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Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy I have to jolin Zornwil in commenting on the native language concept. I was one of those who, perhaps like others reading here, went from "saving throw", "armor class" and "hit points" to "CV", "skill levels" and "DEX" as terms of normalcy. These tings are most useful in that the game system not only allows but ncourages multiple and even cross genres. This is true even though IMHO the "Super" roots are unmistakeable.

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy Your last sentence nails it perfectly and should be a sig. --I still have to spread some Rep around before can get you, Doc--

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy Good point on the point build issue. I too spent my early gaming years rolling dice to determine characteristics and even class. I am also very guilty of the "I follow the rules and define the environment exactly according to the book...well except for... The only real departure I have is that if something not entirely consistent is more fun for for a specific player or more glorious for a specific character, and doesn't overbalance the campaign or shortchange the other players (a nonsystemic hand wavy call if ever there was one:D ) then we go for it, but by consensus as there are 5 GMs involved in our campaign.

Re: Purpose of Playing a System-Philosophical, Unscientific and Wordy I hope I didn't sound offensive. Some day someone may come up with a real successful formula and I would have egg on my face if I denigrate the concept too much. I really appreciate your comments on consistency and the tinkering aspects, Zorn. I certainly fall into the category of skipping over rules that are too complex for me to want to deal with at the time, then players in our campaign, like Dangerous Dan who likes esoteric builds or Blackjack to whom the minutae of legalistic detail is meat and drink come up with these great uses of the "hard" powers and force my hand. Neither do I consider either the tinkerers or the unifiers intrinsically wrong. I guess my approach just one more based on a gaming "chaos theory" which assumes that player decisions and actions, good or bad, will destroy any premise of mathematical balance, predictability, directional flow or any other design assumption made by the GMs. Our team has almost gotten taken out, with only Z'lf sneaking up the rafters to rescue us later, by mediocre enemies and gloriously defeated Eurostar while separated and ambushed. Even the dice didn't account for those random events. Your answers were great and only brought up more questions for discussion, which is in the nature of good conversation.

Re: What Other Pulp Hero Books Would You Like To See? I guess I keep leaning toward Victorian Hero as our campaign appears to fall just before Pulp but just after Victorian, ie 1905. Given how much research I have been doing myself, however, I could just as well take some of the excellent Pulp Hero book concepts (timelines, maps, archtypes, etc) and just back up the dates covered for our campaign.

This is a tangent to Zornwil's excellent thread on the purpose of a system. I would like to explore why players play a particular game system. Why Hero rather than GURPS, or Rifts, or D&D, for example. Likewise, I wonder what causes players who say that they like the Hero system to constantly tinker with the rule system. My approach is that like any game or sport, Hero is a set of rules which challenges a player to accomplish a specific task or set of tasks within the confines of the parameters enumerated by the character stats, rules and randomized by dice and declared actions. Thus while action is limited by the rules and "playing field", the actions and ability of the player do make enough of a difference that the GM must take them into account or there is no need for players. Whether it is a Champions hero doing a move through and accepting damage to themselves to hurt the bad guy or a football quarterback calling a gimmick play to offset the defensive strength of an opponent, it is how well a player succeeds within the confines of all parameters of the game that determines success. While a basketball player might lament that he can hit three point shots all day if only nobody were allowed to guard him and justify that he and his buddies would enjoy a higher scoring game more than the lower scoring ones, that doesn't mean basketball is broken. Likewise, numerous gamers over my 25+ years experience have fiddled with damage charts, hit charts, critical charts, magic systems, skill and power increase tables and so on in order to better reflect reality/their concept of ability/a certain sci fi or fantasy universe etc. Likewise, I have seen dozens of attempts at a sort of "unified hit/damage/defense/saving throw theory" which have been about as successful as the quantum version. Anyway, I and to a large extent my group's players accept the Hero rules mostly as written as the limits of construction and combat, but also accept the suggestions in the rules that some things are not necessarily mathematical precise or determinative. This particular structure, that is either a lack of randomness for certain things on the part of the GM or the lack of perfectly quantifaible progression, seems to really bother some players, including some within our own group, while other could care less. I don't know why. Utimately I come down on both sides of a philosophical fence. One side says play the game as constructed and accept the mental challenge presented by your discomfort making victory all the sweeter. The other side, of course, is that the rules are guidelines and not holy writ so you are the GM or you are running the character so play the concept and SFX and then let the rule definitions cover them as best agreed upon by player and GM. To conclude (yay, finally, you say:D ) the Hero rules, IMHO aren't broken, because no set of rules is pefectly representative of reality, mathematically consistent, or sufficiently all encompassing to have predicted everything. I am intersted in the views of other GMs and players.

