bigdamnhero

I have mixed feelings here too. The purist fanboy in me agrees. But I also have to admit that at least for me that looked more convincing on screen than Scarlet Witch's "Power Of Making Dramatic Gestures." (As my wife dubbed it.) I don't disagree. What pulls me out of my suspension of disbelief is when they try to explain "No really, it does make sense because..." but their explanation makes even less sense.

I think this hits the nail on the head for me. Such things exist, and a couple have been referenced in this thread, but they're all fan-built and you have to go looking for them. Also: all the published Hero materials (AFAIK) are very much written around what the GM needs to know rather than what the Players need to know. The former is an order of magnitude greater than the latter.

Completely agreed.

[not sure what happened to the end of my last post there] As a fan, I completely agree. Urban fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and that's a central principle in most UF. Unfortunately, most of the explanations writers make up for why magic is different from science don't stand up to even a casual I'm-a-history-major understanding of how science actually works. I'm happy to suspend my disbelief while I'm inside the movie/book/whatever. But also I recognize that it makes about as much sense as "mutant superpower." And I'm still waiting for some writer to come up with a distinction between science and magic that actually makes a lick of sense.

Of course there is a subjective quality to art. But if I don't understand how complimentary colors work, my art will indeed have an uncontrollably random quality to it. Ditto for my music if I don't understand consonance & dissonance. The whole notion of perspective introduced during the Renaissance was developed based on a mathematical understanding of how people see the world. So while I can't reliably predict how people will subjectively experience my painting, there are still countless pieces of objective & observable knowledge that go into the creation of and the perception of that work of art. Whether we're talking about painting, sculpture, writing, music, whatever - there are underlying objective principles that you need to understand (whether or not you've been formally trained in them) if you're going to have any chance of creating art that people will subjectively appreciate. And even if we're just talking about art appreciation, there are still things that are objectively measurable. If I bring in 100 people and show them a Van Gogh masterpiece placed next to my stick-figure scribbles, and ask which they subjectively find better, I'm betting 100 of them pick the Van Gogh. I can repeat that experiment 100 times, get consistent results, and I can make inferences and predictions based on that. That's part of what successful artists do: they create works, see what people like/dislike, and incorporate that data into future works of art. But all that aside: teleporting to Mt. Everest is not a subjective experience.

Bazza - Yesterday I started out to writing a detailed response, but it quickly got unbearably long even by my standards. Believe it or not, this is the short version... It's been a long while since I did any serious study on the philosophy of science, but my understanding is Cartesian notions of the subjectivity of experience were largely discarded ages ago by practicing scientists. The whole point of the scientific method is based on the assumption that much of reality is objective, testable, and therefore predictable. Scientists may argue about to what extent science can be applied to things that can't be observed (ie scientific realism pro & con), but I don't believe there's any argument over whether or not it can be applied to the observable - otherwise there wouldn't be much point of doing science at all. Indeed, the whole point of rigorous scientific testing is to remove the subjectivity of the observer as much as possible. I'll grant that none of us can really know how another person perceives the world. But if I perceive that this flashlight produces light that allows me to see, and I hand that flashlight to you, odds are you will act as if it is also producing light and allowing you to see. Which strongly implies that whatever differences in perception exist between us are minimal enough to not be relevant most of the time. Which puts ideas about the subjectivity of experience firmly into the category of "unfalsifiable, and therefore not useful." As Laplace said to Napoleon, "Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis." So if you want to define "magic" as really being about meaning and essences and whatnot, that's fine. We could have an interesting philosophical discussion about that. But the minute Dr. Strange opens a teleportation portal to the Himalayas, he has made observable changes to the physical world, and that effect is therefore able to be measured & tested in order to understand the processes involved and formulate theories that (hopefully) allow us to make useful predictions that if I do X it will have Y effect. Ie - science.

