PaycheckHero

Unless you think it was too cheap for the effect, that's a reason to not let it into a particular campaign, not a reason to remove it from the game completely.

I know the feeling. Not having played in a game of yours, I have no idea if that would be my impression or I would think you're just selling yourself short. That said, "if not me, then who?" "If not now, then when?" You might find that biting the bullet and just having a go will motivate you to become a better GM. My experience as a player has been that people have been quite accommodating to people who go to the trouble of bringing a game to the con. Because if we all wait until we're perfect, we won't do anything. I'd rather have one hero game to play in than zero perfect games.

I agree with all that in general, but re-thinking everything might be too ambitious while at the same time learning Hero. It might be easier to just do the straight conversion when it's easy (e.g. +2 per) and leave the rest for when he's got his feet under him. Same with things like racial bonuses to combat; sure, in fact they're artifacts from a less flexible system and realistically shouldn't be so much racial bonuses as fighting abilities normally only taught by (and to, unless they're a lot less secretive than Tolkien's dwarves) dwarves. I'd be inclined to write up a "dwarven fighting arts package" (could use the MA rules but needn't) separate from the racial package (or just be lazy and not write it up formally but let dwarves take stuff with the justification "I'm a dwarf, we fight these guys all the time"). But...Hero is already inherently complex enough, I would hate to increase the incidental complexity by forcing a re-think of the ground rules even if that might be a fruitful thing to do. I like illustrating to the OP all the fun things we can do with Hero, but I fear making him think you must do them lest he give up in frustration. I've been remarking on fun alternatives because of the original "why use Hero" thread, but I'm probably laying it on too thick for the goal of *getting something going*. Sorry, OP.

I couldn't find the +2 DCV on the sheet, though the cost seems to reflect it since he only paid 5 points for DCV 6. Either it's in there and I can't find it or the DCV should have cost 15 and not 5. It looks like he used HD, which should get the cost right, so I must be blind. Shades of 4e! He's using 6e, we're not supposed to buy DE always on anymore. He could take the combined recommendations for levels of growth and DE, cancel out things that cancel (like KB resistance, if he actually uses KB in fantasy), and buy the rest, but why bother? In most games dwarves melee like humans, so I don't think they need much in the way of specific size adjustments. Same for orcs, even though they often are pretty short and squat.

OK. One thing to keep in mind is that defense maneuver is specifically the ability to fight multiple opponents, as I'm sure you saw. That means it isn't of much use unless the character is tough enough to fight multiple giants and ogres. Also, highly skilled dwarves may want to buy off the limitation (something I generally would permit as fighting many mooks is kind of a genre staple, I suspect Gimli used it a lot at Helm's deep for example), at which point they're not getting any special benefit for being a dwarf. My suggestion would be to buy a couple of CSLs "only against giants & ogres" and extend the deadly blow damage to include giants & ogres as well as orcs, and leave defense maneuver as something any sufficiently well trained dwarf can buy. To me that works better because levels and damage both stack, so that no matter what else the character buys his special dwarf ability will keep giving him a bonus. An interesting alternative, just to illustrate fun things you can do with the system, would be to buy location levels only vs giants & ogres. That would fit if your special effect is that dwarves know just where to hit them. It has a little more flavor than just extra damage, but also is more specific about just what a dwarf's advantage against giants is and so has to fit your vision for dwarves more specifically. There is nothing wrong with your version if you like it, I'm just offering an alternative. Yeah, quite different in Hero. Resistance to fear is usually bought as extra presence "only to resist fear attacks," I think. As for the magic save, one product of Hero not being fantasy-specific is that it doesn't treat Magic specially, which can be frustrating if you want to have a general magic-resistance kind of effect in your world. IIRC the Fantasy Hero solution is to houserule in magic as a kind of damage category analogous to physical and energy, and allow PD to be bought against magic (I think it can function as physical, energy, power, flash, or mental defense against magic attacks). I don't remember the details or the cost structure, but that system tweak might fit your world very well. Another way that isn't complex is to notice that unlike D&D mages have to make a hit roll just like everyone else, and buy DCV "only vs magic." That's a different game effect since it resists the magic taking effect at all rather than reducing it's effect, so as with so very many things in hero it's a matter of taste. I mention it because (IIRC, I never played much D&D) a saving throw has a similar effect in reducing the chance of suffering effect rather than reducing the amount of the effect. (Or does a successful save only reduce the damage by half?) If I went that route I'd probably bump down the level of the limitation if necessary so that the levels also apply to MDCV, since the mental/regular power distinction doesn't fit fantasy as well as superheroes or science fiction. That said, you could go a completely different way and buy the dwarf one level of Damage Negation, which would fit being a tough guy. Everyone rolls one less die (1/3 of a die for a killing attack) of damage against him.

