Barwickian

Demiurgos, welcome to the boards. You're grokking Hero System a lot quicker than I did when I started getting really into it. I'm just highlighting Lucius' point above because this is a really important part of Hero System. You buy the effect, not the description. If Mind Link works mechanically for what you want the power to do (and I'm not convinced it does), then you use that, and call it "privacy field" and make its special effect invisibility (or illusion, or light, whichever you prefer). That way, the characters in the mind link will be visible to someone who sees invisible things. From the looks of it, you've figured that out already, but there's no harm in emphasising it. Were I to have a go at building the Mind Link privacy field, I might look at the limitations Normal Range (simple LOS is not sufficient), and as many levels of limited range as necessary to bring the power down to 2-3 metres range. There are usually several ways to build a particular power in Hero System; it's not question of the right way or the wrong way, it's a question of which you prefer, which way models the idea in your head best for you.

Thanks for the input, folks. Much appreciated. Sounds like the "noisy" limitation is exactly what I was looking for - and is very close to what I've recreated through the Side-effect: Hunted. It could go as a campaign rule, rather than a limitation - but so could Gestures and Incantantions. I'm inclined to use it as a limitation. The magical sense would work - and that was my first thought when looking at this earlier. I've been trying to get away from that, however, as I really don't want to consider rolling for every shadow-creature that may be in range. Side-Effect: Hunted keeps it simpler in play. There is a weakness, in that it isn't reversible (at least, not as written) - the forces of good do not necessarily detect the magical workings of the shadow-forces. For the purposes I'm thinking of, that's not a major issue. In a more egalitarian world, perhaps Magesight (a magic-detecting sense) would be the defining feature of a mage or magical creature ("They say she has the Sight.") I've used that in other campaigns. The advantage is that it lingers for some time on an area (not the mage) - a couple of weeks or so, depending on the mage's REC. This means the response may not be immediate, and abstaining from magic offers a way of letting the trail go cold, if the mage is travelling.

I've been pondering how to achieve this 'attracting unwanted attention' aspect of magic, as is done in MERP 2nd edition. In that, each time you cast a spell, there's a risk the shadow-forces notie and send someone (or something) to investigate. Castling spells in oneo fthe havens (Rivendell, Lorien, etc) is pretty safe, but in the Wilds it's risky, and in lands dominated by the shadow nigh suicidal. The best I've come up with is using a complication as a side effect (6E1 p394). Side-effect, always occurs, only effects environment near caster (side effect is Hunted by Shadow-forces, Infrequently, More Power, NCI, Liimited Geographical Area, Harshly Punish), -1/2 The Infrequently could be adjusted upwards for more powerful spells; the limited area is intended to make havens safe. Thoughts?

Yes. Each of the Hârn kingdom modules maps out the kingdom showing the location of each settlement (village, chapter house, keep, castle, town, abbey), with hundred and country boundaries marked. Symbols note which village hosts the hundred moot.

What sort of Hârn game do you want to run? For gritty low-fantasy consider competent normal (100pts + 30 in matching complications). You could go down to skilled normal (50 + 25 matching) if you're feeling particularly bold. For a typical Heroic game, Standard Heroic (175 + 50 matching) works well. Have you considered a superheroic game? PCs might be the sons of Noron, of Atànasîr (incubus) or vaènasîr (succubus) parentage. They might be Ívashù. They may be grey magi, on speaking terms with (or members of) the Council of Eleven. Hârn is a very broad setting.

Fenhorn's HarnPage has his most recent update of the great unified Hârn Price List. http://www.quicenter.com/harn/dl.asp?id=112

