On 3/12/2023 at 8:44 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

At some point, I don't recall when but 4e at the latest, I think, the baseline shifted from "Normals have 10s across the board" to "0 point Normals have 8s across the board, 2 SPD, 16 STUN, 16 END and 23 points of skills, perks or even stats higher than 10". I think it crossed over with Everyman Skills; both were aimed at Normals having some skills and abilities, not "straight 10s and nothing else".

Yeah, once we got to 4e Normals definitely had skills and such. Give 'em a professional skill and a hobby skill, plus the everyman skills, and then allow for Goodman-ing the straight-10s stats to gain more points to spend, and you could build a pretty interesting character starting with a standard Normal. Then with 5e's switch to already-Goodman'd Normals with straight 8s, some of that flexibility went away.

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Dont beat yourself up, Sir.

 

There is something good in even those games that seem all bad.

 

I wasnt kidding when I said that we _loved_ the time chart.  We saw it what it essentislly was: the key to super-cheap very-permament Power Destruction and perms-boosts via Adjustment Powers,  but that doesnt mean it wasnt a great idea.  We use it for spells and such when we are doing Fantasy, and even for bits of software when we are doing some,sort of sci-fi.

Did you end up adopting the modified time chart from Hero System Almanac / 5e?

(And please, call me Joe.)

16 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Sorry-  I meant to mention that even MegaTraveller (which I detested) had the best system creation and world,creation of any edition of Traveller.

 

Good even amongst the awful.

Good point. And the starship tour was pretty cool too.

13 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

A lot of what happens in the comics, doesn't work in a game.  Tactics would be completely different; certain glass cannon builds (Cyclops most prominently) would never make it through the first adventure.  The thing we're trying to simulate here is not perfect adherence to comic book stories, but to simulate the feel and sense of the comics.  To make it feel like you're in a comic playing things out the way you would, with your character.

Exactly! I can't imagine how frustrating traditional RPGs must have been for folks who wanted to replicate another medium rather than the feel of it before RPGs tuned to that existed.

4 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

Just as a point of reference, the NBAs 3 point shooting contest gives competitors 70 seconds to shoot up to 25 balls from between 22 and 23.75 feet away from the basket and you also have to move about 70 feet to get to where all of the balls are placed. Most of the participants finish all of their shots within the time limit, so their SPD must be over 4.

Of course, for best fidelity they should also be playing dodgeball at the same time. 😁

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

3e never came anywhere near us.  When the tiny xorner of a craft store drom which we could order games finally closed up (small town story) and the corner shelves were again filled with crocheted dollies, we would find ourselves drivibg from seventy to a hundred and fifty miles one way to get to our "local" game stores.  If no one in that range had it when we made our quarterly pilgrimages, we didnt get it.

 

So we never even saw a 3e to move on toward.   

That makes sense. Hard to upgrade if the new edition isn't available for purchase where you shop!

(Those of us with easier access to RPGs may have bought more new editions of things, but we probably had buyers' remorse more often, too. 😄)

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

What it amounted to was that 4e seemed to be about pulling stuff from other HERO Games (which we were already doing anyway), a few new powers that "solved" problems,we had either already adressed anyway or never actually had because our interpretations had apparently differed from the 4e (or 3e. It would be a xouole of decases before I got a 3e book, so we thiught some,of these changes may have come,from there; no way to know at the time).

You were a lot more thoughtful than I was at the time. It took me until well into the 90s to fully figure out that just because there was a new edition didn't mean I needed to buy it (and if I bought it out of curiosity, that doing so created no obligation to play it to "get my money's worth out of it").

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Points creep and power escalation-  I totally understand the appeal.  But if there is no change in relative power, then it's just pointless.  It is an exercise in trillionairism:  once I have _all_ the money, what is the challenge in using it?  Who can stand against me?

Reminds me of when one of the players in my AD&D group said something like, "Yay, I gained another level...but that just means I'll be fighting tougher monsters, so is there any point?"

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Why move on beyond what was already working great for us?

