DreadDomain

1 hour ago, zslane said:

 

There seems to be a recurring theme here which insists that these decisions and changes in 6E had to be made at all. Since I don't agree with that basic premise, the debate is pretty much dead before it even starts. What 6E needed to be, in my view, was a massive presentation revamp (ala Champions Complete), not a campaign to eradicate pet peeves and make pet tweaks and house rules official.

 

Yes, there is no doubt that decisions regarding a potential new rulebook for HERO had to be made but I am nowhere implying these decisions could only lead to rule changes. Same rule, new presentation could have been an option. Those in charge felt HERO needed more.

 

This debate as you say was dead from the start because I do not believe you wanted a debate. It is clear by now that you keep dancing around whatever I say to avoid the real objection I had with your position.

1 hour ago, zslane said:

 

Well, the way I see it, it boils down to a general resistance to fixing that which isn't actually broken. Who gets to decide what is or isn't broken? Well in this case it was Steve Long and a bunch of like-minded players whose design instincts I don't feel pointed true north.

And yet, those who had to make the decision clearly had a different opinion. Those who didn't have to decide, like you and I, can only revel into the comfortable luxury of being back bencher critiques. I simply happen to believe that despite all my reservations and the fact that they did not address all my personal pet peeves and did address stuff I thought was not a problem, they have done a darn fine job and made HERO 6th an excellent game. 

 

1 hour ago, zslane said:

And lest you think I dislike all change, I will point out that there have been plenty of changes to the game between editions that were quite sound--and even necessary in some cases--but IMO very few of them are to be found in 6E.

Ah no, not at all. I do not know you and I couldn't simply jump to the conclusion that you generally dislike change. My understanding is that your objection rest on the removal of COM, to which I was replying. I don't recall you making a reference to any other change you felt offensive so I was not making any other assumption. My point was that if change would be stopped every time someone (not specifically only you) opposes it, because he finds it unnecessary or otherwise, nothing would change. You would have passionately opposed the removal of COM, I would have opposed the removal of Figured Characteristics, someone else would have opposed the change to the Variable Power Pool, etc. In every case, we would have pleaded that there was no need to fix what was not broken.

 

My objection to your objection is not about the removal of COM (I totally get that) but rather on how you frame the impact of the removal of COM.

2 hours ago, Cassandra said:

 

As someone who started with the 1st Edition, I found that each subsequent was a natural evolution to the system, with the 5th Edition being the ultimate role playing game.

 

The 6th Edition was essentially a Retcon.  It was redoing thing simply because the systems creators decided not to work together anymore.  So rules were relabeled for not other reason they they had to be relabeled.

 

Hey, I didn't call it Star Trek: Discovery.  That would be Villains and Vigilantes.

 

I do not really know Star Trek (never was a fan) but regarding HERO, I cannot agree with your view.

 

Well except the part were you say the 5th Edition being the ultimate role playing game. That I can agree with.

4 hours ago, zslane said:

 

When a long-standing core element is useful to some players but not others, the prudent and sensible thing to do is to simply leave it alone. Those who have no use for it can continue to ignore it while those who do use it aren't left refactoring their game to accommodate the change (or undoing the change as a "house rule"). 6E was not made better than 4E/5E by replacing COM with Striking Appearance, it was merely made (needlessly) different.

 

In all fairness, this statement boils down to a general resistance to change and if we would always judge the validity of a change on your above statement, nothing would ever change.. I am sure that for every changes made in 6E, we can find someone who preferred how it was done in 5ER (I know I do) and some else thinking that the change was long overdue. Let's go back in time and I am sure that for every changes made in 5E, we can find someone who preferred how it was done in 4E and some else thinking that the change was long overdue.

