Joe Walsh

One thing to remember about The Golden Age of comics. Writers usually did not concern themselves with the science behind the superpowers they give there heros and villains.

You're not kidding!  In anticipation of Darren's new book, I've been trying to educate myself on Golden Age superheroes. Over the weekend, I read the first issue of Zip Comics that featured Steel Sterling: Man of Steel. His origin story is quickly related: his dad was gunned down by gangsters, so he set about learning chemistry so he could harden his body against bullets. After years of study, he finally douses his body is some chemical mixture, then jumps into a vat of molten steel, and emerges with skin as hard as steel. He still looks normal, but somehow now has metallic properties. You know how he gets around? By rubbing his hair vigorously until he builds up a magnetic charge, then using that to attract himself to the power lines, and thereby zipping along as quickly as electricity!  

When my wife read that issue, she said, "That's so awesome!!"  

I hate to be "that guy" but...it's Artemus, not Artemis.

Eh, just call him Arty.

Or is it Arte?

Without standing up and going to look, I am pretty sure that both characters were Stated out in Western Hero. Probably renamed to prevent lawsuits.

Interesting! I'll have to pull that off the shelf and take a look sometime.

I loved that show, growing up.  

I remember stating up James West and Artemus Gordon for Champions...2e, was it? Or maybe 3e. Anyway, back in the 80s.

I don't have those character sheets any more, but I do remember that Artemus Gordon ended up costing more CP than Jim West did, and being surprised by that at the time.

Anyway, it is a good show, particularly the B&W episodes.

re Flashlight

 

Couldn't you write it up simply as this:

3 Nightvision, Transmit (7 Active Points); OAF (Flashlight; -1)

 

It allows everyone to see in the dark in a regular sight radius. Probably should be limited further to reduce the range of sight, but that's what a flashlight allows someone to do, see in the dark.

I can hear players from campaigns long past (teenage years): "But flashlights can briefly blind someone, too! And they work as clubs! Why can't I do those things with your Hero flashlight?" 

To me, there may be some fiddling that can be done to make the system a bit smoother around the edges, but I think you'd have to move to something else entirely to get it to be dramatically simpler.

You could remake it as a system that deals with gross effects only, for example. All the little stuff would just be free SFX.

Alternatively, a pure narrative system could be much simpler. Start asking what the story effect is, rather than worrying about having enough mechanical bits to affect in just the right way to simulate something.

But at that point I think we're back to talking about killing Hero to save it.

Was this a recent link or something a few weeks/months old?  If the latter it may have expired.

 

HM

I was going through the files I'd downloaded, and couldn't find the 1988 PDF. So I looked through my email folder on it, and couldn't find an email with a link, either.  So, that's why I brought it up here.  Michael got it sorted out, so I'm all good.

Hmm. I followed the link Jason sent me, and then had to install Dropbox to get access to the files, and then had to give Dropbox privileged access to my computer for it to work, and then...all I can get access to are files with lock symbols on them, even if I copy them to my computer. Is this what everyone else experienced?

Jason shared via Dropbox on 21-Mar-2016. Dropbox sends an e-mail with the link.

Thanks! Jason got in touch and re-sent the links. Dunno how I lost those.

I never did get the original Strikeforce PDF even though I was backing at that level. Was there an email at some point?

<dreaming>I'd love to see a Harn Hero product line.</dreaming>

Reminds me of the women who eat the placenta after they give birth.

Ever grab a grown lizard-man's tail, Joey?

And we've not even begun to discuss Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. and his (later) adventures.

YES but this IS a RPG. It's a way for people to live out a fantasy. So if it's really centered about heroic white guys with no others being as heroic. It really kills the feel for me and depresses me. It's the opposite of fun

 

YES I KNOW that I can run games where the whole team isn't white and a bunch of them are women. The point is having representation IN the supplement.

It was just an attempt at a joke.  Sorry it didn't come of as clearly as I wanted it to. I should have mentioned the yellow guys, maybe.

Well, see, it was a war between people who believed in equality for all white guys, and people who believed in equality for only some white guys, so...

