Tywyll

13 hours ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

So this would fall under the 1b version of what I was suggesting earlier in the thread: use the genre/setting books to dial in the games while still relying on the core rules to teach the game. I'm with you on this: the Urban Fantasy HERO book is a lot of fun, and covers a lot of bases. The primary problem with all of the genre books is that they cover too many bases to count as a single game. I'm all for variety and options, but again the genre books require a lot of prior rules knowledge for the genre choices to even begin to make sense. It's a great model, I think, to introduce new settings/games for existing HERO players, and could potentially play really well in the Hall of Champions.

 

The 1a version of my original query, a one-book game, is more like the old 3e games that I cite. They teach the rules along with the specific setting and genre assumptions made for that particular game only. So a 6e equivalent to the 3e games would be more than a genre book with some settings: and adventures. The Complete books are based, from what I can see, on the 6e Basic Rulebook because they are condensed in a similar fashion, and then offer a lot of genre advice and a little bit of source material. But they stop short of being one-book games because they don't have settings, campaigns, or adventures under one cover.

 

So what I'm proposing is something that cuts down the middle: offer a condensed version of the rules, with the unnecessary stuff trimmed out, make the genre assumptions as applied to the setting, and then offer resources (lists!) and some campaign/adventure material. The reason I chose Action HERO! is purely personal, so I'm not convinced that's the best way to go, or the only way to go. I only brought it up because Danger International was supposedly being rebooted and wasn't. I was disappointed, and am curious what it could have looked like. There may not be a market for this sort of game, but maybe that's only because there are very few in existence right now to fill that niche. I can think of Gumshoe and something like One Last Job as the only contemporary examples. But what DOJ most definitely doesn't need right now is yet another version of Champions or Fantasy HERO, because they've done that many times already. 

 

I like Urban Fantasy HERO as a genre, but I think it's too unwieldy as a one-book game: It's really something like 4 or 5 individual games, depending on what you want to pursue: Vampires? Werewolves? Vampires vs. Werewolves? Aliens? Zombies? Each of these would deserve different and unique sourcebooks, and would best be served as their own individual games. I'd probably buy each of them, if they taught the rules for new players, explained the setting, has a resource guide, and offered campaigns or adventures and lots of plot seeds. Without those things, they'd be just another version of the many genre and setting books that have already been done, and very well.

 

Just a few of my thoughts on what's been covered so far. Thanks for the feedback!

I'm agreeing with your idea, just offering up ways to make it (possibly) more appealing to mass market. Namely, have the default rules for modern day gaming in one book with predefinied equipment with hidden builds, etc. Dump all the nonsense like building bases and vehicles and the power system.

BUT...

Also include some default settings in the book. Yes, an urban fantasy campaign setting could take up a whole book...but also it could be done in 20 pages or less. You exist in a world with monsters that you secretly hunt. Here's your organization, here's some monster stats, here's 10 spells a black witch could learn. That's enough to start playing with. As with everything else in the book, you don't let the player or GM need to pursue their version, you decide for them.

Ditto with a Zombie outbreak setting. Here's how it started, spread, and here's several zombie stats. Few roleplayers need more than that to grok a zombie setting. 

Etc, etc, etc. Some I'll agree are too complicated for this approach, but others are so much part of the cultural landscape that I don't think they need more than 20-30 pages to be playable. 

These mini settings don't have to be big to get people playing, but they do allow the rules to be used by people who would pass over a game set in the modern day that most people don't seem to be interested in.  I suppose that, if this were a kickstarter, these could be the stretchgoals, but I really think you want to have this in the book to appeal to a broader audiance. There is little reason to make an easily digestible and approachable version of HERO if no one picks it up because they aren't interested in the default setting. 

17 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

There is no limitation to the cost of the pool.  However, the control cost and the pool cost have been decoupled.

 

The maximum AP of any power in the pool is equal to twice the base cost of the reserve.  Since the highest AP spell considered in my example was 60 AP, the base control cost is 60 AP/2 = 30.

