Alcamtar

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.

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.

If you're thinking of using the latest edition, Fantasy Hero Complete is your pony. The current Fantasy Hero still needs the rule books, which can be difficult and pricey to find. FHC is a one and done book that includes rules and genre info. 

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

5th Edition is primarily what our campaign uses, with a mix of 1st-4th thrown in. I would say 6th is slightly more complicated.

I wouldn't say that the rules have gotten more complicated, they've just gotten really specific and try to cover every contingency rather than leaving it up to the GM.  I noticed after 6th came out I was looking stuff up in the book all the time instead of just winging it -- and finding I was almost always doing it according to Hoyle just from experience and common sense.

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 always appreciated the high degree of compatibility between HERO Fourth and Fifth Editions. It's very easy to use material written for one with the other, which given everything published under them, gives me a vast amount of stuff to draw from for characters, creatures, artifacts, templates, settings, rule variations... the works.

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.

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? 🤔

This one is easily my favorite FH supplement.  One of the best low fantasy RPG books ever printed.

Never actually played 6e, I saw the 6e weapon chart and was too enraged to continue reading.
 
Obviously 6e has done away with figured characteristics, and the weapon chart is... different.  FH 1e also had tweaks to the powers that made them fit into fantasy a little better--one example is Flight, which in FH 1e is Levitation and causes users to be half DCV.  The cost structure for powers in FH 1e is often different.  Flash is 10/d6, I think Drain was 10/d6, Shield (aka FF) was 5/2, Healing was 10/d6 (and better defined), and so on.  And I'm pretty sure 1e had no power frameworks either. 
 
It was expensive to be a caster, but limitations also were worth more--incantations and gestures were -1 and foci were at least -1/2.  Ultimately this forced casters to pile as many limitations on spells as they could, which went a long way toward making it feel like fantasy as opposed to medieval supers.

[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! 😇
 

[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! 😇
 

[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. 😅

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.

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.

Honestly? 
 
Quite possibly right here on this board. Browse around some old threads and see how many times some build or other is disagreed with because it doesn't include Chemical X, which it must have, because it can potentially do a thing that is entirely of the wheelhouse of Chemical X. 
 
Remember the old Swinging power, before it got folded into a more annoying version of Flight?  Remember how it said 'character is assumed to have an appropriate swingline'?  Not on this board, but way back when chat rooms were still a thing, I watched a five-way argument amongst GMs as one GM was recounting something a particularly quick-witted player had done.  I don't remember all the details (just that I found the detractors really annoying), but rather than focus on the clever thing, they siezed on the part where the character cut his swingline to drop onto a trio of mooks, finished them off with some knuckles, and then proceeded to use the cut length of the swingline to tie up the mooks as he radioed his teammates. 
 
These guys argued for over an hour before I got sick of it and left- if any of those guys was one of you guys, please do tell me how it ended. 
 
The argument was that it was impossible for this character to do that because he did not have entangle. 
 
It was impossible to use a bit of rope to tie up mooks because that would be entangle, and he did not buy entangle. 
 
I believe we have all seen similar stuff here on this very board.  This is exactly the mindset that lead to the creation of the Power Skill, when you get down to it.  "well, it makes sense that his inferno cone _would_ set the hay bales on fire, but dang it, that's a Transform, and he didn't buy that.  I've got to make sure he pays _something_ to do things like this...." 
 
When you look for official answers, you are often referred to specific skills or powers-- let's face it, you can't go wrong by the book if you can find something in the book that you can specifically point towards, right? 
 
All of that reinforces the idea that every ability must be paid for, and that off-label useage is completely forbidden.  
 
In the long run, this is hurting the game: it is leading to more and more hyper-specificity and more and more "can't must never only always" in the rules. 
 
Worst of all, it is just another thing to point out from the outside as more 'proof' that this game is too complex, to precision, too demanding to be worth picking up. 
 

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).

I understood most of that.  I think.
 
While Peterson FH will always be my favorite TTRPG, I feel as though 4e was the sweet spot for Hero, if only for timing reasons.  4e got rid of most of the really clunky mechanics (i.e. END Batteries) combined with good overall system balance and excellent production values.  And the nineties were a great time for Hero, while TSR fumbled AD&D and before to the invention of CCGs, and ICE even supported the system for a bit, publishing the closest thing to official Fantasy Hero adventures that we ever got.  By the time 5e rolled around, CCGs and CRPGs and MMORPGs had shortened attention spans everywhere, and short attention spans are not suited to 5e.
 
And you're right about the preload for 6e; the most glaring example is Star Hero, which has pregenerated stats for almost nothing in a genre that is practically defined by its gadgetry. 

The moral of the story is that the system isn't the problem, or at least it isn't the biggest problem.  The recent WotC debacle has people in D&D forums complaining about what they don't like in D&D.  But obviously it's not a dealbreaker since they're... playing D&D.  (To say nothing of the Stockholm-syndrome players who insist "it's not D&D if it's not Vancian magic!".)  Shadowrun was an even bigger disaster systemwise, despite three or four total rewrites.
 
Beautiful, orderly designs certainly matter in terms of making the game fun and avoiding weird situations (like the time my D&D 5e paladin flung himself off a fifty-foot castle wall safe in the knowledge that he'd only lose maybe half his HP).  But presentation and support would seem to be at least as important, if not more so.

I agree.  Before that it wasn't a unified universal system, just another 80s "core system" a given company would build a variation on with each new game.
And after that, way too much bloat in skills, perks, skills, proficiencies, skills, familiarities, skills, contacts, skills, skills, and more skills, not to mention open-ended knowledges, sciences, proffessions, area knowledges, and, oh, yeah languages. 
 
Like, 1st:
"Ima detective in m'secret ID"
Detective Work, INT roll, 5 pts
 
Then 2nd & 3rd, stuff bled in from Espionage, Justice Inc, Danger International ...
Criminology is only 3 pts.... better pick up profession Private Investigator and Perk PI liscence, as well. 2pts ea.    
 
4th ... I think there's a 20 point package for that some where... 😐
 
5th. Did I say 20? I meant 50.  😞
 
6th:  I see your 50 and raise you...
=:-O