Orion

Re: Hero GUI

The first thing I do with people new to Hero is to totally ignore points. Just get them to describe the character, and then choose the powers that fit the description. And if they choose a power that can't be modeled well with Hero, I ignore the fact, and apply liberal amounts of handwavium. I want them to see that they can build anything they can imagine. Balance isn't even a concern at this point. I'll figure out an appropriate scenario to use it in if they can come up with the character. No GUI here though - this is just getting them interested.

The next step, especially good for those that are used to the limited choices of class-based systems, is simple pick lists. Choose one each on the movement, defense, and offense columns, then a quirk. Next, pick a skill level (green, regular, veteran, elite) and power level (powder puff, regular, dangerous, godly). With this, I can make a character up in 5 minutes, and then take the time to show them how I made it. This is a simple wizard in that they make a couple choices, something else does all the work, and they can look at the generated code/character to see how it was done.

From here, you just start adding in additional layers and options. The complexity of Hero is great once you understand the whole system, but I believe it is a major problem in getting started. I'm all for having multiple genre books that contain only the stuff needed for a standard campaign in each genre. Just the basics. Any advanced stuff, optional rules, and corner cases are handled in a second book. For those that want it, you can have a single book with all the rules from everything in one place, but it is strictly a rulebook, not an example book.

As an aside, ensure that the new Hero GUI emphasizes creating a character to play, and not playing with the build rules. If they want to run around and disarm everyone in a second, then they must choose fast movement and reflexes, not tport, stretching, or anything else. Not getting hit is high DCV, not armor - that is something very different. Teach the foundation of the game, not how to twist it up into something barely recognizable, just because the system can do it. A complex system is good for the experts, but should stay in the background when first learning.

Re: TUALA MORN -- Interested In More Stuff?

I would be interested in the stuff that has a Dark Ages feel, but not so much for the Medieval. A compendium of stuff on the pre-Christian Slavs, Saxons, and Celts would be helpful for a side project I have, and I'm guessing I could easily steal enough to make the low price worthwhile.

Re: Need a name for a windy character

Stormy

Blowhard

Breeze

These are the three I immediately thought of. The first could be a friendly nickname, and the second a nickname used by enemies or rivals. Of the names already given, Tempest is by far my favorite.

Re: Armour/Power Suit that can retract into a non-functional state.

Multiform would work well, if you wanted to go that way. However, I'd do it as a secret ID / hero ID thing. In secret ID, he has some communications abilities. No different than if you had a powerful cell phone/radio, pistol, or pepper spray. When you do the Instant Change to heroic ID, he has a bunch more powers.

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

Have scenarios as normal - fight other imps, set things in motion, try not to get noticed by the Big Guys. All XP gained here can only be used to increase skills, knowledge, and contacts. XP from draining other demons can only be used to buy powers. Make it is simple campaign rule/agreement, and you are set to go.

Re: Where do your chars put their XPs?

Sounds...dull. I want my characters to go from zero to HERO! I want it to mimic epic fantasy where characters start out as near-powerless farm boys to become uber wizards and ultimate warriors.

Different strokes and all that - making me play a zero for any length of time is a good way to get me to leave the campaign, or to not even join one. I have little interest in becoming uber powerful, so gaining combat skills means little to me. A mid-level character is far more interesting and fun to play for me. As long as my character is competent, it doesn't bother me that they stay the same for the entire campaign. I'm usually far more interested in stuff like moving up the political hierarchy (manor heir -> manor lord -> sheriff's man -> minor baron), or implementing long term goals than I am in combat effectiveness.

I also don't do epic fantasy in game. I rarely even read the stuff any more. Low or no magic, minimal monsters, and historic fiction is more my thing.

Re: Where do your chars put their XPs?

Ground rules:

1. Characteristics rarely change. What you start with is what you get. You aren't going to get stronger or faster just because you cleared the bandits out of the abandoned mine, nor is your intelligence going to go up. You might get a couple points of presence because you have spent time working with the baron and sheriff and learning how to run a manor and rule the peasants, but that's it.

