Chris Goodwin

I have the problem that even with a calculator I can add up the same column of numbers twice and get three different results.
 

I have written up bits of Amber-related material here and there.  You can find some of what I wrote here:  http://web.archive.org/web/20050212234011/http://www.herogames.com:80/oldForum/OtherGenres/000115.html  Note that that was all for fourth edition, so it's pretty out of date.  
 
There's also a bit here, including reference to the thread above:  http://web.archive.org/web/20050412064451/http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15810
 
The biggest thing I can recommend is to decide whether you're running an "Amber Hero" campaign, or a "superheroes with Amberites" campaign.  The latter would tend to be as generic as possible, while the former would mean you'd be essentially building an entire Fantasy Hero type "magic system" for the Amber cosmology.  For example: instead of writing up, say, the Amberites' favorite Tarot cards, as a set of Powers, figure out how you want them to work in your vision of Amber, then tweak the basic game rules to follow.  (For instance: contact via card might count as touch for purposes of No Range abilities, even across Shadow, and that lets you write up a whole bunch of abilities as No Range.) 
 
More threads: 
 
(Oh hey, that's pretty neat.  I had no idea the links would come up like that!)

I’d play in Ghostbusters. It sounds fun.

What is interesting in the point you make about "What you CAN'T do"... I think this mode of thinking is actually correct... in the right game. For Supers, it is all about what you CAN do, most often in amazing ways.

In Heroic level... the more "realistic" you get, the more likely you are defined as much by what you can't do as what you can. Because the closer you get to "real human" then every character is kind of the same... and having a few unique skills, compared to other PCs who CAN'T DO THOSE THINGS is very important. "I'm the kick as swordsman, but don't expect me to be sneaking past any guards any time soon." type of thing. Thus, in the origina 3ed age, it was the Danger Internation and Fantasy Hero type games that expanded the skill list, because you needed more particular skills to help differentiate one character from another. Once you were beyond the fighter or mage or cleric or thief trope... how did two thieves differentiate? It is the same reason that current D&D and such have a plethora of classes... because every fighter needs to be different from other fighters as PCs at least, and class distinction is how they do that.
 
Again, I'm all for detailed skill lists... for the right game. The Skill list actually goes a long way to defining the kind of game the system is trying to create. Thus, I think, the appeal of stripping things back to a 3rd Ed kind of level to some folks on these boards.
 
Personally I feel 4th hit the right level for me, and it went off the rails in 5th and 6th, but the discussion and understanding of what the "skill list" represents for the game concept and play... that's what is important.

Skills, aside from flavor, should have some sort of pertinence to a character. Both in what one can and can't do, as RDUNeil pointed out with Stealth. Having it or not impacts one's options. What I'm seeing from the current gauntlet of skills is that they are trying to encourage that sort of thinking. That what you have and what you don't has impact. However as it has split it into so many subdivisions and minutia, it detracts from that I believe. 

Say you would want a smooth and suave talker? Bureaucratics, Charm, High Society, Possibly Interrogation, Oratory, Persuasion... Any one of those could be what you are looking for at any point in time. That's all just... Talking things.
What about being Athletic? Acrobatics, Breakfall, Climbing, Riding, and perhaps Contortionist and Martial Arts. 
Even being sneaky could be covered by a few skills! Concealment, Disguise, Forgery, Shadowing, Slight of Hand, and the all powerful Stealth.
 
Personally I'm surprised no one has brought up Invention as a skill. The skill that defines the creation of almost anything the mind can conceptualize is a single skill.
 
All these options don't... they don't help convey the options that the Player has. It helps define the world by what they don't and aren't able to do. By defining them all as specific types, it limits the way one tends to think about a situation. Too few skills and they are often too wide and broad to specifically narrow down what one is capable of. Too many skills and each one the player doesn't have is a tool removed from their arsenal. 