 

The pool itself is real points.  As only one spell will be in the pool at any one time, and the highest real point cost of any spell (in my example, the real point cost of each of the four spells) is 22 points, the pool costs 22 points.

Huh...wow, I totally missed that. This is one place were I wish they had more examples!

And I guess with Continuing Charges, you could activate a power and then switch to another without losing the first one. 

Still, as this is a build for a brand new Hero player, I don't want to get into VPP wierdness and overhead, but I'll definitely remember this for other builds. 

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

How does one tell the difference between two spear users when:

 

(a) One has the exact STR Min and one has 5 STR more than the MIN?; or

(b) One is 5 STR below the STR Min and the second has the exact STR min?

 

One is a bit more effective than the other in both cases.  "Can't use well" is a pretty relative term, and it's always amazing how differently we perceive a -1 penalty versus no penalty, compared to no bonus or a +1 bonus.  Either approach is a game construct whose relation to any realistic evaluation is decidedly questionable.

 

We do know that, in game, 8 STR is average and 10 STR is "noteworthy", while 12 is some greater, less common level of STR.  And we know a 12 STR gets the full DCs and OCV out of that medium spear.  We don't know what a typical soldier, or guard, or farmhand conscript, using that spear has, objectively, as OCV or DCs.  We can see, as could the actual users, that it's pretty effective at poking holes in the other guy.

I think we also know that the 'common' stats and supposed 'noteworthy' stats from the table are disconnected from actual characters built with the system so are, at best, only useful for bystanders.

For example, Valdorian Age, an Incompetant Guardsman has a 12 Str, 12 Body, and 12 Con. A Bandit's Follower has a 10 Str. In Champions 6E a Street Thug has a Str of 12. A soldier (who doesn't fight much in HTH I might point out) has a STR of 13. I do not think 'noteworthy' is as limiting as you seem to think it is. I think it merely means worthy of note...not rare. So therefore it is in no way odd to assume a soldier in a muscle powered society would have a 12 STR, despite the benchmarks provided. 

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

The example characters use the specific word "noteworthy" to describe a person with straight 10's.  That is a baseline PC, and a Noteworthy person.  Your 12 STR, 6 DEX example (to pick two stats) is likely known for both STR and clumsiness.  "Skilled" gets us up to 13 STR.

 

 

So the reason a charge was a popular tactic was so your men could break their weapons? 

 

from 6e  v2 p 72:  if the BODY damage done to the target exceeds three times (3x) the weapon’s base Damage Classes, the weapon breaks.

At the time we were using 5th edition where the weapon actually took damage against its Body and Def. Or at least that's how I ran it at that moment. 

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

If that's only half of the DCs done to the target, I find it reasonably unlikely the weapon will break.  If the target is not knocked back and it takes full, breaking seems like it could be a real threat (but taking full damage from my own move through is also a threat).

 

For a move by, that 1/3 damage is typically easy to ignore.  But then, a Move By halves base damage.  Rather than halving STR and allowing full weapon damage, my recollection is that we always played it as "compute weapon + STR damage, halve those DCs and enhance with velocity modifer from the mve by".  I don't think that would make the move by more powerful.

For simplicity that's probably how I would run it. 

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

 

I won't lay claim to expertise on medieval military history, but if I look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_(warfare), it suggests my gut feel that cavalry charges were big.  Much of the advantage of an infantry charge seems based on closing more rapidly so you don't get shot at quite so many times, and on breaking the enemy's morale (PRE attack, which also explains why charges were typically also noisy).

 

A lot of this is offset because the charge is cinematic, but I don't find the rules discourage a charge.  Neither do they overpower one.

 

I don't find the charge being overpowered by ignoring the additional penalties for reduced strength. Since the greatest damage bonus is worth less than any accuracy bonus, the double penalty on the maneuver for a weapon user makes the maneuver evern weaker and less likely to be used. I rarely see it used in my game without double dipping the penalty but I feel it would drop to never being used at all if I added additional penalties on top. 

37 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

An "Average Person" has 8s.  That did not change from 5th to 6th.  The starting template for a standard character is a Noteworthy Normal, who has primary stats of 10.

