Killer Shrike

On 5/10/2022 at 6:43 PM, Black Rose said:

I'm trying to figure out how to do this effect in HERO, and would appreciate the help of the Assembly. This is specifically for Illusion spells, but any thoughts about doing it for other types of spells are appreciated.

 

When you have enough experience (high enough skill level) and power (big enough Multipower pool), you can try to "take control of another illusionist's spell", letting you make it do what you want. I've seen writeups in Champions Powers for using Mind Control to simulate "controlling" simple devices (effective INT is Active Points/5; this is covered in more depth in APG 72-73), and I could go that route. But I wondered if there was already something done that was a bit more elegant?

 

Anyone? TIA

Buy an illusion spell and then take a big Limitation on it "Only to `take control of` existing illusion(s) in my area", or words to that effect.

I would do it procedurally, starting at the first regional settlement(s) in antiquity and walking forward in time introducing various events (wars, famines, new technologies, natural disasters such as floods, rivers changing course and / or getting damned and / or bridged (etc), over / under population, trade imbalances, and so on). Layer it up over time, to attain verisimilitude.

Also, it's useful to remember that contrary to common belief rivers flow downhill, not toward the equator, not toward a particular cardinal direction, and not in arbitrary directions. Thus the topography (particularly in regards to relative elevation) of the region should be carefully considered. If you have a giant lake with a bunch of rivers flowing into it, then it would logically need to be at a lower overall elevation to the areas the rivers are flowing to it from. If there is one river flowing out of it, then that outbound river would need to be flowing towards an even lower elevation, and there would need to be some barrier between that even lower elevation area and the adjacent areas or else some of the rivers flowing into the lake would actually flow towards that even lower elevation area instead.

On 3/31/2022 at 9:42 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

Just as a closure on this thread....after I presented him w/ my proof his character is not only illegal, but messes up the campaign, he chose to stick with the character he settled on when we started the game.

I guess I should have read to the end before posting.

On 3/31/2022 at 9:42 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

I need to hire guys in the towns where my players live....so in case they pull **** like this, I give Bruno, Jimmy, etc., a call and he goes over with the "Whack" stick to readjust their **** and get them with the program.

Hmmm....I think I might just have a niche in that market...rent out RPG thugs that adjust remote/online players who don't conform to game rules....  😉

Now, I see the smiley face and acknowledge that you mean this as a joke, but to me it still very much seems to be an expression of something you actually feel to some degree. Coercing others to conform to your preferences with the threat of violence isn't a great way to be. Maybe take a beat and consider if you yourself have some control freak impulses to overcome. You'll be a better GM, and more importantly a better person, if you exorcise the impulse to use force to bludgeon people into doing what you want them to do.

On 3/30/2022 at 10:30 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

I have known and played in this individual's campaigns for over 5 years now...he is a friend, and outside of the game, not a bad person at all; however, any game conversations that he feels are not in his favor go south immediately...he has even shut down games because he disagreed with a player....I don't mean major fallout, but just because something he didn't like...

 

Whenever I try to discuss these things, he throws a fit and threatens to leave the game.

Well, ok. Let him leave, then. Sounds like he's "that guy" who has been the bane of many an RPG group over the years. Ask the other players how they'd feel if he does in fact take his ball and go home. If he's as obnoxious as you indicate, at least some of them would probably be ok or even happy to see him go.

This is starting to sound less like a struggle over character continuity and more of a passive aggressive struggle for control over the social group to me.

On 3/29/2022 at 7:52 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

I have a possible solution to the ever-swapping player.

 

I built a character that had like 20 multiforms, each one a different superhero.  Kind of like Dial H, or the Miracleman concept, where you swap into a "body suit" of some different character.  Except he had no control.  The GM selected or randomized a character and handed the character to me when I activated the multiform.  That would give the guy variety without being terribly disruptive.

Yes, I've also done this. I've spoken in past posts years ago about a random Multiform based PC from one of my past campaigns. Each form had an Accidental Change particular to that form's shtick that when triggered would force a random roll on the list of forms. The forms were all over the place; a few were deliberately useless or disinterested or antagonistic (one of them was even the Hunter of one of the other PC's). 

I've also allowed / encouraged characters like Mr. Goodspeed and his array of vehicles, dual body constructs like ERG-9, various non-identical Duplication based shenanigans, a shapeshifter with virtually all points in a form-specific VPP, and other similar open ended / complex characters. It's a thing the Hero System does better than any other system I've used over the years. 

