bigdamnhero

I'm looking for some different, interesting ways to use change environment to cause minor but amusing combat effects, beyond the standard slick-floor and pea-soup-fog. What are some clever tricks you have used or seen used? I'm really more interested in humor value than serious combat effects.

bigdamnhero

"Smoke me a kipper, Skipper - I'll be back for breakfast!"

Re: Best example of role-playing a disadvantage

One of the players in my post-modern Cthulu-esque campaign played an engineer with "Curiosity" and "Engineer Tunnel Vision," meaning that whenever he was engrossed in any kind of problem he tended to ignore what was going on around him. So he would occasionally wander off in the middle of fights to check out some cool piece of alien technology or whatever.

Of course, the *player* is an engineer who suffers from the same maladies, so it wasn't exactly a stretch role-playing-wise.

bigdamnhero

"He thinks we're either a threat, food, or a mate. He's either going to kill us, eat us, or hump us."

Re: Appropriate challenges: how many points?

Okay, what about other situations, such as:

 

• Supervillain + henchmen/agents
  
• Multiple supervillains
  
• Henchmen/agents only
  

When I was new to Hero, I would sometimes calculate villain point totals counting only their combat skills/powers to get a rough idea of how tough they would be. Nowdays, I mostly just wing it. Of course, I usually play heroic games where there's generally a narrower range of attacks and defenses.

With henchmen, I have been known to fudge on the numbers available. Say I planned on there being 5 minions with 5 more reinforcing -- depending on how the players handle the first 5, I can easily raise or drop the number of reinforcements. Or give them better or worse weapons.

Once, when I was putting together a Champions game for a con and was nervous about the balance, I went so far as to create a spreadsheet calculating average and max damage from villain attacks compared to hero defenses and vice versa. It was more than a little tedious, but it gave me a good estimate of how many shots various characters could likely take before going down, as well as guestimating the "lucky shot" effect. Not something you'll want to do every week, unless you just really don't have a life.

bigdamnhero

"...and that's when I shot him, your honor."

Re: Introducing player to the HERO System

I won't use VPP for this first game. I'll go with perbuilt spells. And yes' date=' there will be diffrent spell-casters in the character I'm building.[/quote']

 

I was thinking of not only different spell casters, but different approaches to magic. For example, one wizard might have some powerful spells but they all cost huge END or take a full turn to cast. Another might have all his spells built around a focus and not use END at all. A third might have to prepare all her spells ahead of time using delayed effect and the like. Like I said, more work for you, but helps show your players that not all magic systems need be created the same.

 

All your suggestion are good' date=' but I must consider my players. I can't decide be myself not to let them create their own characters. I can't ask them to hand me a character write up and build the stats myself. We just don't do thing that way.[/quote']

 

Oh, absolutely. All our free advice is worth what you paid for it. It's your group.

 

 

BigDamnHero

"And that's when I shot him, your honor."

Re: Introducing player to the HERO System

What I often do in the case of introducing new players to a system' date=' is to first [i']ask[/i] them what sort of character they want to play; have them give me a one-page character concept and/ or history... then I'll build the character myself. That's the good thing about HERO, all you need is a detailed description of a character, and you can build him or her pretty much straight from the description.

Amen. Make it about the characters, not about the character sheets.

bigdamnhero

"Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle."

Re: Introducing player to the HERO System

- Design the character to accentuate the abilities of the Hero system (a blouse wearing fencer with a high DCV' date=' a armour laden knight with low DCV, etc). Let them see the versatility of the Hero System. [/quote']

 

Absolutely. If you just show them another way to write up standard D&D characters, then why should they bother learning a new set of rules to do the same thing? Try to break the "archetypes" (which is usually just a euphemism for sterotypes IMHO).

 

I agree with not tracking END... unless you're using spells that require END, in which case you may have to.

 

Speaking of which, how are you planning on handling magic? Here's one place you can really highlight Hero's versatility. If you really want to show off, you could even have multiple spell casters each using radically different magic systems. Of course, that's more work on your part.

 

One last comment: do as much prep work as you can to make sure you know the rules cold before you start. One of the things I love best about Hero is that despite all the char-gen complexity, the game itself plays very quickly *IF* you've got a ref who knows the rules. If you're having to stop every five minutes to look things up, combats can get bogged down fast.

 

bigdamnhero

"Thank god for the LARP-ers; they make the rest of us look normal."

Re: Getting the word out?

As for what to do... my wife and I are planning to start running once-a-month pickup games at the local hobby store.

Excellent! I figured I couldn't be the only one on the front range thinking along those lines. Let me know where & when and if I can be of any help.

(Re: d20) Some people just seem to love it for no apparent reason.

In defense of my d20-playing friends, most of them don't seem particularly enamored of the system itself. It's more "There are a lot of cool games for d20 and everybody already knows the rules." That's why I'm thinking if we show them cool games, fun things they can't do in d20, they might give it a shot.

Incidentally' date=' my gaming group kind of fell apart, as our schedules have just become too difficult to work together. If you're looking to form a Hero group (Champions, especially), I'd love a chance to join, depending on the logistics involved.[/quote']

Definitely interested. Let's talk.

I moved to Denver recently, and have been looking for Hero gamers. (Mighty thin, but I'm not writing to whine about that.)

What has surprised me is how many gamers, when I mention Hero, say something along the lines of: "Oh yeah, Champions! Fantasy Hero! Those were great games!"

Note the use of the past tense.

This is not a dig at DOJ, who I'm sure are doing the best they can with what is probably a fairly meagre advertising budget. It just worries me how many people seem genuinely surprised to learn that Hero is still around and people still play it.

