Chris Goodwin

I've got 'em down for August 8, 2029.  Sorry, but that's the earliest one I've got available, but I'll let you know if someone cancels before then.

Hey Rose, I'm still alive and kicking. eepjr has inspired me lately to revisit the HERO material by persistently grinding through Fantasy HERO material, and I've been making some mechanical improvements to the site here and there, so I still have a hand in the HERO jar but I'm no where as active as I once was.
 
Long story short, my wife and I had another baby a couple of years ago, and that, plus work, other kid, etc, I just don't have the free time I used to have. I started using Fate and Fate Accelerated for my (seldom) game sessions mostly due to the greatly lessened time it takes to work up material.
 
I still love the HERO System and it is still my favorite game system of all time. Just, y'know, life happens.
 
 
 
How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? Long story short, it was my handle for Mechwarrior a very long time ago, that I then used to replace a different handle I had used for years that I discovered was very similar to one used by a hacker with a bad reputation. It just sort of became my net persona, unintentionally. 
What was the first tabletop RPG you played? Actual table top was D&D Red Box; I was 10. But my real intro to the hobby was Joe Dever's Lone Wolf; if that hadn't of hooked me I would not have been interested when the opportunity to play D&D was offered.
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? Also D&D Red Box.
What are you currently playing/GMing? My Pathfinder Fate Accelerated hack, though on an extremely spread out schedule. We play every now and then when the stars align, usually in bursts of a few sessions. Over the last year I've also played in some one offs of Edge of Empire, Pathfinder, and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, and we play a lot of board and card games. Netrunner, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Warhammer Quest, Descent, Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Smashup most recently. I'm currently looking forward to the new Netrunner Mainframe board game, and the Sentinels of the Multiverse Oblivaeon kickstarter.

How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)? 
 
My name is David. My college era gaming group called me "Dave Man" and then "D-Man" when they got lazy. I do not know why. It was stupid. Embracing this pointless nickname, my handle back on the Cybergames boards and then the Hero boards and then these here resurrected Hero boards was D-Man.
 
However, back during the flame-wars of old (today is weak tea compared to 2003-2005) I led a coalition of like-minded flame-war disrupting and derailing dastards under the moniker of Von D-Man, the monocole doffing, hessian boot wearing, kaisereich uniform wearing, bad German accent wielding Supreme Leader of PAID in Full. Whenever the flame warriors gave up and surrendered a thread (and boo-hoo'd at me in whiny private messages) we informed them they had been "Paid in Full."
 
Yet, someone took to abbreviating Von D-Man as VD-Man and, well, no thank you. Since ScubaHERO had taken to referring to me as "Von-D," and occasionally "Vondy," I asked Simon to change my handle to Vondy. It has been thus for years on end now.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you played? 
 
The blue-covered1977 Dungeons and Dragon boxed set. It was 1979. I was 7. 
 
I played a ton of early games, however, and I loved a lot of them.
 
What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed? 
 
Same.
 
What are you currently playing/GMing? 
 
I have been running FFG Star Wars, but last week converted the characters to Hero 5th. 
 
I have a street-level TAS style Hero game I want to run in the near future. 
 
When did you start to play Hero?
 
I first played Hero in 1983, but didn't settle on it as my system of choice until 1991. 

How did I come up with my 'handle'?
I am German, I have red hair, and I'm a commie.
 
What was the fisrt RPG ypu played?
Guess what - D&D Red Box of course!
 
What was the first RPG you GM'd?
D&D Red Box again. I introduced roleplaying games to my friends in school.
 
What are you curently playing?
My group alternates when it comes to gming/ playing. So, at the moment I gm Solomon Kane (SW) and Mutant City Blues and have just finished a 5 year long Labyrint Lord campaign. We still have a D&D 5th edition campaign and a Warhammer 2nd Edition campaign running and another AD&D 2nd Editon on a longer hiatus.
 
P.S.: This was my 1,000th post.

Same. I also love the next to last frame. D'awww...

That kind of thing probably would go over well with a lot of players, since they've grown up in a sort of multimedia crayons and construction paper sort of world.  The theater of the mind we can teach, but it might require some tools to get them there.

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.

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.

At last it can be revealed!
 
At last it can be revealed! I took advantage of some free time in ace artist Eric Lofgren's schedule earlier this year to get him to create a beautiful piece of art that I currently intend to use as the cover of Mythic Hero. He took my idea and executed it superbly.

