Diamond Spear

Will anyone be able to be on chat tonight?

In keeping with the idea of making it read like a Cracked article with funny pictures....

I'm thinking the Superman analog should be Señor Superior, and his arch nemesis is an evil billionaire with obviously fake hair, who lives in NYC and hates aliens. And he wants to be President.

I think we should leave politics out of it.

Feeling under the weather at the moment but still planning on playing coordinator. Was thinking about trying to get as many of the interested people together in the chat room either Thursday or Friday night after 7pm EST. Can people make it?

As long as people don't find it presumptuous I'll go ahead and start figuring out whose volunteered for what and get started on a basic flowchart/ task list. Should only take me a day or two. Any objections?

If you still need someone to coordinate I'd be happy to help. My day job is office administrator so I'm used to that kind of thing.

I should have also mentioned that the force field would be 0 END to activate/maintain when not taking damage.

How would I construct the following? I want a force field that runs off of a battery (END Reserve I know) and every time the force field is hit with BODY from a Killing Attack it has to use an amount of END equal to the BODY damage to stay powered up.

Example 1) a 6 PD force field with an END Reserve of 18 is hit by a Killing Attack that does 4 points of BODY damage. The force field remains at 6 PD and the END Reserve is reduced to 14.

Example 2) a 6 PD force field whose END Reserve has been reduced to 3 is hit by a Killing Attack that does 4 points of BODY damage. The force field is now reduced to 5 PD because only 3 points of END were available. Any additional BODY damage from Killing Attacks will further reduce the force field until it is reduced to zero or the END Reserve gets a Recovery.

How exactly would you build this power? Help!

You know diamond spear thinking about your idea, I imagine if I pitched it to my players as a mundane setting everyone would buy into it for a few rounds. Digesting it in my mind it becomes more and more appealing by the moment.

Thank you very much.

That purpose might be better served by writing fiction rather than game design.

 

Not that I necessarily want to discourage you, but it's often stories that get people into games rather than the other way around......perhaps you can take a two-pronged approach and attempt both?

 

As for the misunderstandings in the thread, I can see the joke you were attempting with "that ship has sailed" but the usual understanding of that phrase seems to be "you cannot or should not attempt what you are talking about because it is too late." I know you weren't trying to tell Diamond Spear to back off, but some people I think got that impression.

 

But even I am a little confused by "HELP ME PLAY TEST IT." I dare say I've probably been reading your offerings with more care and attention than most, but I don't always understand you. Join the club; I'm not always well understood either.

 

But it's obvious to me that what Diamond Spear is talking about is very different than what you are talking about you. You have obviously immersed yourself deeply in the mythos and ethos of a particular set of cultures that you find fascinating and you wish to share a unique world-vision that you feel is in danger of fading away entirely - you see a bright thread of the Human tapestry that seems to be unraveling and you want to weave it back into our collective imagination because the whole world is poorer if it is to be irretrievably lost.

 

Diamond Spear is just throwing around ideas for what he hopes would be a fun kind of game. In fact, I think what Diamond Spear has himself posted gives me a clear idea of where he is coming from, and as he puts it, your ships are sailing in different directions. If you read his posts and still don't understand what he's saying, I am not sure how to clarify it any further.

 

Well, maybe I'll take a stab at explaining one aspect of the difference.

 

What Diamond Spear is talking about is Alternate History. The world of the kind of game he envisions is "like our world, but..." so he refers to it as "a fictionalized version of our world."

 

Your world is a completely different world altogether even though it is populated with people descended of refugees from our world's past. It isn't Earth as we know it and never was. Do you understand now the distinction being drawn?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says they are not just sailing in different directions, they are on different seas under different stars.

 

 

Thank you for saying what I wanted to say better than I said it.

Sorry guys, I think that I may have given the wrong impression. I was more making a post to see what people would think about a game run in such a setting not about me sitting down and writing up a full setting. I guess my "defense" of my first post did a poor job of making that clear. Sorry.

That ship has sailed...I'm finishing up the first book now, based on Bantu Africa. The meta-setting is called 'Refugium' or perhaps 'Refugia' - a world where cultures that lost out on our world get another chance, with magic and without colonialism. All of them reach the Age of Sail at the present time for the setting. I'm almost certain the first book will go on into layout this summer and be on kickstarter asap. There's a link to the current version of the PDF in my sig. If you're really interested, I'd LOVE a partner/co-author.

