Altair

dont think you have been given bad advice there.

 

dont volunteer for a long campaign.  You might decide to run a four or five session game setting up the game you really want to play.  do the things from the previous generation of heroes.  If things screw up then it is not the players heroes that suffer and you can adjust things for the real campaign if that is what you still want to do.

That's a cool idea! A generation gap is probably not going to work with what I'm trying to do, but it's sound advice nonetheless. 

I might try a "snapshot" of a single event, just to see how that feels. That's not the worst plan in the world.

Lots of good stuff from everybody thus far; I'm gonna unpack this bit.

The real question seems to be as follows:

Will your players be ok with your fast/loose style in a game system that models combat to the second?

 

The answer in a nutshell is:

Only you know your players well enough to effectively answer the question, above.

It's true! While I'm not entirely certain what the play base is going to look like, or even if this game will wind up happening - I've also pitched a post-apocalyptic adventure, and offered to run the Infinity RPG - the players in question seem to like my stuff, and should be pretty comfortable with my style. 

They'll have more experience with me than with HERO, and would be signing up for something significantly more narratively-focused than the dungeon crawl-heavy stuff they're also involved in. 

Additionally, this would hopefully include at least one of the fine folks from my adventures in Champions Cardstock Combat Chronicles from last year, so I'd not only have good experiences previously, but also (with any luck) be able to lean on them for help & advice when I get stuck.

My recommendation:

Do your thing for a while and see how it goes -- and make it clear to your players from the start that this is the plan.  Solicit feedback from your players as you go.  If things go well across 4-5 sessions, no adjustments are needed.  If players give you feedback as to things that might make the game go better, take it to heart and act on it.  If it's looking like the improvements you need to make don't fit your GM'ing style, then sit down with your players and call a spade a spade.

 

The game is supposed to be fun for the GM, too.  Seasoned players understand this and won't fault you if your style isn't working for them ... and if the changes you'd need to make for the game to work for the players ... will turn your fun into something more like work.

Yeah, that's pretty much my feelings on the matter. I'm not worried about a style clash, and I'm not running for anybody that I have a mutually exclusive style this time around, so hopefully this shouldn't be too big an issue. 

I guess I'm wondering if anyone else feels this way? Where they love HERO, and it's fun as a player, but they're intimidated at the thought of running it seriously?

And if so, what helped them make that work?

So, I'm looking at possibly running a Supers game starting up this fall. And even though I'm working on another RPG that (should hopefully) provide robust support for the genre, I'd like to run this game in Hero. Mainly because:

• The project I'm working on isn't done yet
• I like Hero
• At least one of my potential players is super into Hero
• People have been playing Supers games in Hero for years - there's a lot of wheels I don't have to invent

So, Hero. Specifically, Champions Complete. Hooray!

Problem: I'm having serous anxiety about running HERO.

My GM'ing style is highly improvisational. Even when I prep things, I have a tendency to discard them once the game is truly flowing. I'm a little nervous about the highly granular nature of HERO playing poorly with that tendency, and I have neither the time nor inclination to drill myself on the mechanics until I know them inside and out. Being a player is one thing, I only have to manage my bits, and I can decide how complicated I want them to be. But GMing has an awful lot more complexity; I'm likely to get things wrong, and I cannot stand fighting about mechanics.

So that's pretty much the situation: I want to run HERO, I like HERO, I'm intimidated by the thought of running it long-term in an actual campaign.

Help?

(Crossposted from the Hero System forum, after the highly sensible recommendation to come here.)

So, my beloved S/O has decided that she, along with another dear friend of ours, wants to GM something in the Eberron setting. For a variety of reasons, they're considering Hero, probably Fantasy Hero Complete, as the system for this endeavor. I was wondering if anyone had taken a swing at this before, or if there are any recommendations?

A couple things to note:

• This is not supposed to feel like standard D&D. Both GMs harbor a burning hatred for D&D in general, and are definitely not trying to replicate its feel
  
• They want different kinds of magic to feel different. Wizards, Sorcerers, Dragonmark magic - all should feel distinct.
  
• This is designed to be a political intrigue game, that branches out into the occasional expedition. But courtly intrigue first, monster-thwacking probably third at best.
  
• Neither of the GMs has run Hero before, though one of them was a player in my brief wargamey Hero sessions, and enjoyed it quite a bit.
  
• Both are very "Simulationist" from a GNS theory perspective - they like solid mechanical representation of things.
  

Anyway! I was wondering if the Herosphere had any thoughts on the matter?

Thanks, all!

