Joe Walsh

14 minutes ago, Opal said:

But, if not having a skill can be dealt with as a penalty, then having one is the same as levels - and levels have a cost structure that recognizes diminishing returns.  And, y'know, Hero scaling.

Buy Skill Levels for use only with Characteristic rolls when used in lieu of Skills? 4 points for +1 on INT "skill" rolls, 4 points for +1 on PRE "skill" rolls, 6 points for +1 on DEX "skill" rolls? Or am I completely off base?

16 hours ago, Opal said:

And that reminds me that Hero already has Skill Levels, and why couldn't we just use those?

You're right, for decreasing the cost of buying skills in bulk, Skill Levels (and Enhancers) do the job. I just wish many characters didn't have any reason to buy in bulk in the first place. 😄

But the more I dig into it, the better it sounds to just use the existing system differently rather than trying to modify it without breaking something else.

Specifying that for /this/ campaign PS:Whatever includes the ability to know and do everything that the job would require seems like it will work while risking little. Sort of like Wildcard skills in GURPS (but so far without the cost). Hmm. 🧐

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I am not familiar with Supers, save having heard it mentioned in these forums a few times.   I am not shooting it down, of course-- I can't! I know nothing about it. 

 

I know that it is diddifuclt to keep track of the details of what are essentially faceless strangers with a common hobby, so as I soft reminder, allow me to politely state that by and large, Superheroes isn't my bag.  I have, and do still, played _a lot_ of Champions, because after my Travellers /Tunnles and Trolls group broke up (the GM's wife was military, and had been reassigned to anither duty station) way back in '79, the next non DnD group I found was a Champions group, and even if supers was not my favorite, I confess to having a romantic appreciation for clear-cut good guys and dastardly villains, so as long as the story is good, I can play supers. 

 

I was never a comic book kid (gearhead for life.  Even as a kid, I loved tearing into engines and seeing if I could get them running again), so I had no serious self-insertion attraction to the settings or the characters, nor even a serious understanding of the tropes (he was bombarded with radiation and then _What?!! _. No-no-no-!  I think you misread that.  I think you meant gelatinous death via rapid cellular destruction and tissue degeneration.  Or at least cancer, and lots of it). 

 

My preference is science fiction, my hear belongs to Classic Traveller, Cyberpunk is great from the 80's interpretation of the genre, and tied with post-apocalyptic adventures (and what is Cyberpunk but a unique take on an apocalypse of social structure and not just the human race/?).  You heard that right: I loved Gama World despite it's absolute goofiness (up until the garbage that was 3e),  had a love/hate relationship with Aftermath, and all of our Car Wars games were straight up Mad Max.  There were two dozen other failed post-apoc games on the shelves, and I tried most of them. Pulp action is fun, but the people who really "get it" started dying off twenty-five years ago, and I can get into a well-realized non DND fantasy game. 

 

Then, after all that, comes superheroes and war gaming, in a constant switching of which I would prefer in that moment. To be fair, war gaming would win more consistently if I wasn't terrible at it. 

 

After all that there is going to work, complete social isolation, self-mutilation, and striking my thumb with a hammer.  Just beyond that there is DnD, and finally, when self-torture starts to seem sort of pleasant, there is LARP. 

 

After that is taking a third job, then bobbing for French fries, eating okra, and then military RPGs.  Those games where you are not your own agent and are tasked with goals in which you have no actual interest, and then get shot and die.   It's like the retail industry simulator; why on earth would I want to do that to relax?

 

Finally, at the bottom of the bottom, like the earth beneath the feet of the elephants that support the world (unless you are one of those who believes it is just more elephants all the way down forever, you heathen, you) , there are collectible card games. 

😂 OK, that's hilarious. Are you sure you weren't a humor columnist in another life?

Glad to meet you. I'll try to remember your proclivities, but honestly it can take me as much as a year of repetition to remember people's names even when I interact with them regularly in real life, so I won't promise anything. I'll undoubtedly embarrass myself at least a few more times. Fortunately we're not far off in which genres we like, so maybe I'll do better. I'll sure try.

Your view of Traveller sounds very similar to mine (I run mixes of the editions put out before Mega, but like you I stick with book 1 chargen; even though I was part of the crew brought in to try to save T4 from the mess it initially was, none of the post-Classic editions have been long-term favorites of mine). I, too, was a fan of Gamma World pre-3e (long live the artifact system -- well, longer than some of the characters who used it, anyway! 😂) As far as cyberpunk, I liked the Shadowrun flavor best, but R. Talsorian's game was fine too. (Yet somehow the "rocker" thing always made me cringe.)

