Kap

Re: So how did you guys learn the system?

Bought a beat-up used copy of 2nd edition Champions for two or three dollars after skimming through it to see what it had to offer. What pulled me in was it was the only superhero game that had a mechanic for PCs burning themselves out by overexerting themselves (END costs) and the BODY/STUN mechanic to mimic how superheroes in comics get knocked out all the time but not killed. I only used Hero System for super heroes. Despite its billing and what others say, I think it works best for that genre and prefer other games for other genres.

I still have friends who don't really "get" the system, though, but in the course of a game they get by with minimal explanations and memory jogging.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

Don't forget the various orgs that would come out to exploit the situation. Such a thing could easily go national.

Or just as easily be minimized as "Idiot Gets Self Killed Playing Super Hero, Film at Eleven." Might get a mention in "News of the Weird" and not much else, depending on what else is happening that week, kind of like how Farrah Fawcett's death was overshadowed by Michael Jackson dying the same day.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

Well' date=' if we want to be truely "realistic" it would probably get more than a small news item on Page B2. I'd expect it to be a sub headline on the cover, or, if it were a slow news day, the cover headline. Bruce Wayne [i']is[/i] incredibly rich after all.

No, because in a realistic setting Bruce Wayne would never become Batman in the 1st place. It would be some deluded kid who read too many comic books, thus the B2 placing for the small news item.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

Generally it's too simplistic. You've got good guys and bad guys and not much grey. What I tend to like (and which most players apparently don't) is grey contests with at least three sides.

As for that, I get enough in real life. Superheroes are an inherently unrealistic genre so I never understoood attempts to make their comic books and games "realistic." In reality, Batman would be shot dead the first time he tried to take on a gang of thugs and we'd have a small news item on page B2 about it.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

I sit somewhere in the middle. I wouldn't want to run a game as cuddly as the Super Friends but at the same time I wouldn't want to run a long term game in the style of Watchmen. Although I loved The Watchmen, both comic and movie I would find running that sort of game draining after a while. Now if I got the chance to PLAY, well hell, I'd play anything, any style; from Gold to Rusty Iron to post-Iron. Oh, I'd love to actually get to PLAY one of my characters.

 

Ahem. Sorry about that.

 

My first exposure to the supers genre was the old Fleishman (Sp?) Superman cartoon from the late 30's and the 60's Marvel TV shows. My 2 favourite characters were Thor and The Submariner: one the pure, noble hero, the other a brooding anti hero. I preferred them to the Super Friends; from a very early age I found Super Friends too cheesy. Too much club-house kids action. But Thor and Subby, I liked. I liked the art and stories. Yeah the shows were done on the cheap, even as a kid I knew that. But art doesn't need to be expensive to be good. I liked Subby the most, it seemed that his struggles were more meaningful to him on a personal level: defending his kingdom from Atlantean barbarians, trying to regain his throne, defending his people from the Surface Worlders (ie: Us!) I liked that we (people, the characters one is supposed to identify with in most such stories) were not always the good guys. Things we did could have unintended harmful effects and others were justified in fighting against us. That's a pretty big conceptual leap for a young child.

 

And then along came Spiderman. Now here's a fella a kid can get in to. He's young, he has a young person's problems, he's constantly misunderstood by authority figures despite trying to do the right thing. He makes jokes even when he's in trouble. Yep, I liked Spiderman. Still do.

 

I guess all this adds up to: colour me bronze.

Cheers. :-)

That Spider-Man just might catch on.

Re: Second Best Game System ?

Aye, agreed..... BTW the Superbabes RPG was also a really good system

 

~Rex

What was the mechanic for "Superbabes" like?

Re: Hero System Sixth Edition Concise

To me, this points out the entire "elephant in the room" of the Hero System... the double-edged sword that has both been a financial millstone around the necks of the companies publishing it, and been the main thing that attracted many of its hardcore players to it in the first place and has kept them fiercely loyal to it. Namely, that it has been the "anti-D&D;" that all of the official rules are in the core rulebook(s), and anything in supplements was just that: truly supplemental... something that might be useful, but is not in any way necessary.

