kjamma4

I'm a big fan of Simon Hawke's Time Wars series. Briefly, it takes place on Earth in the future - a future where time travel is possible. The governments of the future no longer fight wars in their time but rather send soldiers back in time to fight using a formula to see who won. The series revolves around a group of soldiers who are sent back in time to prevent historical paradoxes and then branches out to have them going against the temporal underground (terrorists who want to stop time travel), the Network (a rogue subgroup of the TIA - Temporal Intelligence Agency who use time to further thier own ambitions), and finally an alternate history who have been suffering attacks on their timeline due to excess energy from warp grenades (a combination time warp and nuclear device) bombarding them. Good stuff. Has anyone run a Time Wars campaign or something similar? I know that time travel presents a lot of problems and dealing with time paradoxes can be problematic. Thoughts? P.S. I have GURPS Time Travel. Very helpful but if possible, I'm looking for more specific info. P.P.S. Anyone have a writeup on warp grenades?

Re: Mutant Chronicles

Re: CHILL - Sense the Unknown (how to in HERO)

Re: Pulp Era Board Games Hancock.tom's reply was pretty much on target. You actually do not roll up a character but are given character points (hmm...) to distribute to the characteristics of your pilot. You can increase your stats due to winning aerial battles but the game is really a boardgame rather than a RPG. You then select a plane, balancing size, speed, acceleration, and maneuverability and then assign weaponry and armor. Do you take a lumbering beast that is slow, cannot turn well, but has loads of armor and guns or take a hummingbird-like plane that is fast and nimble but has little offensive punch and can be dropped with one lucky rocket hit? You do indeed secretly plot your maneuver every turn. You have a hex grid which shows all the maneuvers for a particular speed and the corresponding G forces necessary to make that turn. You can exceed your top speed, acceleration, or G rating but you may do so at your peril. Combat is really simple with the size of the plane the starting point for your to-hit roll (smaller planes being harder to hit of course) modified by distance in hexes to your target and your pilot's skill. The planes had a schematic that had boxes for the armor and internal components. You used a plastic template that had various outlines for the specific weapons/calibers to mark off boxes. Hitting certain vital components affected the performance of your plane and ultimately would lead to your demise if enough was taken. [i believe the same type of play was used in Renegade Legion, an earlier FASA game.] I thought the game was very fun and played very quickly. Your initial assignment of skills and choice of plane would determine your game style and we used to play games with six people running two planes apiece and finish in less than three hours. Smaller battles would take less time. The only cardboard minis you could get were the ones in the main set. FASA came out with more books with plane designs but you could only get some of those in metal (along with ones from the initial boxed set.) They also came out with a clix style game with plastic minis which IMHO was nowhere near as fun as the original. The actual plastic planes do look nice and you can probably pick them up now for pennies on the dollar. However, the bases are a bit too large to use with the original hex maps. The game is well worth the price if you can still find it. P.S. I am currently involved in a Pulp HERO game run by board-poster Barton. He has converted many of the planes from Crimson Skies over to HERO. Great fun was had when we escaped from an enemy's dirigible in a stolen Balmoral Bomber piloted by my daughter's character, a displaced Russian aviatrix. The pilot of one of the pursuing planes was rather rudely introduced to my gadgeteer's experimental engine-stopping ray. By the way, those planes don't glide too well !!!

In the game of CHILL (for those who don't know, an old Pacesetter/Mayfair horror RPG), each character had a Sense the Unknown "skill." This represented the chance of that character sensing evil locations, people, things, monsters, etc. It could be a feeling of unease, a sense of foreboding, a prickling of hair on the neck, and so on. What would be the best way of modelling this in HERO?

Re: Your "2006" Pet Gaming Projects I just picked up Dark Champions so I am going to try to put together a Delta Green HERO campaign.

I want to create a Drain power that takes BODY away when I hit someone in combat w/ my sword (Fantasy HERO campaign.) I modelled it like this: Arterial Strike: Drain BODY1d6, Trigger: Must hit in combat (+1/4) (12 Active Points); OAF (-1), 12 Charges (-1/4) 5 points. Is this correct? Do I get to use the charges when I want or do they just apply to the first twelve swings? First twelve hits?

Re: National Geograpic Maps Special Edition

Re: Learning how to play HERO Also very easy to do in Excel (took me about 5 minutes)

Re: Lagomorph HERO Wasn't it "Siflay hraka, embleer-hrair"? [i recall rah was a term of respect for leader and hrair was the word for "many" which was the number of enemies rabbits had.] [Why does that stick in my mind and when I'm in the shower, I can't remember if I already shampooed my hair?!]

Re: Being Pedantic...

