Bismark

Re: Converting adventures from other systems for fantasy hero A while back I did a quick conversion of D&D 4e damage types and defences that would work against them to HERO. In many ways, the damage 'keyword' system of 4e is much easier to convert to HERO than the earlier editions' level drain, etc. mechanics. The draft document is attached; you may find it useful.

Having run a STAR HERO campaign for most of this academic year, I am once again GMing at the UK Student Roleplaying and Wargaming Nationals competition. I was planning to run a different system (just for a change), but lots of Real Life work and time constraints (the tournament is on the 9th-10th April) have made me go back to the game system I have by far the most recent experience with. The good news is that I can use characters from my campaign with the serial numbers filed off for the majority of the party (5 of them - I need 2 more) and I will be running the game in the same homebrew universe I have been using all year. The bad news is the time constraint and the fact that I have a bit of writer's block regarding scenarios. I will therefore do the characters first and hope that the inspiration comes from there. Now I need to design some insectoid aliens which are a bit like the Star Fleet Battles Seltorians crossed with Starship Troopers (the original book - what else?) Bugs who will be the main villains for this adventure. They have cropped up in the campaign already but I want to stat them up properly this time - the leader-types (who are bigger and more intelligent than the drones) at least. To add a small amount of humour into what will be a dangerous universe, some of the character names might be familiar: the party medic is called Franklin McCoy, and the gun bunny is called Clint Bronson (I know… but I could not resist). Ideally the party should be finished and a skeleton of a scenario should be ready for a run-through next Sunday, with further tweaking at another run-through with a different set of players a week later. So far the party (finished characters, that is) consists of: 1. the aforementioned Medic (ex-Marine, lots of contacts and positive Rep) 2. a hot-shot pilot with lots of Complications relating to his inability to stop bedding women 3. an explorer/archaeology assistant with corporate connections and a serious skill at using sniper rifles, but with a weakness for fine booze - especially weird alien concoctions 4. a technician/all-around mad scientist (he's a Transhuman - genetically altered to be stronger, faster and more intelligent than humans, but sadly, he's also a mass of Mental Complications) - he has the classic Transhuman identifier of pointy ears. He spent most of last year obsessed with making ever-more-powerful back-pack-powered heavy weapons for him to carry around; having finally been convinced that a particle beam was just plain dangerous , he settled on a coilgun. 5. An ex-marine with a set of scrounging and grifting skills, plus a mortal fear of vacuum (having been accidentally 'spaced' once) In development is the gun bunny - tough ex-Marine with lots of weapon skills and some cyberwear (the internal stuff that would make some sense rather than stuff that would be better kept external for ease of upgrading). I may do one more to have a spare in case someone gets "croaked" early. Well, back to work - HERO Designer needs my attention…

Re: Shadow World setting Folenn is largely in the hands of Unlife minions (both Steel Rain and Soulslayer minions), from what I gather. One of those groups (the Soulslayer-following Vancu) have found a gate to another continent and are busy invading it (and given the fact that they have seriously unpleasant soul-eating gear, I would not want to face those guys).

Re: Shadow World setting Bladestorm it is - set on the continent of Folenn. I used that location and the maps for my HERO Shadow World campaign of 2007-2008. The current SW situation has modified conditions on that continent a lot (according to the game world author in the ICE forums). Bladestorm was not originally going to be in any previously-published campaign world, but it got dropped into Kulthea in the hope of boosting sales.

Re: Shadow World setting Oh, how I like compliments Just noticed this thread because recently I have been hooked again on an old 'time eater' known as Diablo2 and been playing in a lot of private (passworded) games on bnet (where lurks the all-powerful 'Lag Monster' - the greatest enemy any on-line toon will face). Shadow World is up to 4th edition now - the 4th ed book and the Masters of Light and Darkness supplement are pretty darn good; I might well pick up that Players' Guide PDF myself. It's a fun setting - especially the feeling that "the bad guys have won but they don't know it yet" - mainly because they all hate each other. BTW, in case you did not know, the 'murderous super-androids' alluded to in the previous post are the incredibly scary magical constructs known as Shards. The undead are very scary - in HERO terms they would all have an area effect STUN Drain (Power Defence as countermeasure)-even scummy low-end skellies and zombies. Really cruel GMs would crank that up with a bit of BODY Drain as well (probably with a much lower frequency of effect). I have some characters for 5th ed HERO in this setting (taken from my campaign, in fact) which I can make available if anyone wants to grab them for inspiration/ideas/brutal criticism ;)/whatever. Now I really must do an update to 6e of one of my favourite Shadow World monsters - the Hue Eater/Life Eater

