mhd

That would just change the order within a segment. Never mind that I don't think that simulating it with existing limitations is the proper approach, as this would be a really fundamental change. You'd have to see what you retain from the stuff you're replacing and adapt that to the new system. Just to make sure that I made myself clear what I'd be aiming for, let's go through a slightly longer example. All numbers and most rules are totally ad-hoc, so let's not nit-pick it to pieces yet. (Keep in mind that we're totally ignoring the speed chart for this.) Angus, Bonan and Camilla are entering combat. They're all aware of each other, no surprise. So let's determine the first time they'll act: Angus has Reaction Rank 3 wields a Dagger (Strike Speed 3), which is sheathed (+1) = he'll be able to act in round 6, but won't have his dagger drawn until round 7. Bonan (Strike Speed 3) wields a two-handed axe (Strike Speed 5), which he has bloodied and ready. He'll be able to attack in round 8. Camilla is pretty fast on the uptake (Reaction Rank 2) and has a spear & shield combo (Strike Speed 4). So she'll be the first to attack in round 6. (We'll ignore positioning and moving, mostly) Round 6: Camilla attacks Bonan, who isn't ready yet. But as he's only clad in his loin-cloth, he really wants to block. He's two round away from acting, which gives a -2 to that attempt, and we'll double that because he didn't act even once. But even with -4 he makes the block, barely. Next actions: Camilla will attack again (6+4 => round 10), Bonan, too. But he blocked, so that resets his prep time, putting his next action at round 9 (6 + Strike Speed 3; NB: an additonal penalty for preemptive defenses might be needed). Meanwhile Angus is drawing his dagger. Round 7: It's Angus turn. He attacks Camilla, who wants to block. If she'd be using her spear for that, it would be pretty dire (-3 penalty), but she has a shield which she hasn't used yet. So she blocks unmodified, and makes her roll. This doesn't change the time of her next attack. Angus next action: A quick jab (-1 Strike Speed; -1 DC) at Camilla again. His next turn will thusly come in round 9. Round 9: Both Bonan and Angus are ready to strike again, both at poor Camilla who decideds to Dodge (and retreat), as she could only block one attack at the best of her ability. No preemptive penalty for Dodge, but it resets her initiative rank. Thus she'll get her spear ready in round 13 again. Bonan misses, Angus hits but fails to penetrate armor. Next actions: Angus round 12 (9+3), Bonan round 14 (9 + 5), Camilla round 13 (9 + 4) etc. This illustrates a few items that I'm wondering about. Penalties for aborting actions, how the fictional "Strike Speed" would be calculated etc. (I was assuming some kind of base value plus weapon modifier here. Let's say everyone had a Base Reaction of 2, two-handed axes gave you +3 on that, daggers +1 and spears +1; a shield had a further +1, so it does slow your main weapon down, but leaves you free to ready it while still blocking) Note that I'm really spitballing here, trying to see if it would be worth the while. I think for a heroic fantasy game it might be interesting enough, as speed becomes more of an option during play. For superheroic games, this is more a character creation matter (where I want to spend my points, SPD, OCV or damage DCs?).

I don't speak or read Swedish, but I think I could gather some info from that PDF. If I understood correctly, it has a pretty simple character creation system, where each profession gets a list of skills which all start at common value and you can pick several (three?) skills which start at a higher level. For a BRP variant, that's a pretty simple system and not hard to port. With "templates" I meant some professional or cultural attribute/skill/power packages, like they appear in some HERO products. It seems that DoD might be a good and simple fit for that, much easier than e.g. the character creation version used in RuneQuest III (where you got a few percentage points each year in a career, and careers were divided into cultural packages like Primitive, Barbarian and Civilized). So you could make a "Warrior" package with roughly the same skills at their default values and let them pick three at a higher one (+2). Or just use the basic template and let them flesh out their favorites with extra points. If they pick a weapon, it's the relevant WF (+2 CSL if picked as an expert choice). No matter how much you let them do their character creation in HERO terms, producing equivalent templates is a good starting point and gives the players some familiar territory to start with. Beyond that, it's pretty much as I expected. Combat is on the simpler side, but does seem to have Armour Points (albeit no hit points, so I guess it's an automatic weapon break if damage > armour points, unless it's a shield?). That would be a bit harder to include in HERO, as there's no mandatory active defense roll in the default combat system. Not sure how keen the players are on that anyways, I remember a similar rule from the gaming system of my teenage years, which we chose to ignore completely because of bookkeeping and constantly sundered weapons being a bit too silly. If you want to stick closer to that, it does look like the combat skills from APG2 are an option to be evaluated. You'll have your mandatory defense rolls there, which are also closer to BRP weapon skill than HERO's OCV/DCV + CSLs. Magic does look a lot like RQ Sorcery. Not that hard to build them out of HERO Powers. Endurance Reserve for the POW points. As for the dice, I'm usually a big fan of the bell curve, but using a D20 in HERO seems like a distinct possibility, too.

