Alcamtar

I backed the first kickstarter but have never played it, honestly only skimmed it since it's a pretty thick tome with a lot of rules, and I'm getting lazy. Based on ACKS, Macris does a great job on solid bulletproof mechanics and I know he is an obsessive math and spreadsheet geek, and tends to attract similarly math-obsessive fans, so I don't doubt the Ascendant rules are well designed. I just haven't had the time or reason to really dig in. He did do a second successful kickstarter for a "platinum edition" with some sourcebooks so it must have fans. (Personally I am a Fantasy Hero fan, and was mostly interested in Ascendant from a fantasy/universal standpoint. It arrived during a long COVID induced lull in gaming, and these days everyone in my circle only wants to play OSR...) Honestly the best place to ask is probably on the Autarch Discord, which is extremely active and has half a dozen ascendant channels. I don't know the rules for posting discord invites here, so if you want an invite PM me. (I'm not much of a Discord user either, just pointing you to a place you can get more info.) Here's a superhero AP, run by the designer. It has some combat so you can maybe get a feel for how much dice and rules feel in play. Edit: For what it's worth, if you just want the "takeways" from players new to the game (this was a demo), skip forward to 1:58:50

I feel that. We can't even have our own take or spin on things, because there are a thousand pop culture police who think it has to be a certain way, who are invested in it. Feels like a church sometimes. I honestly felt that way with 5th edition, when Steve was dispensing advice and rules questions on the forums. I mean it was kind of nice, but once there's an official written word and an official ruling on everything, and someone you can ask... it kind of takes a lot of the creativity out of it. As a python programmer I find that too. Programming is a lot of fun when you can roll your own solutions, but when there's one true way, and mechanical tools to enforce that one true way, and a legion of fanatical rage-nerds who will criticize anything that they don't consider a best practice, it sucks a lot of the joy out of it. Even when the language has official support for a feature, I can't use it because "not supposed to". The most fun part of a geeky hobby is doing your own investigation, acquiring your own learning, developing your own interpretation. You can't really do that with a pop culture juggernaut, and the more complete the canonical corpus is, the less freedom there is. I guess you were talking more about the whole subculture thing. The social side of it was never that big for me, because I knew relatively few people who were into gaming and I always wished there were more, or that people around me were more accepting of it than I perceived them to be. I guess the proverb is true: be careful what you wish for!

I don't know I don't think she has to be trained. I mean if you're doing the Burroughs thing maybe, but it seems to me it should be possible to have an interesting character without that. What you describe is in the lines of a trope that I've long found interesting and thought could be a fun role in an RPG, but rarely is it ever realized in a game mostly because players want to be the Big Damn Hero. Personally I'm an enthusiastic GM but indifferent player and so find myself gravitating to this sort of role: one were I can play but not have to stand in the spotlight, really just be content to tag along and occasionally do something interesting (but not powerful or critically important). There's actually a range of characters along this line that can be broadly grouped as sidekicks. They range from the helpless princess to normal man types (the hobbits from lotr) to junior heroes (Robin boy wonder, the minstrel that follows the Witcher around) to legit heros who are still overshadowed by their companions (Moonglum, Rackhir the red Archer, Tonto, etc). There's a lot of these kind of characters and my brain is fuzzy and I can't really think of too many right now. Oddly, often times even powerful characters like Conan are The Witcher end up pawns or temporary sidekicks of some NPC sorcerer that is even more powerful. I've even thought it would be really interesting to have an adventuring party where the one really important and powerful characters is an NPC, and all the PCS are companions and sidekicks. (Literally embracing the Mary Sue except not as GM aggrandizement, but as the simulation of so much heroic fiction. Elminster, Gandalf, etc.) It puts all the PCs on an equal footing, gives the GM a mouthpiece and leader, but also gives everyone something to do. What if the NPC was Conan and the PCs are all kozaki or barrachan pirates, the band he's leading? Even Conan needs backup so it's not like you're useless. Or you could be Conan's girlfriend who often is completely useless, but maybe a witty and sarcastic conversationalist, or have important knowledge, or maybe she's a princess that everyone else obeys, or a priestess (or faux goddess) with weird control over monsters and knowledge of the Temple. Maybe appearing helpless and being kidnapped is her superpower because it gets her behind the lines where she can work mischief, she is always underestimated and treated like a piece of luggage not a dangerous human being. I have had a few rare PCs in my games that were like this; usually they're built the same way as all the other PCs but the way they're played puts them firmly in the everyman/sidekick role. In one fantasy hero game a PC was deliberately not optimized, I think he only carried a knife and was reluctant to use it. I remember at the time it frustrated me because he was noticeably less powerful and I didn't want to kill him and wasn't really sure what to do with him, but I think with that a stronger concept it might have worked. (The player was an actor and was trying to play a non-violent character, but I'm not sure he had a whole lot of concept beyond that.) Other PCS have been things like aging blacksmiths, that sort of thing; having some useful toughness or skills and plausible motives. Lastly I'll note to that DCC-style funnels are completely built on this sort of character. Haven't played too many of these but usually the characters are ton of fun, not because they're powerful but exactly because they're not powerful, and instead they're quirky and cowardly and chock full of personality. I've started memorable d&d games this way (you are a zero level Normal Man, your mom packed you a sack lunch and you took a hatchet from the barn, and you are arriving in Shadizar the Wicked for the first time... alone.) And when D&D PCs die and have to return to the party I generally start them at first level, which, when everyone else is 5th to 9th level, means they'll be starting as a Nodwick level hireling and proving themselves for one adventure-- until you share enough party XP to catch up. (An intriguing design feature of old school d&d advancement)