 

The name problem - I started out calling it Ubantu, which is protoBantu for 'Land of the People' but that's too close to Ubuntu, the Linux distro, so I need a new name. Alternatives:  Ulimwengu - Swahili for universe; Umphasi - Zulu for Earth; some contraction of 'Mdala wa Uhai' - the Cloth of Being, as the cosmos is called; Afrikajabu - a contraction of Afrika ya Ajabu, Africa of Marvels; or Ekong - Duala/Cameroonian for 'they have transported us to another world'. Any input here would be very helpful.

 

I've got a bit done on the next one, Nèf Guinée:

 

 

The other potential worlds are

 

 

I'm currently thinking of skipping to Bundahishn out of sympathy for the Kurds.

 

 

First of all, thank you for your response. I don't think, however, that “That ship has sailed” really describes the situation. I appreciate that you are working on a similar idea and will absolutely take a look at it with an eye towards seeing if I can make a meaningful contribution to it, however my idea differs in a few key ways.

 

First I'm looking at much more of a “kitchen-sink” setting especially considering the inclusion of Vikings. Secondly I'm looking at a much less, I guess “structured” would be the word, setting. I'm going for more of a floating concept to be customized by how any individual game progresses rather than a completely mapped out and stated out setting.

 

Secondly, and I'm basing this more on other posts I've read about your setting rather than a perusal of the actual Gazetteer, the games/setting that I'm envisioning is much more High Fantasy/Swashbuckler/Spies and Intrigue than what you're doing.

 

Thirdly, the cultures, empires, etc. are based much more on our popular perception of those cultures rather than the reality of those cultures. For instance, historical pirates were really not nice people but our modern perception of them in fiction is much less objectionable. Another example would be the fact that most people, not being history majors, have only a vague idea of what the great native empires (Aztec, Inca, etc.) of the Americas were like and for my idea that works just fine as such cultures can be expanded on and described in each individual game.

 

I think the major difference between our ideas is that what I'm talking about is a general type of game and what you're working on is an actual setting for a game. Neither idea is superior they're just different ways of approaching things. Does that make sense?

 

EDIT: Skimming over your map and Gazetteer you seem to be developing a setting that is not the "real world" while what I'm proposing is setting adventures in a fictionalized version of our actual, real world.

 

EDIT THE SECOND: Your work is strictly a different version of Africa while I'm talking about the Caribbean and the Americas so a completely different thing. Going back to your first sentence I'm thinking our ships are sailing in completely different directions.

Fantasy Hero seems to be the perfect springboard for a game set in the Age of Exploration. A little tweaking of history and instead of the Age of Exploration resulting in, well the events that actually transpired, perhaps you end up with the cultures of the Americas being able to meet the Europeans on equal or near equal military/technological terms. Or perhaps the inhabitants of the Americas have built their empires based on magic which the Europeans are completely unprepared for.

Moving the time up by a century or so and the Age of Piracy becomes not an offshoot of, and side-show to, the wars in Europe and the European settlement/exploration of the Americas, but perhaps the Caribbean is the place where the dominate powers of Europe and the Americas meet to trade, negotiate, spy, raid and trade, all in the hopes of gaining some advantage over their cross-ocean rivals as well as the countries right next door.

If you want to add even a little bit more to the mix perhaps the Viking cultures never accepted Christianity and were able to settle the northern part of North American, modern day Canada and the northern-most parts of the United States. Vikings allied with Northern native tribes could make for formidable foes. Plus the thought of a Viking longship armed with cannon and packed with musket wielding Vikings is both terrible and glorious. And if runic magic actually works....

So what do you guys think? Any additional suggestions? Directions such alternate history might take? Is this a nifty idea worthy of a game or just silly?

I'm completely new to Hero. When I opened up the core books to run a fantasy game I was completely overwhelmed. So, I went to Fantasy Hero 6th. It's a fantastic book and gets the gears turning in anticipation, but it's still doesn't provide tight enough constraints to comfortably dig in and start building. My hope is that Fantasy Hero Complete cranks things down a little bit, letting me jump in and go.

The most important thing to keep in mind about HERO is that all the work (or at least the vast majority of it) is front-loaded. The second most important thing to remember, or maybe even 1A is that "Just because you CAN stat something out in HERO doesn't mean you SHOULD". My favorite example of this is when I tried to stat out the sisters from Charmed; I was basing them on 150 points and having the devil's own time stating out Piper's Time Stop power. After an hour on the phone with a friend I hit on a brilliant solution: I wrote out a description of the power based on what it's shown doing in the show including its effects, its limits, who/what was immune to it and gave it a cost of 75 points. All this without creating a stat block for it because I realized two things: 1)Even in HERO it was impossible to exactly recreate and 2) There was no need to. Half the character's point budget was a reasonable cost for the game. Problem solved.

Yup that works well.

Thoughts on the second half of my post?