Personally, and the rest of this and the rest is conjecturing and opinion, so feel free to disregard it, I'd try and stick with Archtype like skills. Have a dozen or so of them. Academic Learning, Street Learning, Athletic Capability, Stealth Capability, Driving, Empathetic Capability, Communicative Capability, ect... Then just define them by Skill levels in those groups. Sure you might have an 11- for Stealth stuff, but for Hiding specifically? 13-. Negative Skill levels work too there. Say a star athlete with 13- for most, can't jump to save their lives, so 8- or 7-. By defining it in broader strokes, one can grab most of what they are aiming for, and be much more likely to still specialize in areas thanks to the system already in place with Skill Levels.

The only area that sort of rubs me the wrong way would be the KS, PS, SS and such. Though, if one took it more at a general idea and said "They are XXX Profession, they would know YYY because it is related, just with modifiers," then it still works just fine. Then you just sort of grab the "Professions" that define them. Club-goer, Doctor, Nature Enthusiast, Gambler, Ect...
 
An easy way to conceptualize that is the classic question, "What is an Adult?" Understanding a touch of the tax code, property rights, food cost, local area knowledge, good grocers, places to find jobs, where the police can be found, the DMV and general Medical information, ect... All the little nuances that one could go out and specifically designate, but are more easily understood under the bow of being an Adult. Though admittedly, I use this example because nothing would be more saddening and amusing to watch a superhero fail at being an adult and take the day off, or sleep in...

Long story shorter: The further down you break down skills, the more people tend to think and limit themselves to those definitions. Because I have (perhaps misplaced) faith in the Hero Community, I'd recommend parring them back, and setting it up on hunks of related skills, and defining them further with Skill Levels. Same for PS.

I've seen it written all over the place on these forums that we are most definitely not allowed to rewrite the rules to fit our projects, that the IP of HERO is not something we can tamper with, and to even ask is met with silence or curt refusals. Yet Champions Now is doing just that: literally changing the rules in interesting (and probably fruitful) ways to achieve a feel. It's sending a mixed signal.
 
So unless "our" name is Ron Edwards, I don't see how any time spend trying a project like this is possible. I suggested a Fantasy HERO Basic project a while back, and the basic final assessment was that it wouldn't be allowed for the reasons listed above. I wonder if maybe it's not time for DOJ to put their money where their mouths are on these type of projects. Perhaps Champions Now will actually make that possible. This is why I backed the project, and I hope that it opens the door to some similar project proposals from us lowly amateurs who also have a vested interest in seeing the games and the system itself succeed. 
 
I remain skeptically hopeful.

I do hope exactly that.  At the very least, I hope it helps me find more people to play the earlier versions with.
 
 
I too can respect their concerns, but Jason also has more interest -- by which I mean financial -- in success or failure of the Hero System, and more knowledge about how to do that, than I do.  
 
Also a lot of people -- myself included -- have put forth armchair solutions to The Problem, but very few -- and I am likewise not one of those few -- have taken any initiative to write the kinds of products we'd like to see.  If any of us had put our keyboards and time where our mouths are, maybe this would be one of our projects we'd be discussing here instead.

I would observe that the reason it was done with 3rd edition is that Ron is the one writing it, and that 3rd edition was the one that generated the play experiences he was looking to replicate.  I don't see any reason the techniques, and even some of the rules, wouldn't work with the edition of your choice.  (For the general "you" of course.)

I do hope exactly that.  At the very least, I hope it helps me find more people to play the earlier versions with.
 
 
I too can respect their concerns, but Jason also has more interest -- by which I mean financial -- in success or failure of the Hero System, and more knowledge about how to do that, than I do.  
 
Also a lot of people -- myself included -- have put forth armchair solutions to The Problem, but very few -- and I am likewise not one of those few -- have taken any initiative to write the kinds of products we'd like to see.  If any of us had put our keyboards and time where our mouths are, maybe this would be one of our projects we'd be discussing here instead.

I do hope exactly that.  At the very least, I hope it helps me find more people to play the earlier versions with.
 