As far as supers, I became a fan of that later than most: senior year of high school (1986). One of the guys I was friendly with at school introduced me to Marvel's Strikeforce: Maurituri, a comic set in Marvel's "New Universe" (something they launched with much ballyhoo but it died ignobly not long after).  Before that I'd only had a brief childhood fascination with reruns of the 1960s Batman show. I'd never picked up supers comics at all. But Strikeforce intrigued me. Its heroes were regular people who chose to join a military force to defend Earth against alien invaders...and who therefore voluntarily underwent a process that would give them each one random superpower...but that process would also ensure they'd die within one year. So you had great pathos built in from the start, plus an ever-changing cast of characters -- not one of whom had plot armor. Quite the reverse, actually. And, as one character pointed out, there were no guarantees: you could end up with the superpower of cutting lawns perfectly evenly and then die an hour after you got that power. C'est la vie!

The funny thing is that up to that point I was our group's most popular GM and members of the group were comic fans who wanted very much for me to run a superhero game. So I'd been using Champions to do so for a few years at that point, faking it until I could make it. That got a lot easier after picking up Strikeforce and then a bunch of other comic tiles not long after. But up until then, running Champions was probably the hardest I've ever worked at being GM. 😅 (TSR's Marvel Super Heroes helped a lot when it came out in '84; it not only had some pretty decent adventure modules adapted from comic book storylines, it also had a multivolume printed character database with full stats that I spent a lot of time poring over).

On the other hand, I'm sorry but I have to disagree with you on okra. I ate a lot of fried okra growing up, and I still enjoy it immensely when I can get it. My wife hates the stuff, though, and I rarely bother to make it just for myself. (Fried green tomatoes, too -- loved those growing up, still love 'em, but my wife doesn't care for them at all so I've had them maybe once or twice in the last 30 years.)

15 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

The shorter version of all this is the alternate ways to play superheroes really aren't on my radar at all, but if I find an inexpensive PDF for Supers, I might check it out for the skills system. 

I may be able to save you some trouble. The free Quickstart doesn't give details of the "Aptitude" (skills) system unfortunately.  And it looks like the core rules PDF's going for $10 these days. Probably not worth buying to see the Aptitude system, honestly! You'd just get a list of "aptitude" categories which I think you can kind of infer from the character examples in the Quick Start. The full aptitude system is kind of a HERO-esque mishmash: "academia" is like every academic KS in one, while Animal Handling is...just animal handling. Military is how to work within a military structure and conduct military operations, and Performance is all performing arts (including lying), and Sleight of Hand is just sleight of hand. All specializeable of course, but the breadth of what you get with the initial purchase sure varies a lot between categories. A lot like HERO. The key difference is there's not even an implied assumption you're going to start out with a bunch of narrow skills or immediately specialize every bit of knowledge or professional expertise into its own separate skill. Instead it combines some HERO skills into one category (for example, Technology gives you Computer Programming, Sensor Ops, Mechanics, Weaponsmithing, and a lot more) and in other cases leaves narrower skill categories standing on their own. That's the way it goes, though.

I think anyone reasonably familiar with HERO System and game design could come up with something similar if they wanted to without needing to refer to any other system. But we're kind of stuck with a lot of HERO's individual skills if we're leaving 6e as written in other respects. The 'permission to make a maneuver' skills like Two-Weapon Fighting and Rapid Attack seem too powerful to fold into one skill for example. And no matter the edition, I'm not sure we'd really want to do much with Language or the various Skill Levels. But the small skills like Bureaucracy and Lockpicking and Climbing can probably be rolled up into fewer, broader categories without much of a problem if we wanted to go that route. It'd just be a matter of identifying them and then setting up appropriate categories like "Academics" and "Persuasion" or "Espionage" and "Soldier" depending on how we want to flavor the groupings.

Whether the result would be something for one campaign by one GM or would work well for everyone for a broad swath of campaigns will be the brain sweat part.

But that's kinda the problem with modifying an existing system, as we all know. Even stuff that looks like a simple change will have unexpected effects down the line. 🤷‍♂️

3 hours ago, Steve said:

I like using Expert for this, grouping a bunch of skills together and giving a -1 point cost modifier to each of them for following a theme.

 

It reminds me a bit of the old package deal modifier from early editions and works pretty well in saving points on skill lists from the various package deals in the current books.

Exactly! Something more proportional than skill enhancers may be more appropriate for some campaigns.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Instead of science skills, engineering, and dozens, even scores of variants, having Science as a skill would be more useful: you're skilled at all sciences.  Then you can buy "+3 with bioengineering" as a skill level, for example.  In certain very specific types of campaigns you could have more granular skills of specific types, but the general rules could be more general.

 

Stealth could cover shadowing as well, for example.  Social Skills could cover conversation, oratory, etc.

When I really think about it, broad skills like that seem like they would work great for my past supers campaigns and, frankly, many (most?) of my heroic campaigns as well. It'd even work when characters share archetypes, thanks to the option to specialize in a slice of the broad skill.