 

Look, there are many reasons to prefer 5ER over 6E:

• I liked Comeliness
• I liked Figured Characteristics
• I liked Elemental Control
• I liked Transfer as it was
• 5ER was shorter
• 5ER had a better library of books
• 5ER had a vehicle book (two actually)
• I liked... and so on and so forth. We could probably go on for the whole day

They are all valid and choosing 5ER as our ultimate role playing system cannot be disputed by anyone (but the same could be said if our ultimate role playing system was Rock, Paper, Scissors). However claiming that the removal of COM made every single character sheet in existence incompatible or is forcing you to refactor your game to accommodate the change is dubious at best.

 

I will leave it at that as it clearly comes down to a logical versus emotional argument that can only lead to Edition Wars (HERO do not need that). I do not agree with your rationale but I certainly respect your opinion. 

4 hours ago, zslane said:

6E1+6E2 is even worse than FRED. I remember thinking the original BBB was massive when I first saw it. I could never have imagined how bloated and unwieldy it would still become.

No doubt Steve, while a prolific author, would have benefited a good editor while writing for HERO (any edition). I believe 6E has 200 pages more than 5E Revised, which is a bit mind-blowing. That being said, I believe 6E is easier to read than 5R but I cannot quite put my finger on the reasons. Is it because of the colour? Is there more white space and more art (feels less crowded)? Is it because it is whiter (less black)? Is the font different (feels the same to me)? Not sure.

 

I would have liked to see a Champions Complete with the same text but with 6E production quality. 

3 minutes ago, Cassandra said:

The 6th Edition of the Hero System is the Star Trek Enterprise of the System.

I must admit I do not get the reference here. Would you care to explain?

In my view HERO 6th is the first iteration of the 3rd generation of the system, Champions 1st, 2nd and 3rd being iterations of the first generation and HERO 4th, 5th and 5th Revised of the second.

 

3 hours ago, zslane said:

The Hero System is sort of like a piece of software. With each new version there are going to be changes, but ideally you don't make changes that require your user base to refactor all previous content.

In my view HERO 6th is the first iteration of the 3rd generation of the system, Champions 1st, 2nd and 3rd being iterations of the first generation and HERO 4th, 5th and 5th Revised of the second.

 

3 hours ago, zslane said:

Backwards compatibility is important, and most of the 6E changes forced players to refactor all their characters and villains, which is a major PITA and totally unjustified for the dubious benefits most of those changes delivered. To my mind, the removal of COM is a good example of a change that didn't need to be made, wasn't replaced by a clearly superior mechanic, and which made every single character sheet in existence incompatible with the official RAW.

 

It is because of changes like that (of which there are many, in my view) that I have a very difficult time endorsing 6E to players familiar with previous editions, even with the much improved presentation of the Complete books.

It must be a matter of perspective because this is absolutely not my experience. Transitioning from 5th to 6th as a player, you would certainly have to translate your character (if only because of points and future growth) but as a GM, using a 5th edition character is pretty seamless to me. The changes made in 6th are relevant during character creation because some changes were made for game balance, ease of construction or aesthetics (and I am not saying I like all of them) but for the purpose of reading a character sheet and using it play, the impact is minimal. Some names were changed, priced reworked and some construction mechanics were replaced (EC, Figured Characteristics) but it mostly doesn't matter when it comes to using the sheet. The only translation I can think of is doubling the Inches to get meters.

 

The generational gap between HERO 5th Revised and HERO 6th is fairly minor compared to others. Consider the gap between AD&D 2nd, D&D 3rd, 4th and 5th. Even GURPS, transitioning from 3rd Revised to 4th lost a lot more backward compatibility than HERO did. Some mechanically important concepts disappeared (PD), some figured attributes numerically changed (Dodge, Parry, Block), and the scale of strength was dramatically modified (an elephant in 3rd has ST 300 but in 4th it has ST 45, even more dramatic changes for vehicles). You can easily use a HERO 5th villain in a HERO 6th game. The same cannot be said for different editions of D&D or GURPS.

 

I agree the removal of COM was unnecessary but it was replaced my a superior mechanics if only because COM didn't any really codified (to use Chris term) mechanic behind it. Now is Striking Appearance clearly superior, as you say? Probably not. The net result of having COM or not on the sheet is pretty much inconsequential from a mechanical perspective.