Depends on what you think are the defining characterstics of BRP in this context. That often was expressed with some degree of "as opposed to D&D", and if it's mostly about that, (Fantasy) HERO would certainly suffice: No levels, lot of stuff being skill based, no escalating hit points. Beyond that, it depends a bit on your personal tastes and on the specific incarnation of BRP (sorry, I don't know jack about DoD beyond its existance, so excuse me if some of the stuff doesn't apply anyways). Percentile system important? That would be a major change. Skills improved by usage? Could be done, although in a 3d6 system a point is worth a lot more than a few percent in a d00 system -- never mind the bell curve. One could theoretically track skill values as percentages for creating and raising and just map them to 3d6 values. Peculiarities of the combat system? HERO has no Impale special effect and now parrying weapons that block damage with their own hit points. Depending on the version of BRP, there might be further missing elements (or fewer). On the other hand, the distinction between STUN/BODY would be a major new element. Although in FH one could do without Normal damage, without too much trouble. Still leaves you with the two statistics (plus END, of course). Does DoD have common magic a la Glorantha RQ? That would be no problem in a point based system, of course. Character creation? Some BRP variants have quite involved culture/background systems, whereas HERO normally just lets you distribute points as you want it. Maybe some templates would suffice, or even a straight-forward port of BRP mechanisms. With players coming from BRP, I doubt that it would matter too much to them that their final point values wouldn't add up. The combat skill system from APG II might be useful, as it more closely resembles BRP combat skills. "SPD 3 for everyone" might a useful simplification, too.

Given fractional SPD values and very fine grained ET values applied to almost any action, I'm sure you could express it that way. If you like writing RPG rules with copious amount of LaTeX formulas.

Did anyone ever experiment with a tick-based combat system in HERO? To clarify what I'm speaking about: A few RPGs have combat systems where there are no discrete rounds, but where every action takes a certain amount of "ticks" to complete. Recent examples of this would be White Wolf's Exalted/Scion and Kenzer & Co's HackMaster (Basic available for free here). AD&D's "weapon speeds" might be seen as a somewhat unfortunate ancestor. So let's say you're on tick 4 of the combat, and you just swung your mace. Because of your skill and ability plus the slowness of the weapon, it would have a "recovery" of 4, i.e. your next attack would be on tick 8. Spells and the like would have individual casting times. Initiative, if at all used, would be the time it takes from tick 0 until your first action, mostly simulating combat paralysis and recovery from shock (surprise would add to this). I always liked this kind of system, but haven't been too fond of most of the games where it's used (don't get me started about Exalted). And as I've got lots of time to think about such things during my holiday hiatus, I've wondered whether this would be possible to include in HERO without creating too much friction. In a super-heroic game, it might be a little out of place, but I think it could be done in a Heroic campaign where about 90% of SPD values are in the 2-4 range anyway. So let me brainstorm this a bit: Speaking of SPD, we need some equivalent for this, preferably not derived from DEX. Probably your basic "waiting period" whereupon spells and weapons would add to. 12/SPD? Or maybe a modifier to the speed given for weapons/maneuvers/powers? Weapons and basic attacks would need some kind of speed factor. Either individually or in broad categories ("two-handed swinging"). Possibly multiple values per weapon (thrust vs. swing or even thrust vs. quick jab). Martial arts maneuvers would be well-served with some kind of speed reduction, so a Fast Strike would actually be faster. Extra Time and its inverse might be rather common for Powers Aborting actions would be rather easy, as it would just reset my countdown clock. Per-tick movement? PRE attacks adding a slight increase to your own action time, but potentially adding more to your opponents recovery. In a fantasy campaign, you would probably have to take extra care so that all the speed and ability factors aren't too widely spread apart. It should matter whether you're using quick weaponry or powerful, slow ones, but you wouldn't want to end up with every rapier dude getting in 6 thrusts before your axe-wielding barbarian can get in a single one.

