Lamrok

Re: Always use the biggest gun

Re: Player vs. Character

Re: Media Darling

Re: Player vs. Character If I think the character would play a situation a certain way, that's how the character does it. I trust the GM to save my butt if this gets me in over my head. As a GM, I love it when players play this way, and I'm willing to cut them the slaack it takes for them to play heroes who act heroicly. As a player, I return the favor. Some other systems have mechanisms in place to reward and protect this kind of behavior. Players earn "chips" (or whatever) by roleplaying in ways that are consistent with character but inconsistent with optimized gaming. Maybe 6th edition Hero could consider such a construct.

Re: Pulp TV Shows Jonny Quest was originally a prime-time show, aimed at parents as well as kids. I don't think it was faulted all that much for violence - westerns in the early 60's were plenty violent. I think it failed because people weren't ready for an animated show at prime-time. Of course, "failed" is a relative term. It did run for 26 episodes, and never really had a chance to go downhill.

Re: Pulp TV Shows When Jonny Quest was created, the intent was to bring pulp adventures to TV, but in a more modern context. Almost all episodes of this series (now avalable on DVD) make excellent ready-made adventures for a pulp game. They're even designed as challenges for a group of globe-trotting adventurers (rather than an intrepid solo adventurer.) Scooby Do was heavily influenced by the pulp Weird Menace genre. Most of the episodes of this show provide most of the stuff you would need to run a nice self-contained four hour mystery-adventure, complete with clues, red herrings, and some backround material on characters and settings. Some years are better than others, but most shows have plenty of content of just about the right difficulty to a good group of role-players (in my games, I call this the "Scooby Do rule - for maximum fun, mysteries should be about as hard as the ones on Scooby do.)

Re: Media Darling How about paying for an appropriate positive reputation?

Re: I want to play Hero, First, become a good player. Be the kind of player that GMs love to run and that players love to have along. Be funny. Be helpful. Build your RPG cred. Once you have the respect of your group, they should be happy to try whatever you want to run. When you run it, start simple. Keep points low. If possible, pre-generate characters for your players. Build villains who put up a good fight, but go down quickly. Rehearse the game to make sure you can run it quickly. Too many players have a conception of Hero as a game in which it is difficult to build characters and in which combat is slow. Show them that this is not the case. When I moved to Portland, the group I found played only GURPS. I learned GURPS, and I played it for a year or so. After the group was comfortable with my presence, I suggested we try Hero. I asked them what kinds of characters they wanted to play, then pre-built characters for them. I started with characters built on a 50+50 template with no powers. Once these were done, I made a second set of sheets that included the characters with an extra 50 points of powers. At the first session I handed out the non-powered version of the characters. They spent the next several session discovering their powers, and eventually gaining possession of their full sheets. I plotted adventures carefully making sure to feature plenty of investigation along with combat. I got them completely hooked, and after a few sessions, Hero became the only system we played.

Re: Who do you trust? Hero Board savants I look for 1) people I'm not familiar with - they are more likely to say something I haven't heard before. 2) People with an understanding of how to divide sentences into paragraphs.

Re: How long to make Master Mold? Another approach is to wave your hand and let them go at it. Have it take a bit more time than they thought. Then describe their end result - a bunch of mismatched tin hammered into a maze of 2x4's guarded by remote-control toys duct-taped to hunting weapons bought from Walmart. Redneck Heaven!

Re: How long to make Master Mold?

Re: Pulp Film Recommendations And Yojimbo is based on Dashiell Hammet's "Red Harvest" which is a pulp-era classic.

Re: How long to make Master Mold? Let them roll for it. A really good roll should cut the time a lot. Suggest to them that they might be able to bring in outside experts to help with this task (making complementary rolls). Of course they'll have to do something for the expert to get him on board. Tell them that if the capture a robot from X, they might be able to reverse-engineer it and get a nice bonus on the roll. Make it a fun challenge.

Re: Dem's the Breaks That era covers the time of The Scarlett Pimpernel as well.

Re: The best of Other Pulp RPGs I've got quite a few at home, but I don't think Hero has much to fear from the bulk of them. The most important mechanical features of a pulp game are the ability to add interesting abilities and combat mechanics that produce cinematic results. Hero covers these very well. I have a very strong presumption that Pulp Hero will provide a set of excellent tools to fine-tune the rules to get the exact feel a GM has in mind. I think Savage Worlds gives some strong competition, though. It is a simple, streamlined system that has a very complete feel to it. It is a universal system, but the base rules seem to be targetted at the pulp genre. The streamlined nature allows for quick combat resolution, allowing for more non-combat role-playing time - something I think is fairly critical for a pulp-genre game.

