Brian Stanfield

And one more thing: I don’t even have to look at the Cyberpunk books to know which illustrations you did. I can already tell just by looking at the Teenagers from Outer Space book. You know, there are a couple of illustrations in those books that I’ve always had in the back of my mind, but could never remember where they cam from! Great stuff! They really stuck with me. This is convinces me even more why HERO needs to put out superior art with its publications, because it really does affect the way we remember the books and how we engage them aesthetically.

You know what’s funny? I have a really good friend that I’ve known for many years, and he teaches art at the college where I teach. I’ve always loved his work, and when I was toying with the idea of doing a Fantasy HERO Lite booklet a couple years ago I asked him if he could do a few illustrations to fill the white spaces. He said sure, no problem, he’s done a lot of odd jobs for a lot of game companies. Huh? I didn’t realize that! Which ones? It turns out he did a lot of work for TSR and Wizards of the Coast, including D&D, and more importantly he did some of the earliest Magic: the Gathering cards! He still gets flown all over the world to do card signings! How did I know this guy for almost twenty years and never know this?!

Yup, and the main reason I didn't make it to your Cereal Killers session was because I was in the other one at the same time! I really regret not seeing your costume or your cereal boxes. Truly brilliant!

That's a good reminder! Thanks for that. On a different note, I literally just took a book off of my game shelf two minutes ago and found your illustrations in it! Teenagers from Outer Space, if you remember that far back. I was actually going for my copy of Toon after playing that at Origins last week, and TOS was right next to it so I flipped through it and your name popped right out at me! Totally crazy serendipity! What else have you done?

The Amorphous Blob guys ran a Toon adventure called Cereal Killers as well. I was in that one, and played Snap, Crackle & Pop, a sort of three-headed hero. It was truly a ton of fun. I hope yours worked out as well.

Yup, it's part of what got me thinking, and the other thread on what can be borrowed from other games. So the point buy system is what originally sold me on Champions, and then Fantasy HERO when it came out. It was the first time I'd ever seen anything like it. It may be old-school now, but I still have an affection for it. It still is a novel idea for my friends who only play D&D, which, with it's renaissance has brought a lot of new gamers into the fold who have never heard of something like HERO System. It's crunchy, as you say, but it's also what attracted me to it in the first place, so I won't cut that out. But I do give my new players pre-gens so they don't have to figure it all out right away. They'll be anxious to make their own characters soon enough. The 3d6, roll under mechanic has always seemed a bit odd to me. We're all used to rolling high to succeed. Nat 20 is deep in the psyche of D&D players. But what I learned to love about the roll under mechanic is that higher target numbers are good, and modifiers are added to the target numbers, not the dice roll, so it is easy to understand what the target is, and what you need to roll under. I hate games that modify the die roll because it gets confusing (and maybe that's just something left over from the '80s; maybe nobody modifies the die roll anymore, but it at least used to be a thing, a very confusing thing). Anyway, once you get used to it, it makes a lot of sense. It's not uniquely HERO, but HERO was one of the innovators of the mechanic, so that stays too (at least for me). HERO System Basic Rulebook for 6e gives a stripped down list of combat maneuvers, so it's simpler while still maintaining a lot of options to make it seem open-ended enough for new players to identify what they want to do. I'll introduce new maneuvers in eventually (Yes, @Duke Bushido, even martial arts maneuvers because my players are martial artists and it makes them feel like they're doing something cool [even if it's only an illusion: the maneuvers aren't really all that different from each other, but it makes them feel cool and let's face it, that's what really counts!]). I can see why you'd say that the character creation is a bit of a red herring, if I understand your meaning. In reality, I spent a lot of time making characters for my players so they didn't have to figure stuff out just yet, but most of what I put on their sheets won't come into play very often. I love the idea of building anything you can imagine, but in game play this often doesn't look as varied as you'd think it would. They're all basically choosing from the same handful of maneuvers in a heroic campaign, so whether it's a knife, a bow, a sword, a gun, or a fist, it really all kinda resolves about the same. With no armor in a Pulp HERO campaign there's even less to figure out in terms of damage and hit locations. However, the character creation is where the players can really invest in their characters, and the process of building them, even if it's a bit over-emphasized in HERO, is still fun for them.

