AlHazred

2 hours ago, RavenX99 said:

One of the fun things about APAs is that writers often talk about what's going on in their lives, projects they're working on, etc, and I find reading through those in Haymaker! archives to be more compelling than the game material.

Agreed. That's my takeaway from reading old Alarums & Excursions. You'll read about the same arguments you see on active gaming forums, along with personal snippets of campaigns, and so forth. One author gave a multi-page writeup of his starter adventure for Traveller. It read familiarly to me, and in checking the planet names I realized he'd later submitted it to Traveller JTAS periodical as a 2-page scenario; it was one of my favorites I'd remembered from reading it years ago. Reading his campaign writeup in A&E shed light on a whole different way it could play out and was pretty rewarding.

2 hours ago, RavenX99 said:

OMG, someone remembers Clockwork Hero.  I'm actually looking at scanning the whole collection and making it available, but I'm working through the legal/ethical issues.  Scott Heine wrote stuff for it that he later reworked and sold to a publisher, so I'm talking to him about his contributions, and I probably need to see who I can find from the original authors.

 

The big problem is that technically, I don't have the right to copy anything but my own work... everyone participated with the understanding that the APA was distributed to a limited audience.  There's one author I've searched for off and on for _years_ and have never been able to find.

That's the problem for a lot of old fanzines. The rights are the murkiest, and many of the contributors will be difficult if not impossible to reach. I have a feeling the old fanzines will slip into obscurity and inaccessibility far faster than other media. And another piece of the gaming history will be gone forever.

EDIT: And it should go without saying, I'd be interested in the progress of this and would like to subscribe to your newsletter!

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

Here are the old articles of mine I could find -- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q-1oKphlwDWQe3LWZX2dt1DHB5S-iUq0?usp=sharing

I love these things! I originally picked up a few A&Es a few years ago to see what they were like, and became enthused when I saw the same arguments played out in them that people still argue about on gaming forums today. I've since started picking up some, but it's admittedly hit or miss as the few indexes for APAzines you can find online are all incomplete.

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

I'm pretty sure I lost my physical copies to some basement flooding many years ago.

That's sad to hear!

On 1/16/2024 at 7:32 PM, Susano said:

And this is what reading through the lore can be so much fun:

[[SIDEBAR]]
DRACULA?

Mircea Dracula is the older brother of  the vampire Vladislas Dracula and half-brother of Radu Dracula. All three were born in the 1400s and are effectively immortal, possessing either mystic or vampiric powers, or both. Mircea is the heroic one of the trio, with Vladislas the King of the Vampires (and the basis for Vlad Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula), while Radu dwells in a pocket-universe where he engages in hedonistic pleasures.
[[END SIDEBAR]]

Hmmm... So Mircea is a Ventrue, Vladislas a Tzimisce, and Radu a Toreador?

I don't know if I should include Red October. It expands the whole thing greatly beyond its original scope. Also, she has the archives at least split into categories which makes them easier to search. Part of the reason for this list was, a lot of these publications are hard to find and will only become more rare -- for instance, is it worth buying an expensive item on eBay if you only know it has a Champions article? Hopefully you can at least check my list and see if it's of interest!

For me personally, I'm always interested in archives of old Champions and Hero System material. No need to ask!

Apparently, @mattingly is the man to ask! I found this post, where he mentions it. There's a list of Hero APAzines in that thread: Haymaker!, Aaron Allston’s Rogue’s Gallery, HeroZine, The Clobberin' Times, Black Hats & White Capes, and Clockwork Hero. I'm sad I wasn't enough of a writer to at least contribute to one or two of these. I had no idea there were this many! This is relevant because I'm working up a list of articles. I can't include any APAzines beyond a few issues of Alarums & Excursions, because I don't have any! A&E you can at least buy direct from Lee Gold.

A while back, I worked up an article index for the Chaosium Pendragon game. This isn't to index all relevant material that has ever shown up online; that would be a monumental and fruitless task. It was mainly to index articles in old print and PDF periodicals, which aren't always well-documented in RPGGeek. After I completed it, it occurred to me that Champions/Hero System also has not-that-many articles that have ever shown up in magazines -- there were a huge number of online resources from the very beginning (starting with and including the Red October BBS), and so I guess a lot of people were looking there for their resources. Still, there are more than Pendragon, and I used to have subsciptions to Adventurer's Club, EZ Hero, and Digital Hero, so I've got those to go off of.

I've started the list here. I've got quite a ways to go, and I have no idea where to find some of the resources. Haymaker! has compilations available on DTRPG, but I love old APAzines (they're basically the Web forums before the Web existed) and even if I did, indexing them would take ages.

Suggestions welcome.