And the fact that I'm reading this more than a year after it was posted is an indication I'm far less regular these days. I've read the whole thread. IMHO people are getting far too hung up on modelling HârnMaster mechanics in Hero System. Why bother? HârnMaster does HârnMaster mechanics far better than Hero ever will. If you want Morality and Piety Points and Convocational SBs, play HârnMaster! The important thing is to get the mood and use the background. There are some things you can do, well within the bounds of Hero System, to get the Hârn flavour. All the below is no more than suggestions and 'this is how I do it - you may find a better way.' 1) Character Points and Power Level: For grim and gritty 'classic' Hârn, consider starting characters as competent normals, even skilled normals. But if you want the kind of Hârn only Hero can do well, what about a superpowered campaign, at the low-powered or standard superheroic level, with PCs being powerful Ivashu, the Sons of Noron, ancient Sidhe lords, or grey magi? You can almost guarantee the Earthmasters and Hârn's multiverse will come into this level of game. Having mentioned this possibility, I'll now turn back to a classic Harn feel at competent normal or standard heroic level. 2) For gritty combat, look to Fantasy Hero's grittier combat options - bleeding, infection, etc. Keep a tight rein on OCVs (or more properly OCVs + CSLs). Use Hit Locations and piecemeal armour. Use impairing/disabling damage. Do not feel obliged to use all these, though. You're playing Hero set in Hârn, not emulating HârnMaster. 3) Piety points: Fuel Divine spells with an END Reserve. Buy the END Reserve's REC with a custom limitation: Only when performing religious activities. You may want to increase the time slot of the REC as well. That works pretty much exactly as HârnMaster's piety points do, and is a simple thing to do in Hero. 4) Pvaric Magic: Buy Magic for each individual convocation, and separately for Neutral Magic (I'd advise against the HM1/HMG policy of a separate skill for each spell). Don't worry too much about convocational opposition, although you may choose a custom penalty for non-primary concovations (say -2 for secondaries, -4 for tertiaries/neutral, -6 for opposite). Build spells as appropriate. Spells use END, and require gestures and incantations, whcih can be ocercome at a penalty (see Fantasy Hero). By all means add Extra Time for spells that need it. You can add options emulating the bonus effects for high ML. Again, don't sweat modelling HârnMaster too closely.

Restrictions you can place on people wearing armour and carrying heavy weapons are social, legal and practical. For breaching social norms, I like to demonstrate to players that what they're doing is unusual - they're the only ones on the street so equipped. Parents hustle their children away. Shopkeepers pull their shutters closed. If you want game penalties breaching social norms, impose a penalty for interactions with NPCs when improperly equipped. If it's a matter of legality, PCs will simply attract undue attention from authorities. In practical terms, it may be difficult to recover from long-term endurance while heavily armed and armoured. If the weight is sufficient, it may not be possible to recover lost short-term END (see the optional rule for END loss and encumrbance on 6E2 p46). What's typical 'civilian' equipment? Pretty much everyone will have a knife (eg, Katherine Hepburn's line in The Lion in Winter: "Of course he has a knife. We all have knives. It's the 12th century and we're barbarians."). Very light armour - soft leather, cloth - may be acceptable, particularly if it's designed to look like normal clothing. Even thicker hide armour, though that may mark someone as uncouth. A dagger in the belt may be acceptable, but fighting daggers are markedly different from knives. A walking stick or staff is acceptable, but a knowledgabkle person will spot the difference between a walking staff and a strong, aged ash-wood quarterstaff. Concealed weapons, even concealed armour, will be acceptable, though are likely to provoke an adverse reaction or undue attention if noticed. There was a market in disguised armour, such as thin mail sewn into a tunic. Remember that (in the TV series), Catelyn Stark's first inkling that something is wrong at the Red Wedding is when she notices Lord Bolton's mail under his sleeve. Nobles are allowed, even expected to carry their swords (not that it wasn't common for an unarmoured noble to wear the sword strapped around the waist - they generally carried the sheathed blade in their hand, with the belt wrapped around the scabbard). It may be that strangers are expected to disarm (everything but their eating knife) when meeting the local lord or lady. The castle is sure to have more heavily armoured guards. It's acceptable to be more heavily equipped if one has a reason - such as employment as a guard, or leaving or entering town, before one has a chance to disarm at wherever one is staying. These restrictions apply as much to NPCs as to PCs. It should not be common to see heavy arms and armour around town - which means if you do see it, there's a reason. Finally, assuming the characters are standard heroic, and the GM accepts most people aren't that good, an NPC rogue attacking a PC with a shortsword, wearing light armour, shouldn't present too much challenge to a PC fighter with a knife.