Yeah, if he draws his strength from war, the first half of the 20th Century is definitely going to be close to Peak Ares. Meanwhile if Zeus draws his power from worshipers, he's kindof SOL. [pedantic sidebar] Actually, despite killing 15 million people, WWI was "only" the 13th deadliest war or atrocity in history.* The Mongol conquests of the 13th Century, for example, killed an estimated 40 million. China's An Lushan Revolt in the 8th century is believed to have killed something like 36 million - a staggering number considering that was roughly one-sixth of the entire world's population at that time! But still, the breadth and scope of WWI were certainly unprecedented. * Depending on who's making the list and how they're counting, of course. The list I'm referencing is from Matthew White, quoted in Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels Of Our Nature."

& Granted, recognized, and agreed. As I said, I'm all for a newbie-friendly product that simplifies the presentation of the system to make it easier to digest. All. For. It. But at the same time, the core strength of Hero has always been its strength and versatility - the fact that I can build anything I want with it. That's what originally drew me to the system as a newbie all those years ago. So while I'm 100% behind attempts to make Hero easier to learn, I do worry a bit about some suggestions (here and in other threads) that sound like they want to hide those core strengths completely in an attempt to make Hero look like every other RPG out there. Simplify presentation, yes - as long as we don't lose what makes Hero unique in the first place. Totally fair point, tho I might argue that's as much a marketing failure as a system design failure. But that's a different conversation.

Sure, there are examples of cities that grew organically - planning wasn't ubiquitous. But planned cities were hardly "an extreme exception." I can post some actual professional references if you really want, but honestly the Wikipedia article I linked to above is a decent overview and gives several ancient, medieval & Renaissance examples. And that article doesn't even touch on the Muslim world, where basically *all* the major cities were planned from the dirt up. I was mostly joking - sorry if that didn't come across. And it's not a matter of what they didn't include: some of the statements they made were just flat incorrect, and it wouldn't have taken a second longer to state them correctly. But again, I'd say it's close enough for gaming purposes as long as you don't take it too literally. The Platte River is not a navigable waterway; it would barely qualify as a stream Back East. It had very little impact on Denver's founding or economic growth other than as a source of fresh water. Well, that and flooding the town every 5-10 years. The shot they cut to of the city view with the light rail in the foreground is definitely Denver; 14th & Stout to be precise. I live 2 miles from that intersection.

Yeah, leaving out that table was the single biggest oversight they made with the Complete books IMO. Similarly, for the Characteristics Comparison Table from 6e1 p48: they included the bottom half of that page that tells you a "Legendary" STR is as strong as a horse or gorilla, but not the top half of the page that actually tells you what number range that translates to. As for having to jump around some: I get that they were trying to eliminate duplication by putting all the commonly-used tables at the end. But a handful of "See page XX" references in the text would've gone a long way. Fair point. It does feel like we've gone well past Peak Acronym. Amen. We use two character sheets: a detailed one for character creation, and a streamlined one for actual play that leaves off most of the math. The problem is I'm not sure how you present that in a game book without it looking even more complicated: "Wait, now I have to copy everything onto a second, completely different character sheet? Are you %$@@! kidding me?" I can't think of any other RPGs that do that, so I wonedr if a lot of potential players would find it off-putting? (That's why personally I was fine when they left the starting values off the "standard" character sheet. But yeah, a table that has starting values, costs, Normal Max, etc all in one place would be helpful.)

Yeah, they used the "Basic" rules which (rather arbitrarily IMO) left out a lot of things, but then some of those things wound up in the character write-ups. Teamwork Skill is the first one that comes to mind. Can't remember the others; I'd have to go back and look up some old threads. Another nice idea, but uneven execution. But is that a problem? Or simply a niche? I love Hero precisely because it's the only RPG that really gives me the freedom to design whatever wacky shit my players & I dream up. I recognize that makes it intimidating for newbies, and I agree that some "Powered By Hero" type books that focus more on presenting the sausage and less on detailing 137 different ways to make sausage is going to have broader appeal. But anything that loses the open-ended toolbox is going to lose me. You don't have to lead with the full toolbox; you can be smarter about how you present the toolbox; but personally I still want access to the whole kit in one place. And while whining about the lack of good settings/campaign books for Hero is a popular pastime here, let's also acknowledge that most of the setting/campaign books Hero has published haven't sold worth crap. We can relive the many different reasons why that is - I don't think we've had that argument yet in 2017. But the reality is that if we (collectively) don't buy the settings Hero puts out, it's hard to blame Hero for not putting out more of them.