Some cultures were worried about releasing evil or evil spirits, and took measures to not only preserve the body but prevent the spirit from leaving the body, using it as a sort of prison. I think the Romans were in this category. I think those would definitely not be in favor of burning!

Regarding burial customs, people did this IRL. Not dissolving bodies in acid, but dealing with the dark energies either with religion or magic or various superstitions. Burning was apparently used at times though. Witches were often treated like vampires, with great measures taken to either trap the evil or prevent one from returning from the dead. I seem to recall anti-lycanthrope burials too, but didn't find anything in a casual web search. Some very common practices: Burial face-down, to prevent the spirit from rising to heaven Burial under rocks to keep the body physically trapped. Also nailing a corpse to the floor of a coffin. Rocks in the mouth to prevent the spirit from escaping Unmarked graves are very common for witches and criminals but I'm unsure of the significance Cutting off the head Staking a body with wood or iron Misfortune subsequent to death was seen as a curse from a ghost or witch, so the body might be exhumed, exorcised or mutilated, have rituals performed, and then re-buried. Exhumation was also used to inspect a body for hair and nail growth, or to see if it had moved, etc. There's a ton of material out there if you are interested in historical practices, here's a few to get started. https://www.businessinsider.com/ways-villagers-buried-vampires-to-stop-rising-from-dead-2023-8?op=1#bodies-were-buried-face-down-3 https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/witches-vampires-and-werewolves-10-ghoulish-archaeological-discoveries-004402 https://bigthink.com/the-past/5-ancient-rituals-prevent-zombies/ https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/workers-horrified-as-450-headless-vampire-skeletons-found-while-digging-up-road/ar-AA1cnG0F https://www.historytoday.com/hidden-history-deviant-burials Several practices are mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial such as inverted burial, burial at a cross-roads, and exhumation.

This is clever. I was thinking about Multiform but couldn't come up with a clear way to do it. There used to be (in some past edition) a variable effect advantage, so you could have an redefinable multiform, but that advantage hasn't existed in recent editions. But I'm not sure Multiform really solves the issue. It lets you define a new form with added memories, but you can't use those memories in your standard form which I take to be the point. Transform (self) could do it, to alter your base form. For a PC I'd require spending XP for additional abilities, but for a monster it is just a deus ex machina and it gets more powerful with each victim it kills. Honestly for a monster I might not even bother to define the ability in terms of a power: it's just a story element that the monster asborbs abilities of victims and becomes more powerful. Update the character sheet, done.

