AlHazred

Re: Your Gaming Group's Jargon Anybody else here ever visit the Gamer Jargon website? For some inexplicable reason, my players consider "Stunned" to mean Unconscious, too. They use the term "Dazed" to mean Stunned. And one of them runs games at Cons, so I suppose he's spreading that insidious meme... Cracked Out - a character with maximized potential in some area. As in "Man, those goons are going to kill you!" "Nah, my HTH skills are cracked out!" Blarg - an informational placeholder, used when the GM wants to give specific information but does not have that info prepared. As in "So, we ask the beggar where he saw the Man in Black. Does he have an address?" "Uh, yeah... blarg!"

Re: What do you call this genre? Uh... "Early National Fantasy"? That's quite a mouthful. When a good genre name doesn't come to me for what I want to run, I tend to go with an element of the setting that helps define it for the players; hence, "Kumite Hero" instead of "Cross-Dimensional Martial Arts Fantasy" or "Vigilance League Hero" instead of "Pulp Heroic/Golden Age Superheroic."

Re: Fiddling With 6th - Skills (first of ??) Another thing you might want to consider is "Cascade Skills." This is the idea (used in several other game systems) where a "Skill" is not the ability to do one single thing; rather, each Skill covers several related abilities. For instance, in DragonQuest, the Thief Skill allowed you to Open Locks, Find Traps, Disarm Traps, etc. To apply this idea to the ones floating around here, perhaps you could define "Cascade Packages" for your campaign; a 1-point (or 3-point, or 5-point, or whatever) investment nets you a 7- (or 8-, or 6-, or whatever) roll with a group of related abilities. You could have the Thief Cascade with Security Systems, Lockpicking, Eavesdropping, and so on. Then, when a character wants to be better at one particular thing, he pays points towards improving it. This way, you maintain the exclusivity of people who invest in skills (i.e., they can try things other, less skill-intensive, characters can't) but still maintain your granularity. In this system, there are no Everyman Skills, per se. You get a Cultural Cascade with the relevant Everyman Skills in it.

Re: Sci-fi the 60's way: Strategic Space Command Nice. They've got some nice stuff worked up. There's enough detail on some of the threads, and on this site to work up some of the vehicles. And they got Nyrath to make up a star map! He's the best at those things! Nice catch, Proditor!

Re: I need help designing some equipment What's the actual effect that's being worked up here?

Re: high medical tech, physicals & psych exams A couple of comments: First of all, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a campaign with 150-point characters built on 125+25 or whatever. As long as this accurately reflects the genre, setting, style, group predilections, or whatever, it's fine. Second, just because everyone is "fixed" doesn't mean everyone is perfectly fit, mentally and physically. There could easily be incredibly minor physical ailments that either aren't major enough to qualify for government treatment (mild color-blindness, birthmarks, etc.) or can't because technology just hasn't reached that far yet (easily gets colds, unexplained nervous tics). These could be worth a 5-point Physical Limitation or Distinctive Feature. Alternatively, depending on how advanced medical technology is, there could still be problems that haven't been fixed yet, either because society does not regard them as "real problems" (Overconfidence, Obeys Orders, certain Prejudices) or, again, because technology has not advanced to the point of being able to fix them; the thing about mental problems is, some of them are really well-hidden by their victims, and can't easily be discovered by even the people they live with, their intimates. Third, there're all sorts of disadvantages associated with being a member of an organization. Usually a Watched, Subject to Orders, sometimes a uniform (Distinctive Feature), whatever. These can easily add to points. If your GM is giving you points for things like Subject to Orders Social Limitation, then he's probably doing it for a reason (i.e., you're not always going to like what those orders require you to do). Maybe you need to tell us more about your character's personality and background, so we can help you pick out the Disads. It helps to have more experienced eyes looking, sometimes.

