Lysando

Re: HERO System Bestiary

How does this compare to th 5th edition Bestiary? Is it an update for 6E of what is in the 5E Bestiary, or does it include "new" content?

Re: Pulp Inspiration: The Guild of Specialists Trilogy (Book 1 - Operation Red Jerich

Halfway through the second book. Very good, but worth the price of the books for the diagrams and pictures.

Re: one for the browncoats with big wallets

Frankly I'd rather have the $350 replica browncoat. The only replica of the Serenity I want is 1:1 scale. Anything else is just a tease.

Folks, as I was reading the Basic Rulebook, I stumbled upon what might be the ultimate pulp cover. It's on pg. 129 in black and white. Let's run it through the checklist:

1. Zeppelins. check

2. Zeppelins on fire, falling to a fiery death. check

3. WW2 fighter planes fighting. check

3. WW2 fighter planes on fire, falling to a fiery death. check

4. Cats, with rocket jetpacks. check and check

5. Nazis, with gasmasks. check and check

6. Apeman wearing vest and pocket watch standing on the top of a zeppelin shooting at Nazis. check and check and check and check

7. Woman setting dynamite charges on top of zeppelin. check

Then, imagine my joy when I discovered a FULL COLOR version of this in 6E2, on page 213.

If any of the HERO Powers That Be are reading this...this would make an excellent poster. :-)

Re: what gives your pulp its pep?

(Near) continuous action , but also a big plus for me is exotic locations, and interesting situations. When I finally get my globetrotting pulp campaign going, that is what I will be emphasizing.

Also, with the pulp heroes, there was a sense that they were still basically human, not superhuman. You could believe that that sort of heroism could in theory actually be possible in the real world. Probably not in reality, but you don't have to suspend too much disbelief.

I've been known to play in superhero campaigns, but I always take my disbelief, fold it up nicely and put it on a shelf out of the way, before I play.

Re: Some annoying news on Lucha Hero

i have to agree with you there as long as i could read it i'd make do

You know, I would also. In fact, now that I know it is a collector's item, I think I HAVE to have one. :-) How about it, HERO Games?

PS. I'm serious.

Re: Some annoying news on Lucha Hero

just tell people the books come "pre-mangled" by an authentic luchador. bam! instant collectible!

Re: Byronic Hero

You might want to take a look at GURPS:Screampunk. It is quite possibly the worst-named GURPS supplement ever, it covers that "gothic" period around the turn of the 18th c. (or is that turn of the 19th? anyways, that period around 1800)

Re: Identify the Source

heheh

A skiffy version of Lord of the Rings, of course.

Re: Who was WWII's most important leader?

I have to say Winston Churchill, at least during the first part of the war. He held England together when it was by no means certain that the Nazis weren't going to be able to take the British Isles, and by no means certain that the Americans would enter the war at all. Britain stood basically alone, and managed to deliver the first few bloody blows to the Nazis.

Churchill was by no means perfect, in fact he was a hard-core imperialist, among other things. But the "free world" does owe him a bit of a debt of gratitude. If Britain had been lost to the Nazis, WW2 might have been much longer and bloodier. Without "Airstrip 1", an invasion of Europe would have been much harder to undertake.

Re: Big List of Disads

Bam, that's it! Thank you!

I'm hoping someone here can help me find something I know I've found or had before, my Google-fu is failing me. What I'm looking for was either a website or a document available online which listed literally hundreds of different disadvantages/limitations. It may have been something for GURPS. Does this ring any bells for anyone?

Thank you!

Ly.

Re: Music to Kill Zombies By

Flamethrower

"That's When I Reach For My Revolver" by Moby

Buffy or Angel

I just noticed that the price for the PDF of the Hero System Bestiary is the same as the price of the hard copy. ($24.95 for either of them). Is this correct, and if so, why?