 

For Hero System fans, this can be a very cool feature. And indeed, I know many Hero System players for whom this is exactly the case: they've never bought a single Hero System book beyond the core rules. If you understand a genre, you don't need the attendant Genre Book. If you run or play in a homebrewed setting, you don't need a Setting Book. If you have good ideas for powers and gear builds on your own, and don't mind doing them, you don't need a Powers Book or an Equipment Book. If you build your own adversaries, you don't need an Enemies Book. If you create your own adventures, you don't need an Adventure Book. Heck... all of this is probably why the APGs were successful. They were offering something for the "just the toolkit" players to buy to expand their toolkits, rather than stuff built using the existing toolkit (which the "just the toolkit" players would rather build themselves).

 

But obviously, for the company, this can be a less-than-desirable state of affairs. Yes, it means there will always be a market for the core rules. But successfully selling anything other than the core rules gets much dicier. Possible, certainly. But not as clear, and probably a bigger drop-off than many game systems in terms of sales of the main book compared to sales of supplements. (I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I wouldn't be surprised if sales of the core rules for the Hero System outperformed sales for all of the supplements combined. Or at least, for all but the top two or three supplements combined.)

 

Another part of the issue, I suspect, is that the toolkit nature of the system makes it harder to offer books that appeal to players as much as they do GMs. Yes, there are certainly some (APGs, Hero System Martial Arts, Powers/Equipment books (but those run into the "I always build my own" issue with some players), etc.) But Setting Books are largely perceived as being for the GMs who run games in the setting (perhaps not true, but often seen that way). Adventure Books are obviously for GMs; same with Enemies Books. Even Genre Books are perceived by some players as being mostly for GMs, with a lot of the focus on choices about campaign creation and feel, etc.

 

To put it plainly, if D&D3 had included a system for how to build your own Feats and Prestige Classes, and do so in a way that was (more or less) balanced compared to those offered in the books and created by other players, then much of the sales for the countless supplements -- which was largely driven, from what I've seen, by the desire to get the new crunchy bits -- would have dried up...

I just use 5th edition (not the revised edition) and none of the extra books to run games...all the rules I need are already there. The only genre book I have is the Champions one by Aaron Alston but I don't really need it, I just enjoyed reading it and some of the ideas were neat. The other genre books don't appeal to me and the settings/enemies/heroes/vehicles/bases/etc. books I don't care about as I only use homemade settings and characters.

I would have been more interested in 6th edition if it didn't look like they wanted me to buy 2 books to do what I'm already doing with 1.

Re: Hero System Sixth Edition Concise

There's been a recurring suggestion that perhaps the Hero System core rules could benefit from a more concise treatment, similar to how the Hero System Basic Rulebook was done, but including the full rule set (not just the sub-set featured in Basic). I like this idea, simply because I think it would be easier to use a lot of the time. (There have also been suggestions that it might make the Hero System less intimidating to newcomers, and thereby increase the popularity of the game, though I'm personally less convinced on that score.)

 

Therefore, I've been giving some thought to what one might use as guiding principles for such a project. I thought I'd post my take on it, and see what ideas other folks might have. Who knows? If Hero Games ever decides to tackle such a thing, maybe these thoughts will be useful.

 

In no particular order...

 

 

• Don't Anticipate Confusion (aka, "It's Not a FAQ") Don't devote a bunch of words in the core rules to answering unasked questions. Explain the rule clearly, and assume readers will "get it." Will they? Not all of them, not every time. But most will, most of the time. By trying too hard to anticipate all possible questions before they're asked, you end up including a bunch of answers that many/most people would never need. By all means, use those answers somewhere, but have that be in an FAQ file or a "Hero System Companion" book or something.
  

 

 

• Don't Anticipate Every Possible Permutation It may seem useful in theory to include verbiage describing how, say, Clinging works if you apply Area Of Effect (personal surface - Damage Shield) to it. Trouble is, for the 99% of characters with Clinging that don't have Damage Shield on it, it's just a wasted paragraph. As with the "answering unasked questions" material, this sort of "specific game-element interaction" material can go in some companion volume instead of the core rules.
  

