TheDarkness

Alwin13 developed the musical theory that states that the more music you write, the less you can be Kenny G, but the theory was copied by Kenny G before publication.

I actually have, for gritty game, used a 'great death' factor for things usually handed out as heroic action points. In such cases, there were a variety of great deaths that could occur. Some might mean the character had hours to tie up loose strings(i.e. walk in on enemies eating dinner and take care of them, etc.) In some cases, it might mean they survived with injuries that would never heal. In all cases, they were guaranteed legendary status in the world and, if they lived, NPC status. This is for games where it is assumed you will have a couple back-up characters at all times, and was a way to keep things gritty for that game, while not making death all that bad. It would not be at all unusual for a newer character to get training from one of the crippled old legends that was actually a previous character.

Microsoft secretly measures when to release a new edition of windows based on the moment Bazza becomes resigned to the latest version.

I actually linked to that thread on this one, because I remembered our discussion. That said, I can't recall what page of this thread I did that on. Not too far back, I think, but I did have a three week vacation in which I didn't think of Hero. Okay, I'm lying. I had a three week super recovery built with a charge of once a year. Total munchkin build, but I'd do it again, given the chance. Unfortunately, my GM won't go for it. Worse, he keeps running the same campaign, day after day, and doesn't even provide snacks.

Bazza nightly dons his fedora to hunt hipsters.

Kaeto, ironically, has a sidekick names the Grain Hornet.

Is that the Gilbert Grape sequel? Is that even on film yet?

I think the last few weeks have put the last nails in the coffin of the theory that Trump actually is trolling everyone else. He's responding like he's been trolled at every turn. The idea that he is brilliantly distracting everyone from his main goals is entirely at odds with the fact that almost all his goals have faced trouble from both sides of the fence, and that he spends a huge amount of his energy on responding to every action, which is exactly what a troll doesn't do.

Alwin13 makes an excellent, if a tad dry, unicorn jerky.

And for the overall project of adapting the game approach. Experience has shown me that threads titled like this one means that over and over, people will come on asking for why bother to do this, or why do it this way. This thread could be the place where that might go on, while a thread titled "Fantasy D20 project Thread" or something like that, where it is clearly task oriented, would likely face less of that. After all, we already have notes within this thread from three different threads on the topic(with the other threads cited somewhere in this thread). If we had a central thread that all useful info was copied into or made its way into, it might make this all easier, and less good ideas will slip through the woodwork. Sweet Zeus, I'm sounding like a project manager! [scurries off and fills out the necessary paperwork to make his job look absolutely essential despite the entire project naturally occuring on its own without him]

I think putting the actual builds in an appendix is a great idea. On the issue of 'eventually, they need to know the system is complex, and if they don't want to deal with that, maybe it's not the system for them', I think, for gameplay, it is not that complex, it's builds that are complex, and there's nothing to preclude a player who wants prebuilds from playing, or, for a halfway point, to provide lists of prebuilt powers to choose from. Different gamers like different aspects, Hero's problem is that it cannot attract gamers who are not that big into long and complex character generation, but that generation is not the game itself, it is a product of making as flexible and balanced game as Hero. Ease that burden for them, and they can get to the fun play. Gameplay wise, any player playing a modern rpg(or D&D) is perfectly well prepared for the complexity level of game play in Hero. If THAT is too complex, then they probably aren't interested in rpgs in general. Further, prebuilds and prebuilt packages are perfectly playable with other Hero stuff. The only caveat is that they won't be quite as effective, given that they don't take advantage of every nuance, but that could be a motivator to delve more deeply into the system.

I think you have a lot of good points there, and my small experience on roll20 impressed me greatly. If I might, perhaps the group working on this, before going longer on a thread with a broader topic, might want to make a thread dedicated to the project to lessen that amount of side chatter and make one storage place for all the notes?

Older strains of Hero Syndrome may involve anger at the mention of figured characteristics and Elemental Controls. Make sure to talk to your GM or game store professional before taking Hero. Hero has been known to lead to guests eating your snack supplies in some users.

Isn't the answer usually alcohol related?

L. Marcus has been known to attend furry conventions as a lemur in a person costume.

Sounds like I was fortunate to have missed out on the fourth edition. After looking at how threads about Hero's virtues goes, I think it's fair to say that Hero gives us a convenient excuse to complain about D&D in as curmudgeonly a way as possible. That's at least one of the symptoms of Hero Syndrome. Summarizing real world phenomenon by what their points cost is, finding nine ways to build a flying winnebago, and complaining about other game systems are three of the main symptoms as far as I can tell. There is probably no cure. Usually symptoms get worse when someone says a system can also build a fruititarian mage whose magic mainly works on cheese, especially if the system given as an example doesn't really do that, but just has a stock fruititarian mage and a cheese psychokinesis(fromagisis?) system that in no way is the same as we clearly imagine such a thing to exist. Don't these people understand, we want precision in how our game represents our cheese magic?

