TheDarkness

Weren't we only keeping de heads?

Do I look like I've been to Texas?

Death Tribble once organized the world's largest mounted baby cow brigade, the twefth Calvary.

Is that what they call it in Helsinki?

All right, I've concluded the Combat section with a page on normal damage, END use, and getting stunned.  Then there's an Appendix: that has a quickie guide to building magic systems and how to modify the game to capture various combat tones.  To ground people trying to find some basis for comparison, I've also placed the Characteristic Comparison chart there along with two monsters taken from the Hero Bestiary (I didn't want to use more because of copyright concerns; I think this is enough to get across the general idea of what a monster looks like without straying over the bounds of fair use).  I end with a bunch of links to product.

 

I think I'll call it a day here, unless anyone makes a good case for how something important is missing.  Some things discussed earlier -- even ones I thought might be good and was thinking of adding -- I decided to drop as the idea for the project evolved.  I want this to be a sort of general guide to how Fantasy Hero broadly works and what it can do, not a guide to how to specifically read or use Fantasy Hero Complete, even if it can't help but be that a bit since it draws on that book's material.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/357573/Fantasy%20Hero%20Primer.pdf

 

I'm also contacting the artists to see if they'll let me use their pieces for free distribution; I want to have that before I upload this to the Hero Games site proper.

And, in case I haven't mentioned it, damn fine job!

Sorry to use such strong language...

The great Martin McKenna (http://www.martinmckenna.net), of Fighting Fantasy, M:tG and other awesome art fame, just confirmed that I have permission to use his images in the pdf.  So that secures most of the art used in it right now.

 

 

Sorry, I'm not clear on exactly what you're referring to.  What pages or material should go where?  What do you mean by "the powers"?

I think he means the full builds, versus the narrative description of the power. The full builds(the crazy Hero accouning) in the appendix, while the main sections have the text description of what it does.

Hermit has been calling it the uncaps lock all this time, and wonders everyday why everyone online is yelling at him so quietly...

Celebrate it with a pineapple pizza?

For a long time we had a floating NPC character that was in a lot of our games, whatever the genre: Bacis Tira.  He was a very generic character for whatever the game setting was and had a pretty basic set of disads that made him easy to play for anyone who'd drop by or wanted to try out the game.  It worked really well.  Bacis was a drifter, he could show up at any time, but the next day he was gone.  He was not critical to the game but fit in well.  It always worked well for him to show up almost anywhere at any time because that's just what he was like.

So not the champion eternal, but the sidekick eternal.

Actually, an interesting concept. I witness to the mutliverse of history...

Ooh! What about some nefarious attempt to stop the conquistadors and establish an enduring bloody Aztec Empire, drawing on dark magic and human sacrifice.

 

It presents a difficult dilemma of whether to allow the atrocities of the Conquistadors and the massive death rates versus the ongoing evil of a horrific religion.

 

All the interferers seek to do is immunise the population to a few common diseases and a bit of iron working. They hope numbers will do the rest...

 

Maybe conquistador iron also interferes with Aztec magic, they may just tell the priests how to get round that bit and let fell magic win...

I thought the aztecs were in decline and the Mayans were the more likely winners of something preventing the conquistadors from doing what they did. Maybe I have that backwards.

Don't listen to Cancer. Do it!

I call no way on the range issue.  I can hit a coffee can at 50m no problem at all.  My dad used to get deer all the time at longer ranges than that with a musket, and he's not even that great a hunter.

I think the range stats listed can be misleading.

A lot of engagements have a range defined not by the rifle's capabilities, but by the distance at the time the firefight starts. In jungle and urban settings, whoever initiates the combat has a great capacity to force the shooting to start at point blank range.

Further, hunting is a bit different. A good hunter stalks their prey and fires on a commonly non-moving, unaware target, usually not under appreciable cover, and most often not attacking.

Shooting something that is attacking is a whole different ballgame. I forget the name of the statistic, but within 21 feet, statistically speaking, knives have tended to be deadlier in actual cases of gun vs. knife scenarios. Combat situations do a number on aim possibly being one of the factors, although drawing the weapon itself is an issue as well. Adrenaline dump is far more a factor in combat scenarios than in hunting scenarios.

Hunting accuracy is closest to the skill of a sniper not under fire aiming at a target. It is not a good measure for firing under other combat situations, no one shoots as well when being fired upon as when not being fired upon unless they are simply aiming and not caring about whether they are shot.

Regardless, modern firearms are more accurate at further ranges.

Actually ... how do you know that? Have you ever seen a female of his species?

