Joe Walsh

Here's the latest version of the origins-of-5e file, updated to include things that originated with the house rules document Aaron Allston shared in 1995 and the Fuzion rules. I looked into these two additional sources when I noticed that Steve Long referenced them as the origin for some of the new stuff in 5e in his "A Peek at the Fifth Edition" Long Shot column from Haymaker #18 (1998). HERO System 4e Modernization Supplement.docx

Since some of the other classic games have gotten premium reprints in recent years, I've dreamed of having the option of buying a reprinted 4e Champions BBB hardcover that's not from page scans (other than of the artwork) but from a modern recreation of the original layout -- with all errata integrated. It would require paying someone for data entry, copy editing, and layout, at the least. Last time I knew anything about those costs was in the mid-90s. Does anyone have an idea of what getting such a project ready for printing would cost these days? It would be so great to have the BBB (and ideally all the 2e and 3e games) available again as though they were brand new, not just for those of us who use them regularly, but for people who fondly remember them and any gamers who may prefer the approach of an older edition. It would also possibly raise HERO's profile a bit in the wider gaming community. I can dream, anyway.😁

Finished S1 of Deadwood (HBO Max). The season was very well done, and although it started weak, it gained strength throughout the season. Well worth watching! Finished Station Eleven (HBO Max). I'm sorry I kept watching this one. It started good, but became more ridiculous as it went along.

Wow, it would be great to be able to finally be able to buy a copy of each!

Sure, that's the defense they all retreat to...because it's true. It's what Alex Jones says when he's hauled into court, it's what Limbaugh said on the record publicly and repeatedly as far back as the 90s. These political commentators are all entertainers, and as such are only as beholden to the truth as any random wanna-be comedian on an open mike stage. Which raises the question -- is it a net good for society to allow such people prominence in our political discourse? My parents are completely hoodwinked by Maddow. My brother-in-law was for years a "ditto head" and now is an Alex Jones acolyte. Plenty of folks see frozen dinner scion Tucker Carlson as some sort of regular guy hero, telling the truth to the masses. But he's just an entertainer (tho it does raise questions as to his purpose to Fox, given the tiny number of advertisers remaining on his show). Is this a beneficial political environment we've allowed to grow? Is the effect that people are entertained, or that they become herded into camps that are beneficial to the wealthy and powerful? The answer seems clear to me. But as to what to do about it now, given the internet, I have no idea. Sure, we could restore the Fairness Doctrine to broadcast and maybe cable/satellite (any such moves would of course be bitterly fought in court by the media oligopoly, and our current supreme court seems unlikely to uphold much restriction on major corporations). But on the internet? The only way I can see to do that would be by further encouraging consolidation of services to a manageable number of megacorps and outlawing any 'pirate internet' sites. That's already where we're heading, but I don't think hastening its arrival will help. The corps who own those consolidated services will just go to court and politicians and get what they want, like all megacorps do in our incredibly corrupt system.

Watched the next-to-last episode of Station Eleven. It was terrible. Looking forward to when the last episode is over.

It's surprising how many of the 4e books I consider essential have his byline.

Yup. Forty years ago, I didn't know about game design issues. We just played games and if they were fun we kept playing them. Thirty years ago, I'd fiddle with any issues I found and try to fix everything. I considered it part of the hobby. But only rarely was a game design and its flaws amenable to fixing one thing without breaking one or more others or doing a total redesign...that would have its own issues. These days, I try to run as close to RAW as practical, only applying fixes to issues that have a negative effect on our actual gameplay, and even then only when there's a simple fix that doesn't break anything else. I can applaud the folks still trying to comprehensively fix RPGs that were designed in the paleolithic era, and I can even empathize with them and cheer their successes, but in the end I want a fun game at the table, and all my favorites provided that back before I knew how to recognize game design issues.

The first episode of Moon Knight shows promise.

I'm so sad to hear that, of course for his friends and family, but also for the RPG community. Seeing his byline on a product told me that it was going to be great. What a loss for the community. Thankfully his RPG legacy will live on.

I updated the file above to fix some typos and add a bit about what the new-to-5e Grab By maneuver is in terms of 4e maneuvers. Also, for anyone interested in a take on 4e to 5e changes that includes much more detail, at the time of this writing TheEmerged's comprehensive comparison from way back in 2003 is still up: http://theemerged.blogspot.com/HERO425.htm

Right! It's the final step in the "Longevity" progression.