 
I too can respect their concerns, but Jason also has more interest -- by which I mean financial -- in success or failure of the Hero System, and more knowledge about how to do that, than I do.  
 
Also a lot of people -- myself included -- have put forth armchair solutions to The Problem, but very few -- and I am likewise not one of those few -- have taken any initiative to write the kinds of products we'd like to see.  If any of us had put our keyboards and time where our mouths are, maybe this would be one of our projects we'd be discussing here instead.

I do hope exactly that.  At the very least, I hope it helps me find more people to play the earlier versions with.
 
 
I too can respect their concerns, but Jason also has more interest -- by which I mean financial -- in success or failure of the Hero System, and more knowledge about how to do that, than I do.  
 
Also a lot of people -- myself included -- have put forth armchair solutions to The Problem, but very few -- and I am likewise not one of those few -- have taken any initiative to write the kinds of products we'd like to see.  If any of us had put our keyboards and time where our mouths are, maybe this would be one of our projects we'd be discussing here instead.

You've seen bootleg scans.
 
These won't be bootleg.
 
Project Gutenberg's books are often scans of the originals...because we're talking manually printed.  Sometimes they're pretty poor;  but if the work's put in, the readability can be very good.  The size...they might be large, yeah.  Eek.  Got 4 gig on my Kindle, got 16 gig on my iPad, got Google and Dropbox accounts to stash this.  I'll grant that size may be an issue WRT file load times, but other than that?  Nah.
 
One big thing with the playtest doc is, he's aiming for significant simplification, which IMO will be helpful.  I've been goofing off developing character ideas for a Drew Hayes Super Powereds universe...total of 5 books.  Only origin stories are Mutant, and Tech Wizard.  Even the latter is rare among Heroes;  they tend to be on the sidelines in a support role.  And generally, every character is fairly well themed.  It's been fun.  Some in Hero, some cases, tried to use GURPS.  With both it's very easy to get lost in the weeds of all the options, variations, and what-all.  And that *can* devolve into the character being buried in the numbers.  Easily.  Simplifying the rules doesn't prevent that, of course, but his emphasis in characterization first helps.
 
And it's going to be quite a bit different.  He's probably going to go with Endurance issues again being front and center.  He talked about killing attack issues;  we went back and forth in comments on it...that one of the major problems is simply the killing damage dice.  It's one of his YouTube videos, with our exchange of comments below.  So there's going to be some qualitative differences that may well *not* be applicable to full-scale Hero.  

When these rules first appeared in Champions II, there were no point costs associated with them, for a couple of reasons.  The benefits and drawbacks associated with them were considered to equal themselves out, or at least the GM was recommended to run them that way.  Also, they were intended as part of that no-point-cost background stuff that probably won't come up in play very often. 

I've been doing the no point cost thing for a while, in superheroic settings.
 
I will actually push it into territory that comes close to buying powers. The logic works like this:
 
If the Batmobile is basically a sportscar with a fancy paintjob, it can be bought with money, and is worth zero points.
If the Batmobile is basically a magic box that allows Batman to get to where the action is, it is a GM convenience, and is worth zero points. This is not affected by all the neat things it can potentially do.
 
Similarly for the Batplane. I don't care about its stats or point cost, if its actual function is to get Batman to the action occurring in Tierra del Fuego, where he will land, get out and walk. It's convenient for the GM as much as for the player.
 
The same for Wonder Woman's Invisible Plane! On the other hand, she probably is a bit more likely to use it tactically, so maybe she should buy a bit of limited flight to allow that.
 
Naturally, zero point stuff can be destroyed/taken away at the GM's pleasure, so it's not wise to abuse its availability.

Note, it's written for 4th Edition.  Fairly compatible, but Hero Designer would be more flexible in that you can modify some stuff.

So I was thinking about skills and their use in game play, the way they've changed over the years and editions... realizing one of the things that bugged me about the trend to micro-deconstruction of every skill (Not enough to have PS: Lawyer... now you have to have 47 sub-skills to represent all the things a lawyer knows). I realized what bugs me, is that the game is now inconsistent. Some skills are broad and general and supposed to cover a variety of situational applications... others are really constrained.
 