Ben Miller, The Aliens Are Coming! The Extraordinary Science Behind Our Search for Life in the Universe (Little, Brown, 2016) (Amazon UK link - Amazon US link) Note: this is not a critical review - it's a recommendation. Ben Miller is better known as a comedian and film and TV actor (notably one half of the British duo Armstrong and Miller). Less well known is that he was studying for his PhD in physics when his comedy career took off. The Aliens Are Coming! is a popular science book looking at the chances of intelligent life developing on other planets, and our chances of communicating them. Along the way, it introduces and explains what Miller describes as "some ravishingly beautiful science". It hits some of the usual notes - the Drake Equations and the Fermi Paradox - but doesn't overemphasise them. It goes rather deeper into quantum mechanics, cosmology and the four basic forces than I'd expected, but explains them well. Miller's methodology tends to follow the Drake equation - how unusual is our solar system, what are the chances of life developing on a similar world, or on a radically different world, and so on - but explores each part in extraordinary detail. It isn't a scientific paper; Miller aims to show that alien life is quite possible, even probable, but he does highlight some difficult areas, where an unlikely event has to occur for his reasoning to stand (notably the development of complex cells, when an archaeon at a bacterium). He relies fairly heavily on convergent evolution to demonstrate that aside from the one event there are multiple examples of particular abilities (including intelligence) developing on Earth. There are plenty of concepts I wasn't aware of from older books on aliens (such as classificaton of languages according to Zipf's equation - and the fact that dolphin whistles also fit Zipf). There's a ton of useful information for worldbuilders (for example, if life originates in undersea volcanic vents, then molten core worlds are essential; the Earth is one the small side for a long-duration molten core, and bigger worlds with plate tectonics will tend to have lower mountains and shallower seas - the latter being ideal for complex life.) Although it predates the Trappist-1 discovery, it anticipates it. If you're interested in cosmology, SETI or worldbuilding with up-to-date science, it's a must-have. I had the chance to see Miller talking on the subject at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai last weekend, and to briefly chat with him afterwards. Not only is he a clever chap, he's also a hellaciously nice one (a view formed not just by my own meeting, but that of a friend involved in organising the festival).

Can Move By be used as a charge attack to gain a full move and attack? For example, a character has 12m movement and a 1m reach sword. Her opponent is 13m away. Can she move her allotted 12m and attack the opponent? The maneuver description specifies a character must move past an opponent, which means no. But it also says an attack can be made at any point on the path (which would include the end), and when visualising the action - the character running at full tilt, thrusting her sword in front of her - allowing the attack seems reasonable.

Hero is not a game such as Pathfinder (or its predecessor D&D3.5) that has a number of character abilities that depend on knowing exactly how one's character is positioned in relation to allies and enemies. And I know a number of people who forgo minis for Pathfinder. Whether or not one uses minis in Hero is a matter of preference; there are good arguments both for and against them. I've run Hero both with and without. In my experience, using minis tends to promote tactical play (ie, it stresses the game element of RPG), and if that's your cup of tea I suggest using them. Not using them tends to promote creative play (stressing the roleplaying element of RPG). Note that I've said "tends to", not "works exclusively with" - some players transcend the division, others are unable to work with either. There are times even with usually using minis that one must forego them, particularly if vehicles or long-range powers are involved. LIkewise, if I'm not using minis I've sometimes resorted to sketching a plan and marking positions on a whiteboard for complex set-ups (these aren't usually to precise scale, so this is more along the theory that a picture paints a thousand words).