2 hours ago, C.R.Ryan said:

I don't know. Sometimes I deal with it by simply having broader skills. I'm not the biggest fan of Science Skills, when every other profession just has KS and PS. In pulpy or superhero games I often just give the scientist "PS: and KS: SCIENCE!!!", or "SS: SCIENCE!!!" I only concern myself with more granular Sciences if multiple characters are scientists and need their own expertise. 

Seems like maybe we're approaching consensus on broad skills.

2 hours ago, C.R.Ryan said:

I literally uses skill enhancers too.

 

In an earlier post I described the "Skill Sets" (Spacer, Smuggler, Doctor, Bounty Hunter, Jedi, ect) I use in Star Wars, 10, 15, 20 point professions that give a PC access to a broad scope of skills based on the situation they're in. Any time during the game when they think their PC should have a skill under a Set they have they can ask to use that skill and I decide if it's appropriate and at what level (8-, 11-, full skill).

Have you felt a need to keep a record of such decisions for later reference?

2 hours ago, C.R.Ryan said:

They can also specialize in skills that are clearly in the skill set (Spacer: Combat Piloting) by paying 2 (+1). In that case they actually write the skill down (full skill roll+1) and we never need to have the dramatic justification of them using the skill.

 

Also for years I've been giving characters like 10pts in background skills for free (not including their native language). In a lot of games this gives a PC a profession, and a little bit of Knowledge to fill out their back story with out costing the a skill level or cooler skill (I like that Shadowing is separate from Stealth now they can have both for example). 

That's a neat idea. It sounds like you've put a HERO spin on how some modern (and OSR) games use a character's backstory to determine some capabilities on the fly during play.

Have you tried giving folks a pool of "background skills points" that can only be spent when situations arise in  play that their character's background indicates they should have a related skill? Seems like it would take the onus of new players particularly, but even old hands may appreciate not having the pressure to predict every background-related skill that will be worth buying for the campaign.

But, there I go again, trying to apply a fix to the current system when it seems obvious that broader skills would solve the same problem more elegantly. 🙄

12 hours ago, C.R.Ryan said:

I actually like the system the skills work on. Unfortunately for certain campaigns I do find the costs to really flesh out a character a bit exorbitant. So I create other cost structure to lay over what I think is a nicely robust skill system that can be as broad or granular as you like, in terms of the actual skills themselves.

I hesitate to say it, but would something like an EC for skills fix a lot of the cost issue?

20 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

That!  That right there!  Cascade skills are the thing for heroic or realistic type games, and I heartily encourage someone who does not write the rules (because I cannot imagine anyone thinking we need a longer rule book) to give this a try.  You might go around and gather your players' skills and create your own lists for them to have when playing, though I would recommend asking your players something like "pick 5 skills that fall under that heading that you want at that level, then pick either two each from each of those that you want at (some lower level)" or even  "then pick ten skills under that main heading you want at (some lower level), and possibly go to 15 total on a tertiary level. 

I don't recall if you're familiar with it, but that's similar to how Supers! Revised Edition handles it. For anyone reading who may not know (and without getting stuck in the details), in Supers! Aptitudes are broad skill categories (like Academia, Athleticism, Investigation, Military, Occultism, and Technology) that characters can choose, and can gain proficiency in up to the third level of proficiency (out of seven). If they want to add proficiency above that, it can only be done through specialization. So for example, a character can't have Academia at the 4th level or above, but they can have Academia at the 3rd level (indicating broad competency across a range of academic subjects) and then, say, History at the 4th level.  The game includes 21 Aptitudes, each with a range of suggested Specializations, but adding Specializations and even whole Aptitudes is fully supported and expected.

On the other hand, Super Action Role-Play goes even further into broad skills with its Backgrounds (Arcane, Art, Athletics, Blue Collar, Business, Criminal, Espionage, Exploration, High Society, Journalist, etc.) Typically there are five levels of competency a player can distribute over up to five chosen Backgrounds. So, a player might assign 2 levels to one Background and 1 each to three others. Or however they want to distribute their five levels. Unlike HERO's Skills and Supers!' Aptitudes, Backgrounds basically function like old-school Traveller skills in that the value next to the Background indicates the die modifier to be applied to the task roll. Eighteen Backgrounds are included and, as with Supers!, adding new Backgrounds as needed is expected and fully supported by the game. Specialization isn't part of the game, but for those who want a more specific skill can choose one of the game's Boosts (which are similar to HERO's Talents): Super-Skill. It lets you add a significant bonus to your die throw for one appropriate non-combat characteristic check such as Disguise, Intimidation, Inventing, Swimming, Tracking, etc.