Thedoree Roosevelt couldn't practice judo if he wanted to, with his polio weakend body and all (you need to be able to have good legs and moving hips to throw someone, even if your only redirecting there own momentum). Beyond that, why not?

You're thinking of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Theodore had a very active lifestyle.

And free basic rules in pdf (no artwork).

That's a biggie in today's market: the lack of a free Hero System ruleset. There's no Quickstart, no SRD, no Lite edition...there's just stuff that costs money. So we have an RPG that is widely seen as very difficult to use, yet no one can download a copy to see for themselves without spending money. Why would anyone want to spend money on a game they "know" is difficult to use?

Hasn't been edited yet, so I don't have an answer for you. Almost certainly north of 200 pages, depending on layout and similar decisions maybe more like 250-300. If anything gets cut that's worth reading, it'll go into the annex PDF. dw

Nice not to have to stick to a given page count!  "Okay, we need to write a 128-pager on this..." isn't always a ton of fun.

Did I miss a reference to page count? I can't find it on the Kickstarter.

I wish Marvel would learn to make fun movies like DC makes.

I Disagree with the idea of Stand Alone (rules included) supplements. There are many successful roleplaying games that have separate rulebooks from World books. I would like World books that have all of the abilities pre baked into the product. ie a Supers world with all of the powers pregenned with the apropriate power levels for the game etc. Fantasy Worlds with fully fleshed out Magic Systems etc. A set of Pregenned PC's. Also all world books should have a built in Campaign Adventure arc (See Savage World's Adventure Paths and Pathfinder's Adventures)

I DON'T want to see powers disappear from the toolkit. Every time this has happened, it has increased the difficulty of creating characters.

I think a lot of people could get behind having pre-built stuff in the genre books, and the full powers system in some other document. 

However, I don't think that everyone who plays Hero should be asked to buy a book with the powers system in it. It just seems too intimidating to people. They need something simpler, with just the rules used in play and the simplified character creation with pre-built stuff to choose from.

So that leaves us with one document with the powers system, a bunch of genre books with pre-built stuff, and then the rest of the rules either in those genre books or some third book. I think it'd be an easier sell to put the rules in each genre book, but doing it the other way could be made to work, too, I suppose.

Ah, I see where you're coming from.

You're right, I'm not aware of any RPGs that treat social conflict with the same amount of crunch as Champions combat. And all the games that do offer more-than-usual crunch in the social arena most likely have not sold as many rulebooks as Champions/Hero alone...in aggregate.

The nice thing is that the Advanced Players' Guide offers some additional crunch for the social stuff, for those who sometimes have a use for it (such as myself).

Right, well that's where everyone's latent desire to be a game designer comes into play. Rather than wait for someone else to design a workable system, they should design a workable system themselves. Necessity is supposed to be the mother of invention, and given the number of RPGs that most gamers have played, there is certainly no lack of existing systems to draw ideas from.

 

I'm more inclined to believe that the demand for such mechanics has been too low to fuel the necessary development. Noone's homebrew system (for this sort of thing) has ever garnered enough critical praise to become a standard. You gotta figure that if you put enough gamers on the task, eventually something successful (and enduring) will emerge, but in 40 years nothing has.

I'm confused, though. There are many RPGs out there that have systems for handling social conflict and the like. Or are you restricting it to some subset of RPGs -- ones that make the top 10 list of best sellers, or something like that?

Throwing practicality to the wind, I'd prefer they take the Runequest route and go back to an earlier edition (4th) and re-release a cleaned-up and errata-fixed prestige edition of the BBB to remind the RPG community of those times. While that's going on, they can work from that bugfixed 4e base to build the 7th edition -- a simpler, clearer, more modern Hero System. And then take a left turn and start producing all-in-one books like the 3e days -- Champions, Modern Action Hero, High Fantasy Hero, Space Opera Hero, etc.

More realistically (but still in the realm of fond wishes, given the status quo), I would like to see 6e1/6e2 reprinted (with the known errata fixed) and then a line of all-in-one genre books for 6e produced that would just have pre-built stuff and a pointer to 6e1/6e2 for the complete powers system for those who are interested.