Slow implies low DCV to me. 6e actually makes this harder to get from reading the rules, because it offers no clues as to what CV means (I have said this before, but the 6e fanboys didn't or wouldn't understand the point). In <6e to get high DCV you bought DEX (in fact, that was the main reason people bought dex and the reason DEX was kind of a God stat), which gave you a clue as to what kind of character should have it. Now it's less obvious that DCV is probably closer to what you think of as dex than dex is. Now, combat levels are different--just about any character can certainly justify having those, which can be used on DCV (depending on how you buy them), but they're more flexible (though I'm not at all sure 6e didn't overprice them). So here is the strength, or weakness if you prefer, of Hero. The system doesn't force you into a particular vision for how you implement your concepts. You can build dwarves as high-damage characters who depend on wearing armor for defense, and that's how I tend to think of them mainly because that's how the GM ran it when I learned Hero--but you *don't have to*. So maybe we should really ask how dwarves fight in your world and whether you expect the party to normally wear armor as in D&D (which puts armor-dependent characters at a disadvantage if circumstances don't allow it to be worn) or normally don't (as in real life, essentially, though people expecting trouble have worn some torso armor under clothes since long before bulletproof vests). The answer to that will tell us a lot about what you *really* want, and then we can suggest ways of getting it exactly. Or, if that's too much to think about, just buy the dwarf some plate armor and be happy for now. :-) In reference to the thread subject, that's really why you play hero--so the system doesn't force a particular concept on you. If you want armor to be rare outside of battle, you can do it just as well as the customary way. It's probably also why some people *don't* play hero--so very, very many choices if you start thinking about it. In fact, it's probably too much to bother you with now, except it kind of gives the real answer to your initial question. You use hero because you can make ninja dwarves, make viable characters without wearing armor all the time like they're on the battlefield, or whatever fits your world.

If you just buy extra stats "only when berserk" you don't need either of those. I might set the value of the limitation by comparing the berserk roll to an activation roll, though they're not the same (but I think newer editions have funky options on Requires A Roll so it might be a better fit than it used to be. Aid is another good way--it makes the boost less predictable, which could fit the berserker idea better. More bookkeeping though, since you can't just have your boosted stats on the character sheet and they fade every turn. "Only when berserk" is the easiest way during play, if less colorful and too predictable. For someone learning the system, it might be better than having to adjust characteristics every turn. Really wild would be to make which stats get the aid vary randomly. Maybe too wild. :-) In 6e, damage negation might be better than DR to simulate tough guys. In fact, it might be a reasonable alternative to PD-based combat luck. It kind of depends on the effect you want, but DR means that you're stronger against powerful opponents but are easier to nickel-and-dime to death than if you'd bought PD. I'm not sure that's the effect most people would want, since they might prefer to be able to wade through a sea of mooks. But either is certainly valid. DR is also kinda pricey for what you get in most fights (intentionally so, to discourage PCs from taking it--I believe it's primarily meant to allow the PCs to nickel-and-dime a master villain in a big, long fight without being able to one-shot him). It always seemed like the damage level where it really starts kicking in is about where you're in reaaaally big trouble even with the DR. That's a decent way to do it. I have a grudge about the CSL cost structure in 6e, though.