It came from looking at the Talent "Environmental Movement" which is a Talent for no apparent reason. Isn't the ability to move through certain impeded environments something you can learn... i.e. a skill?  Whatever on that, it is the design difference between it and Stealth that jumped out at me.
 
First... Stealth is 3 points, and is used by almost every character, every game, multiple times. And if the character concept doesn't call for stealth, the lack of it is just as meaningful to the game. Stealth is vastly under costed for its utility in action/adventure (i.e. every Hero game) scenarios... especially as it covers "being sneaky" in any and all situations. Want to sneak past the guard in the dark? Stealth. Want to move through a crowded party without being noticed? Stealth. Want to move across an old attic floor without causing loud squeak? Stealth. Give some situational modifiers (really creaky floor or plentiful blindspots or lots of stuff you have to climb over) and you are good to go. Quick and easy.
 
But then you look at Environmental Movement. Not general, but highly specific, in that you have to buy it separately for every environment. And each environment is nearly as expensive or more than the all-powerful Stealth. 4 Points for Crawlspace Ace.  Really? Four points for the once in a decade of gaming where a character has to move through a cramped space quickly? Really? Talk about overpriced for utility, even if there is no skill roll, that is four points that is almost never going to come into play, and when it does, the action could have been easily covered by a Dex roll with minuses.
 
It is also inconsistent design. While tentatively "realistic" in saying "Knowing how to move through cramped spaces doesn't also allow you to move through underbrush, or over rocky terrain, etc." the question then comes up... if that is the design philosophy, why isn't it applied to Stealth? Moving quietly in the dark is different than moving surreptitiously in a party is different from knowing how to move in an old house without creaking... but you don't have to buy 3 kinds of Stealth.
 
I'd much prefer to see a single skill Environmental Movement 3 pts. "YOur character knows how to move across difficult terrain, through crowded and cramped spaces, etc. Make a roll... "   Boom... GM throws in situational modifiers like any other roll... "This is cold and icy and slippery and you haven't really done this before, so -3 to your roll!" and we are good... quick and easy.
 
Costs aside... Talent or Skill aside... it is the inconsistency in the design that really bugs me. While I personally prefer skill lists that are broadly comprehensive vs. narrowly defined... at least be consistent. It is the fact that similar aspects of the game have fundamentally different design concepts behind them.
 
---
 
On a completely different note... what skills encompass "Hot wiring a car" Sure you could say mechanics, but plenty of people who fix cars have no idea or couldn't effectively hot wire a car, and plenty of car thieves would have no idea how to fix a car... so mechanics seems wrong. I was just scratching my head that such a common action/adventure skill isn't clearly covered anywhere. I PDF searched "hot wire" "Hotwire" "Hotwiring" in 6th ed and came up with nothing
 

But would you really say, "Huh... none of you bought wealth, so you don't have money for tickets... so I guess we don't play this game because it is happening in Italy."
 
Really?  Getting to Italy is just the scene setting up front at the start of the evening's play session... then you go from there.
 
Are you really making your players role play out how they scrounge together enough money for airfare?

If the story is about the investigation, then the characters are just in Italy... set the scene with cool images of Rome or wherever and go! If the adventure is something far away and it would be out of the dramatic storyline to have the PCs involved... then it isn't the adventure. You do a different story.
 
I will admit I really don't get where you are coming from on this.

In my case, it was the internal consistency that was the problem.  
 
Champions, 3rd edition, was a different game from Danger International and from Fantasy Hero, 1st edition.  To me, it was fine that they had different sets of rules.  For the most part, perfectly compatible; a lot of the optional dials-and-switches type rules in 4th through 6th editions are almost word-for-word identical to their first-gen counterparts.  
 