 

6e stats them out on v1 p 440.

 

 

First off, who says that the average soldier was not taking a CV and damage penalty?  How would one objectively compute that the soldier would hit a typical opponent more frequently if he were a little bit stronger?  Do we have objective data from historical battles to demonstrate what percentage of attacks hit, and what percentage missed, in order to extrapolate the typical OCV and DCV of the combatants?

Who says? Most examples of Guards and soldiers statted up by HERO for one thing. We can't objectively compute that soldiers would hit a target more frequently if they were stronger, but we know that people didn't build weapons to be difficult to use. They built weapons that were functional and capable, they built tools that suited their needs, not ones that they couldn't use well. 

To flip it, who says that the Str Min are anything but game constructs designed for 'game balance' rather than modelled on any realistic evaluation of weapon use throughout the ages? This seems a wierd tack to take. 

37 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

While a trained warrior is probably not am "average person", I'm not sure he would be more than "noteworthy", nor a lot stronger than the farmer who labours in the fields all day.

No, but a 12 in a single stat isn't particularly noteworthy. Averages are just that...averages. In the 'common' build there would be a host of people on that bell curve to make that average. Old people, youths, etc. So even among 'average' people you will have people with a 12 here and a 6 there. 

37 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Verisimilitude answer:  Because charging someone and swinging your arm out as you pass (Move By) or crashing into him, shoulder-first (move through) is a lot easier than keeping the pointed end of the stick properly aligned to puncture that same someone rather than just smack him with a stick instead of your arm/shoulder.

And yet charges have been historically the go to by just about every army (that wasn't turtling). If people just fumbled over each other the second the battle lines impacted each other, somehow I don't think that would be true. 

37 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Game balance answer:  Because using a weapon mitigates one of the most significant drawbacks of using these maneuvers,  being the damage taken by the attacker.

Losing your weapon in a charge and having to fall back on a smaller, weaker weapon is a significant drawback. One of my players almost broke his enchanted halberd on a move thru a few weeks ago and he's never bothered to try it again he's so scared the weapon will break (and he's probably right as it only has 1 BOD at the moment). 

And maybe because I primarily play heroic games, but I've yet to see anyone damage themselves from a move thru. They always absorb the stun. 

14 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

So the VPP would cost 22 for the pool + 22 for the control cost.

I appreciate your comparitive breakdown. The powers I envision would be a)much lower in AP and b) more heavily limited (my magic systems tend to have around -2 in limitations at least, before the whole charges question).  With a framework, there is that desire to max every possible power to scrape the top of the AP limit of the framework, while I see this as a few low cost spells (maybe a Detect X for example, or even Night Vision) mixed in with a few higher point value spells (maybe a 10d6 blast). In a framework there would be that desire to push everything up to 11 so it uses the full value of the framework...otherwise you are leave money on the table.

That said...

Does 6E allow you to apply limitations to the Pool cost of a VPP? That's never been the case AFAIK and I don't see it anywhere in 6E1, just applying limitations to the Control cost or the powers in the reserve so you can use more at a time. By my understanding that VPP should cost 82 points.

33 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

IIRC, the discussion in question revolved around the requirement that all magic be cast via an END reserve while all other abilities cost 0 END.  Casters were therefore effectively forced to put "costs END" on all of their abilities (as every other ability in the game was "0 END" automatically) for no point savings.  However, if we want to revisit that discussion, I suggest reopening that thread.

And Gnome's suggestion was taking something that should be a limitation (saving points) and turning it into a far more expensive proposal (an END reserve) which would, in effect, be exactly the same beef (they have to pay for something that normally they wouldn't have to).

Anyway, I have no interest in returning to that discussion. I just found the disconnect 'amusing.' 

27 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Variable Power Pool with charges. Get the list of powers that can be used through it and slap the charges on the pool itself.

That's waaaay more expensive then any other concept I can think of.

It also doesn't really help the problem that some powers need continuing charges and others do not. 

On 2/24/2020 at 11:07 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

First off, why do we assume every soldier has a STR 12?  That's quite a bit stronger than an average guy with STR 8! 

