Roter Baron

There is only one answer to the dastardly lie of Vondy about me being French - and that is a CUNNING PLAN! Let the record show that a) I just became aware to have a natural friend and ally on the board in the person of Hansi Hansi seeds apples c) I have a tri-plane. Thus, I will take Johnny for a ride and he will spread the seed of apples all over the United States! Hah! I will freeze my enemies in the shades of forests of apple-trees and make them - at the same time - allergic to the very fruit these trees grow! And we will start in your home-county, Vondy. MUHAHAHAHA! So, apologize for your insult, Vondy - the triplane's tank is filling up and when it's full it's all too late!

Ach was!?! Wo bist du denn her? Ich wohne im Ruhrgebiet.

Johnny Appleseed098 is actually a German agent of the German Imperial Nachrichtenbüro, real name Johannes "Hansi" Apfelsamen, Code-Nummer Null Neun Acht. He is now 125 years old, having a party at the Kaiser's birthday each year, still somehow getting money from the long defunkt agancy and still spying at ships in the New York harbor. Or looking out for hookers. Actually, that was what what he mainly did 1914-18 and one of the reasons why Germany lost the war ... Thanks, Hansi!

Death Tribble is Nurgle's secret love child! There! I told the world! Hah!

Thank you!

The Donald Trump promised to make Hermit Grand-Duke of Atlanta and Warden of the Southern Wall in case he got crown elected.

Cancer instigated the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He his now known amongst these vile aliens as "King Kancer of Kanada" (they wouldn't make him "Imperial Mouse of Disneyland"). Nobody knows about ithe whole thing because everybody else - except me - was snatched.

Really? Can you tell me the page. Just curious because I would consider it then way too powerful. Deadly Blow seems aimed at Neroic campaigns and it you add it to the base then each and every dagger instantly turns out to be a Claymore (NOT the sword, THE LAND-MINE) damagewise. 2D6+1 is formidable enough for me, but please prove me wrong.

Okay, your Cestus has, say, a STR-Min of 4 and does 1/2D6 Killing (2DC) and you have a STR of 15 and Martial Arts with Martial Strike. That would be 1D6+1 Killing Attack since the Cestus maxes out at STR 15 already (2DC = 4 DC max = 1D6+1). The Martial Strikes does nothing to the damage but provides +2 DCV. Now you have 1D6 Dealy Blow. I would think that that basically just adds to the end-damage, not the basix - so that is 2D6+1. But the Deadly Blow does ZERO, NOTHING, ZILCH, NIX to your Normal damage capacity. You can kill people effectively, not knock them out more efficiently. So, you simply can't "trade" the 1D6 Killing Blow to 2DC in Normal Damage. Buy Hand-to-Hand-Attacks or Damage Classe for your Martial Arts.

Actually I may be mistaken about 5th Revised but as far as I know there is now doubling limit to Normal attacks, except when it comes to weapons. So a herois character with STR 15 who delivers an Offensive Strike (+4D&) does 7D6 damage. With a Martila Strike it would be +2D6 (= 5D6 total), not +5D6. The fist load is a weapon, so it isn't of much use if someone with Martial Arts uses it (since it maxes out at 4D6). Of course you could rule otherwise and simple say that brass knuckles in the meaty fists of a heavy-weight champion delivering the ultimate swinger (+4D6) is still good for its +2D6, or at least 1D6. Would make sense since weighting boxing gloves is an old trick of unfair contenders. Deadly Blow is only good for Killing Attacks. It is not added to any Normal Damage. My two €-cents. And hey: This is the HERO Forum - NEVER EVER excuse yourself for min-maxing! Might be a vice in other systems, with HERO it is an art form with a long tradition!

Well, actually it counts.

My guess with Egypt and the longer use of flint would be that due to the warmer climate Egyptian warriors (and their enemies) used bronze armor less often. Thus, flint arrowheads were still effective and you could save or spare bronze for other things.