Finally, the local University RPG society has a number of members with the excellent taste to volunteer to be guinea pigs - sorry - players in a Star HERO campaign run by yours truly. I am still doing the characters at the moment so will have to add details about the campaign later, but it is basically a Space Opera tending towards the 'hard rubber' end of the spectrum (there is FTL - to make the whole thing work) but the number of rubber sciences is kept to a minimum and there are no psionics (which I always think of as magic under a different name) to speak of. Overall feel is Babylon 5 meets BSG meets Aliens. The backdrop is a war that has ended recently (or more correctly, 'Round 1' has ended recently). So far we have a shady ex-merc who is into the darker side of trading, an ex-military doctor, a hotshot pilot who is also a talented computer jockey and a crazy engineer (a Transhuman I for those people who remember Space Master), who I have given the Inventor Skill to under the name of 'Mad Science', and who could probably rebuild the entire stardrive from a set of spares and some duct tape in a matter of hours. 1 of the players has the 6e rules and has done 90% of his character himself, another has the 5th ed rules, and the other 2 are complete newbies to HERO. The characters are built on a total of 275pts including 50pts of Complications; they need those points because in SF I tend to use fairly narrow skill categories and the costs soon mount up. Later today will be when they see their character sheets for the first time, we sort out equipment and introduce them to their ship (which is actually kind of paid for in full - for that read: 'they stole it off the base that produced it but the war trashed the ownership records and the computer jockey falsified some new ones'), before the first adventure starts. "…and so, it begins…"

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Just bought 'Babylon 5: The Ultimate Collection' (all 5 series, plus Crusade, plus all the movies and last year's 'Lost Tales' add-on). Watched 2 of my favourite episodes from series 3: Severed Dreams Shadow Dancing [cue the big space battles - trying to get into a Star HERO design mood…]

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? Spot on I hated that film - but lusted after Dina Meyer (heck, she's even in my age range )

Re: Creature: Grandfather-of-all-the-Reptiles

Re: Creature: Grandfather-of-all-the-Reptiles ...and for those that do not use HERO Designer (thanks for the Rep, Lord Liaden!), here is Kar-mit in simple .txt format and in PDF; he is good for a laugh - until you see what I did with his blowgun damage... (the need for serious lung power did give me an excellent excuse to min-max the STR and CON, though )

Re: Creature: Grandfather-of-all-the-Reptiles

Re: Dragons Being used to Rolemaster dragons (which are terrifying) I tend to 'clone' their abilities in HERO. This can be a bit of a nasty shock for younger players - the older players (who have actually played Rolemaster) stay well clear of anything draconic unless they are in a position to talk to it - or they are terrifyingly powerful themselves. A combo of decent defences (suitably Hardened or Impenetrable) plus a huge dollop of Damage Reduction usually suffices to stop the dreaded 'Headshot specials', and there are usually massive levels of defences against the element that dragon is associated with (e.g. I would give a firedrake a very high ED against heat/Fire only allied to humongous levels of Damage Negation against non-magical fire and + Damage Reduction against magical fire).

Re: Real Costs for spells and how you handle them? Having tried both 'Divide by 3' (for 3 years) and Multipowers (for 1 year) in my High Fantasy games so far, I would tend towards the Multipower option, with common Limitations on the MultiPower to enforce the sort of mages you want. In THIS thread : http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/77763-Rolemaster-Magic-Conversions?p=1965786#post1965786 I posted some of my characters from a game where I was working off Rolemaster-style mages and priests - feel free to make use of them as examples. These were 5th edition characters rather than 6td edition characters, so the terminology is slightly different (fixed Multipower slots often used to be called 'ultra' slots, for instance) and were 200pts or thereabouts, so the actual power level may be a bit more than you want for starting PCs. The 'Divide by 3' option is the easiest for beignning FH GMs, but it does suffer from some 'side-effects' - for example, if you want inherent powers for Paladins, etc, they has better be bought as Spells of some kind or they will be overpriced by comparison to 'actual' spells since they do not benefit from the divisor. [i bought a cleric's Turn Undead ablity as a spell for precisely that reason]

