John Desmarais

Nifty news.  It’s kind of funny though.  I’ve never actually used San Angelo in a game, but i’ve (very often) used it as an example of “here’s how to write up a city for a superhero RPG”.

The D3 Games version was published in (I think) 2011, which would have made it most probably a 6th edition book.

4 hours ago, rravenwood said:

Although Chris has already provided the answer here, I wanted to share further evidence that this was an old-school literal cut-and-paste layout error: if you look on page 76, the last three lines of text at the bottom of the second column (under "General Movement") are the missing fragment of text ("tions; individual circumstances can modify the chance to perform a Skill tremendously. Providing modifiers will act as an incentive for the players to be").  The actual General Movement text continues from where it left off on page 77 (so the uninterrupted text should read, "All movement costs END at the rate of 1 END per 5 inches of base movement distance used. Noncombat movement at multiple distances increases the END cost of a movement action; [...]").

Ha.  That s the missing text from page 20 that got,me chasing down this rabbit hole in the first place.

41 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

How dare you question God!

 

I'm just kidding, of course. I love Alston, but the layout of all of the HERO books back in the day was flawed. I'm surprised there aren't more obvious errors. I'm helping Duke Bushido edit Western HERO, which actually has entire pages placed out of order!

An edited Western Hero?  Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

2 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Ah.  I went to the first edition Fantasy Hero and found the equivalent paragraph; a lot of verbiage was taken straight from one book to another.  The paragraph in FH reads: 

 

 

Missing text bolded by me.

 

Edit to add:  The text is the same in Danger International... I'm confident that that's what it was intended to read in Justice Inc.

Thanks.  I didn't even think to go look in one of the games from that era.

15 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I thought he'd written up a big list of his gaming and fiction related stuff with errata... I think maybe I'm thinking of Mythic Greece, though, and web searches aren't turning up anything, nor is his archived page at the Wayback Machine.  What paragraph is it?  

Ive got his errata for Lands of Mystery, and Mythic Greece (the Mythic Greece document actually being an update to 4th edition, which made it even cooler).

The biggest error I’ve found in Justice Inc is the transition from page 20 to 21.  It appear that what should have been the last line in column 2 may have gotten obliterate when the Skill Modifier Chart was added.  The text ends in the middle of a hyphanated word and the beginning of the next page doesn’t continue it.

The page and column ends with:  “Skills are very general in order to cover many situa-“

The next page starts with: “clever and creative, and that's when they're having”

The basic gist of the paragraph is still pretty plain, but this really eats away at my own personal psych lims.

2 minutes ago, Brian Stanfield said:

 

It was written by Aaron Allston, so there were no mistakes, only nuances you couldn’t possibly understand . . . .  

While my appreciation for Allston's work - particularly his Hero work - knows no bounds; I have found a few definite errors, including an entire line of text missing from the middle of a paragraph.  (I'd love to know what it was actually intended to say.)

(Not sure if this was really the best place to post this, but no other forum seemed any better).

Do any of you fine Heroes know if there was ever a errata document produced for the old Justice Inc game?

4 hours ago, Surrealone said:

I'm a bit north of Durham (close to Roxboro) and could be interested in a game -- depending on regularity of sessions, session cadence, and other such logistical items, of course.  I'm open to most genres and enjoy playing at all point levels -- but I tend to enjoy low-mid powered superheroic games, most.  You should be aware that I'm one of those ultra-dependable types who, upon committing to something, is very consistent - and I seek the same for regular gaming. Note that  do not GM; I've tried on multiple occasions and learned that it's not my cup of tea.

 

P.S. I'm also a student of the Goodman School of Cost Effectiveness.  (Per 2e RAW, that sort of thinking is part of playing the game, too!)

Im still a few months away from the Grande Move,  but once I’m settled I’ll start getting serious about gaming in the region.

Ok, having read through the various ideas and, taking the originally stated source material (Potter) in account, here's my suggestion:  

Don't bother writing it up at all.  