My current project is to address the few real issues 4e has by making as minimal changes as possible, so I'm not sure I want to go that far right now. That'd be one way to have handled it! As an aside, I ran pdfgrep "HA " on *.pdf in my 4e folder and came up with not a whole lot of usage for HA. Then I ran it in my 5e folder and got way more hits. So I guess, at least as far as official publications go, the HA fix in 5e was a big success, despite the controversy.

I never met Scott Bennie, but I always appreciated his work. His name on a product meant it was going to be solid, inspiring material. I hope he's having fun rolling six-siders in the great beyond.

Hi Bathawk1. 4e's Total Life Support is Self Contained Breating (10 CP), Doesn't Need to Eat, Excrete, or Sleep (5 CP), and all Safe Environments and Immunities (15 CP). 5e's Total Life Support is Self Contained Breathing (10 CP), Diminished Eating (3 CP: doesn't need to eat at all), Diminished Sleep (3 CP:doesn't need to sleep at all), and all the Safe Environments and Immunities (29 CP), for a total of 45 CP. As usual, 5e breaks things down a lot more than 4e, with lots more Safe Environments and Immunities. As a result, those costs are adjusted. Under 5e's Total Life Support, immortality costs 5 CP, which brings us to the total of 50.

As I look back at 4e and what was changed for 5e, I wonder what the effect of making some different design choices would have been. For example, Hand-to-Hand Attack. In 4e, HA cost 3 CP, which misaligned it with the DCs. So in 5e, the choice was made to up the cost to 5 CP, then back it out at the Limitations stage with a required -1/2 Limitation "Hand-to-Hand Attack." An unprecedented move in the design of a Power, AFAIK. Another choice would have been to make the cost 5 CP, but make HA require no END by default. That would have effectively built in a -1/2 Limitation to the previously 3 CP Power, getting us to the 5 CP cost we want so it can align with the DCs but without the awkwardness of a Power having a required Limitation. Is there a strong argument for going with the required Limitation vs. simply making HA a no END cost power to justify the 5 CP cost?

We tried to watch The French Dispatch, a comedy movie on HBO Max. It started promisingly, but just got worse and worse as it went on. In a rare move, we gave up with about 30 minutes left. Episode 7 of Station Eleven finally picked up where the pilot episode left off. It was a fine episode. Too bad it was followed by episode 8, which was just more drek like most of this series. Deadwood continues to gather steam through episodes 7 and 8 of the first season, while The Righteous Gemstones blew the roof off with episode 8 (can't wait to see Ep 9 next weekend).

I've attached the results of my searches for the origins of 5e skills/talents/powers/etc., should anyone be interested. There may be more to be found, but I will probably stop here for now. I ended up approaching the writing of the document from the perspective of, what if you wanted to start with the 4e rulebook and then add all the skills/powers/etc. that 5e has that the 4e rulebook doesn't (not including all the various little Advantages and Limitations sprinkled throughout the text; just the ones that got their own entries in the appropriate chapter), but didn't want to just copy/paste from 5e wholesale but instead wanted to draw from 4e supplements as much as possible. Thank you for all the help and advice! HERO System 4e Modernization Supplement.docx

Sorry, @Ninja-Bear, I didn't write that clearly. I intended that as an acknowledgement of Duke's favored version. I normally run 4e. I used to run it heavily modified by house rules and stuff I imported from other editions, but my current project is to go back to 4e RAW, add rravenwood's extremely helpful compiled errata, then assess anew what I need from the 4e supplements that contain rules (principally Ninja HERO, Fantasy HERO, Western HERO, Almanac 1, Dark Champions, and An Eye for an Eye), and, in light of that, what I really need (not "just in case it comes up" or "but it's cool" like I'm wont to do) from 5e and finally in light of all that what I really, really need from 6e. (Not because I hate 6e or 5e; I just want to only add or change things that are likely to be of great use, and not clutter it up with stuff I think is clever and such like I've done in the past). But if I weren't running 4e? I'd probably be running 3e. The saddle-stitched version (because it lays flat and keeps the rules to a separate booklet vs. the perfect-bound version). 2e was my first, and is of course also saddle stitched, but 3e's layout and typography are so much easier on my aging eyes. (You've been here a long time; I'm embarrassed to say that somehow I never picked up on the fact that you were running 3e. My apologies.) Anyway, before coming up with any house rules, why not look to other editions for clarifications and/or new rules (if you have access to them)? Your example of Leaping is an excellent one. To me, 4e's final Leaping sentence "It is possible to perform a half-distance leap as a half Phase action" is implied by the earlier sentence both 3e and 4e share ("A standing leap is only half as far") so it seems like importing that explicit statement shouldn't cause any problems. Or does that sort of thing cause acrimony in your group?