Wish I'd thought of that before buying AD&D 2e, MegaTraveller, Paranoia 2e, Shadowrun 2e, et al. 😂

(Heck, just seeing the task system in Travellers' Digest and thinking, "Hmm, seems interesting, but it's so much more complicated than what we're doing, and there doesn't seem to be any benefit..." should have been enough to warn me off of MegaTraveller, but I fell for the hype anyway. 🙃)

13 hours ago, Logan D. Hurricanes said:

I had a lot of hopes for this one, but I think I stopped after two or three episodes. It was painfully slow. 

I wish I'd been that smart. 😄

17 hours ago, mattingly said:

For a show with a similar vibe, but quite compelling, I recommend Paper Girls in Amazon.

Thanks!

We finished S1 of Tales from the Loop (Amazon).  This sci-fi show was one of those where each episode is just barely good enough to keep you watching. Every episode was just OK.  We have no interest in watching a second season of it.

We also finished The English (Amazon). Clearly the filmmakers know the history of filmed Westerns and use it to good effect at times. Some scenes are very good. But each episode as a whole was just ok, and the ending of the series was simple and unsatisfying.

1 hour ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I think that was the shared understanding. The question was the meaning of the distance from "10".  When a scientist who falls into a vat of chemicals and gains the ability to fly and project fields of darkness has a DEX of 23 - 26 and a SPD of 5, it doesn't seem like these are being highlighted as superhuman characteristics. That kind of Super in the comics isn't portrayed as super-agile, or hyper-fast.

Yeah, the granularity sure tripped us up. Especially for heroic level / normals. We ended up having to back off and take a more holistic view of all the stuff that makes up a character.  It would have been nice to have something like Normals Unbound or Everyman (not to mention if they'd included a good roster of example characters in each of the 3e heroic games).

9 hours ago, Opal said:

You can.  Enough levels, or the right power set, and finesse the speed chart just a bit...

Even the super-efficient 23/5 is 16 points the 20/4 character can put into 5 martial arts levels, or 4 & a DC, or 2 all-combat if they're more diverse combatants.

 

That works.

DEX/SPD is relative, if everyone backs off a little, you don't miss it. The groups I was in, '84-99 were like that.

Thank you!

(Just having a group that wants to work together so everyone can have fun goes a long way.)

1 hour ago, Duke Bushido said:

Just out of curiousity, am I the only guy who assumed that the blank character sheet-- straight 10s and do Figureds from there--  _was_ the human baseline, and you compared against that and the few examples from the book to decide how "super" your characters were?

We always played it that way because on page 7 of 1e and 2e, and page 11 of 3e, it says, "A normal person is considered to have the base value for each characteristic, on average."

AC/DCs T.N.T. album.

I'd forgotten what a great album that is. I listened to so much AC/DC in my youth that I don't really bother much anymore. Decades later I can still "play" any of their songs in my head, essentially. But I decided to throw on the first side of T.N.T. this morning on the way to work, and I gotta say pulling into the parking lot at work with the title track playing was pretty awesome. Bon Scott was such a clever lyricist, and as a performer he did a great job of selling sexy, or funny, or lascivious, or goofy, or menacing, or whatever an individual song or line called for. Much respect.

Espionage! is the gift that kept on giving.

On 2/27/2023 at 12:52 PM, unclevlad said:

On Haymaker's -5 vs. Kick's -2/-2...-5 DCV makes Haymaker pretty easy to disrupt.  Doing a haymaker, you're a sitting duck...if you're doing it in combat.  It's also very expensive to counter it with CSLs;  they have to be 3 point CSLs or higher, and even -3 DCV is still pretty severe.

52 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

The converse also holds. 

 

A haymaker can be a double fist hammer strike, OR a braced spinning snap kick.

 

A kick can be the above, or a quick jab...a simple Strike, not a haymaker.

 

So defining a Kick maneuver is IMO far more obfuscating than useful.  

That's seems like really solid reasoning. If, as other sections in HSR imply, the 4e Haymaker was intended for more than just punches, then having a separate Kick would have been seen as redundant...until you consider the different OCV/DCV mods. But if the modifiers for Kick were seen as unbalanced vs. the harder-to-overcome Haymaker modifier, that resolves the conflict...and may also help explain why Kick never made it to the non-Champions 3e Hero System games.