Average guy in what era? In standard Heroic, avg is 10. In Valdorian Age they dropped it to 8 to show how crap sack everything was. Has 6th changed it to 8 for everyone? Default is still 10 when building characters.

Regardless, I picked 12 because I picked a medium spear, the common side arm throughout the majority of human history...which was weilded along with a shield typically. So it's hardly a strange example or weird to think that a trained warrior would NOT be an average person (which would more likely be a farmer or a hunter). 

On 2/24/2020 at 11:07 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

If the choice is "charge or just move and don't attack at all", which should Stan pick?

Move By/Through already have penalties to CV. Why do weapon users have to suffer additional penalties? 

Wow, @Gnome BODY (important!) a downvote? For what?

1 hour ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

You're forgetting why we were complaining and calling it a concept tax.

Oh no, I remember. This sounds exactly the same to me though. In what way would it be different? I have a concept of a magic system that ought to work via charges, but now your suggestion is to pay more points to make it work, especially if the pool was really large and needed to fully recover every day. In what way is your suggestion NOT a concept tax?

14 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Agreed. Which is why I said it wasn't perfect. However, I still stand by my conviction that the HERO System is far easier to balance than non-point-based systems where very little is exposed for deeper examination.

 

Moreover, I trust the work of game designers and playtest groups over the tampering of GMs. Given the amount of heated arguments I've witnessed time and time again between players and GMs over house rules and other GM-induced tweaks and changes to the game (usually D&D), I am forced to conclude that players don't typically enjoy being guinea pigs to untested GM experimentation. It's mostly a trust issue; players tend to trust the rulebook (and by extension, the game designer(s)) rather than the GM, at least when it comes to the rules and game mechanics.

I'm curious what editions you played. Regardless, my own experience has been different and the evidence of 10's of thousands of players signing up to play beta versions of 5E and Pathfinder point to the opposite.

Yes, when the players don't trust the GM or the GM doesn't Session 0 their changes, there will always be problems. But that's a personality issue. 

So I just learned about a study published in in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that looked at the decision making processes of shoppers. They found that when shoppers had to choose between 6 jars of Jam or 24 jars of jam, the fewer choices there were the more people purchased. Decision paralysis is a real thing and having limited scope actually helps most people.

So yeah, giving most people a book that has a game with all their decisions made is far more likely to bring them to the table as it were then asking them to build it themselves. 

8 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

Well if this is your actual construction, then it's a matter of sliding down the ratio until you find the value of a single power with a two-thirds charge.   There's your value.

 

however, if I might ask:

 

Is the multipower actually different powers, or is it one power with many aspects?  I only ask because of that is the case, it may be more appropriate to consider the (from your example) multipower to be _one_ power, then add the other two, meaning three powers with a total of 4 charges, or 1-1/3 of a charge each.  Again: slide down the ratio until you get an appropriate limitation for one power with one charge of 1.33 and you're done: apply that Limitation to all the powers sharing those charges.

 

 

Well, I don't want to do it as Multipower for various reasons, chief being the overhead of how Multipowers work (sharing the reserve, powers turning off when you switch slots, needing to have the same limitations, etc). So its not a MP at all.

Essentially, it's a minor magic system. The character can cast X spells a day and has a list of Y spells that function differently. He can do (for example) 6 spells a day, regardless of which of them he picks. He knows 4 spells but could buy more later that would also share the charge pool.  

While I could force him to buy an END reserve to represent it, last time I opted for that, I got dogpiled for 'taxing' a concept. That's not why I'm doing this differently however, I'm doing it differently because the magic is different for this character than for others and I want that to show that difference mechanically. Unlike a normal caster in my world who can recover their magic juice over time (from their REC into their END pool), this type of magic has a hard limit on it's uses per day. 

Now, having said all of that, I have now seen that a continuing charge doesn't shut off when you switch powers in the reserve, so that makes me slightly more ameniable to the idea of trying to force these abilities into a MP. However, I'm still left with other problems (namely shared limitations, AP limits, etc) so I'm not sure I want to go that route. 

