Browsing through the HERO store

[Amorkca]

Belgiumites thank you...

[Duke Bushido]

It's getting there.

 

Almost done with the page separating.  Thirteen-hour work days, if you haven't tried them yourself, aren't what you'd expect.  They seriously cut into your personal time. :/

 

On the plus side, my donor Western HERO showed up today, though I'm too stinkin' tired to even open the envelope to make sure it's what I wanted....

[Duke Bushido]

All righty.  All the pages are separated, and the cover is completely intact.  Ish.  It's in terrible condition, but that wasn't me.

 

Maybe Sunday or so I can start with the scanning.  I'm going to scan the cover and spine from my good(er) copy, though.

 

 

Hey-- on the subject, who here-- show of hands, please-- bought the Fantasy HERO Companion II PDF that went up for sale a few days ago?  Other than me, I mean (because some of the original pages in my homemade scan were coffee-stained, and this was easier than cleaning them up. )

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

Not me. I got it in hard copy decades ago, but found it to be not as well executed as its predecessors in the line. IMO Fantasy Hero 4E and Fantasy Hero Companion felt like what they were, one book with a unifying vision which had been cut in two. FHC II felt to me like an add-on, stuff put into a book primarily to sell another book.

[Genma]

I did, Duke. I just had to complete my virtual Fantasy Hero collection. 

 

Believe it or not, before Jason started offering PDF versions of the Valdorian Age, Terran Empire, Spacers Toolkit..., I had bought a quality scanner just to do that; scan my old books to minimize my library and have them in a more convenient (to me) format.  Now here’s the irony, I love the Hero System so much that even after I scanned couple of my books I still bought their PDF versions being sold here. 

[Old Man]

20 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Not me. I got it in hard copy decades ago, but found it to be not as well executed as its predecessors in the line. IMO Fantasy Hero 4E and Fantasy Hero Companion felt like what they were, one book with a unifying vision which had been cut in two. FHC felt to me like an add-on, stuff put into a book primarily to sell another book.

 

FHCII was still useful, but you're right that it didn't have the vision or balance of the first two books.  The third best 4E FH book was Ninja Hero.

[Duke Bushido]

I will be perfectly happy to accept your agreement to disagree on this, so long as you are willing to accept mine.

 

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Star hero scanning has begun.  Without serious image manipulation software, I am having to hand lay every sheet for alignment, most often multiple times. 

 

We've all seen bad scans: someone piles a bunch of pages into a sheet scanner and hits play.  Then you spend most of your reading time cracking your neck to each and every unique angle of every sheet. 

 

 

I detest that.  Without a clean method of nudging the image few degrees this way or that, or a half a degree or a quarter--  seriously: twisted text makes me dizzy-  I have to hand lay each sheet, proof it, tweak the position, reproof, etc.  As there are several shets where the text is actually printed off-kilter on the page, this is taking a _while_! 

 

Even then, I'm just goi g to have raw scans.  The bleed through is so bad I had to put a black backing on each page stop it (traditionally you'd use a white, but even cardstock wasn't helping, so I had to go with black to literally blend the bleed through into a uniform grey.  When I get access to some software, I'll burn out that grey and darken the text up a bit so it prints correctly if I ever do need to print it (like, say, if my current paper copy walks off to join my last copy ;)). 

 

But at least the raw scans will be done. 

 

Western Hero is going to be more of a challenge.  Star hero was in black and white, but WH is greyscale, featuring faint log_themed borders and scans of old sepia tone photos. 

 

Not sure how I'm going to handle bleed through on those.... 

 

 

 

 

Slicing has begun on Waetern Hero and is currently 3/4 finished. 

[Vulchon]

Just found this post. Good luck with the slicing and scanning, would be interested in the pdf, Thanks

[dmjalund]

Good luck

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks.

 

In truth, though, I need time even more.