You know, I haven't, now that you mention it. Perhaps I'd best just not invite him over on pasta primavera night.

No, Yoda, you may not 'do' the pasta primavera. But if you'd like to try it...

Your relationship has no chemistry. Anyone listening to any of your conversations can see this.

Leave Annakin now.

Seasick Steve, the Banjo Song

Michael Caine will someday play your role in the celebrated drama, The Wonton Poisoner.

And here I am, fresh out of Likes for the day.

 

I think Tomorrowland is one of the most important movies of the past decade precisely because of the monologue you quoted.

I literally just watched the first episode of Laurie and Lewis, and there is a skit in there about a man going to a bookstore looking for a book on a soccer team from another country, and, when getting the book, finds it's almost empty of pages, at which point there is a long argument about the merits of that country's soccer team, at which the bookstore owner questions his patriotism because he claims the British lost to the country in question, and no true Englishman would ever say such a thing.

I realized that I am now living in that skit.

It's much funnier than my description of it, mind you. I'm no good without a studio audience.

With an occasional David Lynch scene in a Russian hotel room.

Don't you forget about me.

Yes, you and I were antagonists in those discussions.  I was coming from first edition Fantasy Hero, where the play style was pretty specific, and FH for 4th edition was more or less trying to continue the style.  I couldn't imagine why you'd want to play what were essentially superheroes in a heroic genre.  I honestly thought that the default mode of play was what it said in the book; that's what I was interested in, and still am.  That's really why I wrote my Low Heroic guidelines.  (Edited to add:  If it matters, I don't feel the same way; I totally get it that there are lots of different play styles.  If you're having fun, it's all good.)

 

That said, I still wish I could find people running the kinds of games I want to play in, but I hope there are no hard feelings. 

Just read your guidelines earlier today, nice, practical, and succinct. I found it helpful.

That said, I have no cash to give you.

I tend to like above zero to a respectable level as a starting point. I pretty early got burnt on epic level. I find that the meaning of the monsters gets pretty badly warped at exactly the level where the characters can easily kill a dragon. I suspect it's my own genre expectations, there's really not a lot of the genre that goes that way outside of gaming.

I don't care for zero as a start unless everyone is on board with a fair percentage of the party dying, because they probably will, super low points don't have a lot of skills or powers to mitigate their dying, and if they just get to automatically live, well, we've all done that a thousand times, need we repeat?

That said, to relate this to D&D, playability, I think about sixth level was the sweet spot where game play seemed to work best in keeping with the genre.

Grrr, another reply just got eaten. Type again...

As Womble pointed out, in other games, it is not uncommon for non-magic weapons to have little utility against some creatures.

I think the question of why guns aren't dominant can, as easily, turned into an argument of why they shouldn't be.

Hunters typically have to move away from safe, populated areas to find game. If that means deeper into the forest, into the mountains, then this is also the type of environment that some bad, bad things may be in. Will hunters want a big loud stick to kill deer and draw attention to themselves in the wild, a big loud stick that will likely be no use if something bad comes, when they could opt for a quiet bow? Probably not.

Given that all a magic that stops guns in an area effect needs to do is stop sparks, this should really be a cheap spell.

What leader will put heavy weight into gun production when his rivals will be using creatures who cannot be harmed that way and using wizards who can make the guns useless before they get into range?

Magic armor that can stop bullets would likely render a bow obsolete.  A magic bow that can penetrate magic armor when a gun can't ... would  likely render a gun obsolete.

 

I think you get the point: there's a rock, paper, scissors thing going on with the projectile technologies as they relate to the armor technologies -- one that magic likely can't resolve.  (In fact, it would likely only change what is a rock, what is paper, and what are scissors ... without actually solving the dilemma?)

Taking this to another place, the presence of a wizard being able to, fairly cheaply, have an area of effect spell that merely stops sparks effectively renders guns, in that set of circumstances, useless, while leaving guns quite useful when a wizard is not present. When one is present, bows and armor are still highly useful.

This would be a rock paper scissors in which the actual rules of the game change based on circumstances.

Further, one could have enchanted places that have such magic in place from the get-go. Meaning, if going to such places, guns will not avail you.

On another issue, I'd have a bit of a hard time as a GM allowing someone to buy off the inherent inaccuracy of many versions of pre-modern firearms. A little of it, sure, but wholesale making it as accurate as a modern firearm would need an explanation, one that would probably end up being magic or telekinesis. Likewise, I wouldn't allow completely buying off the reload time without another such explanation. That's not the province of a skill, that's a power. But that's probably just me.

If there's magic, armoor still may have a role.