mhd

I generally like the idea of lulls in combat, even if losing a turn is never an enjoyable activity. It adds a flair of both danger and realism and helps with big groups. And being stunned, aborting to defense or taking recoveries all make that happen, so I don't think I'd want to get rid of that. Or at least I'd want a somewhat serious stun penalty where you could act, but defense/moving away is the better choice (similar to how GURPS does it). As for easing tracking, I do agree that this gets cumbersome a bit. I ditched the free recovery, so taking a breath is something that I actively encouraged, but still, if END use isn't a big part of your setup (i.e. powers), then it's either a drag or people forget it. I see lots of retroactive END accounting, where people guesstimate the amount of phases/turns they can keep up their routine and occasionally do a quick END audit. At which point I'm not quite sure whether it's really worth it. Of course you also take a breather to regain STUN, but that would often mean that the heavy armored, heavy weapons guy could keep swinging without pause. Not sure what to do about that, so I didn't institute any house rules about that, but I'm not enforcing it all too much (and currently our magic doesn't use END anyway). I did think about combining STUN and BODY once, though. Using a / + X tracking mechanic. No dual damage types for weapons, then of course. Stun would mostly come from damage conversion. But that's too much rejiggering for now.

I know that was how it was sold, but I never really got that, neither from reading the books nor from my own personal playing experience. The rule system was pretty crunchy and exploitable, a lot of it was geared towards combat, as with most RPGs around (even more back then). I encountered lots of combat monsters and lots of purely mechanical social stuff (overuse of Dominate/Presence). Sure, it was called "Storyteller", but I didn't see a lot of mechanical difference to its contemporary Shadowrun (another combat monster dice pool game of the early 90s). Sure, there were more politics, but Rein<pffrth>Hagen did that better in Ars Magica a few years earlier. And IIRC both Torg and Amber came out before V:tM, both games that tried to get away from wargaming, IMHO with better approaches. Or, heck, Prince Valiant "the Story-Telling" game. (To be fair, neither Amber nor Prince Valiant woudl cound as "really successful") To stay more in the topic, at times I'd actually like a bit more nitty-gritty wargaming in my HERO game, even at the cost of some of the superheroic heritage -- for example, more TFT-style maneuvering and fewer unique abilities and powers.

Believe me, I'd like to get my players to narrate combat a bit more, but I don't think mere penalties for repetition would work for my campaign at the moment. We simply don't have that many different attack powers and special abilities, so mechanically, keeping an even CSL split and just doing Strikes seems like a good idea quite often. That doesn't mean that this would result in the same exact physical movement, so the narration could (and should) differ. Regarding the verisimilitude, attacking the same way doesn't necessarily correspond to the exact same strike. I mean, simply doing a left/right switch (or a different angle) isn't a whole lot different. For more swashbuckly campaigns this might be a good idea, but probably not a good solution, as a one point penalty still doesn't tempt players to e.g. try a Disarm or Grab all of a sudden. Nor would that necessarily make the combat more exciting, personally I'd get more out of the exact same mechanical approach, but with a different flourish in the description than just switch from Fast Strike to Martial Strike... Also, why a penalty? Wouldn't something like the Exalted stunt bonus be better psychologically? Were you give a +1 - +3 bonus to CSL just for a great description? Probably wouldn't work for serious attempts at realism, but we're not GURPS.

I'd never dare to suggest that.

Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same...

I'm currently doing a skill-based system where the point cost of the spells don't factor in at all. So basically the spell itself is treated like equipment and the skill similar to combat skill levels. I wouldn't recommend going with a 3+2 point skill cost system then. Before I changed the skill costs to 1+1 (for all skills) we used "domain" skills (e.g. mind, fire, transformation) and "spell familiarity". The active point costs are just used to establish a rough ceiling for the power and of course for the skill roll penalties. Skill adders are pretty cost-effective for a setup like this, of course. (And yes, I also noticed that I basically re-invented GURPS Magic.)

The Goblin Emperor, by Katherine Addison. A less funny King Ralph scenario, where the whole Elvish royal family gets wiped out in an airship accident and the 18 year old half-goblin son has to come out of exile to become Emperor, having to struggle against court intrigue and prejudices. The elves & goblins are not what we're used to, more a way to get some racial tension into it, no immortals or squatting hordes here. The court seems rather baroque, tech seems advanced enough (clockwork & airships), without become to annoyingly steampunk. What I really liked about the books was that you as a reader are thrust into this unknown setting along with the main character. All people have weird names & titles and it takes you a while to get all of that sorted out. Don't expect any Game of Thrones and/or Gormenghast shenanigans here, it's more focused on character development than courtly intrigue and there are plenty of nice lords & ladies around. Actually, at times I found things a bit too far into that direction, approaching Eddison/Lackey territory. (It seems fantasy these days either goes into this YA/Disney group hug territory or tries to emulate Martin/Abercrombie torture fests.)