I like both of those systems, and prefer such systems to the totally freeform ones ("Tell me two things your character is good at and one they struggle with") and the ones with giant lists of skills.

20 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

I took a lot of inspiration from Marc Miller and don't often play a skills-heavy game: buy skills for things that you do exceptionally well, and we will do characteristics rolls or what-have-you for things that you just know or know about.  (in supers, anyway). 

Me, too. Because of him, I tend to think, "Given that we have Characteristics we can base rolls on, what do we need Skills to do for this campaign?"

And it gets the idea out there, giving it the chance to be normalized over time.

This is a conversation between authors Sarah Kendzior and Jared Yates Sexton from their visit to Left Bank Books in St Louis, MO. It's about an hour long, but it has enough good content about how we got here (Sexton is a historian) to be worth watching IMO.

53 minutes ago, Cygnia said:

In the "we STILL gotta worry about the willfully ignorant" file...

 

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/capitol-watch/idaho-lawmakers-introduce-legislation-to-criminalize-those-who-administer-covid-vaccines-legislature/277-2436a514-e7da-4b31-9762-f9be10300075

Wow. Banning vaccines that hundreds of millions of people have taken, and that represent a significant step forward in our fight against disease. Brilliant idea!

The "you have to pay for everything" approach is what kept me away from online HERO discussions for years. It was just so far removed from my way of doing things, and would make the game into such a chore to me, that I just stayed out of online HERO discussions entirely. Showing up with my minimalist designs just didn't seem worthwhile in the face of giant, detailed character postings that seemed to be the standard everyone adhered to. (Whereas with Traveller I just needed to stay away from the gearheads and their starship design discussions. 😦 )

Some of that did come in with 4th Edition, and then more with the later 4e products when character statblocks started getting bigger and more detailed, but to me it really showed itself with the removal of Package Bonuses with the release of 5e, and then it accelerated into 6e with the removal of Elemental Controls. The system moved steadily away from trusting the GM and players and toward trusting the official rules as The Final Word which could only be altered with great care by your local professional Authorized HERO System Service Technician. (I kid, but sometimes the fans' discussions and many of the questions to Steve Long sure seemed to spring from that viewpoint even moreso than the rules changes.)

38 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

Yeah - the granularity of the skill system is something I have mostly body-swerved.  I liked the simple PS: policeman from the earliest editions.  I dont mind being more specific for some things as long as they make the character stand out but it is impossible to buy all the things that make a scientist a scientist in any kind of detail.  I think it might be cool to have lots of charts like the language chart that shows that 5 points in Medicine give 4 points in pharmacology, 3 in a variety of biological sciences, 2 in social work and 1 in a bunch of related stuff.  🙂

Great example! Until I encountered the online HERO fanbase, I'd thought it was normal to use the bits of the HERO System that you felt were right for your game and leave the rest behind. So, if it made sense for your campaign not to use the Skills System in a detailed way, and instead rely mostly on PS:whatever that was fine and certainly in the spirit of Champions 1e-3e. 🤷‍♂️

Obviously, it's always been perfectly fine to me when a user of the rules takes a maximalist view of things and designs incredibly detailed character statblocks. I admire the thought and cleverness that goes into those designs. It's just nice to see a more relaxed approach make a return as a legitimate and accepted choice. It'd be great if someday the published materials made it clear that either way of doing things is equally good and equally supported.

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Make sure that your players are paying a reasonable amount for extremely powerful abilities.  With practice and familiarity, it becomes easy to make overwhelming abikities for very little points.  Never forget that this can steal the thunder- and thr dun- from other players less familiar with the system.

 

It can go right next to "some people will get a bit more than they pay for; some people will get a bit less.  However, no one gets anything that they do not pay for, unless the GM rukes it to be a unique, in-the-moment perk of their SFX. 

 

There.

Yes!

Sure, Champions needs adventures and promotion, but it also needs more support for GMs and players new to the system. The game would benefit from less specificity and more guidelines, advice, and examples of play, IMO.

Champions Begins is a good start that deserves to be built upon with more about what I'd call the "philosophy of play" and a broader examination of successful strategies for running HERO in different ways to support specific campaign types, playstyles, etc.

I wonder if we could pull some of the great stuff from Champions Now, Strikeforce, old issues of AC/Haymaker/Digital Hero, the existing advice in the various core rulesets, etc. and assemble a reasonable guide for running the game that would help out those new to it.

How to make a gritty street campaign feel like a gritty street campaign. How to do the same for golden age, silver age, bronze age, underground, indie, etc. campaigns.

"How I learned to stop wearing out the rulebook at the table and rediscovered the joy of running a great session for my friends."

"One weird trick to shrink those unsightly two-page character statblocks down to a georgeous index card that's ready for sun and fun at the beach!"