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO Al Hazred: Regarding weapon damage, I was considering some Limited Power stuff for 'real weapons' - one example: 'Weapon does Minumum STUN' - x1 STUN maximum, regardless of location hit (useful for arrows and the like - it's the bleeding that gets you with these things) There are a few others I am working on which I will submit as a 'working document' when I have throught up a few more; one thing that strikes me is I am veering towards treating mace/hammers (and slingshot for that matter) as AP Normal attacks.

Re: Kulthea - the Shadow World As Shadowsould has noted, I did indeed run a Shadow World campaign about 3 years back. There was a thread on these forums relating to Rolemaster/HERO magic conversions, to which I contributed a few characters from that campaign. It was 5ER rather than 6e HERO of course, but conversions are not that dificult. Thread linky: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/77763-Rolemaster-Magic-Conversions

Re: Forgotten Reallms in HERO Just finished a campaign a few weeks ago, using HERO 5ER with the old 1987 'grey boxed set' version of the Realms (with a few choice additions from later versions). I used the bog-standard Turakian Age magic system (with the divisor) - because it was easy, and with 6e being just around the corner (when the campaign started) I did not want to put too much effort into the magic system when I was planning to revamp the whole thing for 6e anyway. Characters were built on about 200-215 points,usually including at least one 'signature' magic item. Things went quite well - I started the party off in the Dales (what a surprise ) and what started off as raiding Zhentarim supply caravans heading inrto Daggerdale turned into an all-out assault on the logging camp at Snowmantle in Teshendale, using a motley array of allies including various fey, an elder dragon and a buch of Kobolds (yes, Kobolds!). As I was using 5ER and I have a bit of OCD when it comes to min-maxing with pre-6e HERO (I really cannot help myself - all that lovely Characteristic point recursion -yum!), there was an awful lot of STR 20, DEX 14, 18 or 20 going on here. Also, using the magic system that I was using, I realised that casters would generally be superior to 'pure' fighters, therefore the entire party was made up of 'semi-spell users' (to use the Rolemaster term) apart from one mage who was gifted/tainted with Spellfire (and hence had access to the Arcane magic lists - using the old HERO Grimoires here). We had: 1. Human mage with Wizardy and Arcane specialisations - used a staff focus and a sword in the other hand (and yes, he had robes and a pointy hat - both magical and giving protection equivalent to a mail coat) 2. Fire Genasi fighter/mage with fire spells - no surprise there 3. Earth Genasi fighter/mage with earth spells and a signature weapon - a magic mace which did silly damage (3D6K, +2 STUN Mod, Affects magical /undead desolid) 4. Elf Druid with a magic bow and a huge chopper (a Dacian falx [battle scythe], to be precise) 5. An Aasimar priest of Lathander the Dawn God 6. A nomadic Gnome shaman/"Giant-hunter" (yes, you read that right - "Giant-hunter") from the Ride, with his pet riding badger and a magic Bohemian Ear-spoon (yes, THAT Bohemian Ear-spoon I posted to theese here boards a while back). This guy attracted all the usual Gnome-based japery - I called him 'The Gnomad' Just your ordinary bunch of adventurers then If you want, I can post the .hdc files or the PDFs of the characters so you can laugh at them/adjust them to suit you/whatever. Things I learned: 1. be very careful with spell descriptions - I wish I had spotted that the priest's Power Defence spell (for undead protection) affected up to 8 people simultaneously. This is the standard spell from the Grimoire, and I suggest that the number of people be lowered, otherwise most energy-draining undead become a bit of a joke. 2. Weapon STUN damage was an issue - in particular, maces/hammers were just way too good compared to swords/spears. I will be adjusting that for future campaigns with some custom Limitations which I will thrash out with the other people on these forums. I intend to run the Realms again, but this time I will use HERO 6e as the ruleset. The magic will use a Powers/Key descriptor system for spells similar to 4e D&D (but without the moving things around a battle grid and the 'gamist' stuff like 'per encounter' powers [they will be simulated with powers that have a 1 hour lockout after use, or similar Limitation]). Fighter-types will also get super-skills, to remove the old 'casters are way better' syndrome. Damge keyword descriptors will also be nabbed from 4e D&D - hence, most undead will do Necrotic damage, etc. I have attached my version 1.0 document which I wrote to remind myself what keywords translate to in terms of HERO system damge types and defences affected - which will eventually become the document to inform new players how these things will work. This is a work in progress, on which I am happy to collaborate. As an afterword, most of my players will not be around next campaign (I run at the local university, and all but one of the players will have left by then) but the player who is going to still be at the university wants to join my new campaign - so it must have gone OK (he was the Gnome, btw, who was SO much fun).

