Chris Goodwin

Thread necro! 
 
My group back in the 80's almost did a Bureau 13 DI game.  Sadly it never happened...
 
There's no reason you can't use DI as a supplement for the edition of your choice.  And I wrote my Low Heroic protocols for just this purpose. 
 
I ran a Robot Warriors short campaign in 2021 using 6th edition and essentially following RW/DI for my pregen characters, and it was every bit as fun as it was back then. 

Thread necro! 
 
My group back in the 80's almost did a Bureau 13 DI game.  Sadly it never happened...
 
There's no reason you can't use DI as a supplement for the edition of your choice.  And I wrote my Low Heroic protocols for just this purpose. 
 
I ran a Robot Warriors short campaign in 2021 using 6th edition and essentially following RW/DI for my pregen characters, and it was every bit as fun as it was back then. 

Hey!  Ah-Toe demanded perfection in travel!  If they were on three or more wheels, they were from that goofy splinter cult!
 
 

Richard Tucholka, God rest his soul. He is gone, and we are the poorer for it. I worked on some Bureau 13 stuff, but Doug Blanchard defined the look of most of the Tri-Tac games. There was a definite gallows humor edge to that game, but having spoken to folks who played in Rich's games, as well as to Rich himself often at the old Milwaukee Gencons, that the games got pretty lethal to player characters if they weren't smart. The old Tri-Tac system itself was crunchy, and dangerous, in that post Gygaxian way. But often Bureau 13 adventures did have their moments of Laurel & Hardy events due to the die rolls.
 
The odd thing is that to me, Danger international, and Dark Champions have two separate "Feels" to me, with D.I having a grounded, real world flavor, with the occasional weirdness, whereas Dark Champions feels less grounded, with it's foot in the Superhero world. Doing SCP feels more like D.I. than D.C. with all the real world weapons, and many of the SCP items being otherwise mundane items being altered by the unexplainable. But  D.C will have to do, these days.

Weirdly enough, I was thinking Bureau 13.
 
No; not because I didn't think Overlord wasn't packed full of suspense, mystery, horror---   but because every time I try to run that kind of game for one group in particular (the Brunswick group), it invariably devolves into a game of Bureau 13.      You can almost _see_ the entire game as a Foglio-esque cartoon, played out before your eyes....
 
 

Someone who values the storage space and is not deeply analyzing the benefits and drawbacks from the perspective of a paranoid murderhobo?
 
Why would anyone design a metal contraption powered by flammable substances spewing out noxious fumes so that they can travel at great speeds and potentially end their lives should there be a malfunction, inclement weather or a slight driver error (whether by the person driving this one or someone driving a different one)?  Historians and archaeologists believe that this reflected the devout religion of Ah-Toe, a deity of speed who demanded such sacrifices from his faithful.

You're right in that there's nothing but word of mouth out there, but that word of "mouth" is now spread electronically. 
 
I feel comfortable saying that there is no person getting into the HERO System who doesn't have access to either an experienced player -- otherwise whose mouth is the "word of" coming from? -- or the Internet in some way.  I'm happy to be proven wrong. 
 
And any person creating a character intended for actual play in a game is going to have a GM who is going to look their characters over, check their stats for viability and whether they meet the campaign guidelines, and advise them where they don't. 
 
And if they do?  If they happen to create a character that somehow slips through? 
 
The world dies in nuclear fire --
 
No, it does not.  Nor does the patient die on the table.  Nor do the Gaming Police show up and haul everyone away to Gaming Prison. 
 
We admit that we made a mistake, and we fix it. 
 
My first two Champions characters were made using just the rulebook, without reference to a GM or an existing game.  I'm fairly certain they weren't viable in play, mainly because I didn't have a clue where the stats, including the Figured Characteristics, came in relative to any particular set of campaign guidelines.  In my defense, they weren't intended to be; they were me playing with the character creation mechanics in order to learn them.  (I'm pretty sure Feline came to about 180 total points -- this was third edition).  I showed them to my friend, who by then had been playing Champions for a couple of years, and he told me -- nicely, in case anyone was wondering -- why they wouldn't be viable.  My third character was as viable as a character could be that was created using only the third edition corebook and none of the supplements, which everyone else in the group had...
 
Figured Characteristics aren't an automatic protection from non viable characters, nor do they allow you to disclaim decision making for each one.  (Unless you've gone full Goodman School of Character Efficiency, and have built your characters with way-out-of-any-coherent-concept levels of STR, DEX, and CON, but if you're that person then nothing in any part of this discussion applies to you.)  You're still looking at them to decide whether the 8 base ED from your 38 CON is enough or whether you need more. 
 
I'll tell you what eliminating Figured Characteristics did do: it made it so that we don't need 28 DEX or 38 CON to hit the minmax breakpoints on CV's or Figured Characteristics, which means we build to concept rather than arms race, with housewives or grad students gaining energy powers and 25 STR and 23 DEX.  SPD 4 and DEX 15 are viable in play in a 375 point Champions game. 