8 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

Equate X Continuing Charges to Y normal Charges.  If 4 Continuing Charges is the same - as 8 Charges, then a Continuing Charge is "worth" two charges. 

If you have different values of Continuing, do this multiple times.  Fractions are likely to get involved, meaning you'll need to inflate numbers or suffer rounding losses. 

 

Alternatively, buy an END Reserve.  You are seriously in the territory where it's easier to say "This END Reserve is 'charges'.  Every # END is a 'charge'.  These powers cost #, #, #, and # 'charges' each.". 

I find that suggestion funny. I mean, sure, it would work. But weren't you one of the people that complained when I mentioned I had build a magic system that required an END reserve?

1 hour ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

No, I'm saying that if you buy 4 powers with 6 charges, you have 4*6=24 charges.  You can use one power 24 times, each power 6 times, or anywhere inbetween.  Thinking more I'd probably tell you to also throw on Unified Power at -0 to pay for the flexibility. 

If this proved to be really effective I'd ask for a recosting.  If this proved to be abused (say, a dozen tiny powers that added shared charges cheaply but weren't used) I'd force a switch over to an END Reserve. 

How does it work when some of the charges are continuing? See, that's the niggle. What if some of them have different values of continuing?

The way I'm seeing this is more like 4-6 powers, with a total pool of charges of 6 spread amongst them, though some of them are instant powers and some are continuing. 

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

You might be able to work out something like this:

Take the pool of charges and then divide it equally among the powers.

For the sake of simplicity we'll use easy numbers.

16 charges / 4 powers = 4 charges per power = -1 Limitation.

Then reduce the limitation by two steps (in this case -(-1/2)) because the pool of charges can be shared and that makes them far more flexible than a hard 4 charges per power.

 

Total disadvantage: -1/2 for 16 charges over 4 powers.

That's something, though I think reducing it two steps over states the value of flexibility (look at the enormous discount you get on Mutlipowers and we don't pay for that flexibility). Maybe +1/4. 

Though honestly I think linked charges should be an additional discount rather than a benefit. Buying charges for each power would give more uses than doing it this way. 

2 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I'd say to buy the same number of Charges on each power, then sum the total number of charges to create the charge-pool. 

I don't really follow.

Say I have 4 seperate powers. 2 Attacks, a Resistant Defense of some kind, and flight. I want to only be able to use them 6 times a day, no matter what combination.

If I'm reading you right up above, are you saying I would treat this as though I had 24 charges, even though using 6 charges one one burns out the others? So this construct which is weaker than just buying each of them with 6 charges I would pay more for?

I feel like have X powers that are limited by Y charges total should be worth more of a discount than simply saying each power can also be used Y times. It is objectively worse. Figuring out how much worse is why I'm asking for input. Right now I'm thinking an additional -1/2, but I'm not sure if that's enough.

To put it another way, why should 4 powers each with 6 charges cost the same as 4 powers that can only be used a total of 6 times a day?

36 minutes ago, Grailknight said:

I'd have no problem with it. We do the same with END Reserve all the time and this concept is not truly different. As for the cost, I'd probably price it normally also.

So you wouldn't give a discount even though the total charge use is less than the actual limitation reflects?

28 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

My first question as a GM would be, if these powers are unconnected, how are they drawing on a central pool of charges??

 

Doc

They are only unconnected in the power framework sense...ie they are each bought separately. Thematically they are connected of course. Maybe they are all powers that shouldn't be in a framework, or have wildly different AP, or the character should be able to use several at once, or the GM has banned multipowers. The reason is irrelevant, but the need remains.

And I am asking as the GM trying to build a concept, not as a player.

Say you had a character with a handful of powers, some instant, some persistent, some constant. You want the character to only be able to use the powers X amount of times per day, but these powers are all separate constructs and not part of a framework. You could divide the charges between the powers as you see fit, and some charges are instant and others might be continuing and last 5 minutes.

How would you handle this?