2. If the character isn't spending significant time training or studying, then skills don't increase.

3. The storyline controls both the rate of change and the types of changes allowed. If it doesn't fit the established story and character background, it can't happen.

4. Most importantly - XP truly has little meaning or purpose, and increasing power and skill is not why we game.

So a character says they will spend time over the next three months learning a new weapon. At the end of that time, I'll let them have familiarity in it, regardless of whether they have any XP saved up. I don't care whether they've killed a horde or orcs every day (many XP), or just sat around the tavern in between practice sessions (0 XP). I'll give out contacts and knowledge skills free. Save the princess from the evil duke - she's a contact, and you know a lot more about the high-level politics of the kingdom. Want the city watch commander as a contact, but don't want to bother playing out a storyline to get it? Ok, I'll make up a short story about how it occurred and how much time it took. Once that is worked into the overall timeline, you are good to go.

To me, XP is just a way to control the rate of change in characters, and that is better handled through the storyline that is developed with their participation. I treat XP like the point awards on the tv show "Whose Line Is It?" - pull a number out of the air and award it at random times. Sometimes you get 1 XP, sometimes you get 1,000,000 XP.

But, to the underlying meaning of the original question, the characters tend heavily towards improving skills. Wizards learn more spells, or how to cast the current ones better. Warriors learn tactics and strategy for controlling small groups of combatants, and learn more about the fighting styles of their opponents. Everyone develops contacts in the local area, and hopefully builds up their business, whether that business be politics, religion, lording it over the peasants, or just creating new ballads and ditties about the duke and his serving girls.

Re: Help Me Convert from Silver ATs to Gold Freeform Goodness

I'm still trying to figure out what time cards, CO, Silver AT, and Gold Freeform even mean.

Re: Balancing social skills and role playing

I would play in a game without xp.

This is my default GM style. I want the players to design the character they want to play now, not a character that will eventually turn into what they want. Don't make a 350 point character and assume you'll use the next 50 xp to get to where you want to be - make the 400 point character you want now. If I do give out xp, I don't give the players much latitude in how they spend it. Just because the mentalist zapped you a couple times today doesn't mean you get to buy more ego defense. If it isn't written down in the character concept, or part of the ongoing storyline, it isn't allowed.

Unless specifically requested by the players, I'll won't do a low level campaign in any genre - I always start off at mid or high level. I'm also as likely to want the characters to be competent but not heroic, middle-aged, and already starting the downhill slide on their physical characteristics. Now I know many players want the progression of power, and crave getting xp every session, but that's not the type of player I want given a choice.

Re: Heroes to Villains

I've never changed a character from good to evil or vice versa in any genre or gaming system after the character was created. Some may change during character creation as part of their history, but after that they stay true. And changing the name and costume, but keeping the powers the same, has no interest to me. There are too many good villains in all the old sourcebooks I have, along with those I created myself, to ever need copying an existing one. If anything, there are too many that I'll never get the chance to use.

Re: What is the building in which a mason works called?

They call it an uncompleted building. Once they are completed, he gets another commission, and starts a new building. :-)

Re: Triad

Just wondering, are there is rules on handling robots and computers, such as for bases, in this way? Seems this character is quite similar to a master computer sensing and acting through multiple security cameras and worker droids. I use these for my Mechanon scenarios, but as NPCS I can just handwave it all. I love the idea of this as character though, and am trying to figure out how to properly handle it.

Re: The cranky thread

If I go out of my way, and go through a bunch of residential streets with stops signs every two blocks, I can avoid school zones on the way to work. Most of the time, I just go through them. In the last 6 years, I have never seen a child in 2 of the 3 zones. Not on weekends, not during the summer, not in front yards walking to the car in the driveway. As far as I can tell, there are no kids in this neighborhood. I think the school zones are just so we can look out for this endangered species and report them to the authorities if they ever do return.

So, no kids using the school zones. But on the back side of the school, right next to the playground where all the 6-year-olds have their soccer and t-ball games...no school zone there at all. Makes no sense at all.