Re: IQ a give away Our campaign and some of our players value INT very highly, but some PCs aren't conceived as super intelligent. None of our players want characters who are average, but when you are flying around with your force field on using your increased vision to look for the villains you want to blast without fainting from lack of END when you get around to it, every point counts.

Re: Longest Running Thread EVER Finally real entertainment, not to mention real time communication on an airliner. How cool.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings Agreed. Trebuchet and I were actually in a horrible Champions game seventeen or so years ago involving our long running superhero PCs for which we refused to accept XP and thereater referred to the incident as our coincidentally shared nightmare. We had no qualms with contimuing the campaign timeline before and after the dreaded affair, but mere skipped over the offending game.

Re: Musings on Random Musings OK, if, and I emphasize if, there was any such thing as a #2 Highlander, I would have to concur 100% with your assessment.

Re: Musings on Random Musings I wonder if we can use that method to un do stuff. The first Star Trek movie, the Highlander sequels, Robert Jordan's unnecessary fill in books...

Re: The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés So what defines overused as opposed to being classic. Used twice? Three times? Ten times?

Re: Musings on Random Musings I was sort of saving that threat to force William Manchester to finish the Churchill biography series, but it appears age is going to prevent that from happening.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings Asking a Moderator for something, killing a Thread, for example, is like having a Wish. If I had known that I was going to get what I wanted I would have asked for something more important.

Re: Bye all Dear moderators Please Kill Me! I have nothing to live for. Sincerely This Thread

Re: Psychic Wars Yepper from another fan.

Re: Musings on Random Musings

Re: Musings on Random Musings Someone had once mentioned one these boards, IIRC,that Trampier won't have anything to do with gamers now that he is a "serious" artist.

Re: Weird Pulp plot seed Trebuchet and Blackjack, forget that you ever read this thread! Great use of a totally unusual plot line.

Re: Villain Summary Charts/Tables In Books Steve, I have to admit that I seldom notice them. For some reason, I prefer seeing the entire villain write up, including the backgrounds.

Re: Pulp Stargate! Um, yah. I was thinking of that all along. (Jak keeps coming up with good ideas that I need to "borrow''). I had forgotten about that. Good thought. Come to think of it, the same kind of pulpish openning took place in "The Fifth Element" IIRC.

Re: Pulp Hero, after looking it over Woo Hoo! Finally got mine in the mail, yesterday. Even though I already had downloaded the PDF and was well on my way to world designing, there is something so much more satisfying about turning the pages of a book. (Not to mention the secret decoder ring. ) Great job Steve.

Re: Disadvantage OK, cool. That would actually work really well in some cases.

Re: Comments on sexism and racism at the outset of Pulp Hero While our campaign will take place in the real world, we have decided to make our Pulp Heroes the exceptions to most cultures as applicable to sexism and racism. The British hero will view the Commonwealth as a potential for unification of all subjects of the King. The American will be a tolerant and forward looking champion of individual merit and equality. The Chinese will be educated, complex and as patriotic and unselfish about his people as the European. While the other players are still decidng what to play, it is our intent to represent the best that the world has to offer within the context of a very flawed world.