We may never know for sure what the thinking was back then, but as far as I can tell that's a reasonable explanation given that it's clear in other ways that 4e needed at least one editing pass by someone who didn't know the game at all.

I'm still thinking of reintroducing Kick someday, though, just to see how it goes.

Flying Tackle (or maybe just call it Tackle) is a shoe-in, I think.

The idea of making Grab and Hold work as Duke discussed is intriguing, too.

I like the idea of a Killing Blow for the masses, too. I just need to think about it a while longer.

On 2/28/2023 at 8:30 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

I advocated for Trip in the SETAC days because a non-MA should be able to Trip someone.  I didn't recall it being in FH.  On a broader basis, most MA maneuvers were things anyone should be able to do, so make non-Martial versions and MA versions are just better at it.

Thank you!

On 2/28/2023 at 8:30 AM, Hugh Neilson said:

To me, Kick went away because it was SFX-specific. You can do a Haymaker with your fists or with your feet, so why is a special maneuver needed? Based on where MA ended up, this would just be -2OCV, -2 DCV, +2 DCs now, extra time now.

That makes total sense. I never did move on from the punch-specific haymaker, but given that the game did, it makes sense to get rid of Kick.

The thing is, to me 4e was pretty clear Haymaker was a punch-specific thing. I understand different people interpret it differently, but the 4e entry itself seems pretty plain to me:

Quote

HAYMAKER
This Is basically an all-out punch, and takes an extra
Segment to execute. If a character states on Segment 6 that
he wants to do a Haymaker, the blow won't land until the very
end of Segment 7, after all characters in Segment 7 have
taken their action. This extra Segment can even allow the
target to move out of the way if he has an action. In this case,
the Haymaker misses altogether.

But, like I say, different strokes for different folks. It's just curious to me that Kick was dropped with the publication of 4e yet they went with the "all-out punch" explanation for Haymaker.

13 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

I think the ones added to 6e were Shove, Trip and Choke.

One of the 6e changes I liked best was the updated Combat Maneuvers. It was nice to see more hand-to-hand attacks added outside of Martial Arts. Heck, I didn't own a copy of Ninja Hero until well into the 4e era, when a local game store had it marked down. It was a little too in the weeds for me. My earlier Classic Traveller experience taught me to be careful about buying expanded subsystems that are used at the table before it's been proven our group needs them.

From the AP article on the Scott Adams issue, regarding the phrase “It’s OK to be white":

Quote

The Anti-Defamation League said the phrase at the center of the question was popularized as a trolling campaign by members of 4chan — a notorious anonymous message board — and was adopted by some white supremacists. Rasmussen Reports is a conservative polling firm that has used its Twitter account to endorse false and misleading claims about COVID-19 vaccines, elections and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Parker Molloy goes into this in much more detail (including links to the 4chan hate channels where this whole thing was born) in her report, "An Overlooked Detail in the Scott Adams Dilbert Story":

https://open.substack.com/pub/presentage/p/scott-adams-white-grievance-dilbert

Looks like Scott Adams is about to transition to a new phase of his life.

‘Dilbert,’ Scott Adams lose distributor over racist remarks

32 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Flying tackle is basically a full move throw sacrifice, a completely reasonable martial arts move.  But its one of those martial arts moves that anyone can attempt: anyone can run at someone and crash into them, taking them both down.  Its 3 points base as a martial artist, plus whatever CV modifiers you apply (full move 3 pts, Throw 1 pt, Both fall -1 pt.  You could probably stick V/10 on that as well for +1 point).  But it really ought to be available to everyone. 

 

I posted a list of 0 point martial arts a while back in order to show how you could build them so that anyone could try just about every martial arts maneuver, they'd just be lousy at it.

Neat! i must have missed that. I'll have to take a look.

32 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Basically yes, but there's no real point.  Its just Haymaker with some different dressing, no reason for redundancy.

Huh. Seems like -2/-2 vs. -0/-5 would present a significant choice to players, but apparently not. Again, wish I could remember what my group's experience was at the time. 🤷‍♂️

2 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

Someone wanting to kick for more damage should simply use the haymaker maneuver.  The old kick multiplying the damage can quickly get out of hand especially in a champions game.  