 

Would I have kept COM? Yes.

 

But pretending that the removal of COM is a good example of a change that "made every single character sheet in existence incompatible with the official RAW" is, to use your own expression, disingenuous.

18 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I wouldn't say COM did nothing.  It did plenty, that just wasn't codified.  It was there to give your normally fluff-only good looks some small bit of mechanical oomph. 

Yes, that is why I qualified my comment with "from a mechanics perspective".

 

18 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

Fortunately, Comeliness is forward-portable to 6e, and Striking Appearance is backward-portable to 5e.  In Hero Designer, COM can be done as a custom Characteristic, while Striking Appearance can be built as limited PRE.  

Absolutely. No effort required!

53 minutes ago, zslane said:

The lower "usefulness" of COM was already encapsulated by its lower cost. Taking COM away and replacing it with a Talent was not a solution to any problem of meaningful magnitude. It was change for change's sake, in my view. Steve absolutely had another choice, which was to just leave COM alone; I kind of feel it is disingenuous to frame this as though Steve just had to make a change, when he really didn't.

 

" From a mechanics point of view, COM did not do much in previous editions and I guess the choices Steve faced was to ..."

 

Oh, I was certainly unclear. What I meant was that to make COM matters from a mechanics point of Steve had a few options. However, he also had the option of keeping COM as is and not bother about its lack of relevance. As you say, the existence of COM was not causing any problem of meaningful magnitude and from a mechanics perspective, the same can be said about its removal. COM was doing so little that taking it away did not impact the game in any way just as deciding to reintroduce COM in a 6E game would not require any work of any significance because it was not really connected with anything else in the system. From that perspective, it wasn't change for the sake of change but an attempt to have appearance matter if it was the desire of the player.  

 

Now personally I don't have a strong opinion, I rather liked having COM, but I understand why it was morphed into Striking Appearance which serves the same purpose in a mechanically more meaningful way. Would I have been the designer, I most likely would not have taken this route and would have looked at making COM more mechanically relevant instead but since I was not the designer, the point is rather moot.

4 hours ago, zslane said:

I suppose COM is a bit of a game design anachronism, born out of the desire to break D&D's monolithic CHA characteristic into two more compartmentalized concepts: PRE (personality) and COM (physical appearance). I feel that if you agree in principle that PRE is worth codifying with a number, then there's no logical reason to reject COM.

I see your point but COM was not rejected, It was recodified into Striking Appearance. From a mechanics point of view, COM did not do much in previous editions and I guess the choice Steve faced was to make it relevant, to drop it or to replace it with something relevant. For better or worse he chose the third option. The benefit of COM was that, at a quick glance, you had an idea of the scale of handsomeness of the character but aside from that it wasn't doing much. At least Strike Appearance provides the mechanical effect to which you can attach the special effect you want.

 

EDIT: But none of that has anything to do with the topic, sorry...

56 minutes ago, mrinku said:

Yeah. Unless they added Variable Advantage to CC and it's not in 6e proper. CC p.120 has it, same as Cassandra describes the 5e version.

 

Puzzled.

 

It is in 6E as well

10 hours ago, Cassandra said:

Here is one advantage that the 5th Edition has over the 6th.  

 

Variable Advantage is an Advantage that allows a Character to use any Advantage as long as they pay twice to normal cost of any potential Advantage.

 

Example:  An Archer wants to be able to use Armor Piercing, Area Effect One Hex, Explosion, and No END with his Energy Blast.  All of these are +1/2 Advantages so if the Archer buys Variable Advantages at +1 he can use all of them along with any other +1/2 Advantage.

 

However if the player only choses 4 Advantages they my take a -1/4 Disadvantage.

 

This is especially useful with Flight.

 

Flight 10", Variable Advantages (+1/2), [[Invisible [Hearing], Megascale [1km], 1/2 END, or Usable Underwater Only (-1/4)]]

 

Cost 24 Points

Why is it an advantage that 5th has over 6th? Variable is identical in 6th is it?

