bluesguy

Hi I watched the video and I am very very impressed. I really think that @Jason S.Walters should reach out to you and see what you are doing. I think what you have done should get a big official stamp of approval. Tabletop Simulator and your tool suite will allow people to play Hero very effectively across many geographic locations.

Great work. Can't wait to use it.

Hi, I am the developer of Hero Combat Manager. The purpose of the program is to help a GM manage combat. Here are the specific things you can do with it: Using Hero Designer (HD) - you can export characters you have created using HD into a format that Hero Combat Manager (HCM) can use HCM will track when each character can act depending on their Speed and Dex With HCM the GM can: Handle all dice rolling and damage management for NPCs. This includes Normal, Killing, Mental, Presence, Flash, Entangle, etc. and apply the damage to the player character information. You will always know how injured your player's characters . The players still have to keep track of the damage which the GM will provide Handle all damage that the NPCs receive when the player character's hit an NPC Handle held actions Buff/Debuff per Aid/Drain or the GM can adjust. Be prepared this part of the application has always been a bit flaky (sorry) What can't be done with HCM: You can't create a character on the fly in HCM. You have to use HD and then export the character It doesn't interface with the Hero System Mobile (we have talked about it but I am too busy and technically not savvy enough to figure it out how to do that - yet) Quirks and issues When I was a full time paid developer I worked on embedded software systems. A UI was the raw data being dumped out an RS-232 port to a dumb terminal. We didn't need no stickin' UI. So that means HCM's UI is primitive I haven't done an update in a while. Too busy. I will answer questions and I am going to set aside time in 2020 to do some major bug fixing. This project grew out of my need for a tool to help me track combat. I have done it with pencil and paper and real dice in the past. That worked but in a big fight someone would get missed. I tried doing this with a spreadsheet and a fancy VB macro but that failed pretty quickly. The program grew out of my own needs.

Something I did for a game day event at a local gaming store was to create a hero 'team' (they meet as part of the game) that fit our location (Minnesota). We had a Paul Bunyan avatar (his truck was nicknamed Blue). A union guy who fell into a vat of iron ore dust, which happened to be full of an 'experimental chemical' that turned him into living steel. A DJ who is a mutant that can mind control and ego blast people thru sound, and she only plays Prince music and all her powers are named after Prince's songs. And a highly skilled bio-mechanical engineer who created a power suit and can shrink down to the size of a mosquito. I made the powers as simple as I could. I didn't worry about the points balancing. I had the player characters in Northern MN near a casino at night when an alien space ship crash lands near by. One of the small surviving ships from attack on NYC at the end of the Avengers 1 movie.

You are doing some amazing work. I can't wait to use this.

Always great advice on these boards. And the best answers come with someone new to Hero asks a great question. In my own case when I run Champions I treat it like episodic TV shows. Think of it as bad-guy episode #52 "Mole men attack the university" and next week "Mind controlled senior citizens robbing grocery stores and banks." The campaign always takes place in the city I live in and I insist that all the characters be themed around something connected with the current location. This gives the characters a nice common theme and background. Usually they have a few adventures before the local or national authorities show up and let them know they need to either get registered or be prepared to pay for property damage. I run my Champions games as something in between my Fantasy campaign sessions when we know someone isn't going to be available for a session or two.

Most likely a version incompatibility. Glad you got it working.

In my game mooks never have a PRE higher than 13. When my players build their characters they are encouraged to buy up PRE and consider getting Oratory (when appropriate) or striking appearance. I am currently playing (yeah I am not the GM for a while) a Draconian bodyguard (steampunk world). He is big, strong, tough as nails and has a high PRE + Striking appearance (only usable to intimidate humans). Once when he was being shadowed by two folks he lured them into an abandoned church, was able to sneak up on one of them and put his double barreled shotgun in his back. Afterwards he told him "I don't want to cut you in half with my shotgun, so just give up." He did and he convinced his partner to give up and then I got the info I needed and left them with no boots, pants or guns ...

If there are lots of goons encourage your players to use a good PRE attack to scare the goons into surrendering/retreating. My players love making a big attack/show of their abilities and then give a command to the remaining goons that it is a good time to leave the field or surrender. A good PRE roll is sometimes way more effective than an attack/damage roll.

And my money is on Steve winning!

Thank you that was helpful. Sorry you invested so much time. I really like the whole Nine Clans story and impact on its culture. As for the last statement, there are things IMRL that I don't want intruding on my gaming life, so I totally understand "reality of a world full of cowards" is something I get.

After 30 years of off and on playing and running RPGs I have learned a bit ... Thank you for the compliment. I did take about a year to build a framework for the world and the cultures before I ran a single adventure.

Could you provide a little detail, I really would like to know.

About 1/2 of the countries in my campaign world have a "Roman-culture" so for those countries they have a kind of Roman civil law. I tried to read up as much as I could about how Roman's dealt with legal matters. A couple of my players really are into stuff like that so I have some help there. A couple of countries are kind of Nordic/Viking in nature so I tried to match what we know about them. I have one country that is unique because that country is primarily made up of bipedal felines (think Vincent from the 80/90's Beauty & the Beast). In that case the first two players who played characters from their helped with formulating the society/laws. I had some basics. Smallest societal unit was a pride (like a lion pride). One alpha male and potentially multiple partners. Seems patriarchal except the females in the society controlled all the wealth and really made most of the economic decisions. The males made decisions about fighting/warfare/exploring. There was a complex honor/vengeance/vendetta system. Females who didn't want to be tied to a pride would often pack up and leave for other lands to start out on there own.

I am so impressed with the work you have been doing. This is going to be awesome.