So, I'm still not sold on Action HERO! as a genre because while I appreciate the lack of needing to establish a world, I still can't point to any really successful games set in the modern era that completely lacked any supernatural element.

That said, I was looking at some books yesterday and found some interesting data. The Basic 6E rule book is about 95 pages, once you dump the power section. Urban Fantasy HERO, which is both a genre source book and a campaign(s...seriously it includes 3 whole settings with their own races and magic rules) guide and comes with an adventure comes in at a little over 200 pages. I think you could look at the Urban Fantasy model and, like them, include 2 or 3 campaign settings in the book (maybe even one with precreated powers) and an adventure in a 200 page book.

This would a) teach the rules in an easy format while also b) showing off the flexibility by showing different settings. As long as you stuck to modern based one, the world detail could be minimal. You could have a) generic action  setting (though honestly I don't know what this would even look like...what is a generic 80's movie setting?) b) a zombie/alien invastion setting and c) a hiddern monster setting (kind of like monster hunter international/MiB/Xfiles) possibly with some psychic rules or a smattering of spells. All of that for around 200 pages.

12 hours ago, zslane said:

 

Quite true. However, I question the play-balance of most of it. The traditional advice given (for instance, by the DMG) for creating new spells and deciding what level they should be is an unhelpful, "Pick an existing spell that is similar to it and base the level on that." It takes an extraordinary degree of experience with D&D, and more than a small amount of good game design instincts, to add new spells, classes, monsters, and magic items in a way that delivers consistently credible play balance. Especially since your new thing won't have the benefit months of play testing by multiple testing groups before use in your campaign. Most players don't like being guinea pigs for this stuff, especially as they discover just how poorly balanced most of it ends up being.

 

While a point-based system like HERO isn't perfect, the mechanism for building things is transparent enough that if you think something isn't quite right, you at least know where to look for the fix. Moreover, if you ever have to justify the point cost of something, you can easily "show your work" and demonstrate precisely why the cost is the way it is. The areas where judgment calls are applied (e.g., Limited Power Limitations) helps focus the lens of debate where it belongs. Naturally, since HERO is a toolkit system, none of this is terribly eye-opening.

 

However, what surprises me, I guess, is the degree to which non-toolkit systems are regarded as expandable (in a reliable, play-balanced manner) just because players have been doing it for decades. In my experience, players have been doing it poorly for decades, mostly because the system in question (D&D usually) is terrible at providing a truly systematic framework to assist in this. Even in the modern era of 5e D&D, it is well established that its CR system is horribly broken past the 7th-10th level power tier.

Just because Hero has systimised it's costs, doesn't mean its immune to play balance issues. And some of it's 'balanced' constructs can be wildly destabalizing to a game, hence all the ! and Stop Signs. Let's not pretend that HERO is perfectly balanced. It isn't. It works within it's assumptions of what is and what should be...but ultimately those are just assumptions, made by a writer instead of a GM or supplement designer. You can just as easily build a broken legal construct in it as you can in any other system and the only thing stopping a monstrocity from seeing play is the GM and their system knowledge. 

I think we just need to point at its inability to satisfactorily create Light and light based effects as a flaw in the idea that its math is somehow immune to balance issues (yes, I know you never said that specifically, but the implication that have a point value attached to something somehow makes it better isn't far off from intimating it). Also the fact that many builds are, due to point cost, effectively NPC only (or only in huge CP games which is something not often run), where as similar constructs might actually be usable by players in other games.

And as to this, "Most players don't like being guinea pigs for this stuff, especially as they discover just how poorly balanced most of it ends up being.", you'll need to show  your work. That certainly not been my experience. And the fact that tons of gamers routinely lap up Pathfinder and 5E's playtest and beta material would seem to point out the opposite. 

4 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

 

It is one thing to "allow" customisation (not sure how they could stop me once I had the rulebooks bought!) and another to facilitate it.

 

Yup, D&D has books you can buy with other pre-prepared stuff in it. 

