Spence

OK, I have failed. I have looked everywhere I can think of and can only find trains.

Why thank you. As they say, even the blind pig eventually finds an acorn. 😇 For myself I prefer Hollywood Medieval because it is easiest to visualize for me. I know, I know, many people think that Hollywood Medieval and Tolkien'verse are the same, but they are not. The Tolkien'verse, like many of the settings out there revolve around vast cites and equally vast armies. I prefer settings where the towns are small and 100 is considered an army. It is perfect for allowing PC's have a significant impact without the need for Galactus level power. It is one of the reasons I think Narosia didn't do better. 480 pages of stuff, 8 cultures, 8 races, a buttload of vocations and so on. All of it wrapped around jaw-breaker names specifically designed to NOT resemble anything. If they had selected one SMALL slice (region/area) and started there with a functional small town and a mini-campaign it would have been more accessible. Start in a region that can be described using a real world analog, and then put out additional parts before unleashing the 480 page tome. We were actually BIG Traveller fans when is started. It was actually the way they began tying everything to their specific game world setting that caused us to quit. None setting specific adventures like Annic Nova and the Judges Guild ones were great as fillers for when work limited our build time. But once it basically became their campaign or nothing we moved on. I I was never a fan of the dandelion eaters either. But then I always preferred to run a game where the party was all human. Gasp I can just feel the outrage from some of the readers. But I was never a big fan if all the people playing humans with pointed ears, short humans with beards and so on. It was always more fun to run a game where the Elf or the Dwarf was actually an encounter of its own. That is why D&D 5th has slid so far down my acceptable as an RPG list. They have doubled down on "races" as just ways to add cool buffs with nothing else. The Dragonkin and Tiefling was the last straw for me, pure unabashed murderhobo. Runequest is just as bad these days and their forums are horrid. They actually expect new players to not only read the existing rules tome, but also the 30+ years of notes and journals that are floating around. And god forbid you ask for a simple short synopsis on something. Champions could use an actual campaign setting. It has all the ingredients, well actually it has FAR TOO MANY ingredients. But it doesn't have a campaign setting. It has a massive number of disjointed books and a few timeline books. But nothing that Bob the gamer can pick up and actually run a campaign.

Bad news, D+ just wasn't worth it and I let it go after a short time. Hopefully all the "studio" streamers will continue to underperform and dissolve in a few years. I'd much rather use a multi source stream.

For myself I'll use a small color map, usually on 8x11, so people can hand it around. If it becomes necessary to actually use fig/markers I use a wipe off chessex map so we can easily draw out damage and terrain. I've found that as long as you have a good picture or map to refer to, you do not need the actual play map to be too fancy.

Just use Wizards Sack from Fantasy Hero (5thR & 6th) modified. I needed one more inline with a book I was using as a setting. Just call it a ring instead of a sack and remove the "must fit through the mouth of the sack" limitation and you have a ring that can store anything you touch up to its internal volume. No need to overthink.

Just saw this. Hmmmm... when I get back to the house I'll look. I think I may actually have something you can use from an old game. I'll have to look through my computer.

Just remember dial up. Now everything is fast

Length?

Some friends and I have been talking about this and scouring the internet for news. We have found some interesting articles about CWs ongoing financial and audience losses. We are of agreement with some of the internet pundits that the CW owners group realizes that the network has lost viability and needs to change direction and content but the are trapped by existing contractual obligations to show runners and various "creative" teams. "Selling" the network allows for the new ownership to get rid of the problematic ones. It could be what is needed to fix them.

I tried to grok M&M, both versions, but could never get past replacing damage and power effects with "conditions". A bizzilian possible and sometimes contradictory conditions drove me away.

It had a third problem that was pretty large and one that was shared by several games/settings that never took off. It attempted to have it world be too unique. Games that go out of their way to be too unique requires players to STUDY the setting in order have enough information to do anything. All I really remember of Empire of the Petal Throne was too much weirdness and too little explanation. We went on to other games. Tolkeins Rohirrom (sp?) can be described loosely as plains dwelling horsemen with a culture that resembles Viking/Norse/Celtic and no ships. 100% accurate? No. Enough so that a new player can create a character? Yes. To play an RPG a player must have enough information to be able to create a character that fits in a setting.