This is driving me nuts...I'm trying to build a "Create Water" spell. This is meant to emulate the Create Water spell in D20:

"This spell generates wholesome, drinkable water, just like

clean rain water. Water can be created in an area as small as

will actually contain the liquid, or in an area three times as

large-possibly creating a downpour or filling many small

receptacles."

What exactly is this? Change Environment? Transform ("Thin Air" to Water)? Summoning? (OK, I know it isn't Summoning....)

My guess so far is this is a Major Transform, of Air to Water, or "Nothing" to Water. But Transform assumes you are casting against something which has Power Defense (possibly) and BODY, which sorta doesn't apply. Or does it?

Anyways, what do you think?

ntb

Re: PDFs on Kindle

Thanks for all the responses. I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and get a low-end laptop. I just hate laptops with their dinky little screens and dinky little keyboards, stupid little touchscreens or nipple-whatchamacalitts and battery management fusiness and all the cables and other crap that come with them. It doesn't help that in the most horrible job I ever had I had to carry one of them back and forth to work every day, set the damn thing up every morning and undo everything when I left in the evening...

Anyways, thanks again for your responses and for listening to my whining. :-)

ntb

My ideal electronic book reader continues to revolve slowly in Platonic ideal-space, but the Kindle comes close-ish, sort of...

What I REALLY want is something portable I can use to read PDFs, not just the HERO pdfs I have but many others. I think that the true answer to this desire of mine is called "laptop" but I don't have the bread for that now.

So...what I'm asking is...has anyone had experience reading the HERO pdfs on Kindle? I know the PDF support on Kindle is "beta"-ish, so I'm just wondering how "beta-ish"...?

ntb

Re: I had a descussion with Steve about buying some Hero's books...

Hello all,

Some or many of us probably have copies of the 5th ed, ie the non-revised version, lying around, that we no longer use because we plumped for the Revised Edition of 5th ed.

Would it make sense for one of us to send Heroic Avatar one of these copies to get him started, or would that confuse matters further for him to have the "pre-revised" edition? That way he could save his $ for one of the genre books or something else, and learn the system. Or would he just have to unlearn too much when he finally has the $ for Fred?

IE, would you recommend giving the regular ed. of 5th to a newbie to learn with? My skillz with HERO were bad before, during and after both books, so I have no idea.....

ntb

This is so going into my pulp campaign....

The Third Reich's Diabolical Orbiting Superweapon

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=940

Hello all,

I looking for a "setting" for my upcoming Pulp campaign. I put "setting" into quotes because the majority of the adventures will be elsewhere ("globe-trotting adventure" and all). However, the characters have to have a place to call home, and a place for the villain to unleash his unobtanium death ray on to get revenge on the characters. I'm thinking Hudson City, because I don't want to use a historical city.

The Hudson City book that already exists is supposed to be for Dark Champions, am I correct in assuming that the book is based in the "present-day"?

ntb

Re: The book I want more then any other....

This probably qualifies as "fools rushing in where angels fear to tread", but here goes...

For me, disadvantages are a huge part of chargen. I think this is because I enjoy stories about people overcoming their limitations. It's not like I don't like other kinds of stories, but this kind of story appeals to me. And I think it appeals to alot of other people also. Early on, comic book writers discovered that just simply writing and reading about uber-competent characters taking out the monster of the week can get boring. There are many other interesting stories which revolve around other aspects of the characters such who they interact with, care about, etc. or what "personal demons" they are facing.

So the challenge facing players who want to get beyond munchkin rollplaying is: how can I create characters who are interesting, not just for what they can do, but also because of what they are facing, who they are with, etc.

Disads are an important part of that. So I have alot of respect for disads as tool to make characters that are more interesting to play.

For GMs, disads are (among other things) where your players hand you a plaque with a bunch of hooks on which you can hang plot. The challenge for the GM, is how to weave the inherent stories in these hooks into your campaign. So I have alot of respect for disads as a tool to help GMs create games that are more interesting to play.