Not sure if I am basing a dead house at this point. But I just thought a great example of this is the book that brought us into Hero.

Fantasy Hero 2nd edition and Champions 4th edition. Both had the vast majority of their write ups for characters take up half or less of a page.

The meat of the mechanics are identical and it captured our minds.

On a more serious note perhaps several of us could get together and work up some "cleaner" introductory material.

Even your format is number light, which is what Christopher is advocating and I am supporting. How that very same object is presented in a book needs to be attractive and simple. Currently these swords are presented in the equipment guides as.

8: Rapier: 1d6 HKA, AP x1 +1/4, Reduced end-0 -1/2, Real -1/4, OAF -1 Str Min 8 -1/4; 19Active points

Or in some cases

8: Rapier: 1d6 Hand to Hand Killing Attack, Armor Piercing +1/4, Reduced Endurance -0 -1/2, Real Weapon -1/4, Obvious Accessible Focus -1, Strength Minimum 8 -1/4; 19Active points

These swords can also have a +1 to OCV taking up just as much space or even worse a reach modifier for a chain or pole weapon.

What a player wants to see and can see if Hero is presented in a ready to play method like the talents is.

Rapier 1d6 Killing +1 to hit

As an example here is a cut and paste from Hero System 6th Edition Equipment Guide page 22

Urumi: The urumi, or spring-sword, is a flexible sword from India; it’s also known as a velayudaya. It consists of a hilt with 1-4 blades of metal (sharpened on both edges) projecting from it. The blades are thin and flexible, allowing them to be whipped through the air and into an enemy. When not in use the urumi can be carried around the waist like a belt.

HKA 1d6 (plus STR), Reduced Endurance (0 END; +½) (22 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum (12; -½), Real Weapon (-¼) (total cost: 8 points) plus Reach +1m (1 Active Point; total

cost 1 point) plus Autofire (4 shots; +½) for sword (8 Active Points); OAF (-1), Real Weapon (-¼), Requires A DEX Roll

In the end there is nothing wrong with the game mechanics and once you get a player playing it they soon find they love it. But the presentation is the most unattractive.

I do see your point and agree that a cleaner presentation is desirable.

Just had another thought. You could run the game in an "Age of Exploration" setting. Magellan, Drake, the Conquistadors that kind of thing. You can run very personal adventures that can still take place on a larger world stage and manage to scratch both your itches at the same time.

Read up on Renaissance Italy and you should be able to come up with a ton of ideas for a more "local" campaign. Even just some cursory research will give you some idea of the tensions between various merchant/political/family factions. Throw in a Church that is powerful but beginning to be challenged for primacy by more secular powers and away you go. Intrigue, power-grabs, exploration to find distant lands full of exotic goods (Marco Polo anyone) all make for good but non-world shaking adventures.

I do not think licensing is what is needed. The two most popular settings are two of the cheesiest most two dimensional settings there are. Forgotten Realms and Pathfinder both both are successful in large part to presentations.

People look at a D&D book and they see eye candy. They see a cool power or name and all they have to do is answer a couple multiple choice questions to get their character, even the default power level is assumed start at level one and a group of four player character can take on a challenge rating 1 encounter.

In Hero you have to want to think and put work into it, to create a challenge a gam master has to be aware of dozens of interplays between defenses, offences and utility. People can play Hero, but they have to put a lot more work into it from both a player and game master perspective. Hero does not offer good eye candy and the books read more like text books than RPG books. Even the two Complete books that are out now are still 80% Hero System text book and 20% discussion on stuff.

Players want fluff and eye candy to get them interested in a setting. Once they are interested they will begin thinking about the meta gaming options. But Hero’s presentation is the Metagame, so any motivation has to come from somewhere else.

How many people do you see work out conversion from other systems (especially D&D and Pathfinder)? Almost everyone who plays Hero does.

Even Fantasy Hero Complete falls short of this because the sample characters in the back of the book run from 125 points (maybe the same as 1st level in D&D) to 275 points (15th level?).

How many times do we see post or questions about balancing characters or encounters? Flat out the nature of Hero is work load heavy IMHO it is inarguable. Monster Hunter International is a great example of this. The game mechanics alone for the team members are 1-1/2 pages long. The core of the setting is presented from page 1-73 and gets a player interested, then a large section on characters which are all presented in the maximum numbers heavy format for Hero were even something as basic as strength has a minimum of 4 values (actual value, cost, roll and dice of damage). Then the player gets to magic (because gamers love magic) and a spell will have 2 paragraphs one for flavor and one for game mechanics code for the rules implemented by the spell.

