What happened to HERO?

[Duke Bushido]

Damn.

 

Now I want it even _more_!

 

Thanks for the info and the insight, Sir!

 

 

[Spence]

21 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

Damn.

 

Now I want it even _more_!

 

Thanks for the info and the insight, Sir!

 

 

It is well worth it to me.  I wish I could have found a physical copy.

 

[Duke Bushido]

I am starting to think that the existence of such is an urban legend.  Either that, or everyone that bought it fell in love and therefore isn't looking to sell it.  :/

 

[Nolgroth]

I just got the PDF. If you're one of those that has to have dead tree versions, I'm pretty sure you're outta luck. Or you might try: https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147599435/Narosia---Sea-of-Tears

[pruttm]

I see copies at amazon.com.

 

[DreadDomain]

3 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I am starting to think that the existence of such is an urban legend.  Either that, or everyone that bought it fell in love and therefore isn't looking to sell it.  😕

 

It's right there on my bookshelf!

Yes, a complete game (can't believe I forgot to mention it).

[Duke Bushido]

Thanks for that, Nolgoth.  Every time I've hunted for it, it's been for a different game system.

 

Yes: I am "one of those" for paper copies.  I can't stare at a screen long enough at a time to really enjoy using a PDF.  I have PDFs of pretty much all my HERO stuff (not quite, but getting there), but they're only good to me as quick references (though they suck to read on a phone) or something I can have printed should something happen to my actual book.

 

 

[Nolgroth]

You're welcome. Good luck.

[zslane]

I presume Narosia is built on 6e HERO? Does it include the Hero System rules and game mechanics in its 480 pages?

 

[Solitude]

Hmm..

 

Well I just spent several hours on the main champions forums.

My perception is that rather than opening the game up by getting rid of unnecessary math ditching figured characteristics brought about more sameness of character designs.  Everyone may as well buy a high presence because they don't get much out of constitution since it no longer affects your recovery, endurance, stun, and energy defense.

 

Things people agonized over regarding characteristics did add time to the character generation process but it brought about some design choices that the game evidently (admittedly this is only from reading for a few hours) no longer sees.

 

Is Champions Now going to return to figured characteristics?

[ScottishFox]

On 12/21/2019 at 11:00 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Is that complexity or just long-windedness though?  There's a bunch in 6th that gets more space (for example, Clinging goes from half a page to a whole page) but doesn't meaningfully change, it's just wordier. 

 

Grab in 6e2 is over 6 pages by itself.  SIX pages for ONE maneuver.

 

6e feels to me like a GM detailing all of the rules calls they've had to make over the decades.  It's just too granular and the resulting book size is SO big that almost nobody will read it.

On 12/21/2019 at 10:11 PM, Spence said:

But I know this.

1st and 2nd Edition were FUN!

3rd Edition was FUN.

4th Edition was FUN.

5th Edition was fun...ish

6th Edition was....well after we bought it we never really got a game going past the odd single session.

 

4th edition would have the largest FUN on my list, but I agree with you for the most part.

 

4th was the perfect blend of crunch and brevity (for me) and the game simultaneously failed to keep up with production values of competitors (Pathfinder and D&D are works of art AND game books) while suffering from terminal rules bloat.

[Chris Goodwin]

I've been playing Champions in 6th edition, and at the table in play it's just as FUN as I remember Champions ever being.  If you didn't know which edition the GM was running you probably wouldn't know the difference among the second-gen games; you could tell between that and the first-gen editions if you were paying attention.  

 

I think I've said the above more than once even in this thread.  

 

Presentation has changed, for sure.  Rules have changed along the way; the 5th-6th changes are about as radical as the 3rd-4th changes.

[Spence]

30 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

4th edition would have the largest FUN on my list, but I agree with you for the most part.

 

Well, I will confess that I started with 1st Ed and that may influence my memory.

 

The tone of the games back then were still superheroic as they hadn't converted all the Heroes into deranged headcases yet. 

 

To me pre5th reminds me of a time you could run a superhero game without explaining how heroes don't use Area Effect 4d6 AP Killing Attack in a crowd just because Deadpool wouldn't care. 

 

I guess incidents like those have tinted my views.

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

53 minutes ago, Solitude said:

Hmm..

 

Well I just spent several hours on the main champions forums.

My perception is that rather than opening the game up by getting rid of unnecessary math ditching figured characteristics brought about more sameness of character designs.  Everyone may as well buy a high presence because they don't get much out of constitution since it no longer affects your recovery, endurance, stun, and energy defense.