I think the goal in that case is to have hero available to people who are not, out of the box, willing to or are ready to deal with full builds, which is a significant share of the market. Selling Hero as is presumes that it's necessarily possible to convince a significant number of people that, even though they don't want to spend that much time on character building pregame, they will or should. I don't think that way has worked. Conversely, I think that is a loss. One player may be incredibly elegant at builds, but poor or average at the game table. One player may tend towards the most unimaginative builds, but add good role play dynamics at the table. As is, the system does little to attract people who want to play, not build, and that loss is felt every time many people are trying to find a group to play with. Further, this is not zero sum. Largely, it seems those talking about 'powered by Hero' are planning their own or working in a group to develop this. More Hero products available does not take away from the core stuff, especially if some is more modest in production. If any of those more modest products gain some traction, yes, that might influence the decision making of the company itself, and then it might be an issue if the direction is at odds with the market.

One thing comes to mind. The technological society is early in that process, so they need lots and lots of workers. This could both explain why they do not divert population to learn magic in order to gain an advantage and why they are at odds with the magical land, due to the need for more workers and resources. Further, the assembly line idea is partially about replacability of each individual part, including its managers. Magic using beings are much harder to quantify, and the wrong one could make completely invalid a major industry, crashing the economy. Further, they could be aware that the use of magic may prevent them from having a motivation to find other, mass producable solutions to specific problems. And even further, they may be secretly be seeking the means to mass produce magic itself, or its effects, for consumption as well as for their own national needs. On the flip side, the magical society is dependent on mages, and thus, there would be huge social pressure from the guilds to not use technology to essentially decrease their share. Further, the dependence of the people on the bottom may be due to the need for magic. However, I do agree with a previous poster, making spell users too rare compared to engineers would make it hard to justify how they could hold an edge. Perhaps a better approach is simply that those able to muster the power to be directly valuable as human artillery on the battlefield are rare, but that those able to protect crops, heal, or otherwise have a niche role in a community or organization, are much much more common. Further, the ability of those who can heal to prevent plagues would give them a reason their population isn't dwarfed by the early industrial nation despite being feudal. However, there is one thing that, even if magic remains uncommon, would make up the difference between the magical society's mages and the ability of the technological society to produce large amounts of engineers. Scrying. Seeing into the planning rooms of the technological society. If you know where your enemy plans to move before they do so, this means you also know where your defenses need to be or where is open to attack.The magical society would have an enormous advantage in this area, that cannot be overstated. As far as the blended nation, they become hard to believe in if they are not, at the stage of the story, significantly smaller than the other two. At that point, why they don't control the world, even by way of peaceful or economic takeover, is a huge question. However, if they are a bit like Israel, small but higher 'tech' than their neighbors, and that the area of buffer between the other two is largely geographic barriers like mountains, rivers, and seas, with a narrow area that they occupy that happens to be the only easy land route between the other two, this makes a more believable delicate balance of power, where they are a powerful enough group to make either of the others think twice to mess with, but in a place where there's a fairly high motivation for either of the others to mess with nonetheless. This would also explain their mixing of the two, they had no choice.

During WWII, Bazza gave up the dream of being an evil mad genius for his brief career in advertising because people kept assuming he was a nazi mad genius due to his death ray that selectively targeted people without the letter z in their name, the Not-Z Death Ray. Unfortunately, his advertising company went under after he was asked to market Actress and Dancer Peggy Ryan for product promotion, leading to the equally ill-named and ill-fated Peggy's Prosthetics.

In the old west, Cancer once shot a man just for building a flashlight using stretching and immaterial with a visible effect too loud.

Would a picture help?

If we were capable of closure, would we need the colostomy bags?

This is a lot of what some of us have been talking about for awhile. There is a thought that came from it of games 'powered by Hero', essentially using the Hero system to design games that would then draw more players into the full system. So, instead of focusing on complex build mechanics, provide lists of premade powers, skillsets, etc, whose mechanics are put in English instead of Hero build accounting, but whose actual builds would be readily available online in pdf format, this sort of thing. The play itself is not as complex, and would be shown fully. Since fantasy is a large share of the market, this is an avenue that would work well for it. Now, one thing I tend to think is that, as much as possible, lots of modifiers should be avoided for these builds, as modifiers that can play into combat are fairly numerous in Hero. For example, Combat Skill Levels can add a lot of complexity to play in combat, so builds where they are not readily shuffled, but are tied to OCV, DCV, or DC specifically, in order to simplify game play, would make it simpler for the new players, even if later, availability of CSLs that can be shuffled are added in. In essence, such games would be entirely compatible with any other Hero game in genre, while GMs who, as you say, later are going to want more complexity and the ability to add elements without breaking balance will be drawn to the full Hero system.

When we're purposefully being vague?

He spins his panendromedary at the end of every day to see if he's in the real quote.