Jhamin

Doh! As you can see. Even the vets manage to get confused.

I voted a few days ago! Darn my impulsiveness! As I didn't yet know what the recommended voting was I Voted my heart. Pretty much the recommended list, except for Ninja Hero over Champions.

Strength is the only stat for which we get an exact answer. Each 5 points of Str doubles it's effect. Thus at 5 Str we get .4 chords per hour, 10 str gives .8, 15 gives 1.6 and so on. Of course you do have to take into account that at around Str 30 or so it becomes more cost effective to buy Transform: Wood to Chucked Wood. And always remember to buy up your End. Those little woodchuck bodies can't keep up otherwise.

If you are jumping in with both feet (we all did once), may I suggest you start simple. There are so many options avalible that you run the risk of bringig combat to a complete halt every action trying to figure out what to do. Hero can do almost anything, but that doesn't mean you should try in in your first game! I would reccomend a few things: -The first charcters you use should avoid buying abilites marked with "magnifier" or "stop sign" icons in FREd (and yes you are using that right). These are useful and good abilites, but can either be unusually complicated, or unusually powerful unless you know what you are doing. -Run a combat or two not using any skill levels or maneuvers. Just get everyone used to calculating hit rolls and using their special abilities. -When you are ready to use maneuvers, start with the basic ones and add optional maneuvers a couple at a time. -Make sure charcters don't have speeds that are more than 1 point apart from each other at first. (another topic I know) This can overly penalize slow characters until you get a feel for balance. If your skill levels apply, you can use them at any time. If you have skill levels that apply to guns only or ranged combat then they will not help you against knife weilding enemies. On the other hand, if you haveclose combat skill levels, or skill levels that apply to all combat, or skills in knife fighting (even if you don't have a knife, knowing how to fight with one helps you avoid them) then you can apply these. If, for example, you have 2 levels in ranged combat and two levels with knives, you can use both at the same time, adding two to your ocv for shooting enemies across the room while adding 2 to your dcv vs. knife-weilding enemies. Don't get too carried away with all combat skill levels, they are really useful, but if you buy a character with too many they will always hit while being unhittable in return. And in most genres, ovarall combat mastery is rare. Most charcters will have skills with their preferred weapons, or ranged combat, or close combat, but not in everything.

Hero System is a /very/ old school game. And I mean that in a good way. 5th Edition is leagues ahead of the versions that were floating around in 1985, but alot of the internal assumptions are still there. There are rules for everything, which in my opinion is a refreshing change from more modern systems that handwave everything. Correct. The standard and optional maneuvers on page 254 of the 5th Edition book (Which everyone on the forum calls FREd, long story) are the heart of your combat choices every action. The martial abilites are better, but cost points to be able to perform. Once you get used to calculating OCV/DCV it comes very quickly. Once you get used to using these maneuvers you can get very detailed combats. If in your example you mean you have 5 skill levels then you are correct. There is some confusion because I'm not sure if you might mean a 5 /point/ skill level (which is how Trebuchet is reading it). Skill levels come in several point costs. The more expensive ones can be applied to more combat situations. This is broken down on p36. Dodge is listed as one of the basic maneuvers on p254. None of the PCs in my current game would still be alive without it. Martial Dodge is even better, but it costs points for a character to buy the ability to perform it. It should be pointed out that the number of skill levels a character has varies alot by genre. Martial arts heavy game hae chracters that have a half dozen skill levels each, but most of the published super powererd characters have 0-4 each. By buying your dex up and making liberal use of the basic maneuvers you can get buy without any skill levels at all. There is a long-running and semi-contentious debate on these boards about which characters are better/more realistic/more appropriate: the ones with 30+ dexes and few skill levels or the ones with 15-25 dexes and lots of skill levels. One of the things about Hero is that while there are guidelines by genre, in your game you can set the standard wherever you want. So if you like skill levels and want everyone to have a bunch, then as long as the characers in your game have the right number of skill levels relative to each other the whole thing still works. You just have to adjust prepublished characters to bring them into line with your game standards. There was a cyber hero for the 4th edition, but the fan consensus doesn't seem very positive. Some cyberwear rules are in Star Hero. Another 4th Ed supplament that might be good is Dark Champions. It's all about violent, gun toting vigilantes with super powers fighting it out in crime-ridden back alleys. Substitute cyberwear for super powers and this might cover alot of the ground you are looking for. This one is out of print, but is due to be updated to 5th edition sometime next year. Of course the beauty of Hero is that once you get the hang of it you can probably make up your own cyberwear rules without much difficulty.

