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The myth of Hero


Hyper-Man

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The intent is just to show why you don't need to list active points.  There are other ways to do it.  We aren't talking about releasing 7th edition Hero like this.  We're talking about a standalone campaign setting with everything already statted out.  It's Diet Hero, with all the things that a Hero GM would normally decide, already set.

 

Let's say we're going with Aliens Hero, like from the movie with the facehugger and the acid blood.  It isn't necessary to include the Nostromo's DCV, because there is no ship to ship combat in that universe.  It isn't necessary to give the number of active points for the Mind Link that the Aliens have with each other, because no one is going to Suppress or Dispel it.  It isn't necessary to stat out the Transform (or whatever it is) where a host hatches a new Alien.  Just give the rules for how long it takes.

 

You can take out the stuff that doesn't need to be in the rules for that particular genre and setting.  We're talking about creating something with a good presentation.  It still follows the Hero rules at its core, but it isn't scary for new players to look at.

I have no objection to simplified presentation. But eliminating AP, only to introduce an arbitrary "Level" system that you then have to explain to folks that are familiar with Hero - especially if they might want to tinker with the setting a bit, like some of us are known to do - is actually making things more complicated, not less. Leave out the stuff that isn't needed, fine. But if you're having to make up new stuff to replace the stuff you're leaving out, maybe you should consider just using the thing that already works?

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I have no objection to simplified presentation. But eliminating AP, only to introduce an arbitrary "Level" system that you then have to explain to folks that are familiar with Hero - especially if they might want to tinker with the setting a bit, like some of us are known to do - is actually making things more complicated, not less. Leave out the stuff that isn't needed, fine. But if you're having to make up new stuff to replace the stuff you're leaving out, maybe you should consider just using the thing that already works?

 

Which is what you'd use the Big Books for.  Again, over and over again, this is for Diet Hero or Hero Lite, prebuilt game books.  

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I have no objection to simplified presentation. But eliminating AP, only to introduce an arbitrary "Level" system that you then have to explain to folks that are familiar with Hero - especially if they might want to tinker with the setting a bit, like some of us are known to do - is actually making things more complicated, not less. Leave out the stuff that isn't needed, fine. But if you're having to make up new stuff to replace the stuff you're leaving out, maybe you should consider just using the thing that already works?

The levels of power are a construct for balance. Without the full system, balance has to be prebuilt into the system. Therefore, to prevent a starting wizard putting all his starting points into a big power, when things like DC caps and all are part of the underlying system, but not spelled out in it, you hardwire it in.

 

And it's not making new stuff, it's merely choosing a vernacular that is understandable to larger audiences.

 

As for what already works, that's the whole point of this thread. A means for getting new players who would normally be turned off by the complexity of some aspects of Hero, which is called most of the market.

 

As for players being confused by the concept of levels, I'm not sure what Hero players that could possibly be, unless Hero is the only game they ever played or heard of. I'm fairly certain if they looked at such a system, they would almost immediately go, "Ah, I see how you built that!" And quickly recognize the higher AP things from the lower.

 

And I'm certainly not seeing added complexity. It's the same rule system. Only all prebuilts. It's just Hero being used for the design code, and English being used for the description.

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If the Wizard's "Spirit of the Pugilist" is identical to a Strike (or for the sake of selecting something he'd actually pay points for, Martial Strike), then it should be purchased as Martial Strike with the Special Effect that it is "spell-casting", rather than "martial arts". The fact that there is a more expensive alternative is irrelevant.

 

Furthermore, you'll find many "disconnects" when you start comparing Skills to Powers and vice versa. For example, Persuasion is much, much cheaper than Mind Control, but when the former works it is largely indistinguishable from the latter in terms of mechanical effect (the NPC does what you want them to do). This doesn't mean that Persuasion is under-priced or that Mind Control is over-priced. They are apples and oranges that just happen to taste the same after you bake them into a pie.

