Problems With Fantasy Hero Complete and Newbies

[Eisenmann]

Exhibit A for my position upstream:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying-game-powered-by-gurps

[Lucius]

We have real world evidence that Multipowers are a barrier to entry.  I didn't even try to work with them until I'd been playing Champions for a while, and I was a 15 year old high school geek at the time.  So, why not hold it off until the new folks have been playing for a while?

You have a point. My own opinion is that Multipowers be left out of the Beginner's Book, in which maybe we give the magic-user a choice of "pick one from this short list of attack spells" for the first adventure or two. Then when they "level up" say "Your apprentice can now cast any of these attack spells, but only 1 at a time" and present the "disguised" Multipower magic system. Finally in the appendix or another book altogether present "Here is how to make a Multipower and ways to make it even more flexible....."

 

But that's just a suggestion.

 

 

Once you know OCV and DCV and roll 3d6 to hit and for Skills, and know where to look on your sheet for STR damage and Hit Locations and your armor values...

 

Hit locations are an optional rule. Lots of other games don't have them. Should we include Hit Locations in the Beginner Book?

 

My suggestion: a good candidate to leave out at the very first, then later introduce the concept of "called shot" and then eventually  "if you like, you can roll randomly for every weapon hit, here is the table...."

 

Step by step. Not all at once.

 

I tried the same thing with my buddy, and his decades of experience with D&D and Pathfinder made him really unsure of what he could or should pick, how the different parts related to each other, what templates were more useful, etc. etc. He was crippled by his gaming expertise, stuck trying to figure out if spells or swords were "better," which skills were "better," and things like this. I gave him the "Hero in 2 Pages" to read, and he looked at the combat example document I found somewhere, but it just seemed to confuse him more because now he got derailed in wanting to know all the minutiae of the characteristics in combat, and he spun off into more questions than he could handle. Meanwhile, his little girl just jumped in with both feet and had a blast because I was there to translate everything for her.

Thanks for articulating what our real challenge is.

 

It's not that Hero is so hard to learn. It's that D&D is so hard to UNLEARN.

 

Wish I knew what to do about that.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary volunteers to kick players in the head until all the D&D is knocked but I don't think that's a good idea....

[Chris Goodwin]

Why is it listed in the 5e Star Hero part of the store? Has it been updated? 

 

I imagine that's where they thought it was the closest fit.  It hasn't been updated at all.

[Chris Goodwin]

Speaking for myself, "here is a game you can invest time in learning to play the same characters you already play in a game you already know" does not entice me. Toss in a few archetypes alongside some things other games cannot create so effectively.

 

How is a Burly Dwarven Warrior in Heavy Armor a better choice for a sample character than a Hulking Lizardman with Tough Scales? Both fill the same niche in the game. If we want two pregens in each archetype, make one a Fantasy Trope Standard and the second a Hero Games Character that isn't as easy to play in D&D.

 

Don't try to make D&D using Hero - that leaves no reason to want to play Hero instead of D&D.

 

A brief survey of my group said the same thing.  

 

However, is this product intended to get people's feet wet (to overuse a metaphor) or be the start of a campaign?  It can be the latter, if that's what the people at the table want -- and it's perfectly serviceable for D&D style fantasy.  (SJG's Kickstarter for Dungeon Fantasy, Powered By GURPS, sure did well enough.)  

[Eisenmann]

A brief survey of my group said the same thing.  

 

However, is this product intended to get people's feet wet (to overuse a metaphor) or be the start of a campaign?  It can be the latter, if that's what the people at the table want -- and it's perfectly serviceable for D&D style fantasy.  (SJG's Kickstarter for Dungeon Fantasy, Powered By GURPS, sure did well enough.)  

 

I'm currently playing in a Gurps fantasy game that started out in an OSR system. The switch happened not because of limited character builds but because we wanted to try Gurps and its skill system, getting away from the periodic attack roll. Character development was a consideration but it wasn't a primary motivating factor.

 

I've been exploring Hero for the flexibility. I already have ideas for my full blown campaign but I'm just not there yet. One of the comments that I heard from the players when creating characters was that they wished that they could see what starting characters should look like, where the points should be spent.