Ah, so this is not about keeping your cool under fire (which seems pretty central to any non-hobby weapon skill) but about Grossman's "On Killing" hypothesis?

If you like that part, Burning Wheel had a "combat paralysis" mechanic, too. Pretty harsh, where you basically have to skip a few actions. Personally, I've never been fond of telling players how they feel, whether that's afraid or mad. Part of why CoC never quite hooked me way back when (plus a general disinterest in the 1920s and failing to see what's so scary about the Old Ones).

I just finished "The Voices", a black serial killer comedy with Ryan Reynolds. Prime idea is showing the POV of the killer and depicting his mental illness (he's talking with his pets, thus the title). So it's more a deconstruction of the serial killer than the slasher flick. Doesn't get bogged down in moralizing, and Reynolds is a good pick for black comedies. And of course, I watched Kung Fury.

I'm doing this with my current Heroic fantasy campaign. Not a lot of special powers, common spells or special abilities, so skills are a natural focus and I've never been fond of the way they were don in HERO. All the regular stats now cost 2 points, including Dex, and yes, over 15 it's doubled again. But that's mostly to compensate for the fact that you're getting a bonus to your roll for every 3 points (as per APG2), so it's not a big enough change, but reduces non-skill stat effects to a more mundane range (e.g. unarmed damage, stun threshold). And yes, SPD is considered 4 for everyone. As you don't pay for it and there are no exceptions, this basically just sets the ratio of phases per turn. Which doesn't come up that often, apart from some Extra Time issues and the cost of a "Haste" spell. We also have a unified roll-over mechanic, so, yes, I do like Fuzion.

We tried it a bit, but the group didn't really grow fond of it (similar to Savage Worlds' step dice system). And in general I like it better if you do more rolls where each is quickly interpreted and tallied instead of one roll that takes care of everything, but takes longer to resolve (e.g. ORE, RoleMaster). Although to be fair, HERO wouldn't be my prime example for the former, either.

I've had more problems with stacked abilities than with individual point values (Heroic), so while this might cap some of the more obvious efforts, it's no panacea. In my case, it wasn't even that intetional, but if you're supposed to be good at something and there are no zany powers to sink your points in, things get pretty focused Right now, I've abused HERO quite a lot: - Double the costs for the core stats, "maximum" 15, bonus per 3, not 5 - SPD 4 for everyone (at no cost, simply not editable in Hero Designer anymore) - "Fuzion-ized" skills (linear cost, wide spread expected). I wish HD would let me implement cumulative costs... That's for a long-running campaign. If we'd just playing a short superheroic game where everyone is supposed to have SPD5+, I'd just set that down in writing and might increase point totals, but wouldn't mess with the Hero Designer templates (so they'd still have to pay for it).

Madness Meter is basically a multi-axis sanity system (Violence, Supernatural etc.), each tracking both your current state and your general resistance -- you can become "hardened". The latter is where I see some conflict with the way HERO handles things, as you don't just get better at something by making your rolls, you have to pay for it. Other than that, it's certainly possible to introduce several new stats for each axis, and have some kind of limited Power Defense for each of them. On the other hand, HERO already requires you to track and roll more than the "One Roll Engine", so I wonder whether that's really worth emulating. Maybe a single stat to track, but different resistances. Or a general resistance that is frequently bought aspected ("Sanity Defense, only vs. Violence"). As for the funky ORE dice, I don't really see the point there. They're basically aspects of ORE's dice system, which really has no direct equivalent in HERO. Generally speaking, they make you better at something, so as Nolgroth pointed out, skill levels would be the obvious replacement. If you really care about special mechanics, make them limited skill levels, e.g. "only to save failed roll" or "only to counteract penalties to skill roll". Whether that makes sense with the regular HERO skill costs is another issue. Maybe you have to restrict normal levels and require everything beyond that to be "special skill levels" or something like that. Otherwise the cost savings from limited skill boosts are often not worth it. (For those who don't know the rules here: "One Roll Engine" is a dice pool mechanic, where you look for matching die. And both the "width", i.e. the amount of matching dice and the "height -- the dice value -- are important and used for resolution, e.g. one might determine whether you hit, the other how hard you hit. Expert dice let you set the dice beforehand, trump dice after you rolled. So they're quite important, but statistically not that easy to translate in a more straight-forward roll-under/-over mechanic)

Or Severe, if we're talking 'bout identity (alone or in combination with a physical transformation).