 

In regard to Martial Arts (the Combat Skill, not the Special Effect) the disconnect (though extant) is justified because they aren't in any way intended to be the same thing as Powers. The fact that you can construct a more expensive alternative is still irrelevant because Martial Arts are not intended to replace Combat Skill Levels and Hand-To-Hand Attacks. The Maneuvers System (and by extension all Martial Maneuvers) is intended to act as an addition or ​complement to the Powers system (and to Combat Skill Levels and Hand-To-Hand Attacks). That they are so inexpensive compared to powers is for two reasons:

First: Martial Maneuvers derive most of their Game Elements from the basic Maneuvers which every character receives access to (and therefore already paid for) as part of the Everyman package of abilities which also includes their characteristics, movement modes, and senses.

Second: Even using the rules for designing new Martial Maneuvers, they suffer from severe design restrictions specifically designed to prevent them from overshadowing the Powers System they were intended to complement. These restrictions are intended to prevent you from gaining a game-breaking advantage by investing heavily in Martial Arts, but still reward "martial artists" for investing in them as opposed to using convoluted power constructs to achieve similar effects.

The fundamental concept of martial maneuvers is that they are improvements upon the existing Maneuver System. The Maneuver System gives players access to the ability to Block and Dodge attacks, and Trip or Disarm enemies as Everyman Game Elements precisely so that players do not have to invent convoluted rules constructs to give characters the ability to do things which history and science tells us any humanoid has a given chance of being able to do successfully. As such any point value which could be calculated for martial maneuvers such as Martial Disarm must first have the value or regular Disarm deducted from it; because Disarm is a Game Element which is part of the Everyman package.

Okay, persuasion and mind control. The difference is in how they work. Persuasion should almost always have a lot of modifiers. It also should be presumed to take time. Mind control may be instantaneous, how success is determined will generally have less modifiers. They have one metric that is similar, that is true, but every other metric is different. That's the reason for the cost difference. And the distinction from martial arts. Not because one is a skill and one is a power, but because their odds of achieving an effect on the game and the time it takes to do so is quite different, and in the case of mind control, far less conditional. So, the 'when the former works' you speak of is intrinsic to why the cost is different.

 

Costs are for balance, not to enforce categories.

 

The wizard's spells, conversely, are the exact same build, the exact same effects, but cost more for no added value to the system.

 

Now, as martial arts being 'not in any way intended as powers', you previously were very specific in referring to them having advantages, which means they are, in that way, absolutely intending to be built like powers. I just find it odd that the argument against building skills as powers is a system that does exactly that.

 

To be clear, the martial arts system's greatest strength is recognizing game balancing elements that are needed. Specifically, block, something that allows slower characters a chance. However, if you wish to argue that this is modelling a reality that all humans can do due to physics and evolution, as opposed to it serving a useful game function but not modelling any such thing, you're going to run into problems, because in the real world blocks don't do any such thing. In the real world, sweeps don't usually do more damage than a punch to the face. In the real world, throws don't work that way. Heck, in the real world, untrained people never do throws in fights, they do trips and shoves, and if you see a throw, ten times out of ten they picked it up somewhere. In the real world, hitting with the blunt side of your weapon does not add defensive value.

 

As for convoluted builds, break down sweep as it stands to what game effects it has, and you will see it is just a convoluted build that is discounted(in its case, it is the game physics that it convolutes. It's Strength based, so, let's see, how to do a strength based KNOCKDOWN? Change environment. Hm.) . It's not like having actual builds do it could not be standardized, and bought all package-like using a system whose costs are clearly explained. In the martial arts system, all costs are discounted, including the base costs. There is no undiscounted cost to even determine the level of discount.

 

This is to clarify, I wasn't asking WHY there is a discount. I was asking for the rules of the discount. The nature of the pool. I'm betting money the discount is totally different from move to move and arbitrary. It's one thing to have to arbitrarily decide what value a thing should have based on experience and then test it, its another to also arbitrarily decide on the discount for a list of slots on a slot by slot basis with no explanation.

 

Most importantly, the only reason the system prevents martial arts from overshadowing powers is because it largely enforces caps, no other reason. And it does this while enforcing the rules elsewhere of no skills in pools, and ignoring them for its own uses.

