Vondy

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Well, most series-franchise fiction loses its steam as time goes on. Some loses its steam faster than others, admittedly.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! S&S is one of those weird cases where the latter-era pastiches are often better than the originals. It also, often, makes for better gaming than reading.

Re: Why I prefer HERO System over Pathfinder/OGL/D&D for fantasy I agree with everything in Hero's favor here. Hero is my go to system. Until I get to magic. Yes, it is beauty in its tailoring crunchiness. I can design whatever I want. But... the amount of work involved in doing that, especially building every spell, is the reason I don't use Hero for fantasy.

Re: Damage Negation!

Re: Vanished Villains

Re: Vanished Villains

Re: Damage Negation! Yet another reason for me to reconsider 6e. It may be great gaming science, but its horrible gaming art. It looks good, but is less playable that earlier editions. This concept flows from Steve's attempt to clear up the 5e damage calculation mess in 6e. It was never explicitly discussed in 5e so whether that was the case is a question of interpretation. However, I'm just going to out and out say it: this is a ridiculously complex and work-intensive method. Its also completely unnecessary and a touch counter-intuitive. The more I see of 6e the less I wonder why Hero has a hard time attracting new players.

Re: Ranger Choke Hold? The Choke Hold maneuver in Martial Arts is generic and can represent any number of techniques. In essence, the maneuver is the mechanic and the specific technique is an FX.

Re: Adult Entertainment Homeric

Re: Vanished Villains I'm a fan of Mind Titan, personally.

Re: Vanished Villains Basically, instead of simply quietly editing villains he didn't like out when he rebooted the CU, Steve killed them off. White Flame and Bora had a Steve Long bridge dropped on them. Neutron's stronghold fate comes to mind, too. I'm not sure where the margin in "do nasty things to characters you hate but other people might like" is, but there you have it.

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth?

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth?

Re: Damage Negation! This is a game-mastering style issue rather than a mechanical issue, IMO. I've never sweated a little meta-gaming knowledge falling into player hands. They are either going to be good role players, or they aren't. And if they are creative they can come up with an in-game explanation for it - source materials have many "hmm... he's super-resistant to X" moments. I've also been at it long enough to adjust my tactics - rather than builds - if they "play meta" as it were.

Re: Damage Negation!

Re: Damage Negation! I may be doing it wrong, but I just subtract the Damage Negation dice from the attack before the roll. Ergo, a mentalist with 14d6 Telepathy targeting a character with Mental Wards -8DC would only roll 6d6. It makes calculations easy as pie.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! http://youtu.be/MDthMGtZKa4

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? Competition.She has Doc D, Tyrannon, The Lich Lord, and others who will drop everything to ensure she won't accomplish what they will. Let alone those pesky heroes....

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Let's see, Its a rare thing for me to find a fantasy or science fiction novel I can stand. Dune must die. Interesting concepts... by the story was as dry as the planet it took place on. 2001 was pretentious, boring trash that typified its era. Star Wars was great before puberty (I was 11 when Jedi came out). As an adult I find it utterly banal. Star Trek is too preachy, inconsistent, and given to populist pseudo-ethics for me to enjoy. Its also a canon nightmare. I liked much of DS9, Wrath of Khan, the last season of Enterprise, and think the reboot was a great popcorn film, but other trek... please no. Tolkein was a great world builder and horrible story teller. Moorcock and Lieber and ERB are simply boring. I find Terry Pratchett's books sophomoric and George RR Martin gratuitious in terms of cynicism and grit. I do enjoy REH, but his western, southern horror, boxing, and sailor stories are better than his Conan stuff. My "fantasy" was born from being read classics and folklore from a very young age. I was read Beowulf, Homer, Chaucer, the Robin Hood Ballads, Mallory as a child - my mother made it interesting. These days I'm re-reading the above with great enjoyment, plus Shakespeare. When I do genre fiction its almost always crime / police procedural / historical stuff. No fantasy or science fiction. I love Bernard Knight and Patrick O'Brien. My guilty pleasures are Ed McBain and James Ellroy. I cannot stand paranomral romance and urban fantasy. I find both utterly banal. Do not date the monsters. Cosplay and Larping are right out. Renfair can be fun in small doses, but I don't dress up or speak faux shakespearean English. I don't play video games and don't want to. I don't do card or board games. One exception: INWO, but only once in a blue moon. I don't do manga or anime or superhero comics. I will read non-superhero comics if they are well done. Some French and German medieval comics are very impressive.

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! You, too, are a journalist?

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!!

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!!

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!! Its not such a secret. I've said on these very boards that, while I admire Tolkein's remarkable talent for world-building, I think Lord of the Rings was horribly paced, more than a little boring, and revolved around an annoying protagonist.

Re: Custom Skill Enhancers I believe there is an "expert" skill enhancer in one of the books that allows you to define its scope/applicability. So "Expert: Lawyer" would allow you coast break on all background skills related to the legal profession irrespective of their category (KS, PS, SS, Etc)

Re: Possible HERO System Supplement Kickstarters From Steve -- What Interests You? Actually, I kind of like the mega-villain in detail approach. Now all I have to do is surmount the ludicrous reality that is international banking from inside Israel....