C-Note

33 minutes ago, Spence said:

Who publishes "Tales"?

Miskatonic River Press.  It's been out of print for years.  Amazon has a copy for $249.  There are PDFs floating around the interwebs.

https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Sleepless-Scott-David-Aniolowski/dp/098218185X

I've been running a Roll20 "Cthulhu HERO" campaign set in 1925 using pre-published adventures that I've converted to HERO.  The players are fairly new to HERO so I'm able to hand-wave things a little in order to keep the game flowing smoothly.

I'm currently running them through adventures from "Tales of the Sleepless City", which is a collection of CoC scenarios set in 1920s New York City.

As they get more experience using the HERO System, I'm slowly introducing them to more of the rules.  It's working great so far.  For sanity checks, the players must make EGO rolls with various modifiers.  Failure can result in the characters acquiring a Psychological Limitation which could be temporary or permanent, depending upon how badly they failed the EGO roll.  Permanent Psych Lims can still be bought down or bought off with XPs.

3 hours ago, Cane Irondog said:

Thank you very much, Simon and C-Note.

I`ve modified a copy of the regular vehicle-template, which works quite well (just added INT + EGO). But I will have a look at your templates too, C-Note.

 

Thanks for the quick replies.

Greetings from Germany

Templates modified.  See edit above.

Here are two templates I modified to combine computers with vehicles. One template just adds INT (for a regular computer) and the other template adds INT and EGO (for an AI).

Vehicle With AI - 6th Edition.hdtVehicle With Computer - 6th Edition.hdt

EDIT:  Templates modified on April 19, 2019 to include the "Program" Talent.

After bugs are squashed, still hoping for character graphic image display!

HERO has multiple ways of modeling what you're looking for.  Here is one way of doing offroad:

Ground Movement 6"; Only On Appropriate Terrain (-1/2); Total Cost: -4.

Applying the limitation "Only On Appropriate Terrain" to the base 6" Ground Movement will give you 4 points to spend elsewhere (or reduce total cost by 4), and will reduce vehicle velocity by half on inappropriate (e.g. Off-road) terrain.

On 1/18/2019 at 4:36 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

This is all very cool. Since I am coming most recently from an FH background, do I just build vehicles as characters in HD?  I have no familiarity with vehicle rules.

You build it as a Vehicle.  File -> New Character -> 6th Edition -> Vehicle.

Or, you can use the template I provided above.  File -> New Character -> Custom/Non-Standard.

Vehicles are almost identical to characters with some changes to Characteristics.  They have a SIZE, but lack INT, EGO, and PRE.  There are some other minor differences.  Open the "Close Escort" hdc file above to get a feel for ship construction.

You will need to use a Vehicle Export Format available in the Downloads section on this site, since Hero Designer PDF export is only designed for characters.

According to Star Hero 6E p218, 1G of acceleration translates to 120m of Flight per Turn.  A SPD 3 ship would need 40m of Flight to achieve 1G.  A SPD 2 ship would need 60m of Flight.  Etc.  Combat/Non-Combat rules apply.  There is a chart on p218 that goes up to 6G of acceleration.  With the Star Hero chart combined with the Traveller chart above, you should be able to easily handle in-system travel times.

Star Hero p219 contains even more optional rules for realistic acceleration/deceleration depending upon how crunchy you want to get.

Attached is a Hero Designer file for a Close Escort that my players captured in our campaign.

Close Escort - Sublight.hdc

Also attached is a Hero Designer template that combines a Vehicle with a Computer.  Saves me time when designing both.

Vehicle With Computer - 6th Edition.hdt

I'm assuming all in-system travel involves acceleration to midpoint, and deceleration to the destination.  This great chart is from Classic Traveller.

Just purchased Fantasy Hero Complete and I've spotted a few errors while reading through.  Is there an errata file?

On 12/5/2018 at 5:27 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

 

Possibly, but I don't think any company wants the negative twitter storm about products that could be generated.

I'll take a negative tweetstorm against Hero Games any day.  What's it going to do? Hurt sales?  At the very least, it will raise Hero's profile.

Love the idea of a 6E Pulp Hero setting.  Would also love to see a Champions 3000 science-fantasy setting.  Everything from battling space-orcs in a black hole debris field, up to defending the galaxy from evil, extra-dimensional space-gods.

I'll be starting a "Cthulhu Hero" campaign for my players and I'm looking for pre-generated Pulp Hero archetypes (e.g. Strong-Jawed Hero, Detective, Femme Fatale, Soldier, Ace Pilot, Journalist, Gangster, etc.).  I'm currently looking through Surbrook's Stuff.  Are there any other locations where I can find pre-generated characters?

