etherio

Re: Martial Art Style Creation

Hey...Steve Long's checkin' out this thread with me.

Forgive him Steve...he knows not what he does.

Re: Martial Art Style Creation

I think you'll find HERO gamers here hesitant to do anything that would seem unethical or unfair to the company that is generously hosting these boards. The UMA is a very good, very useful supplement, but the material contained in it is not necessary to play the HERO System. I recommend that you buy it. It sounds like it's just what you're looking for.

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

Setup...

In my supers game, we have a running theme where PCs do the whole crosstime caper, alternate dimension thingamajigee. Some dimensions are very close to theirs, some very different, some displaced in time. A few PCs have "Sliders"-type gadgets that let them travel randomly to other universes...Anyway...

The players were given 48 hours of in-game "downtime" where they were researching ways to stop the evil alien menace from eventually setting off their doomsday devices. They were supposed to report to their boss at the end of that period. During the briefing (the beginning of that day's game session), they saw a commotion on the street below. When they went to investigate, they found that the aliens had planted one of the "implosion devices" under the street. While they were working on disarming it, one by one the neighboring burroughs were wiped out by the devices...seemed like the whole world was being destroyed. Just when the one near them was about to blow, the 3 PCs present saved themselves at the last moment by zapping into another dimension.

They arrived in another world that was almost exactly identical to their own, but 48 hours behind. The players were shocked..totally tripping on this development and in denial. I convinced them that it was no dream...it had really happened. Depressed and grieving for their lost loved ones, comrades, and entire civilization, wondering what the hell had happened to the campaign, they made their way to that world's equivalent of their HQ to tell their alternates what they were facing, if all was the same here.

The alternates of the same 3 characters (NPCs of course) met them and, once convinced they were all good-guys, began to share info and discuss plans.

They eventually figured out, through casual marks made by me about past game sessions, that their (the players') memories did not exactly match with their characters' recollections of the last couple of weeks...some details were slightly different. They eventually figured out that they had been playing the alternates for that session and I had been NPCing their characters. It played out pretty cool.

I then gave back control of the PCs to the players and had them "give" their alternate to another player to be played as a second PC for that story arc as they tried to save the world from armageddon in 48 hours. It gave opportunities for each player to get a shot at the cool stuff other players' characters had for a while, and a chance for role-playing interaction between PCs that are essentially the same, but becoming slightly different people due to their differing circumstances. It also gave each player some inspiration for his own character seeing how another player used his abilities in and out of combat.

Re: Gaming "Outside the Box"

By the way,

These sorts of things can include clever ways to use props like maps, computers, fake documents, tangible clues that the players can actually hold, etc.

It might include radically different adventure structures or resolution methods for tasks...let the brain cells fly.

Let's toss around ideas and strategies...

For years now, I've been interested in finding ways (large or small) to enrich the gaming experience by gaming unconventionally here and there. Not necessarily in groundbreaking ways, but in ways that add a little variety to things, and maybe occasionally simulate the storytelling of comics and literature a little better than RPGing usually can.

For example, when you read a comic book, you get to see the machinations of the villain mastermind. That rich element of the story is lost to players. Or, when a character loses his memory, it doesn't have the same impact that it would in a story when you just tell his player: "Play like you forgot everything."

There was an excellent idea in a Dragon magazine years ago, where the whole campaign starts out with the PC waking up in a dungeon with amnesia, and eventually learning he's a Paladin along the way.

Some recent filmmaking innovation, like the movie "Memento" (recommended if you haven't seen it yet), has really spurred my inspiration in this direction.

One example of these sorts of things that I've tried recently:

The PCs were having a plot arc where they struggled against evil, alternate-dimension versions of themselves and allies. One hero, Vindicator, had a duplicate (Nightstalker) that coveted his life of admiration and honest respect from his peers and the public...So he took his place. The plot was convoluted, but basically the hero had his memories replaced so that he thought he was the villain. Meanwhile, the villain, completely possessed of his original memories, assumed the hero's identity.

When the switch took place, I subtly took the trusted player aside and told him was now playing the Nightstalker impersonating his character. It went beautifully. He did a great job at both staying in character and maintaining the ruse when socializing out of game time. When the Vindicator (really the Nightstalker) died in combat, the players and PCs both were shocked and devastated, because they honestly though it was for real. We even broke up early, because the player admirably pulled off a pissed-as-hell attitude and the other players thought I was being a jerk due to my poorly-stifled grin. Vindicator had a funeral "episode" and the whole nine yards (which was of course interrupted by a tastelessly ill-timed bad-guy assault).