Sure, but don't modifiers matter (-2/-2 vs. +0/-5)? And couldn't its damage have been modified the same way as the modern Haymaker if it'd been brought forward?

2 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

The flying tackle also gives more than a standard maneuver should give.  I would treat this as a move through and trip.  Basically, I would waive the rule you cannot combine maneuvers in a combined attack for this specific maneuver.  

How so? You do end up prone at the end of that maneuver, which seems a reasonable price to pay for a -2 OCV attack that does normal damage and makes your opponent prone. What am I missing?

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Kick disappeared because martial arts got refined, and it no longer fit in. 

Are you sure? Kick was only in Champions, never any of the other products, including ones without a refined martial arts option. Seems like there was something else keeping it away from the heroic-level games.

It's been so long that, honestly, I can't remember what I thought about it at the time. Was I disappointed they didn't carry Kick forward to 4e, or did it make sense because we didn't use it much? Wish I could remember.

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Note that Haymaker stopped being a damage multiplier, it just adds a flat 4 DCs.  So, with a low-STR character, x 1.5 doesn't do much and it's not even close to worth the maneuver's disadvantages, whereas on a brick it might give TOO much, particularly with early END costs.  A 50 STR brick gets +5 dice, at no END.  Finally, note that 3E doesn't have HA at all.  HKA, yes...but not HA.  

Couldn't Kick's damage have been changed similarly to how Haymaker's was, leaving the option for a different set of modifiers for the same effect?

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Killing Blow is largely similar, and made more sense, based on the sourcebooks you mention, to simply roll into martial maneuvers.  The penalties were justified because killing damage was SO much more dangerous back then.  Also, I agree with CRT...this isn't about breaking bones, it's about hitting vital spots.  Normal damage is about breaking bones first, when they do BODY.

Strangely enough the descriptions of Killing Blow in Espionage, Justice Inc, and Danger International all mention "breaking arms" specifically (in addition to knee drop, throat punch, and kidney strike, which are more like what you're referencing).

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Hold isn't in 3E that I can see;  I see Grab.  

3E Champions? No, they kept that pretty simple. Hold was in Espionage, Justice Inc, Danger International, Fantasy Hero (3e), Robot Warriors, and Star Hero. All also had Grab, interestingly. They existed side-by-side in many Hero games for a long time, somehow.

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

The whole basis of Flying Tackle is wrong...your raw STR doesn't come into play that much.  The martial maneuver makes a lot more sense...2d6 + v/10, both fall. 

Maybe so. I just remember characters attempting flying tackles in b-movies and the like. Often while wearing a three-piece suit and dress shoes! 😄

2 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Basically, I wouldn't bring any of them forward.

That's cool.

Ever consider bringing forward some of the old rules that were dropped along the way?

Sometimes old discarded rules are brought back in the official rules, of course. In 6e we regained the Trip maneuver that was last seen in Fantasy Hero 3e, for example.

The "Kick" maneuver, however, hasn't made it out of Champions 1e-3e. And although "Hold" was used in every non-Champions game from Espionage to Star Hero in the 2e and 3e eras, it hasn't been seen since. "Killing Blow" and "Flying Tackle" were in Espionage, Justice Inc, Danger International, and Star Hero but disappeared with 4e.

Kick: -2/-2, damage x1-1/2, lands at the end of the following segment. So effectively it was another OCV/DCV modifier choice for a Haymaker like effect.

Hold: -2/-2, both stopped. OK, hard to understand why this one stuck around so long, with Grab being better from a modifier perspective AND granting the opportunity to harm the opponent (which Hold does not).

Killing Blow: -2/-2, (STR/15)D6 Killing. Nice to have a killing attack available for hand-to-hand combat in some genres. Meant to simulate bone-breaking attacks and the like.

Flying Tackle: -2/both are prone, x1 STR damage and knock down. This one seems particularly reasonable, given that it's something any untrained combatant could attempt. I believe it's somewhere in Martial Arts now, but I'm not sure it needs to be locked away?

Wow, they sure did like their -2/-2 back in those days!