On 3/29/2022 at 9:26 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

I have a player in my Hero 6E campaign who has changed the character already once in the game prior to starting.  We have played six sessions, which is maybe 1/4 or 1/5 of the way through the campaign.

 

The player now wants to play a digressively different character, because he said it would be more fun.

 

Would any of you allow this?

Yes. I generally like it when players rotate characters. When I get the chance to play, I rotate characters as befits the narrative. As the GM I do enforce character shtick / niche protection, i.e. I wouldn't allow a player to make a new character that just steps on another existing PC's niche. And of course the introduction of the new character and exit of the old should be bent to fit the continuity of the campaign rather than the other way around.

As long as it isn't super disruptive, like every session of two, I see it as a beneficial thing. It can be an opportunity to extend the larger story of the campaign, reinvigorate the group dynamic, provide new hooks and / or pull in new antagonists, and so on.

On 3/29/2022 at 9:26 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

As a GM, I am highly frustrated at this attitude period I believe it is showing a great disrespect for the effort that I’ve made to not only create this game, but I actually work with the players to create a backstory which will fit into the game and allow me to write their stories into the campaign material.

Try not to make everything about you. Are the players there to serve you? Or are you a group of peers getting together to enjoy a collaborative creative activity? 

In the end, its just about having fun together. If any of the players, including the GM, are not having fun then either adjustments need to be made or one or more people should leave the group.

If this player isn't having fun playing the character they have, and them wanting to change their character is making things not fun for you, pick a path and go down it:

1. Player keeps character, possibly with some changes to the character or the campaign or both.
2. Player makes new character
3. Player leaves group
4. GM ends campaign

My experience in life is that most people problems start and end with a failure to communicate effectively. Try talking to the player to understand why they want to change characters, why that bothers you, and then figure out together which of the above four choices is best to your situation.

On 3/29/2022 at 9:26 AM, Jujitsuguy said:

Am I wrong to think this way?

Right and wrong are irrelevant to subjective / emotional things. I would ask instead, is it productive for you to think / feel this way? Are your feelings making things better or worse? Seems to me that it is making things worse. So, flip the script and find a more productive footing to proceed from.

He will be missed.

Sure, I enjoy some franchise movies, but I'm not ecstatic about them either. Not a "superfan" of any of them, to be certain. I also consider fanfic something to generally be avoided. 

18 hours ago, Tjack said:

Licensed novels depend heavily on the quality of the author. Those types of books are often done by writers just starting their careers or who can’t get their own novels published...

Yes, I'm aware of the industry reality, and there have been occasional exceptions where I've read a particular licensed work after being vouchsafed by one or more people whose opinion(s) I give some credence to, and some of those turned out to be ok. Exactly zero have ever blown me away, though. Given that there is a lot of competition for my time and the track record of licensed works for me is overall poor, I don't think it is unreasonable to filter them out baring extenuating circumstances. 

For instance, I read very quickly so when I travel I usually take a couple of books in my laptop bag and (depending on the length of the flight) finish them before landing. On the return trip, I'll generally buy a couple of books inside the airport after checking in, and take the best I can find from the limited selection available. My usual pattern is, one fiction and one non-fiction. Possibly a magazine as well for old times sake if there is a likely victim on the newsstand. In that sort of a scenario, I might pick up a licensed fiction book for lack of other options as a means to kill some time. Otherwise, when wider choice is available, I look elsewhere.

As another for instance, I like the Arkham Horror setting from FFG, and have found the novellas and most of the paperbacks to be decent enough reads. A few of them I've put down unfished due to mediocrity, but most of them have been entertaining enough and I consider them good enough light reading to continue buying them.

Soon, I Will Be Invincible is a personal fave. You and Crooked are readable; of the two Crooked is the more fun. SIWBI remains his best IMO. These are all written by Austin Grossman.

The Magicians series on the other hand is written by his twin brother Lev Grossman.  It's a well written series and a fun light read; kind of a mash up of So You Want To Be A Wizard, Harry Potter, and Narnia to me (and other similar awkward kid discovers magic is a thing hiding behind the dreary mundane world tales). The main character is an aggravating non-traditional protagonist...he's not very likeable IMO, but the setting and supporting characters were good enough for me to read thru to the end. It's alright. 

Personally, I find Lev to be the more polished (and slightly more prolific) writer, while I find Austin's ideas to be more fun and interesting. 