Re: 6th edition Min Str At the risk of repeating myself, having posted a few bits and pieces on related topics in the past, here are a couple of linkys for you: http://www.thearma.org/essays/thrusting_vs_cutting.html http://www.thearma.org/Youth/rapieroutline.htm The rapier article is illuminating - I always thought that a lot of Late Mediaeval "rapiers" I saw pictures of were in fact just 'Knightly thrusting swords' with a rapier-style hilt, and that some of the other 'rapiers' were in fact estocs or toccos- a different kind of weapon altogether (and actually designed to take out heavily-armoured opponents - unlike the rapier). The videos on that site are great fun as well. I have seen axes with small hammer heads on the back - they were steppe nomad designs, on the whole, fairly light, and designed so that the back of the axe could indeed be used as a hammer for making/repairing stuff rather than as a weapon. There is a related item that probably started off as a tool which evolved into a weapon - this was an adze with a hammer head on the back call a sagaris - popular with the Iranian-speaking nomads of the Late Biblical, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman eras.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? …and now to magic systems - of which HERO fandom must have created many… I have just read through my copy of Chivalry & Sorcery 3rd edn and I was reminded of the fact that despite the magic there being (for the most part) 'Western' in feel, there was a huge variety in modes of casting and types of arcana that would be fun to 'draw inspiration from' for the new FH book. Examples include mages who: 1. prepare spells by making potions and cast spells by drinking those potions; 2. sing their spells; 3. solve complex equations (the 'Magic Square Mystics') 4. use Words of Power [Earthsea rip-off here ]; 5. inscribe glyphs onto bits of pottery and either read out the glyphs or throw the pottery pieces at the target in addition to the Dance/Chant types (classic 'hop in a circle while yodelling and brandishing fetishes'-type ) A few guidelines on how to model this sort of thing would be really useful, especially to FH 'newbies'. Another little thing that may crop up now and again is the concept of mages who can cast spells without a "Wizard's Staff" or similar, but their spells are easier/quicker/more powerful if they have one. Guidelines on how to model this would be most welcome.

Re: FANTASY HERO -- What Do *You* Want To See? Seconded here ; I have always thought that the weapons were a bit 'off' - a few comments below: a. To be honest, I think that the STUN is way too high for a lot of 'real weapons' (taking lots of STUN from a non-penetrating arrow hit to the head seems very dubious, for example). b. The hammers/maces doing +1 STUN multiplier; unless there are serious (and actually rather excessive) STR minima applied to these kinds of weapon to keep the damage done by 'average' PCs down, they are so much better against most opponents than swords are that it is rather embarrassing. AP (or Piercing) Normal Damage seems to be more appropriate for these weapon types (since they are basically refined clubs).