Have you tried bringing any of these maneuvers back for non-MA characters in more recent editions?

More broadly, have you brought forward any of the other rules that were dropped along the way?

How did it go?

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

You're sure that's supposed to be the future?

Next Sunday.

I'd been hearing good things about Matt "We should improve society somewhat" Bors' Justice Warriors comic book and now that I have the trade paperback that includes the first six issues (plus some bonus content) I have to say it really is pretty danged good. It's set in a dystopian future where a small elite hoard all the wealth while they enjoy life removed from the rest of society. The political leader is both stupid and vain, and is surrounded by self-serving and craven political advisors. Obvious pump-and-dump schemes are perpetrated on the populace without any repercussions. Police see it as their job to protect property at all costs, and will kill any member of the teeming masses who steps out of line.

But despite that wildly improbable premise, the story is very good. And the setting would be great for a Champions campaign. It's hard not to take campaign notes as I read it.

Worth checking out if you're into political comics, dystopian settings, and the like.

(Posted here in the Politics thread because the content is very political. If this isn't the appropriate place, let me know.)

It's cores all the way down.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/24/new-earth-inner-core-layer-metallic-ball/

14 hours ago, rravenwood said:

The last edition (5.10, if I recall correctly) appears to still be generating a lot of errata. 

Ugh! That's too bad. Thanks for letting me know; I don't get over to CotI much any more.

14 hours ago, rravenwood said:

Unfortunately, as well, no one seems to have taken over on the validating and compiling of reported T5 errata since Don McKinney passed away.

He was so dedicated, I'm not surprised no one's been able to step up.

16 hours ago, Old Man said:

I'm wondering how much Hero combat could be stripped down for introductory solo adventures.  It seems to me that the bare minimum (assuming a fantasy setting) are OCV/DCV, damage, armor, and then CON/BODY/STUN.  SPD isn't really necessary since there's only one PC, and the mental stats are likewise not needed in combat.  We'd put all the stats on the character sheet for educational purposes but the above should be all that are really necessary.

 

At this point I feel like a flowchart would be helpful for total newbs--attack, roll to hit, if you hit then roll damage, here's how you read the dice, here's how you figure BODY and STUN.  I'd want to include some maneuvers, though, like Block, Dodge, and maybe Trip--enough to make combat more than an exercise in dice rolling.  Thoughts?

Oooh, I'd love to have a translation sheet so I could easily use HERO with all the TFT and T&T solos. And, sure, the GURPS and D&D solos too while I'm dreaming.

I started down that path a few years ago, but got bogged down in the issue you've identified: making combat interesting without it being complex for someone new to the system.

The premise I landed on was that having tactically meaningful choices to trade off between chance of hitting, chance of being hit, and the amount of damage at risk was what powered many RPGs that had combat systems that were fun and engaging all by themselves over the long term.  There's obviously much more that can be on offer, but those seemed core to me at the time (going from my notes, which include capsule write-ups of a bunch of systems analyzed along those lines (why do I do that to myself?)).

Fortunately HERO has plenty of those three tactical options in the form of Combat Modifiers, Combat Maneuvers, and Hit Location rules. Not quite as clean as an intentionally designed combat simulator like Melee/Wizard and the related GURPS system, but still very good when compared to a lot of other systems out there.

It seemed to me at the time that it should be possible to go with select maneuvers (probably pulling in one or more maneuvers from Martial Arts while collapsing a lot of the standard maneuvers down to the generic attack at +0/+0), add some Combat Modifiers, and call it a day. But I never got further than that.

Whether that's helpful I don't know. Maybe I was way off base or maybe I'm misinterpreting my notes. But, for what it's worth.

14 hours ago, rravenwood said:

I picked up PDFs of T5 when they had a Bundle of Holding deal a while ago.  I can't say I've actually read through it all, but between reading some, doing a lot of browsing through, and then taking the ever-growing and not-uncommonly astounding errata reports on the CotI forums into consideration, I'm left with the impression that T5 is a bit of a hot mess.  I suspect it's probably best as a source of ideas for tinkerers and house rulings.

Undoubtedly!