Honestly, in the Potter books it's just a plot device.  For one reason or another, it never actually effects the heroes (PCs); and it would inappropriate for one of them to actually use it  - it just hangs out there as the ultimate magical plot threat where if it hits you die.  Other than as a mental exercise, I can't think of a reason to actually stat the thing up.

18 hours ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I clearly haven't communicated well. 

D&D See Invisible lets you see things as though they weren't invisible. 

HERO has a bunch of adders that provide ways to see better. 

Building See Invisible as a non-sight detect means the subject of See Invisible won't benefit from their sight adders which contradicts the SFX of seeing the invisible. 

Nothing stops you from putting your Detect into the Sight group. Unusual Senses are usually grouped according to their special effect. For example, if a character has the ability to smell water, his Detect Water becomes part of his Smell/Taste Group. is is called the Simulated Sense Group rule.  (HS6Ev1, pg 207)  Any modifiers the character has to their Sight Group senses would come into play (as would any Sense Group targeted attacks).

Anything beyond that is really kind of the expected issues when trying to duplicate the mechanics of another game rather than the concept - exacerbated by trying to also take advantage of the unique mechanics of the target system.

19 hours ago, sentry0 said:

I just pushed the 1.2.4 build into production, it has the following fixes:

• Fixed a character loading bug on some devices (Android only)
• Fixed an issue that caused sliding a slider to also switch tabs (iOS only)

As usual, Android will be updated before iOS, likely within an hour or so of this post.  The iOS update will hit your devices tomorrow sometime pending a successful review by Apple.

 

@John Desmarais @Toxxus

Installed a few minutes ago.  Looks good.

Ok, ready for the one?  This is more of a minor UX quirk than an actual problem.  There are a couple of screens where you have sliders and tabs that you can swipe between: the "Hit" and "Damage" screens are the two I've noticed. On an iPhone, when you move the slider control the screen also moves (attempting to swipe to the adjacent tab).

3 hours ago, sentry0 said:

 

The 1.2.3 build was just approved by Apple.   I'm feeling pretty confident that this will finally address the loading issues that you've been experiencing.  I was able to simulate both iCloud and local file loading on iPhones and iPads without issue...hopefully the real devices will behave the same this time now that I've reset my simulators to their default states.

 

Give it a whirl and let me know if I hit the mark.

 

Phil

Houston, the Eagle has landed.  I repeat, the Eagle has landed.

Successful file load on both of my iDevices. 

10 hours ago, sentry0 said:

 

Alright, it was a surprisingly easy fix but it was buried at the end of their docs.  Once I came across the fix I had to get a little late night hacking in but I'm feeling pretty confident in this fix.  I reset my simulators and things are looking good on my end but as you probably know, the Xcode simulators and I have a love/hate relationship.

 

I'll push the new update into production tomorrow.

Cool.

13 minutes ago, sentry0 said:

 

Oh no!  It was working for me in simulation but there must be something different between the simulator and a real device.  Not the first time this has happened tbh.

 

Was the error message you saw the same as your original post?

 

I'll look into it tomorrow.

 

Phil

Yep, same message.

JD

On 2/15/2019 at 8:31 PM, sentry0 said:

I made some changes to the file loading code and I started a rollout to production a few minutes ago.

 

They should be hitting your device sometime soon for Android and hopefully over the next day or so for iOS.  iOS seems to always take a bit longer than Android to review their apps.

Just installed v1.2.2 on my iPhone and my iPad.  

The good news: it now works the same on both devices.

The bad news: throws that error when loading a character on both devices.

Alas...

10 minutes ago, sentry0 said:

 

Gotcha, well I located a couple of bugs in the code...one iOS specific and one was a general bug.

 

I'll make an update later tonight after I finishing testing.

Btw, (since I’ve got your attention) any chance of adding in awareness for tablet-size displays?  As nifty as it is on a phone, it would rock on my iPad with the ability to really take advantage of the extra real estate.

