Joe Walsh

Oh if only a doc like that had existed for 6e (or if I'd found it sooner?) -- it would have saved me a lot of the expansion time/effort regarding the 2-page summary.  That said, I've got a LOT more detail in what I created -- enough that it could probably be combined with a 5er set of rules to allow one to play a 'frankengame' that matches 6e.  That wasn't the intent of creating it, and I will not use it that way (but I may use it as a quick reference, myself); it is, however, a danger if it's published ... which is why I won't go there.

I understand. Still, if you ever have the time and you're feeling generous, creating a 5e-6e doc that's similar to the one Chris Goodwin did for previous editions and making it available would help the next person out. Just a thought, since you've already done the work exhaustively detailing the differences.

I'm glad you were able to put together what you need.

I imagine something like this work comparing 1e-3e with 4e and 5e should be OK to publish.

#8. Because in some jurisdictions it's still illegal to kill idiots.

The episode was OK, but the writers still have the characters being idiots.

Barry and Cisco decide Wells-2's daughter's life is worth abandoning their own city for a while and leaving it at the mercy of whatever metahumans come along while they're gone -- which may be forever if they get killed or trapped on the other side!  Fine. Then they get to Earth-2 and Barry is more interested in going out to dinner than in saving Wells-2's daughter, while Cisco is trying to find himself instead of trying to find Zoom. And when Wells points this out and asks Cisco to get on task, Cisco rolls his eyes! Are these characters 14 years old? The sure act like it!

Oh! I didn't know there were still a few 4e books in the Hero Games store. Thanks for that!

I remember seeing the 4e book PDFs being sold on floppy disk back in the 90s at GenCon...

I have experience writing and editing. Time availability will depend on my work schedule, but I'm willing to devote what I can to the project.

I have writing and editing experience and can contribute some time to this project.

The issue with actually putting together a product like this is that Writers, Artists, Printing etc costs money. Money that wouldn't be immediately returned for a free product. I don't think the company has the cash to do such a product. Perhaps if they ever did a Plot Point style Campaign book funded via kickstarter, they could do the introductory adventure as a stretch goal or as part of the main product. 

True. Honestly, at this point I don't expect Hero Games to do things like this. It'd be great, but it seems obvious that such things just aren't in the cards right now. They're in survival mode.

Perhaps one or more fans could get together and web-publish it, though.

This should get you started:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/153-champions-complete-converting-characters/

If you ever do that for weapons, let me know.

Will do.   The plan is to do it for everything, but I fear I'll be well into retirement before I finish doing my complete analysis.

Jason looks to be trying to get a lot of 4e and 5e material out in PDF, so there's that.

Apparently I've already used up my quota of Likes for the day (what can I say, Hero attracts smart people), so I'll just say "Great!"  I'd love to have my 4e collection in PDF format some day. Heck, I'd like to have all the way back to 1e in PDF format some day. But, I'm that kind of guy.  (I spent part of my weekend going through every version of Hero System ever published and typing the skills listings into a spreadsheet, noting when skills were dropped, changed names, etc. Why? Because it's fun! No, really. Why are you looking at me like that?)

To get us back on track, we're at 384 backers and $24,230, with 21 days to go. Less than $6k to full color!

In addition. no other company produces back-dated material. All D&D material for 5E, all Shadowrun material is for 5E, GURPS is for 4E, Savage Worlds is for the newest edition. Same with all other systems.

The nice thing these days is that, in most cases (including Hero) companies sell one or more previous editions in PDF format. So you can still get all that stuff if you prefer an earlier version, and your players can pick up their own copies if they want, etc. Heck, D&D's available in PDF format all the way back to the 1974 booklet edition now. You can get almost everything ever produced for any version of Traveller (including third-party products).  And of course Hero still sells lots of 5e things in PDF and/or hardcopy.

It may be disappointing that new stuff's not coming out for your favorite edition any more, but the great thing about RPGs is that making up new stuff is part of the game. Buy the new thing and translate it! Make your own version! It's all good.

Ah, I gotcha. Tho I'm not sure you could boil Hero down below the Basic book level and still have it make any sense. But you might be able to go the other direction: sell some pre-built material without showing all the math - more like a ton of Talents than Powers per se - and then point them towards the "Advanced" rulesbooks once they get hooked and want to roll their own.

Yup, that'd be the way to go.