There are many books that I'll never crack open because they give strong indication that they are not meant for me and I likely won't enjoy them. I've started books that didn't grab my interest and thus I put them down. I've finished many more books, some of which were disappointing and / or instantly forgettable. However, I can't think of any books I've actually hated, as hate is a strong emotion and not something I'd so carelessly apply. 

Having said that, I've found most licensed novels to be drivel and I generally avoid them on principle.

Also, the various Sorcery variants in my urban fantasy setting Here There Be Monsters work somewhat as described. Invokers and the custom Invocation power are particularly close thematically (as I mentioned yesterday in the replies to the corresponding facebook post). Meanwhile, Necromantists, Daemonologists, and Elementalists use a variety of Followers, the Summon power, and various skills for some of their magic. 

Separate subject, a long time ago I threw a "fun" character up on these boards as an example for some other poster, to demonstrate a "summoner" whose powers were all various slots in a couple of MP's with a SFX of summoning things but no actual usage of the Summon power. There's a copy still laying around on my web server here: Mythic. A great benefit of the Hero System is that one can handle quite a lot of thematic woo woo simply with creative use of SFX.

Make of it what you will...

13 hours ago, mattingly said:

His name was Robert Paulsen.

 

His name was Robert Paulsen.

 

Beat me to it. 

The Metier style has this to say about SFX for matrixes (the metier equivalent of spells) from a top down perspective:

Each of the sample styles further suggest how matrixes of that particular style are perceived by those with mystic senses, under the label of "signature"; for instance:

However, there's nothing preventing further elaboration. For starters, each individual matrix has some relevant SFX particular to what it is / does. It's a matter of taste if multiple practitioners with the same matrix (the exact same mechanic at the same point cost) have personalized SFX or a common SFX for that specific matrix. 

In the case of Metier where the intent is to emphasize a strong notion of identifiable styles of magic I would opt to have the same matrix of the same style have the same SFX for all practitioners of that same style. The conformity to magic as taught by that style would cement the idea of rigid differentiation between the different styles. I would be concerned that allowing practitioners of the same style having different personalized SFX for the same matrix would subvert the intended notion of style recognizability.

The vector of differentiation within Metier, for me, is between practitioners of different styles. Using the example styles as a for instance, imagine a practitioner of Preciat using a fireball type matrix and practitioner of Conde also using a fireball type matrix. They will have some mechanical differences due to the [required | restricted] [advantage | limitation] structure of Metier. But while they share some SFX (both have the SFX of Arcane, Metieran Magic, and Fire), they are also differentiated by other SFX and would reasonably have different sensory effects; how different is left as an exercise for your playgroup to decide as you see fit.

However, that's just my preference. It doesn't really matter either way if you prefer to have each caster have personalized SFX for all of their matrixes. It's a very fine grained tonal consideration.

I don't know if you've seen my old alternate Arms & Armor Variant from back in the day. I used it in several 5e Fantasy Hero campaigns and it was very well received by the weapon fetishist players in the various groups. I also received feedback from other GM's who used it successfully in those days as well. It's much more gritty than I would go these days as I've drifted towards favoring lower crunch mechanics over the years, but it is a battle tested subsystem that might at least be interesting to take a glance at.

I defined a set of categories which determine DC, concealability, # of hands, and STR Min, and then a seperate list of traits that offer various benefits and drawbacks.

The weapon list is then just a process of assigning a given weapon to a category and tagging it up with the traits necessary to dial in its particular nature.

Some of the traits (Bashing, Slashing, Piercing, etc.) interact with specific types of armor (Cloth, Leather, Scale, Chain, Plate) which offers very tactical considerations in a given engagement depending upon what weapon is being used and what sorts of armor the current opposition is wearing. And so on.

On 12/2/2021 at 10:46 AM, Mr. R said:

I am making some Runemaster Character ala Killer Shrike...But weapons have a Str Minimum.  In his examples the runic weapons have no Str Min.... BUT.... is that the norm? Do magic weapons use Str Min (are normal weapons just with extras) OR Do magic weapons NOT use Str Min (part of the enchantment is that they are almost effortless to use)

In my magic systems, it's a design choice; mundane weapons have STR Min but an artificer making a permanent magic item that happens to be a weapon only has to comply with the required / forbidden restrictions of their particular magic system. 

In the case of permanent runic weapons, the magic system does not require STR Min to be applied, but also doesn't forbid it. So, maker's choice. 