Oy! Isn't that the truth. I was running my game set in a New England college with PCs like a Pre-Med student, a TA, and a 16 year old prodigy scholorship student, then the new guy wanted to play a CIA commando, or a Chi-Gun mystic. We eventually comprimised with a martial arts guru. After the third game he came up to me and said that he didn't really believe it when I told him his Katana would be less than useless in this game, but said that he was really enjoying it all the same.

Oy! Isn't that the truth. I was running my game set in a New England college with PCs like a Pre-Med student, a TA, and a 16 year old prodigy scholorship student, then the new guy wanted to play a CIA commando, or a Chi-Gun mystic. We eventually comprimised with a martial arts guru. After the third game he came up to me and said that he didn't really believe it when I told him his Katana would be less than useless in this game, but said that he was really enjoying it all the same.

I actually have an Angel PC in my hero group. Something that I thought added alot to the character was building her without any frameworks or power disadvangates other than foulable wings. She cost more, but never finds herself at a disadvantage. It's a subtle thing, but it really adds to the other players perception of her as divinely graceful.

I think the answers to these questions vary by series. The 008th MS team seemed to have much more "realistic" mecha that had joints that could get fouled by sand and that needed constant work, while the G Gundam sometimes seem almost like foci for all the fabulous powers of the Pilot. Things like accleeration matter in one series and don't in the other.

I actually ran a really successful horror game set in the modern world that lasted on and off for over three years. Alot of the advice here is good. I agree that making sure fighting the monster is a bad idea is central to the genre. However, really strong monsters are not enough. I would strongly suggest you limit the power of the characters as well. I'm not saying you should be playing -25 points loosers, but avoid 75/75 characters like the plague. Think back on all the really good horror movies you have seen, how many of them have Navy Seals as protagonists? There is a reason for it. The few horror movies that have capable characters usually make sure to kill off a bunch of people just like them right away to underscore the point that their fancy skills and gear won't help them, but that is advanced horror gaming and it is probably better to start lower on the scale to help get your players out of the regular "whack it" gaming mentality. Confidence is the bane of Horror games. When your player character resembles Indiana Jones or Neo it's hard not to get confident. Instead of a CIA special ops team, you need the PCs to be a school teacher, a gas station attendent, and a couple of tourists. Then you need to make sure they do not have access to institutions that can protect them so they have to deal with it themselves. Heck, even a couple of small town cops can be great PCs, all they have is a shotgun & a couple of pistols. Like that's gonna stop the ooze from beyond the stars....Just make sure they can't call in the big city SWAT team to deal with the Mummy of Om-Genna-Net-Ru. Confidence is the bane, you have to keep your PCs off balance and away from support structures or backup. Freak weather is really hand for this, as are PCs with just enough Psychic power to percieve a threat that is invisible to the rest of the world. This is also the reason you don't see alot of Fantasy Horror. Conan just doesn't need all that much backup and it's hard to scare him just cause he is alone in a spooky cave.

Hadn't realized it had gone out of print. I bought mine off the shelf of a Barnes & Noble about a year ago.

You are of course correct. What good is a fantasy world without the DARKLORD or the FALLEN EMPIRE? On the other hand, it does tend to keep people honest about what is their brilliant idea for a world and what has been done in every game world ever since the dawn of RPGs.

One of the best bits of worldbuilding advice I ever got was from Monte Cook at a Gencon forum. He reccomended that everyone buy "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland" by Diana Wynne Jones. It is a guidebook to a really generic fantasy world. As humor it is moderate, but as a guide for what not to do in a world it is Marvelous. As I understand it, if you ever want your world published you had better make sure it doesn't resemble Fantasyland in any way. The publishers already have 1000 worlds that do. In gaming on the other hand, you often do want the generic fantasy tropes. If you do, this book will help you remember them all. When you create your evil race, look up evil races in the book. Do the two resemble each other? If so you have created a really generic evil race. Decide if that is really what you want. Rinse, repeat.

