bluesguy

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you... the Mississippi Avengers.
 

 
Edit: A friend suggested "Gulf Coast Avengers" as a better name, and I agree - its more consistent with the existing Avengers names/

I made a parking garage (now somewhat worse for wear after some mooks got put through it), and a skyscraper out of foam core.
 
I also got some extra counters from the excellent card game Heroes of the Multiverse, which I used to track END, and my homie used to track the points put into his character's absorption power. Our new player used them to track STUN & BOD. 
 
I enjoyed having them around.

So I probably go a tad overboard with this, but I'm convinced that good GM prep is the key to running Hero combat without it getting bogged down.
I have a one-page printout for that scenario's NPCs, with all their stats, attacks, damage tracks, etc. So rather than shuffling multiple papers, everything's on one page. (Of course this was easier to read before Physical Complication: Middle-Aged Eyes kicked in.) I have a corresponding page for the PCs. On my laptop, I have Hero Designer open, in case I need to look up some more detailed information about exactly how I built this power of that defense. Also on my laptop, I keep an Excel spreadsheet of the Speed Chart, with each character's actions plotted out by SPD & DEX. You'd be amazed how much it speeds up combat if you don't have to do the "OK, who goes on Phase 4? What's your DEX?" dance every Phase. I've also started having my iPad available for passing around maps, pictures, documents to the PCs, tho that's not really a combat thing. Lots of soda. Obviously.

Kinetic energy has a serious consistency problem accross genres. Not its fault, really - as a friend of mine once said, it's not a superpower if it doesn't violate one of the laws of thermodynamics. 

What I have found is that it is easiest to sit down with somebody and walk them through character creation.  Ask them what kind of character they want.  Help them make it.  Keep it relatively simple.  There's no need for a power to have 15 different advantages and limitations on it.  Then play a short 1 on 1 session so the new player can grasp the mechanics.  Be prepared to tell them what number they need to roll to hit for several sessions.  It may help to ignore End and Knockback as well.

Oh, for sure! I picked that example, because in my experience, remembering the common bonuses and power attack tends to be what most of my newbies have spent their time on. It might not be that way for everybody, but in my experience, that's what playing a fighter tends to look like. 
 
No argument that there's a lot in HERO - I mean, I'm at that stage where I can't remember how this ish is supposed to go - I forgot that STUN multipliers are a thing on literally every Killing Attack I rolled. So, yeah. Lots of stuff!
 
My point was, that in my estimation, that "new game barrier" was pretty big for people learning Pathfinder too. Maybe skewed, because this was in a college gaming group where most of these lovely little newbies hadn't played tabletop RPGs before, so it kind of illuminated just how much stuff I'd taken for granted as being natural.
 
We'll see how much that holds true for teaching HERO to people without advanced math-y degrees!
 
Also, I ordered some damage trackers from the card game Sentinels of the Multiverse, that I plan to use to track END, and maybe STUN and BOD too. I found that I really liked that tactile element in the card game, and want to see if it translates well to HERO combat.
 
THREAD FORK: what kinds of peripherals/aids do people tend to use? What have you found useful?

I had some good luck, using the pre-generated characters and couple adventures I posted in the downloads section. I have used them at a con once, ran my Mom, Wife and Brother through them (my moms first game) and used them for some other groups. 
 
Twice it turned into longer running games, with the player customizing the character with their experience as the game grew. Skim it and consider giving it a try.
 
http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/210-in-service-to-the-throne/

For me Hero's biggest strength is the ability of each of the Heroes to be completely different. In many games I see the same character run across my lap with 10 different names, while in Hero each character has the potential to be unique.
 
So while all systems do have pro's and con's, Hero is my favorite.

Fair enough. But I don't think "simple and fast-playing" is necessarily a deal-breaker with Hero either. As we've all discussed numerous times, 90% of the complexity is in the character generation phase. If the GM is willing to do the bulk of the heavy-lifting in chargen, and limits the number of optional rules to a manageable handful, once you have everything on the character sheet Hero plays fairly quickly. Maybe not Fate-fast, but certainly no slower than D&D.

How I currently acquired my current group for Hero probably won't work for most.
All it takes is have a bunch of kids, then wait between 1 and 2 decades...

Ok, it isn't like I am just saying - 'Hey, you don't want to play my way, you only get half the points.'
This is just in respect to 'new players' that are just starting and in all likelihood have never read through the rules.
 