I don't have a finished book. I don't have any specific idea for how I'll publish the book when it is finished. But man, do I have a kick-ass cover.
 

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?
 
Idea, which requires some bookkeeping: treat it as Ablative, only keep track of the cumulative Body total stopped by the armor. For every multiple of its DEF, treat that as one instance of BODY getting through. (In other words, 7 DEF Armor is hit by 7 BODY. If it takes 1 more BODY, then it takes one Ablative hit. If it's hit by a total of 14 BODY, 1 more BODY pushes it to two. Etc.)

Re: Thoughts on Autofire - what am I Missing?
 
Idea, which requires some bookkeeping: treat it as Ablative, only keep track of the cumulative Body total stopped by the armor. For every multiple of its DEF, treat that as one instance of BODY getting through. (In other words, 7 DEF Armor is hit by 7 BODY. If it takes 1 more BODY, then it takes one Ablative hit. If it's hit by a total of 14 BODY, 1 more BODY pushes it to two. Etc.)

I came up with a way of doing invulnerability (to everything) and immunity (to a specific special effect) that doesn't cost huge amounts of points and doesn't use any (okay, no more than one) questionable constructs.
 
First, buy the Automaton Power Takes No Stun. If you're buying immunity buy it "Only Vs. X". In the latter case, a kind GM (incluidng me) wouldn't require you to buy all of your defenses at 3x cost with this (though I would for full invulnerability). This is actually the trickiest part of the whole thing.
 
Next, buy resistant defenses equal to twice the campaign maximum Damage Class. That's enough defenses to totally bounce the BODY from an incoming attack. For immunity buy "Only Vs. X".
 
For immunity, buy Life Support against the appropriate condition. For invulnerability, buy Life Support vs. everything.
 
Buy Regeneration with the Resurrection Adder (and possibly the Heals Limbs one). For immunity, buy it Only Vs. X. Buy as much or as little as you want; note that 1 BODY per Turn regenerates 300 BODY per hour.
 
You're finished.
 
Note that this is comic book style invulnerability or immunity. In the comics, invulnerability never means fully invulnerable; for instance, Johnny Storm has been taken down a number of times by "cosmic flames" or some such.
 
Here's the cool thing. If you're killed by your immunity condition (or anything but your invulnerability condition) you'll come back from the dead pretty quickly. So the special effect of being dead from that condition is that you're unconscious. It was too much for you, it overloaded your system or whatever, and you "passed out". (In Marvel, at least, most "invulnerable" characters can still be killed by scattering their atoms -- they wouldn't survive walking on the surface of the sun or being at ground zero of a nuke.)

I came up with a way of doing invulnerability (to everything) and immunity (to a specific special effect) that doesn't cost huge amounts of points and doesn't use any (okay, no more than one) questionable constructs.
 
First, buy the Automaton Power Takes No Stun. If you're buying immunity buy it "Only Vs. X". In the latter case, a kind GM (incluidng me) wouldn't require you to buy all of your defenses at 3x cost with this (though I would for full invulnerability). This is actually the trickiest part of the whole thing.
 
Next, buy resistant defenses equal to twice the campaign maximum Damage Class. That's enough defenses to totally bounce the BODY from an incoming attack. For immunity buy "Only Vs. X".
 
For immunity, buy Life Support against the appropriate condition. For invulnerability, buy Life Support vs. everything.
 
Buy Regeneration with the Resurrection Adder (and possibly the Heals Limbs one). For immunity, buy it Only Vs. X. Buy as much or as little as you want; note that 1 BODY per Turn regenerates 300 BODY per hour.
 
You're finished.
 
Note that this is comic book style invulnerability or immunity. In the comics, invulnerability never means fully invulnerable; for instance, Johnny Storm has been taken down a number of times by "cosmic flames" or some such.
 
Here's the cool thing. If you're killed by your immunity condition (or anything but your invulnerability condition) you'll come back from the dead pretty quickly. So the special effect of being dead from that condition is that you're unconscious. It was too much for you, it overloaded your system or whatever, and you "passed out". (In Marvel, at least, most "invulnerable" characters can still be killed by scattering their atoms -- they wouldn't survive walking on the surface of the sun or being at ground zero of a nuke.)