 

Which, again, would be no big deal if it were an option, instead of an enforced norm that is at odds with the system physics and enforces a view of martial arts that is often dated. It precludes other approaches at martial arts that would build it with cost savings but still maintain balance, which is entirely at odds with Heroes central philosophy of building what you imagine.

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Active points are fine, they are a level system, a point level.  They are great to include just in case the game includes some mystical elements or something that can dispel.  It also gives a rough feel for raw power as well, an easy rating to look at items with.

I could see their inclusion, though I think the build put up earlier with standard effect used for dispels is really good for a system like what we're talking about.

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When Heroic-level games first appeared, it was not deemed necessary to know the point cost of equipment that was bought with money rather than Character Points. General accessibility to such gear was assumed to be available to heroes and villains alike, and so "balance" would all come out in the wash.

 

I'm curious to know how many such campaigns were rendered unplayable by this simplifying assumption. I'm guessing virtually none.

 

 

Not a one, in my experience.  We also didn't have characters optimized for damage, or for defenses, or for whatever particular game mechanical niche.  Like, I never remembered building a character to try to hit a damage range; in the heroic games, even Fantasy Hero 1e, we didn't have DC ranges, defense ranges, etc.  You built your character and that was that.  You might have been building a driver, or a hacker, or a faceman; or you might have built a hand-to-hand fighter or a rifleman or a swordsman (but not a Martial Artist, even if he did have Martial Arts).  

 

(Actually there was one Danger International campaign in which we did go way over the top; I wanted to see if I could build a character in DI who could survive jumping out of airplanes without a parachute.  Breakfall 25-, using the Extraordinary Skill rules, 20 BODY, and as much over NCM on PD as I could afford.  That was way outside the norm, though.)

I'm still out of Likes....

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Cantriped, if I come on too strong, forgive me. On one level, I want to build what I imagine. On a second level, Trump.

You didn't say anything worth getting upset over, and likewise I'm sorry if I have ever offended you with my strong argumentative streak. We may both have strongly opposed views on the subject, but I wouldn't ever want to think less of you or get offended for you sharing them; because I would desire the same respect in turn from my peers who don't agree with me.

As for the second level:  I'm in much the same boat today... I think I will be abstaining from any debates on game design today so as not to let my bad mood infect my writing.

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You didn't say anything worth getting upset over, and likewise I'm sorry if I have ever offended you with my strong argumentative streak. We may both have strongly opposed views on the subject, but I wouldn't ever want to think less of you or get offended for you sharing them; because I would desire the same respect in turn from my peers who don't agree with me.

As for the second level:  I'm in much the same boat today... I think I will be abstaining from any debates on game design today so as not to let my bad mood infect my writing.

Understood!

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Which is what you'd use the Big Books for.  Again, over and over again, this is for Diet Hero or Hero Lite, prebuilt game books.  

And again, over and over again, I am all for that! But IMO inserting a new arbitrary "spell level" game element complicates things rather than simplifying them. Creating absolute effects isn't about simplification either - at best it is "complexity neutral" and at worst it actually adds complexity because it increases the level of explanation required for specific spells. So rather than having a couple paragraphs on How Dispel Works, you now need a sentence or two in every single effect built with Adjustment Powers explaining how that specific effect works. You're simply moving the complexity downstream, which (again IMO) is the exact wrong direction to go.

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And again, over and over again, I am all for that! But IMO inserting a new arbitrary "spell level" game element complicates things rather than simplifying them. Creating absolute effects isn't about simplification either - at best it is "complexity neutral" and at worst it actually adds complexity because it increases the level of explanation required for specific spells. So rather than having a couple paragraphs on How Dispel Works, you now need a sentence or two in every single effect built with Adjustment Powers explaining how that specific effect works. You're simply moving the complexity downstream, which (again IMO) is the exact wrong direction to go.

The description previously written in this thread for a dispel was no longer than spell descriptions in any fantasy game.

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The description previously written in this thread for a dispel was no longer than spell descriptions in any fantasy game.