You can if the GM allows it. See the Skills power for buying a skill as a power. Normally to acquire skills, you ought to pay character points for them, unless they're temporary. If they're temporary, you might look at the Cramming skill (it was a talent in 4e) for inspiration. Maybe you could combine cramming with Enhanced Senses (Detect), using the detect to recall a skill of a defeated foe, and cramming to exercise it. Eidetic Memory won't give you skills, but you could reskin it so that it allows recall only of the memories of someone you killed, not things you experience yourself.

I tweak things a bit to makes them more like Tolkien. For a game that blatantly copied Tolkien, D&D does an incredibly lousy job actually resembling Tolkien. D&D's version of demi-humans are a bit like Picasso's version of a woman... If you squint your eyes you can see what he was going for, but it's not something you'd want to come home to at night.

What's the difference between "multi-genre" and "universal?" I could think of things, but I'm wondering what you're thinking? 🤔

Mythic Greece was a pretty cool adaptation. What really blew me away for 1E was the Shadow World material, particularly statting up the gods (Lords of Orhan) and other epic characters like the Loremasters and Navigators. They were so over the top, like cosmic level superheroes, it really expanded my perceptions of what you could do with Fantasy Hero. (I do doubt whether any of it was really play tested.)

[For the TL;DR skip to the bullet points at the end of this post] If you like 6E, then yes. Personally I have almost fully abandoned it and have been thinking of running a 1e campaign as-is, because the flavor and tone and even the rules are quite different. I liked FH 4e a lot too. I bought the 6e books and 10 years later I still haven't read them. It's just too much text, too much weight to cart to a game store or someone's house to use as a reference, and the books are so heavy they are falling out of their binding. So they stay on the shelf and rarely get pulled out to look up a rule, though honestly it's a lot quicker to just pull up a PDF and use the search function. And as little as I have used the 6E core books, I don't think I've used the 6e Fantasy Hero at all. I flipped through once after I bought it and looked at the pretty pictures, then put it on the shelf and it stayed there. There's nothing inside that I need. Hero is a do-it-yourself system, and I can already do all I need in 1e or 4e. 5e and 6e may be interesting commentary and house rules on the basic system, but are not anything I need or find any value in. 1e is just the right length and tone for me. I know the book and can find things easily. I have read it cover to cover many times, but only used 5e and 6e as reference books to look up specific things that had changed. After a while I asked myself: why? Why go to the trouble to swap the rules when 1e already does what I want. There are some rules in 4e I like to pull in, like VPPs; 5e added no real value, but at least it was compatible and therefore painless to use. 6e requires me to cross-reference every second rule to see if it changed, but the changes strike me as merely cosmetic, change-for-the-sake-of-selling-an-update with no real benefit to game play. I think the 4e rules are the ones I remember best, I have them practically memorized; but 1e is my mental blueprint for how the game works and plays, and is the first place I go when I need to look something up. It's the book I turn to for inspiration. It set the pattern that every edition of Fantasy Hero followed and reprinted. In terms of Fantasy Hero I think the first edition was the best and most focused, and each edition after that has been less useful to me than the one preceding it. One major (and frustrating) difference is that things get renamed and reclassified with each edition. Recently I went through all FH editions (1e, 4d, 5e, 6e, FHC) and compared them. From 1e to 4e a ton of powers and skills changed their names, and more than a few rules changed. The basic 14 attributes are the same, but everything else changes