 

 

• Don't Assume Particular Special Effects Wherever possible, stick to describing what the game mechanic effects are, without offering possible game-world or SFX reasons for choosing those game effects. In other words, assume the readers understand the concept of Reasoning From Effect, and don't bother specifically noting (for example) that Animal Friendship might mean a character has "an innate bond with animals, or a mystical ability to make animals like and respect him." Maybe he does; maybe he doesn't. It doesn't matter. What matters is that the character pays 20 points, and gets the ability to gain an animal’s friendship, teach it a trick, or get it to perform some task, by succeeding with a PRE Roll at +3. Why the character has this ability, how it works for him specifically, or why the animals respond... that's all SFX.
  

 

 

• Don't Describe What It Isn't Except in the relatively rare case where it's clearly the best way to describe something (such as with, say, Combat Luck), don't bother describing what an ability isn't or what it doesn't do. Don't assume every reader will assume it might do other things you haven't said it does. For example, you don't need to point out that Ambidexterity doesn't allow a character to make multiple attacks. You didn't say it did allow that, so there's no need to assume someone else is going to assume it does.
  

 

 

• Don't Assume Ill Intent Beyond brief suggestions that a particular ability can affect game balance, so proceed appropriately, the core rules don't really need to warn against the abuse, misuse, or the evils of bad or munchkinny gaming groups.
  

 

 

• Assume Universal "GM Discretion" Exceptions Don't bother saying -- many times, on dozens of different abilities and rules -- that something is generally a certain way, but that the GM can grant special permission to do it another way. Just say "It works this way," and have it be a universal assumption that the GM can allow anything he wants to allow, disallow anything he wants to disallow, and change anything he wants to change. If that fact is spelled out clearly enough as an axiom of the system, then we don't need to mention it over and over again in specific instances.
  

 

 

That's what I've thought of so far. Anyone else have any ideas?

I really like points #2, 3, and 6.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

what would be a challenge is to make a hero who si both a good guy AND a creep

Batman since the '90s from everything I've seen.

Re: Second Best Game System ?

The system is Cortex or Cortex derived so reviews of the Leverage and Smallville rpgs might be helpful as far as the basic system.

Anyone have any experience with the Cortex system? The reviews I found didn't really give me game-mechanics details, they were like "so much fun!" or "lame!" Not very useful.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

If they ever fought' date=' the Superfriends would murder the Watchmen by accident [i']à la[/i] Superboy Prime.

The Super Friends would have the good judgment not to make that kind of mistake.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

I prefer to see more mature and reasonable treatments of the complex questions of force and the private application of such to exert one's will.

I don't need, or usually even want, my Supers campaigns to be blood soaked Iron age festivals, but I similarly can't comprehend the attraction for the saccharin fake world imposed on the Comics industry by the HUAC and Senator McCarthy's witchhunts. As far as I'm concerned, setting a Supers game in an unexamined Silver age setting is like playing a Hogan's Heroes game without even considering the implications of milking Nazi camps for comedy.

The HUAC and Joseph McCarthy had nothing to do with the Comics Code Authority. Do you mean the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency?

"Hogan's Heroes" was set in a P.O.W. camp, not a concentration camp, in case you've never seen it. It was basically a sitcom ripoff of the film "Stalag 13."

Re: Fictional cities

Another thing you can do with fictional cities is make them a mosaic or mash-up of famous cities and cultural landmarks--you could combine the Vegas Strip' date=' Hollywood, Broadway, Cambridge, Greenwich Village, Chinatown(SF), Detroit, Silicon Valley and the French Quarter of New Orleans to create a hyper-cosmopolitan, hyper-industrial megapolis with plenty of local flavor(plus you could pack it with movie stars, wealthy industrialists, crime lords and genius inventors and professors).[/quote']

 

That could work great for some games depending on the style of play you enjoy. For the kind of games I like, cities like that just seem too fake.