Re: Hero System women are all insanely attractive

Re: Background skills

Re: Background skills I like rolling dice also - but I feel a bit uncouth admitting it in public.

Re: Character Design Theory When I write character backgrounds, I do it because it is fun. It gives me a chance to write some playful prose, and hopefully entertain the GM or the group. If I go more than about two pages, most people won't even read the first paragraph, so with that in mind, I tend to follow "Lemming's first rule of RPGs: Don't annoy the GM." When I'm done, I generally have a rough outline for the character, and, more importantly, a good place to start working out how I'm going to actually play the character. I'm more than happy to work with the GM if I want a character embedded into the campaign background. I'm also happy to keep things entirely generic. When, as a GM, I receive backgrounds, I like them to be either entertaining, concise, or, preferably, both.

Re: Background skills

Re: Background skills Actually, I think those numbers came out of a book. I don't have any sources at hand right now, but I don't think I (or Oddhat) made them up.

Re: Background skills And here is my character: Le Comte de Chareau Val Char Cost 10 STR 0 14 DEX 12 8 CON -4 8 BODY -4 13 INT 3 8 EGO -4 18 PRE 8 14 COM 2 3 PD 1 2 ED 0 3 SPD 6 4 REC 0 16 END 0 17 STUN 0 [stats stripped down to what he actually needs] 7" RUN 2 2" SWIM 0 4" LEAP 2 Some swashbuckling modifications. I like for characters in games like this to have a 4" half move. Characteristics Cost: 24 Cost Skill 3 Acting 13- 3 Bribery 13- 3 Climbing 12- 3 Concealment 12- 3 Contortionist 12- 3 Regency Skill 12- 3 Jack of All Trades 1 1) PS: Baker (2 Active Points) 11- 1 2) PS: Farmer (2 Active Points) 11- 4 3) PS: Fashion Sense (5 Active Points) 14- 1 4) PS: Fisherman (2 Active Points) 11- 1 5) PS: French soldier (2 Active Points) 11- 2 6) PS: Vintner (3 Active Points) 12- 7 Disguise 14- 3 High Society 13- 3 Scholar 1 1) KS: Diseases and Maladies (2 Active Points) 11- 1 2) KS: European History (2 Active Points) 11- 1 3) KS: Fashion (2 Active Points) 11- 1 4) KS: French aristocracy (2 Active Points) 11- 1 5) KS: Who's who in English society (2 Active Points) 11- 1 6) KS: Wine (2 Active Points) 11- 2 CK: Paris 11- 1 Language: French (imitate dialects) (5 Active Points) 4 Language: English (idiomatic) 3 Lockpicking 12- 3 Mimicry 12- 3 Persuasion 13- 3 Riding 12- 20 +2 Overall 3 Stealth 12- 3 Streetwise 13- 1 TF: Two-Wheeled Muscle-Powered Ground Vehicles 3 WF: Early Firearms, Blades Skills Cost: 99 Cost Perk 10 Follower - valet 4 Regency perk 10 Money: Wealthy Perks Cost: 24 Cost Talent 3 Regency Talent Talents Cost: 3 Total Character Cost: 150 Disads are pretty much setting-specific. Disadvantage Points: 75 Base Points: 75 Experience Required: 0 Total Experience Available: 0 Experience Unspent: 0 Background is shrouded in secrecy - to players anyway. Suffice it to say that he spent a lot of time helping French nobles escape Mme Guillotine. The only compromise on this sheet is the somewhat short shrift given to combat abilities. His two overall levels help somewhat, but he's a character much more at home outside of combat. Other than that, he has every skill he should have at the level he should have it. When combat rolls around he's happy to yield to one of the "vigorous young fellows" in the group. (Le Comte is in his early 60's, though he can apparently still clamber up a rope ladder better than any English sailor in the group ) Some of his skills relate to his personal history, some are essentially complementary to his disguise skill. He's designed to reflect a character from "The Scarlett Pimpernel", with an emphasis on non-combat swashbuckling situations - Le Comte would rather escape than fight.

Re: Background skills I guess some of the problem stems from the fact that if you design a character who is an expert at Flower Arrangement, he probably pays more points for it than if he'd decided to be competent with persuasion (which can generally be used to significant effect in nearly every session). Part of the point of a system like Hero is that costs should at least try to match utility - but there's no clear way to express a character who is well versed in something that isn't very useful. Perhaps utility-driven limitations should be applied to background skills of this type. For instance, "Flower Arrangement" might merit a -2 lim. Sanskrit might be a -2, but Spanish would be -0 (in many, if not most, games.)

Re: Background skills

Re: Background skills