The Destruction Company are some of my favorite long running villians. They had style. CyForce was Ok. The rest of the book was pretty bland. Not bad, just Bland.

Point levels should vary widely in almost every game world. Superman is built on vastly more points than most anyone else in his world. (But don't be decieved by the Joker's low physical strength. He regularly goes up against Batman and has to pay for all those gadgets and henchmen.) In general you want to keep the Player Characters all on about the same power level. It just works better. In the comics Thor and Mockingbird can be on the same team together but it almost never works as well when you have a player stuck being woefully underpowered compared to his buddies. The players enemies can vary widely. A bunch of villians that are about as tough as they are should be build on about the same number of points, while the Shredder to your Players' Ninja Turtles should have alot more. Whether the PC have fewer, more, or about the same number of points as the "average" superperson in your game world is really a campaing choice.

I hate to admit it, but the worst Superhero supplament I have ever seen was the old Champions adventure "Scourge from the Deep" A team of aquatic theamed villians go on a rampage. The problem lies with the Characters. They include: Barnacle - A power armored guy who clings to stuff. That is the extent of his power. Man'O War - A gellyfish with a face and Human legs. No arms, no torso, just legs. Coral - Takes damage when she shoots parts of herself at you. Odds are, she will drop before her target Dolphin - The gadgeteer. A dolphin that hates humans. Wore a metal tube that covered most of his body and had robotic arms. Shark - Kind of scary combatant, but his main power was to change enemies into sharks so they would asphyxiate. Coast Guard - (the NPC "Hero") A dimwitted night watchmen in glowing white plastic powerarmor that looks like is is made from milkjugs. Even better, the armor was given to him by an intelligent space otter who thought he was loveable. The climax of the adventure comes when the villians take over a TV studio to broadcast their demands. I couldn't get past how they all avoided drying out under the lights.

In that case you probably want to give him Acting, Concealment, Conversation, Deduction, Native Language (4 points (it is sketchy if he would be literate, he is noble but many suspect that literacy was a priest/scribe only thing), Persuasion and Stealth. These are pretty much all he needs. Alot of his more useful skills dealing with command would probably be bought normally. How do you plan on getting him over the culture shock?

There was the point when the heroes had infiltrated a boys summer camp they believed was a front for a master villian. When they got caught by the 19 year old counselor, the tem Gadgeteer and Brick pantsed him and ran away.

Few other things to keep in mind: -In 2100BC egypt is already ancient, and the Great Pyramids are already over 600 years old. - 2100BC puts you a bit after the beginning of the 1st Intermediate period. A disaster (possibly a crop failure) has unraveled the mighty God-Kings government. There is a Pharoah (Inyoteph II according to my refrence), but he only rules the capital city and some surrounding regions. Governers each maintian their own districts and sometimes war with eachother. The class system has broken down, Tombs are raided by large organized teams in broad daylight. General lawlessness is rampant. Starvation is common. This state of affairs will go on for about another 150 years. - Ancient Egyptians did not live in the Desert. They lived in the Nile River valley. They had fields and orchards and hunted in the marshes. The desert was a scary place where foerigners lived. - They walked everywhere. Nobody rode. Egypt had horses, but these were used in the military more than for general transport. The camels belonged to traders. If If you were rich you took a raft up or down the river. As everyone lived near the nile that was all you needed.

I seem to remember this as well. At one point in the first book (I believe it was when the Sardukar were wiping out house Atredes) a massive explosion obliterates a division of solders. One character turns to another and asks if he has broken out the Atomics. The other replies that no, that would violate a bunch of treaties. He aimed a Lasgun at a Shield belt and set it on a timer. In other words, a distant observer who knows about these things can confuse the effect of a lasgun hitting a shield with a medium scale ATOMIC detonation.

Remember, according to the new guidelines from FREd, just because you are different than normal size that doesn't mean you should have growth or shrinking. Those powers are intended for folks who can change their size. These giant aliens don't do that. They have a machine that changes them. That is the definition of a Transform.