Re: New Advantage: Varying Dimensions No, based purely on the math, it would seem to be worth +¾ in addition to the normal value of the AoE. I hadn't thought of this, but it would seem to make it really expensive (since it would be a +2 at a minimum). It's a good idea, but it doesn't quite achieve the effect I was looking for; there are plenty of Radii you couldn't hit with it, for example, since the Active Points are always divided by 10 in the case of AoE Radius. Personally, I'm thinking it's about worth +1/2, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's similar to Selective in that you can use it to avoid affecting certain targets; in some ways it's more effective, since, for the targets you want to strike, you don't need to make any additional attack rolls. Secondly, it seems to be slightly less effective than an Any Area AoE, since you can't select hexes inside the area not to affect. To achieve an Any Area AoE similar in size to one of the other AoE shapes, you need at least +1/2 worth of Increased Size. So, somewhere around there seems right. I'm thinking it would work like this: when the Power is used, the user declares what the base size of the AoE is. For an AoE Radius, it's the Radius; for an AoE Line, it's the length. For an AoE Cone, it's the length of a side. Other AoEs might require more in-depth thinking, and since I'm at work, I won't be using any of that part of my brain; at least, not until 5:00 PM. The minimum size would of course be AoE One Hex. Comments? Complaints?

I posted a question to Steve on the "Hero System 5th Edition Rules Questions" Board.

This may already be in one of the books or DH issues, but I'm blanking on it. Is there a modifier to Area Of Effect that allows one to vary the size of the Area? I'm thinking of an Area Of Effect (Radius) that would allow the user to vary from 1" Radius to the normal size of the Radius (1"/10 AP). Thanks!

Re: Suddenly Alone on the Stations I would imagine the need to plan for future expansion would lead to some enterprising use of available space. I'm remembering an old Asimov story where cast-off rocket shells that stayed in orbit were given spin and converted to hydroponic farms.

Re: Cross-gender roleplaying If you can do it well, more power to you. I have enough trouble trying to play a realistic human in real life. I know I'm not up to the RP challenge of playing a different gender, myself.

Re: RSR. Can you think of a different way? In a Vancian magic system, master magicians would have no RSR on their spells. In fact, you couldn't be considered a real mage if there was any chance your spells would fail.

Re: just a note for the arduin fans Arduin was one of those incredibly creative fan projects that I didn't get back in the day, but that seem like incredibly interesting now. In college, I had a D&D GM who made extensive changes to the system; he used quite a lot of the Arduin mechanics. Looking at it now, a lot of Dave's ideas are extremely creative. I probably wouldn't use any of them as written, but I love to pull out the books and page through them, and let the ideas percolate in my GM-brain...

Re: Priority Character Creation Meta-System One of the GMs in my group used to do things this way. Now, he insists on sitting down with you one-on-one and role-playing through your character's history, jotting down how he develops. Personally, if it works for your group, then that's all the argument you need.

Re: Tyrannon Ah, well. How much detail can we expect on the Witchcraft-related organizations, the Trismegistus Council and the Circle of the Scarlet Moon?

Re: Full Desolidification

Re: Tyrannon One of my favorite mystic/psionic elements of the old Champions Universe was the Blood. Will they show up in the new Universe? Will there be equivalents? This is what I want to know...

Re: Culture HERO

Re: How would you write up the following power? Don't forget the Extra Time limitation and Delayed Effect advantage.

See, this is why I don't hang out on the RPGNet boards, despite the fact that it's the favorite board of some of my gaming group... (Highlight mine)

To bring this (vaguely) back to Fantasy Hero, has anyone worked up a Middle Earth language chart?

Thanks, Scott! Any chance of you posting the HD files?

That's what it is. Steve just came out (in Fantasy Hero) with some guidelines, so that we know what Absolute Effects in Hero would look like. The new FH Talent Fearless uses this rule. Having thought about it, I think the idea of the new Class of Minds would be the "best fit". That way, if you decide later to do something different, you haven't power-constructed yourself into a corner.

You'd need Criminology to properly process a crime scene, I'd think. It wouldn't hurt to have Deduction. Entomologists in my experience also know a little Botany (what the bugs eat), Geology (since many live in nests underground), and some Chemistry (to analyze bug traces/pheromones/etc.) As a detective, you could justify Enhanced Perception and Eidetic Memory.

The Absolute Effect Rule is a method to represent effective absolute effects. It's essentially a sanctioned handwaving method.