I have to say I think the whole "recreate find weakness" concept misguided. It doesn't work unless the GM is willing to houserule armor piercing that layers. If you're willing to houserule, you can instead get exactly what you want with no fuss *by using the actual find weakness rule*. There is no problem borrowing from one edition into another. Why houserule in a way that creates funky builds when you can make it simple?

You can use prebuilt armor from Fantasy Hero or from the equipment guide if it isn't in your rulebook--I think the "Two Ginormous Phonebooks" have a table of basic armor but I bet it got left out of CC in the interests of brevity and the fact that it is focused on superheroes. If you don't have those, we'll have to get you some stats or something. Make sure you pay attention to when the multipliers get applied, because that's critical. Stun comes before armor, body after. That's OK, if we sounded critical I don't think anyone meant to. We'll explain whatever isn't clear. We don't know the feel in your world, so our comments are really about generic fantasy dwarves. If Your Dwarves Are Different, you'll have to interpret what we say or explain how they differ. Exactly how to fix it depends on what dwarves are like in your world. For my concept, I might well drop the DCV down to four or five and give him something like DEF 8 armor or better, but that depends on whether dwarves make awesome armor in your world or not. That models a dwarf who isn't terribly hard to hit, but he's hard to *hurt*. Combat Luck is probably a good idea in any event for a fighting character; it uses the armor rules but the special effect is, well, combat luck (or skill, you can adjust the special effect no matter what the name). A basic rule for my games is you can't max out all categories (otherwise, logically everyone would have the same defenses. If you want campaign limit armor, you shouldn't have a great DCV. For a dwarf, I'd emphasize armor, whereas for a elf or a hobbit I'd have less armor and more DCV. DCV limits for a heroic fantasy game would probably be in the neighborhood of 7-8 DCV (perhaps more for a unusually fragile character), so that dwarf would be a DCV monster in my games. I tend to think of dwarves as bruisers and elves as dancers, so to speak, so I'd give that DCV to elves and give the dwarves armor. If you're used to D&D, or older versions of D&D anyway (I don't know anything about recent ones), it might be confusing because classic D&D implements armor by making you harder to hit, what hero calls DCV. Hero, and for that matter most games that aren't D&D, implement armor by soaking up damage. So if you're thinking in D&D terms DCV probably seems like armor, but in Hero it isn't. One consequence of that interpretation is that dwarves reeeally want to fight in their armor, so it won't work that well in a game where your adventurers don't normally walk around in heavy armor (realistic, but contrary to most people's ideas of fantasy thanks to D&D). If that is your game, we'll have to re-adjust *our* expectations, and also think about how you're going to differentiate the fighting styles of dwarves, elves, and hobbits. In that situation I'd probably emphasize OCV and damage for dwarves. In fact, in that kind of a game you might end up having most characters use martial arts and design a different art for each race, but that's a bit complex when you're getting started. And the less armor there is in the game, the more the PCs are absolutely going to want combat luck, and probably try to talk you into allowing more than one level of it. You have to decide if that fits your concept. In a low armor game you could certainly allow it instead of martial maneuvers to distinguish bruisers from dancers.

I agree, but I don't yet know if the design is because His Dwarves Are Different <grin> or because he didn't quite get the system to do what he wanted. The comments below assume mostly the latter, as there isn't much to say if he got the result he wanted and it's just different from what I expect. That dwarf has the CV of a Mad Whack Voodoo Ninja (inside joke). I suppose one could build a world with dwarves that move like Bruce Lee, but that would be...odd. We never built dwarves as CV monsters, we gave them excellent dwarven armor. Also good damage--high OCV plus high damage is itself a defense, as the opponent gets fewer chances to strike at you. I'd let, say, a dwarven champion go up to a high OCV, but not high DCV. I also agree about 'small'. Having dwarves take increased knockback (admittedly, it's not at all by the book to use KB in a fantasy game, though we often did it) is pretty odd, and anything that shouldn't take increased KB also shouldn't get DCV bonuses IMO. My reading of Tolkien (the source of most fantasy dwarves) is that dwarves have no issues meleeing with human-sized opponents. All in all, except for the strength that writeup is almost closer to a hobbit than a dwarf. If that's not the intent, tweaking is in order.