Re: A campaign wishlist

On the frontier - my main campaign storyline, set in Harn. It is equal parts Conan and Cormac mc Art vs the Picts, Deryni magic, Tolkien, and American frontier ca. 1760. Hostile barbarians, not so hostile barbarians, scheming manor lords, religious fighting orders, and rebellion by a large number of nobles. Even the "bad" guys have a lot of supporters among the populace, and very few of them are evil - just on the other side. Some politics and ethical dilemmas, running a single manor at first and later on up to six manors, fighting rebels, etc. No dungeon crawls, and somewhat light on combat. Strongly storytelling in nature.

Witch King - basically, post-apocalyptic fantasy. The original idea was a combination of playing in the kingdom of Iuz on Greyhawk, and being in Middle Earth in the darkest period of the first age. The Witch King/Warlock/Sorcerer/Demigod took over the north and destroyed the kingdoms 100 years ago or so. Undead, goblins, giants, and various other humanoids now prowl the lands, and humanity isn't safe. Players are fighting for the survival of their village/town, and regularly search the ruins of devastated castles and cities looking for magic and items of power to help them out. Tech and society is early iron age, with lots of bronze still in use. There are five main cultures, which are loosely based on ancient Egypt, Persia/Babylonia, Greeks, Irish myths, and proto Germanics and Slavs. There is absolutely no hope of defeating the Witch King unless the magical McGuffin is found, and that would signal the campaign end. Play is about staving off evil and the never-ending search for the McGuffin, not gaining loot/power/levels/exp. Combat and dungeon-crawl heavy by design to satisfy the expected players if it ever happens, but plenty of chances for politics and scheming for any other group.

Re: Champions 1st edition

My memories of the old days is that all characters had powers that related to combat, but nothing for outside of combat. Either your group was only about combat, or any skills and such were handled in the character description and the GM made up a required roll as needed. "You are a physics prof in your secret ID, with a specialty in lasers, but this is alien tech. Roll a um...lessee..... 9-sounds right... to figure out what this equipment does." These days, I'd be more likely to just roleplay the skill, rather than requiring a roll, but that depends a lot on the players.

Limit yourself to the villains found in the early books - nothing after Enemies II or thereabouts. It's rare to have big powers, and agents with guns are often much worse than supervillains. Maybe it was just my group, but having the 4 heroes fight a single villain was much more common than going against a villain group.

Re: A new Enemies book: What would you want to see?

In general, I prefer a villains book to be of all the same age. They're either all iron age, all silver age, all golden age, etc. Also, I want them to either be comedic, or non-comedic - don't mix them up. While many prefer to have a wide mix of character types because it guarantees a few will be useful to them, most of the time this ends up meaning only a few are useful to me, and therefore not a good enough value to purchase. I guess what I am saying is choose a target audience and go for it, rather than trying to do a little bit for everyone.

Plot points and suggested uses are far more valuable to me than a power writeup. In fact, I would say a majority of the book should be devoted to this. It doesn't have to be on the page with the character - have a separate section that details how to use the characters. In fact, I'd put more value on a book of plot points and uses for the old Enemies I villains than I would for a bunch of new villains with minimal plot points.

If all villains are going to be newly created, give a range of power levels and types. Try to make it so that a person could run a reasonable campaign using only the villains contained in your book. Mention connections between the villains (Tiger Man (page 4) and Shark Boy (page 9) used to be teammates, but now despise each other because each wants to date Bird Girl (page 27)), but make no mention to Dr Destroyer, Prof Muerte, etc. Help make the villains feel like they are parts of the same universe, and not just randomly chosen villains of the week.

Give histories of each that are longer than 1-2 sentences. Tell me how many years each has been active, any groups they have been active with, feuds they have, etc. Give at minimum a paragraph of text describing how they got their powers, how the powers works, and if their powers have changed over the years. Looking at power costs tells me nothing - I want a detailed text description. Assume that many users are going to need to tweak the power level, framework, etc., to fit our campaign, and give us enough descriptive text so that we can do it and make them fit in with what we have. Think about the character write-up you'd prefer your players do before a campaign starts - I expect the same for villains. I'd far rather have 10 detailed villains that have 3 pages devoted to each than 30 villains with little more than characteristic and power costs.