 

Things people agonized over regarding characteristics did add time to the character generation process but it brought about some design choices that the game evidently (admittedly this is only from reading for a few hours) no longer sees.

 

Is Champions Now going to return to figured characteristics?

Really? So people want to be more impressive instead of getting Knocked out? The primary function of CON hasn’t changed.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 minute ago, Spence said:

Well, I will confess that I started with 1st Ed and that may influence my memory.

 

The tone of the games back then were still superheroic as they hadn't converted all the Heroes into deranged headcases yet. 

 

To me pre5th reminds me of a time you could run a superhero game without explaining how heroes don't use Area Effect 4d6 AP Killing Attack in a crowd just because Deadpool wouldn't care. 

 

I guess incidents like those have tinted my views.

 

 

There’s a bad assumption. I have stated before ( a long time ago) that my first Champions character was a Ninja. I was told we were playing Silver Age. I had no idea what that meant. I threw villains off of 3 stories buildings cause I was a Ninja! 

[ScottishFox]

5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

There’s a bad assumption. I have stated before ( a long time ago) that my first Champions character was a Ninja. I was told we were playing Silver Age. I had no idea what that meant. I threw villains off of 3 stories buildings cause I was a Ninja! 

 

I recall GM'ing a Champions session in the 80s where the Punisher wannabe at the table was going to unload full auto killing attacks at the enemy martial artist.

 

We all chastised him for what would most certainly be murder given the numerous non-lethal options in his super-gun multipower.  He tried a non-lethal option and the villain nearly KO'd him with a massive martial strike.

 

He hits the ground a couple of hexes away, says !@#$, switches his gun to MURDER and holds his phase.  The martial arts guy jumps towards him and he unloads a nearly perfect full auto burst (rolled a 4 or 5 and landed all but 1 of his shots).  Bad guy is knocked back straight up 2-3 hexes and dead before he reaches the ground.

 

Good times. 

[Solitude]

The secondary functions of certain state often lead to them being more used than now.

Yes, they each had a primary function.  That's not the same as having only one useful function. 

 

In the case of constitution raising the initial endurance pool while at the same time partially determining the recovery rate of that endurance was a powerful reason to purchase the stat and you got a lot of your initial stun pips and all of your basic energy defense from constitution besides.

 

It lead to the stat being favored far more heavily than it is now.

 

You still need presence,  but constitution wasn't the almost write off it is now, 

[Duke Bushido]

48 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Really? So people want to be more impressive instead of getting Knocked out? The primary function of CON hasn’t changed.

 

 

I am going to assume you left out an important word or phrase (then I am going to assume the missing item was in fact the word "not"), but I do not want to presume to be putting words into your mouth. 

 

However, if my assumptions are wrong, and the question is in fact "do prefer being more impressive to being knocked out?", then the answer is the most emphatic of "YES!" es to have ever been affirmed. 

 

 

 

[assault]

1 hour ago, Solitude said:

Is Champions Now going to return to figured characteristics?

 

Yes and no.

 

Only one characteristic - Body - gives figured characteristics in Champions Now. On the other hand, it gives Recovery, Stun (the old Con!), Knockout (the old Stun) and Endurance.

 

They can not be raised separately, so the values derived from Body are what your character gets.

 There are interesting trade offs between Body, Speed (and Dex). If you have enough Speed, you can burn phases taking recoveries, effectively multiplying your Rec and making buying up your Body pointless. But of course you can't always do that. On the other hand, there is no free "post-Segment 12" recovery, so everybody has to take Recoveries eventually. (I put quotes around "post-Segment 12" because Champions Now uses a 6 segment turn.)

[Solitude]

13 minutes ago, assault said:

 

Yes and no.

 

Only one characteristic - Body - gives figured characteristics in Champions Now. On the other hand, it gives Recovery, Stun (the old Con!), Knockout (the old Stun) and Endurance.

 

They can not be raised separately, so the values derived from Body are what your character gets.

 There are interesting trade offs between Body, Speed (and Dex). If you have enough Speed, you can burn phases taking recoveries, effectively multiplying your Rec and making buying up your Body pointless. But of course you can't always do that. On the other hand, there is no free "post-Segment 12" recovery, so everybody has to take Recoveries eventually. (I put quotes around "post-Segment 12" because Champions Now uses a 6 segment turn.)

 

So basically 

 

Training wheels.

[Ninja-Bear]

1 hour ago, Solitude said:

The secondary functions of certain state often lead to them being more used than now.

Yes, they each had a primary function.  That's not the same as having only one useful function. 