randomly. And then every edition after that, things move around; skill become powers and then become skills again; other things change from skills to perks to talents to powers; some things disappear, only to skip and edition and reappear again under a different name. Examples (not exhaustive): SKILLS. Charioteering and Sailing were separate skills that became Transport Familiarity; Courtier skill became High Society; Artisan skill became PS; Brawling became the Hand Attack power; Propecy skill was removed in 4E, then added back in 5E under the name Divination, then removed again in 6E; Spell Research became Inventor; the Luck skill because a Talent in 4E and then a Power in 5E. POWERS. Shield because Armor in 4E/5E and then Resistant Protection in 6E. Shadow and Silence became Darkness. Noncorporeal became Desolidification. Blast became Energy Blast in 4E/5E and then Blast again in 6E. Mind Attack became Ego Attack in 4E/5E and then Mental Blast in 6E. Perceive became Enhanced Senses, Bind became Entangle, Dazzle became Flash, Ward became Force Wall and then Barrier; Sounds became Images; Cloak became Invisibility; Adapt became Life Support. Haste became Running. Heal got folded into Aid and then separated back out into Healing. Some powers like Destroy and Create and Analyze were removed altogether. MODIFIERS. Aura became Damage Shield. Constant became Continuous and then became Duration Advantage and then became Constant again. Some modifiers like Fast and Easy and Permanence and No Magic Roll were removed because the rules changed to be more generic. LIMITATIONS: Burnout became Activation and then Activation Roll and then Requires a Roll. FRAMEWORKS: Magic Pool (1E) was renamed to Variable Power Pool in 4E. DISDADVANTAGES: Friend became Dependent NPC. Personally I find the older names shorter, more intuitive, and they make for shorter stat blocks. As I said this list is not exhaustive, though I have a doc (also probably not exhaustive) if you are interested. There were rules changes; for example in 1E the standard spell requires a magic roll and takes a full phase, and these changed in 4E. The whole thing with "Create" spells disappeared in 4E. The only pattern I can discern to all this randomness is increasingly generic-ness and decreasing balance. More options mean more ways to get around rules limitations, especially with 6E which has ways to circumvent nearly any limitation in the system. You can't just say make a character with X points like you could in 1e, the GM need to review every line of the character sheet and consider if it might break something in the campaign. 1e was specifically designed and balanced for Heroic Fantasy; the fantasy flavor was baked right into the names of skills and powers, and the rules were tightly focused on the needs of fantasy. Workarounds were rare and expensive. In 4e it was all genericized so it doesn't feel like fantasy anymore, it feels bland and generic; the rules were genericized to be more universal. 6E doubled down on this and is far more generic than 4E was. Jack of all trades but master of none. That trend continues with each edition, so that 6e is the blandest, least focused, and least balanced version yet. It has more options, yes; but also effectively fewer options, because now instead of using your imagination, you look up the official options and rules in the exhaustive list of "anything anyone might ever want to do with Hero." It's already been done, no need to invent anything or use judgment, just look it up or ask for an official ruling. IMO that sucks the heart and soul right out of Hero, and takes away all my desire and a joy in playing. Honestly, when I ran 6E Fantasy Hero, I mostly used FH 1e as a reference and sourcebook at the table; I even converted the items and monsters from 1e to 6e because I found them more evocative and inspiring. When I had a 6e-specific rules question I looked it up in Fantasy Hero Complete, or searched a 6E pdf. And I finally realized that if what I really want to play is 1e (and it is) then why am I swapping the rules from a different and incompatible game system? (Especially one