To elaborate on what Tasha said for purposes of illustrating the system, the reason this is true is that DCV reduces the probability of hits, but not the damage if they do hit. It gets less likely to take, say, 24 body to the head (max on 2d6, doubled for an unprotected head hit), but it's still possible. Play long enough, and it will happen. On the other hand, armor reduces the damage when there is a hit, so the maximum possible result is less than it was without armor. This is particularly important since armor applies before doubling body, so that a 6 DEF helmet reduces the max hit to 12 body, not 18. Your buddies might manage to save you if you take 12. 18, not so much. The point is that damage application is non-linear, in that six hits that do 24 body total are in no wise similar to one that does 24. The longer you play, the more likely it is that you'll take that lucky shot and the more likely it is that armor will keep you alive when DCV won't.

Absolutely. I think that is why that GM didn't use crits. There are supposedly heroic genres where I think it's a mistake to use killing damage at all. Turning all weapons into their equivalent DCs of normal damage is particularly likely to be appropriate for adapting anything from a Saturday morning cartoon. You don't have to do that, but I think in many instances it is more faithful to the source.

Illusionism is only cheating if you're caught.

I don't recall having much trouble with unintentionally killing PCs, but it's been a while since I played in a killing damage game so I don't remember if there was a specific reason beyond, perhaps. the GM occasionally lying (though I recall a near-death from a lucky hit that the GM didn't sugar-coat). We may have been lenient with the bleeding rules, for example. We also weren't using the critical hit rules, which when combined with hit locations can really beef up the extreme result tails. Definitely combining multiple "gritty" options can easily push you over the lethality cliff, and we tended to be moderate in that regard. That said, an interesting fact is that Hero never used to have an official means to resurrect a dead character--I think that first showed up in the official rules in 5e or 5er. That occasionally dismayed players coming from certain other games....

You're welcome. MHD's advice is very good, and has the advantage of being closer to your situation (I learned the system fairly well before I tried to GM). Yes, those are good choices. Swords & Sorcery tends to make spellcasters mostly NPCs due to the horrible consequences of using magic (I think Howard was borrowing some of that from his friend Lovecraft), and non-magical S&S characters are easy to build and work with. The truth is in an S&S game I might not even write up an NPC magician's magic and just use two simple meta-rules (1) magic is mysterious , unpredictable, and dangerous, so he can do whatever seems appropriate and can't do anything that doesn't seem like Howard would have allowed it, and (2) if the barbarian tries to hit the mage before he gets his magic off, the barbarian always wins). In a Conan-like game you really can't go wrong with having the NPCs burst into the wizard's lair to find him incanting behind a wall of minions while dark, opaque mist starts swirling around within a summoning circle, with a note to yourself that the summoning will be complete at the end of a turn unless they can stop it. You really don't need magic rules at all, because either they stop the summoning (usually with horrible consequences for the caster, whose demon-derived powers have brutal side-effects) or they have a monster to fight using the normal rules. Modern is also good unless you find the equipment getting you down, but if you have enough equipment lists that won't matter much. Modern equipment can exercise quite a few different powers, but in a canned format that doesn't require you to know them by heart. One additional issue though is optional combat rules. Hero is rigged by default to knock characters out well before killing them, which is the opposite of D&D and many other systems. It works just fine as-is for fantasy but gives a different feel, and some don't like it (I think it's really a matter of how your world works). And many people want "gritty realism" (by which they mean they don't really want so much realism as a particular kind of unreality that includes lethality). To get those in hero, you use some combat options (hit locations, maybe critical hits, whatever) that can increase the complexity of play slightly--the simple rules are the ones that work for supers, pulp, and other larger-than-life, relatively non-lethal combat. So you might find some kind of two-fisted pulp action game (I'm aware some historical pulp was bloody, but I think you know the kind I mean) works well as a first game, as pulp characters are very hard to kill and the default (superhero-ish) rules work great as-is. Just think about what would happen if a PC is defeated. If the answer is he'd surely wake up suspended over a tank of hungry sharks while the villain gloats and powers up his city-destroying death ray, then you've got a prime candidate for using the simplest version of combat (and normal damage attacks). I'd also suggest maybe swashbuckling, as long as you don't mind using the martial arts rules. They do add some complexity, but it's manageable and otherwise it's another genre with normal humans with skills, not powers.