[Cantriped]

To Brian:

Thank you for articulating your story more clearly, it was helpful to better understand what is going. Hopefully as a result we can be more helpful to you now.

 

Having read the story of your friend's experience versus that of his daughter it makes me think that your friend's problem isn't the rules themselves, but his approach to them. I apologize if that sounds hostile, that isn't my intent! What I mean is that it sounds like your friend is falling off the learning curve because he is trying to optimize his character before he has learned how to conceptualize it. This isn't even really his fault, systems like D&D have taught him bad habits that are making it more difficult for him to approach this game...

 

First, you need to find a way to encourage him to start imagining the character he wants to play, instead of the one he wants to build, like his daughter was doing in your story. You need to find a way to inspire him, to ignite his imagination. You need to recapture the child-like sense of wonder he felt when he first started gaming. These are tall orders, and to be honest I'm somewhat at a loss on how to guide you in that regard.

I know what inspires me is creating character's modeled after my favorite characters from cinema and literature, I often do it just for fun (see Bell Cranel in the downloads section for an example of such a character I've "converted" to Hero). You mentioned above that he wants a frame of reference for what the standard tropes look like in Fantasy Hero. Have you shown him any of the example characters in the back of FHC? Did they help him understand, or confuse him further?

Perhaps he would be interested in being able to play his own version of his favorite character from a particular story. Perhaps the mechanics will click for him better when he can see them applied to a character he already knows.

 

Second, I think you are going to have to find a way to break him of his fear of making a "bad character". While it isn't a sin to want to be Awesome!^TM​​. Fantasy Hero Complete doesn't try to trick you with sub-par choices like D&D could be argued to do. Nor will the game mechanics inherently punish him because of the role he chose to play. For example, the party isn't necessarily going to wipe just because they don't have a Healer, or because nobody is playing a Rogue with Trapfinding. He really can play almost anything he can imagine and go on wild adventures with his friends who are also playing anything they can imagine.

[Brian Stanfield]

Exhibit A for my position upstream:

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying-game-powered-by-gurps

 

Whelp, that pretty much looks similar to what I've been thinking, except 408 pages seems a bit much for an "out-of-the-box" game.

[Brian Stanfield]

I'm currently playing in a Gurps fantasy game that started out in an OSR system. The switch happened not because of limited character builds but because we wanted to try Gurps and its skill system, getting away from the periodic attack roll. Character development was a consideration but it wasn't a primary motivating factor.

 

I've been exploring Hero for the flexibility. I already have ideas for my full blown campaign but I'm just not there yet. One of the comments that I heard from the players when creating characters was that they wished that they could see what starting characters should look like, where the points should be spent.

 

This is exactly what I was running into. Even when sample characters were given, he didn't see how to get there from where he was as a beginner. He was overwhelmed by the flexibility, or rather the openness left him feeling a bit rudderless. Part of the problem was not having a very strong setting to work in, and that's a story for another thread. With a good idea of what the world is supposed to be like, he'd know what his characters are supposed to look like. Then everything begins to affect everything, and it gets even messier! 

 

It's hard work being a GM. This is partly why I think a very basic beginner version, with a minimal setting, is the best way to go. The world, nor the characters, would be built to last for an entire campaign, so all those tough questions wouldn't have to be answered. Just a dungeon crawl, or a wilderness exploration, or whatever is good enough to say, "here you stand, now go kick ass and have fun!"

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah Hero can be very overwhelming to people especially at first, because of its very strength: the flexibility.  Its so open and unlimited its like being in the middle of an ocean.  Yeah, you can go anywhere, but which direction is right?  There are so many choices people can freeze up.

[Ninja-Bear]

Yes Hero has many choices however without a campaign gudieline, of course they are going to be overwhelmed. The.GM needs.to provide that assistance. If you choose speed 2 and.everyone else speed 4. You may be miffed. Btw in a basic game you should have blurb about campaign guidelines.

[mallet]

This might be a long post, but please bare with me. 

 

I've been playing the Hero System for years now. Many years. I've seen these conversations and threads come up again and again, and they are always good and always enlightening, but also always eventually fade away only to be restarted 6 months or a year later. I agree with pretty much everything people are saying on here, in fact I even started writing a Fantasy campaign book a year or so back that would take new players from low points to standard heroic level characters over a a few mini adventures, much like what has been described here (and reading this thread makes me want to go back and finish it!) but one thing all of these threads that talk about how to make the Hero System more newbie friendly, get more players, etc... and it always seems to end up with these few main points:

 

-The Hero System owners need to spend more money on new products and advertising: Which we know is not really viable at this time.