Which home town? York, where I was born and grew up; Dubai, where I live, or... Yeah, let's have Mombasa, where my wife's family lives and where we have our retirement home. I have a 1938 guidebook to Mombasa, with the bus and ferry timetables from 1941 tucked inside. That gives me the pre-independence street names. Too long, didnt read: Ivory trade, slavers, great white hunters, shipwrecks, ruined cities, man-eating lions, colonial murder mystery, monkeys, black mambas, caves, secret tunnels. Mombasa is an island nestled in inlets off the Indian Ocean, between Kenya and Tanzania (then known as Tanganyika). Most of the local stone (and hence building material) is coral. In the Pulp Era, Mombasa's 16th century Portuguese castle, Fort Jesus, has been wrested from the hands of the Mazrui governors who ruled Mombasa under the Sultanate of Oman, as independents and under Zanzibar. Under the Mazrui's it was a focal point of the slave trade to Zanzibar - that was stamped out by the British, who now keep the fort as a prison for both criminals and political prisoners (those opposed to British colonial rule). Legend has it there's a hidden tunnel from the fort to a promontory on the south of the island. Fort Jesus lies on the east of the island, facing the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese built a second fort, Fort St Joseph, on the ruins of an earlier Arab fort, but by the 20th century only ruind remain. Offshore from Fort Jesus is the wreck of a 17th century Portuguese frigate. Old Town is ancient. The Arab geographer Al Idrisi mentions it in 1151AD; Ibn Battuta (the Arab Marco Polo) visited it briefly in the 14th century, and praised its beautiful wooden mosques. Arab traders began settling in East Africa from at least the 10th century; by the 13th century they were building settlements. Their descendents are the Waswahili, the People of the Coast, of mixed Arab and African descent. The whole coast is littered with ruined Swahili towns (of which more later), but the major trade centres of Lamu, Mombasa and Zanzibar survive. Old Town, like the Stone Towns of Lamu and Zanzibar, is full of narrow streets, overhung with wooden balconies, with ancient, beautifully carved wooden doorways centuries old leading into the houses. Dhows from Oman and Arabia call at Old Town Port, on the north east of the island, linking Mombasa with the Sultanate and through it Persia and India. The British use the new (in the 1930s) port at Kilindini, on the south west. From there passengers and goods are offloaded onto the East African Railway, which leads to Nairobi (with an extension into Uganda). Construction of the railway, in the 1890s, was hampered by the man-eating lions of the Tsavo, the Ghost and the Darkness (hold on, we get far pulpier than that). Mombasa in the 1930s is home to 43,252 people (1931 census). Two ferries link the island with the South Coast; two bridges give road links to the North Coast. Near the Nyali bridge, by a baobob tree, is the grave of Sheikh Mvita, legendary founder of Mombasa. At an annual festival, people lay bread, betel nuts and money on the grave, before dancing round it to the beat of drums and singing traditional songs. After that, the offerings on the grave are distributed to the poor. Heading south, across the Likoni Ferry, the road to Tanganyika, just a few miles away, lies the village of Shimoni, where spider-infested caves were once used to hold slaves bound for Zanzibar. From Shimoni, it's a short dhow trip across to Wassini Island, where a coral forest grows inland and the villagers fish for cattle in the mangrove forest (really, they do - years ago one of the fishermen decided to herd cows. He brought some across from the mainland, but when he died the herd went feral. Now, on high feasts, the fishermen take their nets into the forest to see of they can catch a cow.) Heading north from Mombasa (past our house), you get to Takaungu, where the Great White Hunter Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford's character in Out of Africa) had his home. Past that, you're in the mamba zone, with both black and green mambas, then at the monkey infested ruined city of Gedi (sometimes spelt Gede), an ancient, abandoned Swahili trading town in a coastal jungle infested with monkeys. Beyond that, Malindi, where Vasco de Gama made landfall. And slightly north of that, the site where one of the Chinese admiral Zheng He's ships was wrecked in the 15th century. To this day, some people claim descent from shipwrecked Chinese sailors. It's also on this coast that Juanita Carberry claims her mother hid the gun used in the most famous murder of the Happy Valley Set - a group of Upper Class Twit colonists near Nyeri, much further inland, who drank and shagged each other crazy, until Sir 'Jock' Delves Broughton shot Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Errol, in 1941. Was this a competition? Do I win?

Shona is southern Bantu, I think. I work with a couple of chaps from Zim, but I have no Shona whatsoever. My wife's Kikuyu, but the family lives in Mombasa and we have a number of friends from other tribes, so tend to use Kiswahili.