To me, the parts that are different serve a purpose in their difference.  Champions, the 3rd edition core rulebook, didn't need or have an extensive skill list, because finely detailed extensive skills weren't the point; the point was the things that your character can do as a superhero.  It told the GM how to do skills, including importing them from Danger International if you wanted, but an optional way to handle them if you didn't (and the Champions II supplement added most of those in anyway).  Champions wasn't just "a superhero RPG powered by the HERO System," it was a dedicated superhero game that happened to use a house system.  Fantasy Hero used a lot of the same basic mechanisms, but added its own tweaks that worked for fantasy games.  Likewise for Justice Inc. and Danger International.  If you look at, say, Runequest/Call of Cthulhu/Superworld, you can see something similar.  
 
In first-gen era, the games themselves were designed using the core "Hero System" and their own sets of assumptions; each game did its own thing and did it well.  In 4th edition, suddenly we had the fully internally consistent "HERO System" that tried to do everything, and did most of it, pretty well, but you did it all starting with one set of assumptions.  The most unsatisfying games I had were when I tried to run first-gen style non-supers campaigns with people who started with 4th edition; even when I'd write up in campaign documents what I was trying to run, even when I'd use the campaign design sheets, the underlying assumptions tripped us up.  I was trying to run one style of game, they were trying to play a different one.  I was trying to run low powered, primarily skill-based games, and they were trying to figure out what powers their thief should have and how many points they needed for their Multipower.  
 
The truism around the webs is that Hero is best for superheroic games, and GURPS is best for gritty games.  I honestly never found that to be the case, until 4th edition came out.  The group I used to play with in the late eighties, firmly in first-gen era, was an organized group that had five sessions in a weekend; Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening.  I was part of that group for about three years, and the system of choice was almost exclusively "Hero System", meaning the first-gen games.  We played ridiculous numbers of different campaigns; some of which went on for two years, some of which went on for two sessions, but 95% of which were one or more of Champions, Fantasy Hero, Danger International, Robot Warriors, Justice Inc.  Each of the games -- even different campaigns using the same game! -- had its own flavor, and own assumptions.  For instance, Fantasy Hero 1st edition didn't include the Martial Arts rules by default.  The assumption was that you were playing swords and sorcery types, with weapon skills represented by specific fantasy-flavored optional maneuvers.  In a Fantasy Hero conversion of FGU's Bushido RPG, I played a ninja (it was the 80's, don't judge) with Karate from DI, so I asked the GM, who chuckled at my kewl-ninja-wanna-be-ness but said yes, I can do that.  If he'd said no I wouldn't have had Karate.  And it was no big deal either way.  You started with the particular set of assumptions in the game you were playing, and asked the GM to go beyond them; it's easier to give than it is to take away. 

Nowadays?  It's one system, one set of assumptions.  The assumption is that everything in the book is fair game; for instance, if want to run a low powered Fantasy Hero game reminiscent of the first-gen days, I can write up a campaign rules document that clearly says "No Martial Arts," and no to a dozen other things, but I guarantee every character will have Martial Arts and at least half of the other things on my "no" list.  And I'll get all kinds of pushback about how this is just his combat style, it's not really a Martial Arts form, and I'll just toss the character sheets back and never run the game. 
 

Woot!
 
Now I have to decide on the
"One solid bit of content about superheroes and/or villains
One solid bit of genre specification, implying a fictional style and specific types of problems, including the location of play"
for my playtest game.
 
All I've got at the moment is "not Grimdark".

JUST FUNDED! WOOT!

?  And maybe points up assumption clash a bit.  ?   The campaign was intended to be fairly historical Japan (with the addition of magic, of course); the GM very patiently explained to me about the historicity (or lack thereof) of ninja, and the problems my character would be facing in the campaign (namely, being a hired killer of the eta social class), but he let me go for it.  I played that character for the first arc of the campaign.  (Sometimes dice just work out, to the point that in the final session of that arc I took out a lieutenant-type with a Karate punch, critical hit, to the head, and shortly thereafter I died holding a position.  I felt it was a very worthy death.)