…that next year's UK Student National RPGing championships will have enough players interested in a 'Sci-Fi' category (NOT a 'Star Wars' or 'DarkHeresy/Rogue Trader' category, but one where either of those games, or Traveller, Star HERO etc. can be run) …because the Universe has returned to its rightful state and Sheffield WON this year's trophy again - meaning that we are hosting it in 2011. I have already volunteered to run a game for the Sci-Fi category (since it currently exists unless not enough people show an interest) - guess which game system that will be I managed to run Star HERO in 2004 and 2006, but in 2008 there was no interest in anything other than Star Wars and Shadowrun, so I ended up running a game in the 'Open Fantasy' category instead (a Valdorian Age Fantasy HERO game, which went rather well). The sort of game I have in mind will be in a homebrew universe which I have a lot of detail for but need to write it down and do actual game writeups for several of the alien races (and the humanoid ones as well); the problem is: while there is doubt about whether or not that game will actually get to be run at the Nationals I have something of a mental block where doing writeups is concerned (one of my annoying little personality quirks, unfortunately ). I am tempted to start doing writeups/background either on this forum or in a blog, because then I will be constantly reminded of it (I appear to have developed a bit of ADD as I got older and have difficulty finishing stuff I start unless it is work-related); I can also 'iron out any wrinkles' with the aid of your good selves (Nyrath's web site has been very useful for determining which weapons technologies I am going to use and which ones I am leaving out owing to their silliness, for example). Basic universe set-up is 'hard rubber' interstellar sci-fi. There are FTL drives but a minimum of other 'rubber science' bits, apart from one rather useful set of temporary wormholes in the back story; otherwise, like a Cyberpunk/B5 hybrid but with very limited psionics (and those that exist are actual physical phenomena like the Traveller ones - no magic/mysticism here, thank you very much). There are very few actual alien species that humans can interact with - and most of them are 'Uplift projects' (thanks to David Brin for that concept - and I do have a copy of GURPS Uplift, oddly enough), but there are a few scary things out there, including bad guys that have bred several slave races to do their dirty work for them.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? "My Destiny" by Leaves Eyes: (check out those Viking costumes…)

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? 'Stay Forever' - Delain (from the 'April Rain' album) Linky to video of above track here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mND5oKWeHxk

Re: Rolemaster Magic Conversions? Hierax: Nice job there - just begs to be collated into a singe document so others can make use of it (rip it off ) [Dealing with the Dark Space tangent here ] One thing that struck me about the Zhainmoths (or as RM Creatures and Treasures II referred to them "Cthughans") was the distict impression I got that a certain iconic D&D critter had been as much the inspiration for them as anything Lovecraft had written - the Mind Flayer/Illithid. You could do worse, if you wanted to stat up a Zhainmoth, than look at Hierax's take on an Illithid: http://www.hierax.com/hero/fantasy/grey/monster/illithid.pdf I would probably start from there and then alter to suit Dark Space better. Other things you could throw at the party include those lovely amoebic psionic nasties (the Liophods) - though they might be rather too dangerous for beginning characters (I always envisaged the as having frightening high Active Point Mental Attacks). Alternatively, you could put the party on the planet 'Sylva' allowing you to start with a more 'trad fantasy' feel to the game, before things get all dark and scary. As an aside, think of the fun that could be had with faulty Softech items, especially the microrgs that grant the implanted being the ability to cast spells (you could even set the players up for a fall, in classic Shadowrun style, by having them act as couriers or salespeople for faulty Softech - when they do ot know that the goods are substandard ).

Re: Hero D&D

Re: Hero D&D It's time to post the almost mandatory (in the sense of 'so useful it is a "must see"') reference to Killer Shrike's Web site, specifically his 3e/3.5e conversion page: http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO/Conversion3e/conversion3e.aspx It deals with conversion to HERO 5th edition at the moment, but is still very useful. I am running a Forgotten Realms HERO campaign at the moment (using 5e HERO, soon to be converted to 6e HERO) set in the time period between the 1st ed Realms 'Grey Box' and the Time of Troubles. I can post characters from my current campaign if you want (in HERO Designer format). As an aside, you really, really, really want to get HERO Designer if you have not grabbed a copy already as it both speeds up character design and really helps people to learn the rules (just ask Shadowsoul, one of my former players - it also helped me no end when preparing to run my first Fantasy HERO game back in 2004 as well) N.B. These characters were not designed using Killer Shrike's system, but used the method in the Turakian Age HERO setting - a method which is easy on new players/GMs, but suffers from the 3e 'casters are just scary' syndrome, so I will be doing something different when I convert the campaign to 6e. Armitage's 'Variant Magic System for Critique' thread in this forum also looks interesting as a source of inspiration.