The hero, an NPC for the time-being, plagued them as Nightstalker for a while, until subtle clues led them to realize what had happened. The player who was in on the ruse was obviously banned from meaningful participation in piecing the clues together.

It all was perfect, and it really brought the flavor of a tried-and-true genre convention to our game.

Please share any experiments you've tried or ideas that you've been tossing around about ways to "game outside the box."

Re: Block Maneuver Silliness...

I realize the whole rationalization bit for SFX, but that gets a bit stretched sometimes. I just wondered how other HERO gamers treated this subject. I never saw that other thread...maybe I'll take a peek.

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Nice pics, too, by the way Wildcat. Looks like you put a lot of work into GMing. I try, but I've got to budget my time. I bet your players look forward to your games.

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

...but I can get anyone who wants my own custom buildings I made myself' date=' just e-mails me and we'll see about gettign them to you (they are in Photoshop file format, as I don't have Acrobat to make the pdf files)[/quote']

 

The 3D stuff looks awesome, Wildcat...please do post them.

 

You can just save the .psd format files as .jpg, .bmp, etc...and then upload those. I'd be stoked to get my hands on them.

 

...And zornwil...thanks for jumping back into this thread. Can't wait to see what you've got to show.

Hey fellow Herophiles...

We have for years occasionally run across a problem where a player wants to use a block maneuver against something ridiculous...Xandarr the fantasy martial-artist and his triple-iron vs. the jaws of wyverns the size of clydesdales, Photon the normal-strength super hero vs. a 50STR goon of King Cobra, etc. I know there are rules about weapon breakage that control this somewhat, but there seems to be no real mechanism for determining if a guy is capable of blocking an attack other than comparative OCV. Of course, GM watchfulness is important, but its often arbitrary. It could seem especially unfair in a supers game where points are paid for everything and special effect probably shouldn't make one character's block maneuver crappier than another's.

How do you folks handle this in your games? Do you have any good house rules for drawing the line?

Please share,

etherio

Re: Your Gaming Group's Jargon

An unofficial jargon unique to our group is the use of some variation of the term "Stewied." It refers to the unfortunate soiling of game-related materials.

It's named after our player who seems to have the magical talent to do just that to any paperwork, character sheet or other gaming accessory he gets his hands on. Doubt me not...I don't exaggerate when I say "magical." Stew has managed to get orange Dorito stains on his brand new character sheet when there were no Doritos within miles.

Re: Your Gaming Group's Jargon

Here's one I suspect most of us encounter in one form or another, but makes no sense nonetheless:

"That roll wasn't on the table"...

In the various groups to which I've belonged over 20+ years of gaming, there seems to be the common belief that a roll has been invalidated by the fact of the die making its way off some arbitrarily-defined surface. Sometimes that's the table, or a book, or whatever. If it rolls onto something flat, it's a roll, for Crissakes. On the other hand, it is sometimes a good excuse for letting a player reroll when dramatic sense or his life are risked by a dumb roll.

"OK...the blue one was off...but keep the other dice."

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Here are a couple of maps for a real research institute I found somewhere on the internet some time ago....don't remember where I got them, but they weren't for sale as maps. They were on the institute's website. This is perfect for a supers game.

Just curious...

I've never run a campaign where the PCs are supervillains, and I don't imagine I will. However, for those of you that do, how do you run things?

When the PCs are heroes, typically they prevail, at least in some way. They apprehend the villains, or foil their fiendish plots, or at least minimize the damage done. Even when a group of comic supers fails, genre convention calls for it being a battle lost in the course of winning the war against evil.

How do you handle villain PCs and their goals and plots? I'm not talking about rebel anti-heroes or the like, but real villains. Do they actually succeed in robbing Fort Knox, mesmerizing world leaders from orbit with their "Hypno-Ray," or slaying their nemeses with elaborate death-traps? ...Or do they just have to endure being foiled again and again?

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

...I did think of another plus for this alternatate rule... Blocking. If you have a -8 to your OCV it all but guarenteed that any attempt to block the attack will succeed. This doesn't make much sense to me. An unaimed punch shouldn't be that much more difficult to block (or an aimed punch that much easier). Not that blocking is necessary if your opponent has a -8 to his OCV.