13 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I appreciate the insight, though, and yes: I will probably buy it anyway when I can find an affordable paper copy.  I have seen it as one book and as three books.  Does anyone know if there is a difference?

The Kickstarter campaign page has a decent explanation, but the tl;dr is that the three-book version is the more recent and theoretically less errata-prone edition. I have the three-book version, but since I don't play T5 I haven't really looked into the errata issues.

Is watching the French documentary "Super-Vilains: l'Enquête" worthwhile? It sounds interesting: "Comic book writers discuss how they make the villains who take on the superheroes." But it's rated 5.4/10 on IMDB and there are no written reviews. HBOMax has it, so I guess I should just give it a go, but I wondered if anyone on here had taken a look?

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

we all have House Rules, many of them not even "official options" in the big pale blue encyclopedia of options.   Mine are neither better nor more interesting than anyone else's, I wouldn't think; they have just grown out of the need to solve problems at our tables. 

Still, I appreciate the peeks you share. It's so fun to learn what other people do with the infinitely interesting (to a few of us anyway) HERO cyclopedia of rules. I have so many text files of saved posts (with attribution of course) that it's becoming unmanageable, yet I still get that thrill when I see someone's new-to-me take. It's a sickness.

2 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

As for Duke's Hero System, that dream vanished in the 90s, when I first got on the internet. 

 

The first thing I did was spend some hours researching the status of Hero Games, became very sad, and then excited by the possible opportunities, gathered several potential backers, and learned that Steve and Company had acquired the rights already, and we're working on something, so I got all excited again-- to the point that when I heard there was a new edition in the works, I ran to my FLGS and demanded he keep an eye open, and that I wanted six copies.  

Ah, the 90s: such a time for dreams to die.

But now I'll always wonder what could have been if things had worked out for your plan.

7 minutes ago, Spence said:

I know a young guy that games at my FLGS.  By young I mean in his 20's, in the Army and recently back from a stint in Poland.  He had never seen Star Trek or really heard of it more than in passing. He was blown away by later TNG and and later DS9.  Yes, the first few seasons of each were a little rocky.  And then I had a good laugh when he tried Disco and came back with a firm WTF happened?

Yeah, not exactly banner carrying stuff.

Did he get a chance to give SNW a try?

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

You want embarrassing?  You should see the look my wife gives me when I am scrolling down threads and come across your name.  Much like the inability not to moo at passing cows, I have to revive the 80s jingle from the tou commercials and sing out " Gee Emm Joooeee!" 

 

I have tried fighting it; my wife has tried avoidance therapy on my behalf (whereby she avoids noticing any attempt to get her attention for the next few hours), but thus far, I am completely unable to not do it. 

 

There.  Now we are even.

🤣

Sorry about that! I'd used "Ransom" for decades because Out of the Silent Planet was the first sci-fi novel I read. As a kid, though, I hadn't realized what the protagonist's name really meant. I kept using that because I was known by it even long after I belatedly realized the meaning, only changing it more recently. On RPG boards I went with GM Joe, since I'm usually the GM and also because I was a big fan of GI Joe as a kid (back when they were 12" 'action figures' who could plausibly make out with Barbie).

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

OH MY GOD, _SPILL_!  SPILL! 

I doubt many are interested in this, and it's definitely off-topic, so I'll spoiler-hide it:

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Okay:  my Classic Traveller collection is far from complete, but I have only recently begun to re-collect what I chunked out years ago (that being 2300, Mega, and TNE, all of which I hated, but Fire, Fusion, and Steel was the single greatest accessory ever published for any RPG, ever, period, even though it was a DGP manuscript, and that irritates like an unsanded seam on a butt plug. (I assume.  At least, it sounds like it would irritate.)

CT stuff is so expensive now! I gave my copy of the Atlas of the Imperium to someone who needed it to produce T4 stuff and never did get it back. Now it would cost an arm and a leg to get a copy in good condition. Not that it's worth anything in play, of course. We have it all on a website now, errata-free. What I wouldn't have given for that back in the early 80s!

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

More embarrassment:  fans of Shadow run talk about how awful the first edition was. 