I tend to min-max the combat/actual-game-play part of my characters so that they can have whatever off-the-wall or irrelevant  abilities/traits [1]  I want, but still be viable. For example, I like playing smart characters. In most of the Hero  games I've played in, a high Int is not worth as much as the sam points spent in strength or dex. I also like to play attractive characters, is I'll tend to pay those points, but I've never used any mechanical benefits from that in the game. Then there are the skills that will never be game-relevant that I need to buy to match my concept. So, then, when I get to the game relevant stuff, I do my best to squeeze the remaining points to get a character who can actually be an asset to the team.

[1] Take Emily. She has autokinesis, which means, logically as I envision her, she effectively has prehensile hair. So I pay for the extra limb, despite the fact that she keeps her hair shoulder length and it never, in the years of playing, came up except for her lowering her sunglasses to glare at someone while her hands were full.

Transitioning things between media always carries issues that "some things" don't work as well.  Weekly TV is much better at supporting an ensemble cast than a movie franchise.  The printed page and the screen support different elements (Supers can keep those full-face masks on; actors need to convey facial expressions - plus we did not pay for a Big Name to hide their faces constantly).
 
The first example I always think of is "splitting the party".  Having each member of the team go off to do something different works great in print and on screen. Not so much when the GM and 1 player at a time are playing and the rest of the group is just watching.
 
 
While there needs to be some chance of losing in a game, there's not much drama or tension in a book, comic, TV show or movie if there is no chance of the protagonist losing either.  Especially in serialized fiction, where we pretty much know that the Hero will survive and likely come out on top, efforts to create suspense over the success or failure take a lot of work.
 
When we narrowly define "success" and "failure", it becomes that much harder.  Death is not the only way to lose.  Combat is not the only resolution to conflicts.
 
If the expectation of the game is that the heroes will largely resolve conflicts in combat - the combat encounters will define success and failure, we can't have Unhittable Flash and Unhurtable Superman.
 
But if their opponent is Lex Luthor, non-combat corporate kingpin investing massive resources in an aura of legitimacy and seeking the Presidency, Flash can't speed him away and Supes can't punch him out of office. 
 
Well, they COULD, I suppose. Either could knock him out, or even snuff out his life, with no effort at all.  But that would not be a "win" in the game, because "beat Luthor in combat" is not the "victory condition", to coin a phrase.
 
If we are going to run a game of Silver Age Supers, so powerful that no opponent can hope to prevail in combat, then we need to design our game around challenges that are not resolved by combat. Flipping that around, if we are expecting to run a game where the primary source of tension and drama is conflict resolution by combat, then the PCs cannot be Silver Age Supers for whom combat results are a foregone conclusion.

It looks like a lot of it is pretty edition agnostic.  How much work do you think it will take?

back in 1996 I modified the then current setting for Fantasy Hero (2e, 1990), Western Shores. Adding to it again in 2006. I'm now thinking of updating and improving it to 6e Hero System as I may run another campaign using it. This thread is for feedback and ideas on what I've done so far and what folk might like to see (and if anyone actually would like it to be done).

Locations to find this setting:
The Western Shores Campaign (1996, 4e Hero System, note the elite level HTML use) The Western Shores (2006, 5e Hero System, some issues with transitioning wiki markup from the RPG.net site) WS:Index (same as above but hosted on the RPG.net wiki) In it's current state there are some areas with lots of detail not particularly well organised (because that's where the PCs were) and some areas that are not detailed at all.

For me: 
Fantasy settings that are assumed to be knockoffs of medieval Europe. Fantasy settings built on a medieval Europe model (feudalism) in spite of the fact that there's elves, dwarves, halflings, magic, dragons, quite probably flying mounts, teleportation spells, multiple gods that exist, etc. Fantasy churches that act like the medieval Catholic church despite being polytheistic, including/especially with clerics that follow the D&D model Arcane vs. divine magic divide, including healing magic limited only to divine Horses treated the way we treat cars IRL.  Everyone has one, everyone rides them everywhere they go, the only care they need is an oil change every 3000 miles a vague assumed "stable", they don't poo and pee all over the place, they don't smell like animal, they never get sick or injured or frightened MMO terminology.  (Examples: toon, alt, DPS, mobs, etc.) D&D model description of characters.  (By which I mean: in D&D, your character is a <level> <race descriptor> <class> with <magic items>.  Fantasy Hero would be <point> <race> <profession> with <special abilities, magic items, etc.>) Tolkien or D&D standard races, included without examination.  In other words, assuming that playing a fantasy game means you're figuring out what kind of elf you're playing before you know literally anything else about the game or the world.  (Why does this world have multiple intelligent races?) Fairy tale logic behind... anything, really.  Things like: gatherings of three, seven, or thirteen; monkey's paw wishes; evil wizards are ugly; some flavor of magic called "black" or "dark" is evil; etc. World design by trope checklist Anything that's already been done a million times before.  

Here's the Discord:

https://discord.gg/HcUJvJH

True.  But...
 
