buzz

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points?

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points? What's the Efficiency Rating system?

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Samurai007, is there a site where we can take a look at your work? I don't have any issues of DH, sadly.

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points? Okay, what about other situations, such as: Supervillain + henchmen/agents Multiple supervillains Henchmen/agents only

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet?

Re: Superheroic core stories E.g., Harbinger of Justice, Punisher, or even the Authority, maybe. "We know there's evil out there. Let's go kill it."

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points?

Re: Superheroic core stories Hmm... I could simplfy this even more. Superheroes are all about Law Enforcement. "One or more superheroes aim to uphold The Law. One or more villains (super or not) works to violate The Law. The superheroes battle the villains and restore order. Repeat." The variable is the source of The Law. In a Golden- or Silver-Age game, that source is usually the city or nation in which the super resides, e.g., WW2-era Superman upholding "truth, jsutice, and the American way" by sabotaging Japanese battleships. In a Bronze- or Iron-Age game, the source may be a more general "higher" law that transcends borders (e.g., the Justice League, sorta), or else an individual super's conception of what's right and wrong, e.g. the Harbinger of Justice acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

Jumping on the core story bandwagon here... HERO, of course, has no core story, as it's a generic RPG designed to be adapted to whatever core story you want to tell. But what about Champions (or the supers genre in general)? Maybe... "A party of superheroes bands together to use their powers for a stated goal, usually upholding the law (or their conception of it) in a given city or nation they protect. Opponents appear who aim to thwart the superheroes' goal, either directly or indirectly. The superheroes defeat the opponents, restoring balance and/or furthering their goal. Next week, the same thing happens."

How do you gauge the appropriateness of an encounter in HERO? I.e., if I'm running a game for X number of PCs each built on Y points, what kind of NPCs are appropriate to throw at them? Is it simply a matter of side A and side B totalling up to the same number of points? E.g., is Card Shark (c.750pts) enough of a match for 5-6 DC characters built on c.250pts? Or am I just thinking too much like a D&D player, and HERO simply doesn't work this way? I was perusing Champions: Battlegrounds and StaST to get an idea, but I must not be seeing it. I asked a similar question a while back, but it's buried in the archives now and I don't want to look for it.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? I was actually expecting more discussion and less NPCs. I.e., I'm kind of disappointed to see that it's mostly a book of foes, many being foes I wasn't too interested in. Nice to see stats for Scarlet, though.

Re: Where else do you roll down? You know, as long as a "bonus" is something you add and a "penalty" is something you subtract, I don't see why anyone should have a problem with a roll-under system. (I was happy when GoO stopped doing this backwards with TriStat.) In the end, regardless of the fact that you want to roll low to determine success and roll high (ideally) to determine effect in HERO, you're still rolling X number of dice, *adding* them all up, and making a comparison (be it to a target number or against a another PC's BODY/STUN/EGO/PRE/etc.). Intuitive enough for me.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet?

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet?

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? I'm not saying you can't. Just pointing out how dusty the color argument has become. I think we've seen that DOJ can produce very good looking B&W product. They've also made it clear that doing what GR/Super Unicorn does is not financially feasible for them. (And, IIRC, there were quite a few M&M fans on their boards who were disappointed with the look of Noir, being used to the glorious color of all the other M&M books. But that's a different issue.) Ideally, yes. But if DOJ has to make a budget-based choice between: a) A mediocre cover and middling-to-poor interior art A fantastic cover and either no interior art or minimal but quality interior art I'll happily take B. I would. I might not be as happy as I would be if it were filled with glorious art, but ultimately the content is more important to me.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Particularly considering that, e.g., M&M books of similar page count list for $4 less and are full-color wth awesome art. Still, this is an old issue that DOJ has addressed many times. They do what fits their budget and makes economic sense; if they could make their books look like M&M and still make a profit, they would. I would just like to offer the opinion that, as a devoted HERO fan, I would be happy to see less art in a book if it meant the pieces that were included were of quality. Better to spend the art budget on a really nice cover and have an all-text interior than produce books that look like DC:TAS, IMO. The content of this book, typos aside, is looking quite good. I would think that a casual browser in a store would have a higher chance of taking a look at this content, even if all-text, if the cover really caught their eye. I really hate criticizing HERO products. Art or no, I still love this company.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? You know, Beatlemaniac would have been a better name.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Hadn't had a chance to look at VA too closely, sorry. Two is worse than one, but I'll wait and see. Maybe some DOJ folk will jump in here.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Let's not jump to conclusions. One book does not a trend make. I'm not going to get my panties in a bind until I've read the whole thing. I just had a reaction to the art.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? 120pp. Honestly, not that unreasonable when you're talking about anyone other than WotC or WW given the current climate. Granted, I'd feel better about the $27 (I paid full price ordering from the DOJ store, 'cause that's how much I love HERO!) if the book looked a little better. Still, it's on very sturdy paper!

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Oh, man! I just found a "see page ???" in the first few pages! That's pretty rare for a HERO book. I'm sure the content rocks, but... aww, man.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? Well, I'm not going that far. DC:TAS was obviously a minor book (one of the shortest in recent memory) with limited audience that didn't justify a big art budget. I would have preferred less or no art than what was produced, though. Next time, commission one awesome piece for the cover that includes depictions of major elements of the book. Then, reproduce bits of said cover inside the book where appropriate. Redundant, but at least pleasing to the eye.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? I would say the book *attempts* a more animated style. It just fails miserably. Sorry to harp on this, but even for HERO, this art is atrocious.

Re: Anyone get DC: TAS yet? I just got my print copy in the mail a few moments ago. The chapter break pages for the Knights and Powers both say "Street-Level Supers: Hudson Powers." Kind of a big gaffe. The book is also a serious contender for the worst art I have ever seen in a HERO product. I'm going to be running DC:TAS events at an ENWorld Gameday and at GenCon. I was hoping to use scans of NPCs and PCs from this book on the character sheets I hand out, but I definitely will put the kibbosh on that idea. No way am I going to risk showing a HERO newbie such poor quality work. I really hope DOJ saved a lot of money by using these artists. (There are a few pieces by Greg Smith which are his usual good work. But only a handful.) As for the content, I can't say. I can only hope Tharakzog is correct.

On p.168, the example explaining how long an Entangle barrier can be seems to imply it is 1" for each d6 of Entangle (i.e., the example charcater never rolls his Entangle dice; it just says that the barrier is 5" and the Entangle is 5d6). The text above the example says that it 1" for each BODY rolled. Which is correct?