It probably all depends on where you "come from", both regarding your first RPGs or novels/movies. For me, I always liked the implications of skill rolls. For one, they're yet another resource limitation, possibly requiring multiple invocations and thus actions. And a limitation that can be overcome with training. Speaking of training, that's another important aspect of it: Spells are something you can dissect and master. Contrast this with Vancian magic, where your magical training and ability is mostly concerned about containing the spells. This changes the nature of spells, making them more special, external entities. Black boxes of arcane power, as opposed to something that can be understood and mastered using some faux-scientific approach. It also makes it easier to have separate fields of study, where you're just better at some category of spells (or even individual spells). In campaigns where magic is clearly different from those set of assumptions, skills might not be the right approach for me. It doesn't seem to be the right fit for direct-line-to-the-gods divine magic (as opposed to "scientific" theurgy), or for more mythical approaches to magic itself, where logical understanding doesn't chime well. Never mind that it's simply not an effective mechanic if every PC or NPC encountered is by definition a very advanced practitioner of magic, maybe because point values are so hight, maybe because you're simply not let out of "magic school" unless your chances are basically 100%, maybe because 'wizard' is pretty dang near to demi-god (Middle Earth or Earthsea seem to be candidates for that). I generally like to start on the low end of the spectrum, maybe with no intentions of leaving it at all, so I've generally been happier with skill-based systems in the past. Also not a big fan of divine magic (cf. D&D), very common magic (RuneQuest) and daily magic resource renewals (almost every fantasy game ever).

Publishing adventures doesn't make enough money, it seems. Even WotC published more source- and splat-books than adventures. That doesn't explain Paizo, though.

And while he's not running stuff directly anymore, I think it got mentioned in the (generally quite great) GURPS forum that his opinion was one of the reason why 4E had the old Magic system pretty much unchanged. But as I've said, not the only one, given ease of use and cost structure (even with a high Magery it's still more cost-effective than doing everything with Powers). Yes, Thaumatology basically just expands the number of ad hoc systems, although it does have a few pretty neat ones and generally serves as a good source for inspiration. It does have one chapter about conceptual frameworks for Powers as magic ("shamanism", "bardic arts" etc.) GURPS Powers has several sample builds that are definitely spells, although it has no complete tradition/system collecting that. There are a few short "monographs" that present new magical systems, and some of them are based on Powers pretty directly (Divine Power) or at least integrate it (Ritual Path Magic). Nope, I had some problems with it myself back in the 3E days. Now it just seems a bit worse, because you do have Powers in the core books and it kinda makes you feel like Tantalus, with a better, more unified approach *just* out of your grasp... If I really would want to use GURPS again, I'd ditch those attempts and just pick one of the better auxiliary magic systems. For satisfying my RPG-Lego craving, HERO seems a much better fit (although I did just buy EABA2 and have to give that a try, too).

My two current campaigns are using bits and parts of official D&D adventures: - Witchfire Trilogy. One of the first D&D 3E adventures and the beginning of the rather successful Iron Kingdoms line. I've used pretty much everything available for the setting (the three adventure books, the World Guide, the Character Guide the most excellent Monsternomicon, and even bits and parts from both the Warmachine tabletop and the new stand-alone game) - X1 Isle of Dread - Yes, the adventure that came with the old D&D expert set. Lizardmen, natives and dinosaurs. I also follow the basic setup of the Treasure Hunt adventure, i.e. a bunch of "normals" (0-level in the original) rising to more heroic proportions. If they survive... Most of that is run by the seat of my pants. Which served me quite well, although given that my players are relative newcomers to the system, I'm planning to collect a big bunch of combat and spell abilities over the holidays. Not everyone likes to tinker as much as I do, and the people who want to play spellcasters started to complain a bit.

Most likely because you actually can change it (with some effort) and you can often see how it's done -- it all comes back to powers, at most you get a somewhat obfuscated way of distributing the points required for a Multipower or similar frameworks (e.g. in a perk-based system). Whereas in GURPS there's a huge gap between what's doable with Powers and Magic. The latter is hailing from the early ages of the system, brought down from the mountains by Steve Jackson himself. Compared to that, Powers, outside of a superhero expansion context, are fairly new. Creating a whole magic system from this is hard, I'm not aware of anything completely pregen here. And you most likely end up with costs beyond the usual sweet spots of GURPS non-cinematic characters. Hardly usable for your average campaign and a big burden on GM prep time. Which is why the magic systems of GURPS receive far less criticism, appearing both more helpful and obfuscated. If you don't know anything about cars, it's all rather magical to you. But show someone just a few concepts, and he's out there criticizing his local shop and most major manufacturers.