 

It was the only edition I really liked.   even then, though, the fantasy trappings were not exactly to my taste.  If I want your chocolate in my peanut butter, I will arrange an innocent accident at an aerobics class involving two people making weird snack decisions during their workout; that you very much. 

That first edition was pretty great. We did what we'd always done and fixed the problems we found. It was worth it. 2e worked for us, too. Then I waited in line at GenCon to get a signed hardcover copy of 3e the day it was released (it was so great when GenCon was in Milwaukee which is about an hour's drive from my home) and never used it. Eventually I sold it off, but I still have 1e and 2e!

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Really?   You'd think you would have picked up on that "priceless collection of ancient Etruscan snoods" thing a ways back up. 

Well, it's been a long time.

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Technically, I didn't modify it.  I threw it out completely. 

 

Well no; technically, I didn't do that, either.  I opted not to back port it into my games except for very rare occasions, and decided that Skill Levels-a thing that already existed and already did what skills do- were the way to go. 

 

As an ezample: PS Archery becomes +2 with bows. 

 

KS: Engineering becomes +2 to INT rolls for engineering problems. 

 

Two weapon fighting becomes +4 with off-hand weapon, not to exceed the off-hand penalty. 

 

Area Knowledge becomes +3 to INT rolls about area X. 

 

Skill levels already have costing and mechanics in place for 'everything' to 'large, related groups,' to 'small, closely-related groups' to 'this one thing and no other thing.' 

 

A quick house rule that Skill Leves as Skills can't be allocated to something else-such as CV or extra damage-and it has worked pretty well since 4e came out a few days ago.  Maybe some extensive okay testing will show me why it' s a bad idea. 

 

For Supers and pulp, build straight off the Characteristic roll.  For more 'normal' heroic games, start with 9+ instead of 11+, and for grim, ultra-realistic stuff, start with 7+ Char. 

 

For something screwy, consider averaging 2 or more characteristics and deriving you 'bonus' (the thing after the plus) from that instead of one single characteristic. 

 

It really solves the 'points auck' problem, and retains the option for broad or narrow skills (buy then as 'one single thing, small closely - related group, or large related group, so pricing is' in line' with utility for those to whom that bit matters. 

 

If you are concerned about what else they might spend their 150 points on, the don't give them 150 points.  If you are concerned about what they might spend their XP on, have a talk before hand and say 'look, I am going to try something with this campaign, but it involves reducing awarded XP along the way.  That may or may not change after we have tried it a bit, but for now, we are going to kind of ease into this. 

 

Most importantly, if you are concerned about either of those, you should admit that you have been using skills as a points suck all this time, and let go of that.

Great stuff! Just one question: when are you going to get the time to write up Duke's HERO System for publication by our hosts? It really should be shared. 🙏

42 minutes ago, Opal said:

....Yeah?  But instead of skills? Or even just as a thought experiment around how much should skills cost/how many skills there should be?

 

Like Overall Levels at 10 pts for +1 to anything have been a feature, from Champions 1st through Hero 6th, right? A solid benchmark.

If you think of lacking a skill as a penalty to a roll, like an 11- or a normal 10 stat or general skill, taking a -5 or -8 or -11 whatever conveys that, then an upper bound for "character buys every skill," should reasonably be around 50 to 100 points. (And that fits the very old power design maxim that 50 points should be good, a power you can hang your superhero cape on, and 100pts sgould be just wonderful)

 

Now, I know at some point there was an explicit rule that you can't add levels if you don't have the skill - but, like some other rules about skills, and many skills, themselves - it seems like it's there to justify skills, when they don't really fit the game that well. (And it also sounds like an early iteration of the "buy it the most expensive way" maxim.)  Maybe? 

IDK, I'm just noodling around the wrong side of a long-settled issue.

 

Ah, I think I get it now. Thank you for being patient. It takes me a minute sometimes.

But that's an interesting approach. As @Steve pointed out, we already have a model for "every skill" in the Jack of all Trades skill from Traveller HERO, which puts it at 4 points per +1 (only to negate skill penalties) for all noncombat skills. Under 6e it'd be 5 points for the same thing.

Which implies a broad group like we're talking about would be 2 points per +1 under either edition (rounding).

Hmm.