People really need to let go of the idea that new players care about the toolbox. You DON'T NEED the power construction parts of the rules for newbies. You present a number of pregenerated powers at a specific power level (ie DC 12 give or take 12pts). Include common powers such as blast, Force Fields, Flight, TP, Strength, TK, Expanded Senses etc. Present all of the skills, perhaps only including 8, 10and 12pt skill levels  (6e costs here, 5e would be 5, 8 and 10pt skill levels). Include Multipowers and some limited limitations (ie Focus, OIAID etc). Perhaps present the advantages and Limitations as adders and subtractors (ie Robot Warriors). Keep the math simple. trim the combat maneuvers chart (ie Move through, Dodge, Block, (remove move by), show any damage change as subtraction of DC. Ignore Endurance. Present the SPD chart as an optional rule, assume that all PC's are spd 4. Perhaps include a extra attack power (ie 1 extra attack every other phase is 20 pts and 1 extra attack every phase is 40pts)

 

Mention that Champions Complete (and FH Complete) include more powers and more ability to customize. Include a document with CC that shows how the various powers are built with the full powers rules and how all of the powers can be further customized by using the extra options in CC.

Sounds great! I like that you dealt with the speed chart, too. I'll bet this Starter Champions and the starter campaign outlined in the other thread could bring in some new players.

This one would take some real work (although we do have a pretty big database of pre-built powers already, so that'll help). Even so, it seems worth doing. I wonder if the Hero folks would have any interest in such a project, or, if not, how difficult it is to get a license to produce things for Hero.

Making it compatible with the Basic book is problematic, due to all the good stuff they intentionally left out of Basic. But I agree with the rest.

It's probably not all that important to support Basic anyway. CC's the horse they're riding on these days, so it's probably best to focus support on that.

Sounds good. Make an inexpensive PDF with POD option, and ensure it's compatible with the Hero System Basic Rulebook as well as Champions Complete, and it might sell some books.

They did; it was called Sidekick in 5ed, or Hero System Basic in 6ed. I don't know how well they sold, but I sure don't get the impression they brought in a lot of new players.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was thinking of something like GURPS Lite, which is not only a simplified subset of the GURPS Basic Set but is also free. Sidekick and Hero System Basic are indeed subsets of their respective full rulesets, but I don't think they're something that Hero can really give away since they contain the whole powers system that is the heart of Hero. There wouldn't be enough reason to go from the free product to the full product. Unless, of course, the point is just to sell such people on genre books and the like. And maybe that would work. I just don't have the data, unfortunately.

Well they do allow, even encourage, plenty of 3rd party campaign/adventure books, but you still have to buy the core rules from Hero. Which probably makes sense: Hero's big selling point has always been the rules themselves, so letting others publish their rules through an OGL-type arrangement would be giving away the store.

I agree. I don't think an open license would be of benefit, either.

I have zero insider knowledge other than what Jason, Steve, et. al. have occasionally expressed here. But the sense I get is they realize Hero's main appeal is to people who like to create their own campaigns, so they have decided to focus on their strengths. And there's some logic there: people who like Fate aren't going to be attracted to Hero just because we make it 10% easier, whereas "watering down" the rules risks alienating their existing fans. So it's kindof a Catch 22.

 

That's why I like the idea of an "Introductory" campaign book that was proposed in another thread, where all the world-building and decision-making is already done for you. You don't have to simplify the rules, just help the GM with some of the initial heavy lifting. But that's a different thread.

That is a very common problem: do you appeal to your core (but shrinking) audience, or seek out a new one and possibly alienate your current audience. It's a tough call. Certainly in the case of the type of sales that even a very successful non-D&D RPG can generate, it's probably not a bad idea to keep appealing to one's core audience. But there may be other possible avenues for growth. It may be that NuSoardGraphite's idea of something that hides the Powers system could work as a free introductory product. It all depends on whether the Hero System has anything compelling to offer modern gamers aside from the Powers system, really. If that's all Hero really brings to the table, then yeah, there's not much they can do but keep selling it as-is.

They could easily give away a free version of Hero Lite that has the very basic game system, the characeristics, skills and a couple of dozen Talents with the build mechanics hidden from view. But all the detail, combat options and power construction requires the full book to learn.

I think something like that might well work. I'd add in a Social Combat system from APG II as well.

The folks at Hero must have considered a "Lite" product at some point. Or a "Powered by Hero" product like Hugh mentioned. Either seems like it would help. I'd love to know more about the company's thought processes and market strategies some day. Maybe they're just holding out as best they can, hoping the wheel will turn in favor of relatively complex games again some day.

