HS 6e is mechanically the best version of the rules; dissenting views welcome

[RDU Neil]

On 2/5/2019 at 11:41 AM, Doc Democracy said:

The problem with guarding is that you are dealing with players who make tactical judgements on paper that they would never make in real life.  They judge that taking a hit in getting past is something they can live with whereas a real person might want to avoid a bit of sharp metal penetrating their skin.

 

I wonder whether the rule should be that if a zone is guarded the seeking to pass by the defender is possible.  The defender can make a roll to hit at 1/2 DCV and, if they hit make their damage roll.  The person seeking to get past must then make a PRE or EGO roll modified by the BODY rolled in the attack to see if they actually do it.  If they do not, they do not pass and lose the rest of their action, if they do they can choose to take the damage and pass the defender or avoid the damage and fail to get past.

 

It kind of means that it is the character deciding whether getting past is worth the damage rather than the player.  Less brave characters will fail to do this, even if they are wearing enough armour (they are scared), brave characters with plenty of armour will choose to go through as the literature shows - the brave hero smashes through the defensive line, allowing his shield and armour to take the strain to get within reach of the big bad.

 

Doc

 

I wonder if there is a simpler way to get at what you are doing. You just need to use Ego (or something) as a "coolness under fire" or "courage" or "desperation" roll. Basically, Ego roll adjusted for situation.

 

i.e. Slim Jim wants to dash across the street from the saloon to the general store while Crazy McKnuckin is drunk and stumbling around and shooting anything that moves. Now, getting shot in the old west is dangerous... severely debilitating if not outright lethal, could die of infection, generally all around bad... but McKnuckin isn't that great a shot, and Slim's pal is bleeding out and I needs the medicine. All those "story elements" are what make the GM come up with a quick "Ego Roll... -1 or you stay behind the barrel."

i.e. Conan sees the vile sorcerer putting the finishing touches on his horrible spell. If complete, the demon that is released will feast on all flesh until the world is but bones! Between him and the red robed sorcerer is a phalanx of animated skeletons weilding vicious, twisted and blood drenched blades!  Now, in this case, of course Conan will smash through. If the player playing Conan even hesitates and looks for another way, they should be dumped from the game as they don't know how to play Conan... OR... you could argue that a "coolness under fire" roll is still required, but Conan has a high Ego, he knows how to fight better than the skeletons, isn't afraid of a little damage, and absolutely MUST stop the sorceror... so he has Bonuses to the roll. (of course, what happens with the inevitable 18 is rolled and Conan blanches in the face of danger? Unthinkable!)

So coolness under fire is campaign applicable, but I think it is a simple, but important use of a basic Characteristic roll, that gives it some heart... but allows the "character" to decide... not necessarily the player.

And basically, how is "guarded" any different than "Held Action"  ??

[RDU Neil]

58 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

 

Either you agree with the premise of the topic that 6e mechanics are better overall than the previous editions, or you don't; and if you don't please share which edition's mechanics you prefer. 

 

I'm just trying to keep the discussion on the track; any ruffling of feathers is unintended.

 

I love the decoupling of Figured Characteristics. I dislike making Missile Deflection an "every man" maneuver, as I thought 4th Eds version of this was much cleaner, and provided 99% of the utility expected. I dislike the tendency of 5th and 6th to differ in the approach to skills/talents.  For example (and I've written about this before): Stealth is a very general skill for any kind of "move without being noticed"... so I can move through a house party avoiding the hosts notice AND sneak up on an alert guard without being seen or heard AND move through an old house without setting off all the creaks and scrunching noises... all of which are VERY different skills, but fall under Stealth.  While at the same time Environmental Movement is based around having to define every different environment in detail that you know how to move through, pay separately for all of them, even though most of them will rarely come up, while Stealth is used ten times a game or more. I preferred old editions with smaller skill lists where skills were broadly interpreted/applicable. 

This lack of focus on internal logic/consistency at the expense of actual play effectiveness is at the heart of what I see as a difference in game philosophy that didn't always work out. (Healing/Regen, etc.) in many cases. Sometimes it did work out (non-figured characteristics is much better IMO and it helps create a more diverse range of character builds in my experience.)

 

Also... the idea of "universal game" is also a misnomer... because it still has restrictions. Hero is a generalized system for creating human-based action adventure characters and resolving cinematic action adventure conflicts between such characters"

Hero is not suited for your political game, or your simulate microbial growth game, etc. It has no mechanics that effectively represent that, and wasn't intended to... so sometimes bespoke mechanics that reflect "action adventure characters having action adventure conflicts" are better... like Missile Deflection as defined in 4th Ed.

 

 

[Killer Shrike]

35 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

And basically, how is "guarded" any different than "Held Action"  ??

