Panpiper

Well, of course YOU are in Kaze (HeroFan). 😉 It is going to be at the very least several days before I nail anything down at all with how I'll build the game. I would prefer to build the myth, history and geography slowly, in a manner that works 'with' player conceptions, rather than have player conceptions fit within the world I have pre-created. I would like to offer players the chance to play characters they might have a hard time playing in a less narrative game. That is not a requirement, just an opportunity. For instance, I'm attaching a character that absolutely could not be played with a normal group in a standard table top game, but 'could', perhaps, work in a narrative game such as I am suggesting. Note this is not necessarily an NPC in the game, but she 'might' be. Posted character can now be found on this thread; Ref: Hecate

So I've recently been exposed to Play By Post (PBP) gaming, hitherto being blithely unaware. (Thanks HeroFan.) I am discovering that it has a distinct strength with regard to role playing games, and a distinct weakness. It is not simply an inferior way to game, in at least one major way, I have to my delight discovered it is superior! PBP is quite a bit superior with regards to the investment in role play by the players. It is vastly inferior with regard to the tabletop wargame aspect. It lends itself very badly to turn by turn, initiative ranked, rolled dice combat resolution. Despite this, I believe Hero System may work just fine anyway for such gaming, on the condition that players forgo the detailed turn resolution of combat, and allow such things to be adjudicated off screen by the GM, with the results narrated. A combat encounter might be divided into three acts with a narratively described setup, followed by players describing anything they intend to do if and when things get violent. The next post from the GM would narratively describe the consequence of the initial encounter and await any further posts from the players as to any changes they might make to their character's tactics. Resolving that off screen, the GM would narratively describe the results of that, and wait for final updates in the actions players might wish to change to. This of course would be followed by the narration of the conclusion. The combat would be dice rolled out by the GM assuming best possible tactics on the part of the players, erring always on the side of the players. This would change the PBP gaming from taking weeks to resolve a large encounter to being maybe a day or two. The game would cease to be a fighting game and become much more a character game of story telling and character development. Characters would of course still be built with Hero System, experience would still be spent, and of course the improved stats, skills, powers, etc., factoring into any future combats the players get into. The only difference is the players wouldn't be designating exact hex placement, calling individual shots, and rolling the dice themselves slaved to a phase chart. Outside of role playing, which can be done with any system, my own personal greatest joy with Hero System specifically is character creation and character growth. The combat resolution part of the game while fun, is really more of a means toward either furthering the role playing plot, or garnering experience points to spend, at least for me. Experience point rewards would have much more to do with frequency and quality of written posts and the furtherance of the narrative plot, than how tough the enemies were. Are there any Hero Gamers out there who would be interested in such play? Is there any obvious glaring problem with what I have outlined.

Too cost effective, that makes sense. Of course one could just rule that slots cannot be ultra slots, and that should address the expense rather nicely I would think. It would also make it worth the while for a player to add extra limitations to slots when appropriate, further differentiating various spells.

I've been away from actively thinking about Hero System for a couple of years, entertaining the idea of GMing something fantasy. Of course I have to consider how to do magic in my world, and I find myself looking at a gazillion oddball ways proposed by many, including in published material, and I am left wondering. Just why are multipowers not the perfect and obvious way to do magic? They seem absolutely perfect to me. Am I missing something?

I've never noticed much difference between the editions from first to fifth. Sixth I am emphatically NOT a fan off, and play it only because other people do.

Well, if you don't have a circle of friends who can play tabletop in real life, that pretty much relegates you to online options. The advantage of on line is that you have a lot more potential players. The disadvantage is that it is nowhere near as social nor as simple as just drawing on a hex mat and using figurines while everyone chats and shares books. Online options would include gaming utilities like Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and Tabletop Simulator. Roll20 might be the easiest, as long as you aren't expecting it to do much more with it than provide a chat service along with a basic map, character figures you can move and basic dice rolls. Fantasy Grounds has better map functions, but even less support for game systems outside of D&D. Tabletop Simulator due to the efforts of one very dedicated modder may ultimately be the best option. It may require a bit more brain power to get started with, but long term would probably provide the most enjoyment. Check him out through his YouTube site and then follow the links he provides in his video descriptions. Finally there is the option of playing Play By Post, which involves the least learning, but is also the slowest option with regard to actual game play. That said, there seems to be an awful lot more character role play in Play By Post than in other gaming methods, including RL tabletop. If you do get something going on line, please do consider me interested. I have plenty of time in my week and apparently a bottomless enthusiasm for Hero System.