These are the sorts of things Ron Edwards got out of first-gen Champions!  And in fact is what he's optimizing Champions Now for.  
 
(Boldface mine.) 

I want to strongly emphasize:  I don't think the old way was necessarily better.  It was different.  (And, sadly, is now dead, which is what I'm hoping will change with this Kickstarter.)

In my case, it was the internal consistency that was the problem.  
 
Champions, 3rd edition, was a different game from Danger International and from Fantasy Hero, 1st edition.  To me, it was fine that they had different sets of rules.  For the most part, perfectly compatible; a lot of the optional dials-and-switches type rules in 4th through 6th editions are almost word-for-word identical to their first-gen counterparts.  
 
To me, the parts that are different serve a purpose in their difference.  Champions, the 3rd edition core rulebook, didn't need or have an extensive skill list, because finely detailed extensive skills weren't the point; the point was the things that your character can do as a superhero.  It told the GM how to do skills, including importing them from Danger International if you wanted, but an optional way to handle them if you didn't (and the Champions II supplement added most of those in anyway).  Champions wasn't just "a superhero RPG powered by the HERO System," it was a dedicated superhero game that happened to use a house system.  Fantasy Hero used a lot of the same basic mechanisms, but added its own tweaks that worked for fantasy games.  Likewise for Justice Inc. and Danger International.  If you look at, say, Runequest/Call of Cthulhu/Superworld, you can see something similar.  
 
In first-gen era, the games themselves were designed using the core "Hero System" and their own sets of assumptions; each game did its own thing and did it well.  In 4th edition, suddenly we had the fully internally consistent "HERO System" that tried to do everything, and did most of it, pretty well, but you did it all starting with one set of assumptions.  The most unsatisfying games I had were when I tried to run first-gen style non-supers campaigns with people who started with 4th edition; even when I'd write up in campaign documents what I was trying to run, even when I'd use the campaign design sheets, the underlying assumptions tripped us up.  I was trying to run one style of game, they were trying to play a different one.  I was trying to run low powered, primarily skill-based games, and they were trying to figure out what powers their thief should have and how many points they needed for their Multipower.  
 
The truism around the webs is that Hero is best for superheroic games, and GURPS is best for gritty games.  I honestly never found that to be the case, until 4th edition came out.  The group I used to play with in the late eighties, firmly in first-gen era, was an organized group that had five sessions in a weekend; Friday night, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening.  I was part of that group for about three years, and the system of choice was almost exclusively "Hero System", meaning the first-gen games.  We played ridiculous numbers of different campaigns; some of which went on for two years, some of which went on for two sessions, but 95% of which were one or more of Champions, Fantasy Hero, Danger International, Robot Warriors, Justice Inc.  Each of the games -- even different campaigns using the same game! -- had its own flavor, and own assumptions.  For instance, Fantasy Hero 1st edition didn't include the Martial Arts rules by default.  The assumption was that you were playing swords and sorcery types, with weapon skills represented by specific fantasy-flavored optional maneuvers.  In a Fantasy Hero conversion of FGU's Bushido RPG, I played a ninja (it was the 80's, don't judge) with Karate from DI, so I asked the GM, who chuckled at my kewl-ninja-wanna-be-ness but said yes, I can do that.  If he'd said no I wouldn't have had Karate.  And it was no big deal either way.  You started with the particular set of assumptions in the game you were playing, and asked the GM to go beyond them; it's easier to give than it is to take away. 

Nowadays?  It's one system, one set of assumptions.  The assumption is that everything in the book is fair game; for instance, if want to run a low powered Fantasy Hero game reminiscent of the first-gen days, I can write up a campaign rules document that clearly says "No Martial Arts," and no to a dozen other things, but I guarantee every character will have Martial Arts and at least half of the other things on my "no" list.  And I'll get all kinds of pushback about how this is just his combat style, it's not really a Martial Arts form, and I'll just toss the character sheets back and never run the game. 
 

the Kickstarter just broke 19k!