@Shadowcat & Pattern Ghost

For sure, Killer Shrike has a ton of great stuff going. I'll check back on some of his stuff, for sure. 

Also, I'll drop in on the Fantasy Hero Sub, thanks.

So, my beloved S/O has decided that she, along with another dear friend of ours, wants to GM something in the Eberron setting. For a variety of reasons, they're considering Hero, probably Fantasy Hero Complete, as the system for this endeavor. I was wondering if anyone had taken a swing at this before, or if there are any recommendations?

A couple things to note:

• This is not supposed to feel like standard D&D. Both GMs harbor a burning hatred for D&D in general, and are definitely not trying to replicate its feel
• They want different kinds of magic to feel different. Wizards, Sorcerers, Dragonmark magic - all should feel distinct.
• This is designed to be a political intrigue game, that branches out into the occasional expedition. But courtly intrigue first, monster-thwacking probably third at best.
• Neither of the GMs has run Hero before, though one of them was a player in my brief wargamey Hero sessions, and enjoyed it quite a bit.
• Both are very "Simulationist" from a GNS theory perspective - they like solid mechanical representation of things.

Anyway! I was wondering if the Herosphere had any thoughts on the matter?

Thanks, all!

I'm becoming increasingly pleased with physical props of this sort. I used Sentinels of the Multiverse damage tokens for Champions, and I've since picked up various poker chips for tracking different things across different games. 

Speaking as someone who loves character sheets/spreadsheets on my laptop, and tends to go all-digital more often than not, there's something deeply satisfying about tangible representation. I like poker chips, because they've got a solid heft to them, and it can be very gratifying to plop down a stack of chips at dramatically appropriate moments.

Which makes sense, given their origin. They should make you feel like a badass when you confidently thump them down; that's how casinos make money

Supers is probably the easiest open field even with M&M and other knockoffs out there.  Hero is still best known for Champions and its the standard for superhero games, even if its perceived as being a bit clunky and creaky these days.  A killer intro and a series of great campaign arcs like Pathfinder games would go a long ways toward making it the gold standard again.  We already have a campaign setting, all that's needed is the stuff to make it easy for GMs to jump right in.

So, as a bit of a community outlier, I'll advocate for the devil: I'm not sure that Supers and Hero are the best match. 

(takes cover)

Everybody still here? Gonna read further before declaring me Baron Poop of Incontinence Town? Let's assume yes

I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed the CC supers thing I ran, as did the players. Incredible amounts of fun! But, we did nickname those sessions "wargame Wednesdays," because the amount of granularity and attention to detail benefited most from big, tactical action/combat scenes. That were fun as hell - let's just be clear on that point - but weren't the sort of gaming anybody was terribly interested in sustaining. We had a lot of great discussions about what would happen if we wanted to run an ongoing RPG with what we had, and most felt that we'd wind up ignoring massive chunks of the system for actual play. Now, we still discussed doing so, but the rules provide incredibly robust support for certain playstyles, and it seems silly to not make use of that. Otherwise, why are we using Hero in the first place?

Obviously, that's not everybody's experience. And I'm in no way trying to say that anybody's wrong for enjoying something, far from it. 

But the hobby has changed. Specifically, how people enter the hobby is very different. Wargaming doesn't really lead into roleplaying so much. And at this point, neither does LARPing, frankly. No, people who are coming into tabletop RPGs tend to be doing so from a couple different angles, in my experience.

Reason one: This podcast/webcomic/youtube show that I like was talking about RPGs and how they're actually fun. I want in!

• These folks tend to go for whatever the original source was talking about. Lately, that tends to mean D&D 5th edition, or Fantasy AGE by way of Titansgrave. 
• They're going after a specific thing that caught their eye, and that's usually not intricate mechanical representation.

Reason two: This video game/novel/other is amazing! Oh man, it's based on a "pen and paper RPG?" Maybe I should check that out...

• Again, something sparked their interest; maybe a setting, maybe a type of mechanical interaction. Whatever it is, they want either more or adjacent to The Cool Thing
• These folks will usually hit up the property said game is based on. And why not, right? The idea that setting =/= system is alien from that perspective; it might be cool to play Mario with XCOM's mechanics, but that's not on the table (though I desperately want it now.) So if you like Shadowrun, you find Shadowrun.
  • Honestly, I feel like the ball wasn't so much "dropped" as it was "punted into another stadium" with Champions Online in this regard. 

Reason three: My friend/sibling/co-worker/romantic partner is super into this RPG thing. So I agreed to try it out!