 

That's where I always end up on this topic as well.

[Killer Shrike]

On 2/6/2019 at 1:08 PM, RDU Neil said:

I love the decoupling of Figured Characteristics.

 

Me too.

 

Quote

I dislike making Missile Deflection an "every man" maneuver, as I thought 4th Eds version of this was much cleaner, and provided 99% of the utility expected.

 

Ok, so, yeah. I'll go ahead and parse that for those who are not 6e conversant...

 

Missile Reflection was split into its two component elements, the defense part and the offense part. Seems simple enough at first.

 

However, that's not the end of it. The ability to "deflect" a ranged attack directly against one's self was added to the Block maneuver as a GM's option to allow. Mechanically this makes sense, as it unifies the mechanic for block / deflect and deals with odd situations such as throwing a character at another character (hth attack or a missile? do I block it or deflect it?). The first time I recall any discussion around that particular edge case and insight that the mechanic would be more sensical if merged was back in 2005, by the king of finding wacky edge cases, Sean Waters. 

 

So, what does the Deflection power do then? Lets you use Block to deflect ranged attacks at range. It's a unlock type of ability, allowing a character to do something the rules don't normally allow.

 

So, this is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in for old timers used to Missile Deflection...used to be you bought Missile Deflection and then (if you wanted to) upgraded it to also allow reflection. But now, a character can just buy Reflection without buying Deflection to reflect ranged attacks made directly against themselves as the target. 

 

There are nuances there, but I think that's a fair encapsulation of the main ideas.

 

Ok, so back to the topic at hand. "Missile Deflection" as a simple, unified power vs Deflect, Reflect, and upgraded Block and which is "better".

 

This actually plays into a point I was making earlier vis a vis many of the character creation changes also constitute game resolution improvements.

 

From the perspective of simplicity, the unified power is obviously easier to understand, easier to purchase for a character, and has a smaller footprint both in the book, and in the user's headspace. Less fiddly to be sure. However, it introduced a parallel rules subsystem that was basically Block with a false dichotomy asserted into the rules to separate the two. It did model the specific "All in the reflexes" cinematic ideal of catching a muscle powered ranged weapon and throwing it back pretty well. However, it was less ideal as the type of attack it was to be used against ramped up, and didn't cooperate very well when used to make more extreme solutions (a trigger based defense matrix I once added to a character drew a surprising amount of ire, for instance). There were also rules oddities such as the aforementioned fast ball special glitch, attempts to use missile reflection as a model for redirecting hand to hand attacks (why can't I? block and deflect are the same mechanic, why isn't there a redirect to mirror reflect?), and so on.

 

So, mechanically, the deconstruction of all of that results in something like what we see in 6e. Personally, the Block upgrade and the Reflection Power make sense to me, but Deflection feels more like a Talent to me than a base Power, due to its flat pricing and limited effect. It's basically just Ranged as a Naked Power Advantage, when you cut through the mix and consider what it does, but its a bit of a muddled area as it applies to a free maneuver rather than some # of Active Points. I can live with it as a Power, albeit a now very niche ability.

 

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I dislike the tendency of 5th and 6th to differ in the approach to skills/talents.  For example (and I've written about this before): Stealth is a very general skill for any kind of "move without being noticed"... so I can move through a house party avoiding the hosts notice AND sneak up on an alert guard without being seen or heard AND move through an old house without setting off all the creaks and scrunching noises... all of which are VERY different skills, but fall under Stealth.  While at the same time Environmental Movement is based around having to define every different environment in detail that you know how to move through, pay separately for all of them, even though most of them will rarely come up, while Stealth is used ten times a game or more. I preferred old editions with smaller skill lists where skills were broadly interpreted/applicable. 

 

So, I agree in theory...it would be better if the game made up its mind whether it wants granularity or abstractness in the skills model. 

 

Personally, I prefer broad skills vs narrow skills over all. For instance, a game system that makes me take one skill to be sneaky when I'm standing still and a different skill to be sneaky when moving has some problems baked into it, both superficially (so...if I move the guards wont notice me but if I stop moving they'll see me? wtf?) and mechanically (this sort of mechanical separation for its own sake tends to not just show up in one place in a rules system, but rather be an endemic flaw of the game designers that will rear its head throughout a system designed by them).

 

However, at gritty / realistic / low powered levels of play sensible granularity is a good thing from the perspective of character differentiation. For instance, if we are playing in a space exploration game, hard sci fi, and the PC's are a group of scientists, astronauts, and a security detail then either there is one scientist who is just good at all "sciency" stuff, or there is design space for different specialties within the broad category of "science". Science is obviously used in this context as a stand in for any similar area of specialization. 