I'm very thankful for the Master List of Disads. This is a huge tool. But I still think there is room for content that would give GMs and players advice,suggestions,guidance, etc. on how to use the tool that is Disads. There is just as much room there as there is for content on Skills and Powers, etc.

So the question then becomes, if you agree with me so far that Disads deserve additional content, what kind of content? A full dead-tree Ultimate Disadvantage book? A series of articles in Digital Hero (oops, maybe not...but DH might have been the best place for it)? A shorter book, published only in PDF? Fan-created content on the Web?

lysando

Re: Sell me on HERO 5th ed.

Could I go into GURPS and model (not just "find" but model) all of the d20 spells as I have in HERO? Can I create new package deals on the fly because I have all the tools in front of me and know precisely how they work? Is that possible? I genuinely don't know. I would say from what I've read in this thread and my minimal experience with GURPS that the answer is "nnn...yyy... maybe." Whereas with HERO the answer is not only "Yes."

In GURPS you aren't really "modelling" anything in the sense that you are in HERO. In HERO when you are trying to convert a D20 spell or something like that, what you are essentially trying to do is figure out what Power would be used to describe the effect, and then determine Advantages and Limitations to apply to modify in it in accordance to the D20 description. In GURPS you really don't do things that way. The GURPS GM would look at the D20 description and then decide how that translates into GURPS rules, without necessarily looking at a list of powers and modifiers. The process is less precise.

When I get home I'll post some sample spells in D20, GURPS and HERO.

If you are a rules tinkerer, then HERO is your game. If you get a thrill off of trying to figure out how you would build something, say something you saw on the telly during Superbowl :-) then HERO is for you.

I began playing HERO about 12 years ago because I got massively burned out on D20, and because all my friends were playing HERO (peer pressure!). I've come to appreciate the system because of the fine level of control it gives you. Creating spells in HERO is alot like how I would imagine creating spells in the "real world" would be like.

However, when I'm looking for a system to play with my 16 year old nephew, who just wants to play now, then I look to GURPS. Plus, I really like alot of the GURPS worldbooks, etc. I have over 100 of them, and love to read them more than once. Many of them have some very good innovative ideas which can be applied to ANY game system. Not so much the crunchy bits, but all the other stuff, ie atmosphere, flavour,plots,campaigns,etc. HERO players should not be afraid to look at GURPS books. You won't get infected with GURPSophilia or become converted to GURPS, but you might pick up some good ideas for your HERO work.

ntb

Re: Sell me on HERO 5th ed.

I've played both GURPS and HERO, and GMed GURPS. I sometimes think of GURPS as HERO-lite, or HERO as GURPS on steroids. But I don't think that is entirely accurate. Another somewhat-inaccurate analogy I sometimes use is that D20 is like Windows, GURPS is like Mac, and HERO is like Linux.

I've found that GURPS is easier to pick up and learn, and easier to GM.

However, HERO is like a precision instrument. The good thing about HERO is that you can build literally whatever you want, and have it defined sufficiently to enable you to use it according to the rules. When you build a spell or power or whatever built in HERO, you know exactly how it is going to work. And game balance is built into the system in a way that never really is with GURPS.

So...if you want to play with your 16 year old nephew, who doesn't want to bother with all the complexity of HERO, then GURPS is a far better alternative than the mess that is D20 ("balance? what is this word balance that keep saying?"). However, if you want to go to the "next level", then HERO might be for you. Folks have suggested getting HERO Sidekick. This is a good idea. For a minimal sum, you can get a good basic intro. to HERO. If you like what HERO is all about based on that, then you can "upgrade" to the full HERO, or you can also just stick with Sidekick.

Re: Your "2008" Pet Gaming Projects

I have 3 gaming goals this year:

1. Dune HERO conversion, I finally got started on this a little while ago.

2. Finally deliver the Pulp HERO game I've been working on for the last year. I'm about 80% done.

3. Start converting Transhuman Space to HERO

Re: What Age are we in now

Silicon Age?