I find it normal to build someone's first character for them to their description, HD or not. That's how we did it in 4e with pencil and paper too. Why would they spend a lot of time learning a system that they don't know if they like? The GM has to make the investment of time up front, but it's a good idea to not make the players do it. Yep. If you're really pressed for time (that happened as students all the time) you'll find that (1) the players don't see the fine details of the NPCs unless they're important ones, so a small number of redshirts can be used over and over without the players even noticing, and (2) normal humans are easy to improvise on the fly. You can make up those basic combat values on the fly. I'm not saying that's the best way to do it, just that it's done, it works, and it beats having to cancel the game because you had a final two days earlier (then) or your kids had too many activities the previous week (now). Yeah. They won't notice a lot of detail on redshirts, but they will notice one, maybe two distinctive features. You can use a standard mook character sheet, but give one of them a couple of combat levels, a maneuver or two, or a special weapon on the fly without creating another sheet. Or bump their speed up by one, that tends to get the PCs attention. Yeah, I can't figure out why people worry about point total for NPCs (maybe because a lot of published Hero characters are built to a specific campaign point total even though it's meaningless). Just let 'em do what you want 'em to do. In fact, this can occasionally be amusing if you de-optimize the stats relative to the breakpoints. This has less effect in 6e, but in previous editions you could shock a lot of players with an NPC with a dex of, say, 16 or 19 (since no PC would ever waste points like that, the NPC would always get the initiative on PCs with the same base CV). Just because the PCs are optimized doesn't mean those other stats don't exist. Yeah. In addition to FH, Killer Shrike's web pages have some very nice worked out magic systems covering some methods that FH doesn't (or doesn't do the same way). It looks to me like some are completely worked out and ready to just plug in.