To go back to the original question, "how much world", the only answer is "slightly more than you think you'll need". Let me explain that better. You often hear of top-down or bottom-up approaches to world-building. Bottom up is the most efficient, as you create only the place where the characters are and the surrounding area, and detail more as they move outwards. in this case, it's fairly easy to incorporate charatcer background ideas. However, it also runs the risk of inconsistency, and in the absence of other evidence, people tend to fall back on default assumptions - for example, unless you tell them otherwise, they assume elves are good, if stand-offish, and favour woodlands. I favour what I call the towards-the-middle approach. Make your big decisions about the world - is it round or flat? How did it begin? What are the main religions? What races live in the world? What's the technology? How does magic work? Then draw a world map and sketch in the major physical features, cultures and nations. Are there any notable events at this scale (such as national rivalries, wars, a lost continent)? Once that's done, crank right down to the starting area and proceed with the regular bottom-up approach. You might even want to go so far as a more detailed map of the kingdom/region outside the starting area, but probably not much more than that. The work you've done with the larger world can be filled in with extra details later. I suppose it's like a painter creating the whole image with sketches and broad brush strokes, then moving in to work on specific areas with the detail brush. The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding is a pretty good book on FRP world-building (if you don't have it, you should get it), and it spends a lot of time trying to persuade people NOT to get into too much detail, but to leave 'creative spaces' for later ideas (or, if intended for publication, for GMs to personalise the world).

We had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

Seeing this thread for the first time, thanks to Lucius' necromancy. It's good stuff. And my wife's Bantu. Noticed a question above that went unanswered. "What's a wafundi?" - it's the plural of mfundi. Wafundi means engineers or craftspeople in Kiswahili, but Mzimwi seems to be using it to mean enchanters. Therefore ufundi is enchantment and mfundi an enchanter. Bantu word construction. People generally fall under m/wa singular/plural prefixes. Common prefixes for cultures and people: U- the idea or culture of something - could be a place or an abstract. M- a person of that culture or idea. Wa- a group of people of that culture or idea. Ki- the language of those people. For example: Kiswahili, the Swahili language; Uswahili, Swahili culture; Mswahili, a Swahili person; Waswahili, Swahili people (Swahili itself is a word of Arabic origin, from suhail, meaning Coast). Likewise, Uingereza, Englishness, or England itself; Kiingereza, the English language; Mingereza, an English person; Waingereza, English people.

I've used the Keep with Hero, putting it in the Turakian Age - the Borderlands were those between Khirkovy and Vestria. It worked pretty well (one of the other GMs in our RPG community has run it with GURPS as well). If you want more than a simple dungeon crawl, you need to assign motivations to various parties. My own solution wasn't particularly original, but it served its purpose. The Keep was built to defend against Khirkovian incursion; the occupation of the various caves by humanoids is ostensibly at the instigation of the Evil Clerics, who have Khirkovian connections - though they were in fact renegades not sanctioned by the Khirkovian authorities. Both the Evil Clerics and the Khirkovian authorities has a spy in the Keep. Depending on what evidence they uncovered (and which side they work for), PCs could instigate or avert a border war. There's a moderate amout of work to do to bring the keep up to playable standards - NPCs and businesses in the Keep have to be named (or a names list prepped), side quests planned. There's a lot you can do in the Keep before ever heading to the Caves of Chaos. Some prep work is needed for the Caves as well, though I largely kept this as dungeon crawl. The Evil Clerics needed a bit more detail, and some handouts and coded messages prepared.

Healing - that's what I meant instead of Aid. Yes, that would work in combination with Ablative. The shields in Mass Effect do recover in battle - provided you take no damage for a time. I think a full turn should cover the recovery period. The Extra Body with Recovery is an interesting approach. It would have to have the limitation 'not protected by armour'. This may be the simplest approach in play. Thanks for the input.

Looking for ideas on how to build Mass Effect's 'forcefield' shields in Hero 6. For those unfamiliar iwth Mass Effect, shields provide defence to individuals or vehicles (so Resistant Defence is more appropriate than Barrier), weaken as they absorb damage (they're Ablative), and they recharge when not under fire for a while. It's this latter aspect, the recharging, I'm unsure how to model in Hero. The simplest option I can think of is to use the Ablative variant where damage reduces the point value of the power. The shield can be turned into a Compound Power, adding an Aid with the a Trigger (when shield is damaged), the limitation Requires Extra Time (1 Turn, -1 1/2) and the custom limitation Only When Not Taking Damage (which I think is serious enough to justify a -1). Any other suggestions?

Oh, man, that puts pespective on my torn muscle/crutches matter. May your issues be resolved soon, Collie.

