Springald Jack

Re: Too balanced Which is something people forget when they try to make "realistic" firearms, what's really at fault are to kind Bleeding rules rather than insufficient damage

Re: Religion Hero??

Re: Too balanced Absolutely. The rules are an engine for helping figure out what happens in the fictional world. If the rules return a result that does not conform to the world, the rules rather than the world must give way every time.

Re: Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind.

Re: What is HERO about?

Re: What is HERO about? English also has a much simpler grammer than pretty much any other Indo-European language and has severly debased phonetic rules because we don't change spelling and barely change pronuncation when we appropriate a loan word. English is the d20 System. An occasionally elegant mess of whatever those responible threw together. HERO is Attic Greek a very complex structure that nonetheless comes together pretty elegantly. I could probably extend this metaphor to other games but chose not to. (hint the Munchkin card game is Pig Latin )

Re: Ridiculous things in comics that you don't mind.

Re: Has HERO achieved maximum desirable complexity? I think the HERO system is about as loaded as is practical. Especially in Character Creation. While to some degree I accept Front-loaded complexity (ie in creation that doesn't complicate play) there is a limit. In fact I agree with some others that in some places the rules are over complex. Although to be honest I wouldn't mind complexity in terms of a way of executing Mental Powers that doesn't suck. Just my opinion of course.

Re: GURPS - more like us every day... Steve Jackson has never denied that GURPS owes a large debt to the HERO system, but the fact remains that HERO and GURPS are very much distinct systems. GURPS retains its true emphasis which is its skill system. The issue you are discussing the Alternate Ability Rule, I find to be very distinct from the HERO implementation of Multipowers despite some similarity.

Re: What is HERO about? What is HERO about? I think that the rules of HERO are organized around the task of pitting beings with very specifically described Superhuman abilities against each other in Combat. Powers and Combat. This can be seen in things like that mental powers rules are based on the way a damage power works. That said HERO has a less strong flavor than most games. This is not a judgement, but I feel it to be true.

Re: "Your Most Embaressing Game Mastering Moment" Caught without a necessary Eastern European name I named a girl Froiska which is a totally made up name. The real problem was my players caught the source: My can of Frescaâ„¢.

Re: Religion Hero?? I'll have to admit I never read Demon but both the original Mage and Cangeling I loved and the Aeon Continuum is a gorgeous setting. WW is not, by definition, crap. Religion is often a theme in my games. Most of my games are set in something that resembles the modern world. None of my players has ever been offended. HELL In Nomine (which I love) never generated a lot of negative flack. The facto of the matter is our little hobby is no longer in the eye of those who attacked its evil, mostly because it no longer has any chance of becoming mainstream.

Re: Religion Hero?? Actually That's not true it's just the church believes that cases of genuine possesion (and therefore the need for excorcism) is very very rare. And in fact there have been quite a few rpgs dealing with religous themes. Pendragon In Nomine GURPS in sourcebooks like Religion and Cabal and Fantasy Demon:the Fallen Alternity in the Dark•Matter Setting Nobilis I just got through with a game where the PCs were Demon Hunters working for the RCC in the year 2005. Obviously there were some differences from the real world .

Re: Costume fixation (Get your mind out of the gutter) I more or less am the opposite I like costumes that look like super-costumes. It's the iconography that is a big part of Supers for me.

Re: College Professor Skill Level If you mean more training is required by US educational institutions, this is factually untrue. If you meant to effectively teach requires more I can't prove that you are wrong but I am skeptical. As for Research and Instruction being different skills this is definitely true.

Re: Still Asking... However GURPS 4th ed does have a unifying setting but it's an infinite worlds setting which avoids a lot of the problems of a unified timeline

Re: An Overall Evaluation of Fifth Edition Actually sometimes this is exactly what the chips are for. Forex in Buffy RPG when the GM hoses you, you get Drama Points In M&M 2 you get Hero Points when Complications arise They are in these cases the spoon of sugar to help the medicine go down they do not take control for the gm they just formalize what the gm already had

Re: Advantagous sfx What I see the basis of the HERO system being is a freedom from game assigned SFX. I can build whatever power I concieve, but this is not because sfx are unimportant but rather because they are all important. However no matter how good I am at building powers sometimes a particular quirk of how things should interact isn't going to be in the mechanics. That's when the mechaincs get overruled.

Re: Learning how to play HERO

Re: Limitation Boondoggles? Which is only relevant if we are writing a History of rpgs. SAS, M&M, and others are not HERO or lesser deriviatives of HERO even if HERO was an important influence in their development. They are their own games. As for what Limitations are for it might be worth pointing out that in litcrit trying to figure out the Author's Intent is referred to as "the fallacy of intention" what is important is what sense you can make out of limitations if you use them as role-playing motivators than good for you.

Re: Teleport catcher

Re: Learning how to play HERO I will say that HERO is one of two systems I didn't "get" the first time I tried to read it. The other is Continuum, the orginazation of which could have been improved by putting topics in random order. When I did "get" it I found that it was pretty comprable to other high-detail systems.

Re: Limitation Boondoggles? This to me is problem thinking. For me a good role-playing game is about the World and the events. A rules engine whether HERO or something else is a tool which is subservient to the groups desire to emulate this world. So the "subjective" costs are far more real than points. After all the characters understand what "my power ring doesn't work on yellow things" means but not about points. FULL DISCLOSURE: I am of the firm opinion that "game balance" is ultimately a myth game designers and players tell each other rather than a meaningful thing.

Re: Has anyone statted up the Prince yet? Ironically when I saw this thread the first thing I thought of was Katamari*, but thought "naw, couldn't be about that" *Recently I have been playing the sequel "We Love Katamari" where you can change to various cousins instead of just the prince.

Re: Teleport catcher You heard correctly instead while spells are in the stack (between being played and being resolved on a first in, last out basis) other spells can target them. It's much more elegant if a little weird at first. As far as teleport goes I think the problem goes down to wether or not it is even theoretically possible seems variable by SFX. We can't really reason from effect here cause we're not sure what effect we are really looking for.