 

In my experience, the following things are not 100% true, but true enough to serve as useful heuristics.

 

• Allowing space for narrow specialization within a broad category is almost always genre or subgenre specific, and is counterproductive outside of the narrow contexts in which it is useful.
• Any 3d6 roll under skill can be used as both a simple broad skill or expanded with fine grained sub-specialties requiring separate purchase.
• Edge case skills that lack a 3d6 roll and are just fine grained sub-purchases don't really make sense in the context of the game system, and the system would be better if each of them were either turned into a 3d6 roll under skill or gotten rid of as unnecessarily fiddly.
  • Some of them might be better expressed as Penalty Skill Levels for certain tasks rather than defined as they currently, but that tends to spiral back into "genre specific".
  • The Professional Skill / Knowledge Skill model offers a compelling existing mechanism for handling arbitrarily defined narrow skills with a skill roll applied to them.

 

So, personally, I think that the skill list should be simplified to a very tight set of broad skills usable in nearly any genre. An open ended define-your-own skill exactly similar to Power Skill would be sufficient to cover the rest "well enough" for the core game. The Ultimate Skill or edition-specific equivalent would then provide a compendium of possibilities for optional inclusion in games in which they are relevant; all the bespoke specialized skills worth retaining would be moved to live within it and be copy & pasted directly into genre and settings books where relevant. The genre and setting books (and GM's for their home games) could also extend that list in whatever way seemed appropriate to model special snowflake ideas peculiar to them. But the core experience would be straightforward and general purposed rather than a collection of disparate subsystems as it is today.

 

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This lack of focus on internal logic/consistency at the expense of actual play effectiveness is at the heart of what I see as a difference in game philosophy that didn't always work out. (Healing/Regen, etc.) in many cases. Sometimes it did work out (non-figured characteristics is much better IMO and it helps create a more diverse range of character builds in my experience.)

 

 

I could natter on indefinitely in this space; deconstructionism, convenience vs correctness, etc. However, to stay focused on more concrete matters I'll instead make the following observations:

 

Abstractions are powerful and good, but there is not one level of abstraction. When you start to break down things that are abstract into things that are more abstract, if the level of abstraction that the thing was already at was useful then you tend to lose something in the process. 

 

Now, when done properly, the original abstraction can be reconstituted by combining the even more abstract thing it was turned into with one or more other things. When done improperly, the original abstraction cannot be reached from the deeper abstraction. Even when it can be reconstituted, it can be unnecessarily laborious or irritating to do so.

 

Applying this idea of levels of abstraction to the Hero System, there are multiple levels of abstraction present within the Powers category and this can cause some issues. All the powers, regardless of their level of abstraction, are in the same bucket. Some powers within that bucket are very abstract and can be used to make a bewildering array of concrete power constructions individually and in combination. Other powers within that bucket are less abstract and the power constructions they can be used to make are more limited in variety. As long as there is no direct overlap in scope between the powers, this isn't a problem per se. 

 

However when there is a less abstract power that overlaps a more abstract power, the meta rules of the system indicate that the less abstract power is redundant and should be factored away in such a way that the more abstract power can be used to cover that idea in addition to its existing greater scope. 

 

This makes sense systemically; you reduce the total complexity of the system by removing redundant subsystems. However, if the less abstract power offered useful functionality that was commonly used and it is unnecessarily cumbersome to reproduce it...

 

There are powers like this, Regeneration and Transfer come to mind from this thread alone, that offer specific, non-atomic functionality that can be decomposed into more general base powers, but that provide a useful level of abstraction and ease of use, and in the case of "powers that existed in previous editions" familiarity. I think the obvious place for power like this to have been provided as full power write ups (with the stipulation that they are derived from core powers) would have been in the APG along with other similar practical but non-core expansions of the game system.

 

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Also... the idea of "universal game" is also a misnomer... because it still has restrictions. Hero is a generalized system for creating human-based action adventure characters and resolving cinematic action adventure conflicts between such characters"

 

I don't agree with that. I've had players play everything from an amorphous blob to a sentient idea. The system is very pliable and forgiving, and my experience indicates that it is more the preconceptions of the people using it than the system itself that dictates its limitations. 

 

Also, there is a hidden trap in that which I almost missed...a universal system is not a system that claims to have no restrictions. All systems are finite, and thus all systems have limits (or "restrictions" to anchor it here) as to their scope. Some chap named Gödel had some interesting things to say on that subject, as a matter of fact; I'd refer you to him for further information.

 

The term "universal game system" (or "generic game system", interchangeably) has a well understood meaning in the context of roleplaying games. The 'universal' connotation in this context is of the "comprehensively broad and versatile / adapted or adjustable to meet varied requirements" meaning of the word, not the "existent or operative everywhere or under all conditions" meaning.