• This tends to introduce new players to whatever the person/group thinks is cool. That has strengths and weaknesses!
• We're pretty familiar with this. It's one of the reasons why I'm always harping on the existence of different agendas/play styles; I've seen so many potential new players turned off to the hobby because the person introducing them assumed they'd like it in the same way.
  • My S/O is an incredibly dedicated gamer; but she prizes representational verisimilitude above all, and hates combat scenes. If I tried to introduce her to RPGs via a 4-color supers game in Fate, she'd hate it. (She hates Fate in general, as near as I can tell). She, however, came into gaming via reason four.

Reason four: I'm actually super big into Role Playing, I do it all the time! I'm interested in exploring doing it outside of an online forum, though.

• I haven't done any quantitative studies on the topic, but my observation indicates that this is how people are coming into the hobby at the greatest rate. 
• Forum RP generally doesn't have any mechanics to speak of, and I've seen a lot of people get turned off of tabletop RPGs, as they seem to involve "a lot of work that gets in the way of the fun part of the game, in order to minimize said fun bits." (That's a paraphrase, but whatevs.

Whew! That was a lot of jabber to get to this point: new players tend to be less interested in complex simulationist mechanics than in the old days, because they're really not coming in via wargames. They tend to be interested in different things. 

So the idea that something with the complex structure of Hero is good for a mass-market Supers game, is one I'm not sold on. Many casual fans of the supers genre - of which there are SO MANY right now, capes are the biggest draw in theatres - could give a crap about the difference between an HKA and a Blast, let alone their real cost. Those aren't really value-added propositions, just more work. 

If I wanted to run or play in a supers campaign, I'd probably look at Masks (a PbtA game), Fate (via Venture City Stories), or Marvel Heroic. And I like Hero. But to my tastes, I'm not sure the experience of what I'd want in a supers game is strengthened by Hero's strengths. Now, that's just me, and don't get me wrong - I'd be ecstatic to play in a proper Champions game, no doubt - but to me, and many others, supers aren't really about granular detail. 

Now, if there was going to be, I dunno, a Deus Ex RPG? HOLY CRAP, do I want that. And I want it in Hero, because attention to detail is a bigger part of the cyberpunk experience to me. I daresay that Hero might be better suited to running Shadowrun than any edition of that game to date. Or yeah, even Epic Fantasy, because the variety of archetypes should be pretty different, and Hero does that neatly with a very slick combat system. 

Obviously, many people disagree with those assertions. That's good! People like different things.

But no, I'm not convinced that doubling down on supers would be the best marketing strategy. Because I'm not sure that the current market wants to experience supers in a way that plays to Hero's strengths. Hero has amazing strengths! I consider it best-in-class at granular representation. That's an important tool in the kit! But it's not the 80's, where every RPG is some variant of wargame, and if that's not what you want, you should find the one you hate the least. You don't have to hammer in nails with your wrench, if you don't want to. 

If I were the Hero line developer, I'd go after some survey data, and try to figure what people want simulated. Then I'd go after that genre hard, because there really isn't much catering to the simulationist playstyle, and that's an opportunity. 

...

I am not, however, the Hero line developer, so I'mma slink off and dream about my Deus Ex Hero game now....

In introducing Hero to a group of people who hadn't played it before, I got a decent view (albeit in a small sample) of people's introduction to the game. Frankly, if not for my rampant enthusiasm - made all the more notable, given how far outside my normal preferences Hero is - I doubt it would have caught on. Complexity is not, in its own right, value-added, and Hero is plenty complex.

Again, not dealing with people who were new to the hobby, unintelligent or uneducated. But the question with a new system is always going to be one of investment vs. reward. 

It's not that Hero is particularly difficult from a mathematical perspective. It's not conceptually complex beyond most traditional games, there's no paradigm shift needed to play (frankly making its conceptual difficulty much lower than games like Fate, Apocalypse World or Dogs in the Vineyard, which really require a different mental approach to be worth it). It's not that Hero asks you to do any one thing that's particularly daunting.

It's that Hero involves a lot of investment. A lot. Now, what you get for that investment is a richly detailed, highly granular, simulation-focused system. If you subscribe at all to the GNS typology, it's worth noting that there aren't very many systems out that really support a simulationist agenda. Hero offers robust support, while retaining plenty of interesting choices and challenges for a gamist agenda to feel satisfied. Even the narrative-focused folks can at least find plenty of support for interesting and dramatic scenes in the character options, as Ron Edwards talked about on his blog a ways back. Limitations are a great way to communicate a narrative agenda to the GM, and put different things on or off the table.

That's a lot! That's a lot of good stuff.

