What makes a complete game "complete"?

[assault]

Some of sample character write ups in Champions Now contain a lot of the material that would appear in a playbook of the type I described. That's not a coincidence - I stole part of my concept from there. I stole other bits from elsewhere.

 

Champions Now is full of interesting ideas, and worth reading even if you have no desire to play it.

[Doc Democracy]

40 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

This has become a standard approach for a lot of the so-called “indie” or “rules lite” games out there, and it has a lot of merits. In my mind, I keep coming back to the “powered by HERO” notion. If DOJ wants to remain relevant, I think they are going to have to at least consider dipping their toes into this market with a similar approach to the PbtA games, or Fate, or whatever. And then hit the convention scene with an assortment of game sessions that would truly teach the system. 

 

This pick up and play notion attracts me.  I so want to do a Golden Age adventure with templates for key heroes and stripped down rules.  It might need to be my coronavirus project that I can share with folks here informally even if, once he has seen it, Jason does not think it Hall of Champions material.

[assault]

Coronavirus projects are a must.

[Hugh Neilson]

12 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

It absolutely can.  HERO is very easy to grok as long as you don't have to touch chargen and you don't touch anything outside your own sheet. 

The thing is that HERO needs to be streamlined at the individual player level instead of at the system level.  Character sheets with rules on them would solve basically everything. 

 

The core combat mechanics, skills mechanics, etc. are not overly complex.  Toss on a pile of optional rules and that changes.

 

Relative to other games, how complex is CharGen?  Let's assume you want to play Pathfinder, or D&D?  How complex would that feel if you had to read every class, race, spell, feat and special ability in the game before you could make a character?

 

What makes these seem simpler is that the abilities are bundled.  OK, I want to play a warrior-type, so I don't read any class that doesn't get +1 BAB every level, or any race that doesn't have bonuses suitable for combat.  No need to read any spells I can't get at first level, or many feats, and I only need to read low-level class abilities for the class, or classes, that catch my eye.  A "powered by HERO" game would, or at least could, provide similar pre-bundled, pre-fab abilities with no build data, just game effects.

[Brian Stanfield]

1 hour ago, assault said:

Champions Now is full of interesting ideas, and worth reading even if you have no desire to play it.

 

This is exactly why I backed the project. After talking to Ron Edwards for a while, I realized the project really wasn't for me, BUT I also realized that he's got a lot of really cool ideas that I want to draw from. I haven't read any of the recent releases of the game after the first one or two drafts because I want to wait and see the whole thing with virgin eyes.

[Sketchpad]

16 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

other than stepping backwards to the first couple of editions, no, it cannot.

 

15 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

It absolutely can.  HERO is very easy to grok as long as you don't have to touch chargen and you don't touch anything outside your own sheet. 

The thing is that HERO needs to be streamlined at the individual player level instead of at the system level.  Character sheets with rules on them would solve basically everything. 

 

Oh I realize it can be streamlined. It won't be, however. Not anytime soon. There are several ways to keep the integrity of the system, yet still streamline how things work and make it appeal to the current market. But that's another discussion all together. In many ways, Mutants & Masterminds has learned from Hero, and Hero could learn a few things from it.

 

And stepping back too far also isn't the solution. Looking at it from a modern perspective, there's more of a need to go forward and make some changes than jump back to a time we all fondly remember. Nostalgia only sells so much. 5th Ed D&D builds on the nostalgia, but also brings the game forward into a new age. Hero needs to do something similar.