bluesguy

Re: Now taking suggestions - HERO System Combat in Two Pages Hi, I might be able to help. What I did was take the Hero Resource Kit pdf and condense the rules down to 2 pages. This is the absolutely bare minimum necessary for 80% of the players in most games (IMO). Enjoy...

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat? I would like to have what he is having as well:D;)

My only connection with this is that I bought into the first Monster Stock Art & Minis Kickstart effort and I am very glad I did. The minis were very well done. Anyway here is the link for Monster Stock Art & Minis II Kickstart.

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat? Again I go back to my current campaign where there is only one non-human, a dwarf. I have given the player some information about what dwarves are like in this world but I have basically said it is up to him to help flesh it out. Also the other players would like to find out where their friend comes from - the character would like to know that as well but he has been suffering with amnesia for the entire campaign - but that won't happen until I get some help fleshing out dwarven society from the player who wanted to play a dwarf.

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat?

Re: Evil Interesting topic. I like many of the definitions people provided. I went to Wikipedia to see if there was something that could articulate what I was thinking better than I could. I like this item from the Evil entry on Wikipedia. According to Peck, an evil person: Is consistently self-deceiving, with the intent of avoiding guilt and maintaining a self-image of perfection Deceives others as a consequence of their own self-deception Projects his or her evils and sins onto very specific targets, scapegoating others while appearing normal with everyone else ("their insensitivity toward him was selective") Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others Abuses political (emotional) power ("the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion") Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness) Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim Has a covert intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury The big distinction that Peck presents is that this description covers those who are NOT sociopaths. Read about "Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs".

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat? That is true. I would guess that if you compared Native American Tribes in the north east vs. plains vs. Southwestern portions of the US you would find very different cultures. I lived in New Mexico and got to know the three predominate Native American cultures and they are all different. But if you look at the size of NM & Arizona where Navajo, Zuni and Pueblo that is a lot of 'ground to cover' - on foot. In Europe people had pack animals - horses, mules, oxen and wheeled vehicles. And the ability to travel & communicate allowed for a more homogeneous set of cultures in Europe. But in the new world that wasn't as true. That is an interesting 'justification' for having a bunch of different 'species' in a campaign. In my campaign we explore 'race' (and racism) because there are clashes of culture between Valdorians, Abyzinians, and Cynthians. They all have their distinct cultures. They are all human. But I digress (and it was fun). You asked My simple answer is that if I was playing in a campaign world where I could find 6 to 12 distinct species/races (within species) all living within an easy month's travel of each other to be 'too close together'. I don't think they would be very distinct. I think the cultures would evolve into a much more homogeneous culture with 'quirks' between each one. As for multiple intelligent species in the same area - I think the competition for resources would lead to many of those species being wiped out. I would think intelligent species want to preserve themselves and will do whatever is necessary to do that. I would think this would be doubly so if it turns out that two intelligent species can not interbred. So if I was playing an a world roughly the size of Western Europe and there were humans, elves (multiple types), halflings, gnomes, orcs, serpent/lizard people, goblins, dwarves, giants, gnolls, hobgoblins, and ogres - each with very distinct cultures I would wonder if the GM just kept tossing in 'species/races' because they seemed cool without thinking about how it would all work together. Finally I should mention that my first campaign world suffered from my lack of thought on how all the 'species/races' in that world could actually survive. This is what works for me and YMMV

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat? I get that... I bet you only play elves ?

Re: Fantasy Race Bloat? I have played in High Fantasy games where their are every known race and culture all pretty much 'slammed together'. My experience is that many new players want to play elves, dwarves, and a few other species because they are 'cool', have interesting abilities or cultural/species quirks. I have also seen this with new GMs as well. I know my first campaign had more than a few species that just didn't make sense. There were also cultures (human and otherwise) that were too close together and didn't make sense. I like playing humans and I have never wanted to play another race. In fact I have only played one other species - gnome fighter/illusionist. He didn't like 'big people' (bordered on bigotry). His favorite thing to do was go find a roof near a bar and when people came out drunk he would create an illusion of a pink dragon flying by spewing puce colored vomit. He thought that was a riot. One of the things I like about the Valdorian Age is that humans are the predominate hominid species. There rumors of 'dwarves' and a few gnomes and halflings around but they are rare. As for elves they are the Drindrish and everyone is glad to be rid of them because they left the entire area many years ago. Everyone in the party is human, except for one dwarf. He gets a fair amount of hassle when he goes into new areas because people don't have a clue what he is. And he doesn't even know where he came from because he has amnesia . When people asked "Can I play an elf?" I would tell them that elves are called Drindrish in this world and no one has seen one in a long time. And if one was found they would be killed pretty much on the spot. The Drindrish enslaved humanity for a long time in the Valdorian Age.