SCUBA Hero: The site's probably not dealing well with the last part of that link. I think it should work if you get rid of the ? and everything after it.

Good point, they could have handled Reputation like Charges, with positive, negative, and neutral options. Unusual Appearance could have been handled that way as well. That's been obvious since at least when Victory Games' James Bond 007 was released. That game made being ugly and good looking both cost less than it cost to be average looking, since in either case you're more memorable, which is a liability for any secret agent. With HERO, it could have been left up to the player what game effect they wanted for their character's appearance. Rather, what they wanted the most frequent effect to be, since lots of things can be a positive or negative given the right situation (as you point out below). That brings back good memories of the early days, back when we only needed to concern ourselves with The One True Way To Play Each Game when we spent the bucks to be at a gaming convention. Not that people don't houserule today, and not that people didn't send in SASEs asking for an official rulings back in the day, but the One True Way approach does seem to have become steadily more common over the years to the point that the former is less a part of the hobby than it once seemed to be. Speaking of which, as I go through the rulebooks and rule-bearing supplements to remind my aging brain what was newly minted for a given edition, what was changed, and what was carried forward without change (and, not incidentally, to distract myself from Real Life), the books are working against me in frustrating and all-too-familiar ways. 4e: "Here's are nice lists of Skills, Perks, Talents, and Powers. What? You want a list of Advantages? Limitations? Disadvantages? GTFO! Go through every page you lazy bum!" 5e: "Yeah, what they said. Well....OK. I'll give you Function Tables, but they won't be useful for your purpose." 5eR: "(sigh) Fine. Here's your frickin' summary tables." Or: 4e: "I'll make separate chapters for Skills, Perks, Talents, Powers, Advantages, Limitations, Frameworks, and Disadvantages. Then I'll sprinkle a few Powers and Power Modifiers throughout the rulesbook. They'll be like Easter Eggs!" 5e: "A lot of people say eggs are cheaper by the dozen, but if you buy wholesale you can get them in crates of 180! Wouldn't it be fun to try finding that many Easter Eggs?" Or: 4e BBB: "Index? You want an index?? What a loser." 4e HSR: "Well, OK, you can have an index, but not a useful one." 5e: "Here's a comprehensive index. The index of your dreams! But it's in a font size that only an ant could appreciate. Enjoy!" (No disrespect to the folks behind those editions. I've produced enough stuff in my life to know that there are always compromises, and the product is never as good as you would have wanted it to be if you'd had unlimited time and money. Just having a bit of fun after spending too many hours poring over HERO System rules.) I guess that's a good reason to stick with 2e, which is small enough that a list of what's on each page can be kept in your head.

True, prior to 5e (and in 5e) the negative aspect of reputation was handled by the Disadvantage 'Reputation'. But I haven't been able to recall the idea of a positive Reputation that you have to pay points for appearing prior to 5e. It's just such an obvious thing, and 5e mainly compiled the rules that appeared in supplements (and elaborated on most of the rules), that I was just curious whether it was entirely new or something that had appeared before.

I'm glad I could help. Thank you for taking the time to compile and update errata for the older editions!

I'm trying to track down where the Positive Reputation Perk first appeared, and where the Talents Absolute Range Sense and Combat Luck first appeared. As far as I've been able to tell, they all first appeared in the original release of the 5e rulebook. Is that correct, or did they appear somewhere before that (perhaps with different names)?

I just want to say, it's so great to see new products coming out regularly again, thanks in large part to HERO Games' decision to start the Hall of Champions program and HEROphiles' willingness to step up to the challenge of becoming Champions.