Also the intent is to remove 1/4 from the advantage value, not to add a -1/4 limitation.

Finally, the  Variable Avantage cannot be lowered below +1/2 so applying 4 different +1/4 advantage or less is still a +1/2 advantage.

Hey guys, finally got my hardcopy of Golden Age Champions here down under. I gave it a first read and it is in my opinion a very enjoyable book. I am not a “reviewer” by any stretch of the imagination but here is how I would summarize my thoughts.

 

Cover

Personally, I have never been a fan of Storn’s arts but even if the colours are a bit too washed out for my taste, this piece came together quite well. For roleplaying books, I generally like covers depicting team action with a central villain and this one delivers exactly that. However, it looks like the piece wasn’t quite balanced for a wraparound cover. My main gripe is the gap right in the middle of the cover in between Bulletproof, Seahawk, the title and Doctor Twilight. The title couldn’t have been slightly bigger (the font is good but it looks a bit tame) or even better, Seahawk and the big Robot could have been moved to right a notch to at least bring Mara mostly on the front cover with the robot being knocked back over the spine to the back cover. In comparison, the back cover is very well balanced. I quite like to see “Darren Watt’s…” in the title. Nice touch.

 

Layout, Graphic and Arts

The book looks good. It has the same graphic design as HERO 6^th (as opposed to Champions Complete or Strike Force) and I believe it suits the book very well. Aside from the section with the timeline and the equipment tables where it is sparse for good reasons, there are quite a few pieces of art throughout the book and although art is always subjective, I find most of it contributes to the Golden Age feel. To top it all, some of the art is surprisingly large, a bonus! I also greatly appreciate that most character sheets fit on a single page.

All in all, I find Golden Age Champions looks better than Strike Force (and I like Strike Force). Compared to GAC, I believe SF is blander, with sparse, mostly small piece of arts and generally poorer character sheet layouts. I am still disappointed the KS missed the full colour stretch goal. GAC would have been glorious in colour! If there is ever a full colour version of the book, through Drivethrurpg or otherwise, I will jump on it.

 

Writing, Editing and Proofing

The writing is colloquial, easy and fun to read. It is full of atmosphere and simply put, makes me want to play Golden Age Champions.  Chapter 1 and 2 set the scene nicely by introducing the real world Golden Age of comics and describing the themes and tropes. I appreciate that it doesn’t overdo it and we quickly jump into game elements. There is a nice selection of “before the war” and “during the war templates” but I would have liked to see the Heroic Archetypes developed to the level of what was done in the Champions Super-Hero Gallery. It would have made it easier for people to jump in with builds themed around the era. Also, it doesn’t seem to indicate a preferred starting point total for characters.

Chapter 3 describes the state of the world complete with a 56 pages timeline listing events unfolding between January 1938 to December 1949. A full 12 years of plot seeds! It follows with Chapter 4, Gears and Technology covering weapons and vehicles (real, unusual and weird). This section is low on fluff and high on game stat tables. Chapter 5 covers gm advice and campaigning in the Golden Age by breaking the era into smaller periods, each with slightly different outlook and focus. This chapter is only 20 or so pages but it is dense with campaign ideas. These 20 pages really make you want to play Golden Age Champions. It felt a bit weird to move from timeline (chapter 3) to game stat heavy gear (chapter 4) to then a higher-level campaigning kind of timeline (chapter 5). I have a feeling it would have flowed better to have the timeline after what is now chapter 5.  

Chapter 6 is all about new characters which are diverse and have interesting backstories. The “after the war” blurb is a very nice touch but it seems a lot of them end up dying of cancer (is there an in-story rational to it?). All in all, this is an excellent chapter that introduces cool characters, complete with nice, large pictures (ok, some are very average but they are mostly good) and backstories packed with plot seeds. The write-ups are good and focused, not too simple but not too complex (or convoluted) like we might see sometimes in some HERO supplements. They all seem to bring something to the Golden Age canvas.