More of what is above - especially with new players.
They don't know what cost there are, how they can spend them, etc.
If they don't already have a contact or favor on their sheet (that I probably wrote for their first adventures) - they probably have no idea it even exists.
So I take what the player says they think the character learned/accomplished - and try to translate it into how that would actually come out in the game on the sheet.
This gets to be a really big deal when a player is (like my youngest daughter in our current game) 11 y/o and it will be years before she gets down the rules.  If she wants her heroine (Alley Cat) to be able to do something - she will come to me and discuss it.  I will draw up the options and list them out as she gains XP - and she can pick what she feels is closest to what she is hoping for.  Of course, there are often times when the response is - 'that is going to take a loooongggg time and a lot of points.  Is that what you are really wanting to work for...
 
When the players get more experienced - I usually stop giving out the 'option' paper as they don't need it and the 'picks' (other than the straight point option) is usually one or two XP more than what they would normally get from the adventure - to try and get them to appreciate character development over min/max development.
Because (in my experience) most new players that have little understanding of the system and only have experience in games that reward becoming the most effective death machine ever - tend to try and figure out what makes that happen and spend every last point in that respect, never bothering to worry about the rest of the options and rules.

You are right. People like stuff. They like good-looking stuff better, and good-looking stuff that evokes the genre being played is liked best if all.
 
I have begun to look at providing what the games companies do not.
 
I now rarely use official character sheets, provide counters for END and cards for powers with key information such as dice to roll and END cost on them. Players play powers in front of them and power them up with their END counters. At post 12 recoveries I deal END back to them.
 
It us visual, it is tactile bureaucracy and the cards give a visual representation of what is happening. The cards are a mishmash of scenes and powers ripped off from my comic collection and customised for each player.
 
That kind of thing gives players a very different view of the game they are playing. It is surprising to think that Champions probably started this kind of thing when it issued character sheets with silhouettes on them to encourage players to imagine what their heroes would look like...
 
Doc

Wish I could work my mojo better. I used to convert people all the time, now my whole gaming group seems to want to play Savage Worlds now, because its easier.  Maybe I should break out the construction paper and crayons, make some pictures with glitter so they like the game better.

Can't we just give them the rulebook and some lubricant?

I had this problem a couple of weeks ago and was banging my head on my keyboard trying to figure it out.  I eventually uninstalled Java, re-downloaded a fresh version, and installed that.  It worked fine after that.
 
Alternatively, I could have come here and perhaps have saved myself some hassle.  :/

Keep the comments coming.  If people do come up with products ($ or free) to help people learn Hero Game System I would be very interested.
 
Again my main reason for asking has to do with helping new players get started in playing RPGs using Hero.  Learning how to GM and how to GM using Hero is a different conversation entirely.

Yeah, teaching people Hero system should be just teaching them how skill rolls work, how combat works, etc. No way should a newbie be asked to create a character.
 
Fortunately, Hero System is simple, outside of character creation.

I may be a bit of a min-maxer, but I hope I'm not a complete munchkin.

I think teaching people Hero is best done at a minimal level.  They don't need to know very much at all about the rules, just how to interact with the game at the most basic level.  Here's how you roll to hit.  Here's how you do skills.  Here's how you do damage.  Lets play.
 
Using premade characters for newcomers allows them to step into play very quickly, in my experience, and gamers at least are quite familiar with the basic concepts of how rules work so they learn quickly.
 
The absolutely worst thing you can do is have three or four people trying to explain things all at once.  It becomes overwhelming and few things frustrate me as badly as trying to teach some guy how to play with kibbitzers throwing in extra details and anecdotes.  One teacher at a time.

It seems that there are some rather nasty updates to either Windows itself or Java running under Windows that is removing the file association for .jar files for a number of users.  It is not clear at this time why this is happening, but it is preventing people from running HD by double-clicking on the HD6.jar file (or any shortcut they've created).
 
I'll use this thread for troubleshooting this issue with folks -- the fix information in this post will be edited as needed to help out.
 
 
The following is the most direct way to check and/or set the file association for .jar files under Windows:
 
1.  Open a command prompt (Start -> Run... -> cmd)
 
2.  To check the file association for jar files, enter the following (please post the output of this command in this thread if you are still having problems):
ftype | find "jarfile" 3.  To reset the file association for jar files, you would enter the following, replacing the path to javaw.exe with the absolute path to the file on your system :
ftype jarfile="C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "%1" %*

I get the point you are making but my first thought when reading your post was "Playing Batman would still be pretty fun".
 

In my Fantasy Hero games I always tell people to be prepared for 50% combat and 50% role playing (no combat - maybe no dice at all) when all the sessions are averaged out over a year.  We have had sessions where we have spent then entire session in combat (or a series of combats); other sessions where it was all interactions; and some with a mix.  By telling people this ahead of time everyone knows what is expected.
 