Well, yes, though I'm not sure what you mean by "handle." In *any* system I often unconsciously drop out of the system in pure role-playing situations (which by the way is in a sense part of the rules--it's explicitly stated that you *never* use mechanics when they're getting in the way), and in those cases all systems are the same. But when I don't do that, what I mostly want from the system is a skill or attribute test, and certainly Hero does that just fine. The only thing it isn't set to do out of the box is FATE-style metagaming ("I want to discover an aspect in this scene"). I suspect it would work very well to just let people spend heroic action points to add things to a scene, however, so if you know both hero and that bit of fate well I think you can have it if you want it. Here is a dirty little secret: most of us just wing certain encounters, either because they weren't important encounters, because it's a fight with a bunch of generic redshirts, or because the players did something unexpected and we're off the rails. We just don't let the players know that. I believe somewhere the book even suggests something a lot of us do: for hordes of cannon fodder, you needn't bother even tracking hits (stun and body) or end--just say that 1 or 2 good hits will take them out. I have a tendency to say that if your stun total impresses me they're either unconscious or, if they're stronger, stunned. Otherwise, it might take a couple of solid hits. That's roughly what the full system would do anyway, and it *vastly* speeds up combat, trust me. With practice you can do the same thing with tougher opponents that you didn't think the players would encounter and didn't write up. Small digression: if you are adept with the system is perfectly possible to let people build their characters during play. Anytime they want to use an ability whose value hasn't yet been established, let them spend leftover points to set the value or buy the power then and there, then continue. This works pretty well with new players and children. This is actually relevant to the topic at hand: you can do the same with any NPC, not just redshirts, including complex and non-trivial ones. It's just harder to do on the fly and demands more of you. You definitely don't compute points costs, though, just the minimum to move ahead--dice of effect, skill roll, or whatever it is you need right then. One place you practice this is another dirty little secret: most of us occasionally cheat behind the GM screen anyway, often in the party's favor. I'm especially likely to do this when a redshirt rolls some absolutely lucky roll that is likely to one-shot a PC and change the course of a fight--redshirts don't always get to be that lucky if I don't want them to be. If Darth Vader rolls max damage to the head, well, he's vader. If a stormtrooper does, I'm likely to ignore it because in many situations it isn't dramatic--stormtroopers don't get to roll max damage to the head on Luke when he's about to Save The World. I'm also likely to do this if I realize that the NPC I wrote up is tougher or weaker than I intended; to play fair, I'm a lot more likely to give it to them if the NPC is too weak, but if the NPC is too strong then I might well nerf it in play back to the level I'd intended. It depends a lot on what the consequences of not doing it would be. If losing would be interesting, maybe stick to the rules and change next week's adventure to an escape or something. If it would be boring or unheroic, maybe dial back to what you originally intended. I guess what I'm getting at is that in practice, we tend to do stuff like that in any system behind the scenes where the players can't see it. You can learn to do it in hero as well, and don't let the main part of the text fool you. Hero gives you the tools to do everything pre-planned--but they also tell you not to let the rules get in the way of having fun. I would say that it improvises fine, but asks for a lot of knowledge to do it seamlessly. Maybe more than other games. But I have a game in a really simple system that I'm thinking of converting to Hero simply because I know precisely what Hero means, and so I find it easier to improvise in Hero than the simple system. That isn't to say the simple system is bad, but rather than I know Hero better. Also, it isn't as easy as saying 'easier/harder'. Sometimes improvisation in Hero works better than in most systems because you don't have to make up as much stuff. Which is harder: (1) "OK, that improvised spell you want to cast is kind of like this other level 3 spell, so the cost would be similar...except you have an increased area of effect, and based on these other spells I'm going to say that bumps it up maybe one level...but on the other hand, yours costs more endurance, so maybe it's not that bad...." or (2) "OK, you want to improvise this spell, sounds like an RKA with so much area effect...looks like the extra active points add enough end cost that I don't have to add Increased End Cost...OK, I'm not going to compute the final point cost, just say it has gestures and incantations like your other spells and roll on your magic skill." I find that the latter is actually nicer because I don't have to randomly look for analogous spells in the spell list, I just use a power-building system that I'm familiar with. It's also more consistent, so you have fewer "but last time you said it was only level 4, why are you making it level 5 now" or "yeah, but this other spell resembles it just as much as the one you used and that would make the spell cheaper" complaints. That, BTW, is an actual example I came across when I wrote up an (unfinished) conversion from Ars Magica to Hero. AM has a great magic system, but I actually liked the Hero version better precisely because AM has no underlying power building system and so improvised magic has to be costed out by analogy with the existing spell list. It's actually easier, and to me less frustrating, to build a power directly (keeping in mind that I often don't need to finish the build, just figure out the active points and applicable rules) than to do it by ad hoc comparison and analogy. I'd say that's partly true, unfortunately. Hero has an underlying logic and it's harder to make the system work well until you are comfortable with it. The game is much better learned by playing than purely by reading the book--in fact, the book is easier to read after you've played (for one thing, then you know which parts are critical and which you can ignore until later--the book is organized more as a reference and less as a tutorial. Yes, here is one. At a glance it appears to be well done, but unfortunately I don't own Runequest so I can't really say much. It appears to be faithful enough to Runequest to play with the hero rules a bit. There's nothing wrong with that, but for learning purposes it would probably be better to use a simpler conversion that has fewer Runequest-specific tweaks. Also, the author's magic conversions use frameworks (VPPs and Multipowers), and that's fine except for the fact that they add some complexity you might not want the first time. Other than that, the author appears to know both RQ and Hero well enough to do a good job. If you want more comments you'll have to find someone who knows RQ better. Roll20 doesn't appear to be that popular with Hero people, perhaps because the rumor is that out of the box it doesn't support hero that well. OTOH there is a champions game going on there for sure, so it can be done. I am contemplating doing a playtest of a Monster Hunter game there, and since I'm used to just playing with pencil and paper I might not care if it doesn't have any system specific support. Most of the complexity is in the power system, so games centered on normal humans with skills will always be easier for your first game. Similarly, heroic games are easier than superheroic games since you don't need to pay for equipment, which means in practice you don't necessarily even need to cost them out at all (the complaint that "I have to build everything in Hero" is untrue except for supers, where the characters are so stylized that you need to charge for ordinary things in order to get the players to play their characters like superheroes and not carry all kinds of stuff that is useful and logical but not genre). Western, spy, that sort of genre would work well. Magic is a big can of worms unless you use a system someone has already written up, because there are just so many ways to do it. You might not have too much trouble if you lift a system off of something like Killer Shrike's web page though. For example, if you already have a spell list so you don't have to build them all with the power system, a skill-based system can be fairly easy to work with. You still have to know what the powers *do* when a player casts them, though.