If there is something I really appreciated, is that Darren doesn’t shy away from making a stance from time to time. When he describes the Retro versus Period modes of play, he tells us what mode he believes we should choose and why. He does similarly throughout the book around different topics. Too often have we seen in HERO supplements the author laying out options in front of us without making an authorial decision, as if staying at the “toolkit” level was required.  

Generally, proofreading is a bit weaker in GAC that it is in usual HERO books. Not that I took note of any of them but I believe there more typos, formatting error and such then what I am used to. Thankfully, not to the point where it took away from the pleasure of reading the book. GAC loses some brownie points because it lacks an index (disappointing since 6E has one of the best index for a RPG).

 

Summary

It is always easy to point out what could have been done better, what could have been included and in what order or count the number of typos in a book. I have highlighted a few things I would have liked for Golden Age Champions but in the end, suffice to say that the book is easy and fun to read. The writing, supported by the layout and the art, brings the golden age atmosphere to life in a way that makes us want to jump in. The book offers a ton of plot seeds and colourful characters to populate many stories and campaigns.  Simply put, it jumpstarts the imagination and makes me want to play Golden Age Champions.

 

Onwards to the Silver Age!

Unfortunately, they all look interesting to me

Guys, I am trying to keep my side of the bargain. I have bought Golden Age Champions and Ghosts, Ghouls and Golems and I am now waiting to spend my money on the Champions Character Creation Cards and Danger International. Any news on these projects?

 

 

Darren Watts’s Golden Age Champions: I bought it through KS (but still miffed we missed the full colour mark)

 

Michael Surbrook’s Ghosts, Ghouls, and Golems: Sounds interesting. Probable buy.

 

Champions Character Creation Cards: Super interesting. Intrigue by how it will work. I still believe the Superhero Gallery in Champions 6E was great and that it should have been in Champions Complete. It should also be availble through Hero Designer. This is a buy.

 

Danger International: Buy!.

 

Aaron Allston’s Strike Force Organizations: Buy!

 

Champions Villains Four: Organizations: Buy! 

 

Michael Satran’s Imperial Throne: Potential buy.

 

Invictus! Potential buy.

 

Jason Walters’s Santa Muerte: Probable buy.

 

Yeah, but they don't really, because they do not address the plethora of problems that moving in Hero has created for itself.  Witness the glory of a genuine alternative:

 

 

I like it! However, I don't quite see the "plethora of problems" that it solves that Velocity Factor doesn't adresss. Can you elaborate?

I don't understand. :-(

What is the difference in the last two columns, are those numbers the metres moved that segment? You say "each segment you have a phase you can use your movement" but confuse that by saying that not everyone will be able to move every segment.

I am presuming that you mean you will be able to use your movement once in each of your "action" phases? So SPD 4 will get to move 4 times per turn? That still does not explain (to me) why you can't reach your full potential speed...and that sentence seems to be missing something at the end...

My understanding only so take with a bucket load of salt.

 

The last two columns are a range of meters moved by segment. So you could buy for 50 points of Move, giving you a max speed of 45 meters per segment but if in a given phase you were attacking while moving at 13m/s, your move would provide 6 DC.

Out of combat, you can use your move each segment. In combat you can only use your move on your phases.

 

I'd be curious to compare that with the Velocity Factor optional rule.

Thanks for the feedback

 

honestly i do it just for my own pleasure, and it takes more time finding pictures than assembling them

Neat video it really set the tone of the campaign. The music and the text (which funnily enough I only realised towards to end that it was in French) conveyed well the mood.

 

Assembling the visual and audio is quite fun but finding and choosing the right material can be time consuming.

This has likely been bought up at some point, but I just had a thought in the shower that the speed chart is a lot simpler if you just use those speeds that are factors of 12: 1,2,3,4,6 and 12.

 

Each of these matches up with a broad category of character, too:

 

1 = Impaired

2 = Normal

3 = Trained

4 = Highly Trained

6 = Superhuman

12 = Speedster Superhuman

 

So... instead of having those annoying non-factor speeds cluttering up your combats, tell your players that can only choose those speeds when designing their characters. Think of it as a campaign ground rule (which it is).