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

This is new to me as well, never heard of it I used to surf Red October!

I know, right? If I hadn't read the "About" page on the Wayback Machine, I'd have thought it was an incorrect listing on RPGGeek! These dudes were prolific!

Despite being a long-term Hero turbonerd, I found out today about The Clobberin' Times, a Champions zine put out by a group of players from Sacramento, California from September, 1988, to January, 2000, finishing its run after 67 issues. There was a revival of sorts in the form of The Clobberin' Times Online, an online-only form of zine which lasted from April, 2005, to February, 2010, for a total of 30 "issues." The Online form can still be found (in a form) on the Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150405000329/http://forteuniverse.com/cto/30main.htm

I'd never heard of any of it. And I'm a guy who religiously read every issue of EZ Hero and Digital Hero, and the old Adventurers Club (when it was around), and even has a copy or two of Haymaker around (I was never a prolific-enough writer to contribute before deadlines, so my participation in an APAzine is always intermittent). But I've at least heard of Haymaker -- until today I'd never even heard of The Clobberin' Times. Does anybody know a contact who sells copies of the old physical zine? As both a Hero fan, and a fan of the old zines, this ticks all of my boxes and I'd love to check it out!

So, with tiny baby, suddenly we're watching a lot of children's programming in our household. One that's been a big hit is Numberblocks. For some reason, my GM Brain has started working up the Numberblocks in Hero System format. Has anyone done this or something similar with Toons?

Has anyone done writeups for modern pharmaceuticals, like aspirin and similar? Like, I could see "energy shot drink" be a 1d6 Aid END, Drain (5 points/6 Hours). I wonder what clever ideas people might have for others.

Relevant xkcd.

You know, I restarted everything and created the erroring files from scratch, and the error hasn't reoccurred. I'm not sure what was happening, but it's not happening now!

I'm getting a weird error when trying to Export some vehicles, but not all of them. I've had the same error with "RPM_PublishedVehicleSheet_6E_dlc.hde" (which I don't remember where I got) and "RTF-Vehicle Sheet Deric Page.hde" (which I downloaded off the forums thinking the previous export was corrupted). It's the same error with both, but it doesn't occur with all vehicles. It says, "Error Message: For input string "-4-10"." I feel like I'm missing something very simple, but I have a four-month-old, and as a result, I'm too tired to think it through.

For Hero System stuff for the period, I recommend @Susano's book Larger Than Life. He's got "pirates and soldiers, lumberjacks and steel drivers, mountain men and lawmen, cowboys, Indians, inventors, and eccentrics," including sample characters for each type; for instance, the sample lumberjack is, of course, Paul Bunyan. Among the archetypes, he has several appropriate for colonial games, each with a package deal and a discussion of the archetype. It doesn't exactly have a magic system in it, but a lot of the folkloric or "Tall Tales" abilities are basically magic.

Ah! I had uploaded them previously as Package Deals. That explains it! Templates is the preferred way in 6E, so it's good those are up.

Here are the Package Deal versions if that's your preference.

So, I have finally conquered my procrastination! I have uploaded templates for creating classic World of Darkness vampires, werewolves, and wraiths, and only 30 years past when such templates would be relevant!

In all seriousness, I'm pretty sure I'd uploaded them previously, but I went through the Downloads section looking for my old stuff and the only thing in there was an HDC file for a cWoD Wraith, so they must have been deleted. I've now uploaded correct HDT files for all three. Please note that I haven't done any of the myriad, multiple supernatural powers from the various games -- no Vampire disciplines, Werewolf charms, and Wraith arcanoi -- since that would have taken ages and ages, and I didn't need them for my game; these templates are just based on the basic supernatural descriptions in the core books.

Enjoy!

Reading through the writeups, I like them. I feel like Guinevere should have more on her character sheet, but I don't know what!

I like them! Would be cool to see Sir Tristram, and sheets for Merlin and Morgan le Fay. However, I have to ask, what Arthurian romances are you using as a basis? Or is this based on film and television representations? Because, for example, Percival in Perlesvaus is basically a horrifying sociopath, as opposed to Percival in Perceval, the Story of the Grail.

So, I've been toying around with statting up shmups as extra starships in a sci-fi game. Shmups, for those who don't recognize the acronym, are SHoot-'eM-UPS -- video games where you pilot a ship (almost always a fighter-style starship) around a scrolling map and try to shoot opponents while avoiding getting shot yourself. A few of the more popular shmups get some fluff text, which describes the imaginary capabilities of the ships in question -- which is always fun to convert to Hero System.

Anyway, I figured the easiest way would be to start with a "generic shmup," a ship sheet that shows the assumed capabilities of a hypothetical generic shmupcraft. I'll post what I've got so far below, but I'm wondering how to best represent the "bombs." Those usually clear the whole board of enemy craft, so they're pretty potent, but you always have a limited number of them. How does this look?