[Duke Bushido]

No scanning got done on Star HERO today, but more slicing got done on Western HERO.  I know: seems like awful slow going, but first: life happens. Real things need to get done.  Second, "slicing" isn't exactly what I do.

Slicing-- or most commercial-grade de-bindings, is just that: they make a reasonable guess as to where the glue stops, and cut all the way through the book just inside of that.  It works fine.  "ish."

 

"Ish" because it results in a couple of problems.  First, if you want to re-bind (say you bought some ludicrously-large rulebook and you can't use it as a reference because it won't stay open where you want it.  You decide to have it de-bound and rebound on a comb or a coil.  Well the debunking took out a portion of your gutters (the "dead space" between the margin and actual binding of the book).  There's a chance (like my one and _only_ attempt at having that done.  Lesson learned) that the new binding will go right through the text of your book, creating a nuisance for use.  Worse, as the pages wear, the little holes in the text will get larger and larger.

 

Secondly-- and this goes straight to what I'm doing when I PDF an actual book-- you don't get the whole cover.  For instance, look at FHCII, now available on the company store page.  Look at the cover.  Notice how there's about a third of an inch missing from the left side?  The little red block with Hexman up there?  The edge of the art on down the cover?   You have similar issues with any full-page splash art in the book, too.  When I scanned my first FHII (because it had finally begun to fall apart.  When I secured a replacement, I finished pulling it down and scanned it.  Mine, however, has the entire cover.  Not huge to a lot of people, I know, BUUuuuUUUTTT......

 

I don't make the PDFs just so I can read these books wherever I want, or just so I can carry a couple of them in the phone with me.  I am attempting to make legitimate "backup copies."  Something that, should I lose or damage one beyond use and there are no replacements (or they cost fifty stinkin' dollars for a "lovingly maimed" used one!), I can simply get a new book printed from my PDF.  With the whole cover, the spine, glue-binding where appropriate-- the whole she-bang.  And I will even have the original gutter spacing when I'm done.  For the record, I ended up buying the FHCII from the store as well: my original suffered from coffee stains and bored youthful players coloring some of the art.  I'll level with you: that really doesn't bother me the way it might other folks, but it does rankle a little bit on the ones that were colored in MARKER! Gad, the bleed-through!  And of course, the spread and soaking of the ink over the years....  So I thought I'd get the one-- legally, of course-- and stick my cover (which is in better shape over all, as well as being complete), but I can't seem to open the "official" PDF.   I mean, I can read it; I can't get in there to edit it and such.  I'll figure it out eventually.

 

 

As I was saying, I'm not just slicing the pages; I am completely separating them from the biding, one at a time.  Places where the glue bulged are particularly tedious.  I've got less than thirty pages to go on Western HERO, so it's getting closer and closer to the time when I will have to make a decision:

 

Whether or not I should correct the single largest "Typo" in the entire fourth edition.

 

 

Hmmmm.....

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

On 11/2/2018 at 6:09 PM, Duke Bushido said:

I will be perfectly happy to accept your agreement to disagree on this, so long as you are willing to accept mine.

 

You are learning, grasshopper.

[Duke Bushido]

What can I say?  I grew up really, really close to Canada.

 

[Old Man]

On 11/2/2018 at 12:09 PM, Duke Bushido said:

I will be perfectly happy to accept your agreement to disagree on this, so long as you are willing to accept mine.

 

 

 

 

I never said FHCII was bad.  It just... didn't match.  I'd never give mine up though, especially to some lunatic who planned to cut it up and scan it. 

[Lord Liaden]

I never said FHC II was bad, either. It just didn't impress me enough in its quality, style, or utility, for me to want to invest in a PDF version.

 

After reading European Enemies, my standard for calling a Hero product "bad" shifted significantly.

[Duke Bushido]

6 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I never said FHCII was bad.  It just... didn't match.  I'd never give mine up though, especially to some lunatic who planned to cut it up and scan it. 