If I recall the series you are speaking of correctly, the Giant aliens themselves had no size changing abilites at all. They were big, or they were small. Bought as characters, they would either be bought small (like normal characters) or they would be bought big (paying points for all the stuff that gives them). The micronizing device is a transform that changes aliens from big to small and vice versa. The size changing is a function of equipment and should be bought as such. As I recall, it took a while to work so you could buy the device as an Immobile OAF Bulky with Extra time.

I have also long been kicking around a MOO2 based Star Hero game. I always thought a TOS style exploration style game set on a cruiser with Research labs would be fun. The players would be various members of the Crew. A cruiser in Moo2 is small enough that any crew member is important (like a PC) but there are enough NPCs that the players can go on missions and still leave enough guys behind to run the ship. You go on out to investigate new worlds, make first contact, or are called in to study the really weird stuff found by other scouts. If you make sure your sides Navy is small enough, your ship would also get called in on the combat missions. I think Moo2 works better than Moo3 because Moo2 placed alot more emphasis on individual ships. A lone battleship could make all the difference (especially midgame when the Antarans are still really scary). Moo3 is all about clashing armadas. Individual ships, let alone charcters tend to get lost. BTW: Don't let anybody tell you that Moo3 isn't a good game. It is very different from Moo2, you have to approach it very differently, but it is very good after you spend about 100-150 turns figuring it out. If anything it is more like Moo1 (remember that?)

http://www.tejitsu.com/zen.htm http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/igj/igj12.htm http://www.angelfire.com/il/SumieSociety/taste.html http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Underworld/1701/sengoku_proverbs.htm Ah Google!

Re: Re: It has arrived! Sorry, there is alot to digest & I didn't read the playtest version. I haven't been able to do much but a deep skim of the contents, a more extensive read through is still in progress. My thoughts, in no particular order: >There is an emphasis on laying out the entire setting without an apparent bias toward one type of game or another. Champions Universe for example seems to assume you will be playing a hero team that protects a city, probably Milenium city. Star hero just describes the goings on in the Terren Empire over the course of three centuries. >There isn't alot of detail on any one part of society. I consider this a good thing. You aren't going to be getting this book and immediatly using the sample characters to run a game that weekend. On the other hand there are many games like "soldiers of the fleet", "Merchant Traders", "Planetary Archeologists", and "Wild Planet pioneers" that all fit equally well into the setting. The book gives you ideas then gets out of your way to flesh them out. > I really, really like the history section. The empire waxes and wanes repeatedly over several centuries. It feels historical reading about it, and more importantly there are lots and lots of points that sound tailor made for campaigns. You have a well loved emperess replaced by an unqualifed letch, you have galactic wars that both go well and poorly, you have contact with older decadent elder races, and a gradual shift from an iron-fisted dictator to an egalitarian republic to an idle sun-kingesce nobility. The changes don't feel chaotic but are close enough together that the changes in time might actually matter in a game. For example: a character can live to see the idealistic empire of his youth become decadent and corrupt. If that isn't a whole campaign right there you aren't trying! There is so much room for gaming in this settign it isn't funny. > There is an overview of technology, but not a whole lot of extensive detail. Given the span of time involved that is understandable. They talk about what weapons are used, and who uses them, but there are not pages and pages of tech writups. This once again seems like a design choice. You know what a basic military rifle is like when your players cross swords with the Emperess' personal guard, but you don't get bogged down in the details. If you need more for your game, it is implied that there is a constant evolution of technology but you will have to make in more granular on your own. I thought there were some nice touches, like including Absolute time sense and 1 point of disease resistance into the everyman skills because of the universal avalibility of miniaturized electronics and early childhood panimmunity treatments. > Package deals are very serviceable, but seem a little dry. There are the expected military, criminal, and civilian packages with comments on changing them, but the setting covers such a large swath of history I thought it might be nice to see some comments about how an Imperial Marine from the reunification period differs from one found in the twilight of the imperium. Then again, it is already a thick tome. > I was pretty unsure about the choice to link the Terran empire with the Champions universe. I am still not sure I will be doing it in my campaign but I was pleasently suprised by how well the Malivans, Persid, Thane, Ect fit into a space opera setting.