-Hero needs to be more user friendly to starting players wanting to make characters with out crushing them under all the math and rules and options of character generation and combat, etc... 

-Hero needs a way that players can make a unique character and start playing right away with out learning the full system. 

 

It seems that everyone gets gung-ho on trying to write and publish something like this but I feel we always forget the greatest tool in the Hero System, no I am not talking about the rules. I'm not talking about the community of these boards. I am talking about the one thing that makes the Hero System viable for pretty much everyone who plays. The one thing that makes everything easier. I'm talking about Hero Designer. This program makes everything work. I doubt I would still be playing & GMing hero if I had to write out every character by hand and calculate all the advantages and limitations and do all the math. it just wouldn't happen. And I think pretty much everyone on here would agree. I know for 100% none of my players would play if they had to do all of it by hand. And I think that is one thing a lot of people forget. Even with a stripped down, simplified version of Hero for newbies, there is still a lot of writing to do. A lot of math. But this is the digital age. Computers and programs are how it should all be done. 

 

What is also so great is that Hero Designer is so versatile and re-programmable, I have almost no coding experience, but back in the day I was able to modify it to remove stats and skills and rename things to math the campaign I was creating. Someone that actually knew what they were doing could make some incredible builds with it.

 

So all that brings me to what I think Hero should consider doing (this is Fantasy Hero based, but could be done for other genres).

 

Hero should get/pay someone (Dan) to build a "stripped down" and very specific version of Hero Designer, that takes out everything unessential to the Fantasy Hero setting and the rules and options used in it, maybe even down to just the Basic Rules options.

 

-It should allow max 175 pt. characters

-It should remove all the powers and just have 20-30 Prefab powers, spells and abilities listed.

-Under Perks it should also have Racial prefabs.

-Under skills it should also have "career" prefabs. 

-Martial arts should only have the basic options.

-The define button and notes options should be used to describe what abilities, spells, powers, talents, etc... do so a newbie would understand.

-Warnings could pop up to explain why something can't be chosen.

-General weapons, armor and gear from Prefab builds.

 

What's great about this, is that most, if not all of these prefabs already exist from past Fantasy Hero sourcebooks. Sure some of them might need to be updated to 6th Ed (or FHC) but that is a minimal amount of work compared to writing a whole new book. 

 

The most time consuming part would be the stripping out of all the other stuff from Hero Designer, and even that might not be too hard as all that need to be done is deleting stuff from the lists and then adding in all the Prefabs, which Hero Designer is already built to do. Heck, I add in all the Turakian Age prefabs whenever I start making characters for a new campaign, races, careers, equipment, spells, etc... It all already exists. It's all there waiting to be combined and used. 

 

A small PDF taking images and write-ups from existing Hero sourcebooks for the races, careers, abilities, etc... could be cut and pasted together from existing books. The Hero-in-two-pages doc could be attached at the end of the PDF. 

 

The with this stripped down and genre specific version of Hero Designer newbie players would be able to play around and build their own characters and get a feel for the system and how it works in a general way with points, total, etc... and have a legal, playable character printed out within a very limited amount of time. Plus they will know what their character can do, what other character builds can do, etc... 

 

Then Hero should give away this stripped down, very basic, very genre specific version of Hero Designer away for free. 

 

Yes, you read that right. For free. 

 

This will draw players and GM's in. It will get them to try something new and different. It will allow them to play entry "level" characters and get a feel for the system.  Once they learn how much else can be done with the system, how much they can build and create their own powers and abilities and spells and expand their characters (and advance them past 175 pts). Once they know they don't have to use prefabs, but can design their own abilities. Once they like it and get into it, then they will buy the books and the full version of Hero Designer. 

 

Sometimes you have to not make money to make money. This would build the fan base and introduce Hero to many more players then a new rule book or setting or sourcebook would, no matter how stripped down or simplified. Free is the very best and most effective advertising anyone can do. 