Or, for a more modern take, "One weird trick that lets you slim your character down to a single phone screen, ready to adventure anywhere!"

19 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

 From what I remember, yes it was a player centric movement, but it wasn't so much about Cruel GM's as it was a reaction against Cruel Dice, and the ubiquity of dice based resolutions. The first system I remember coming out was Amber Diceless. It seems to be a reaction against bad due rolls ruining their character's star moment.  IT was also against the disposability of characters in early D&D in low levels.  (Uncharitably, is was a reaction from whiney actor types that didn't get or like the mechanics, which led to minimalism).

Wow, Amber Diceless! I'd completely forgotten about that. Never having read Zelazny's series, it wasn't something I was interested in from a setting point of view. But I remember when that came out and the reaction to it on Usenet.

But yeah, there's always been that tension in RPGs between its wargaming roots and what it became. Point buy solves some of that issue, but a bad roll can still lose you a character you care about...or just make them look ridiculous. I can see exploring narrative stuff for that. It does take skill and experience as a GM to avoid undesirable situations like that.

12 hours ago, C.R.Ryan said:

A lot of people want less variance in their games. Less emphasis on dice can do this. One of the things that keeps me from wanting to run one of the narrative games is that there isn't much in the way of a solid bases to make rules decisions. I like system gives me a wide variety of tools to cover most situations and I can go from there, instead of the narrative take of, "meh just make it work". It gives the players a concrete sense of what to expect. 

 

Fate's vague power system makes my eyes roll when I can just build the power in Hero and it does what I want with wiggle room for creative uses of the power. That said, even after 35 years of gaming, I'm not above learning new tricks and using cool ideas from other games, they have some really good ideas in them. Certainly not for everybody, but they're fun (for a lot of players) and with a solid foundation like hero to fall back on, they kind of sing. 

Same. I admire some of the narrative game designs and quite a few of the minimalist game designs like TinyD6 and Lasers & Feelings, but the closest I really get to narrative play is with the hybrids like Cortex. I bounced right off of Fate despite having prior experience with Fudge. But as you say, we can and should try to learn from those game designs and not keep our games frozen in . . . amber.

5 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I am not a huge fan of the more heavily narrative systems but I do get frustrated by the 40 year-old game skeleton of the HERO System.   There are things to learn from what has happened in the gaming world in those decades.

 

In Spectaculars there are environmental elements that need to be addressed.  powers work narratively some if the time and not in others - for example, SpiderGuy can (narratively) swing down and gum up all the CCTV with his webshooters but looking to hinder BigBadMonster needs (more gamist) engagement with the mechanics.  There were disconnects in the system for me but I hit a more heavily superheroic "feel" to the game more often than I do playing Champions.

 

HERO has focused so heavily in balancing the power system in character creation, it has neglected making those powers feel more superheroic during play.  I have ideas and trying to put them into words, and when they are good enough, I will share them.

 

Doc

You're so right that the supers RPG world has produced a lot of innovative stuff over the years.  Nothing to rival HERO in its own bailiwick, IMO, but plenty to learn from and enjoy on its own terms. I love the way Supers! lets players use any character ability for anything as long as it's plausible (and within limits -- you can't use your laser eyes to blast the baddies and then in the same round use them to disintigrate a car the baddies threw at you). Any ability can be used to attack or defend, depending on the circumstances and player creativity. HERO supports that via the Power roll now (and used to support it via letting characters do innovative things occasionally with their powers w/o paying as long as it made sense), but it's built right into the fabric of Supers! which makes it a really fun part of the game.

I'll have to check out Spectaculars when I get a chance. I don't recall running into that one before.

I've often wondered how much the narrative gaming trend has been driven by selfish/cruel/etc GMs causing players to look for some way to curtail the power of the GM so as never to experience that again.

We finished S1 of a couple of different HBOMax series last night.

Oh Hell: This German dark comedy is about a young woman whose life is unstable at least partly because she uses lies as her main method for building relationships with other people. It's funny and sad and hilarious and horrifying. I hope they make a season 2 for it.

Avenue 5: This comedy is set on a space cruise-ship that ends up having to take its vacationing passengers the long way around our solar system. It works pretty well at times as social commentary (sometimes light -- the big complainer is named Karen -- and sometimes more serious -- everyone in charge seems to be a fraud and the masses are being lied to constantly), but mostly it works really well as a straight-up comedy with some truly absurd (but somehow realistic) situations. I'm looking forward to starting season 2 next week.

Rules for escaping from a building fire, if they were written by some of the AD&D parties I ran campaigns for back in the early 80s.

https://universeodon.com/@UncleDuke1969/109847699322241496

Nice post, Duke. When I was more involved in the GURPS 4e community it was pretty common for more experienced players and GMs to identify game balance through point balance as a mirage when newer players voiced concern that 40 points of X was obviously worth less than 40 points of Y and therefore GURPS was broken and unbalanced and no one should ever play it.