Yes. But in that same amount of text you could explain how Dispel works as a Power once, and then all you need to list for individual spells is "Dispel ____ 10d6." Unless you plan to only have one single dispel in the entire game, you're not saving text or complexity - you're just spreading it around.

 

Hero's biggest weakness from a marketing perspective has always been that its complexity is front-loaded, which can be intimidating to new players. I'm all for streamlining/simplifying that. But one of Hero's biggest advantages in game-play has always been that because the complexity is front-loaded, once you get through character creation the game plays quickly - it's all right there on the character sheet, no need to constantly flip through the book(s) looking up each individual spell to see how this interacts with that (like in every D&D game I've ever played).

 

As someone who has played around a lot with simplifying Hero* to present to new players, con games, etc, I'm all for simplifying presentation and hiding more of the mechanics. (At least for an intro-level book like being discussed.) What I'm opposed to is creating new mechanics that give the illusion of simplicity by simply moving the complexity downstream a ways. You're fixing the parts that aren't broken.

 

* And no, I don't expect anyone to read all those links...

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I'll repeat myself here:

"It's funny - we can't even discuss this kind of thing without getting caught up in the kind of complexity we are trying to get rid of. Partly it's a real problem - there are real complications in the system - but part of it is probably an inability to let go of what's not important/relevant."

 

If you are messing with the rules, you are doing it wrong, IMHO. The rules are fine. They just need to be as close to invisible as possible.

 

In this case, we definitely do "want the sort of all-or-nothing effects that D&D is (in)famous for". It's easier, and the target audience are already familiar with it.

Let's assume the builds are sold in tiers. Make the build that no spell exists in tier X that a spell in tier Y cannot dispel. Scale up as we go. I'd have to bone up on dispels to see how that would be ensured.

 

In the builds for dispel, apply the standard effect rule, so that all rolls are always three. Then make sure the amount of drain or dispel is sufficient to dispel ALL applicable spells at a certain tier level of spells. If we want the players to have a roll to make it seem less automatically successful, give it an activation roll.

 

Drain is more difficult, so leaving it as Stat drains only simplifies the whole thing.

It's also possible to simulate dice rolls. If we know that our Dispel would, based on probabilities, roll high enough to Dispel the AP we have selected for a Tier 1 spell (and that could be a 3 DC attack, with the same spell having Tier 2, 3, 4 and 5 versions with 6, 9, 12 and 15 DC attacks) 95% of the time, and can roll high enough to dispel a Tier 2 spell 85% of the time, a Tier 3 spell 60% of the time, a Tier 4 spell 40% of the time and a Tier 5 spell less than 20% of the time, we can present this as dispelling on the following rolls:

 

Tier 1: 15- (95.4%)

Tier 2: 13- (83.8%)

Tier 3: 11- (62.5%)

Tier 4: 9- (37.5%)

Tier 5: 7- (16.2%)

 

The percentages above would not be presented - they are there to show the probabilities of those rolls for comparison with our larger probabilities based on dice of Dispel. The player does not need to know that this is a probability of the roll being high enough to dispel the AP of a Tier X spell, rather than being an activation roll that varies with the tier of the spell. He just needs to know how to figure out whether his Dispel worked or did not work.

 

It seems complicated to us because we are trying to determine the appropriate Hero build, but the player is not trying to do that - he is playing the game with the rules provided and does not know or care how the Hero build works, or what alternative builds may have been considered. He knows simply that his spell will work against a Tier 3 spell more often than not, and fail a significant proportion of the time, will work more often against lower tiers and less against higher tiers. Pretty simple.

 

Whether tiers of spells or some other approach does not matter - the point is that the game can be Powered by Hero without providing all the Hero builds. If you don't like the tier system, write your Powered by HERO game differently.

 

Make some simplifying assumptions to make your game flow smoother - the real Hero gamer can download the builds and tinker with them, and with your simplifying assumptions. But the gamers who just want to PLAY THE GAME can do so, without knowing the Hero System it was designed with. 