But it's not what everybody wants. Many people don't care that much about granular representation in their systems, they're more interested in other things. And if someone is primarily interested in a gamist or narrativist play style, what Hero offers is available in other systems for a lot less time investment. 

I generally endeavor to be catholic in my gaming consumption, and despite having a strong narrative focus as a default, I get a lot of value out of Hero, because of its granularity. It does things that other systems don't do. And sometimes that's exactly what I want. To be honest, I'm not sure that Hero's strengths are communicated that well to potential customers. How to do so is a tricky question, but as the least simulationist member of my local group, it's odd that I was the one to latch on to Hero. My S/O, the single most simulation-focused, granularity-preferring gamer that I've ever met, is still a bit wary of Hero, as she associates it with the supers genre, which is a non-starter for her. 

**TL:DR** Hero's very good at granular detail, and not shabby at other things too. But it does take a pretty big time investment to really get value out of it, and not everybody's that into granularity. Also, it hasn't always done the best job of communicating to potential players why it's awesome and worth the trouble; specifically, if you like detail, but not supers, you might pass on Hero. And that'd be a shame.

• What are you currently playing/GMing?
• Nothing.    I moved to the Cleveland, OH area from the Atlanta, GA area about three years ago and haven't had the time to find a group to join up here.  I'm trying to remedy this, so if you're in the Cleveland area.....
•  

Yo, I just left Cleveland not too long ago. I ran the Cleveland State University gaming club for a while - you can probably still find some people around that scene. Some really good people out there, though a lot of the local community is more LARP-focused, which is not everyone's thing.

Also, welcome everybody!

I'm constantly amazed at how much presentation can make a difference. I've found that  a lot of people don't touch Hero because it seems so... I don't know, obtuse?

I was, and in some ways am, one such person. 

I can do the math, and rather enjoy statistics - I got a masters in a statistical discipline, mostly for funsies - but I hate hate hate doing bookkeeping or any heavy mathematical lifting during an actual game. Other people barely notice, but I just get kicked right in the fun. 

Thus, anything that abstracts away things so I don't have to worry about them, and presents the information I actually want? Makes a major difference. Thus is the origin of my 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/267-%7B%3F%7D/

simple sheet thingy.

This is awesome, thanks. These are all really good ideas, which is what I really need; scaffolding upon which to build, and an understanding of what some completed buildings look like.

It's worth noting that stimming up, then having several days of downtime is a pretty established thing for military deployments in the setting. It's a Science-Fantasy setting - the people who are taking these drugs are borderline immortal - so big boosts and a big crash are expected. She has described it as "a cocktail of stimulants that would absolutely kill anything that wasn't already immortal."

It's a highly political setting, so all that time spent not fighting is going to involve a lot of other stuff happening - it's a little like Dune, but the PCs are each like a noble house unto themselves - so that "down time" won't be wasted time, just another conceit of the setting.

Hi! So, my S/O is thinking of running a game in her Dystopian Space Opera setting, which features - among other things - soldiers using seriously crazy combat stims that allow for an incredibly high level of performance, and then leave them out of commission for a couple days.

She has expressed some interest (possibly at my prodding) in using Hero for this, which is great.

Problem: I'm not even sure where to start with these combat stims.

Ok, What I mean is that I want to MANIPULATE Blood, such as making a barrier of blood or launching missiles of blood from my weapons. In essence, imagine a fire mage with fire emerging from his staff. Now, imagine the same except the "Staff" is a spiked knuckle and the "fire" liquid blood. 

SFX: Blood? Just build the powers you'd like, and that's the way they're manifest.

A fire mage with fire emerging from his staff might have: Pyrokinetic Blast:  Blast 8d6 (40 Active Points, 20 Real Points); OAF: Staff (-1), SFX: Fire/Heat

The character you described might have this power instead: Hemokinetic Blast:  Blast 8d6 (40 Active Points, 20 Real Points); OAF: Spiked Knuckle (-1), SFX: Blood.

Does that sound about right?

If you're looking at Hero-based Shadowrun-alike, have you seen Kazei 5?

Tell me more.

The fact that caps are often a problem, I think is neatly illustrated by the fact that even the people who have posted in support of them in this thread have pretty much all also noted that ... ahem .. that personally, they don't actually use caps, but instead have a general guideline in mind ....

 

As far as I can see Hero GMs are divided almost evenly among those who don't think caps are a good idea, and those who think they are a good idea but don't use them.