 

What if I wanted a magic missile that did 1D6 damage?  or 1d4+2 damage?  What level would the spell be?  It is not truly customisable as there are far too many black boxes.  Even though I could customise it, it was purely eyeballing based on experience.  HERO provides a truly customisable experience as the black boxes have mostly been removed.  Most systems have their own black boxes that limit the ability of the GM to really customise options and there One Book Games that we are talking about would introduce their own black boxes.  What would make them different is that the engine within which they were designed is open source and replicable.  Indeed, there should also be a design sheet somewhere online that laid out the detail of those black boxes (even if the majority of people never looked or even wanted to look inside).

 

I would have regular reminders in such books to players and GMs that all the features of the game could be modified using the HERO Toolkit if they wanted to change their game to better suit their group.

 

Doc

 

 

First off, people have been adding stuff to D&D since day 1. New monsters, new magic items, new classes, new spells...even without a design mechanic. The entire OSR is built on reclaiming the DIY ethos, though frankly I think it's erroneous to imagine it ever went away. Yes, the new models of the system are more internally consistent, meaning some attempts at DIY will fall on their face, or just be too complicated to attempt. But you just have to look at the d20 era sourcebook bloat to know that even without a build system people still build new things. So no, that's not really the point.

Regardless, people like new options. They buy books with new options. Sure it's great from a player's perspective that they they don't have to buy new books to build their own stuff, but frankly as a business model goes, those books sell better than any others...even better than adventures. 

A DIY GM is going to DIY no matter what system they run. Hero MAY appeal to them by providing them the tools to do it, but the overhead may not make it worthwhile. 

If ActionHero came out, I would love to see it supported by new setting books/campaigns/adventure paths filled with prefabbed talents/spells/power systems/etc.  Kind of like what All Flesh Must be Eaten did with all it's source books. And each of those not only added new rules and character options, they also came with 2-3 adventures or even campaigns in them, doing double duty as a PC and GM book.  

On 2/29/2020 at 9:58 PM, Hugh Neilson said:

 

I think that there is a lot of scope between old 1e D&D classes lacking any real customization and the full "design it yourself from the ground up" system design model.  I will also note that most threads discussing builds and games encourage the GM to set limits, such that players do not have that "complete freedom" you describe.

 

And I think there are a lot of gamers who may wish to have much or all of the design work done for them, but would still value the ability to pick and choose their characters' abilities, at creation and as they advance, the balance Hero provides and the system under which a Hero game runs.  That can be demonstrated by a game Powered by Hero, such as Brian envisions.

 

Some of those gamers might even value, or come to value, the ability to customize abilities to a greater extent with a mechanical basis behind that customization, or even to create their own game from whole cloth.  They may find Action Hero their gateway into that broader Hero universe.  Other may be quite content to play in Brian's sandbox, and await the next things he adds in an Action Hero supplement.

I think something important to bare in mind, even a 'straight jacket' like class and race game like D&D has been allowing custimization for years. Every since 2nd edition, they've allowed tweaks and choices that meaningfully impact that kind of characters you play (kits), and of course this ballooned in 3.X and continued in 4th and 5th. Players may not be able to build anything they want, but there are so many options, it's not difficult to build something approximating the image they have in their minds eye. Also by presenting cool bits to chop and change around, it gives players options that 'next time I want to play an X, Y, or Z'. I think Killer Shrike's online Hero campaign is actually an excellent example of this...he's created so many magic systems and character types in his Urban Fantasy game, that if I bought it as a book I would be drooling at the opportunity to play all the different builds. I don't know why, but for me at least, this is more engaging than knowing ahead of time I could just make anything I want. And I'd say I'm not alone in this, based on the success of games that do just this. 

I only mention this because a lot of people who seem to be talking about the surperiority of HERO over D&D and it's ilk seem to forget or be unaware that they long since moved away from 1E's 'every fighter is the same except for their magic items' model. Note, I'm not saying this about you Hugh, just your first comment reminded me that the needle has shifted a loooong way since 1E, even if the 'build it yourself' mechanic isn't present. 

So a PbHS approach could work by presenting new and fun options, pre-created for players to pick from, but let's not pretend that the competition is still treading the same ground it did 40 years ago.