 

Same thing with Dodging. If your opponent is taking that big a penalty you can reasonably ignore his attack because he's gonna miss unless his OCV is normally obsene (in which case your only chance is to hope his attacks can't penetrate your defences).

Good point, Raven...I think I mentioned in an earlier post (or was that on another thread?) that the use of this system has increased the use of the Block maneuver. I believe it's because of the slightly more deadly nature of combat, but whatever the reason, it has enriched the dynamic of combat and diversified actions that characters take.

Speaking of boxing, this discussion has prompted me to revisit an idea that I had a while back to compliment this system. I have considered incorporating a counterpart method for the aiming system in how a character applies his DCV levels, or "guards." In every type of HTH fighting style in the real world, there is some form of addressing what area of the body one is focussed most on defending. Attackers, conversely, are encouraged in their training to try to work around that. A boxer is often told by his trainer during a fight to "keep his guard up," to protect the head, while a karate instructor may emphasize keeping one's hands in an abdomen-high blocking posture to maximize the body area that is protected.

I'm working on something in that vein, and I'll post it if I get a chance to playtest it. I think that it may have some useful application for MA, especially, in differentiating the way that different styles play out in the game.

Re: I need serious help!!!

...Now you can do any kind of "carrier" attack as well...Rob

Sound like an old V&V player there...

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

By the way...

Even for those of you who don't like the hit location system, I recommend the expanded locations chart. It makes it easier to record piecemeal armor locations, and has no impact on the standard game rules.

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

Let's try an example in the scale for which it is suited.

Grak the fighter (Base CV 5, +3 with broadsword) vs. Bob the town guardsman (Base CV 4, +1 OCV w/short sword)

Grak goes for a Neck shot and puts +2 on OCV, +1 on DCV...

7-4= 14 or less to hit (.907)...

14-8= 6 or less to hit the neck automatically (.0926)...

.907-.0926= .814 to hit, but not automatically, thus calling for a hit location roll...

.814 X .366= .298 chance to hit the head on the hit location chart...

.298+.0926= .391, or 39.1%, to hit any head location for the entire attack resolution.

This is an improvement, no doubt, but remember that by aiming at the Neck, Grak risks going off the hit location chart and missing after all (swinging over Bob's head). That plays out like this...

.907-.0926= .814 to hit, but not automatically, thus calling for a hit location roll...

.814 X .375 (chance to roll unmodified 9- for hit location)= .305...

.907-.305= .602...

Grak's overall chance to hit anything has been reduced from 90.7% to 60.2%.

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

Mr. Negativity...

There are some flaws in your reasoning here.

It's quite true. I checked the math. Given: A DEX of 43 = base OCV of 14. Sacrifice Strike adds +1 OCV for a total of 15. Ogre has a Dex of 20 for a 7 DCV. -7 for the neck hit location yields a outright hit chance of 12 or less which is 62.5 percent.

First, your calculations should have included a -8 modifier for the Neck, leading to an 11- to hit it automatically. 11 or less is a 62.5% chance to hit the head automatically, so you reached the right conclusion there. However, please recognize this for the sake of all that's holy...once and for all...

The same result would occur in the standard rules.

This is not an argument against my system. It's an argument against hit locations being used in supers games at all. The great disparity between you combatants' CVs is the problem, and it's the reason why hit location damage multiples should not be used in supers games.

Now, if you don't hit outright, you roll 3d6 and see where it did land. On a 10, 11 or 12, you hit the head, anyway. That's about a 36% chance. (79/216) So the chances of missing the base attack, but still hitting the head = ((1-.625)*.36) or about 13.5%. Add that to your 62.5% chance of hitting the base attack and there's your 76% I was talking about...

Correct...but again, you're talking about a CV spread of 8. That is an example of two combatants at the extremes of a supers game. In this example, my system allows a 76% chance to hit a head location...up a whopping 13.5% from the 62.5% allowed by the standard rules.

Like I have said: slightly more deadly, but not terribly so...and not balanced in favor of high-CV characters.