 

And again, over and over again, I am all for that! But IMO inserting a new arbitrary "spell level" game element complicates things rather than simplifying them. Creating absolute effects isn't about simplification either - at best it is "complexity neutral" and at worst it actually adds complexity because it increases the level of explanation required for specific spells. So rather than having a couple paragraphs on How Dispel Works, you now need a sentence or two in every single effect built with Adjustment Powers explaining how that specific effect works. You're simply moving the complexity downstream, which (again IMO) is the exact wrong direction to go.

So build your own Powered by Hero game that sets the complexity where you think it would best be set. The flexibility of Hero still leaves all of those choices - a Powered by Hero game makes those choices for the gamers.

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Yes. But in that same amount of text you could explain how Dispel works as a Power once, and then all you need to list for individual spells is "Dispel ____ 10d6." Unless you plan to only have one single dispel in the entire game, you're not saving text or complexity - you're just spreading it around.

 

Hero's biggest weakness from a marketing perspective has always been that its complexity is front-loaded, which can be intimidating to new players. I'm all for streamlining/simplifying that. But one of Hero's biggest advantages in game-play has always been that because the complexity is front-loaded, once you get through character creation the game plays quickly - it's all right there on the character sheet, no need to constantly flip through the book(s) looking up each individual spell to see how this interacts with that (like in every D&D game I've ever played).

 

As someone who has played around a lot with simplifying Hero* to present to new players, con games, etc, I'm all for simplifying presentation and hiding more of the mechanics. (At least for an intro-level book like being discussed.) What I'm opposed to is creating new mechanics that give the illusion of simplicity by simply moving the complexity downstream a ways. You're fixing the parts that aren't broken.

 

* And no, I don't expect anyone to read all those links...

From an overall Hero perspective, I totally understand what you are saying, and agree.

 

From a perspective of building a system of prebuilds, balance becomes a bigger issue. The tiers aren't any more of a mechanic than any other package system's approach, they are just a simpler way of putting caps on APs and DCs and other things that otherwise mostly requires the full system. In the prebuilt, yes, you may have more than one dispel(which is not inconsistent with fantasy games in general, and so it's a no-brainer for most players to deal with the concept of spell levels, least of all Hero players, who deal with much higher levels of complexity than, "When building a 200 point character, you may select any tier one ability, and up to X tier two abilities). Yes, this is a buy structure, but you would need one to prevent people from putting a big chunk of points into a higher AP ability.

 

I am not saying that APs absolutely couldn't be used for a similar thing, but that, for most gamers, it is simpler to say "you can choose X from list one, and Y from list two". This isn't really a new mechanic, it's more akin to campaign limits, which is a lot of what is being hardwired in. It's identical to saying "You cannot have anything with over X APs, and you cannot have more that two powers with over Y AP cost." But it's in English, because these players would only be doing Hero builds by default, not by their own design.

 

It is not to be a lesson in the deeper aspects of Hero for them. They want a game, not a tutorial. But, if they get into the game, it is an incentive to get into the full system so they can build that extra special thing that they can't put together in prebuilts.

 

Plus, in Hero, there would likely be more than one dispel as well. So the difference in text is the difference between Hero accounting and simple English.

 

To be clear, in this thread, we are not proposing an intro-level book. We are proposing a system built from Hero, not a modification of Hero that one would have to switch into Hero from eventually. A fully fledged game. And one whose GMs and players would find advantage to also having the Hero books while playing, since any Hero power would be compatible with this game, so they could fine tune.

 

By doing this, there is an incentive to also buy Hero, there is a compatibility for anything generated in the prebuilt game with any Hero game, there is a fast way to build characters and NPCs that would be usable in EITHER system, thus saving Hero GMs time, but, the new game never enters into the proposition of "the only reason this exists is to convince players who may not want to spend a long time in character generation, but still want to generate characters, to be convinced they should." The game must exist on its own merits, and this is why balance is vital, since the build elements are not accessible, they must be hardwired in, and I'm really not seeing any complexity added by saying that things under X AP are list or tier or level one, and the repetition of powers that relate to each other, like dispel I, dispel II, almost all would have to be listed multiple times if provided in any system, and usually are.