  Oh no; forgive me, Old Man.  It wasn't that.  FHCII _was_ really unnecessary.  All it seemed to do was pave the way for the "here's ten more spell colleges" that have wasted space in otherwise practical books ever since. 

 

I was referring to your comment that Ninja Hero was the 3rd most useful book of 4th edition.  I didn't find it useful at all, and to this day can't see what all the fuss was about.  Honestly, I didn't find decent utility for it until after the 5e martial arts book.  Then 4e served as something of a primer for folks who might have gotten overwhelmed. 

 

Now before I get ostracized by all HEROdom for disliking one of the most sacred of texts, allow me to defend myself.  Ninja hero was too little, too late to help us.  Just like special rules for vehicles and bases, we needed (at least in a relative sense) a long time before they were published, and when they were, we'll we liked our stuff better 

 

The game as-is allows creation of any contingency thing we've ever needed, and usually multiple methods of getting there.  While I know that, for whatever reason, the following generations would take this model and make it official, I will always maintain that for my needs, it's the worst possible way of doing it.

 

For one, on the meta game level, it takes a whole new book with a special set of rules. 

 

Way to show off the universality of the system. 

 

I won't even get into the rest.  We disagree, but I still love ya. 

 

 

Duke

[archer]

15 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I never said FHC II was bad, either. It just didn't impress me enough in its quality, style, or utility, for me to want to invest in a PDF version.

 

After reading European Enemies, my standard for calling a Hero product "bad" shifted significantly.

 

 

A month or two ago I made a post coming up with  a 26 member UN superteam with each member named after letter in the alphabet. I came up with the character concepts for 26 heroes in 15 minutes.

 

European Enemies struck me as being of the same length of thought: someone had a list of European countries and came up with 26 heavily stereotyped character concepts in 15 minutes.

 

The main difference is that I think my characters had some thought and depth to them, at least enough to be written up as a sellable product which wasn't notoriously bad.

[Duke Bushido]

To be fair, European Enemies was clearly a sellable product.

 

How many people here own it (besides me)?

 

 

(and yes; it was truly awful)

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Slicing is completed on Western HERO.

 

Currently fighting the temptation to slice up GURPS West, Deadlands, and TSR's Boot Hill (flavor and historical stuff only, of course) and creating a Western HERO Omnibus of sorts.  

 

Scanning on Star HERO will resume some time next week, I hope.  Fighting the urge to include the notes from the never-completed 4e Star HERO....

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

To be fair, European Enemies was clearly a sellable product.

 

How many people here own it (besides me)?

 

 

(and yes; it was truly awful)

 

I bought it. Many of us wanted what it promised; almost none of us wanted what we actually got.

 

Champions Worldwide did a much better job of providing well-thought-out international villains (and heroes).

[Old Man]

On 11/5/2018 at 11:48 PM, Duke Bushido said:

  Oh no; forgive me, Old Man.  It wasn't that.  FHCII _was_ really unnecessary.  All it seemed to do was pave the way for the "here's ten more spell colleges" that have wasted space in otherwise practical books ever since.

 

Not a problem.  Always nice to find another FH fan!

 

 

On 11/5/2018 at 11:48 PM, Duke Bushido said:

 

I was referring to your comment that Ninja Hero was the 3rd most useful book of 4th edition.  I didn't find it useful at all, and to this day can't see what all the fuss was about. 

 

YOU ARE DEAD TO ME

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[IndianaJoe3]

On 11/4/2018 at 1:55 AM, Duke Bushido said:

We've all seen bad scans: someone piles a bunch of pages into a sheet scanner and hits play.  Then you spend most of your reading time cracking your neck to each and every unique angle of every sheet. 

 

 

I detest that.  Without a clean method of nudging the image few degrees this way or that, or a half a degree or a quarter--  seriously: twisted text makes me dizzy-  I have to hand lay each sheet, proof it, tweak the position, reproof, etc.  As there are several shets where the text is actually printed off-kilter on the page, this is taking a _while_! 