Here is the player intro for my own Star Hero setting, an amalgam of published and original material:

AD 2,203. Earth's population is 100 billion. The solar system has been colonized, but not terraformed. The planets and asteroid belt are members of a loose alliance called the Terran Union.

Over the past 100 years, unmanned sublight probes were sent nearby stars which revealed several worlds which were hospitable to life. Massive colony ships were launched to these systems.

And then, Dr. Nels Bergenholm invented the hyperdrive.

Communication has been lost with the Santa Maria, the colossal sublight colony ship en route to Barnard's Star. On the last voice transmission, only screams of terror were heard.

Your ship, the IPM Windfall Prophet, an 800-ton Gazelle-class Close Escort, has been retrofitted with the new Bergenholm Hyperdrive. Your assignment is to intercept the Santa Maria and find out what happened.

How about using "Naked Advantage" or "Drain" to simulate differences in ambient Mana? For example:  In areas of high Mana, the Endurance (Mana) cost of casting spells is reduced.

60 Points - High Mana Area:  Naked Advantage: Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4) for up to 100 Active Points, Trigger (Spellcaster Enters High Mana Area, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates; +3/4), Area Of Effect (50m Radius; +1 1/4) (75 Active Points); Usable By Other (-1/4), Grantor can only grant the power to others.

This way, you have an Active Point value for the High Mana area for purposes of affecting it.

With "Naked Advantage", spellcasting could also become faster (Autofire), longer-lasting (Damage Over Time), easier (No Skill Roll Required), etc.  Different High Mana areas could provide different Advantages.

For Low Mana Areas, an AoE Drain could be used to make spellcasting more difficult.  Again, you would have an Active Cost for the Low Mana area for purposes of affecting it.

6th Edition Vehicles and Pulp Hero.

Spacers Toolkit Online

"The Chronicles of Riddick".   One of the most criminally underrated space operas of all time.  Pure entertainment.

If you're a fan of Robert E. Howard Sword & Sorcery, you're welcome to join anyway. I just don't know when we we will play next.  Hero is definitely not as easy to run on Roll20 as PF or D&D.

Sent you the Roll20 link in a PM.

That's because I have the game marked Private, not discoverable.  All my maps are set to hexes rather than the default squares.  I have a few basic scripts like Hit Location and Stun Multipliers.

Let me clarify.  I had not played for about 20 years until discovering Roll20.  Because of schedule issues, we only play about 2-3 times per year.

1 hour ago, eepjr24 said:

I am going to stay out of the accuracy arguments, as people are trying to take an example and extrapolate it to a maximum. But if you look at the chart on 187, it gives the maximum volume in cubic meters for a given size value. So a Size 10 vehicle could hold up to 2000 cubic meters of cargo internally. If you want more exact rules on this, check out The Ultimate Vehicle. It's for 5e, but it was written by Bob and Steve and has some very good examples.

 

Thanks.  I have a old hard copy of this in a box somewhere.  HERO never released the 6th Edition version of Ultimate Vehicle, although it was referenced in 6E Star Hero.  I think it should be the next Kickstarter project.

1 minute ago, unclevlad said:

What's the purpose of the ship?

It doesn't matter.  I'm trying to work out a general mechanic for calculating cargo volume.  e.g. If it's a cargo ship, it would purchase extra STR with a limitation "Only for Lifting/Carrying".

20 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

What's the purpose here?  Why do you need game stats?  Also, what kind of ship?  There's everything from a bulk freighter as mentioned above, to something like the Millenium Falcon which was never really a freighter in the first place.  (And the cargo mass on that layout is actually probably just a fraction of the overall ship mass, at least as they portrayed it.)

The characters are having a ship built.  Using the Encumbrance rules, it's easy enough to figure out cargo capacity for mass.  Cargo capacity volume appears to be left to the GM, so I want to know if anyone has a method for determining that.  My suggestion above is to apply Encumbrance rules to Volume the same way it applies to STR. 10% of vehicle's total volume allocated for cargo.

I realize this is a rough calculation.  If the vehicle has extra STR, the cargo volume would increase.

2 hours ago, eepjr24 said:

6e2 187 has both volume and mass rules for vehicles based on size (you can increase the mass lift by buying up the STR separately). 

Yup.  That's what I use. 6E2 187:  "Vehicle STR can lift exactly as much as character STR. Encumbrance rules apply and may slow down heavily-loaded vehicles."

What about volume of cargo space as a percentage of vehicle volume?  10%, using same rules as Encumbrance for STR (or more if vehicle is encumbered)?

How does everyone handle this?  For the ships in my Star Hero campaign, I use the Encumbrance rules.  The cargo capacity is 10% of the ship's lifting STR.  The ship can carry more, but with Encumbrance penalties.  I haven't figured out cargo Volume, just Mass.