Wow, this thread exploded. So a lot of repeated dead horse beating But a few items, well beaten but none the less true. In no particular order... 1) In Play Character Sheets vice Full Build Character Sheets. This is still a must. You simply do not need all the annotation on the character sheet in play. It is simply a wall of numbers and arcane text for the new player. 2) Actual Campaigns and Adventures. To work a campaign has to contain all of the key information required to play. That means anything not contained in the core rulebook MUST be in the Campaign/Adventure. If a campaign requires the purchase of yet another book in order to run it, people will pass. A "One-Sheet" is a different animal. The "Plot-Point" format is perfect. A supers campaign is not like a fantasy campaign (like D&D/PF) or a horror campaign (CoC). You do not have to meet Dr Destroyer, Mechanon or Galactis in every campaign. A character can complete multiple campaigns before they are powerful enough, and that is OK. 3) Build criteria, as in point values and caps. For a campaign or adventure this is determined by the campaign or adventure. It is not something left to the purchaser to figure out. Make a decision and mark it as such. Players can always ignore it. But a player, especially a new GM needs to know so they can plan. 4) Play Cards. I have started calling play sheets this to avoid confusion with Play Character Sheets. A Play Card has all the information needed to play the specific character on one sheet. I am currently tinkering on one to be laminated so a player can make quick notes. 5) From the beginning Hero has always been easy to play. Character creation, while not difficult once you realize how it works, us completely different and almost counter intuitive to new people. But I completely disagree that combat drags out more than other systems. Most of the issues come from familiarity and paying attention. If a player is actually paying attention they can immediately tell you their action. It is why I ban devices at the table when I run. If you want an example of a mind bogglingly complex game that is Pathfinder with its 2 million class variants and 52 volumes of stuff. I have yet to see a PF game were every action wasn't accompanied by the player and GM flipping pages and pages and pages to verify what they were doing. Yes, yes...I know I your game it never happens 6) Campaign Setting. Hero doesn't have one. They have all of the ingredients, arguably too many ingredients. But nothing organized into a format that a GM can pick up, prep and play.

What is this arcane lore you speak of?

1st off the Hero Boards have always been fairly civil and friendly, but it really became my favorite place for discussions when I discovered the ignore function. There are not very many toxic individuals here and they are eliminated easily. For me anyone that feels the need to inject snide political comments in their non-NGD posts goes straight to toxic land. I don't really spend any time on the NGD so I rally don't care about that. But taking a dump in the RPG forums is out. 2nd. While I do agree in general with most of your comments here. There is one major concept I completely disagree with. Hero System 6th Edition, Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, Hero System 5th Edition Revised and so on are NOT role playing games. Spence: Yes Igor, please raise the drawbridge and bar the gates.... Igor: But we should flee! Spence: It is too late Igor, I can already see the torches and pitchforks... Then what are they, you may ask? It is simple, they are a system that a gamer can use to build a role playing game. A role playing game can be picked up and played. Hero, in pretty much all its incarnations cannot. Instead it can be used by a gamer to put together something that then can be used to be played. I am currently in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game. I am STILL in the middle of prepping a Fantasy Hero game. But I was able to discover, buy, read, design scenarios and run them for actual playable RPG's in just a few days. Even most Hero supplements are not actually RPG's. The Champions universe has a lots of stuff, but lacks a coherent playable setting of campaign. I fully understand that the primary overwhelming ideology was the belief that potential customers would suffer massive catastrophic death if anyone even hinted at a pre-designed campaign or anything that could even distantly be construed as establishing a concise character creation guide. So while Hero is my favorite RPG related system hands down. It is not an actual RPG that can actually be played "out of the box". No I do not have a solution, but I do not have to have one to see the problem. Just like I do not have to be a Chef to identify the cause of food poisoning.

This is a bummer. I really really hate trying to post via a phone. It takes FOREVER to type out a message with that little bitty letter pad and then it up and doesn't post. I had laboriously tapped out an epic to showcase my brilliance and it apparently never actually posted. But I guess it is for the best. I was beating a and it looks like Tasha isn't actually interested. So I will move on. Great thread though. At least in my opinion.