Most conversions I've seen tend towards simulating the "phenotype" of the other game. Which can be useful, as it might make it easier what to pick when creating and advancing a character, but quite often doesn't result in a gameplay that's close enough to the other game. Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes it's GMs missing the point. Reading this thread I'm happy that I'm not fighting nostalgia too much, as most players in my group didn't start with D&D (it wasn't the seemingly mandatory first game in Germany anyway). Their previous games vary and the flux in the group and intersection with other groups (or even associatons) isn't strong enough to influence the choices. So the big difference to me is that practically any other game is mostly prefab, and my players are fighting a bit with all the choices they have. Which is why I intend to make a lot of prefab fighting styles, "feats" etc. for my HERO group during our holiday hiatus. (Also, after some experience, I might change a few dials and gears in the combat options and rules. Just hope I can get that to work without requiring too many pencil annotations on their Hero Designer character sheets)

Erm, that is Tolkien's depiction of dwarves (heck, that's still his name for them). Before that, dwarfs were mostly greedy, sneaky fairy buggers. Or later helpful cutesy fairy buggers. (And certainly the inspiration for all those thick LotR copycat tomes that came out in Germany in the early oughts, right after the movies were released.) I'd argue that even Tolkien's elves were more mortal and approachable than previous mythological incarnations. Haughty bastiches, sure, but compared to the alfr or especially the Irish & medieval myths...

The tool versions of axes, hammers and picks are quite different, and mostly unusable in a battle. Most modified tools were in the polearm category, originally farming implements. As some kind of miner's uprising, sure, but even irregulars should have something better in Dwarvendom.

It seems your careful analysis dates back to the 90s. Dwarven coolness has risen by 4.8 LotR movie points on the "ethnic bad***" scale. And it's kukris now, not katanas. Science!

The numbers of Agincourt seem to change all the time, although it's pretty sure that we can say that the English were proportionally rather focused on archers in general, and especially at Agincourt (slightly less so at Crecy). One of the reasons was that the English had a slight lack of cavalry, and archers do pretty well against them. Other countries didn't focus as much on archers, as they had cavalry and money to pay for crossbow-using mercenaries. (Not that the French didn't field archers as well in general) We certainly had other massive uses of archers over the centuries. Not all with the same tactics, but it's not like the English fielded substantially more than anyone before or after, just that they had a pretty high ratio of them and did quite well with creating a legend about them. Weren't we talking about Dwarven weapons at one time? I think we veered in basically the opposite direction, with huge numbers and a rather cheap weapon. What historical unit would better suit our wee bearded fellows? No cavalry of course, unless we're talking about those weird Elmore dwarves. Traditionally they're often depicted as pretty close to Norse/Germanic warriors, just without spears (mail, axes, swords, round shields).

150 lbs warbows aren't that easy to make, and IIRC most of composite bow construction time is the drying process (which means your bowyers can do something else). Not that this really matters, as the big disadvantage of getting English archers isn't about the material, it's about the men. You can't just round up some random peasants. You need well-fed people who basically trained all their lives with it. And as L.Marcus said, Northern Europe isn't composite bow country, if you can avoid it at all. Animal glue attracts humidity. If you need something quickly, get crossbows. Yes, they take even longer to construct than both types, but it's much easier getting (and "restocking") semi-competent archers.

Which is why I would like to have them alongside, and not several meters away so that they can use their overlong spikes. Which is why dwarves don't make rapiers Which military use of bows wouldn't imply massed archers? It's not like the Turks, Mongols or Japanese had lone snipers...

