John Desmarais

Re: Taking the plunge into Fantasy Hero ... help! One other book you might want to consider - The Hero Beastiery. Sugeestions: Know the rules. If you've played Hero games before you probably have the basics down already - particularly if your exerpeince is with Champions. Read though Fantasy Hero. This book is just full of ideas and suggestion on using the Hero System for Fantasy. Experience. I usually award 1 or 2 points at the end of each short arc, with a few more points awarded at the end of the extended story arc. Things that work / don't work. Optional combat rules. There are a lot of optional rules in the combat chapter of the Hero System Rules (things like hit location, knockdown, imparing, etc, etc). Individually, each of these things can add an additonal level of "realism" and/or danger to your combat. Using to many of them will sloooooow combat down to the point where it becomes boring (combat should never be boring). Encumberance. I know a lot of Hero GMs who don't like the encumberance rules. I like them for Fantasy as it provides a great rationale for Wizards not wearing armor (most of them lack the STR to deal with the encumbrance). Spells / Magic Systems. Fantasy Hero does not include a magic system. The book offers up lots of suggestions for designing them, but doesn't quite do it for you. Depending on your perspective (and how much you like system fiddling) magic system design can be either the funnest part of setting up a campaigbn or the most tedious. The Grimoire incldues write-ups (and costs) for scads of spells, grouped by school. It also includes a capsule description of how magic works in the Turakian Age setting. You may want to consider starting with this as your default magic system and, if you later find it doesn't suit you, change later. This lets you get your magic up and running in a hurry. Starting points. In my typical FH games, characters are built on 75 points plus disads, no more than 25 points in any single disad category, normal characteristic maximum assumed. Non-human races. The Fantasy Hero book includes packages for a whole bunch of familiar (and not so familiar) fantasy races. I have some kind of psychological limitation regarding the ways these packages (and packages in general) handle charactersitic adjustments. Unfortunately, I'm not really sure why I don't like it, so I haven't been able to come up with a fix that I like. (My current FH game has no fantasy races, so it's not an issue for me right now). No doubt, more discussion will follow... John D.

Re: A Hero Shopping List Hmmm... I've bought every Hero product released since Champions 3rd edition. They were all "must haves" at the time I saw them. In retrospect, a couple might not have been. John D.

Re: accepting rules suggestions for 1st Annual Combat Wombat Steel Cage Grudge Match! Say what? John D.

Re: Where are the low fantasy worlds? Because Hero strongly appeals to game system "gear heads" who find writing magic systems to be fun - and once you're created one you want to play with it; and in general, high fantasy serves that purpose better? Actually, the one time I did run a low fantasy FH game, the players opted to end it and start something with more magic and fantasy races. Gotta run something the players will play... John D.

Re: Why play Fantasy Hero over other fantasy games? Nah! The best thing about Williamsburg is that it sits on the edge of Hampton Roads. Newport News, Hampton, Virginia Beach, and Norfolk are where everything interesting (of non-historical signifigance) is. When I lived there the area was supporting at least 10 comic/game stores (most of them are combined stores that sell both), many independantly owned books stores (in addition to the nation chains), a bunch of high quality used-book stores, and had a gaming population that I wish Winston-Salem had. Outside of gaming, there are several small concert venues that are favorite places for performers that can't fill a either of coliseums, several movie theatres (including small, independent ones that show oddball stuff that Carmike and AMC wouldn't touch), several good library systems, lots of museums (both of teh art and non-art variety), and just a slew of other things that used to occupy my free time when I lived there. Williamsburg itself has very little of these things, but a 20 minute drive can get you into the heart of it. Now, where I currently live (Winston-Salem, NC) is a horrible place to be a gamer, and (to judge by the number of book stores) has a population that is functionaly illiterate. And don't even get me started on cultural activities... John D.

Re: A view from outside Elemental Controls are not designed to provide a bonus for a "character whose powers stayed in-concept". They provide a way of defining a single power (single special effect) that has multiple effects, and the system treats them as such - which provides a built-in set of limitations. If I create an Elemental Control for "Flame Power" which contains all of the powers that I think make up "Flame" and then get hit a Drain that targets one of those powers - all EC slots get drained. That's a pretty serious limitation. John D.

Re: Why play Fantasy Hero over other fantasy games? Actually, while at one time I would have agreed with "D&D is easier to build a character in" philosophy, 3rd edition changed my mind. I find it takes me a lot longer now to build D&D characters, which more "flipping through the book" than it does for me to build FH characters. Even the players I have who's primary gaming experience was D&D found building FH characters a easy process. John D p.s. What's wrong with Williamsburg? My office was there for many years.