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

I think you've made an excellent point here' date=' and one that hadn't occurred to me as I examined this idea. With only trivial penalties to called shots, a high CV character successfully can do that all the time.[/quote']

Not sure why you think this is...an automatic head shot in this system is just as hard as it is in the standard rules. You have to have an unreal OCV or a low roll to pull it off. In either case, the same could be done in the standard rules. The substantive difference in this version is the way it moves the bell curve so that it centers on the targeted location. That benefit, and the penalty of off-the-chart modified rolls becoming misses, are both independent of CV. If this system actually benefits anyone as far as getting a chance to make a targeted hit, it's the lower-OCV characters.

 

Suddenly my MAs mere 10d6 Sacrifice Strike to the head is equivalent to a bricks 20d6 Haymaker. With a setup like that, my SPD 9/DEX 43 character could flatten whole villain teams in 3 or 4 seconds. Where do I sign up?

Actually, I think that no hit location system is appropriate for supers-level gaming. I wouldn't encourage any form of hit location system for those kinds of campaigns.

 

Remember, guys...If you're worried about a PC abusing this system...the bad guys get to use it, too, at your discretion.

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

Assuming your character has NO levels whatsoever' date=' you'll drill Ogre in the head at least 75% of the time and stun him most of the time you hit.[/quote']

Not true...refer to the spreadsheet I posted a link to earlier. The curve for 3d6 is not nearly as steep as you think.

 

Were such a system to be implemented, it would require the rewrite of pretty much all of the NPCs and villains ever created to make them survivable.

 

Even at the heroic level, it would completely upset the balance of power in most games. My 8 STR duellist would completely tool the 33 STR ogre. Under the standard rules, there were enemies against which she was useless (high def tanks) and enemies against which he was useless (high dcv swashbucklers). With generous hit location rules like those, the duellist would just own everything under the sun. Head shot, head shot, head shot, head shot, Post 12 recovery, head shot, head shot, head shot, lather, rise, repeat.

That hasn't been the case for our group, and we've used the system quite a bit. Try it, and if you don't like it, don't use it. If you don't want to try it, then oh well...that's your prerogative. There are some valid criticisms of the system, especially that combat becomes a little bit more lethal. However, the difference is not as much as your exaggerations imply. No system is perfect, and this one was designed by altering an existing one, so as to preserve as much of HERO's rules as much as possible, while giving us a chance to make HERO-scale combat a little more dynamic.

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

I hope we can develop a good exchange...

Me, too...and for other things besides maps. We could make this a really cool, dynamically-evolving GM resource, as long as people post as well as download.

Of course it should be mentioned many maps will be things taken off the web and then with a hex map over it or the like. Some stuff I'm sure is somebody else's intellectual property. Hope that's cool with everyone.

Yes...please don't post things that are for sale as maps. Nobody wants to get in trouble. However, there are lots of maps on architects' websites and the like, that are meant as advertising for contractors. I'm sure that us borrowing for geeky, unrelated, non-commercial purposes will be considered harmless.

BTW, I hope nobody's going to complain about people's submiissions. Free is free, and sharing is nice. Let's just back off if we think "eww, that looks bad" (some of my stuff DOES, I know it okay?) - it still may be useful. And if not, well, hey, it was nice of someone to share.

Amen to that.

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Here is a map of the Klausner Gallery' date=' an art gallery owned by my character in his secret ID. The scale is 2m per inch.[/quote']

Perfect for my uses...

 

I'll just paste it in a layer over my hex map file and print...bingo, instant encounter.

 

(Now I just have to work an art gallery into a scenario.)

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

Etherio,

Any chance you have the full color pics of some of the heroes and villains you posted tiles for? Just wondering if you have full color shots of the Coil guys, Deathstroke, Protectors, and any of the other characters you made tiles for. If you have, could you post 'em, please?

...not of the guys you mentioned here specifically, but I do have pics for my PCs and villains. They're posted here.

http://herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16247&page=1&pp=15

Re: Game Maps and Counters Exchange

I'll check back in on this thread after I'm home in a week as I have many maps I could post somewhere and reference here. Perhaps some useful pics as well. Great thread idea!

Awesome...your contributions would be much appreciated. Hopefully, other GMs who come across this thread will follow your lead.

Most of us have homemade maps or props that others of us could find useful. ...or maybe just links to places with cool resources like that.

Re: House Rules for Hit Location

Incidentally, the expanded hit location chart is designed to reflect the locations that have been implied by armor coverage in various HERO supplements.