10 minutes ago, sentry0 said:

 

Interesting, it's definitely a result of the latest round if changes I made.  I changed the low level library I was using for file management and this is unfortunately what I was afraid would happen ?

 

Are you loading from iCloud?  Could you try loading right off the iPad itself or vice versa and let me know if that works for you?

 

Phil

 

 

I was attempting to load from iCloud (also had tried OneDrive).

I moved the files to put them locally on the iPhone and tried to load from there - same error.

Just installed the new version (actually, its the first time I've played with it).  On my iPhone I get an error when trying to load a character:

No such file "file:///private/va/mobile/Containers/Data/e*22B296-BD9E-47D0-8267-Ec383158FAAB/tmp/org.diceless.herogmtools-InBox/Spitfire.XML"

Happens with any xml character file I try to load (just replace the name at the end with the name of the specific file).  I also get a similar error when I try to open either of the file in the Library.  TO make thing even more interest, loading the same character file into the app on my iPad works just fine.

Any thoughts?

In general, I don't have Combat Luck stack with Armor. (Actually, in most cases, I don't use Combat Luck in games where armor is a common thing).

On 10/19/2018 at 1:03 PM, zslane said:

So what is your favorite sci-fi RPG setting that isn't an adaptation from pre-existing material?

 

"My own" is a perfectly valid answer, BTW, and if it is please describe your setting!

 

I ask this largely because I have yet to stumble onto a sci-fi RPG setting that really captures my imagination and makes me desperate to play in that universe. I figure that may be because I'm not familiar with all that many, so I'd like to hear from others about their favorites.

I like the setting that’s baked into Stars Without Number.  Offers up an effective rationale for humanity to spread far, but still having travel distance matter and allowing for interesting isolated planetary cultures to form. It’s a mostly human-centric universe, but a GM who wants to introduce aliens races has room to.

On 2/4/2019 at 4:27 PM, rjcurrie said:

I could see them taking a partial approach. A crisis where you end up some worlds, some merged, but still have a multiverse. For example, they might see an advantage to merging Supergirl's earth with the earth of Flash, Green Arrow, Legends, and Batwoman. As for Black Lightning, I'm not sure it will brought into the fold at all. After all, Supergirl was still in its first season and on another network when they crossed it over with Flash. Black Lightning is in its second season on the same network and I haven't heard a peep about possible crossovers. Also, Black Lightning is produced in Atlanta, which is a long way from Vancouver and the rest of the DC shows on the CW

There’s really not much I’ve seen in Black Lightning that makes it explicitly NOT on the same world as either Supergirl or Arrow if the producers ever decided they wanted to roll it in.  It would not be much of a stretch to simply assume that his fame has not really spread much beyond the city he operates in (and that the local news doesn’t say a whole lot about that looney with the bow in Star City).

Since Abolish is in the D20 SRD, I assume they could simply use so long as the OGL rules are followed.

On 1/13/2019 at 9:58 AM, Diamond Spear said:

Over the last week or so I've rediscovered my Thieves World books and have been enjoying reading them again. I think it would make an interesting setting with appropriate tweaks for being used as an RPG, as opposed to an anthology, setting. The hardest part would be getting the various magic systems to work within the HERO powers framework. That challenge aside I like the idea of a game set in a failing empire, where gods and demons are actively engaged in the world and where power comes with a price. I think you could keep all that without playing it quite as dark as the setting was originally written.

 

Thoughts on that?

There have been several Thieves World RPG / RPG settings published over the years - for several different game systems.  All in all, they've generally all been pretty good, if somewhat skewed towards the strengths and traits of the target system.  The Chaosium one was probably my favorite, even though I think it had the least amount of material published, as it treated the setting as a very low-magic (particularly from the PC perspective) world.

For someone willing to do the work, Hero is actually a pretty good system to do it, as it gives the GM a lot of control over how magic works in your game - bringing no existing system into the mix.