Re: Learning how to play HERO That's the one. I think it would be helpful if those were "stickied".

Re: Learning how to play HERO The nice thing about that is you get a character that is not a "cookie cutter" duplicate of every other character. A nice trade off in my mind.

Re: Learning how to play HERO

There is really no point to this thread other than an observation on my own personal experience, especially as to how it relates to the "ease" of learning HERO. When D&D 3.0 first came out, I bought the core books. I had been playing D&D and other roleplaying games for many years so I was not new to the hobby. However, it did take a while for my group to get up to speed on the game as all of us were new to that specific edition. The players were learning as the DM was learning. I recall reading the Player's Handbook through a few times and remember Attacks of Opportunity causing a few rereads. I played HERO for the first time at GenCon 2005 and the game had two experienced players and an experienced GM. It was pretty simple to learn the core mechanics with their help. Following GenCon, I joined a regular group run by one of the players at GenCon. With an experienced game master, I have learned alot more of the game. When I reread the rules of HERO, they make perfect sense, especially those that I have experienced through gaming. For my particular case, it was actually harder to learn the D20 rules of D&D 3.0 sufficient enough to play than it was to get the same understanding in HERO. Of course it is impossible to say whether that would have been the case had I had to learn the HERO rules "on my own" or if I would have been "taught" the D20 rules. However, I have seen my own kids learn both D20 and HERO by being "taught" and I don't see much of a difference. I guess my point is that I don't completely agree with those people who say that the HERO system has a steep learning curve (and I will admit that ANY game is easier to learn when shown how to play as opposed to self taught). Also, based upon my limited experience, it would be much easier to learn the HERO system once in order to play a plethora of genres than to learn a variety of "easier" systems to play those same genres. P.S. One of the guys in our regular group in now clamoring for me to run another Delta Green adventure, but this time using HERO rules. He has stated that now that he knows the HERO rules, he will be a better player than he was before (since when we played, he was new to the CoC rules.) P.P.S. Tonight, we're playing in a Fantasy HERO game run by the same guy. The adventure is the old D&D module from the Giants series (the fire giants one) adapted to HERO P.P.P.S. Does this make us converts?

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables Delaying his phase - key words - lightbulb goes on. I now understand how you got the phases. However, under that system, if a SPD 2 character increased his speed in segment 6, his next phase would be in segment 12 (no matter what SPD he changed to). He can increase to SPD 12 and he will still only get two phases that turn (despite spending only half the turn at SPD 2). That doesn't seem like a good result. I'll still stick with either just using the new SPD's phases or giving a half action on the first phase in the new SPD if it doesn't share a phase with the old SPD.

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables Unfortunately, no. I am a new player and perhaps I am not using the terminology correctly which is leading to the confusion. My understanding is that there are twelve segments in a turn. Your SPD determines how many times you can act per turn and on which segments. The segments on which you can act are called your phases. A character with SPD 3 can act three times in a turn and he acts on segments 4,8, and 12. A character with SPD 7 can act seven times in a turn and he acts on segments 2,4,6,7,9,11, and 12. If a character with SPD 3 changed to SPD 7 during his action in segment 4, his next action (at SPD 7) is the next segment in which both SPD 3 and SPD 7 have a phase (i.e. a segment in which both speeds can act). For these two SPDs, this is segment 12. I am unsure as to what you mean by "SPD 7 characters are not restricted to moving in the first segment of their phases" or "the character can act in segment 8 of the phase that started in segment 7." I thought that a turn is composed of twelve segments and that phases merely denote WHICH segments a character with a particular SPD can act on.

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables That's what the rule is. That is what the example in the book shows as well.

Re: DC-3 Excellent article - Must read

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables I did a bit more examination of some mid-turn speed changes and have determined that the Optional Speed Change rules (as given in Fifth Edition Revised) sometimes produce wonky results. In the example given, a character at SPD 3 changes to SPD 5 on segment 4. The character does not get a phase in segment 5 at SPD 5 but has to wait until segment 8 since both SPD 3 and SPD 5 have phases that segment. He then has the remaining phases in segments 10 and 12 as any other SPD 5 character does. Total phases for the turn is four (which makes pretty good sense since it is the average of 3 and 5 and the SPD change occurred near the middle of the turn). Now, suppose this character started at SPD 3 and changed to SPD 7, also in segment 4. This character would not get a phase again until segment 12 for a total of two phases for the turn. The SPD 3 character would have been better off staying at SPD 3 and getting three phases or increasing to only SPD 5 or SPD 6 and getting a total of four phases for the turn. Another weird one is if you start at SPD 2 and change to SPD 12 in phase 6. You then act again on phase 12 for a total of two phases. If you start at SPD 12 and change to SPD 2 in phase 6, you get a total of seven phases. In both instances, you have acted half the turn at SPD 2 and half the turn at SPD 12. You should get the average between the two (seven) yet you get more phases if you start out fast and slow down than if you start slow and speed up!? My solution would be to either, a) make the speed change effective immediately and continue on at the new SPD, not worrying about matching phases, or if the first phase at the new SPD isn't a phase for the old SPD, the character can only perform a half phase action that phase and then full actions for the rest of the phases in the turn. [Note that both of those options assume that you are having SPD 1 act on segment 12.]