Oh, I meant to add: this is usually the point where Wiccan/Pagan friends interject "But that's misrepresenting what magic is! It's not about imposing your will on reality, it's really...[vague stuff about bringing your soul into alignment with the cosmos, etc]." Which is fine, and if that's your vision of magic then that's difficult to prove/disprove. But that's very much not the vision of magic portrayed in Dr. Strange, or in most fantasy, which typically portrays magic as able to cause reliable, measurable effects on the external world. For a more humorous take on what would happen if someone who understood the scientific method encountered actual, working magic, check out Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.

Well, that's a bit of an overstatement. England didn't have much of a tradition of city planning, true. But elsewhere the Egyptians, Minoans and Mesopotamians were practicing it in the 3rd Century BC. (The Epic of Gilgamesh even talks about it.) Most ancient city cores were laid out in a classic grid pattern radiating out from a central plaza. The Greeks and Romans turned it into a science. Like a lot of stuff the Greeks & Romans figured out, Western Europe kindof forgot about it for a millennium or so, but even then you built where the Lord said you could build and nowhere else. And most of the great Islamic cities built during that period like Baghdad were meticulously laid out.

Exactly. Science rejects ideas like shakras and faith healing and astral projection because - in our world - they have been tested and have repeatedly failed. There is no evidence for them. But in a world where they did work there would be evidence to that effect, and the knowledge base of what science considers possible would have to be broadened accordingly. Take that scene were the Ancient One pushes Strange's astral form out of his body. Assuming that's something that can be done fairly consistently and half as easily as it's portrayed, that would be trivially easy to prove under controlled circumstances: I push your astral form out, your astral form peeks into the next room, reads something not visible to or known by anyone in the testing room, you come back and report what you read. Repeat enough times to get consistent data, publish, get some other groups of researchers to duplicate your results, and wait for the Nobel Committee to call. The fact that it's outside what science currently considers possible misses the point that science is continuously expanding what it considers possible in light of new evidence. And the notion that magic sees a wider world than science seems almost quaint in the face of ideas like quantum mechanics and many-worlds theory. Don't get me wrong; I loved Dr. Strange, and I loved that scene. But their portrayal of 'the limitations of science" is based on an Art and Film Major's misunderstanding of (and clear disdain for) what science actually is. In a world where magic actually works with any degree of regularity above random chance, that distinction would rapidly become meaningless. Apologies for the derail...

Good stuff! I once played in a Star Hero game where my character was somewhat underpowered in combat, but had all his "face" skills maxed out. This was partly in response to another player saying that PRE was "a useless characteristic." (I wouldn't call the group munchkins, but they were pretty combat-focused.) So I built a character with a maxed-out PRE & COM and all the Interaction Skills pushed up to the campaign maximums. Totally. Broke. The campaign. In my defense, I hadn't realized just how much the GM had built the campaign around a series of mysteries, all of which were quickly solved by me simply going and asking people questions. After a few sessions, the GM & I mutually agreed to retire that character and I came up with more of a combat monkey. Made my point, tho.

Exactly. Most of the big scientific ideas - relativity, evolution, quantum mechanics, even things like gravity or heliocentrism - "broke the rules" in their day. Einstein's probably the most obvious example, since just about every thing he postulated contradicted Newtonian physics in one way or another. But most Nobels are awarded to people who break the rules in some way, resulting in a need to update/modify said rules. Again, science isn't a body of knowledge. It's a methodology of observing the world, testing what works, and then drawing conclusions that allow you to make useful predictions. Demonstrate under controlled circumstances that you can channel interdimensional energies or alter time by wiggling your fingers just so and concentrating real hard? Time to update the rules! That's why you see scientists get so excited when they find something they can't explain - it means they have a chance to update the rules to make them less incomplete/incorrect.