Re: Football Fu I thought that was the best part about the HERO system

Looking at vehicles in my campaigns (and sometimes bases but not as much). Which of these two products will have plenty of examples to work from Hero System Vehicle Sourcebook or Ultimate Vehicles. I run either Fantasy or Superhero games. I have tried running Science Fiction & Pulp but that doesn't work for me, so I don't need vehicles in those areas (having them is a bonus). My main need is for vehicles in a Fantasy setting and then superhero setting. My fantasy setting I need ocean, river, and lake going vessels. This is a low magic world so flying ships are not all that useful (again a bonus). So based on my requirements what is the group wisdom between those two books?

Re: Has anyone tried doing an Hyborian/Conan game using Fantasy Hero Basics are: There are 'two basic' levels of mastery when it comes to magic - apprentice/novice and master Requires either a successful Magic or Faith roll Incantation Gestures Knowledge Skill of 13- (INT based) is required for the school of magic that is studied If a spell exceed 40 active points, each 5 points above 40 costs an addition 1 point of END. For spells which exceed 80 active points each 5 points above 80 costs an additional 2 points of END. This cannot be reduced. It also cannot be made into charges. Apprentices/Novice also have the following limitations Side Effects – all spells will have a side effect that affects the spell caster. Initially no spell can have more than 40 active points Only one school of magic is available at a time And for mages (not characters that get their power from a divine entity) they get to track LTE. And I use the 'harsher' set of rules. This keeps mages from blasting everything in sight because they figure "Oh I blew my spell roll - that just costs me some more END." Now it has a long term impact on the character. I have limited the schools of magic. There are two schools of magic that are universally considered evil - necromancy and black magic. Outside of those two it is dependent on how the person who has magical ability uses it. There is more information at Valdorian Age Rising Power on the Frontier The party consists of three 'magic users': Ranger with some interesting 'spells' (thank you Steve for the Ranger Magic book) which in some ways don't 'feel' like magic but rather special abilities. Priestess who has a pretty limited set of spells (her healing spell pretty much wipes her out because it has a 4d6 END drain (5pts recovered per hour). One time she used the spell 3x and slept for about 12 hours :-) Sorcerer - lots of mentalist spells.

Re: Has anyone tried doing an Hyborian/Conan game using Fantasy Hero I have been using it for over a year. The home base for the players is Elweir but they have been traveling all over the place. I made on major change in my campaign - I don't use the magic system in VA. I love the concept but I think 'managing' the whole favors thing would have become a major pain in the backside. I have been 'slowly' growing the areas around Elweir. Some of the adventures that I think were very 'Conan' like were: Protecting a caravan from bandits. They 'scared' off the scouting party but then on the way home they were jumped by a larger number. And just like Conan can take on a bunch of 'bandits' at one time the party did the same thing (4 or 5 to 1 odds). When inspecting a building to turn into a tavern, they go into the basement only to find a Carrion Crawler the size of a bus (actually more like van) which they fight and kill. And now they are following a 'treasure map' to an ancient treasure trove ... hehehe.

Re: Grimoire: Elemental Earth spell - Create Tower Thank you all for your help. I was able to create an build of a tower, with a moat, drawbridge and a few other items for the mage on the move :-).

This spell is written up as a summon: Create Tower: Summon 300-point tower, Expanded Class of Beings (any type of stone tower or like structure; +1/4), Slavishly Devoted (+1) (135 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3), OAF Expendable (Extremely Difficult to obtain new Focus; miniature gold tower, studded with gems; -2), Concentration, Must Concentrate throughout use of Constant Power (0 DCV; -1), Gestures, Requires Gestures throughout (-1/2), Incantations (Requires Incantations throughout; -1/2), Requires A Roll (Skill roll; Earth Magic; -1/2) If it was summon demons/monsters/bunny rabbits I could look them up in a book and have some stats. But a tower? How do you build a tower? Do you use the building base rules? If so that is one big tower! Suggestions and help please.

Re: Has anyone tried doing an Hyborian/Conan game using Fantasy Hero I am using the Valdorian Age. Yes the main part of the book is all about Elweir. But what I have done is continue to expand on the areas around Elweir. Plus there are hints of deep and dark dungeons and passages underneath Elweir as well :-)

Re: So: What Superpowers would your Parents get if they had a "Radiation Accident" My dad was a rocket scientist (back in the early 60's), worked on lasers (helped build the USAF airborne laser lab), and he can build pretty much any electronic thing he can think up. So I am thinking a genius gadgeteer. As for his actual super powers - Reed Richards level INT; Positive reputation +4d6/+4 PRE skills (people just like dad); high Ego; and 'mind control' (causes people to laugh so hard they can hardly breathe after he tells a joke). Mom... Well we called her the thermonuclear hand grenade while we were growing up. So I am thinking she would have an 'explosive' mental blast, something akin to 8d6 mental blast, and explosive AoE ~ 8". She would also have a high INT and Ego.

