Modeling The Hero's Journey

[Eisenmann]

I just bought Hero Designer (nice piece of software, by the way) and am starting to model things for a campaign. The idea is to model the hero's journey, where the PCs begin as young adults. Being pretty new to HERO, I'm not sure where you start out points-wise.

Some old hand tips would be happily accepted.

Thanks!

[Christopher R Taylor]

One trick I've used is to hand out not points to start with but only complications.  So you don't actually have starting points, only matching from complications (like 25 or 50).  Then, with xps, they get more power over time.  This works best when you hand out more than the usual xp total so people don't feel completely slow in advancement.

I've found that the best way to give out xps is in clumps, not some at the end of every adventure.  Then put limits on what they can spend it on; so like 10 points at a time after several sessions instead of 1-2 at the end of a session.  I recommend not letting people buy more than one stat up at a time, and cap skills/CV which can move up slowly over time.

[Hyper-Man]

There are a few questions we would need answers to before we can give much useful advice.

 

What version of HERO are you using?

Is this for a Superheroic or Heroic setting?

 

IF the latter you can go as low as 50 points to begin with which is roughly equivalent to 0-1st level D&D characters.

 

HM

[DasBroot]

It really depends on what kind of 'journey' they're going on.

 

If they're starting before they have any powers but have the seeds of heroism in them and you mean to end up at 'superheroic' in power than something like 175 is appropriate. That makes them teenagers who are as competent as government agents. Not good enough to be Batman's sidekick, but definitely unrealistically skilled.

 

I once ran a game where people built at 175, no powers, and then had their latent powers unlocked by a cosmic McGuffin after the first story arc. That gave them an immediate 50 CP to spend on powers (bringing them to 225) - and then they gained xp at an accelerated rate until they were full fledged superheroes (325) after a few months of play and xp gain slowed to normal.

 

It actually worked pretty well.  There was a much broader spread of powers than I usually see in game, as my players tend to be twitchy sitting on 15 xp and might buy a cool 7 point power instead of holding out to spend 30 on their advantaged killing attack.

[massey]

Yeah, it depends on what kind of campaign you want to run.  How quickly do you want them to advance?  How powerful will they be at the end?

 

One idea I've seen (but never tried myself) is to have players build some low powered beginning characters, and then build the "complete" version of the character as they see him at the end of the story.  So you start with Farm Boy Luke, who knows nothing about the Force and doesn't have a lightsaber.  You end with Jedi Master Luke with robot hand, green saber, and all the goodies.  And as you go, the GM gradually hands out abilities based on the need of the story.  "Okay Luke, you now have some general force awareness and you can move small things with your thoughts."

[Eisenmann]

Great questions, guys.

I'm using Fantasy Hero Complete as the core for a heroic campaign.
 

 

One trick I've used is to hand out not points to start with but only complications.  So you don't actually have starting points, only matching from complications (like 25 or 50).  Then, with xps, they get more power over time.  This works best when you hand out more than the usual xp total so people don't feel completely slow in advancement.

I've found that the best way to give out xps is in clumps, not some at the end of every adventure.  Then put limits on what they can spend it on; so like 10 points at a time after several sessions instead of 1-2 at the end of a session.  I recommend not letting people buy more than one stat up at a time, and cap skills/CV which can move up slowly over time.

 

 

I like this a lot.

 

 

 

IF the latter you can go as low as 50 points to begin with which is roughly equivalent to 0-1st level D&D characters.

 

 

Numbers-wise, this is exactly what I'm looking for. 0-level is more of what I'm looking for out of the gate.

 

 

It really depends on what kind of 'journey' they're going on.

 

 

The idea is that the PCs will start out feeling vulnerable, where it's easy for the players to imagine themselves in the game. The cap, concept-wise, would be somewhere around Beowulf's retinue. I'm not sure what that would be points-wise.

 

 

 

Yeah, it depends on what kind of campaign you want to run.  How quickly do you want them to advance?  How powerful will they be at the end?

 

One idea I've seen (but never tried myself) is to have players build some low powered beginning characters, and then build the "complete" version of the character as they see him at the end of the story.  So you start with Farm Boy Luke, who knows nothing about the Force and doesn't have a lightsaber.  You end with Jedi Master Luke with robot hand, green saber, and all the goodies.  And as you go, the GM gradually hands out abilities based on the need of the story.  "Okay Luke, you now have some general force awareness and you can move small things with your thoughts."

 

 

Even if I don't do this for the players, I think I'm going to tinker around with this idea to get my head wrapped around both HERO itself and the campaign concept.

Thanks, guys!

[TheDarkness]

My thought on that is that they should play the low powered version of their character a session or two before they design the more powerful version, that way they get a chance to see how things develop(maybe even see some more experienced people at work).

 

When I run games, I will sometimes have very short parts of a session where I hand the players sheets other than their own characters, usually for a kind of interlude. For example, in one supers game, I handed them the sheets of some hired mercenaries on a ship. Less powerful people than the players' normal characters. The ship was then attacked by a particular villain the players had heard of, but never met. The villain ended up letting the mercenaries take their best shot before stunning them, the villain then going through the hull of the ship and coming out carrying something away while the ship and the mercenaries went into the sea, it all took five or ten minutes of play time, and the actual game it was in the middle of made no mention of the event, but the players were like, uh oh, what's that about, while also seeing the villain in action a bit.

 

I like doing a bit of that with new players, as then they get to very briefly play other things, see some well rounded builds, and have a better idea of what can be useful, as well as imparting some knowledge to them that their characters don't have. I even once in a fantasy game had the players play out a combat that their characters were watching , the actual people fighting were more powerful than the characters, so they got to see what the future holds, plus have a sense that not everyone populating the world is to be trifled with, but sometimes talking is better than fighting.