 

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Hero is not suited for your political game, or your simulate microbial growth game, etc. It has no mechanics that effectively represent that, and wasn't intended to... so sometimes bespoke mechanics that reflect "action adventure characters having action adventure conflicts" are better... like Missile Deflection as defined in 4th Ed. 

 

Hold on, that's starting to set off my sophist-o-meter. In what way is it not suited for a "political" game?  In what way would one gamify microbial growth? 

 

 

@RDU Neil I didn't get to responding to this last night, but better late than never....

[Toxxus]

8 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

 

That's where I always end up on this topic as well.

 

The way I run it - You can abort to make the Guarding attack.  No held action required, though the defender gets full DCV if you aborted and 1/2 if you held your attack waiting for them to try to move past you.

[Doc Democracy]

44 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

And basically, how is "guarded" any different than "Held Action"  ??

 

Well, in my suggestion, a guarded space would require a bravery roll to pass through and would prevent the guard from doing anything other than guarding the space....

[RDU Neil]

1 hour ago, Killer Shrike said:

 

Great post, and I am going to respond to it in the detail it deserves (had started to in fact), but right in the middle of typing up my response something came up in real life that I have to deal with. So, rather than post something half-arsed, I'm leaving this here as a marker which I will edit with my response later today / tonight.

 

Cool.  Also, I mistyped in my original post. I wrote, "This lack of focus on internal logic/consistency at the expense of actual play effectiveness"... when the phrase "lack of" should not be there.  "The focus on internal logic/consistency at the expense of actual play effectiveness..." is what I meant to write.

[RDU Neil]

1 hour ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

Well, in my suggestion, a guarded space would require a bravery roll to pass through and would prevent the guard from doing anything other than guarding the space....

 

Gotcha... so "Bravery" or "Coolness Under Fire" becomes a triggered moment by certain "maneuvers" defined with the game. Certainly one way to do it. Helps the arbitrariness of deciding when "Bravery" needs to be rolled vs. the players just having their characters act. 

 

Maybe this is worth another thread (off topic here) on a "Bravery Roll" or "Coolness" or whatever. 

[assault]

2 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

Hero is not suited for your political game, or your simulate microbial growth game, etc. It has no mechanics that effectively represent that, and wasn't intended to... so sometimes bespoke mechanics that reflect "action adventure characters having action adventure conflicts" are better... like Missile Deflection as defined in 4th Ed.

 

 

Most of a political game would be covered by skills, PRE, perks and so on.

 

The Ultimate Base covers a lot of the rest.

[RDU Neil]

8 minutes ago, assault said:

 

Most of a political game would be covered by skills, PRE, perks and so on.

 

The Ultimate Base covers a lot of the rest.

 

You can have all the skills and such, but nothing in Hero helps to mechanically resolve non-physical combats in any detailed way. You'd need mechanics like those found in Dogs in the Vineyard or such for that. There are no verbal combat skills or maneuvers, etc. You could really bastardize the mechanics and build your own of course, but that is different than mechanics purpose designed for that.

 

Like all old school games, social skills were all very generalized and the base expectation was that this is handled by "role playing" and dependent on the verbal and mental acuity of the player, not the character. PRE is a great mechanic in Hero, but if generalized to handle any "social dynamic power play" then it becomes of outsized importance and the game boils down to "who has the higher PRE" and a political game is about one stat. A game designed for primarily political social interaction would have as many Political Maneuvers and Social Powers as Hero has martial maneuvers and super powers. 

Again, not a fault of Hero... it wasn't designed for that. Social stuff was secondary at best, and not the point of the game outside of vanilla "in character role playing" of the day.

[Ninja-Bear]

RDU Neil the biggest issue I have with MD for all isn’t so much that it is in a broad sense but the guidelines of what is acceptable for Block Ranged Attacks and what isn’t is very slim. (Note that the definition I have is through CC so that could be a reason as to why.) I did post on the boards and the main answer was it depends. So basically for myself, I just Deflection as the old MD and moved on.

[Ninja-Bear]

As to the expanded list of modifiers complaint, I’ll make the assertion that the list hasn’t greatly increased. If you look, many of the limitations are really now just hard coded custom limitations. The limitation for Flight only touching surface has been around since 4e but now I believe is the first time that it’s listed as its own Limiation for example. Now the chart to figure out the cost for NND? Ok that I think got more complex for the sake of getting what you pay for. Here is an example of perhaps exactness won over simplicity.  But then I think, does anyone complain about Charges and adjusting for its various modifiers?

[Ninja-Bear]

23 hours ago, Spence said:

 

Very good ideas. 