 

You can still use the other speed points when required if adjustment powers are in play; but by limiting the usual ones to these it should help speed things up a bit.

That is a pretty cool approach!

Ah thanks. I remember the concept of Instant Fuzion (a bit fuzzier on Instant HERO) but never got to see Wildstrike. Cool idea that if done correctly could showcase how simple and yet fun HERO could be.

played in a 1 shot using wildstrike

Can you elaborate on this? I've heard about it but never saw and don't know how it works. Was it using HERO rules?

As I replied on rpg.net:

 

We never really stripped down HERO per say but we did use simplifications:

1) We very rarely used Endurance

2) Instead of rolling the full amount of dice for damage, we used a rule found in HERO5R where we rolled 1d6. From memory 1-2 gave 25% less than average damage, 3-4 gave average damage and 5-6 gave 25% more. These values were written on the GM screen for all to see for each damage class.

3) We enforced the "you snooze, you lose" rule for combat. Players had to be sharp and be ready for their turn.

4) For VPP, we had pre-written builds written on the character sheets so it would be easy to tweak.

5) We rolled OCV as a skill (OCV+11+Modifiers on 3d6) and told the GM by how much we succeeded (effectively, the opposition DCV).

6) We enforced that if a rule could not be recalled on the spot, GM would call and we would look up the official rule in the book after the game

7) Rarely used the Multiple-Attack rule

8) Combat rules set at Superheroic (no hit location, impairing, disabling, etc...)

9) STUN multiplier set at 3 (unless power/maneuver/weapon says otherwise)

 

That was pretty much it. Because of that, combat was running fairly fast and furious in our medium-to-high-level-power Champions games.

 

Nowadays, I would also consider:

 

A) Everyone has the same SPD (making Block more relevant even in Champions)

no Post 12 recovery (effectively, the notion of "Turn" fades away) however, I would consider keeping a free recovery after the very first attack

C) As a default, Adjustment Powers return rate is set at 5 points a Minute (doubling their base cost) reducing bookkeeping in combat some more

D) Merging PD and ED

 

For character creation, the best thing that could happen to Champions were the Champions Gallery as well as book like Champions Powers. It didn't strip anything down but they do speed up character creation

 

 

The best fantasy RPG I've ever played is this one right here:

 

FantasyHero.jpg

I am curious to know what made that edition of Fantasy HERO so good?

My wondering is

HOW CAN GURPS SUPERS BE ELEGANT

when it can't mix with the other genre books

heck the other genre books cannot mix with each other EITHER

THAT ALONE MAKES HERO SYSTEM ELEGANT

Funnily enough, at the time the reason we moved our Golden Age Champions to GURPS Supers 2ed was to get more flavour from the system. No question HERO mixes any sfx and genre effortlessly using a single set of rules. We wanted to try GURPS and its sub-systems and we thought our campaign was well adapted for it. Our characters used super-powers and gadgeteering (Supers), psionics (Psionics), martial arts (Martial Arts) and spells (Magic and Grimoire). It worked surprisingly well. All the characters felt very different and our mentalist became truly terrifying. However, when we moved to a higher powered game, the balancing act became more difficult, required more work so we switched back to HERO.

And when he tried to characterize 4e Champions as derivative of GURPS, I realized this guy lived in a very different reality than the one I experienced back then.

A strange statement indeed. I would say GURPS 4th moved far closer to HERO than the other way around.

 

Champions was a brilliant work of game design. GURPS Supers 1st edition was just a complete mess.

I don't believe I ever played GURPS Super 1st edition but it so happened that, years ago, we moved our Golden Age campaign from HERO 4th to GURPS Super 2nd edition (we wanted to try something different). Surprisingly, of all the other superhero games I tried, it was the second most satisfying after HERO.

 

Mind you, if GURPS has one design flaw is that it doesn't scale nearly as well as HERO does so when we played our modern, more high powered campaign once our Golden Age campaign was over, we ended up after a while, moving the game from GURPS to HERO.