Re: Guide Lines for Campaigns Hi, When I started w/ my current group I had a ton of Hero experience and my wife had played in Hero games for a while. Everyone else was new. So I feel your pain. To help my players and myself I came up with some guidelines for building characters. Check out Gaming Mechanics Characteristics and Skill Rules Experience Points My campaign is 50/50 combat to role playing (the only dice roles are for skill rolls). Everyone has had fun with this. The combats range from encounters where the PCs wade into a fight against 'cannon fodder' and minions pretty easily - which is the way I wanted combat to be. But when they come up against major villains they really have to work at the combat to survive. If you check out the armor 'rules' I have presented the reasons why people don't find plate armor in my world. The best resistant defense is ~5 PD/ED. Most PCs have 4 to 6 PD/ED. Many of them can dish out 2d6 KA and some have the skill levels to take placed shots. The fodder/minions usually can only dish out 1.5 KA (still nothing to sneeze at) - but never take placed shots. Major villains are right in line with the PCs. Usually they have some special ability/skill that makes the combat interesting. Hope this helps

Re: New Fantasy Hero Stuff From Steve: ACID MAGIC and LIGHTNING MAGIC Steve - wonderful news. Going to get those soon.

Re: Fantasy worlds you had to "rework" years later once you've grown up and knew bett When I first started gaming it was D&D, ~1979 , and no one had a "campaign". We did dungeon crawling. Basically wander around, find monsters, kill monsters, take their stuff and then go to town to drop of the excessive stuff. After about a year of that I started to move the group away from dungeon crawling to more role playing. I had been reading the Thieves World series and there was some source material you could buy at that time. So I dropped Sanctuary where Albuquerque NM is at. I used the USA as the campaign world - which saved having to work up geography, weather and some other issues in creating your own world. I also found out I could get maps from the US Geology Service which were pretty cheap and made things more fun for everyone. The campaign world basically spread east from Sanctuary ("Albuquerque") thru west Texas, down to Houston and then back towards where the Texas/Mexico border is today. I found I was spending a lot of time trying to be consistent and fixing problems I had created during earlier gaming sessions. I then found the Harn product line which was the best RPG world I have ever used as a GM. It was easy for me to create an epic campaign and lay that on top of the incredibly detailed Harn world products. I ended up selling that material. When I came back to gaming, I looked at purchasing the Harn product line and decided that was too costly. So I bought the Valdorian Age which has served my purposes very well. Elweir is a very detailed city and the rest of the world has an adequate amount of information that it makes for a good background. There is plenty of room for detailing out places outside of Elweir. This allowed me to create a lot of city adventures and eventually detail areas around Elweir with more detail.

Re: Wealth and Super Heroes In my campaign I have the players pay for enough 'wealth' that they can have jobs where they are upper middle class & have a profession that lets them run off and fight crime.

Re: Paladin Martial Art? Actually I would expect a knight to take damage and keep on coming back. As opposed to a 'light fighter' - one good hit and they are down.

Re: Why Your Heroes Shouldn't Kill And I now return you back to the original topic I am running a Silver Age style campaign right now. I basically told the players we would be playing in a Silver Age campaign and that my basic rules were : all heroes get "Code vs. Killing" which doesn't have to be total but they needed it. I also told them that as a general rule most supervillains don't try to kill either. They will kill but it is more a consequence of the massive amounts of power/damage being generated in a fight. I have even gone so far as to change some supervillains attacks from killing to normal attacks (maybe w/ penetrating) to lower the likelihood of 'killing' happening by accident. There are some villains who will kill and do so at the drop of the hat. I did all of this because I wanted the 'lightness' of a Silver Age style game. Everyone gets plenty of 'gray' in my fantasy game setting.

Re: Paladin Martial Art?

Re: 6E - Low Fantasy Hero - Game Balance Issues - Advice Requested Usually I ask people to tell me their character's back story before we build their character. If the player just describes their characters combat skills I would make a note of that but I would ask them "Tell me about your character's family background. What did your parents do for a living? Does your character have family members? What kind of jobs did your character have along the way?" All of those kinds of questions will indicate what kinds of skills the character needs. I would also insist that those skills be bought first. Also if you have characters built using the packages that are in the Fantasy Hero game the players will end up with some skills. When it comes to combat, I would ask what kind of combat style the player is looking for. I would let people know that because of the way Hero combat works it is important to decide what combat style the character is going to be. IMO that means in fantasy terms that means 'knight' (high strength, CON, Body, PD/ED, Stun, Low DEX, Low SPD), "fencer" (low strength, lower CON, standard Body, lower PD?ED, lower Stun, Higher DEX, Higher SPD), magic user types (low strength, lower CON, normal Body/PD/ED, probably Low DEX, Low SPD), etc. Why do this: Heavy fighters are going to do a bunch of damage when they hit. If they are capable of hitting a quick fighter easily & as often as a quick fighter that means the quick fighter is not a practical option. So if you want all the fighters to be heavy fighters then set no limits on STR, CON, BODY, PD, ED, etc. Everyone will end up buying STR, DEX, BODY, CON, STUN, PD/ED, etc to the Maximum level. UGLY. I would suggest you look at this because I came up with some house rules which helps keep my campaign 'sane'.