Yes but "arcane" just means "mysterious or secret, understood by only a few." In other words it says nothing at all about how the manipulation of reality works, just how widely understood it is. And "extra-scientific" is another one of those meaningless phrases that really means "we don't understand how it works and we can't replicate it." Science is just a methodology for observing and testing how things work: if you test it under controlled conditions and get consistent results, then congratulations it's scientific, even if we don't (yet) understand why. (If you can't get consistent results, well, see above quote re alternative medicine...) My point is that in any universe where magic actually exists, the distinction between magic and science quickly becomes a subjective one that mainly boils down to "looks like something a wizard would do" vs "acts like something technological." And from a narrative perspective I'm fine with that, but best not to over-think it IMO. Yeah, a lot of stuff on the edge seems to almost border on postmodernist nonsense to me. But then, I'm a history major.

Yeah, to some extent the word magic is just shorthand for "we don't understand how it works." Reminds me of Tim Minchin's quote about alternative medicine: "By definition, alternative medicine has either not been proved to work or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine." But that's in our world... Other differences between (fictional) magic and (fictional) science, some of which are more meaningful/useful than others: Anyone can use science (or at least gadgets created by it); only certain people are born with innate magical talent (in some worlds) Science uses commonly-accessible forces (whatever that means); magic taps into extradimensional forces that can't normally be accessed. Science uses natural forces with/against one another' magic uses one's individual will to bend natural forces. Magic is ancient; science is modern. Science is consistently replicable; magic is unpredictable. (Tho a lot of super-tech seems to violate this principle...) Science involves math and equations; magic involves learning ancient texts, speaking obscure phrases, and wiggling your fingers just so. Pick one from Column A, two from Column B...

Context would just spoil it: "What are the implications of the tent?"

I've been toying with that idea myself, but haven't played around with it enough to have a real opinion. It seems like it might simplify a few things. Alternately if you say the AVAD only applies to the BODY damage, then maybe +1/4 is appropriate? I'm also conflicted about the reduction of the Stun Multiple. I liked the idea behind it at first, but in practice it kinda feels like it nerfed Killing Attacks - if you don't get any BODY through, your chances of doing decent STUN are minimal. It doesn't bother me in supers, where I agree Killing Attacks shouldn't be as common (at least not for heroes). But in our current FH game it really makes it difficult to KO someone with a sword. That can make fantasy combat more lethal, which can be good, but it also makes combats drag out longer. But then if the idea is to make X Killing DCs cost the same and be generally as effective as X Normal DCs, then having KAs effectively do more BODY but less STUN gives them some sort of balance. True enough. Tho it's a little easier with Normal Attacks because it's easier to handle the steps when 1 DC = 1d6 compared to 1DC = 1/3d6K. But what I mostly meant was just that having two separate damage mechanisms doubles the size of all rules regarding damage - from adding damage, to Hit Locs, to things like Penetrating - because first you have to explain how it works with Normal Dice and then how it works with Killing Dice. Seattle-Tacoma Airport? I do get that it's more complicated than I'm making it sound, tho. Which is fine for supers, but Hero is supposed to be about more than just Champions...

The only precedent I can think of for a Not-Quite-Death-Curse was in Chronicles of Amber where Corwin thinks he's about to die so he curses Eric, but Corwin survives. His curse still holds, tho it loses a lot of its force, but it's still instrumental in Eric's (eventual) death. Eric even comments on it at one point, something like (IIRC) "I could feel your curse all around me; you didn't even to die to make it stick you bastard."

This. Also I see it frequently about gaining more control (buy down/off a few Limitations) and versatility (a few more slots in the Framework) and the like. I've never actually played with the Champions LARP rules, but it seems like they they did a really good job boiling "the feel" of Champions down to a bare-bones rule set.

Finally finished Season 2. I mostly enjoyed Season 1, but this was much improved - more tightly written, better character dynamics, more interesting McGuffins, etc.

Not a mod, but I for one would just ask that you Spoilerize it appropriately and clearly say it is a spoiler for a show that has not aired yet so I know not to click on it.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here? All I can think of is Thor's "In my world, magic and science are the same thing" speech?