Re: Back to Traveller Hero

When I was paring down the Game Collection for some extra room and cash (and it was a nice chunk of change from Nobel Knight too Thanks guys!) I couldn't bring myself to part with any of my Traveller material' date=' even though the idea was to get rid of everything non Universal or Super Hero related.....[/quote']

 

I once felt the same way about my old Traveller stuff. Once I a blue moon I'd find something I had missed on sale, and would snap it up. Then I discovered the reprint book, and I just had to have them in order to have complete set of booklets. But I couldn't justify the cost, and so it was part of my birthday wish list each year. Last year I decided to go PDF as much as possible with my gaming stuff in the future, and shortly thereafter found out FFE was making CDs available. That sold me on it. I sent almost all my Traveller stuff to Noble Knight, which allowed me to buy a load of old Hero stuff from them, and used holiday money to buy all the Traveller stuff on CD from FFE. I now have far more Traveller stuff than I ever did before, and am glad I did it. There's something nice about having the old paper books on the shelf, to be sure, but it's even better to know I now have a complete set.

Re: Ability Prices

My initial thought was "Add up the value of everything he owns. Now double this, and add 10%" Dr Evil's mad science shop doesn't come cheap, and making him come up with the cash makes for great role playing. "Is really fast good enough, or do I sell off the wife's china collection to be just a little bit faster?"

Then I saw it was another rules question. bah...

Re: Have you written a story?

I subscribe to the theory that the game is only an abstraction of the real world - it does not define the world. If I can see the game rules in the story, it automatically falls into the low-grade fiction category. As an example, most of the D&D and Battletech stuff is this way for me. Because of this, I never try to writeup any game session, nor do I game out any scenarios that I am writing. If it is interesting and plausible, then it happens. I can decide who is hit, where they are hit, and how much damage they take just as easily as dice. I'm not against write-ups of game events, I just consider that as something very different than a short story or novel.

World building is my thing, and I've done a lot of that recently. 39k words of the history of a Battletech merc company, and 34k words of my Harn fanon project, but no real fiction stories as such. I've got a handful of 1-2 page superhero stories that cover a single scene, and were mostly intended to highlight a personality trait or ability, but nothing longer. Next up on my evolution as a writer is to try an actual story. For Battletech I'm going to do it as a series of transcripts on battle reports, house liaison reports, etc. For the Harn characters, it'll be traditional fiction, but the ratio will be biased away from conversation and internal thoughts - descriptions of what they are feeling and thinking and going through is about the best I can do now.

Re: Your favorite champions character

Of the characters I created, Orion is both my favorite and most played. He started out as a Caption Atom knockoff, but lacking a code vs killing, and over the years morphed into a vigilante. Sometimes he was the Punisher with super powers, and others he was a detective that rarely used any powers. His mental state fluctuates regularly, and his hatred of Genocide is about the only thing that never changes. I don't foresee ever playing him again, but his story now forms a key part of the campaign background, and he will anonymously give tips to the heroes so they can stop the bad guys while he keeps out of the spotlight.

Re: EPIC Champions--unofficial material, what should I write about?

Just read through the stuff you posted above, and one item leaped out at me. In the various power levels, someone that can pick up a battleship can only barely dent a modern tank with an average blow (20d6 HTH vs 20rPD). So the person can pick up a battleship and use it to mash the tank flat, but has difficulty hurting it directly? Huh? I would think someone with 100 STR should be able to pick up the tank and mash it into a solid ball using casual strength in a phase or two. Sure, they may be able to push and do various things to up the damage, but it just feels wrong. If my character had 100 STR, I would expect to be need to be very careful so that I didn't accidentally destroy the tank, not that I have to work at it. "Sorry about ripping the turret off - I was just trying to scratch some dirt off it!"

I suppose it's an artifact of the Hero system, but for me there seems to be a disconnect at high levels on the damage STR does vs that done by weapons.