Got it. This will do the trick. Pretty obvious in retrospect, though I'd never have thought to include ritual magic. Updated character attached in case anyone is curious.

I speak French! 😉

He's not dead, he's just 'mostly' dead. I like the ability to buy the defy death thing for five points. If they buy it, they can use it to force something miraculous to happen to intervene, which can also be after the fact if the player wishes (after the fight and danger is past). One could perhaps also allow a 'dead' character to buy it post mortem. They buy it for the price of 'owing' five character points, basically sacrificing their next five XP. There might however be more consequences imposed for buying it after the fact, depending upon the method of death. There may be scars, physical disabilities, etc., added to a character.

I've got a character who has spent pretty much their entire life living in a hell dimension, very recently returned to her original human form. She has by now utterly forgotten any human everyman skills she might have had, but of course would have those of her demonic realm. I have no clue what those might be however. Anyone know of such, or care to take a stab at suggestions? Character attached in subsequent post, updated. Clearly inspired by Illyana Rasputin, and named as she is to pay homage.

I'm using sixth edition. I prefer the earlier ones, but I suspect more people playing are using the sixth. I did get invited to play in a Play By Post game and there the GM has stipulated characters starting with 300 points, including 50 in complications. That is a game of teen supers however, just coming into their powers. Having already started in that game with one character, it seems redundant to build another one for just that, but for now I figure if other people start with more points, a character I build initially with 300 will be able to easily grow into it. So the one I am working on right now is 300 points and I've got 100 points of very character appropriate complications down for her.

I have been away from Hero for so long, I had forgotten even whether we needed to roll high or low to hit. I probably need to dig my rule books out from storage and do a whole reread. What I like doing best though is building characters, and especially, creating write ups for them. My Hero Designer still works just fine, and rather than spend an hour just looking for the books and then days rereading, I'm hoping one or more sympathetic souls will just write a short response sufficient to give me some basic guidelines, so I can quickly get to the fun part. How many points do you typically start new characters at? Teen superheros maybe? Do you enforce hard caps on active points in any given power, if so, what caps?

D'oh! Sorry. Thank you for illuminating my ignorance.

This may be an old issue, as my Hero Designer is not new, but the DefaultPrintTemplate.hde used to export to HTML is displaying the flight speed of a character as a total of two separate multipower slots, when in fact the character can only fly with one or the other. The multipower is not large enough to permit both at once. Ishtar Ninurte.pdf

I am up for online gaming. Little to do otherwise. Gaming is made all the easier being retired as well. Loads of past experience here. Anyone starting something, do let me know. I much prefer Hero System, and my favorite genre is fantasy, but beggars cannot be choosers and I'll take what I can get. I am involved in a Play by Post game nowadays and there is a supers game starting up in a couple of weeks which I am much looking forward to. But there are many days in a week. 😉

I sent you a PM here on the Herogames forum.