 

In the case of constitution raising the initial endurance pool while at the same time partially determining the recovery rate of that endurance was a powerful reason to purchase the stat and you got a lot of your initial stun pips and all of your basic energy defense from constitution besides.

 

It lead to the stat being favored far more heavily than it is now.

 

You still need presence,  but constitution wasn't the almost write off it is now, 

Yup this is why they got rid of figured characteristics.  

[Ninja-Bear]

56 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

I am going to assume you left out an important word or phrase (then I am going to assume the missing item was in fact the word "not"), but I do not want to presume to be putting words into your mouth. 

 

However, if my assumptions are wrong, and the question is in fact "do prefer being more impressive to being knocked out?", then the answer is the most emphatic of "YES!" es to have ever been affirmed. 

 

 

 

I thought I was clear. What I got from Solitude was now in 6th PRE is more important than CON. I am questioning that. Now if I misunderstood him I apologize.

[Solitude]

49 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I thought I was clear. What I got from Solitude was now in 6th PRE is more important than CON. I am questioning that. Now if I misunderstood him I apologize.

 

The impression that I got from the forums was that basically a flat line across the characters is now preferred,  rather than the agonized over decisions that made for characters which were often very different from one another before powers and skills were added before. 

 

 

Keep in mind that I haven't played the newer versions myself,  as I said, this is my impression from reading current players talk about their designs.

[assault]

19 minutes ago, Solitude said:

rather than the agonized over decisions that made for characters which were often very different from one another before powers and skills were added before.

 

I've never really seen this. In my experience the combination of limited point budgets and "Goodman" breakpoints tended to push characters into a relative handful of configurations.

 

I haven't seen any change in 6e, despite there being fewer and weaker breakpoints. Characters still cluster at those breakpoints. In particular, I've found that Dex tends to be marginally higher in 6e than in 5e.

 

Of course, I'm not a hardliner when it comes to "character concept". If a particular characteristic value is not justified by a character concept, I'll change the concept, not the value.

[Spence]

5 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

There’s a bad assumption. I have stated before ( a long time ago) that my first Champions character was a Ninja. I was told we were playing Silver Age. I had no idea what that meant. I threw villains off of 3 stories buildings cause I was a Ninja! 

 

Bad assumption?  Don't get it, no assumption at all. 

My most memorable stretch of gaming was when I spent a year in school at NATTC Memphis.  We had around 8 regular players/GMs and then a a rolling number of short term players that be there for anything from one game to a dozen before shipping out.  For us the player that wanted to build the killer types were the rare ones.  We had a Ninja too, he had sworn an oath to never kill again and all his Ninja weapons and tools were non-lethal versions that he imbued with Chi and would knock out and capture his opponents. 

 

82-91ish I don't recall murder hobo being common.  Though it made it's appearance in the 90's and was full blown by 2000 and on.   Of course we can't call it murder hobo anymore.........

 

5 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I recall GM'ing a Champions session in the 80s where the Punisher wannabe at the table was going to unload full auto killing attacks at the enemy martial artist.

 

We all chastised him for what would most certainly be murder given the numerous non-lethal options in his super-gun multipower.  He tried a non-lethal option and the villain nearly KO'd him with a massive martial strike.

 

He hits the ground a couple of hexes away, says !@#$, switches his gun to MURDER and holds his phase.  The martial arts guy jumps towards him and he unloads a nearly perfect full auto burst (rolled a 4 or 5 and landed all but 1 of his shots).  Bad guy is knocked back straight up 2-3 hexes and dead before he reaches the ground.

 

Good times. 

 

Yep, things like that would happen. 

But they were the the unusual, not the norm.  Plus there were usually in game consequences, like super-prison.  Don't remember when Stronghold came out.   

Players that persisted in making villainous PC's tended irritate most of the players and GMs I knew, and they would drift back to D&D, RQ, Boot Hill and so on.

I do remember a small group split off and started a Super Villain game, but I never noticed where they went.

It has been what, 36, 37 years?  

I can't point out a specific date for when "it" happened.  But somewhere people redefined "superhero" to plug in vigilante, thug, killer etc. to all be considered "superheroes".  

What a person considers fun is completely their call.  

But personally, I haven't read a DC or Marvel book in years that features Superheroes.  They usually have mostly "People with Powers" versus "Evil People with Powers".  Occasionally one or two characters may be an actual Superhero or a Supervillain.  

 

Right now the best treatment of actual Superheroes is an anime called My Hero Academia.  Which is actually sad.