Re: Superbabes to Champions... character sheets needed.

I'm amazed there was such a game.

Re: Spreadsheet for balancing SPD, CV and AP strength of attacks

Nice job.

Re: From Superfriends to Watchmen: The Extremes of Superheroes

I don't think the protagonists of Watchmen were presented as heroes. They were just as big creeps as the villains they fought. Unfortunately Marvel and D.C. decided that all their mainstream superheroes should be remade in the mold of Watchmen, so we've had a couple of decades now of creeps passing themselves off as superheroes. I'm still waiting for the pendulum to swing back.

Give me the Super Friends (or any season of Lynda Carter Wonder Woman) any day!

--Kap

Re: Second Best Game System ?

I thought that was pretty interesting too.

Anybody know anything about the game mechanics for that system? The Captain America character sheet doesn't tell me much. I see different-sided dice for different abilities, but have no idea what that means in the game. Info I could find on the web site was sparse.

--Kap

Re: Golden Age Comics on DVD...The Big Red Cheese!

I found this, and as long as you can deal with PDF rather than paper, I think it's awesome these old comics are available in a collection for ten bucks! I am not old enough to have read these when they came out, but I am old enough to have read a collection in--hardback which is now falling apart--as a boy and to have become a big fan!

 

http://www.everything4lessstore.com/316.html

 

This is the other line which actually introduced 'The Big Red Cheeze'!

 

http://www.everything4lessstore.com/537.html

I have these, but they aren't PDFs (unless they changed since when I bought them). I forget the name of the format they're in, but it basically displays them as comic book pages.

It's a great bargain as you get almost the complete series. There are a few missing issues here and there.

You can also get near-complete runs of Quality Comics (Plastic Man, Phantom Lady, the Ray, Doll Man), Fox Comics (Blue Beetle), and other publishers that went kaput in the '40s and '50s.

--Kap

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!!

I thought 2001: A Space Odyssey was the most boring movie I've ever seen.

 

There, I said it.

I thought it was the 2nd most boring movie...

Re: Destroy Your Geek Cred!!

Never seen the new Star Wars movies.

Disdain all Star Trek without William Shatner.

Never seen a Terminator film.

Never seen Avatar.

Never seen Robocop.

Never seen Doctor Who.

Disdain all Batman without Adam West.

If Dirk Benedict isn't in it, it's not Battlestar Galactica.

Never seen Babylon 5.

No interest in Japanese cartoons or comic books.

No fetish for Asian girls.

Don't believe Frank Miller's Daredevil or Batman were any good.

Never liked the X-men comic book.

Note sure whether I actually qualify as a geek, though.

--Kap

Re: snow board

Is he the Canadian Silver Surfer?

Re: Robocop vs Terminator

Robocop vs Terminator (the original).

 

Who would win and why?

Whichever one you like best, because you like him best! Just like when the Hulk regularly beats the stuffing out of Thor in my mind.

Re: The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!

That's pretty neat that you two are now in contact thanks to the power of the Internet.

Re: Fictional cities

I've done both. Real cities have the advantage of having pre-made history and maps' date=' and the disadvantage of requiring the GM/players to be at least somewhat familiar with them. Fictional cities need a lot more prep work, but generally the GM and players can play in them without worrying about authenticity or familiarity.[/quote']

 

You don't need to worry about authenticity or familiarity with a real city either if you either (A) use the one you live in, or ( use one neither you nor the players have been to. I use NYC and all I've ever needed was a nice map with landmarks on it and the occasional Google or Wikipedia search if I want any facts to insert. None of my players is from NYC so it doesn't matter if I stick a nonexistent fountain in Greenwich Village.

Re: Second Best Game System ?

I'm not sure, honestly. I did run across a link to example character sheet

 

http://www.margaretweis.com/images/stories/bonus_content/data_file_captain_america_promo_2.pdf

On their site (and on Amazon) they're taking pre-orders but I didn't see any information about what the game is like or how it works.