As a long time player I love this because I never have to look up a rule for a power. It is all laid out clearly on the character sheet rite there. But for a new person it is like a technical manual. Compare this to a Savage World write up or a D&D monster block and you find Hero has literally 10 times as many numbers and as much math than Savage Worlds and three times as much as D&D in its presentation. This is why in my “In Service to The Throne” scenarios I used numbers lite presentations for the game master. It makes it all so much less overwhelming.

Test this yourself, write down the stats for a Rapier sword in D&D, the immediately bellow it write down the stats for a Rapier sword in Hero. Which one is 1 line and which one is a paragraph?

HERO Rapier: 1D6 Killing Attack, Armor Piercing (real weapon, OAF, STR Min 8)

Hardly a paragraph.

If your character has a Code vs. Killing it makes no sense at all for him to have a Penetrating Killing Attack given that you WILL do BODY to almost anyone you hit with it.

@ninja the cost of desolidificate would be much higher though than the 3m teleport if I remember correctly (especially with the not affected by gases modifier). Also

some attacks CAN still affect one (I think there is a affects desolidificate adder somewhere) 

 

 

@Diamond: My problem was not really the strongness of the power itself, as I knew immediatetly how to counter it (and tbh I also saw immedieately how to counter basics whole char) , the problem I saw was

more the low point cost for what he intended to do which was in no relation to other powers AND the applicatiion of one simple rule: Everything that a player can do an NPC possibly also can do.

And I don't think basic would be happy if anyone now or later has a 14- or 16- roll to avoid everything basic can dish out (as I don't think that that is funny for the player). 

That is why I am quite concerned when it comes to powers especially if they can be built differently which causes no concerns (like a +DCV which triggers a teleportation if 

the dcv would be enough to stop the attack). Also one concern I always have is that an arms race between gm and player starts (which is never good and should be avoided where possible,

done it once until I almost one hit killed a player character without intention [was a vampire who got attacked by a crocodile in another system that shocked me into form there^^])

The more I think about this power the more it concerns me since it comes off very much like the player is trying to never take damage. I'm not sure if that's what's happening here but I've played with people like that before and it seldom ends well.

@Basic. How does this power tie in with the rest of the character concept? Why would it manifest? What is your intention in including it? How upset would you be if it were disallowed? Would you be willing to drop it for now and buy it with experience later once both you and Tom are more familiar with the rules? If not why not?

I'm not trying to give you a hard time. I'm just trying to figure out how important the power is to the character as well as you as the player.

Our games have used pretty much the same house rules as the first response and they run just fine.

you mean isntead of the other 2 powers? then we would have the same situation as before again as we have an autoimmunity against physical attacks,...

(also desolied doesnt work against gasous powers)

 

the mainprob is also with the original idea of basic that it would be autoimmune (the 14- roll is no 14- roll but a skillroll so we can see 18- there after some sessions).

And autoimmune is something that I want to avoid as from experience that always leads to an arms war between the player involved and the gm (have it seen quite a few times

and heard of it in additional cases). also that reminds me a bit too much of mmo's (immune to physical attacks......use the tank to distract him and then use sorcerers only)

 

 

also a desolification trigger + a teleport trigger that are there to avoid damage are in effect a 100DC damage negation or a 100% damage reduction and that for almost no cost

compared with those (and like I mentioned before also all things pc's can do theoretically npc can do and I dont think a pc is happy when he hears "Ok I managed the skillroll of 16- so youra ttack is completely negated because of my trigger" despite the PC hitting him with a roll of 18 with his strongest attack that leaves him unconscious afterwards)

 

Heck, it doesn't even have to be a defensive power; I once let a player argue me into allowing a character with the following combination of powers: Flight, Invisibility with no fringe and a No Normal Defense Attack with invisible power effects. What I failed to realize was that the character could hover safely out of the way, no one could see them and no one could tell where thier attacks were coming from. It was EXTREMELY unbalanceing.

So IF I udnerstand you correctly then the BG shouldnt limit characteristics,... in any kind and just serve to define MINIMUMvalues (thus that someone highly intelligent according to BG should have more than 10)?

 

So IF I udnerstand you correctly then the BG shouldnt limit characteristics,... in any kind and just serve to define MINIMUMvalues (thus that someone highly intelligent according to BG should have more than 10)?

 

More or less. Again it's a genre convention that individuals with powers also have increased physical characteristics. Trying to make that make perfect sense with a particular background or trying to apply real world logic just gets in the way of the game. It kind of comes down to the fact that in a 400 point game characters NEED those increased characteristics to be playable. If you force Basic's character to have physical/combat scores consistent with his background than you're putting him in a situation where an average 250 point character could mop the floor with him without breaking much of a sweat.

Can I ask if you've set the average and maximum values for your game other than total points yet?