Christopher R Taylor

OK I have been writup and uploading some fun useful files from years past in Hero.  They are rebuilds for 6th edition of old sheets, mostly from 4th edition, to make things easier for the GM.

First up is the Campaign Sheet so GMs can pass it out before the game starts. It covers house rules, optional rules, the outlook of the game (is it realistic?  How important are the PCs?  What's the setting like?  What are the everyman skills and character point values etc?

I whipped up a 6th edition update of the old 4th edition Champions sheet, one of my favorites.  Its fillable blank, for the few of us that still fill out sheets by hand.

I'll try to get more of the old sheets updated and put on here, like the campaign notes, agent sheet etc.  I loved those old sheets

Yeah when 3rd edition D&D was put out, nobody anticipated a 3rd party company would outdo them.  D&D ruled the roost.  Things change over time; pulp used to sell really well and now it doesn't.  The only way things can have a chance to change is to actually push forward, and the present licensing system of Hero makes that possible even with projects that the prevailing wisdom insists can't work or has no chance.

Heh I guess people missed the "house rule" line.

Well ok we've just been doing that as a house rule: if you're stunned on phase 12, you have to use the post 12 to get unstunned, not a normal recovery.  As I understand the rules, you can't recover until you've recovered from being stunned, so that would seem a logical extension of the rules.

I agree, genre and story should trump rules any time there's a conflict, but the most recent editions can lead GMs into forgetting that and second guessing themselves too easily.  If you can shake that, the game hasn't changed a bit in its play since the first gray book came out except in minor details.

Yeah they will burn their post-12 recovery recovering from stun if you pound them hard enough (perhaps a nice coordinated attack).  In any case, its not often that a target has so vast a recovery that they'll get back all the damage you do to them in a good hit.

Another way to do it would be a really long term DOT rather than uncontrolled but its probably vastly more expensive.

I added Urban Fantasy.  I hadn't put it in originally because I don't write urban fantasy materials but it should be there for sure!

You're right I'm not making millions off my work.  Its a start.  But I don't think you understand the point I was trying to make.  Oh well.

The Super Soldier Serum has created a good dozen or more superheros and villains in the marvel universe.  Its usually pretty detrimental in its effects (driving people crazy usually) but it does give powers.

Well so far my stuff is selling pretty well  I'll keep putting it out.  I suspect the "nobody buys" is related to the "nothing out there to buy" in that without a ready supply of easy to use "drop in and play" materials, there's no point in buying a Fantasy Hero supplement.

Today's spell is a simple little ones for illusionists and other mages.  It marks the target with a symbol that glows, one that is easily seen at a distance, but only the caster can see it.  The victim may be aware the spell was cast on them but the mark disappears after a moment and is no longer visible to anyone but the mage.  There is a version of this spell that the caster can learn which makes it so the target is unaware of anything being cast on them at all.

Out of four to six players, we rarely had more than one rulebook for any system anyway. Even when there was a separate "player's handbook". Is that much different in other groups?

 

The last time I tried to teach people Fantasy Hero and ran a game with strangers, nobody bought anything, they just downloaded it all from Torrent.  And I ran the game at a game store to make it that much more likely people purchased books.

On the other side of that, if there was more demand for fantasy books, they would probably get written.

Maybe.  It takes someone with the ideas, drive, and materials to write one.  People are focused on Champions and superhero stuff, which is perfectly fine but not so much on fantasy.  I think if FH had more support material and adventures, it would do considerably better.   In my opinion, Hero actually does Fantasy better than Superheroes.

Part of the reason there were no more Fantasy books is that there weren't more fantasy books written.  Lots of champions books written.

I agree very much that more support material is a good idea; the more stuff that lets a GM and players just drop it in and play is definitely needed.  That said, players (such as me) are adding stuff to the catalog.

Probably a GMing Hero book would be good.  That's what I envisioned with 6th edition: a simplified streamlined set of rules with lots of examples and a more complex set of rules with all the fine details and questions answered, and tons of GMing tips and tweaks as a second book.  That way there would be one easy to access cheaper book to get people into Hero, then a bigger book to help GMs and with more specific information that costs more.  Sort of the "Player's Handbook/DM Guide" model, but AD&D style, not the modern one where the player's handbook is twice as big as the DM guide.

It depends on the setting.  In the movies, the stuff comes off like tissue paper, flying all over the place.  In the comics, its a lot harder to remove. Then again, scene by scene its harder to take the armor off sometimes than in others; mostly the exploding armor effect is for comedic impact than plot.

Yeah its a multiplayer first person shooter so either LoL or Call of Duty, really.

"Obvious Inaccessible Focus"

Look under Focus in your rule book, but basically it refers to a device which others can prevent you from using by taking it away, but that is difficult to remove.  Like a suit of armor such as you mentioned, or an object that is so ubiquitous that you can usually find one lying around.  For example, OIF rock.  You can use any rock for this, but it has to be a rock that can be grabbed out of your hand.  Some places won't have rocks around, so its a limitation.

I think the game should still be generic and modular - part of the appeal is the ability to use Fantasy Hero magic books in Star Hero and Star Hero gadgets in Champions, and run pulp characters through Vietnam War scenarios and so on.

But as I suggested above, each book for the different genre sets can offer the rules in a way that focuses most on that genre.  So the base rule set can be very basic (have two kinds of attacks, or even one kind that you define as normal or killing; ranged or strength adds damage, for example) and then in the genre books you break it down further and be more specific.  In Champions you can use drain as suppress and transfer!  In Fantasy Hero Aid can be used for succor!  and so on.  So books about Pulp adventures don't really need transformation to be described on 4 pages of text, or even mentioned at all.  But Sci Fi probably does.

And the entire line should be tilted toward the best marketing and most well known books in the system: Champions.  Fantasy Champions, Star Champions, etc.  I mean in the title, not the content.  Champions is the recognized brand, not Hero.  Exploit that.

I think comic book companies avoid this for sort of obvious reasons: they don't want to flood the world with zillions of cheap superpowered beings.

I think Raven was all equipment too, a suit that let him fly.