Nelijal

Thanks, joen00b. I just took a look at the FH playtest manuscript, and p11 lists the USPD as a good resource for spells, given that the appropriate limitations are added. THAT certainly answers my question.

Not yet having waded into the deep subject of Powers, is there any real difference--rulewise--between superpowers and spells? In other words, could the USPD be used as a FH spell resource? As-is or with some tweaking?

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Trolls I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.

For anyone who cares, further research has turned up the term intertitle to refer to the written parts of a silent film. Perhaps placard refers to the physical card used to make the intertitles? My silent film knowledge is lacking.

While anticipating the arrival of the newly remastered DVD of Metropolis, I started wondering about the feasability of running HERO like a silent movie. The players are not allowed to speak; they instead write on placards to describe major or key actions, and otherwise must mime their intentions. This would fit any genre, if executed in the spirit of the medium.

Characters act in phases based on their SPD. Characters who act on the same phase go in order of DEX. Characters with the same SPD and DEX roll to determine who goes first. I have seen threads on these boards which imply that characters acting simultaneously is to be avoided at all costs. What's wrong with same SPD/DEX characters acting at the same time? Would this not happen from time to time in real life?

Wow, there have been some impressive discussions on this thread. HERO certainly has a very dedicated (committed?) fan base. Just so Steve and the other authors don't think I was being unappreciative by starting this thread with FREd not even a year old (I don't live far from Steve, and I don't want to get beat up ), I started it as a joke, just to see what kind of input I would get. I certainly don't expect to see SHREd on bookshelves any time soon; Steve's too busy working on our FH stuff. I underestimated the rabid passion of Herophiles. The thread has been very interesting to read, and turned out to be very informative. You guys are much smarter than I am.

Just turned 41, but I'm young at heart (and single).

I think the award for acronyms goes to first edition Chivalry & Sorcery. Between all the abbreviations and the micro-size typewriter text, it was a bear.

I. . . was. . . joking. If D&D had made such great advancements, I wouldn't have spent the last two decades playing RoleMaster and HERO.

That's also what's happened with D&D, right? I mean, AD&D 3.5 and d20 must be light-years beyond the 1e AD&D I played over twenty years ago.

Gee, I thought the whole point of RPGs was an excuse to eat junk food and NOT get to bed at a reasonable hour.

I went back and reread the original post and you're correct, I did misunderstand. The concept as originally stated and explained by you goes well with the idea of further breaking down the powers into more generic building blocks. This would probably reduce the number of rules, but would require more explanation and examples for people to understand how to build what they wanted, which would be covered in the genre books. Thanks for the clarification. This is the big problem with this issue. It's kind of like programming in BASIC versus assembly language. BASIC is easy, but limits your flexibility if you try to get creative with it because its predefined components do things one certain way (though modern extensions to BASIC have tried to correct this), whereas assembly language has no predefined components and is very flexible, but requires a lot more effort than BASIC to accomplish a given task. AD&D is the BASIC of RPGs, and I'm not aware of a game that resembles assembly language, but I'd call HERO a C/C++ style of game, which isn't a bad thing. There really isn't a "right" answer here; it all depends on what you want from the system. I imagine Steve pondered this point a lot while writing FREd.

Man, you're nasty. Cool.

Yep, you're right, you're the minority . I have purchased genre books that I'm not really interested in just for those few rule pages that also apply to other genres.