Winter Soldier is a must-see. I am amazed they squeezed that much plot and arc-building into one movie. Chris Evans is, as ever, superb in the role. The Falcon is awesome, Redford is, well, he's Redford. And Jenny Agutter kicks ass. Literally. There are two teasers at the end. Wait until the very last credits roll. There are a couple of bits where you can see the CGI, but in the overall context of a great action flick, that's trivial.

First Hero forum post in months, and it's on the grumpy thread. Today is the start of the third MIddle East Film and Comic Con. All my mates in the Gulf Roleplaying Community are down there. I'm not. I'd planned to run some Monster HUnter International and Pathfinder Society. But this is my fifth week on crutches. I tore a muscle in my backside, and it's only just starting to get better. I can't imperil recovery. Fed up about the crutches. Limited mobility sucks. Fed up about missng the con. On the bright side, WInter Soldier opened in the UAE last night. The cinema at out nearest mall is about 50 yards' hobble from the mall entrance. I'll be taking my superhero-obsessed youngest son to see it at noon. Also on the bright side, five weeks of crutches is improving my upper body strength. My moobs have shrunk significantly.

Shane's export file is listed as "RTF - Compact 6E (SH)" in the HD export formats online library. SH stands for Shane Harsch, not Star Hero.

The game went pretty well from my perspective. I used David Okum's wonderful TOS paper minis. I ended up with 5 players, who ran Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura and Sulu (sorry, Scotty and Chekov). The game was set around the time of season 2, a year or so after the Organian Peace Treaty. The Enterprise was sent to accompany Ambassador Salik (a Dubai in-joke - Salik is the name of Dubai's toll system and I couldn't resist the gag) to represent the Federation as the border planet Mimora decided whether to ally with them or the Klingon Empire. Roleplaying moments as the Mimoran technocrats questioned officers about the benefits of joining the Federation, and praised the wise idea behind the Prime Directive - after all, technological prowess is power, and it's wise not to share it so you keep control... Naturally things weren't that simple, and shortly after the Klingon delegaton arrived, one of the Mimoran technocrats showed up dead. Kirk offereed his officers' services, and McCoy established not only that the technocrat had been shot by a Federation phaser, but that it was an older model of phaser. Players pulled blinders. They managed to neutralise the Klngon delegation, persuaded the Mimorans to allow the Enterprise to thoroughly scan the station, inviting a Mimoran security team to observe the scanning procedures (and impress them with the UFP's technology). Then a second Mimoran corpse was found, shot by an up-to-date Klingon disruptor (another great Forensic Medicine roll from McCoy). My initial notes called for a confrontation between the Klingons and the Enterprise bridge crew - ideally a trial by combat between a batleth-armed Klingon and a rapier-wielding Sulu. It never happened. The players cottoned on to the heavy-handed plot device and rightly suspected someone in the Mimoran delegation. My initial notes called for the Mimoran vice-president to be the villain, but we were running out of time and he really hadn't featured too heavily in the game so far. When the Enterprise scans revealed the shielded area of the station, they invited the Mimoran security chief to lead them in a physical investigation, and he made an obvious villain. So he persuaded the Enterprise crew, armed with hand phasers, to lead the way, then ambushed them. MCoy, a laser pistol to his head, managed to wriggle free and disarm the villain. Uhura caught a laser blast and was injured and stunned. Kirk and Sulu hammered all three Mimorans with wide-angle stuns, Spock ran forward and caught the security chief with a neck pinch and Kirk called on the others to surrender. Game wrapped up on time. The only thing they didn''t have time to uncover was how the Mimorans had managed to get hold of the UFP and Klingon weapons; one Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Two of the players had played Champions years ago. One of the others was an experienced gamer but new to Hero, and was very interested in finding out more. Re the additional character notes - all good. You're right, Spock should have higher STR and perhaps I should drop Kirk's deduction to proficiency. Shane's compact 6e export template was absolutely perfect for this. An absolute gem. All the information needed, none of the information not needed. I tinkered with font sizes and portraits in Word, and presto. I really like the addition of the To hit roll next to OCV - that really makes explaining how Hero System combat works much simpler to new players. I think it's become my new favourite export file.