that is similar enough to be confusing, but different enough to be incompatible. It's the worst-case scenario.) Ah well, so much for my thoughts and experiences. I'm just an aging gamer unhappy to see his favorite neighborhood park bulldozed and turned into a parking garage. So, not trying to start an edition war, or just complain. Okay, maybe complain a little. But you asked 1e vs 6e and I can't answer that without relating my experiences and feelings, so you can decide if your thoughts are similar, or if your needs are different than mine. If you like 1E FH and really want to play that, then play that. If you like the flavor of 1E, none of the other editions are going to even come close to delivering that IMO, they are all generic and mix supers and modern and sci-fi in with your fantasy, while removing nearly all the fantasy flavor. Then trying to add it back in with separate FH that recommend you rename the skills and powers back to the old 1E names... but who actually does that? It would just be confusing. But the newer editions are great if you want to use the same rules to play multiple campaigns in multiple genres. (All I ever used Hero for was fantasy.) My advice: If you loved the 1E setting and rules, then play 1E. I switched to 4E when it came out because I wanted the VPP rules and some other stuff; but then I later learned that in the 1E Spellbook and 1E Magic items books, a lot of that stuff (such as variable power pools) was added to 1e anyway. And you can also pull stuff from Champions 3E. if you do play 1E, then I recommend the PDFs of Magic Items and the Spell Book: some of my favorite fantasy supplements for any game ever. The Magic items book in particular has some wonderfully creative stuff in it. And they have rules corrections and additions for 1E. If you loved the 1E setting but want to update to "standard" rules, play 4E and convert the stuff over. The rules are still small and pretty compatible, and conversion will be painless. If you try 4E, you'll probably want the 4E Core Rules and the Fantasy Hero book. I liked the 4E FH book, it was readable and full of good content. Also check out the FH Companion I and Companion II. If you disliked the 1E setting, or don't care, or have your own unique snowflake setting, use 4E/5E/6E because they are generic. 1E is strongly flavored like chocolate. But it is easier to add your own subtle unique flavor to vanilla (4E+). Use... 4E if you want rules familiarity, and small rules that get out of the way and leave room for you to be creative. 5E if you want rules familiarity, but very complete rules that don't leave any questions or things for the GM to have to adjudicate. I didn't particularly like the 5E Fantasy Hero supplement, it was too long and dry and packed with stuff I didn't care about. But it may be useful. The 5E bestiary is good. There were a boatload of userul sourcebooks published for 5E. If you want off-the-shelf material 5E is your best bet, by a long shot. 5E is the GURPS of Hero editions: a freezer full of TV dinners, just heat and serve. 6E if you don't care about familiarity (or barely remember 1E), and want a very complete rules set similar to 5E. My main dislike of 6E is that I am very familiar with the older edition and the changes seem arbitrary and pointless; and it is overly generic and long-winded. But if you've mostly forgotten and your rules knowledge is rusty, 6E won't be any more difficult to learn than any other edition. Work mentioning that the 6E FH supplement is beautiful and full color. IMO you don't need the core rules in physical form, they are more useful in PDF, but the FH printed book is pretty nice. And hardback so it should be fairly durable. Fantasy Hero Complete if you want 6E rules but a smaller "focused" rulebook like 1E. It is still generic, but it omits all the non-fantasy genre stuff like Computer Programming, so it's at least a step in the right direction. Use this with the 6E bestiary and other sourcebooks, though you will eventually want the full 6E PDFs because this is still missing a few things. Now that you are thoroughly confused, I bid you adieu! 😇