I think you have missed the point. Players cannot just grab something off the shelf until they have a motivation to look at the shelf. They won't bother to play with any amount of preparation time until they have a motivation to play. Judging by the one data point I offered, getting to that point isn't likely because there is no visibility. What you're talking about is trying to provide a better answer to the question "so what do I need to get started in hero?" I'm talking about giving people a reason to ask the question. As such, they are essentially independent endeavors. That's why I specifically pointed out that you can do both at once--you can publish your adventure as a ready-to-run item. In fact playtesting at a con will probably improve it. If you want to fix a chain, you can't fix one link and call it done. You have to fix every weak link or you really haven't fixed the chain. That said, if as someone claimed this particular topic keeps coming up and failing, maybe it would make more sense to start by working on a different link this time. Or, for that matter, working on more than one, since some people may be willing to do one thing but not another.

It occurs to me that non-hero players won't see anything published for or by hero anyway. If the goal is evangelism, consider this: in LA there is a gaming convention three times a year, large enough to require the largest convention space in the LAX area. There are many RPGs on the schedule each convention. At the last con (Gateway 2013), two GMs ran three Hero system events. In order to contrast with a system of similar aims and complexity, six GMs ran 18 GURPS events, and the two most prolific GURPS GMs each ran at least twice as many GURPS games as there were Hero games in total. I don't think publishing stuff is going to overcome the fact that if the local con is any indication, hero games are either too few to matter or just aren't trying. If the "writing adventures and settings" approach has been tried before, what if just for kicks you all channel your evangelistic energies in a different direction? Why not write a four-hour self-contained adventure with a description that makes people want to play, and take it to a con and *run an actual game where non-hero gamers might actually give it a try.* Note that you can publish it afterwards if you want, so you can actually do both. I just don't think publishing an adventure is likely to make people want to play Hero. However, having a great time playing hero at a con might.

