution. I think Shadowrun 5E does it a lot better. SR 4E was obviously similar to Hero, wich aided my learning it - inlcuding the issues with actions/initiative/aborting. Interestingly it appears SR 5E learned a lot from Hero system in other areas.

 

- too much upfront work to be GM. To few "common ground" adventures/creaturs.

 

Mixed:

- it makes us all game designers. This can be overwhelming for new players. But it also allows a lot of detail to be added if the setting requires it.

 

Which, when it comes right down to it, is my biggest complaint about the Hero System.

 

No matter what genre you try to play, the Superheroic roots of the game is always there, lurking in the shadows.

 

So it feels as if the system only seems to function properly if you're playing Superheroic.

There is a feedback between mechanics and tone of a game. That is a unavoidable truth of game design, something I was not able to formulate until recently.

Sanity and Corruption in Chutulu and Dark Heresy games work in tandem with low rolls to produce a "deadfull" world feeling.

 

The one point where hero absolutely fails is skill resolution. And heroic gameplay usually stands or falls with it's skill resolution/skill detail.

There is just no way Hero could come close to SR 4E or SR 5E levels of skill granularity/detailed resolution. Trying to do so would be like hammering a nail into the wall using the handle of a screwdriver - when you got a perfectly good hammer just laying there.

[Joe Walsh]

It's funny. I know next to nothing about GURPS, as a system. I have a few of the Transhuman Space books for GURPS but I have only mined them, looking for ideas.

 

Yup, GURPS supplements are like that.   I bought a bunch back in the GURPS 3 era for the same reason as you.

 

I wasn't much of a GURPS fan until 4e came out with its much cleaner system, but since then I've enjoyed running it.  But it's another enormous toolkit system, so it takes some work to get into it, much like Hero.

 

If you want to dip your toe in, there's worse ways than checking out The Mook's "New to GURPS - Welcome!" blog posts. He wrote the "How to be a GURPS GM" supplement, so he knows his stuff and is a pretty decent writer.

[Lucius]

 

 

One.

Hero System is not a game. Hero System is a build-your-own-game kit.

 

Two.

Hero System by default is a wide open point buy. Everything is bought from the same pool of points.

 

Three.

Hero System is effects based, that is, it "reasons from effect."

 

Four.

In Hero System, ideally, you get what you pay for and pay for what you get. (This idea can be taken to unhealthy extremes - not everything need be accounted for with points - but it's pretty fundamental.)

 

Five.

Hero System uses a finite bounded rules set to enable infinite creativity. This is perhaps the heart of the system. Rather than create, say, one thousand specific individual "feats" each of which is cut and dried and works exactly as presented, Hero provides a set of Powers, Talents, Skills, and Perks, along with Frameworks and Modifiers that would permit you to create one hundred thousand characters - if you had time and inclination - and give each and every one of them a unique signature ability that would be not exactly like anything any other character has, and yet none of them are "just made up," all are precisely defined in rules terms out of the building blocks the system provides.

 

 

Lucius Alexander

 

What makes a palindromedary, a palindromedary?

[NuSoardGraphite]

The one point where hero absolutely fails is skill resolution. And heroic gameplay usually stands or falls with it's skill resolution/skill detail.

There is just no way Hero could come close to SR 4E or SR 5E levels of skill granularity/detailed resolution. Trying to do so would be like hammering a nail into the wall using the handle of a screwdriver - when you got a perfectly good hammer just laying there.

I am of the opposite opinion here. I like Hero's skill range better than most other games Inhave encountered. I have zero issue with the lack of granularity. I feel that two characters of a similar skill level should perform similarly. Hero does this. It only takes a couple of poijts difference for the contest to skew obviously in the favor of the greater skilled individual....as it should. Thus, it only takes a few points to make a huge difference. A +1 in Hero (GURPS as well) is a significant bonus, unlike in most d20 based task resolution systems.

 

Inhave played games that take the opposite approach. One example is Rolemaster, where skills are on a percentage scale and can be ranked from as low as +5 to as high as +100 or more.

 

Yes, I said "or more". You see, to simulate someone with super level skill in rolemaster, their skill roll needs to be more than +100 to do so. Skill rolls can climb as high as +150. I have seen characters with a weapon skill of +300 to represent their extreme skill. Hero doesnt need to do that to get the same result. A 5 point difference in combat value is akin to having a +100 skill bonus in RM. I find that range much, much easier to deal with.

[Joe Walsh]

Five.

Hero System uses a finite bounded rules set to enable infinite creativity. This is perhaps the heart of the system. Rather than create, say, one thousand specific individual "feats" each of which is cut and dried and works exactly as presented, Hero provides a set of Powers, Talents, Skills, and Perks, along with Frameworks and Modifiers that would permit you to create one hundred thousand characters - if you had time and inclination - and give each and every one of them a unique signature ability that would be not exactly like anything any other character has, and yet none of them are "just made up," all are precisely defined in rules terms out of the building blocks the system provides.

 

Yup. It's the best system I've ever found for that. You can create anything you can imagine, and you can be as precise or as loosey-goosey as you want. I love it!