I actually think it's a great name and perfect for its era, even if it was "named by default." The whole "X Hero" thing became a tradition and recognizable brand identity, and I always felt that the name emphasized the heroic aspect of the game, something that makes it unique from all other games. It's just changing times and changing technologies. There is something to be said for being first to market and trademarking that generic name. Microsoft got a trademark on Windows which is a very bland generic name. Anyone else who wants to compete with that has to come up with a euphemistic synonym that isn't quite as punchy or descriptive. As a name, Fantasy Hero is in that category. On the other hand, my ex wife used to poke good-natured fun at me. She knew Fantasy Hero was my favorite game and would rib me about wishing I really was a "fantasy hero." I didn't appreciate the joke but have to admit it was low-hanging fruit. 😅

Fantasy Hero was an awesome name in 1985, it perfectly captured the genre and flavor of the game, and tied it to the larger hero ecosystem. These days, in the age of the web, I find it is virtually impossible to find Fantasy Hero content on web search engines. I get an endless list of computer games, other RPGs, articles, artwork... nearly anything except the fantasy RPG from Hero Games. Maybe smart search like Bing+ChatGPT will make that easier, but it is interesting how a name that was perfect for the non-digital age is almost perfectly designed to be invisible in the digital age. Just an observation.

I encountered GURPS 2nd a matter of weeks before being introduced to Fantasy Hero 1E, and the Hero skills list seemed very short, elegant and concise to me. (At the time I had never before seen another skill based game.) Things got a little bloated after 4th edition; i don't really need all the science skills broken out, or really even need to distinguish science skills from KS/PS. I've recently come to realize Hero has an awful lot of needless distinction; not nearly as much as GURPS, but they still clutter up the system. Forensic Medicine and Animal Handler could both just be PS, no need to these odd professional skills to be called out separately. User defined is fine; if the writers feel that it is REALLY important for the reader to think about forensic medicine as a skill, just provide a list of genre-appropriate PS ideas. (I do love the way user-defined skills are dynamic in breadth, it is amazingly elegant.) And why do we have both EB and RKA, when we could have a single Attack power that costs 5/DC, and just let the player decide which kind it is? The powers are virtually identical otherwise. These are only a couple of very obvious iceberg-tips... I feel the system really needs an editor, and obviously I'm the best guy to do it... 😇 I think the skill costs for heroic games are pretty reasonably. If you are spending 150 points in a fantasy warrior, he needs something to soak all those points. Wizards mostly take KS and can cheapen those with Scholar.

Great post, I found myself agreeing with virtually all of it. Impressive to write that on your phone!! I finally came to the same conclusion about points. It is so tempting and fun to just say "you can buy anything you can afford" but it does not work. At all. Points don't balance anything, and serve no purpose except to turn character creation into a mini-game that limits you from just doing "anything you want." Forcing a player to make choices stimulates creativity, and also leaves one hungry for a few more points.

I seem to recall those hardbacks being around $12-15 each! For comparison: AD&D 1e is 350 pages (PHB 125 pages, MM 100 pages, DMG 225 pages). Fantasy Hero 4E is 650 pages (Core 200 pages, FH 250 pages, Bestiary 200 pages). Fantasy Hero 6E is 2100+ pages (Core 800 pages, FH 450 pages, Grimoire 400 pages, Bestiary 500 pages).

That's where I am. With 5E I was already teetering on the edge of "I just don't have time for this" but it was okay because I *knew* the system and I loved it as it was. 6E changed it just enough to be unfamiliar again and I have to convert everything, relearn the skills and powers and point balances, and plus it changed some things I loved. The changes seem small but they were enough to break the camel's back. I just don't play heavy games anymore. I ditched 3E, ditched pathfinder, ditched GURPS, even Savage Worlds and 5E D&D are borderline these days. Hero was the ONLY rules-heavy game on my shelf that I played and it was only because of familiarity that it remained... I could play it fast because I had it memorized, though prep still took too long. Honestly if 7E returned to a 4E level of bloat, brought back figured characteristics and stuff, I'd probably play it again, but I doubt that will ever happen. I did buy the 6E bundles because the price was right to complete my collection.

OSR has been my go-to for a solid decade now. Hero was in regular cycle up until 2009, and I ran an on/off game for a short while in 2015 but these days it is mostly a nostalgic memory, though I still collect books on occasion and sometimes think about how to build this or that. That said, with Hasbro going cancelling the OGL I'm shopping for new game systems. Two days ago I sat down and read some Hero books for the first time in a while. Time will tell where I end up. Maybe I'll try to 5E demo for some newbies and see how it goes.

I think what makes Conan tolerable is he is essentially a Robin Hood type character: he mostly preys on corrupt sorcerers, nobles, and other neer-do-wells. But he is honorable towards women; in Beyond the Black River he is protective of the settlers; when there are two sides he almost always ends up on the right one. I don't recall him ever preying on ordinary people. On the other hand he doesn't give his unjust gains to the poor either; he just takes them from other people who don't deserve them either. He's also a mercenary and a lot of what he does is either fulfilling a contract, or climbing the ambition ladder. Again not the most honorable profession, but he pursues it in a generally honorable fashion. When serving a good Lord or Lady he's loyal, and twin serving a wolf he follows the wolf's code. Basically he double crosses those who double cross him, he baits them into it often enough but their own corruption is always their downfall. You root for him because you know he's not going to cause much collateral damage among innocent people, but he's going to ruthlessly clear out everyone else who is similar to himself. And really as Lords go he wouldn't be such a bad one because he's relatively benevolent and disinterested, he just wants to be top dog but has little interest in throwing his weight around, or indulging in foul degeneracies.