 

However, I could propose a compromise. If APs are used, the book could simply say, "at 200 points, you can have X number of powers under Y AP, as many as you want under Z AP, and none at F AP. To choose, list 1 has things under Y AP, blah blah." Unfortunately, that's more words than just, "At 200 points, you can have all the powers from list one and up to two from list two."

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It bears noting that, as Hero gamers already familiar with the system, we see significant complexity in fitting abilities to the various tiers, and ensuring the Dispel build would, rolling its dice or applying its standard effects, have the desired success level on all powers within each successive tier.

 

That is the kind of complexity not present in a game where you pick from the spells of a given level, feats/class abilities available to you at a given level, etc.

 

Hero's complexity is front loaded in building first the desired game and then the characters to populate this. That complexity, in a Powered by Hero System game, is hidden behind the curtain. The work has been done by the game writer. That work might include a liberal dose of handwaving to achieve the desired results. We, as Hero gamers, see the complexity in the game design. But the gamer will only see, as The Darkness notes, "Pick your characters abilities within these parameters". The gamers will not see, for example, how the Tier Z Dispel mechanically affects Tier X powers on a roll of 8-, Tier Y powers on an 11- and Tier Z powers on a roll of 14-. They will only know, and only need to know, that their Minor Spell of Dispelling cancels out any one Tier X, Y or Z power if they make the appropriate roll.

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I think a further point.

 

Hero needs, for example, using fantasy as the base, ONE fantasy game that gets focus on adventure packages first. Something that some branding can have influence on, and various publishers can develop works for for different point levels of characters. Even books that expand on the options for different people(the Way of the Warrior book, the Way of blah blah blah), all to flesh out that one.

 

Also, any modern game should have an item "Flashlight, 1 pt.", just to make people on the forums spend listless hours determining which build was used.

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I don't think its necessary to make Hero's products simpler than every other game published to attract players.  All role playing games by their very nature involve a certain minimum level of complexity.  D&D is hardly a super simple game to run or play and is stil the most popular RPG in the world.

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I don't think its necessary to make Hero's products simpler than every other game published to attract players.  All role playing games by their very nature involve a certain minimum level of complexity.  D&D is hardly a super simple game to run or play and is stil the most popular RPG in the world.

I'd say,as a system, if it came out today, it would not do well.

 

As far as Hero, I don't think it needs to be made simpler than other games, either.

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I'd say,as a system, if it came out today, it would not do well.

I don't know, with the prevalence of Superhero movies hitting the market even games like Pathfinder are having to bow to market interest...

Recent publications have included archetypes that allow players to play character "like" Green Arrow, Captain America, Spider-Man, Sailor Moon, and the Hulk in Pathfinder, They fairly recently released an entire Vigilante class, with so many archetypes it might as well be a class system of its own (it is the source of the last three example Supers I mentioned above).

 

Really the problem for HERO, even using CC/FHC, is that it isn't very plug and play. You can't really buy the rule book, bring it to the gaming table, and expect to be able to easily play it the same day. CC/FHC were a vast improvement in this regard, but they weren't marketed and advertised well, nor do they contain enough examples. The "gallery" sections of both books needed to be much larger, or HERO Games needed to provide more free support for them.

 

I've used the Superhero Gallery from Champions 6th (together with its expansion available in the store) to great effect in assisting inexperienced players quickly make characters. A separate "Champions Gallery" or "Adventurers Gallery" (for CC and FHC respectively) would be a very valuable supplement for CC and/or FHC. Such a set of supplements would vastly improve the "plug and play"ability of CC/FHC. The Hero System Bestiary is fairly useable in PDF, so we don't really need a replacement for that specific to CC/FHC.

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So, let's say that a fantasy system, Powered by Hero, was put out.

 

What do members think would be the tropes of fantasy that would gain the most advantages, as far as being depictions of the tropes, versus depictions that became common through previous role playing games.

 

Thinking things that take advantage of Hero's flexibility.

 

My view is, first, the need for such things as classes becomes irrelevant. What your points bought and how you describe them will define what you are.