Death Tribble introduced "Meryl Christmas" as a greeting to Saudia-Arabia. For that and other crimes he is now hiding at an out-of-the-way oasis pretending to be Faruk al Islami ibn Saud, pretender to the Saudi throne. Yes, the beduins just keep ignoring him and his speaking camel "Mr Ed".

The only reason why my group hasn't adopted 6th edition is : 1) How to get the two basic books? (Well, I have them but paid dearly for them) 2) Some stuff is now different but only marginally so - meaning that you think you know how stuff works but there is some knack that is different. This causes confusion, more ven than learning a rule just from scratch. 3) "Oh great, after ONE bloated rules book (5th edition in comparison to 4th edeition) now there TWO of them !" 4) Hero Designer is not user friendly. But the old one you could still buy as a CD. And yes, I gave my CD to my friends so that they could make their own characters. Is that legal. Guess not. Does it help to get people play? Oh YES! - HERO should offer CDs with the program and think of it as a way to keep people buying and playing the books.

Because there is this discussion over at the borad about what HERO needs to get more popular I thought I could make an offer and translate my adventure "Nachts, wenn der CREEPER kommt" into English and post it here. It was one my adventure for this years One Page Winter Contest here in Germany. I included the german version, too, for the other odd German who might frequent this forum. Hope you like it. And - yes - it i based on an old Shadow audio play.

YEAH! Let's burn money! No seriously: Yes, you are right and other people (me amongst them) have pointed out before that HERO is qute rules-heavy. You can skip a rule here or there, leave out a bunch of options but in the end it IS not a rules-light system. Well, guess we can't chnage that. So, there are two options: 1.) Offering something new in the form of new adventures, cool settings etc that has an apeal to fandom outside the hard-core herophiles here on the board that make people say: "Never thought much of HERO, but that setting is really nice. I guess I try it out - or I use another system with this setting that is more to my liking but I sure as heaven and hell buy the book!" 2.) Publish a different set of rules for settings & adventures that rules light and double stat it with HERO or oeffer two versions. that si for instance what Cakebread & Walton does - rather heavy on the rules with Renaissnace, extremely rules-light with OneDice.

I would soooo buy it! One of my favourite settings. nd i could dust off DRAK THE BARBARIAN. What an ass-kicker he was!

Expansions are IMHO only useful if the villain or the vilain group that is described in fuller detail is also presentet with a ready-to-play adventure that makes some use of the material presented - not some bank robery scenario that anyone (even me) can crank out in two-seconds (that is including a battle-map - thus I need an extra-second). But as a whole that might be a worthwhile idea. HERO needs readily availbale, playable stuff!

Please refrain from psychoanalyzing me. You are not up to the task. But that is basically what I (and a couple of others here) mean: Don't agree with some group or individual who might or might not find something offensive, you are this-phobic or have a whatever-complex or in short: You are irrational, ill-informed, less enlightened. Well, thank you, sir! But it is good to see that my "complex-ridden" self at least got it right that I am not in danger of being persecuted by law. But guess what: I never considered myself guilty of saying anything dickish or offensive (at least not in the context of this discussion), so I wasn't refering to me anyhow. BTW: I am out of this part of the conversation. No point in going on.

As a German I was raised to accept that the stereotype you just described pops up with regularity in Hollywood and other movies. It might be that it is inplied that not all Germans are like that - just all the Germans that are featured in the movie. Don't asked my to name them all - the movies are literally legion and it's not getting better, Schindler's List and Operation Valkyrie nonewithstanding. Germans are the typical movie-villain, next to the Russians (another vile race up to no good). Arabs aren't much good either. That does not get my pulse go any faster. And no - I am not complaining: Sometimes it fits the story. And often I just shake my head. As do the Russians I guess.

Wow! Germany - where they kick ass for at least the last 5200 years. The area of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is nowadays one of Germany least populated. I thikn they'd have a hard time to get as many people together for a brawl of that size today.