For my part, I just ran a Star Hero game at BenCon here last weekend. Only drew 4 players, which I attribute to 1) BenCon is a fairly small convention, 2) I'm new to the area, so I don't have much name recognition, and 3) this is serious d20 country. Of the four, only one player had ever played Hero before, but everyone had a blast and I think I picked up a couple converts.

I'm hopefully going to run another game or two at Tacticon in the fall. My plan is to run a "Firefly" game, figuring to attract a few fans of the show even if they've never heard of me or the system. (The con is two weeks before the Serenity premiere!)

So, anyone have other suggestions what we as fans can/should be doing to promote our game? Yes, I'm in the Legion of Heroes. What else?

(BTW, thanks to Tina for the prize support!)

BigDamnHero

A Mile High

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes

Huh. I've never even heard of Blake's 7.

British sci-fi series, late 70 to early eighties. The effects are, of course, exactly what you'd expect from late-70s BBC, but some of the writing was pretty decent. Don't think it's out of DVD yet, but a good independant video store might have it on VHS. Worth a look, if you like that sort of thing. (I do.)

Trivia note: As I recall, Blakes 7's creator, Terry Nation, held the record for writing the most consecutive episodes of a TV series until Joe Straczynski beat him with Babylon 5.

BigDamnHero

Re: STUN/BODY reach 0

I'm doing this. Most of the Feats actually turn out to be nothing more than CSLs and SLs. It is quite pathetic, in a way. The only stumbling blocks really are the Metamagic Feats, because how they would work would depend completely upon your choice of magic system. So I am leaving them out for now. I'm doing it on paper, but I can type it up and publish it here at some point if people are interested.

Ah, I was *hoping* someone else had already thought of this! Speaking for myself, I'd be interested in seeing what you put together - thanks.

Yeah, I figured it would be mostly CSLs/SLs and Char buy-ups. I agree that the metamagic feats are probably too hard without a specific magic system in mind.

Cheers,

BigDamnHero

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes

Oh, almost forgot...

Franklin: This is the kind of conversation that can only end in a gunshot.

Re: [Humour]SciFi TV Quotes

A few personal faves that haven't already been mentioned:

Firefly -

Mal: Looks like we got here just in the nick of time. What does that make us?

Zoe: Big Damn Heroes, Sir!

Mal: Ain't we just.

Saffron: All you gotta do to be a rich woman, hon, is...get over it.

Zoe: All right. [decks Saffron] I'm in.

Mal: Mercy is the mark of a great man. [stabs Atherton] Guess I'm just a good man. [stabs him again] Well, I'm okay.

Wash/Steggy: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Mal: They tell you never to strike a man with a closed fist, but it is on occasion hillarious.

Simon: I can't keep track of her when she's *not* incorporealy possessing a spaceship.

Inara: What, you didn't see it coming?

Mal: Well, my days of not taking you serious are certainly coming to a middle.

Red Dwarf -

Cat: This sounds like a twelve change-of-underwear trip.

Lister: One swift knee in the happy sacks and it'll go down like anyone else.

Cat: I've never been this near to a woman before. It makes me want to do something. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is I want to do a lot of it!

Lister: There's no such thing as Silicon Heaven.

Kryten: Then where do all the calculators go?

Caligula: Rasputin, bring in the bucket of soapy frogs and remove his trousers.

"Ace" Rimmer: Smoke me a kipper, Skipper, I'll be back for breakfast!

Lister: He thinks we're either a threat, food, or a mate. He's gonna either kill us, eat us, or hump us.

B5 -

Londo: Okay, we made a mistake. I'm sorry. Here, open my wrist.

Garibaldi: Centauri don't have major arteries in their wrist.

Londo: Of course we don't. What do you think, I'm stupid?

Ivanova: Why does my mouth always taste like old carpet in the morning?

Computer: Unknown. Checking medical logs.

Londo: Vir, there is a terrible truth: As one accumulates power, one loses friends. One only has those who wish to use you, and those you wish to use. And yet, in all of this, you have somehow managed to walk through the corridors of power and not be touched. I can only assume you have not been paying attention. And still, the hideous truth is, you are the closest thing I have to a friend. I'm as shocked and dismayed by this as you are, but there it is. I need a friend, Vir, and I need a patriot, and you are both. Will you help me, please?"

G'Kar: And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor.

Sheridan: So you believe all this?

Sinclair: I believe it.

Marcus: If Entil'Zha believes it, I believe it.

Ivanova: I'll be in the car.

Zathras: Zathras is used to being beast of burden to other people's needs. Very sad life. Probably have very sad death, but at least there is symmetry.

Dr Who -

UNIT soldier: Just once I'd like to fight an alien menace that wasn't invulnerable to our weapons.

Doctor: If people see you are unarmed, they'll never hurt you...nine times out of ten.

Trek TNG -

Worf: Good tea. Nice house.

And of course, the one that comes up in almost every game session, regardless of genre, where anyone has psionics, persuation, bluffing, whatever:

"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

Here's a question that came up in a recent heroic game: what happens when multiple NPCs grab a PC (or vice-versa)? I can't find an "official" answer in the books (unless it's in 5er?) so I've been using the following house rule:

Each grabber rolls his full strength (assuming they all make their attack rolls); the grabbee then rolls seperately against each grabber to break free, but subtracts 1d6 from his STR for each additional grabber. (Similar to the DCV penalty for multiple attackers.)

That seems to give a strong grabee a good chance to break free from 2 average grabbers, but not make it a gimmee. Is anyone else doing something similar/different?

Scott Field

New-to-the-list, not-new-to-the-game

Re: STUN/BODY reach 0

...how would you write up the Diehard feat in Hero?

 

Hmmm... might be interesting to write up a list of d20 feats for Hero, as a way to help convert d20 players/characters? Of course, a lot of the feats that simply give skill/ability bonuses would be self-explanatory under Hero.