 

So, looking at the original Conan movie, for example, which, in a lot of ways, is almost one of the best and closest depictions of a fantasy rpg 'party'.

 

Archer and thief. Simple enough,

No need for a 'barbarian' class, he's a warrior, has climbing skill. Strong willed.

Female warrior and thief. Actually pretty much leads the party in every scene she's in.

Old crazy wizard.

 

Using D&D as an example, the ranger class always bothered me. Aragorn is clearly the strongest inspiration there. Spells always seemed to me more a way to make them useful than a particularly trope-fulfilling thing.

 

In this, if you want your ranger to have spells, that's a no-brainer, anyone could potentially buy them, it just depends on how many points they want to take away from other things. But, in this case, since the effect is whatever you choose it to be, his healing spell might be "I was taught the nature of healing plants by the elves, here, let me slap some foliage on that for you. Is my healing salad working? Good."

 

Likewise, his invisibility might be "pass through the woods unseen."

 

That's actually something I was thinking about. Some powers/spells could include, for their point value, a limitation that has some choice for the player. It would have to be of the simplest sort. So, in the case of the above invisibility, they could choose at purchase for it to only work in certain settings, in urban alleyways, in forests, in swamps, in cave systems.

 

Races for the game would themselves be packages: set, paid for bonuses that design a base for an elf, a dwarf, a kobold, etc.

 

For the fantasy game I'm setting up, I'm really going nuts with kobolds as a choosable PC race. Their ability to climb walls lends them quite well to thievery, plus the kobolds for my game are more along the lines of Tucker's Kobolds.

 

Another thing common in my game is the avoidance of a race being 'evil'. I find that entire trope problematic. Even if one looked at LOTR, there weren't really 'evil' races. All the examples were actually twisted forms of something not, by its nature, actually evil.

 

[admittedly, now I'm mostly talking about thoughts for my game, ah well, perhaps The Digression of Darkness would be a better handle for me]

 

So, there aren't dark elves, there are elves who delve too deeply into dark sorceries(and who are, in my world, actually blanched bone white by the use of these dark powers).

 

Dwarves, I'm really trying to capture. I'm playing with the idea of them having a high will towards the kinds of corruptions that affect elves and humans, so some demonic spirits have little sway over them, but conversely, a tendency toward greed, so things that play off of that have more sway. I intend for them to have higher strength and con, simple enough. Additionally, they can buy dwarven armor and weapons with their starting points, whereas most others might be able to buy a dwarven weapon, but not dwarven armor.

 

Kobolds and dwarves have a tied history in my game. They are under a truce, which in some places is more an actuality than others, but they tend to have conflicts because they are competing for the same territory. Kobold raids on the dwarves occur, and dwarves moving wholesale into areas where kobolds live because there are precious minerals under their caves is another issue. The kobolds tend to have mastery of cave systems as they are, and so their mobility as a group and their knowledge of the cave systems, traps and poisons is dangerous, while the dwarves have armor and dwarven steel and war machines. In some ways, it is one race that tends to be part of the environment, and another, that tends to shape the environment to their ideas.

 

I'm actually really pumped about how my ideas on rangers are turning out. Keep in mind, they are not a class, but a group one belongs to that tend to have similar skill-sets, and they have a couple options that others can not choose.

 

[okay, back to my original blabbering]

 

Holy orders(paladins, monks, warrior monks) are also more easily done. Starting points spent on magical armor could easily be armor empowered by their belief(and thus, as far as focus issues, could be replaced by other armor empowered by their belief in the case of loss). Combat skills are all a matter of what they choose, so spear and sword and shield and lance could as easily be chosen as could a skill set that resembles kung fu or samarai arts. And again, since spells are open and the effects defined by the player, then all manner of other things could be added in.

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I believe Tolkien would have argued quite strongly that Ungoliant and Morgoth were unequivocally evil, and that every twisted form of life that Morgoth ever created was evil "by nature", i.e., they were made that way. So any fantasy campaign shaped by Tolkien's writing would have both undeniably good and unquestionably evil beings (and races).

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