 

cheers, Mark

I think, and I could be wrong here, that that would be true in the case of absolute/hard caps vs. no caps, which may not be representative of what's going on. Soft caps are a real thing, and distinct from no caps, yes?

"Make whatever the heck you like" is clearly different from "These are the caps, and they shall not be exceeded." I humbly submit that it is also very different from "Here are the caps, let's talk if you want to do something outside of that."

No rules, Absolute rules and Guidelines are each useful, at least to my experience.

So, question. 

Is there a "fire" phase after the draw phase, or is the actual shot abstracted into the draw? Basically, if you win on the draw, you've won the duel?

Also, I'm not sure that the bluff opportunity is necessary; if two gunslingers face off at noon, arms akimbo, I don't think claiming self-defense is feasible. People have seen duels before, yes? I don't think anyone is going to be confused, they know what's happening. 

This is cool though. I'd be interested to hear how it shakes out in playtesting.

What's up, everybody? I don't know if I still count as "new" - I started with a flurry of posts - but I've definitely been lurking more since autumn hit. I'll chime in about play styles, rethinking various mechanics, and trying to be mindful of different viewpoints. Also, Papercraft. 

Anyway!

• How did you come up with your 'handle' (forum name)?
  
  • It's an alias that I've used, based on a V:tM character. I actually don't use it on the internet much; I went with it here because I was a little intimidated coming on to these forums, and didn't want a handle that I really use elsewhere just in case. This was incredibly needless - this is one of the most welcoming online communities I've encountered, RPG or otherwise - but by the time I'd realized that, I didn't want to change my handle and confuse people. 
    
  
  
• What was the first tabletop RPG you played?
  
  • D&D 3.0, a Dark Suns campaign. It was kind of a toxic atmosphere, very "make fun of the new kid for not knowing the rules/rolling low," but I loved it anyway. I'd also been playing RPGs through LARP for a year or two by that point, so it wasn't really my first RPG experience.
    
  
  
• What was the first tabletop RPG you GMed?
  
  • My roomate was running a Vampire: the Dark Ages campaign. He invited a bunch of people over for the first session, and then didn't show up. After waiting for an hour, he called me, gave me some sketchy details that I didn't write down, and said he'd be there soon. He was not there soon, so having very little idea what I was doing (I had not played any tabletop at this point), I gave it a shot. Went really well, much to my shock.
    
  
  
• What are you currently playing/GMing?
  
  • I'm GMing a game set in the Mass Effect universe, based (loosely at this point) on FFG's Star Wars engine, that's been going for a little under 3 years, and wrapping up soon.
    
  • I'm GMing a 1-player game for my S/O that's nominally set in Numenera, with a custom system (as she loathed Numenera's) that's heavily influenced by Planescape: Torment, and the unappreciated Nier.
    
  • I'm about to start playing in an L5R game (again, with a custom system, as the GM has tried every edition, and isn't satisfied with any of them), and I'm super stoked for that.
    
  
  

Slick.

Is that not what I was just describing? :-D

For sure! Just with a bunch of mechanics that I'm unfamiliar with. It is possible that it is very streamlined and elegant; I remain skeptical, but haven't seen this build in play.

I highly recommend that people check out Fantasy Flight's Star Wars game for how they handle minion groups. 

Basically, the group functions a lot like a single character, and as minions get taken out, the effectiveness of the group is diminished. It's really elegant there; I feel like it might be a giant pain to implement in Hero, but I could be wrong.

I've been running mooks more in accordance with Feng Shui or Savage worlds. I haven't done full detail modeling on every gun-toting thug in a supers romp, and I don't track details for them either. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that, but I find no value in those details.

So, most mooks can take a 1 solid hit. Maybe heavily armored mooks require a good hit, or two decent hits. Once they're down, they're down. People can deal with them post-combat, but they're not in the fight anymore.

Not saying it's the One True Way or anything, but that's how I deal with said "mook problem."

Also, too much time to make a decision can lead to over-analysis. Also, I'm not certain how much additional time helps with Chess. Unless you're a brute force algorithm, I'd have to think you'd hit diminishing returns pretty quickly.

(Addendum)

The more I think about it, the more I like Christopher's suggestion. You have some time to spend on things? Cool! Take 'dat extra time when applicable, and get that bonus. 

Nice and tidy.

Well, lemme take a look. I confess great curiosity.

I would say Jackie Estacado from The Darkness, but he's honestly just as likely to be the problem as to solve it.

Frankly, I'm down with pretty much anybody on the team, so long as they've got the support staff from Captain Britain and MI:13. Just imagining Blake and Dresden with that kind of a crime lab... whoo. I feel safer already.