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables After looking more closely at the SPD chart, I believe that SPD 1 should only have a phase in segment 12 to maintain the same pattern as the rest of the SPDs. [Take any two SPDs that add up to twelve. If the first SPD has a phase in segment X, the second SPD will NOT have a phase in segment (13-X). For example, SPD 3 has phases in segments 4, 8, and 12. SPD 9 does NOT have phases in segments 1, 5, and 9 (13-4=9, 13-8=5, and 13-12=1)]

Re: Changing speed mid turn tables Well, I'm a long time Car Wars player and have been dealing with mid-turn changes of speed for a long time. I can't say that I've exhaustively checked out every permutation of speed change, but for every even speed, half the phases occur in phases 1-6 and half occur in 7-12. For all the odd speeds, the "extra" phase occurs in phases 7-12. If I was going to make a house rule, I would simply have speed changes occur between phases. Then, all you would have to do is simply move to the new speed and use that row from then on. This would be done if going from a lower speed to a higher speed, from a higher speed to a lower speed, and used no matter what phase the speed change occurred on. Like I said, I have not done an exhaustive study but it appears that it works well. I cannot find one instance where there is a "glaring" discrepancy.

Re: Another "New Guy" Story I am not the GM in the Fantasy HERO game - our regular D&D DM is doing that. For background, our Fantasy HERO group has three regulars who are adults, my son who is a regular, and my two daughters who are semi-regulars/sometime players. We used to be part of a larger group who had another guy who DM-ed D&D 3.5. Our current DM was a player in that campaign and always tried to take characters who broke out of the "mold" and had feats that would capitalize on unorthodox strategies. He was not satisfied with the results. When our group split apart, he ended up being the DM and was still not satisfied. He and the other adult member in the current group had both purchased GURPS and were in the process of converting over to that system. At that point, I attended GenCon and played a Dark Champions HERO game. One of the players in that game lives near our location and he started a Pulp HERO game which we all attend. When the two other guys started in that, they were sold on HERO and instead of converting to GURPS, we have been putting HERO through the paces. If anything, they are both even more sold on HERO than I am (so I don't feel bad about shifting them from GURPS to HERO!!!) Our GM is really pleased with the options that you have in combat in HERO.

Re: Another "New Guy" Story

Re: Another "New Guy" Story Ghost-angel said: ... you are taking a minute or so between combats to "rest up" and take Recoveries to renew your END right? Unfortunately, we really did not have much time to rest up between the combats. We did take a few recoveries as we could (which was also cool – I pictured our characters hunched over, trying to catch their breath and then forging on even though they were still tired) Sean Waters said: Do one of you guys want to tell him? [in reference to taking combat slow] ????????? Killer Shrike said: And btw if you are coming from D&D you might find some handy stuff on my website..... The Good News: I have been there and it was great. Really helped me. Thanks. The Bad News: The guy running our game has been there and it really helped him too!!! Hugh Neilson said: We hear a lot of complaints about a steep learning curve To me, that is sort of a "half-full, half-empty" argument. On the one hand, there is so much that can be done, it is a bit daunting to try to learn it all. On the other hand, there is so much that can be done, it is exciting to know that you can do most anything with just the one main rule book. We are continuously learning new rules and saying, "Whoa, that’s cool." Even better, all of the rules "make sense." I first got involved with HERO at GenCon this year and had a great GM and two great players who taught us the ropes. The "roll 3d6 under" mechanism is really simple to pick up for a con game. We then were able to get into a local Pulp campaign run by one of those players who has a lot of experience (and enthusiasm). It’s hard not to learn the game in a situation like that. Our regular DM for D&D always tried to vary combat by using tactics other than just wade in and trade blows. He was very impressed with HERO’s combat options (the fact that his Pulp martial artist broke a thug’s leg with a karate move probably helped somewhat). While our combat now in Fantasy HERO is taking a bit longer than it would for us using D&D, this is probably due to our newness with the system. I am sure that this will quicken as our familiarity grows. The only bad thing now is that the rest of the group is clamoring for me to run a Delta Green scenario using the HERO rules. Oh well, it’s a tough job but someone has to do it!!!