I suspect this is a very subjective question. For example I don't consider any of the powers you chose (healing, alarm, weapon) to be particularly generic. Healing seems a bad fit for evil gods; alarm strikes me as a utility wizard type spell; weapon only fits war gods. YMMV obviously. I would tend to go for subtle powers that related specifically and generically to the notion of "channeling a spirit": augury, commune, bestow/remove curse. protection from spirits, plane shift. Things like bless/curse, dispel seem pretty generic but would be "aspected" by your religion. For example a cleric of a "disease god" and a cleric of a "health god" can both bless, but only bless people their God likes and the blessing should take a form that their god likes; they can both dispel, but can only dispel things their god doesn't like. Similarly things like succor or healing probably make sense for most clerics at some point; the god needs to keep their servant going. But the god of sacrificial mercy wants you to use your healing on others; while the goddess of suffering doesn't like to heal at all and only does it in extreme circumstances and probably earns the cleric and recipient a "demerit" for being so weak and unworthy. Maybe the healing of the goddess of suffering is always accompanied by excruciating pain or disfiguring scars. But its not a domain power because you really shouldn't be using it at! Overall I think the notion of domain powers is not really great for clerics, I think its overly restrictive and reductive, and probably only makes sense for the weakest of minor deities. I mean any deity that is worthy of the title "god" could provide EVERY spell in the book whether clerical or magical regardless of domain. Whether they do or not depends on their goals, the story, etc. A cleric should always be vastly more powerful than a wizard because they draw from a more powerful, more universal source; the downside is having to submit and not being able to call upon that power at will. You only get to do what you're told, if you want to be in control, you choose the path of wizardry which is less power but greater autonomy.

I think realistic armor would mostly be an all-or-nothing affair. Either you bypass/penetrate and do damage, or you bounce harmlessly off. Bludgeons might transmit some impact through the armor; truly armor piercing weapons would just have a greater penetration chance. How to model it effectively, I don't know. Maybe D&D was on the right track with AC.

I like to make a short list of disadvantages that I, as a GM, and most likely to call upon during a game, to help focus thinking. You could pick up a free resource like 5 point fudge that has a list of pithy one liner Faults. Pick the things on the list of appeal to you and leave off the ones you'd rather not call attention to. (You could also use something like Gurps Lite; personally I find the colorful and witty fudge list to be more inspiring) You can either stat them up yourself to show how it's done, or just leave them as seeds. Another option is to provide prefab templates: partial formulas that they can customize. Sometimes when I want to do something very specific with the disadvantages, such as alignment or things very closely tied to the game world or magic mechanics, I'll stat those up specifically in advance. https://www.panix.com/~sos/rpg/fudfive7.pdf

Good luck with the paperwork. Hoping you won't need luck due to the content! 😂 Jokes aside it's great to see folks producing stuff for the good ol' Hero system.

Lakeside is a pretty good spot. It will benefit from trade along the river, but will also benefit from coastal ships that are following the shoreline. Lakeside has the advantage of being a fishing port; it is also a haven when storms blow up on the lake. It's more likely to benefit from milder weather than one inland on the river. But lakeside city can also protect the river against invasion cleats from the lake. One benefit of being upriver could be if that's a natural place where trade routes across the river, particularly if there is an island or bridge. If there are extensive marshes along the lake, it would be more difficult to build a city there, also to be fair that didn't stop Venice.

Cowboys were not more violent than anyone else. Most of them ordinary people, peaceful and just trying to find their own space and make a future for their children. But wherever people gather there's always a certain unruly element. Whenever you gather a bunch of unmarried men they'll tend to be especially unruly. Women tend to be a civilizing influence. In the old west we saw this in mining towns, lumber camps, railroad towns, ranch houses, etc. Men get to drinking and gambling and brawling out of boredom and restlessness and trouble ensues. The problem we have in RPGs is that it's not interesting to play peaceful family people doing their job every day. What's interesting is when you have to strive and fight; but for the most part, those who live by the sword are already engaged in questionable activities. Either that or they're living in a crazy frontier area, although those crazy frontiers are not sustainable for very long, they tend to be short-lived transitional periods.