Re: Initial Character Maxima

No maximums at all. I have normal human maxima, above which you must have powers to explain the high strength, dexterity, etc., but there is no cap on what the strength can be. Same with powers - put as many or as few as you want into them. That said, before characters are introduced, the campaign feel and overall power level is decided, and all are expected to stay within that. If glass cannons are okay with the group, I'd allow >75% of the points in a single power, although I'd be mightily tempted to demonstrate why that is a bad idea in the first session.

I am also much more likely to run a campaign in which all characters are veterans, not newbies, and it is generally understood that skills, stats, and powers will rarely change, so I encourage players to make what they want to play, rather than hope to grow into something better along the way.

Re: So how did you guys learn the system?

1985 - summer before college - I went to visit some friends in another state and they convinced me to play Champions rather than AD&D, which is all I knew back then. I described the type of character I wanted (power armor), and they helped me design it. Within a year I had bought my own copy of the boxed set of Champions v2, and the Champions II and III supplements, and started playing Champions and Fantasy Hero at the local college. I never thought it was hard to learn, or that the math was anything but trivial. And once I did find the game, AD&D was relegated to the back of the closet, and only pulled out under duress.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

For many of us the Superfriends were our first exposure to heroes in media. The stories were often silly, the characters appropriately cartoonish, but the good guys always won, and acted like heroes. On the other end of the spectrum is the Watchmen, where the characters were costumed, but were they heroes? Nite Owl 2 was the closest to be a standard superhero, Silk Spectre 2 had the moves and the looks, and Dr. Manhatten had the power, but even they didn't hold back and bring the villains in alive.

 

My question is this? Are your heroes good people who use minimal force, resist the urge to be judge, jury, and executioner, protect the innocetn, and usually win in the end because the GM approves and rewards good behavior? Or are you in the game to punish the guilty, devoted to justice to the point of your characters having no personal life, wading through a river of blood and gore?

I think Space Ghost and Spiderman were my intro to tv superheroes. Liked both them. When I saw Superfriends shortly thereafter, cheesy and only suitable for 6-year-olds was my opinion. Most of the DC animated stuff from the last 10 years or so is meh at best. The earlier Batman was good, but I find Brave and Bold and Teen Titans to be unwatchable. I loved the story in The Watchmen. The drawing portion of the art was okay, but I never understood why the gawd-awful color scheme was chosen. The coloring alone brought it down from a 5star to a 4star book in my opinion. The movie was better than I expected, and in some ways better, especially the ending.

I wouldn't want to play or GM a campaign at either the Superfriends or Watchmen end of the spectrum. I could not have fun in a Superfriends storyline because of the silliness and stupidity. As I said before, it's good if you are 6, but not much older. In fact, that's how I'd describe most of the Silver Age comics books. Watchmen I wouldn't like, but could tolerate for short periods. I need my characters to be able to have an effect on the world, which I don't see happening in Watchmen. I also want to play characters that have powers, not just a costume.

Somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning toward iron age, is my sweet point. None of my characters have code vs killing, and two are casual killers that will act as judge/jury/executioner at times. A few minor NPCs have codes vs killing, but this is mainly because they are teenagers and/or people that have never been exposed to violence and/or combat. Most characters do not kill, and other than the two special characters, it's never something they set out to do. I don't agree that heroic means no killing - sometimes death is necessary. I also don't see heroic meaning "better" moral or ethical views. My characters are basically soldiers, policemen, and detectives that just happen to have various superpowers. Some get messed up if they have to kill the perp, while others toss out a funny quip and move on to the next murder case/alien invasion/Viper takeover. I'm more likely to play a Rick Hunter type than a DeeDee McCall, but have and will again do both.

Re: Fictional cities

I don't bother with fictional cities in my supers campaign/storyline. I'll just say they are in Dallas, Chicago, or wherever I need them to be, but will rarely use whatever big city that is nearby. Frankly, I've never met a player that cared what city it was, or any details. As long as they are in a Big City, they just don't care. Crimes don't happen at the corner of Fourth and Main, they happen in the Generic Warehouse District, or the Generic Financial Center.