I usually print out some in-game docs if they're relevant and short enough. At least until I forget it and have to repeatedly read it from my gaming notes... I prefer to leave things to imagination and thus avoid pictures and detailed maps. For battles, small pencil sketches or positioning dice, penciles and coke bottles is sufficient most of the time, but when it's important I'll break out my old Chessex battlemat. I think there's still the picture of the High Elvish galleon on it that we fought on 3 months ago... Other than that, it depends on the campaign. Our current HERO combat is very stripped down -- fixed SPD, no hit locations, no martial arts. So I don't need many references for that, but previously having the necessary charts of a piece of paper was very helpful. Better if it's on everyone's charsheet, though. Which is probably where I wasted the most time for my current campaign -- our house rules move us dangerously close to Fuzion, so I had to tailor the export format considerably. I've reached the limits there, so I'd have to buy a source license or reinvent the wheel myself (and I'm severely tempted, considering that the other road is paved with Java). Our current campaign is a conversion, so there's no need to publish setting details -- we've got those in printed form with nice pictures. For other campaigns, I was quite fond of jottit.com, back in the days. Not as capable as a real Wiki, but very easy to setup, and even the less technical players didn't have issues publishing there. I'm a bit worried about it being out of support and not open source, though. For my personal notes, I'm using Emacs and org mode.

I primarily GM, so I have to say that my favorite character is the "sleazoid". I have way too much fun playing them, and as opposed to some other characters, you're rarely in a position of supreme power over the PCs with them. Least favorite: Saucy wenches. When I'm actually playing on the other side of the (imaginary) screen, I've got a really bad case of decision paralysis. So I usually end up with jack-of-all-trade support characters.

Hmm, I remember cleanup detail being there since about always. I mean, the bricks and paragons get to wreak havoc and the speedsters and energy projectors get to evacuate people.

Well, what did the Doge do?

And note that the base coin of Harn is still the silver penny. 240 of which are a gold crown (?), about the yearly wage of a servant (or the yearly fee a miller has to pay). If I remember correctly, it's been a while since I browsed through HarnManor. Harn tends mostly towards the earlier medieval economy I've ranted about. (Which is one source of its realism, you won't find 8th century Vikings raiding 15th century Venetians there) Fief is a very solid standalone, systemless sourcebook that (IIRC) encompasses the 11th - 14th century.

I'll have to agree with assault, "medieval" is a veeeery wide spectrum, never mind that most fantasy settings can be considered post-medieval anyway when it comes to economy, transport, etc., even before factoring in D&D-isms. And on the other hand, there's an almost comical emphasis on pretty early economics when this gets debated on internet fora (or when "realistic" sourcebooks/supplements are published), which makes it seem like the Domesday book was the rule for centuries, all across Europe (nobody seems to care about the Byzantine empire anyway). The only thing I can surmise from that is that some colleages treat post-Hastings England like the "History" Channels treats WW2... Given a somewhat standard fantasy setting, where your traveling adventurers aren't utterly exotic (i.e. you've got good roads, inns etc.), you can't just settle accounts with barter and tally sticks, so coinage will be common, especially when we're talking about cities and larger settlements, and not just manorial holdings. Never mind that a piece of hacksilver isn't worth that much, and the ubiquitous "copper coins" can be considered more of a D&D-ism than silver in the hand of "commoners".

I guess I could say "Raiding norsemen", but that rarely seems an issue. As opposed to some other common tropes (Roman empire, greek city states, Catholic church, Native Americans…) Vikings tend to be copied rather literally, so you usually get runes, berserkers, longships, jarls and everything else in the mix (Thralldom being rarely included, though). I'd like to add that I made the comment about "originality", which usually doesn't overlap all too much with how much I actually like a setting. Most original thoughts in games of either kind tend to be rather bad, so a good copy seems preferable. As long as the melange isn't too incongruous (where vikings can be problematic). As for magic-building systems, I'd ditch some of the emulative aspects and just impose some minimal constraints on standard HERO power construction. Adding another seemingly self-sufficient system on top of HERO rules can create some levels of leaky abstractions. The middle ground between "create a power with limitations X, Y and either Z or ZZ" and "let's ditch HERO for that and use this set of rules I made up" is rather treacherous.

"Does it have quasi-Vikings?" is actually my favorite litmus test of a setting's originality.

Aren't daddy issues basically the foundation stone of Campbell's "monomyth" hypothesis?