 

And, like I said before, what makes this so great and simple, is that everything needed already exists. It has all been built and is sitting digitally around waiting to be used, modified and adapted. 

 

Hero Designer is, in my opinion, the greatest selling tool to draw people into the Hero System and it should be leveraged to do so. If that means giving away a stripped down, very specific and simplified version to generate interest and future sales, then every effort should be made to do so. 

 

Anyways, that's my opinion. Now I'm off to find those old beginer campaign/adventure files and start working on that sourcebook again. 

[Joe Walsh]

Whelp, that pretty much looks similar to what I've been thinking, except 408 pages seems a bit much for an "out-of-the-box" game.

 

Fair point, but the Dungeon Fantasy RPG is the equivalent of the three D&D books, which come in at over 1,000 pages. And DFRPG's books use a smaller page size.

 

We'll see if the strategy works later this year....

[Eisenmann]

Whelp, that pretty much looks similar to what I've been thinking, except 408 pages seems a bit much for an "out-of-the-box" game.

 

From what I've gathered from following the Kickstarter, it's going to be a boxed set of everything that you need to play the game, from the very beginning to advanced - kind of a BECM analog. One key distinction, I think, is that it's billed as being powered by Gurps. They're streamlining by reducing user facing computation at the game system/building block level.

[Brian Stanfield]

From what I've gathered from following the Kickstarter, it's going to be a boxed set of everything that you need to play the game, from the very beginning to advanced - kind of a BECM analog. One key distinction, I think, is that it's billed as being powered by Gurps. They're streamlining by reducing user facing computation at the game system/building block level.

 

I don't know if you caught it earlier in this thread, or in other threads, but there has been a lot of talk about how there should be "powered by HERO" versions of games out there for this same reason. Monster Hunters, International is a very good example. But that's also the Steve Jackson Games strategy: repackage and re-release the same thing over and over (and over and over) again to pump as much money as you can out of it. See Munchkin, or the scores of GURPS books.

 

Hero has tried to explicitly avoid this strategy with the Complete books as standalone, all under one cover rules, but they also may have hampered their ability to offer opening-line products for their game such as we're discussing here. They customized the rules for the different settings (Champions and Fantasy), but they've really missed the opportunity for a well-developed fantasy setting in the way that MHI was done. But that, again, is the tradeoff for a universal set of rules: more unlimited options means fewer actual decisions made for their products. 

[Brian Stanfield]

Then Hero should give away this stripped down, very basic, very genre specific version of Hero Designer away for free. 

 

Yes, you read that right. For free. 

 

This will draw players and GM's in. It will get them to try something new and different. It will allow them to play entry "level" characters and get a feel for the system.  Once they learn how much else can be done with the system, how much they can build and create their own powers and abilities and spells and expand their characters (and advance them past 175 pts). Once they know they don't have to use prefabs, but can design their own abilities. Once they like it and get into it, then they will buy the books and the full version of Hero Designer. 

 

It's an interesting idea. Of course none of us see this happening, ever. But as Cantriped and I have noted before, not everyone is a fan of Hero Designer. Some of us actually prefer books and paper to plan things out. It actually gets you to read the rules, which is essential. A "Hero Designer only" approach wouldn't have the rules anywhere in it, other than brief descriptions of some of the options, etc. Hero Designer and Hero System are not the same: Hero Designer is a tool to assist in applying the rules in character creation, and that's it. Apart from that, there is no good way to market something like this. Sure it's a digital world, but books still have a place in it. The herogames.com store is holding serve, but it's not expanding the market by any means.

 

What I'm looking for is something that could help learn the rules and how to play the game, as well as character creation at a very basic level. Hero Designer, even a stripped down version, is not really very intuitive for new players. I'm looking for a very simple presentation of the game that anyone can pick up in an evening.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah I'd love to see someone pick up say, The Sword of Truth world or Butcher's Aleria Codex world licensed for Hero games.  Write that up as a setting and you have instant interest.

[Old Man]

I've always wondered what such a license would cost.

[Cantriped]

It would depend upon your relationship with the author, your reputation as an author/game designer, and the current popularity of the author's world. However I imagine most of them would want royalties as opposed to a flat licensing fee.

[Christopher R Taylor]

If they'd take royalties instead of a licensing fee, that would be ideal but they'll probably want something up front.