 

I would also suggest that the pregens have simple power sets over efficiency of build.  The idea is to give new players easy samples to play and digest.  Not try to dazzle anyone with how cool the builds are. 

Ok back when Basic 6th came out, I had a grand idea of making sample characters (300 CP). Onething that I got hung up on was that fact that though Basic states that you could put modifiers on HA, it didn’t really explain the rule for using STR with HA advantages. So in my mind I struggled. I could make a character with it for example rapid punch HA with AF. (As an aside I asked Steve Long and he did give me a quick and dirty rule to use.) Or I could have built it a different way, say Blast (PD) AF. What stopped me was in my minds eye, I could hear the criticism of making an inefficient build and also see this is why Basic is bad and you need the 2 tomes.  My point is that if they build an adventure. I wouldn’t so much worry as to the optimized build and somewhere, I would put a page about design considerations. I now harken back to the words from Scott Benny from Classic Enemies when referring to if his builds aren’t optimized. His respond is So What? 

[Spence]

14 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I now harken back to the words from Scott Benny from Classic Enemies when referring to if his builds aren’t optimized. His respond is So What? 

That connects back to what IMO killed Hero as the visible go to Supers (or any genre RPG) game.  Starting with 5th, it became more about trying to achieve mathematical perfection than roleplaying.  When I build a beginner a starter PC, I really care less about efficiency or optimized builds. The keywords are simple and easy.

 

[RDU Neil]

32 minutes ago, Spence said:

That connects back to what IMO killed Hero as the visible go to Supers (or any genre RPG) game.  Starting with 5th, it became more about trying to achieve mathematical perfection than roleplaying.  When I build a beginner a starter PC, I really care less about efficiency or optimized builds. The keywords are simple and easy.

 

 

This is what I'm alluding to above, that it felt like a move too far to the "over-engineering of characters builds" side of thing, while ignoring "actual play" and the results of using the rules in play.

I've said before that Hero became "two games"... the "build your character game" and the "actual play at the table" game. The mechanics, even all the massive supplements, became stylistically and functionally removed from implementing actual play. A tendency to deconstruct everything to the Nth degree, without a focus on whether you SHOULD bother deconstructing, and does it actually help you play the game better with actual people and dice rolling and plots and dialogue going on, etc.

 

[Jagged]

1 hour ago, Spence said:

That connects back to what IMO killed Hero as the visible go to Supers (or any genre RPG) game.  Starting with 5th, it became more about trying to achieve mathematical perfection than roleplaying.  When I build a beginner a starter PC, I really care less about efficiency or optimized builds. The keywords are simple and easy.

 

It is also my experience that trying to achieve that level of balance is pointless as the real deciding factor is the player running it.

As a GM I had some players whom I need never worry about. But I was always careful what I let @Sean Waters run ?

[sentry0]

Character building is one of the most fun things to do in this game.  Thinking in HERO usually means you can't watch a movie or read a book without  mulling over how you would build x or y power/character.  It's fun, at least for me.

 

That said, you need someone experienced to guide you through your first build or at least have well articulated campaign expectations around active points, CVs, etc.

 

Pregens are a good way to dodge all that for new players. 

[Ninja-Bear]

In my mind, the Pregens should have a basic explanation of why certain things were built a certain way and then a general note stating the the GM is free to modify as needed or wanted.

 

For example say Classic Orge is used. I say he should have one level each of Hardened, impenetrable and (isn’t there a third Defense?). A statement would be that for the (prehensile) game, This is all he needs cause no one has more than one level of AP and Pen. However if you use the sample Questionite Claws in CC, Ogre should have the appropriate Defenses to stop those advantages unless GM feels that Questionite should affect Ogre.

[Killer Shrike]

23 hours ago, RDU Neil said:

 

You can have all the skills and such, but nothing in Hero helps to mechanically resolve non-physical combats in any detailed way. You'd need mechanics like those found in Dogs in the Vineyard or such for that. There are no verbal combat skills or maneuvers, etc. You could really bastardize the mechanics and build your own of course, but that is different than mechanics purpose designed for that.

 

Like all old school games, social skills were all very generalized and the base expectation was that this is handled by "role playing" and dependent on the verbal and mental acuity of the player, not the character. PRE is a great mechanic in Hero, but if generalized to handle any "social dynamic power play" then it becomes of outsized importance and the game boils down to "who has the higher PRE" and a political game is about one stat. A game designed for primarily political social interaction would have as many Political Maneuvers and Social Powers as Hero has martial maneuvers and super powers. 

Again, not a fault of Hero... it wasn't designed for that. Social stuff was secondary at best, and not the point of the game outside of vanilla "in character role playing" of the day.