We'd usually ask them something like, "What if it's a campaign where X will be key but opportunities for Y will be nonexistent?"

We'd go on to remind them it's up to us as users of those systems to decide what's right for our specific campaigns and characters. That's why both GURPS and HERO say something like, "Hey, we did our best with this edition, but it's your game so use it how you see fit" and then offer some advice for modifying things based on the designers' views and the underlying assumptions of the game as those designers see them.

But as you point out, Steve does say in the 6e2 section on modifying the game that 6e assumes we must use the most expensive valid way of building a given ability. (With similar wording in 5e and 5eR.)

22 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Interesringly, such builds were endorsed by the guy who wrote the last couple of rules sets, in spite of also writing that the most expensive option is the correct option.

When I originally read that statement of underlying assumption, based on my experiences I chose to understand that from the opposite direction: "The rules for building character abilities are complex, so if you find a way to build an absurdly cheap version of an ability, don't do that."

But that's not what it says, as you correctly point out. I'd (perhaps wrongly) assumed that's probably because stating it the way I did would be open to bad-faith interpretation. I prefer not to game with the type of folks who would do something like that, but not everyone can be so picky. So I assumed that was the reason Steve stated it in the way he did.

So for me, when 6e1 says that Only in Alternate Identity is commonly used "by characters with some types of shape-shifting or body alteration abilities" I take it at face value (as I have with previous editions that included Only in Heroic ID, each of which mention "form" when describing alternates, not just identity). So for me, under 6e players can still use that Limitation for the purpose of defining how their character with multiple forms works -- as long as it's not abusive for the campaign we've all agreed to play.

To me, it comes down to whether the game should expect every HERO System GM to feel comfortable telling their rules-lawyering friend that the obviously abusive but allowed-by-the-letter-of-the-rulebook ability they've created for their character isn't OK. Maybe they should, but I hope the game doesn't demand that from them. People need a chance to grow into the GM role and to develop their own style. So having that bit from Steve about the underlying assumptions of how he built 6e may help them to enjoy the game with their friends rather than having it blown up with bad feelings all around.

Maybe Steve put it in there because he fervently believes that there is Only One Right Way to build any given character ability. I honestly don't know him other than by reputation, writing, and the few times we've interacted on here. Is he that kind of person? Or was he trying to help new GMs while assuming old hands would take or leave his advice anyway?

For me, a big influence was crossovers. Not the giant events that ended up being annual sales pushes and were therefore driven into the ground by the demands of publishing rather than those of the story. I'm talking more about where you might have, say, Cloak & Dagger run across various supers while going about their own adventures: Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, etc. And maybe end up having to deal with a villain or two borrowed from those comics such as Kingpin in addition to their own unique villains. And then C&D show up as guest stars in a few of the bigger comic books. Stuff like that.

In my days of heavily running Champions campaigns for years, it was nice when I could replicate that feel of a real comic book universe with stuff going on all the time just outside the heroes' range of vision, occasionally impinging on their stories and giving them a chance to help out a more well-known and/or more-powerful hero, or help a hero who's just starting out, or maybe even set some misguided fool on the right path after the fool nearly causes a disaster while trying to play hero. That's how I ended up with binders and expanding files filled with character sheets, campaign write-ups, notes, maps, and so on.

I haven't read many post-90s mainstream comics, but if there's something out there like those 80s Cloak & Dagger series and even their back-of-someone-else's-book pages and their occasional guest appearances (the poor sods always seemed to be an afterthought for Marvel), I'd say take a look at that stuff. On the one hand, you have intensely personal and unique stories for Our Heroes, but on the other they are definitely part of an established universe and are therefore both constrained by it and given opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have.

Other than that, it was the indie stuff that had the most influence on me. Mostly stuff with a tinge of humor. I've been wracking my brain for years trying to remember a B&W indie supers comic that had a superman type who just wanted to be left in peace to read Anne of Green Gables, but the villains just wouldn't leave him alone. His best friend was named Apache Joe as I recall. I'd love to pick up a copy of those someday, but I can't for the life of me remember the title of the comic. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of 90% of my comics 20+ years ago.

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I prefer different systems for different tasks, personally, as long as you don't have too many.  Using the same model for everything usually doesn't work well for most of the things, its like using a hammer to dial your phone and cut tomatoes as well as hammer in nails.  Use it for what its good for.

Agreed.  It's not exactly analogous, but I always considered it a strength of Classic Traveller that it had multiple systems you could swap in or out as desired for character generation, shipbuilding, personal combat, space combat, world building, and trading.

That said, I wonder what today's RPG consumers think of the idea. It may be that as long as it's not something goofy like "Well, with the Skills system you roll 4d6 and it's roll over, whereas in combat it's 3d6 roll under" it may be fine with them too.