The key here is that nearly all Owen's supernatural "powers" are actually meddling by higher powers and fall somewhere between No Conscious Control powers that help if the GM feels like it to zero-cost GM plot points that are more of a liability than anything else. We know a bit about how he's been spending his XP--his mind-reading started as plot point and he bought it NCC and then I think bought the NCC disad down a bit so he at least can try to use it--unreliably. The "chosen one" stuff is, out of story, mostly off-the-books(*) stuff that happened in play for dramatic purposes, and in story stuff he hates having and wishes he didn't have. That does *not* compare with Buffy. She sometimes didn't like being chosen, but she controlled most of her powers as she learned them and usually didn't regret having them--she just regretted the responsibility and things that came with them. In MHI *Powers* are so freighted with risk and strings that the characters regret having them at all. In hero terms, Owen's player may have given the GM some unspent points and said "I'd like some kind of GM-option cosmic destiny," but he didn't buy them all with his extra points. By all appearances, he must have spent them on obscene luck, or perhaps a houseruled version of a GURPS power I saw once called something like Destiny where *you can't die* until your destiny is fulfilled--the GM has to contrive it somehow. Hmm--how much do I have to spend to be The Mary Sue? pH * Of course, in the handbook they're statted out, but that's not the point. If you need to communicate campaign plot points hero provides the best language to do it, but that doesn't mean the points were spent by the player rather than out of the GM's bottomless fund.

Thinking more, I wasn't that accurate. The universe is mainly Lovecraftian and the humor often funny stuff stolen from high fantasy, true, but vampires and werewolves aren't really either of those. Pehapse I should have said it's an all-legends-are-true pastiche Earth set in a Lovecraftian universe with Lovecraftian magic (not fantasy magic), so he can bring in Elder Gods and their cults and truly nasty Vampires both. And maybe most accurate of all is to say that it's a B-movie earth set in a Lovecraftian universe. Correia says his two favorite things are guns and B movies, and he has managed to write books that involve shooting B movie monsters. Breaking the fourth wall, that's the real design--a universe made for defeating monsters with Mo' Dakka. Guns & Monsters, Monsters & Guns. You know, I'm also forgetting Government Conspiracies, which is part of the Modern category. So maybe Guns & Conspiracies for Modern crossed with Monsters, Elder Gods, & Satirical Fantasy Races for Fantasy.

I would explain it this way. Urban Fantasy is always a mix of at least two genres: one modern, one fantasy. They differ on which genres they choose in each category. For example, I'd say Dresden chooses Hard-Boiled Private Eye for the modern genre and a kind of high fantasy for the fantasy genre. From my wife's description, a story like Twilight seems to choose Romance for the modern genre. They can also choose a mixture in either or both categories--Dresden is probably better thought of as High Fantasy and Horror crossed for the fantasy genre rather than pure High Fantasy. But it's always a mix. In those terms, MHI chooses (Para-)Military Action Adventure for the modern genre and a sometimes humorous take on Lovecraftian Horror for the fantasy genre, with bits of High Fantasy getting dragged in as part of the humor. So if you think Mack Bolan vs. Vampires, you're not too far off.

Given that I'm used to drawing with markers on a battlemat, that's likely to be the more familiar option to me. Though some might thank me to not inflict my drawing skills on them.... Hmm. Typed chat is obviously no problem. For picture/voice hardware could be an issue, I have some old webcams laying around but I'm not sure whether they had Linux driver issues or not (though even if they did they might not with a current kernel anyway). The problem with audio is that it also picks up noise from children playing in the background, which is likely to be an issue on my end. I'd certainly have to test the thing first. I only run Linux, which could be an extra obstacle, though the fact that Roll20 seems to run completely in the browser makes the OS less of an issue. I think I originally looked at Roll20 for that reason, but was somewhat discouraged by the fact that there was no evidence that anyone played Hero on it and some complaints I found that there were no hero-specific tools (though honestly there cannot be fewer hero-specific tools than face-to-face, and that works fine. That might be useful, since I'd be in a position somewhat like what you contemplated, running a game over the net without having played in one first. I'm not sure that's really saner than running hero without having played it. It would amount to having all the blind men figure out the elephant.

I looked at the site and a quick search or two couldn't find any mention of a Hero game on the site, nor did the game system categories even acknowledge its existence.

All true, though I know nothing about Roll20 so that part could be pretty rough. It would also test whether I still remember the rules well enough to run in real-time.