There have been a few players that have been total skill monkeys with practically no combat skills (run away, dodge, use my sling) to almost pure combat monsters (ok so you want to haggle with the merchant about the price of that armor, do you have trading or any other helpful skill?  No... Ok, the merchant makes his skill roll and you end up happily paying 2x the normal price... Opps).

I'd suggest first running a one-shot game using pre-gen characters. (I run a lot of convention games, so I have a decent library of one-shots to choose from; if you don't, just throw together something simple or buy/download a module from somewhere.) I love character generation in Hero, but it can be pretty overwhelming to newcomers - so skip it! Start out by showing them how simple the game plays once you have the character created. By the end of one 4-6 hour adventure, they'll have a pretty good idea what the stats mean and how the system works. Then the next session you go into "tell me about your character" mod and help them translate that into game elements, but they'll already have some sense of, say, the difference between OCV and PD.
 
When I run convention games, I get at least one Hero novice per con, and it's not unusual to get a complete RPG novice now and then. I start by giving a (by now well-rehearsed) 5-minute tour of the character sheet: here's what the Characteristics mean, here are your Skills, here's how the Skill Roll core mechanic, etc. Then when we get to the first combat, I have another 3-5 minute spiel on the basics of combat. Most players, that's really all they need to get going.

So in my years of RPG and specifically playing Hero, I have taught three different groups to play Hero.  The first time was after college when I formed a gaming group.  The people who wanted to play either knew AD&D, participated in the SCA, or were just your everyday nerds ...  I taught all of them how to play Hero.  After a while a few players were able to create their own characters without much help from me.  Other people in the group started running games and they used Hero because they liked it.
 
The second time was when we moved and we formed a new group.  A few of us knew how to play Hero and the rest were all AD&D players.  That was a short lived group because we moved again.
 
The third time is with my current group.  First I taught my teenagers how to play the game.  My son has taken to the system and has turned into a rule-lawyer (which can be very frustrating at times ).  He has also started running his own game and is doing a really good job.  Then we had two other people start playing with us - D&D/variants.  And our newest member had never played a single RPG but wanted to do a group thing with us.  My son and I do most of the 'heavy lifting' when it comes to character creation.  Everyone has gotten very good at character concepts & back stories - which makes the actual character creation pretty easy.
 
So here is the approach I take with new people:
Think about who the character is.  What makes the character 'tick'?  What do they do when they aren't being a "hero"?  How did they become a "hero"?  Do they have goals?  If we are playing a superhero game I will ask them about what kind of powers they want (which may have come out of how they became a "hero")?  This is absolutely a critical step for people who play Pathfinder/D&D variants, because in Hero the character concept comes first and then the game mechanics starts.  In Pathfinder/D&D variants you roll dice and try to figure out kind of viable character you have based on the random rolls ... Then I sit down and explain exactly what each characteristic is.  When we get to Stun and Body I use some examples like "Body damage is like having a bruise, cut, broken bone.  Stun is more the 'shock' of the injury."  Explaining normal vs. killing goes something like "Bruce Lee punches you that is a normal attack.  If he hits you hard enough he will break bones.  Dirty Harry shoots with his gun it will put a physical hole in you."  And then with Stunned I just tell them to think "Punch drunk boxer - still standing but definitely not thinking straight". We talk about how to build the powers/talents/perks/skills they need to make the character work in the beginning.  Along the way we might map out how to use future XP to meet the original idea. Complications grow out of the first step. Combat:
I got off the forum or download a one page explanation of how combat works.  Everyone gets that sheet.  Then I have a few mock combats with new players so we can step generic combat and combat for their character.  We will talk about what will most likely be effective for them in combat.  When we play I will have the following dialog: GM:  Ok you are going to hit the bandit in front of you
Player:  Yep
GM:  Do you know what to roll?
Player:  No
GM:  Ok.  You start with an 11 and then add your OCV to that.  Then add any skill levels you want to use in the attack to the previous number.  Then add any pluses/minuses for the maneuver you are using.  What is that number?
Player:  11 + 5 + 2 = 18.
GM:  Now roll 3d6 and subtract it from the number you just calculated.  And tell me that number.
Player: Rolls a 10.  So 10 from 18 is 8.
GM:  Excellent that means you hit a DCV of 8.  Next time do the math ahead of time and roll the dice.  You can then just tell me "I hit a DCV of 7."
Usually people learn how to do combat within a session or two.  I have one person who has not learned how in 8+ months.  So we all help her out. I also sit new people next to experienced folks so they can get some help.  
What do the rest of you do?