As far as I know, it's the other way round, the smallsword being the more modern, fencing-only weapon. True, the rapier evolved out of a smaller sword, as you can get away with more in a civilian context (and there actually were quite a few people complaining about rapiers being too long). And you had lots of perpendicular footwork, which isn't really all that well suited to formations or teamwork in general. What the military predecessors did hardly matters, and I think that by the time la Destreza reached the height of its popularity, swordsmen weren't as much in use in the Spanish military in general. Rodoleros (and later tercios) also used lots of mixed formations, so they're in the same category as Doppelsoeldners. You probably wouldn't want a pure two-handed sword formation, either... But yeah, civilian fencing isn't a fair answer to Christougher's claim anyways. More interesting would be the more sparse formations of Romans armed with spathas as opposed to the earlier gladius-equipped troops. And while we're at it, I don't quite understand the assertion that started this line of thought, i.e. how longbows would out-shine composite bows in formations, at least reduced to the weapons themselves (as opposed to the tactics/usage of English longbowmen vs. mounted composite bow users)

Well, Spanish school rapier fencing in densely packed formations kinda sucks.

Huh? 6E2 38 seems in direct opposition to this: "Modifiers that alter a character’s CV remain in effect from when they take effect until the beginning of the character’s next Phase."

I don't quite get the "hand waves are better" argument. If one would've come to that conclusion (and the whole party agrees, which is another matter) then why use the rules at all? In HERO I find that I'm rarely doing "hand waving" as in ignoring some rules to let something happen. It's either straight-forward ignorance of the rules, perfectly within their boundaries (e.g. improvised modifiers) or actually restricting something that would be perfectly RAW (No, you can't make a haymaker now, block that, use Stealth...). But then again, with all the mention of "dramatic purposes" etc. in the rules, I think I'm still fine, legally speaking... In my personal experience, hand waving tend to favor the GM.

Also: metric system.

More attributes, more abbreviations and the fact that it's more a building block system, i.e. both GMs and PCs probably have to spend a bit more time creating their special abilities. Whereas if you're aiming for a non-superhero game, it's more likely that GURPS already provides you with the fiddly bits (spells and/or equipment). And, well, a metric bajillion of source books. That certainly was the case when you compared previous editions. Nowadays, you've got less figured statistics in HERO on one hand, and more stuff built on Powers in GURPS (and most of it is in the basic books). So regarding complexity, it seems to converge a bit nowadays. Personally, I'm definitely regarding HERO as conceptually simpler. As was mentioned, GURPS has lots of specific rules. This isn't really all that negative if that's what you're going for. I'd regard GURPS Martial Arts as more realistic than HERO. Then again, I can actually run HERO MA with a printed character sheet and without referencing menial details about stop hits and aggressive parries... Also, as much as it's possible in a relatively complex, generic system, HERO is turtles all the way down. Yes, it probably takes you more time to learn some details of powers construction, but in the end that's all you need to know, everything is derived from that. You can have a dozen magic system that all break down into the same constituent parts. Whereas in GURPs you've got Magic as Powers, the legacy spell system and half a dozen variations and orthogonal subsystems in Thaumatology or independent products. Sure, that makes it possible to have some rather unique and/or fine-tuned stuff. A bit like modeling putty vs. Lego. Finally, gamers are notoriously bad at judging complexity. RoleMaster is considered difficult, after all, mostly because there are tables and you might have to add up double digit numbers. Whereas a lot of "OSR" folks are yearning for the "simple" life that was AD&D 1E. *coughcoughinitiative*

I'd say that most "human limits" attributes aren't that high in a general meaning anyway, most likely you'd be better off modeling it as a few points lower, but with some limited attributes or simply skill levels. So you'd end up with a weightlifter STR 15/+5 STR lifting only, or some scientist with INT 13/+3 physics/astronomy/mathematics. Although I'd say that this wouldn't matter for most campaigns that are at least a bit heroic...

Yeah, that sounds familiar enough. Apparently it was from a series of novelizations of classic D&D modules. Don't know what they were smoking when they thought of that. And yes, before you ask, they did make a novel out of the Tomb of Horrors. Haven't read that, though, the novels with the fairy/ranger/gynosphinx/badger teamup was about White Plume Mountain / Descent Into the Depths of the Earth and Queen of the Demonweb Pits, all by Paul Kidd. And come on, he's probably not the first person to think of size and form-changing magics for, well, amorous purposes. Not even talking about very finely targeted versions... (Speaking of which, a German RPG had a pretty great grimoire with lots of spell history and variants for each entry, and they specifically mentioned that non-whole-body versions of the systems paralyzation spell didn't quite work out, to put it mildly) We probably could fill a few dozen pages of another thread about "bizarre spell usages"...