 

Ok, I see where you are coming from on this. So, personally, even though I acknowledge that the argument that if a character is a nuclear physicist and the player can't even say nuclear correctly but its cool because the character's purchased abilities allow them to be good at nuclear stuff, then it makes sense that a politician character played by a player who has no social intelligence at all in real life should be able to apply their purchased abilities to be good at political stuff has merit, I still tend to prefer social interactions to at least be grounded in roleplaying a little bit. I still want the player to make some kind of effort to "fake it" before reaching for the dice.

 

It is a bias of mine to prefer roleplaying in character and keeping scenes moving without dice rolls as long as possible. I acknowledge that this is inconsistent with my equally strong bias for clean rules systems when it comes to social skills. I've played a few games that incorporate social conflict mechanics decently, but I generally find it unsatisfying when a dramatic moment in the story is resolved by a die roll or arbitrary mechanical ability rather than rhetoric and narrative. I can play and run games like that, but I tend to not enjoy social interactions as much in such games. I'm a verbal guy, and I like to ham it up in character, so having to switch over into tactical metagame mode to resolve a social conflict doesn't scratch my roleplaying itch as much. 

 

Having said that, the Hero System does have more than just PRE attack for social interaction, it has a solid selection of Interaction Skills; however I acknowledge that they are all still single stat dependent which I think was your main point. What it notably lacks is some kind of concrete measure of consequence for social failure. In fact, the complications / disadvantages model kind of interferes with social consequences in some way, as any significant social consequence would be best represented by one or more complications...but after character creation if a character's complications are maxed out...This sort of thing could be dealt with at the table easily enough, but the system itself is not helping there and is arguably getting in the way. 

 

Some systems generalize "detrimental stuff" as Stress or something similarly named, and lump all sorts of stress (mental, emotional, social, physical) into one bucket and sort of hand-wave away the differences; this can work ok in a more abstract or narrative game if players are willing to play along. It's obviously not a good way to go for a more grounded game like the Hero System. 

 

The main issue I run into with games that try to formalize social conflict into rules is that unlike physical conflict which can be reduced to discrete states (basically, a character can be reduced to a finite state machine of uninjured, impaired, unconscious, or dead or shades thereof), social interactions are not about an individual character but rather the bi-directional relationships between multiple characters and groups (entities to generalize) to each other. As it happens, I have a background in graph databases and both set and graph theory, so I am pretty familiar with the nature of this sort of complexity. I think it's beyond the scope of a game to fully model this kind of thing and I generally find attempts to do so uncompelling for me personally.  As a discrete example, I love Cortex Plus as used for Marvel Superheroes, and can't even wrap my head around playing it as used for Leverage or Smallville or Firefly. 

 

_________________

 

Ok, now that I've cleared my throat on the matter, lets get serious. Lets postulate a fairly standard triangle of Social Mental Physical as the poles of a game engine.  

• Does the Hero System provide equivalent coverage between those three poles?
  • Nope; the system is primarily focused on Physical conflict, though Mental conflict is strongly developed. Social conflict is supported by the idea of a PRE Attack (which was a very early generation idea at integrating Social conflict) and a collection of skills, and there are also Perks and Talents and Complications that relate to Social resolutions; however it is less dominant than Physical conflict and less impactful than most of the Mental conflict options.
• Are the mechanics for the three poles integrated?
  • Somewhat. Physical and Mental conflicts resolve in the same time frame; Social conflict in the form of PRE attacks are also integrated. However odd things such as using Persuasion to get someone to do something vs using Mind Control to get someone to do something reveal a lack of unification.
• Does the Hero System offer core support for a game that focuses on Social conflict more than Physical and Mental conflict?
  • Yes, though it is not the focus of nor a particular feature of the game system.
• Can the toolkit nature of the Hero System be applied to extend the core game system's coverage for Social conflict and / or to more strongly integrate Social conflict with Physical and Mental conflict?
  • Yes, of course. The Hero System is first and foremost a toolkit that is intended to be used by a GM to craft a game setting or campaign that contains exactly what they want. A GM desiring more Social options can easily add them for a given campaign. A GM desiring a more mechanistic resolution for political intrigue can easily dial that in as they see fit.  

 

[Doc Democracy]

24 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

 I've played a few games that incorporate social conflict mechanics decently, but I generally find it unsatisfying when a dramatic moment in the story is resolved by a die roll or arbitrary mechanical ability rather than rhetoric and narrative.

 

One of the ways we have dealt with this (the best way as far as I am concerned) is for the player to roll the dice so that only the GM can see them (use a cup and the GM gets a peak).  The player then roleplays the interaction and the GM dials his responses in relation to the result of the roll.  Only the GM knows the result and so can decide how and where to take the conversation based on the dice result...