Vehicle - Standard Shmupcraft.pdf

When I ran Hârn Hero many, many moons ago (in 5th Edition Revised), I used the Variable Power Pool method for wizard spells and created "spellbook pages" for each spell my wizard PC found (see "Breath of Casyl" attached). I also used "Spell School Proficiencies" which I think I made 5 or 10 points, for each of the Shek-Pvar traditions.

As time goes by, I've come to believe that the resistant Energy Defense of armors in the boom is too high. The next FH game I run, I think I'll try halving the rED of most armors, and give fool rED to some padded or specially-made pieces.

On 7/10/2022 at 5:25 PM, dmjalund said:

Vikings also left finances to the women, so I hear

Of course. The women are stereotypically calculating and cold, the men are stereotypically impulsive and passionate. Which one do you want controlling the purse strings?

My idea was to have several archetypes, but I haven't really developed the idea far yet. The archetypes were meant to give additional points for basic ideas, but not straight-jacket character generation.
 

PRE 25 was from the old "Age" Disadvantage. I was kind of wondering if it even makes sense to have higher than 20 maximums, since they'll only have 25 points to build with.

How does this sound for a Lovecraft's/Dunsany's Dreamlands-style campaign?

SETTING: The Waking World is the modern world of 1985. You are all teenagers (12-14) in a sleepy, rural New England town.

CHARACTERS: Player characters are built on 25 points, plus up to 15 points in Complications. Waking World characters are subject to Characteristic Maxima as shown on 6E1 50, except that STR, CON, and BODY max out at 15 (because you're young teenagers), and INT, EGO, and PRE max out at 25 (because you're Lovecraftian teenagers). Waking world characters have the following powers for free:

Quote

7      Power Skill: Dreaming (either INT-, EGO-, or PRE-based, player's choice)

12    Dreaming:  Extra-Dimensional Movement (the Lands of Dream, Single Location) (25 Active Points); Dream Body (character’s body remains in the real world, but cannot move, perceive, or act, and damage to either the dreaming form [in the Dreamlands] or the real body [in the Waking World] can hurt or kill the character; -1) [2 END]

The Dream World is the Dreamlands of Lovecraft and Dunsany. Basically, Jason Thompson's map of the Dreamlands could be the setting map. Dream World characters are different that your Waking World character, and are built on 100 points. Personality traits should be similar to the Waking World version, but skills do not transfer -- knowledge of real world places and things is usually fuzzy, and Waking World technologies just don't work right in dreams. Your Dream World character is built on 100 points, with up to 30 points in Complications.'

You should choose a Tension for your Waking World character -- you're a teenager, there's some source of drama in your life. Pick Social, Family, or Internal Tension. Such Tensions might be reflected in a Complication for your character: for Social Tension, you might pick a Rivalry Complication; Family Tension could be a Rivalry, a Psychological Complication, or something similar; and, Internal Tension could be a Psychological Complication. The GM should conceive an overall plotline to resolve the characters' Tensions over the course of a campaign, whether they are reflected as Complications or not. (Think Stranger Things and the resolution of the Tension involving Steve.)

As for the Waking World character's discovery of the Dream World, pick an archetype:

Quote

• Imaginary Friend: You discovered the Dream World through the intercession of an imaginary friend, who only you can see in the Waking World, but who has a full form in the Dream World. There is a physical token for the imaginary friend in the Waking World, such as a stuffed tiger, an action figure, etc.; you are very protective of this item, and should take a Psychological Complication: Protective Of [Token] (Uncommon, Total). You may have 25 points to build the Imaginary Friend as a Sidekick.
• Bookworm: You discovered the Dream World through careful reading of obscure fantasy authors of the past and a bit of luck while dreaming. You may not take more than one Contact in your Waking World form, and if you take one it must be a Librarian (or similar.) Your Dream World form has 3d6 of Luck, and you have an additional 10 points to spend on Area Knowledges, Culture Knowledges, and Languages of the Dream World, even of places you haven't been.
• Experimenter: You stumbled on the Dream World during a drug-induced dream. Your Dream World form is more durably-built than others' because the drugs put you under more heavily than the rest. You may not take Lightsleep in your Waking World form. Your Dream World form has an additional +5 CON, +10 BODY, +10 STUN, and +10 END.

I feel like there should be more Archetypes possible, those were just the ones that leapt to the top of my thoughts. Does this seem interesting or workable? I conceive of two levels of plot, Waking World and Dream World, and they might or might not be related or cross over. Stranger Things or Fear Street show ways this could be set up, I think.