The practical effect of not applying STR Min to a runic weapon is that it will effectively do more damage on average without requiring more dice of effect. From an SFX perspective, as you note "part of the enchantment is that they are almost effortless to use" is a perfectly viable justification. 

If you are trying to get a specific permanent runic weapon to a lower point cost and are reaching for plausible Lims to do so, then STR Min is fair game. 

On the other hand, if you as the GM want permanent magical weapons to be consistent with mundane weapons, you can just modify the magic system to require permanent magical weapons to take STR Min at a level appropriate to their base weapon type. It's up to you.

Indeed, I recall my excitement back in the day when this came to pass. I have many fond memories of the materials you guys produced over the years and the purposes I put them to. Make mine Hero! and happy holidays.

The main thing to consider about using polyhedrals for DCs instead of some # of D6's is linear results vs a curve. But, if you don't mind the swingyness of the ranges, it's doable.

Personally, before COVID I was transitioning to a Cortex Prime hack of mine which has similar character building expressiveness to Hero but looser resolution. It uses all the poly's from d4 to d12 in a single dice pool per action / reaction type of resolution. Individual traits (aptitudes, powers, etc) are rated as d4, d6, d8 whatever. For a given action or reaction a character forms a dice pool by taking the die for up to one relevant trait from each set of abilities they have and rolling all the dice. Two dice are chosen and added together as their total result, and a third die is chosen as their effect...the step of the effect die determines the magnitude of what they achieve...thus an effect die of d4 would be marginal while an effect die of a d12 would be extreme. Various stunts (called SFX "special effects") interact with these basic dice pool semantics...for instance the Area Effect SFX allows the inclusion of more dice in the pool and the keeping of additional effect dice to apply to multiple targets, other SFX allow a third die to be added to a result in certain circumstances, or the effect die to be stepped up to the next higher die step under certain circumstances, etc.

I love the Hero System, and have brought many groups into using the Hero System to replace / migrate away from a D&D or other more mainstream game engine. It can be a worthwhile endeavor.

However, if one or more of your players just love them some polyheedz and you want to explore some free form adventure driven by what makes sense to the characters, the setting, and the emerging narrative of your campaign you may find some value in trying out my Cortex hack...

http://www.killershrike.com/Cortex/Heroic/Fantasy/

Most of the sample characters I provide for the hack are actually conversions / re-imaginings of Hero characters from one of my Fantasy Hero campaigns from back in the day. For instance, the warrior blacksmith Saemund in my Cortex hack...and a version of the original player character from back in the day in 5e Hero. And the cantankerous obermancer Kjar in my Cortex hack...and a version of the original player character from the 5e Hero days. 

If you do end up going the Fantasy Hero route though, maybe you'll find something useful among the Fantasy Hero resources still up on my site...

http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/HighFantasyHERO/FantasyHERO.aspx

Good luck...

I'll try to answer any direct questions about the material you might have or that may come up, but unfortunately I'm currently too busy w/ real life to dig into the builds.  

However, I'm really glad to see you getting usage out of this material. This kind of thing makes it worth it to continue keeping the site up.

I'm a big Fate fan, but I've not checked it out specifically.

While I have much love for Fate and Fate Accelerated, it doesn't quite do it for me when it comes to supers. I'm fully familiar with how to "solve" for superheroes using that system and even did some modeling along those lines back when I got into Fate in the first place, but for narrative supers I greatly prefer Cortex Plus Heroic (better known from its turn backing Marvel Heroic Roleplaying) or the more recent evolution of it in the form of Cortex Prime.

I also really like the very similar Sentinel Comics: The Roleplaying Game; I've not yet been able to play at the table but I really dig the game design.

I've not found martial / caster disparity to really be a problem in the Hero System. As others have mentioned, characteristics, Talents / Super Skills, and gear offer plenty of design space for non-casters to be impressive or extraordinary. 

Here's some materials I provided back in the day for Fighters, Rogues, and other D&D type classes suggesting various ways to model common tropes, but it's not hard to dial in the awesome for non-casters using the tools provided by the system. 

The ones you list that I'm familiar with:

Brave New World - I owned it and a couple of its supplements, never played it. Good production values, but not a very good system IMO.

Aberrant - Skimmed it, did not care for it at all (system or setting), never played it.

Guardians - Heard of it. Not into "retro-clones" / OSR per se...I played "old school" D&D when it wasn't old at all and don't have nostalgia-colored lenses re: early days of game mechanics.