I forgot to mention this: in my most recent group, I gave everyone a folder at the first game session which contains: A pre-gen character that I built based on session zero and our group discussion of the characters they want to play. The “HERO in two pages” document. It’s really a pretty concise summary of the game mechanics. I also gave each player the introduction to the 6e HERO System Basic Rulebook that I printed out from the PDF. It’s a little more detailed than the 2-page document, but in 10 pages covers the character sheet and the game mechanics in a little more detail. If they feel adventurous, they can read this for more depth. They aren’t required to read this, but I encourage them to at least look it through. Ten pages, Duke! Beat that! I also have a bunch of playing aids, mostly from the downloads section of hero games.com, and I laminated them all so that they can mark on them and stuff. Seriously, the laminator is a game changer for a GM!!! And it’s so cheap nowadays that it’s insane not to get one. I don’t own any stock in any laminator companies, but you should all go to Amazon right now and order one!

By the way, is it just me, or does the 6e combat roll description seem completely bass ackwards? 11 + OCV - DCV = your target roll or under. This seems intuitively obvious as long as you know what OCV and DCV mean. You roll the dice to see if you hit. Simple. 11 + OCV - your dice roll = the DCV you can hit, or less, is exactly the same formula but I’ve found it’s almost impossible to explain to someone new to the system. You roll the dice to. . . do what? Take away from my OCV? Why do I want to do that? What is my target number I’m trying to hit? Hell, I’m confusing myself just writing this out! I can write out the two formulae and show them to be equivalent, but one is clearly more intuitive than the other. I can appreciate that the second version (the 6e version) doesn’t reveal the target’s DCV, and for advanced players it may be meaningful to hide the DCV. But in all reality, I don’t care if the players know the DCV because a clever player will figure it out in a couple of rolls anyway. In fact, I want new players to know the DCV so they can u detest and how the combat rolls work. Has has anyone come up with a better way to teach the combat rolls? Also, have you come up with a good way to keep track of the OCV/DCV modifiers for maneuvers and such from phase to phase? New players forget the modifiers on their CVs after their phase. When they get attacked they forget to subtract their DCV, or halve it, or whatever. Or they forget they are on the ground after a fall or something, which modifies their CV. I had this idea of using a card with OCV and DCV printed on it, and use colored dice to remind them of the modifiers, but this might be a bit too fiddly. Any good hints on how to keep track of this?

No worries. I woke up a bit grumpy and found some posts in a couple of forums to be off point and less than helpful. Not yours so much, but it wasn’t a bad idea to perhaps restate my question in more concise form. I have a tendency to lose my point in the midst of rambling.

Ok, so for my own edification, and because I've never used a dice pool before, what do you do with those dice? Are they used to replace other dice in a roll? So if you have 12 dice in your pool and remove all the 6s when you roll, and you have, say, 9 left over, do you use those dice to replace "bad" dice in a roll?

Guys, this isn't a discussion about which edition is best. That's a different thread. Please go argue on that one. My question is edition-neutral. It doesn't matter which edition you're using, my question is still the same: how much can you simplify the rules (primarily for teaching purposes) without losing the game itself? This is also not a discussion about what can be borrowed and inserted into HERO games from other systems. If you go back an look at the original post, I'm only using a rules-lite game as an instructive tool, not as the end goal of this discussion. So let me restate: if I can learn another roleplaying game in one evening, or learn and play it in one 4 hour game session at a convention, what can I take from that experience in order to simplify HERO enough to teach to beginners?