Edited to add: Speaking of different systems for different things, I remembered another thing I'd add to Champions Complete if I were trying to make it into a game instead of a toolkit: the James Bond 007-inspired vehicle chase rules from Danger International. Would be fun for Batman type campaigns.

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

I always assumed that skills were kind of glossed over because Hero was originally Champions and skills just take a back seat to powers in Champions.

I remember Duke saying he uses a skill system that's more in line with HERO combat.

Edited to add: I found the link I'd saved to Duke's brief description of his skills system --

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

Solos (and boardgames) also help to get around the lack-of-a-GM problem that eternally bedevils TTRPGs.

So true! And as we saw in the GDW figures I posted earlier, well-done RPG boardgames can actually sell reasonably well (in terms of RPG sales numbers anyway).

50 minutes ago, Old Man said:

I've always wondered why Hero used 3d6 for skill checks instead of the 5/1d6 STUN/BODY model.  The latter would enable finer granularity, and counting 'stun' vs. 'body' on the dice would let you simulate degrees of success, like how long it takes to pick the lock or how big of a discount you get from the merchant.  More importantly, it gives another reason to throw fistfuls of d6es.  But I confess I haven't really thought this through.

Wayne Shaw once said that it was because that's how the system he was working on (that inspired George to make Champions) did it. He mentioned regretting that he hadn't unified the system by using the same mechanic for both. I haven't seen anything from George about why he kept it that way for Champions, though. Maybe because they were all so young at the time?

(Oh, how I wish Wayne hadn't gotten himself banned from rpg.net.  He was a great resource for a lot of this stuff.)

50 minutes ago, Old Man said:

Boardgames.  Although those are expensive, so maybe a line of Choose Your Own Adventure books, with Hero mechanics thrown in.  The latter would be hard to write, but could be a free PDF that leads players through the basics of the rules one piece at a time.

Ooh. That would be neat! 

What do you think of solo adventures for HERO? SJG's The Fantasy Trip seems to be having good success with them, and there's continuing interest in solos for T&T and Monsters! Monsters!.

On Kickstarter, it seems like any tabletop game with a solo option or emphasis tends to get significantly more funding than one without, all else being equal. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.

On 2/7/2023 at 10:48 PM, Duke Bushido said:

A lot of us started with 1e.  I stopped with 2e (still play; I just didn't go in for newer rules sets) and back-ported a few things from 4e (not many), Champs 2 and Champs 3, and of course, I also back-ported the _must have_ "Create' from the original Fantasy HERO (as easy as back-porting and up-porting are in HERO, absolutely no edition has attempted to touch Create.  I cannot believe that forty years later we are still putzing around with trying to beat Transform into doing the job of Create on staff of using the thing that actually does that- that actually creates, and it has been hanging right there in front of us, with a large label,that says "use this to create!").

As someone who's been playing since 2e, I have to admit I never thought about that. Like you, I've taken bits from each edition...but not that one. Sometimes I wonder if those of us who grab bits from here and there got together, could we come up with a superior HERO System by bringing back elements that are part of the history of HERO System (whether from a HERO System game, supplement, article, or whatever)? Or at least the start of one?

Could turning Champions Complete into less of a toolkit and more of a game achieve the goal without alienating the current 6e/CC/FHC player base? Or is the player base so small that releasing a "recapture the glory days, only better" type product that starts with an earlier edition and grows from there be a better move?

Well, modifying CC seems like it would be a smaller lift, and therefore could be something more achievable by DOJ. But what would need to be done? I'm glad you asked.

Quick thoughts on Improving Champions Complete

Introduction: Make it clear this is a game, not a toolkit. Talk about the game world and its assumptions. Include an in-game-world short story?

Core Concepts and Game Basics: Talk about Session Zero, how to run one, and how important doing so is to having a successful campaign. Also include a discussion of Heroic Action Points as a core concept if they're to be used at all.

Characteristics: State the range for each characteristic at each level of play in this game world. What are the standards for a street-level campaign? A standard campaign? A galactic campaign? And so on. Something like what's in the Beyond Points article in HERO System Almanac 1.

Presence Attack: Revise to emphasize this flexible short-term influence system. Go into more detail about how it can be used to rally allies, fast-talk a mark, or manipulate a crowd in a crisis situation. Adventurer's Club issue 7, page 7 "Presence of Mind" is a good place to start.

Skills: Make it clear this is the main mechanic through which players interact with the game world. Spend time on how to run a game so that characters don't get to the equivalent of a door they must open but which they cannot unlock or break down. No dead ends, just costs that must be paid to get to the next step, with the opportunity of avoiding those costs through clever role-play and/or straightforward application of game mechanics.