6e2 has a number of pregen characters in the HERO System Genre By Genre section.  6e1 has multiple sets of Characteristics guidelines by power levels on pages 35 and 48.  And then there's us, here at the boards and on the Discord server. 
 
And there's a ton more information available in the other supporting books. Champions, Fantasy Hero, Star Hero for 6th edition alone.  Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete.
 
A person new to 5th edition is going to be in exactly the same place as a person new to 6th edition with respect to expectations of where stats should be.  In this regard, reducing the amount of math by eliminating Figured Characteristics is reducing the mental load.  I can't comprehend how the opposite could be true.

I think if everyone's making their characters at about the same level of efficiency, it's more fun than when one person is minmaxed within an inch of their life, and even moreso than when it's everyone but you minmaxed.

I find myself with less sympathy for those pining for the days when "our thing" was special and pointed at and laughed at.  I think I am happier with more people who are comfortable with superhero and gaming references, not least the appearance of NPC as a concept in random social media conversations.  I think there is more stuff for me to cherry pick and live off than in the old days when everything was specialist, expensive or home-made.
 
Obviously there are the issues like complete canon and I take great pleasure in educating newbies in the tyrrany of continuity.  I have been there, pined for completeness and then come out the other side, looking for complete stories that can exist.  I love asking those saying that batman should kill the Joker whether they would be happy knowing there would never be another joker story?  Some are but the majority want more stuff to watch and read.  Joker's continued existence is purely by commercial demand, not from any inherent flaw in Batman's priniciples or society as a whole. 
 
I want lots of stories, I want good complex series.  I am content for those stories to be coherent within themselves and owe no continuity to previous stories or to limit future stories by what they reveal.  I guess that is why I drifted into almost exclusively reading old stuff and Elseworlds stories.
 
However, the more people there are involved and interested, the more people there are who are likely to create in this space and, even if 90% of that is dross, it is still likely to be more than I had growing up.
 

Doc

Whoah. I just spent 45 minutes reading this thread and rediscovering all the permutations it explored. Very impressive, and fascinating. Also a little humbling to see what I contributed back when I had time and energy to devote to a topic.

Given that we're playing a system where we can build anything... why do we have to slavishly ape the conventions of the stories Gygax et al loved?  Even by 1978 or so, when Appendix N was compiled, fantasy had gone in new directions, and in the almost 50 years since then it's gone in a lot more new directions. 
 
If you like that, play it.  More power to you, play what you enjoy.  As you note, there are a whole lot of games and settings that cater to that.  But there's a whole lot more to the fantasy genre than the authors whose heyday was the 1930's to the 1950's.  We don't need to lick the boots of D&D anymore.

Given that we're playing a system where we can build anything... why do we have to slavishly ape the conventions of the stories Gygax et al loved?  Even by 1978 or so, when Appendix N was compiled, fantasy had gone in new directions, and in the almost 50 years since then it's gone in a lot more new directions. 
 
If you like that, play it.  More power to you, play what you enjoy.  As you note, there are a whole lot of games and settings that cater to that.  But there's a whole lot more to the fantasy genre than the authors whose heyday was the 1930's to the 1950's.  We don't need to lick the boots of D&D anymore.

Given that we're playing a system where we can build anything... why do we have to slavishly ape the conventions of the stories Gygax et al loved?  Even by 1978 or so, when Appendix N was compiled, fantasy had gone in new directions, and in the almost 50 years since then it's gone in a lot more new directions. 
 
If you like that, play it.  More power to you, play what you enjoy.  As you note, there are a whole lot of games and settings that cater to that.  But there's a whole lot more to the fantasy genre than the authors whose heyday was the 1930's to the 1950's.  We don't need to lick the boots of D&D anymore.

All fantasy?  I disagree with that.

So what the heck does Mercedes Lackey (or whatever it is) write?  Or that abominible Dead and [insert something here] series my wife's best friend is so enamoured with?  (Okay, fine; I do not object if you dump that into a new genre of "near porn" and keep on rocking).  Oe Harry Turtledove's amazing 'Case of the Toxic Spell Dump'?
 
Those were unpleasantly Fantasy to me (except for Spell Dump.  That was _awesome_. 
 
 

Agreed; that is one of the things I am saying:  they are completely unnecessary to build a sword or a goblin or a magic spell, and the do not change the system at all: any superhero can take these same builds.  
 
They are "necessary" ib as much as they are rhe camoflague being dumped onto a superhero game to make it look like something else.
 
 

I hear this a lot... but how do we reconcile this with playing in a system like Hero where our powers are quantified in terms of range, area, power, and so forth? 
 
As I also said up-thread, I do see magic as a science.  I lose immersion if it's not.  I lose interest in books where it's not, and I certainly don't want to play in settings where it's not.  If the characters in-universe believe it's not, I can maybe accept that... but if I want to play a character who believes it is, and tries to figure out how, and the GM shoots me down, I'm going to pack up my books and go home.
 
I'm still not exactly sure how you're supposed to play in a roleplaying game where magic isn't explained.  I'm not being rhetorical here; I literally don't understand how.  The GM at least needs to know the system behind it.