[jdounis]

As mentioned above, the most difficult part of transitioning to HERO from "classic" RPGs is to unlearn their tropes, going from 2D select your race/class/feats to 4D imagining your character and making THAT character its mind boggling,most of my friends even when playing HERO tag their characters, the NPCs, spells and abilities with d&d terms, which is expected in the process of understanding something new but seems like translating idioms from your language word to word to another when overly done.i think a new approach would be better than trying to model the tropes in HERO, maybe a paragraph describing a character without tags, and then section to section injecting HERO system building elements to the description with careful references to the character creation rules.

[Brian Stanfield]

As mentioned above, the most difficult part of transitioning to HERO from "classic" RPGs is to unlearn their tropes, going from 2D select your race/class/feats to 4D imagining your character and making THAT character its mind boggling,most of my friends even when playing HERO tag their characters, the NPCs, spells and abilities with d&d terms, which is expected in the process of understanding something new but seems like translating idioms from your language word to word to another when overly done.i think a new approach would be better than trying to model the tropes in HERO, maybe a paragraph describing a character without tags, and then section to section injecting HERO system building elements to the description with careful references to the character creation rules.

 

I agree with what you're saying at the end. I don't think it's worth recreating D&D so that people who play D&D feel more comfortable. Those people will just play D&D. However, there are no particular tropes in HERO, which is maybe part of the problem for beginners. Being told you can create anything, but not having certain familiar tropes to work with, is a bit daunting. But it's part of HERO's tradition to offer templates to make this part of creating easier. So with enough templates, and enough (but not too many) unique choices for character creation, it can allow a player to be creative and interested in the process. Part of this would require, as you point out, a little tour through the character sheet, then explaining the process section by section with references to Fantasy Hero Complete for more detailed explanations. 

 

Thanks for your input on this!

[Brian Stanfield]

Yeah I'd love to see someone pick up say, The Sword of Truth world or Butcher's Aleria Codex world licensed for Hero games.  Write that up as a setting and you have instant interest.

 

 

I've always wondered what such a license would cost.

 

 

It would depend upon your relationship with the author, your reputation as an author/game designer, and the current popularity of the author's world. However I imagine most of them would want royalties as opposed to a flat licensing fee.

 

 

If they'd take royalties instead of a licensing fee, that would be ideal but they'll probably want something up front.

 

These are all interesting questions I've had as well, but wasn't ready to bring up yet. I guess now's the time. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Christopher, you've done some licensing with DOJ. What's involved? Any ideas what would be involved trying to bring a different entity to DOJ for a game in the way Monster Hunters International did? Because, seriously, just having something like Harry Potter Hero would draw buyers no matter what game system it's attached to (and yes, I know that's not realistic, I'm just giving an over-the-top example). I know we don't really have much say in what they decide to market, and how, so it may all be a moot point.

[Christopher R Taylor]

DOJ's licensing is very easy and open like D20 used to be.  You submit some materials, ask for a contract, and if its not awful or makes them weep openly, they say "sure, its licensed!"  You can get a license from them that lets you keep putting out materials without asking.

 

I know that its harder and more complicated with other companies, particularly those with multi-million dollar world wide properties like Harry Potter.  On the other hand, Rowling seems willing to work with people that will put out quality materials, so who knows?  Her property is particularly complicated though because its been licensed to all sorts of companies and different media, so its likely at least one of them owns the rights to put out RPGs.

[Cantriped]

I also recently started pursuing licensing through Hero Games.

In the Client Area, Under Support, you can write to Hero Games requesting a license. Jason Walters e-mails you a contract to fill out and some generic writers guidelines (which boils down to: write good products). You snail-mail him two filled out copies of the contract contained in the E-mail, he snail-mails you back one of those copies (now signed by both parties), and boom done, you've got a two-year license with Hero Games. After which you begin submitting material for publication.

If your product includes a print run, you are required to provide a certain number of copies of that product for DOJ to sell at conventions and on-line. Otherwise you set the price, they take a cut of its sales, and pay you the remainder quarterly

[Christopher R Taylor]

Hero is, if you cannot afford to buy the physical copies, willing to work with you on that requirement, as well.  They're more interested in getting quality material on the shelf than making life hard on creators.