Powers & Power Modifiers & Power Frameworks: Simplify. Cut this all down as much as possible to be more along the lines of what was included with the base Champions 1e-3e game. Also include plenty of pre-built powers based on those commonly seen in superhero comics and adaptations.

Complications: Include a discussion that this is one of the ways in which players participate in creating the campaign world and determining how it interacts with their characters and their allies. Complications are a player responsibility that limits the actions of the GM and fellow players while lending flavor and verisimilitude to the players' characters.

Champions - Superheroic Roleplaying: Have a full discussion of the game world. Not to minute detail, but enough to give GMs and players a good idea of what the game world is like. And, given that this is a game with a specific game-world, include lots more advice on how to run campaigns of various types in it, from start to finish.

Examples: Include more example characters and teams, but especially include more Templates. At each level of campaign (street, standard, etc.), it should be possible to use the appropriate Template to come up with a whole supers team based on any one common archetype and still end up with highly individual characters who compliment each other.

Presentation: Improve the layout, organization, art, etc. to the limits of the budget.

Adventures: Add a section with a solo adventure so the GM can learn and practice the basic game mechanics and see how it's run. Add a beginner GM'd adventure, and ideally a larger adventure along the lines of the Viper adventure in 3e.

Hmm. I don't know. It'd sure be nice in many ways to go back to 1e, 2e, 3e, or even 4e and build from there. Taking another crack at the skills system may be worthwhile. Come up with a skill system that naturally scales from the simplicity of Champions 1e-3e all the way up to the sort of highly detailed system one may want for other genres, for example.

But that's a lot of work and at some point you're selling a new game so why weigh it down with the HERO System name?

What (if anything) would you do to modify CC to make it sell better?

What (if anything) would you do to make a new, more appealing product line for HERO System?

20 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I reckon the wrong turn HERO took was pulling its focus out instead of simply providing a supplementary core HERO book.

 

Champions could have progressively become more focused on a core HERO System supers campaign, with more defined game standards.  Similar for Fantasy HERO, Justice Inc and Danger International.

Supplements could have been produced to play games in each genre at different power levels with different skills, starting points etc.

 

Imagine a 450 page Fantasy HERO that had a defined magic system, skillset, Bestiary and some adventures.  it is easy to do.

 

You would only need the core book to do your own tinkering and world building. Splat books would gavenew magic systems, new beasts, ideas for building fighter types etc etc.

I believe the same.

I wish we had the HERO Games/ICE/DOJ sales figures like we do for GDW (one, two, three -- note that TSR figures are included in that last for comparison purposes), but appearances are that Champions had better sales when the game system was included (1e to 4e I'm more confident about, but maybe Champions Complete too? I recall Jason saying something like, "Champions Complete sells better, and that's important") rather than just as a setting book (5e to 6e) and further that the HERO System core rules never sold as well when offered as a standalone product.

Or, to put it another way, I don't think the evidence supports the proposition that the typical RPG hobbyist is interested in buying a toolkit and using it to make an RPG. Doubly so for those new to the hobby or seeking to enter the hobby.

Given HERO Games as it exists today, it may be possible to put together a Champions product that's more akin to the 4e BBB (incorporating Champions Begins, preferably, and obviously with a purpose-built game engine rather than a toolkit), and then make the HERO System toolkit a PDF/POD product that isn't emphasized.

If that worked, maybe start offering similar books for other popular genres.

I'd be so happy to financially support such a move by DOJ. I just wish it could be given a chance.

Looks like we're turning to our favorite subject, "What's wrong with HERO and how I'd fix it."

This morning on the long drive to the office I was thinking about HERO (as one does) and the RPG industry in general (again, totally normal thing to do -- I don't know why you're looking at me funny) and I started to draw a hasty conclusion (something no one online ever does) and wondered if it was worth anything.

Hypothesis: Tabletop RPGs with enduring popularity tend to be beautiful messes.

White box D&D, Champions, Shadowrun, D6 System...all were games that did something new and neat with easily digestible basics -- but there were major flaws in design and/or presentation. All became popular enough to get several attempts by different designers and publishers at fixing their flaws, but those attempts don't seem to have boosted their popularity (aside from D&D, which is in many ways its own thing due not least to making it into the mainstream, with a mainstream budget for much of its life).

Maybe, from a hobby perspective, what works are games a hobbyist can learn in an afternoon but which cry out for tinkering. As long as there's something neat about them that provides a compelling enough reason to tinker with them and want to share their tinkering with friends and family.

Maybe that's why beautiful, orderly designs with great execution like EABA get lost in the waves.

And maybe that's one reason why making HERO System more orderly and logical didn't yield more customers.

Sure, there are many reasons for HERO's current situation; we're all familiar with them. But maybe this is part of it too?