There is a gaming group at Origins that hosts a lot of events, and every year they have at least on Champions game based on the 3e rules. They're quick and easy to play, and since it's a convention game the players don't have to learn many of the rules, and what they do learn is pretty standard for every edition of the game. It made me look at teaching the game a whole lot differently: simplicity is best, at least at the beginning. I showed my new players the Basic Rulebook for exactly the reason you say: to avoid the freakout of the monstrous two volumes! So the question at hand, to get back to the original post, is how far can you pare things down when presenting the rules?

Take a look at something like Gnome Stew online, which is a gaming blog that discusses these issues. You may find something you like, and may find some games that are interesting to you. There are also many gaming podcasts out there. Many of the people from Gnome Stew are on misdirectedmark.com, which offers a variety of podcasts discussing these sorts of issues. They also have a lively online/social media presence, which may give you an idea of where gaming is headed these days.

Champions in 3-D is a great place to start. The PDF is available, and the actual book is still available in the store (I had to double check: it’s rare for a book that old to still be available). It will most definitely spark your imagination.

Damn! I like that you liked it for me, but now you can’t like yourself for me that I liked that you liked it. A viscous circle!

I’m out of “likes” for the day, so I guess I’m forced to feel “meh” about your post . . . I am secretly waiting for this moment to arrive. I won’t push it, but I’m hoping some folks buy into it at this level. I will let them use my Hero Designer on my computer, but I really want them to buy their own books and software eventually. But that’ll be farther down the road. Right now, I’m just hoping for emotional buy-in.

I’m fond of the point build approach, maybe simply out of habitat this point. But it’s also what drew me into Fantasy HERO and away from AD&D back in the ‘80s, and it’s what I now use to entice current D&D players into the system. It’s at least an idea that intrigues people. The crunch is problematic though. As I wrote above, I give my new players a soft pre-gen so they can learn the rules, and then rebuild them later. I also give them an incomplete build so they can add things as they learn what’s useful for their vision of their characters. I started a thread a month or so ago about using Resource Pools for things like Skills, languages, Perks, and equipment, and some people lost their minds over it. Sure, it’s a liberal application of the Resource Points rule, but like you suggest, it makes sense to give the characters a certain amount of flexibility from game session to game session so they don’t have to have it all figured out ahead of time. From my viewpoint, it’s a balance between the spirit of HERO System and the flexibility of narrative gaming. I’m also a big fan of the Quick Character Generator in the Champions books (both 5e and 6e) because they play with the idea of archetypes and roughly balanced builds with a minimum of crunchiness. The new Character Creation Cards are another great example of that approach. I think they could easily be built for other genres as well, especially Fantasy HERO.

I love the hit locations, and will implement them in the second combat (or third, depending) to show the versatility of the game. There’s no armor in my Pulp HERO campaign, so no concerns with the bookkeeping for that stuff, but I have always loved the way Fantasy HERO allows for sectional armor in a way that makes a real difference. I think this rule alone would sell many of my fantasy-playing friends, if I could only convince them to give up D&D for just a few game sessions!

Me too. In fact, this pretty much sums up the reason for posting this topic, except right now my % split is probably the reverse of yours since I’m new to the narrative games. But my imagination is totally sparked by their possibility. What I’m looking right now is a way to teach the game with a minimal amount of “book learning” for my players. I want to say, “Tell me what you want to do and I’ll figure it out for you” in such a way that they don’t have to worry about the rules, since I’ll do the worrying, but to also teach them the rules as I go. I guess my internal struggle is to decide how much they really need to peek behind he curtain to enjoy themselves. Part of me wants to encourage them to just tell the story and roll dice when I tell them to, but part of me also wants them to learn when and why to make their rolls. I suppose this is the real art of GMing that we all need to figure out for ourselves and our groups. I want them to have fun, but also to learn. For now, I think the most important part is to get them invested in their characters and the story. Hopefully they’ll want to learn the rules once we get going.

