Re: How Long to Learn Hero System?
I guess I'd disagree a little with many of the above posts. I've only recently come to Hero System after 20 years or so with other gaming systems, and I'd definitely say there is a steaper learning curve with Hero System than just about any other system I've seen. This, of course, depends on your background. If you're mostly just used to class-based systems like D&D or the newer d20 variants, then you'll definitely have a bit of a time picking Hero System up. If you've played GURPS or another point-based system, then I suspect it will be less difficult. I'm not trying to imply that learning Hero is a full-time job or anything, just that it takes more work than most other systems you may be familiar with.
One of the biggest differences in running a Hero game that I found is that you really have to look over the player's characters before the game. This is true with any system, I think, but with D&D or such systems, there really is relatively little room for player abuse. With my last d20 Modern campaign I ran about a year ago, I glanced over the characters but it took no more than 30 seconds or so, just enough to see if there were glaring issues. The campaign went fine. With my recently-started Champions game, I glanced over the characters, then we went on to the scenario - and they proceeded to trounce the villain I threw against them who was actually supposed to be very tough. It was immediately obvious the characters were not balanced. So I spent at least an hour carefully looking over each sheet, looking up powers, limitations, etc., in the book, until I could tell the players how they had to adjust their characters. We went through multiple rounds of this, until finally they had characters that we were all happy with. And the campaign's been running reasonably smoothly since.
Having said all that, here are my suggestions for starting:
1) As others have said, give the rule book a good read through once. The point isn't to memorize the rulebook (if my group waited for me to memorize the rules before playing, we'd never start), the point is to become familiar with the main concepts, how combat works, how powers are constructed, that sort of stuff. Once you've read through it, though, I'd go ahead and jump in to the campaign.
2) If you can use pre-built characters, I would strongly recommend it. This will alleviate any potential problems from player abuse (intentional or otherwise, and yes, it can happen uninetentionally - or at least it did in my campaign in a few instances).
3) Look over the characters carefully, reading each power, limitation, adder, etc., in the rulebook. This is a wonderfully instructive exercise, but it will also alert you to any inobvious aspects to their abilities that might give your villains problems. If you are allowing player-built characters, then give special attention to these. Even if the powers look fine as they are, look out for powers that may be able to work together in subtle ways that might unbalance things.
4) Make your first session a "practice" session. Throw them up against a few different types of villains, to get a sense of how their characters will work. And plan to allow people to adjust their characters afterward, either because you have found some more issues or very possible they've found some things that didn't work as they had intended (particularly if they're as new to Hero as you are).
Sorry for the rather verbose response, but with my campaign having had a rather rocky start only a few months ago, I guess it's all still pretty fresh in my mind. Still, even with some of the issues, I'm very happy with the system and definitely think the extra effort is worth it.
Good luck.