Re: Why play Fantasy Hero over other fantasy games? Fantsy Hero is probably the Hero variant that I GM the most - it's the easy genre to get players to play (because of the ubiquity of D&D). Personally, I find that the system works well - right out of the box (so to speak) - for everything except magic. The Hero System powers are not spells, they are a meta-system that you can use to build a magic system; and build it you must (or someone must). The Fantasy Hero book offers up a lot of advice on how to build magic systems (but stops just short of actually doing it), and the Fantasy Hero Grimoire offers up a whole slew of pre-written spells and a capsule version of the Turakian Age magic rules (which makes FHG a "must have" book if you want to start quickly). Fantasy Hero's strongest point (imo) is that it's a point based character creation system, which means that you are not locked into a predefined "class". A character can be (within the limit of the points available and the framework of the setting) whatever the player imagines. John D.

Re: Ready-made campaign city map I built-up downtown area with tall buildings (Downwon Springfield is pretty "short") that a giant yellow ape could climb. John D.

Re: Codename: Kids Next Door

Re: David Weber Universe Question I just recently chewed through the first two books and thought it would make a pretty godd setting, but that's as far as I got (been a busy month). John D

Re: Setting Idea Many years ago (ie. when the books were still new) I used it, pretty much in whole, as a setting for a short-lived campaign. It's a nice setting, but lacks some of the "whiz-bang" stuff that my players expected in a fantasy setting. John D

Re: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend Central Casting (all three books) are cute and can actually be helpful for players that have problems fleshing out background - so long as don't take it's results to literally. I have found that they are at their most useful with games that use a point-based character creation system as you can then just have the players pay points for every wierd little thing that book assign to the character. (Used as an add-on to a random character creation game can lead to some really unbalanced results if the GM actualy lets the cahracters have what the book gives them). John D.

Re: More boast than post!

Re: Standard Equipment Sheets ? Got any ?? Hmmm.. Being as I have no minions to control I've never made a minion control sheet (or seen one for that matter, you got an example?) Other sheets? I made my own Combat Record sheet, and then remade it, and remade it, and remade, etc ,etc... (I'm still playing around with how much information is too much). Back in the 4th edition days I made all of my own forms, even going so far as to build my own GM screen. These days I don't get to game as much as did back then so I haven't had the impetus to churn out the same quantity of stuff. Also, having character builder software takes away some of reason to build my own. The only reason I built the Fantasy Hero character sheet (that I modified into the generic one in the link above) was because my wife doesn't really like character builder apps. These types of things are easy enough to crank out - I guess isf someone has a request I could throw it together. John D.

Re: Standard Character and Equipment Sheets Here's a more generic sheet. http://john.desmarais.org/HeroCharacterSheet.pdf John D

Re: Standard Character and Equipment Sheets Here is the sheet that I made for my Fantasy Hero games. I guess it could easily be modifed to something closer to what you are looking for (but since I'm not currently doing Star Hero I haven't made one that really targets SH). http://john.desmarais.org/FantasyHeroCS.pdf John D.

Re: Power Armor My standard rule of thumb when determining whether to make power armor a vehicle or not is this: Build the power armor as a vehicle if I expect the character in the power armor to interact with (fight) primarily vehicles (instead of living beings). The reason? Character to character combat in Hero is easy. Vehicle to vehicle combat in Hero is easy. Character to vehicle combat introduces enough differences to create more work for me (the GM) and I'm lazy. If you go the vehicle route, it automatically work this way. If not, simply buy the STR in the armor with a limitation "Character STR does not add" -1/2 (adjust the value if you don't like mine). Not with me (the perils of answering from work). John Desmarais

Re: Dealing with Invisible Heroes Just out of curiosity, what is the rationale (special effect) for the character being Invisible, Silent, Odorless, and Physically null? This bit of information may make it easier for folks to come up solutions to your quandry. John Desmarais

Re: Player-Built Characters... Our typical method is for me to give the players a packet of campaign background info a week or two ahead of time so they can start thinking about characters. We then spend the first session with everyone building characters together (with my help where needed). John D

Re: New to Hero Level GM'ing If possible, you are better off just usng real-world prices for items instead of trying to assign prices based on points. Internet shopping is a great source for pricing. Pay points for things that simply could not be purchased in your setting. A custom magazine-fed shotgun is certainly unique, but you could probably find a gunsmith willing to design and build one - but make the PC pay through the nose for the custome design and labor involved. As a player I hate Independant. As a GM I thinks it's cool. The problem with Independant is that if you lose it, you've lost the points. Personally, I am of the opinion that if the PC was able to make the item in the first place, they should be able to re-create it if it gets lost - so I would just use the Focus limitation. John Desmarais

Re: What superhero world concept are you tired of seeing? Amen... John D

Re: What's the best method of introducing HERO System to newbies Big agreement here. Character creation (particularly the scale of things) makes so much more sense after you've played once (memories of my first Champions character - created before I had ever played the game - still haunt me). All of the numbers just make more sense after you have seen them used. John D.

Re: Older FH Products

Re: So, Who Else Is Gonna Grab Galactic Champions ASAP??