Wild Talents - read the books (based on a Superworld rpg campaign, supposedly), owned the GURPS supplement, played very briefly in a Wild Talents game run by someone or other. In a roundabout way Wild Talents is what led me to the Hero System back in the day so while I did not care for the game itself, it is partially to thank for me finding a system I've gotten several decades of enjoyment out of...so there's that.

Truth & Justice - I'm familiar w/ PDQ but if I were in the mood for that style of game I'd probably just use Risus or Fate which are pretty similar at root.

Sentinels Comics RPG - I own the deluxe leather bound version and have made some characters with it. Pretty similar to Cortex Plus Heroic (and Cam Banks is credited among others on SCRPG so no big surprise there) with some intriguing additions and a semi-random character generation system that I actually don't hate...brought back happy memories of randomly generating characters using FASERIP Marvel + Ultimate Powers Book. I'm a huge Cortex Plus Heroic / Cortex Prime fan, and also a big Sentinels of the Multiverse card game fan, and enjoyed the afternoon I spent messing around w/ Sentinels Comics RPG. I hope to be able to play a small session using it at some point if the stars align. I recommend checking it out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map–territory_relation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)#Fallacy_of_misplaced_concreteness

Hexes are an abstraction, notable only because they were found an a type of battlemat commonly available at the time the game was created, primarily for wargames but usable in an rpg context as well. The three basic choices were square grid, hex grid, no grid (use a measuring tape). Square grids have an odd pixelation effect on movement and AoE abilities and facing is difficult to manage. Hexes are not immune to this but lessen the effect considerably and offer a compelling advantage over squared grids for those who require a little more precision. 

At the time, most miniatures available were somewhere between 22mm and 32mm in scale (though exceptions existed at both ends), with a sort of happy middle ground between 25 and 28mm. 

Layered over that were some practical considerations, such as the size of the typical battlemat, which itself was driven by the size of the typical playing surface, and the desire for some extra space around the board for character sheets, books, dice, drinks, snacks, elbows, et al, and you get a reasonable approximation of 2m (a common approximation of the height of an adult male human) per hex as a working general model.

From there, if you are writing a game that you fully intend to be played on a hex battlemap at 2m per hex, then it seems like a convenient shortcut to just measure all distances in hexes within the rule text including weapon ranges, movement, general measurement of distances (yeah yeah, its 125 feet tall...how many hexes is that?), and so on. Unfortunately, this shortcut is founded on a big assumption, and as all decisions based upon an assumption it is a wrong decision whenever the founding assumption is not true.

To wit...people who don't use a tactical map at all are encumbered by the hex concept which has no bearing at all to their non-tactically mapped game resolution. The introduction of megascale to the rules, useful for things like space based games particularly, would greatly prefer a tactical map that deals in something a bit more practical to them than 2m. Vehicles and supers with high mobility quickly make a farce out of the distance available on the tactical battle map, easily traversing off the edge and requiring hand waving or a reset...but if only the abstraction of the hex lines drawn on the map were decoupled from the amount of real distance they are meant to represent and from the rules text that needlessly expresses itself in that coupling, this logical flaw just falls away.

And it should be obvious, but I'll point out that you can choose to continue to treat hexes as 2m increments the same as you ever could. Decoupling the tactical map representation from a unit of measurement did not take away your ability to continue to use your trusty battlemat or what have you in exactly the same way as you ever did. What it accomplished is allowing you to also scale your representation as necessary or desired. For instance, perhaps for MOST conflicts you treat 1 hex as 2m, nothing has changed for you, but to do an aerial battle or a naval engagement or a car chase thru a city or a battle between giant mechs you shift the scale and for that resolution treat 1 hex as 5m, and for a small intimate battle in a tight space you change the scale for that engagement to 1 hex is 1m. It gives you much more control over the tactical representation for a given conflict. 

Think of it algebraically; replace all references to hexes with the variable "x" (just delete he- and -es from the word so to speak). Let x = whatever number you want it to be to suit your current playing surface and the action being resolved there on.

Personally, I prefer playing the game at 1 hex = 1m for typical heroic conflicts where the characters involved are basically mundane, but for conflicts where people have high mobility, it can be useful to zoom out a bit and handle it at 1 hex = 2m or more. I prefer to shift along 1, 2, 5, 10 per hex and anything beyond that I would tend to handle abstractly (not on a tactical map) unless there was a strong reason to do so. I tend to just hand wave megascale movement as being effectively non-tactical.