Well, I'm a retiree shut in with little means to raise money. I can however afford to kick in $50. myself for an opportunity to play my favorite game again. I too played Champions back in the 80's, and those days remain some of my fondest memories. What I would really like to do is to resurrect my character of old (starting points), faults and all, Ishtar. I do not remember how she developed spending XP, but somehow I remember her starting physical stats. I also remember, that when she started she had no skills purchased, which was an issue for more than a few, and a genuine failing on my part. I've been staring at hero designer having inputted those stats, which came out to 'exactly' 250 points, with nothing left for skills, and then for inspiration turned to do disadvantages. (I failed to recall how hard it was to come up with 125 points of disads.) As I struggled, it occurred to me that frankly, coming out of a deep freeze, or whatever other thing caused her suspension for the better part of 40 years, might well have left her with brain damage and an amnesiac. That would account not only for a good few disad points, but also account for the fact that she starts with no skills! 😉 I actually have a tiny bit of experience playing on Roll20, (a few D&D sessions) and it is a darn sight easier to game with a map visible than to do so with theater of he mind. Technically, very recently, I already started playing a version of my old character in a play by post game, but that version was created quite differently and with 6th edition rules. She looks similar and carries the same name, but mechanically she is 'very' different. The Ishtar of old, the one I would resurrect for your game, is essentially a high dex brick, bought 100% the hard way, no limitations of any sort on any power set or stats to reduce costs. She suffers two glaring weakness, one being not having any skills to start, and the other having all but 9" of running for movement. Her true super strength is not that she has the physical stats of a brick, but that she has the dex of a martial artist to go with it. The new Ishtar I am playing in the Play by Post game by contrast is 'not' particularly high dex, in fact she's a little on the low dex side, but she can fly at Mach 1.8! So yea, rather different. I have played Hero System in many campaigns over the years, but only played supers in that very first campaign, all the others were different incarnations of Hero System. Despite that, Ishtar was a character always very dear to my heart. I hope you'll let me have her, faults and all. I'm Peter Cohen by the way.

Is that $50. per session, or $50. to join the game for as long as it may last?

Thank you for the link Amorkca. I had not seriously looked at Table Top Simulator before. I have now watched a few videos about it and am slightly less clueless. However the crucial thing is not so much knowing about any given on line tool in advance, but rather finding or putting together a group that would want to play, be it Table Top Simulator, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, or anything else. One could know about, possess and have mastered all those tools and still have no game to play.

I'm not sure I am clear on the concept of what a "pbem" game is, or how it is actually played. I suppose it could be some sort of shared story writing device, but how the heck do you roll dice, let alone adjudicate a fight? Is there an article or video somewhere I could reference that could give me more of a clue? I do role play and I can write quite well and easily, but I am more of a wargamer when I play tabletop than I am a role player. I am not sure pbem would be my cup of tea.

I should check in more often. 😉

We are all pretty much in isolation these days, opportunities for socializing at a minimum. The tabletop gaming group I normally play with weekly, has taken our game on line for the time being, awakening me to the relative ease and pleasure of still being able to play. We are most of us actually interacting with text even, and still it's WAY better than nothing. My regular group gave up on playing Hero sadly, because after five years of playing, half the players still didn't know what dice to roll. They were utterly uninterested in learning any rules set at all. So now we are playing D&D 5e, and they still don't know what dice to roll half the time. All that to say, I miss my old Hero. Now that I know first hand that Hero is possible, despite actual lovers of Hero being few and far away, perhaps in these days when so many of us are home, twiddling, a few of us might connect on line and rekindle old flames? I would be interested in joining any Hero System game, any setting, if anyone will have me. I actually do not have a webcam at the moment, but if that's a deal breaker, I could get one and figure it out. I am not one much for GMing. I've done it before, but it is always seat of the pants GMing, with very little preparation. I know there are people out there that actually enjoy GMing. I am not one of them. I 'am' a pretty good player though. I used to be intimately familiar with the rules. Creating characters is not a problem for me, even complex ones. That said, I tend none the less to create relatively straight forward characters. I have a personal preference for fantasy, but I am open to all genres. Anyone with an existing group willing to accept new blood? Anyone wanting to start something?

Hah! You've hit upon the secret ingredient to my own (debatable) success as a GM! 😉

In defense of a flashlight, it is just as difficult to explain how someone bursts into flames spontaneously 'without' a flashlight. The difficult explanation is not avoided by having an invisible beam power. The flashlight merely creates the illusion of a possible technological reason, however implausible, rather than one that almost by necessity, be supernatural.

Oh oh... Damn those creative juices... What haven't we done before? Hmm...