I am pondering the idea to start a Godlike Champions campaign - that is NOT an ultra-powerful supers campiagn with characters with 20d6 EBs and 2000+ character-points but the setting of the rpg GODLIKE: Soldiers in WW2 with superpowers that are less than super-flashy and rather one-tracked. You might be strong but not particual tough, you might have ablast-power but no FF etc. Is there anyone out there who has already done that and might share his experiences or things to take into consideration?

D&D isn't too big to fail, there is just a certain D&D-genre that isn't going away becaus eit is so damn popular. And who cares if the game is called D&D, Pathfinder, labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC , Lamentations of the Flame Princess etc.? Only saying something that isn't going to offend somebody is a sure way to shut up for the rest of your life, especially when that somebody hasn't even noticed that you said something that someone thought someone lese might find offensive. I find it offensive if somebody says something bad about communism, socialism or German culture (equating it with Nazism for instance or a German "gene" for fascism) or someting good about organized religions, especially when they look for excuses for terrorist action. I am also offended by things like mandatory "veggie"-days (some idea of the German Green party) and smoke-free pubs. So, am I right if I demand that people refrain from speaking about or in favour of these few examples of what I consider to be offended by (trust me, I have many, many more)? No, sir! And there is a difference between going out of your way to be a dick and just say what you think is right. In the fisrt you aim at offending people for the reason that you like to offend them, the second is speaking your mind freely to convince people - or just to exercise your right of free speech. In the second you might be mistake or wrong, in the first your civility is lacking. Still, being a dick is not a crime.

Guess what: NOBODY who is now upset asked a gypsy about how they feel about the adventure. It is all about a paternalistic feeling concerned with people who seemingly cannot think or react according to their own "best" interest. And of course showing the world how enlightened oneself really is. I call that "taking care of the stupid children - the leftist/ liberal approach". I could have seen a gypsy complaining or one of the umbrella organizations that there are in Germany and many other countries (although they most of the time go overboard and try to ban for instance the usage of the term "Zigeunersauce" (Gypsy sauce), one of Germany's most popular sauces because it is stereotypical, racist and discriminating .... Maybe I should also be miffed because the vampire is male, white and his last name is von Zarovich - clearly, this bloodthirsty villain is at least of German decent - a Siebenbürger-Sachse judging from his first name. But I guess that is all right: As long as all villains are male, white and German everything is all honky-dory and right on the spot. Why is there no black, female, lesbian vampire-princess in fantasy-land? No, it always the white, male German! See, if I want to get upset I have more than one opportunity to do so. I can also play the game of the discriminated and rebel without a cause. P.S.: Just for the record - "gypsy" may not be the PC term any more but it is still my term of choice since 1) there is nothing wrong with it - people use it to describe themselves, 2) changing the name does nothing to change any of the problems the group has (see: Negro - Colored - Afro-American - Black - African-American - for reference read: Randall Kennedy: Sellout. the Politics of Racial Betrayal)., 3) it includes all of the different folks that are not included under the term "Romany" like Irish Travellers, Jenische etc. Romany is just one specific part.

When I read the passage back in the enlightened days of the late 80s it never occured to me that it meant that real people were accussed as being as bad as people who force others to have sex with them. It meant "people who used the rules to further their own end fully knowing that that end was not the intent of the rules". Well, but we have it over here as well: Curently there is a discussion on the German Tanelorn forum wether the new D&D 5th Edition "Curse of Strahd" adventure is furthering anti-gypsy sentiments (= is racist) and thus should not be played. If you don't have any problems make some up ... I think free speech is a thing of the past. Before you open your mouth please think if there might be a thin-skinned being in the galaxy that may invent a being with even less skin on its body that might - a lot of dellusion and fantasy granted - be offended. Then: Shut up. That said - I am no fan of the "Let's be super non-PC and offend and insulte everybody and his dog thus showing our courage!"-counter-movement either. The Though Police is not to be countered by arse-hattery.