As a practical exercise, get a piece of blank grid paper; it doesn't matter if it is hex or square, and draw a rpg map of whatever. One of the first things you need to decide on is the scale. Does one grid unit equal 5 feet or 10 feet or 100 feet? You make this decision every time you take out a new sheet of grid paper and start to draw; you may have a default scale that you sort of auto-decide, but the choice is there and you can make a decision based upon what you are trying to represent vs force yourself to draw everything at a uniform scale even if it takes 50 sheets of graph paper taped end to end to do it.

A representation of distance on a tactical map is an abstraction. A precise unit of measurement is a concretion. By coupling an abstraction that was only true in a specific context to a concretion that was entirely arbitrary was a bit of a mistake by the original game designer(s) which no doubt seemed reasonable and intuitive at the time but in retrospect was unnecessarily limiting, but to compound the mistake by doing it at a ratio (1:2 hex:meter in this case) compounded the mistake. If it had at least been 1:1 then it would have been little more than a quirky label (this game calls meters "hexes", oh well no big deal) or possibly even a useful abstraction unto itself (a hex is whatever distance it is defined to be in a campaign's guidelines). Instead it was a unnecessary anchoring of a not-necessarily-a-tactical-game-system to a tactical battle map.

Personally, I prefer multiple magic systems in a Hero Fantasy setting because I feel it offers additional opportunities for character differentiation and highlights one of the Hero System's strongest features.

In general it can be difficult to balance different means of empowerment against one another in a given context such as a setting, particularly if those means of empowerment are implemented as orthogonal sub-systems of arbitrary rules. The Hero System and similar game systems influenced by it (or independently evolved) that have a strong notion of separation between fluff and mechanic and a common unified effects model provide a lot of lift to overcome that difficulty. 

And so on...I don't have time to wax loquacious on generalities, so I'll forbear further abstraction for now and move on to specifics.

The various Fantasy Hero magic systems I offer are meant to be used either together or separately. Some are better for particular power levels or tones, some are more suited to be used as general systems while others are more niche, and some are more by-the-book while others introduce custom mechanics or some structured hand-wavium. However, they are all basically compatible. 

As an exercise in dogfooding, back in the days when I was building the bulk of those systems, I made the custom setting of San'Dora with a meta goal of including every single one of those magic systems in one setting. I taped together a bunch of blank paper to make a blank map and drew in a centralized Mediterranean like coastline then passed the otherwise blank canvas around the table of my players at the time and they each extended the map's coastlines, delineated continents, added mountain ranges, forests, rivers, and further geographical embellishments. I then had them each make a list of their favorite genre sources and concepts (books, movies, comics, whatever) and each list 3 things they wanted incorporated into the setting, etc. Then I synthesized all of that into various ages and peoples to incorporate all of it and assigned various magic systems to different cultures, influencing the nature of those cultures and their histories based upon the qualia and power level of their native magic systems. And so on and so forth. This fed back into the magic design, inspiring many of the variants and specializations within the broader systems.

Thus, the various magics systems and their relative power levels, tone, etc, actively influenced that particular setting and vice versa, which results in a grounded / organic feel, reinforces cultural notions within the setting, suggests / drives historical detail, and generally acts as an important part of the worldbuilding process.

I would recommend a similar approach be taken to ground your chosen magic system(s) and other means to empowerment such as religious and knightly orders, martial styles, significant professions, and so on directly into your setting. And to be clear, not just the superficial "now" of your setting, but from the bottom up starting at the foundation of the setting's conceptual core, layering thru the history / back story thereof unto the present / current era where play will begin. Having taken this approach, a rich tapestry of character origins with verisimilitude and internal consistency will present itself from the resting state of your worldbuilding rather than being no more than a bullet list of tacked on, bolted together choices lacking resonance or contextual relevance.

And finally to get maximally specific: my Metier, Runecrafting, and Totemic Shamanism systems all work together reasonably well and I would not expect you to encounter any special problems if you allowed all three. The one caveat there is, as mentioned somewhere in the Runecrafting documentation, as a magic system that revolves around making magic items, you should first work out how you plan to handle magic items in your setting before deciding to incorporate Runecrafting as the assumptions I made when designing that system are based upon how I handled magic items (also documented on the site) which may differ from your assumptions / preferences. 

I've allowed Regen Stun using the APG option for many years; feels pretty good and intuitive in play. Also Regen per Segment, which is quite strong but allows for certain cinematic / genre tropes which per Turn never quite jived with for my preferences. Things like: