John Desmarais

Re: HERO 5E and D20 In general, I don't do it - at least not at the numbers level. I find that I get results I am happier with doing "concept" level conversions; wherein I take an idea from another game and write it up in Hero. (And you can find lots of folks to help with this online).

Re: Weird Conspiracy Hero Many years ago I ran a campaign where I pulled all of my plots from The Weekly World News - lots of wierd conspiracies there.

Re: Hero Mailing List? I'll need to know what email address you subscribed with and I can check on it.

Re: How to create water What do you want to use the water for? My guess is that "create water" is more of a special effect thing for some other ability. Example: Create water to put out a fire. Power: Dispel or Supress vs fire, special effect "Create water"

Re: Adapting D&D Worlds If you've done any formal notes for this effort I would love to read them. I'm a big fan of the Kalamar setting and had started gearing up for a Fantasy Hero game using - but changed my mind at the last minute regarding the setting (went for a setting based on M. Lackey's Valdemar novels instead).

Re: TSR Alternity The rules were basically 2nd edition AD&D with a few tweaks and improvements. (I won't claim it as a favorite system, but it is quite playable). The setting though was actaully a pretty well thought out and richly detailed setting, elaning heavily towards a space operaish feel. I've got a bunch of the books and have, on more than one occasion, considered running it has a Star Hero campaign.

Re: What's Busiek done lately? This is one of the coolest things he's done. It'd make a great game setting.

Re: Ars Magica Hero? I wrote up a magic system (quite some time ago - 4th edition) that was loosely inspired by Ars Magica. http://www.herostuff.net/spoo/JDD-Haymaker28.pdf It was not intended as a conversion, just a "that sounds neat, I'd like to donething similar for Fantasy hero" kind of thing.

Re: Anyone done a Riftwars Hero hmmm... How ironically circular (Riftwars was originally a campaign setting)

Re: Bizarre history of the Moreau family Part of the write-up for the Wold-Newton universe (which has been the basic setting for my Justice, Inc. games for years). Good clean fun.

Re: How To: Racing If you're doing anything for competition and want variance in the outcomes, just make the (potenatially valid) assumption that all competitors are attempting to push whenever they can (this also explains why sprinters are always completely wiped out by the end of the race) and use the Heroic rules for pushing, not the Superheroic ones. Some of the skill and technique of racing then becomes "When do I push? Start pushing to early in the race and you run out of steam, start to late and you fall behind." Same thing for STR based competitions. Assume the lifter is always pushing. This is why sometimes they can list the grossly large weight, and sometimes they fail (to lift a weight that they lifted before).

Re: Movies Pretty much any fantasy movie that was not inspired by D&D is easier to do in Hero. Hero is generic, D&D is specfic. D&D only does D&D well.

Re: Package Disads House Rules?

Re: Help!!! Looking for a Copy of Lands of Mystery I'll second the "reputable" part here - I've used Titan as a source for many out of print rpg products in the past and have never had a bad experience with them.

Re: Marvel SAGA System to Champions More like I started working on them, and then lost interest in the SAGA system. I never finished it, but I was pretty happy with what I had started.

Re: VPP for a Heroic Fantasy Setting - Need clarifications The limitation is a limitation on the pool (therefore it affects the pool control cost) that limits the type of powers that can be used in the pool (only those that have the 1 Charge limitation). It is not a Charge limitation - it is a limitation that KS made up for his magic system that happens to have the work "charge" in it. The Hero system allows for the creation of custom limitations; and; although it only gives sparse guidelines for how to assign values to them, this one seems ok to me. Ah, a fundementalist - "if it's not spelled out exactly in the book it can't be done". To which I say, a Variable Limitation with restrictions is allowed if the GM says it's allowed. It is also a very "in genre" construct. (In fact, I think the Fantasy Hero book actually talks about something similar in the chapter on creating magic systems). I'm not really sure what you're asking here.

Re: Banned and the Banished, and the Black Jewels I am reading the Anne Bishop books right now. The magic system need not be overly complicated. I would probably use the spells from the Grimoire pretty much as is - possibly even using the "divide the real cost by 3" option as most spell casters seem to know lots of different spells. I would add into the mix a new Talent or Perk required for spellcaster - Jewel Color - with a level for each color Jewel (with the point cost of the Talent/Perk increasing as the color gets darker) and use this to define the an active point cap for spells (ie, the Talent for lightest color enables you to cast spells up to 10 active points, each darker color adds 10 AP to the cap util Black, which enables you to cast spells of any active points.) As an additional bit of "magic flavor", the caster's Jewel color is something that anyone who can detect the magic can detect. With a sucessful Magic Skill roll a caster can "step down" to their birth stone (thus giving their spells the appearance of having been cast by a lesser mage).

Re: Shadow World setting The very first Fantasy Hero game I ever ran used Shadow World as it's setting. The campaign later expanded out to a multigenre fantasy and SF game incorporating the "Space Master" universe. Fun, but after a while it made my head hurt.

Re: Bringing new players to HERO System.

Re: What happened to seeker?? After the Secret Champions Crisis War he ceased to have ever existed.

Re: Iron Age on the brain! Authority. I won't claim they're good writeups: http://www.herostuff.net/gnborh/groups/gnborh-Wildstorm.html (Actually, I've been told over and over again that they are lousy writeups. Oh well...)

Re: Vampire: the Masquerade using the HERO system I can provide a home for it on http://www.herostuff.net if you'd like.

Re: Selling people on Hero system when they're already inclined against it...? I'm half there. I give the players a LOT of say in the genre of games that I run (heck, I've been know to simply allow them to decide with virtually no impout from me), but the choice of game system is (if I'm the GM) mine. I my case though it's not elitism - it's laziness. Coming up with plots, NPCs, etc, etc, etc, for a regular game requires a significant portion of my limited free time. I don't want to add "learn a new game system" into the mix. This is the very core of why I gravitated towards a universal system in teh first place.

Re: GURPS Lasers? It sounds like a simpe RKA or Energy Blast. The multple bursts would just be part of the special effect.

Re: Sell me on SH AW: A very specific campaign / extended adventure. If its not something you're likely run than you probably wouldn't be interested. Personally, I bought it to read. TE: Similar to my thoughts on Turakian Age. I doubt I'll ever use, but I mine ideas from other sources. ST: Pre-gen gadgets are always useful. Like any book of generic "genre specific" gadgets, it's necessary to "weed out" those items that don't work in your campaign - but once done it's a convienient time-saver.