Wow, while I knew that the complete (playable) rules were out there somewhere, I never knew about the website having a copy. Just for curiosity, what year was this? My access to the internet was extremely sporadic up until the 2000's until I got out of the Navy. In the 90's I spent a lot of time in areas that didn't have "internet" access unless it was for official use and shared by pretty much every activity that had official need. There are a LOT of things I apparently missed out on in the tabletop RPG world

So Champions Complete covers basic Computers, Bases and Vehicles in 4 pages. Hero System Sixth Edition Vol 2 gives you: 3 pages for Computers 12 pages for Vehicles and Bases combined. Either will give you enough information when you get used to the system. As has been mentioned, there are some 5th edition resources that are better. The Ultimate Base (258 pages on Base design and building) The Ultimate Vehicle (231 pages on Vehicle design and building) Hero System Vehicle Sourcebook (157 pages covering 140 sample vehicles) While there will be some minor changes, Bases and Vehicles didn't really change too much. There really isn't a lot on Computers, but some of the Starhero books have a few pages here or there. There are a lot of examples spread throughout the various books and many of the base and starship write-ups include on board computers.

That I would not dispute. But I am not talking about style or content or anything like that. The play is just bad. Some things transcend generation. When a player takes literally 10 minutes (no joke) to look through their characters sheet to figure out what they want to do. Players that have been supposedly playing for 130+ sessions. That is years of real time. If I had walked in on them at a FLGS with no introduction, I would have thought it was an experienced GM with a group of novice players. I mean it is what it is, but I really don't comprehend the wow that it has. Maybe I am a genius GM

Well there was no humor I saw. I hope you get the chance to try an episode. Maybe you can explain to me why it is even a thing. I have nothing. It is beyond my comprehension at this point.

So I looked up CR and found an episode. It was #130 something and was about an hour and a half. Looking at the average length of eps at 3 to 4.5 hours it is pretty obvious that that they only do one a day. If it was one a week then 130 episode would need over two years to get to that point with 52 weeks in the year. I went into it with the understanding that the "players" were all "well known" voice actors. With all the uproar and hype I actually thought that the "players" would be using their "voice acting" to embellish and refine their characters. I expected to see awesome roleplaying with memorable characters. Boy was I mistaken. Half the players apparently didn't even know their PC's abilities and they definitely were not paying attention to play. The time they spent reading their character sheets while everyone was twiddling their thumbs was what you expect from a new GM running a game with too many players. Not the 130th something session with a group of 6. I have had pick up games at Cons to teach new players that ran better. I must be a genius GM and my players, even the ones at Cons I had never met before, because they were world best in comparison. All I can say is all the players (except the GM which was pretty good trying to keep things rolling) must have been brand new replacements or just returning after a bad round of food poisoning. After a while so I can get past the "mental bad taste" I will try another episode to see if I had just randomly picked the one bad one. But if the one that I saw is par for the series, I am mind boggled at the low bar.

This what I don't understand. Most of the gamers I know don't play D&D anyway. We mostly play: Call of Cthulhu (roll high) Trail of Cthulhu (roll high) Nights Black Agents (roll high) Fear Itself (roll high) Star Trek Adventures (roll low) Conan (roll low) Actung! Cthulhu (roll low) As yet no one seems to fall apart from any mind boggling confusion. The actual issue we get from D&D retreads is their tendency to be murderhobo's and want to resolve everything by killing it and wanting loot. Most of the Champions superHero games get derailed because everyone wants to be a murderhobo (Deadpool) or the grim dark vigilante (Dark Knight/Batman, the killer version) instead of playing a superhero. But grade school math has never be an issue.

What!!

I obviously haven't seen BoBF but friends who have said BF has been transformed from a taciturn and ominous warrior assassin to being a babbling second tier villain complete with soliloquy. At first I thought they have to be exaggerating, but then I thought about how most new shows have been and have to say it is a plausible possibility.

Just saw a article about that last night

OK wait a minute. You do realize that the whole opening a session with the old "so you are all gathered in your bases situation room when......" is one of my favorite lazy GM reasons to have everyone have a base in the first place? Right? Keep this up and before we know it players will actually want actual adventures with actual plots.