But what about all of Aaron's notes?  That's got a huge value all by itself.

True. That would solve the page count issue. But we're still left with the "Ugh, math." issues, the relatively complicated character creation issues, and the combat issues (particularly the speed chart). Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but those are the kinds of things that it seems like people are thinking about when they ask on other boards for suggested superhero RPGs then immediately say, "But not Champions/Hero System."

To solve some of that, a product could offer something along the lines of templates/package deals in a limited number of Superhero archetypes. Add some pregens and a nice introductory campaign (like the above-cited one in the BBB, along with the intro adventure from the same volume) and maybe we'd have something. You'd still be left with the speed chart, but maybe that'd be enough to get people to try it.

Other than, of course, the "Oh, it's Hero System. I already know I don't like that/heard it's too complicated/etc." baggage from previous editions that wouldn't be resolved without a massive outreach campaign of some sort.

And I should make clear that I think what was done with 5e was necessary. I'm not running down the work that Steve did. Adding all those explanations was a huge help to a lot of people and removed the need for a lot of GM rulings and house rules. And 6e made some changes that went a ways toward improving and even modernizing the system (in the sense that Comeliness and Seduction were holdovers from a prior era, at least in my view), while retaining the page-count-boosting explanations from 5e.

One other note: GURPS faces similar issues and baggage, and a number of users have stepped forward to do something about it. The folks at SJGames, from the writers and editors on up to CEO Phil Reed, keep things reasonably transparent in regards to the market forces they're facing and what their plans are. On the SJGames board, the CEO posts an annual "Stakeholders Report" that sets out goals for the coming year and reviews how they did at meeting the prior year's goals. Pretty amazing for a privately held company. And then the CEO makes himself available for customer questions and answers them as forthrightly as he can. Out of that came an effort by fans to raise GURPS' visibility by using their blogs to write about the game. Now, every Thursday is GURPS Day, when a dozen or so blogs get updated with new GURPS content. It remains to be seen whether it will have any effect, but it is an interesting experiment and a great way to involve the fans in the success of their favorite game.

An advantage for the GURPS fans it that the free GURPS Lite exists. They can point people to it as an easy entry point. Hero can't really do that, I think, because while GURPS is basically a huge list of attributes to be purchased (a list that can be massively cut down for a free version, leaving a good reason to buy the main product while offering a free and simple entry point), I don't think you can cut down Hero to a free version that wouldn't essentially give away the store. The Powers system just won't allow for that.

Ah, well.  Maybe we can hit on something else that will work for Hero.

I see where you're coming from regarding two-book RPG design, but is that really all that common outside of D&D? GURPS and Hero both use it in their latest incarnations, but have more than a handful of others in the post-saddle-stitched era?

Aside from that, it seems like a lot of people want simple RPGs these days. Here, I'm talking about people who aren't solely in the market for D&D (a niche within a niche). And a lot of them seem to want free (or at best, cheap) more than anything else. And with the proliferation of RPGs, they can get it -- legally. You can get an enormous number of PDFs for nothing or close to it, from the latest stuff to grognard favorites like B/X D&D. And nearly all of them are low on page count compared to Hero.

I say that as someone who loves Hero and has shelves of the stuff, from 1e all the way up to CC & FHC. It's just that as I look around at the market and listen to what people say, it seems pretty clear to me that what the segment of the market Hero might reach wants is something about as complex as a decent Euro board game and that costs no more than $10.

Hero can't really compete in that space. Not without providing a product they've never provided before, anyway. And maybe not without remaking Hero System entirely.

I like to think of it as being at 43% and rising.

Woo hoo! It's 75% of the way to being funded!

going from 1st/2nd edition to 3rd edition is where we get some really exciting changes.

Sounds like a job for Super Flowcharter and his sidekick, Annotation Boy.

(I keep wanting to go back through all that old stuff and track the changes. Because I'm that kind of nerd, ya know. Maybe after I retire, I can write a scholarly work on the evolution of Hero System.)

This version of Cat is easily my favorite character on the show.

Same here. She's awesome.

The palindromedary recalls that at the last GenCon I went to there was someone still using FIRST edition - he thought it was perfect already and didn't even care to look at anything that came later.

Hmm. Someone should start a thread about the advantages and disadvantages of moving from first edition to second.