 

Doc

[Killer Shrike]

This is a general response to a 6e complaint. No one person cited this exactly, verbatim, but several people made comments that I've generalized into the following:

 

The Hero System is more of a generalized system for making games with than a playable game itself.

 

To which I say, yes, of course. This is not a hidden realization, rather it is the expressed purpose of it. This has been clearly stated in 4e, 5e, and 6e via designer's notes and 'how to use' sections as well as from the extra-diegetic comments of the creators themselves. It's even on the back (and sometimes the front) cover of the books.

 

4e:

 

5e:

 

6e:

 

This is not some kind of secret or bait and switch, it is the expressed purpose of the game itself. The Hero System is also not unique in this regard, rather it is the purpose of the category of games referred to as "universal game systems". Other examples are of course GURPS (the classic "other game" from the perspective of HS) as well as more modern examples such as Fate Core or Genesys or the upcoming Cortex Prime, etc. 

 

So, basically, I can understand someone saying "I don't want a universal game system, I want a specific setting such as Champions Universe with specific non-generalized rules and therefore I prefer Champions III". But I can't understand someone saying "I don't like 6e because it changed things in an ongoing attempt to be even more of a universal game system than 5e or 4e". When something pursues its own stated purpose for existence, it is hardly notable or surprising.

 

___

 

The central  self-described premise of the Hero System is to be a universal game system offering a toolkit meant to be applied towards making campaigns and settings with, as it takes great pains to inform the reader in the form of its marketing and branding and trade dress, various "Philosophy Of..." and "Using the Hero System" sections, in all the "Toolkitting:" call outs throughout the book, in the form of dozens of examples deliberately covering a variety of genres and situations.

 

And yet, repeatedly, people seem to want to cite this as if it is some sort of a problem that "its not really a game, its a game to make other games!" or words to that effect. Yeah. No kidding. That's what it says on the tin.

 

I don't buy a box of hot chocolate mix and then complain when I open it up and find I can't actually drink it unless I assemble it with some hot water and optionally marshmallows and milk. 

 

I don't buy a guitar and complain when it doesn't play itself, requiring me to learn musical theory and songs and what not, and maybe buy an amp and a pedal board.

 

I don't buy a lego set and complain when it requires me to actually make stuff with it myself.

 

And I don't buy a universal toolkit game and then complain when it expects me to make stuff with it myself. The desire to do that and to have a system that caters to that activity is kind of the reason why I bought it in the first place.

 

So, basically, I can understand the position "I'm not really a Hero System gamer, I'm a Champions (or Danger International or Justice Incorporated or whatever) gamer and I'm just here on the Hero System boards to hang out due to lack of options" or the position "I don't find value in universal game systems in general or the Hero System specifically", but I don't understand the position of "I'm going to criticize a universal game system for having rules for the purpose of being a universal game system". It just seems like an exercise in missing the point to me. 

 

Standard disclaimers of "YMMV", smiley faces, etc. I'm not trying to pick a fight, I just don't understand the mindset of hating on something for being what it professes to be.

[Killer Shrike]

27 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

One of the ways we have dealt with this (the best way as far as I am concerned) is for the player to roll the dice so that only the GM can see them (use a cup and the GM gets a peak).  The player then roleplays the interaction and the GM dials his responses in relation to the result of the roll.  Only the GM knows the result and so can decide how and where to take the conversation based on the dice result...

 

Doc

 

That's a cool and viable way to do it. 

 

Personally, I follow a practice these days of open dice rolling when a dice roll is used at all; I don't use a GM screen anymore or try to play headgames with hidden information of this sort. I used to though, and the approach you describe is definitely similar to a hidden perception check or the like and could certainly add tension.

 

However, here is my standard argument against that sort of thing. If only the GM knows, then from the perspective of the players the outcome that is about to occur is in an uncertain state, like Schrodinger's Cat. When the GM reveals the outcome, maybe they are revealing the actual outcome as determined solely by a die roll, or they are revealing an outcome that is in part or whole determined by the GM themselves. 

 

Some GM's always play it straight, no matter what the result. In which case, logically, there was no point to concealing the die roll at all...just roll it at the end and the outcome is exactly the same.

 

So, to make the hiding of the die roll even matter at all, the GM must be able to interpret or assert the outcome. If the GM is going to interpret or assert the outcome, then there isn't really any need to roll the dice at all. If the GM is using the die roll to inform their decision making, they could just as easily use the character's stats or skills or whatever (including the context of the situation they are currently in and given all the other givens). You are just one step removed from a narrative resolution. If you recoil from narrative resolution, then just roll the dice in the open and let them fall where they may. If you have no issue with a narrative resolution, then you don't need the die roll at all.