For me, I decided to use Pulp HERO to teach new players for the following reasons: Heroic level games don’t require an understanding of powers at all, which is the most intimidating part of learning the game. There is a level of realism that everyone is familiar with, but also enough naïveté to make weird things possible without requiring arguments over their reasonableness. There’s science, but it’s weird science. There’s world traveling, but the destinations are weird enough that we don’t have to question their reality. I’m using the HERO System Basic Rulebook for 6e to minimize the special and complex rules. There are plenty of maneuvers and skills available in the basic rules to make for a fun game without adding too much confusion. We created characters at a “session zero” where everyone came up with character ideas that fit well together, then I designed the full characters for them. I’ll let them learn the rules first before I expect them to build characters. This is a really big deal to me, since effective character design really depends on some sense of how the rules work, especially in HERO. There are lots of debates over whether figured characteristics give new players a baseline to build from, etc. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a fan of the 6e rules and don’t find any real problem with internal consistency of the Characteristics. The bigger problem, to me, is not what the proper levels of CV are, since a new player doesn’t really know what that means anyway. I’ll make their characters, let them learn the rules by throwing them in a whole array of representative encounters, and then give them soft rebuilds after a few sessions once they get a feel for how it all fits together. The most basic encounters I cover in the first session or two are perception rolls, basic skill resolution, PRE attacks (a truly unique aspect of HERO that new players under-utilize), and a simple combat. Because it’s a heroic level game, the combat is pretty quick and straightforward with small modifiers and fewer dice of damage.

So if I get this correctly, there are team chits as a result, that can be used by the players, I'm assuming with the group's consent, so retroactively "plan" for "The Plan"? (By the way, I just started a new thread related to this that I think you probably have a lot to contribute to)

Ok, so this is perhaps a high concept question, or a meta-meta-question, coming from a couple of other questions I've been wrestling with. Here's the back-story: There have been a lot of discussions in the forums where the issue of rules accuracy vs. narrative convenience have come up ("simulation" vs. "narrative," or "complexity" vs. "rules-lite," for example). Usually these issues are not fundamental to the topic being discussed, and are eventually passed over. But I'm curious, as a concept in itself, about how many rules we actually need to play a HERO game and have it still be a HERO game. At Origins last week I experienced my first narrative based, rules-lite game (Hydro Hacker Operatives, run by the designer). I created a character in 5 minutes and played a 3 hour game with a very small learning curve. I had a lot of fun, and didn't have any different experience, ultimately, than when I play HERO games. Likewise, I also was in a couple of HERO games at Origins with some new players who were completely baffled by the complexity of the rules. They were able to play along, but I'm not sure some of them were ever really aware of what was going on (in terms of the game mechanics, not the stories). I also bought FATE Accelerated, just out of curiosity, and felt like I learned how to play the entire game in a very short amount of time when I read the rules. It made me wonder (and this issue has been debated to death already) how much I could simplify the HERO System rules in like fashion. As a person who is trying to teach HERO to a group of new players (a Pulp HERO campaign), I'm fascinated with how much one can simplify a HERO System game without completely making the HERO rules irrelevant. I'm fully aware that, as the GM, I can make it as complex or easy as I deem, so I'm not looking for the obvious "it's a toolbox, do what you feel" answer. I'm curious what people have taken from the rules-lite, narrative games and applied to HERO games to make them easier to learn and more approachable for people who've never played with the HERO System before. This is going to seem like a repetitive question that comes up way too frequently, but in all honesty I'm not looking for a hypothetical discussion of what could be done. I'm looking for some actual experiences of what has been done from different experienced GMs. What ideas have you borrowed from other games, and how far have you pared down the rules without completely losing the HERO System altogether? I realize this is a question of taste, so I'm not looking to debate whose taste is better. I'm just looking for some "actual play" examples of what has been done so I can learn from your collective wisdom.

Just for clarity's sake on my part (I may have read right past your explanation), are the luck chits gained for the whole team based on the single "Plan" roll, or individually for each of their pre-plan rolls? In other words, is the ninja using a chit that belongs to the whole team based on their "Plan" roll, or his own chit based on how well he succeeded at inserting himself into the infiltration site? By the way, thanks for reaching out to me at Origins! I love finally putting faces to names!