 

No love for GIMP? That would be easier than tweaking the sheet on the scanner.

[Duke Bushido]

Yeah; I get that a lot when I say I didn't think Ninja HERO was all that necessary.  It's just that the arts as presented there are HEROIC level valid, and Supers level silly.

 

cosmic Ninja Man, with his 80 STR, will forgo using his +30 STR Bunker Buster power and instead use a martial arts attack, which will let him add 2d6 to his attack. 

 

 

Yawn. 

 

Even in Heroic level stuff, it's just simpler to buy Powers defined as a martial this or that.  With the added plus of being able to _really_ emulate some way out there stuff.  You can have a 15 STR and a "secret ninja family technique passed down from father to son in secrecy, and only recorded in tattoo inside the larynx of a tri- colored yak" type maneuver that adds 10 DC.   Want another maneuver?  Sure.  Only use half of it, and yell out some entirely-different combination of adjective-adjective-noun.  Maybe this time go with Adjective-noun-noun.

 

"You will fall, villain!"  

"What power do you think you possess to defeat _me_, whelp?!"

Leaping into battle: "Flaming Spinning Hydrant!"

"You fool!  I am much too fast for that!  You cannot touch me!"

"Oh yeah?!  Soggy Panther Face!"

"What?!  You have penetrated my defenses?  How can this be?!

"I am a Master.  Be lucky I did not try the dreaded Roger's Steely Luffa.  You would not have survived."

 

Want another move?  Move some skill levels and Haymaker it.  The world is yours.  Martial Arts.  Cool. 

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

5 minutes ago, IndianaJoe3 said:

 

No love for GIMP? That would be easier than tweaking the sheet on the scanner.

 

I will spare you the very bizarre and embarrassingly real reason I can't add software to my computer, for all the reasons above, plus the reason that it would be a _lot_ to read (reference the average and mean lengths of my posts to see why this is a valid reason not to share it).  It would also be a lot to tap out with two thumbs. 

 

I will, however, offer that I will be 59 in March, and don't _want_ to learn a whole new piece of software. 

 

Sound selfish?  I have two kids, 10 and 13.  The ten is a litteralist and hyperactive.  Communicating with him is exhausting.  I wasn't kidding when I said I work twelve hour days.  I go in at six am, bust my guts moving material and equipment until 2:30 (fortunately I'm a biggish guy), when I take 20 minutes for lunch, which is usually a cup of coffee and some reading or popping in here for a minute.  (some days I get a ten minute break at 11:15.  It's scheduled, I'm just usually doing something I can't stop right about then.). Then it's circling the entire plant checking inventories until four, five-thirty.  In the middle of the whole day though, I get three or four dozen interruptions of "hey, Duke: I forgot to tell you were completely out of this or that, and we need it or our line will have to shut down (first rule: production cannot stop)". So I have to stop and deal with everyone of this things, because two-hundred-odd grown men can't tell when they are low on something. 

 

Anyway, after inventories (and emergency phone calls, scheduling trucks, etc) it's time to do some ordering.  On a really, really good day, I can get out about 5:30.  Usually it's an hour or so after that, because some things _have_ to be done, and if you didn't get them done, well don't ever be afraid that someone did it for you. 

 

So I leave the house at 5ish in the morning.  I get home at 7ish in the evening.  Wife works nights, so I cook supper for the kids and graze on whatever I'm cooking.  Then run them through the tub cycle.  If I need laundry, gotta run it _after_ they bathe, because apparently running out of hot water is a big deal to them.  If everything works flawlessly, I can get to bed before midnight and do it all over again.  I only work half-days most Saturdays, so I have some time to - hurriedly_ review where my games are and get some notes for the next session. 

 

I know it's not interesting.  Hell, I live it and it's boring as hell.  But you know what else it is?  Bone wiltingly, brain-breakingly _exhausting_. 

 

I just flat-damned don't have the energy to learn a big new thing, period. 

 

Duke