[Doc Democracy]

3 minutes ago, Killer Shrike said:

If you recoil from narrative resolution, then just roll the dice in the open and let them fall where they may. If you have no issue with a narrative resolution, then you don't need the die roll at all.

 

You have moved a long way from I hate using a dice because it feels flat to, actually, forget about feeling flat I still prefer not to use a dice.  ?

 

I like the fact that the character attribute has an impact on what the character can achieve regardless of the player's social skills.  Those social skills should make the interaction more enjoyable and this might only be achieved if no one but the GM knows the result.  I like to play my character (good or bad) rather than ignore its social shortcomings simply because the system will not punish me for that the way it would for lacking a decent CV.

 

Doc

[Killer Shrike]

29 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

You have moved a long way from I hate using a dice because it feels flat to, actually, forget about feeling flat I still prefer not to use a dice.  ?

 

I don't think you follow what I'm saying, so I'm going to try saying it a different way.

 

Lets work backwards. A player who is bad at something is playing a character who is mechanically defined as being good at that same thing. They are attempting to accomplish something in game using the ability that they are bad at but their character is good at. There will be an outcome at the end of this attempt. There are many ways the outcome might be determined however.

 

One way is purely mechanical. The game mechanics that define the applicable ability are engaged to resolve the outcome, verbatim. There is no human interpretation. The rules text itself describes how to resolve the attempt and they are procedurally applied. If there are one or more dice rolls involved, those dice are rolled and their results are applied as the rules text indicates. As there is no room for alteration of what the dice rolls indicate, there is no reason to conceal the dice rolls as doing so does not change the outcome.

 

The commonly cited example of when it might provide value is if it is interesting if a player doesn't know that they've failed...like a Detect Traps roll..."you don't detect any traps" might mean there aren't any traps or it might mean there definitely are traps and you failed to detect them.

 

The same thing applies to other scenarios. For instance, attempting to Bribe your way past a guard. They took the bribe and let you pass, but maybe they really just tricked you and as soon as you were around the corner sounded the alarm. The roll was secret so you don't know what your outcome was, only the GM does...

 

And so on.

 

And I used to buy into that rationale. However, what I found over many years of play is that by and large the primary consequence of playing it that way is that sessions slow way down as players become paranoid or insist on going over every inch of every room because a negative Search check might have been a false positive or distrust every social interaction as the outcome may have just been a ruse, and so forth.

 

The potential for dramatic tension weighed against the ass-grinding halt of forward progress just wasn't worth it for me. So, if I call for a roll, its in the open and the player knows if they rolled low or high, and that I'm letting the dice fall as they may. I'm agreeing to let the dice drive the scene. If I'm not willing to let the dice dictate an outcome, then I don't call for a roll and instead let the action go where ever it seems most interesting, interjecting obstacles as I feel necessary to keep the players engaged and the game exciting. I don't visit the middle ground on that any longer as I've found it unnecessary and not useful enough to offset its side effects on the tempo of the session.

 

[Killer Shrike]

6 hours ago, Spence said:

That connects back to what IMO killed Hero as the visible go to Supers (or any genre RPG) game.  Starting with 5th, it became more about trying to achieve mathematical perfection than roleplaying.  When I build a beginner a starter PC, I really care less about efficiency or optimized builds. The keywords are simple and easy.

 

 

I don't agree with this. What I remember is that Silver Age Sentinels (Tri-Stat / d20) and Mutants & Masterminds (d20 OGL) came out around the same time and started to creep in on the market share. They all came out in or around 2002 (SAS, M&M, Hero System 5e and Champions splatbook).

 

HS / Champions hadn't been on shelves for a while, and had to compete in a flooded market with 2 popular games based on the then-most-popular "universal" system at the time, the d20 System. And it did compete. The 5e era Champions line had good shelf presence and there was an upsurge in players during that era. But it didn't dominate. Part of the problem being, superhero games that came after Champions learned from Champions; it was incredibly influential. Also, I've long argued that the core of the d20 combat resolution rules is the Hero System with a couple of name changes and tweaks. So, the competitive advantage that Champions / Hero System once had was lessened as many later games incorporated lessons learned from Champions / Hero System in their own designs.

 

SAS (and Guardians of Order, the company that published it) died out but M&M and Green Ronin did not. Some other games took their bite out as well, such as Savage Worlds Supers, Godlike, Aberrant, a couple of versions of Marvel licensed games came and went, Icons, etc, but as I remember it, M&M became the sort of de facto supers game for the casual roleplayer. There was a stretch of time when if I went to any of the local game stores and a supers game was being played, it was probably M&M. That may have been a local anomaly but I don't think so.