Brian Stanfield

Try this: See if it gets you what you want. It's like the stat blocks in the 5e books. Spence also uploaded one that's exactly like the character sheet in the back of the books as well.

Have you looked at the downloads section of herogames.com? There are a bunch of different templates there. I don't know exactly where I got mine, come to think of it, but I suspect this is where they came from.

Ok, so I'm drawing from some personal experience when I ask this question: when I was a kid and was training pretty seriously in the martial arts, I learned how to breakfall, but also how to roll out of a breakfall, just like the HERO rules describe it. This sort of realism was one of the things that drew me to the rules in the first place. But I also learned to roll as a way to advance to attack (like a half move before a strike), but also, and this is where I have a question, I learned how to roll and pick up an object, such as a weapon, mid-roll and use it as part of the attack. Is there a maneuver I'm not seeing that allows for this in HERO? I realize there are all sorts of interesting ways I could create this with a power, but I want to first exhaust the possibility of there being a maneuver that I'm overlooking, or one that can be applied in a way that I haven't thought of yet. Breakfall is really darned close, but not quite it. I need a "breakfall plus." Any ideas?

That’s just flat out mean!

@Surrealone: how strict are you about having to declare what you are holding your action for? In other words, is it enough to get to cover and then declare, "I'll wait until I see an opening"? Or do you have to make a more specifically delineated declaration, as the rules always suggest (as in, wait until your opponent comes into view, etc.)? Your tactic is very effective, but I always get called out for not actually declaring what I'm holding for, so I'm never allowed to sit and wait while also holding an action.

I had an aikido instructor who used to say, "There's nothing more embarrassing than getting your nose broken by your own arm."

And that, my friends, is why we play these games!

I’ve never played Fate, so I’m not familiar with this method. So you’re suggesting each player gets a scene which involves one of the other players? So everyone is the star of one scene, and the guest-star of a second scene?

Sorry to bother you. The hcm.jar file wasn’t showing up in step 4 after I unzipped the installer. I deleted everything, downloaded the hcm-package.zip again, and unzipped it in a different directory and it worked just fine. I’m not sure why, but it’s all good now. The only thing I can think of is that I have all my HERO system files in a HERO directory, and I unzipped the hcm-package in a Hero Combat Manager folder, which may have confused the installer. Other than that, I’m not sure what was going on. Thanks for your prompt response.

I finally got around to unzipping HCM 1.12 today, and there is no hcm.jar file in the folder. Everything else is there as listed in the ReadMe file, just no .jar file. Am I doing something wrong? I have a Mac, and had an older version from your previous installer located in my Applications folder, but I forgot to uninstall it. Do you think that's causing an issue with the new version? I went back and uninstalled it properly, and then deleted everything, restarted the computer, and tried to unzip again, but still the same result: no hcm.jar file. Please help! Sorry I waited so long to get around to doing this . . .

Does anyone know if there’s a 3 column 6e export template for HERO Designer in .RTF and not HTML?

So I was looking at Pulp HERO and it specifically says that the Empire Club is in both New York City and Hudson City, but no explanation as to why. (The other locations are San Francisco, London, Hong Kong, and Delhi) As Lord Liaden points out, Hudson City is on the south Jersey Shore, which puts it less than 100 miles away from NYC. Can anyone come up with a rationale as to why this is the case, since the other clubs are thousands of miles apart from each other? I'm not complaining, for the reasons I listed above. But I know one of my players will ask me. . . Perhaps @Steve Long could chime in on the rationale if you have a moment and are so inclined? Maybe you also have a hint as to where to locate the Empire Club within Hudson city?

Thanks for that. I never would have caught that little box.

I like that!

Nice catch. I never noticed the references to southern New Jersey, although I had coincidentally selected a spot right where you're describing, either at Mullica River or Absecon Creek. I haven't decided yet. There's also a few spots along the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia coast that are relatively empty, although that's getting a little far south. By the way, where are the references to New Jersey? I'd like to take a look at them so I can be responsible for what they say.

Oh, you know what? The way it's worded threw me off. The Empire Club is in a large building, in the second, third and fourth floors, with his private quarters on "the fourth floor," not a fourth floor. My mistake. I read it too quickly and still had the brownstone in mind, so I inserted an illicit fourth floor. Although that's not such a bad idea. If I had private quarters, I'm not sure I'd want them on a floor with other boarders. Thoreau is rolling in his grave.

Broken parts of other weapons of opportunity that didn't hold up! (Table leg, broken shard of anything, etc.)

True enough, but it occupies 4 floors: two for the club, 1 for guest quarters, and 1 for Darius Stoner's private residence. It also suggests that it could be in a brownstone, which is maybe what I have been envisioning all along by accident. By the by, where do you locate Hudson City? I was thinking Connecticut, but that would require the map to be turned 90 degrees to match the coastline, and I don't want to try to figure out how to finagle the compass rose on the map. So maybe just replace Newark? But that's so close to New York that it seems silly to have two Empire Clubs. Perhaps I keep it in New York and replace Newark with Hudson City and just make the short drive to NYC whenever the club is needed. In all honesty, though, I wanted to set everything in Hudson City so that I wouldn't have to try to figure out a good map for NYC, and could just use the one for H.C. for everything.

Good choice! I've got the original Justic, Inc. books, so I have all of the information I need. I just don't know the neighborhoods of Hudson City so well yet. I'm looking for something equivalent to what it would be in New York City. I'm looking at your intersection, and just down the road where 20th bends into N. Jackson St. there is an odd lot of land that seems like the perfect candidate for an exclusive adventurers club owned by a millionaire.

By the way, I started a thread in the Pulp HERO section, but since I have your attention here: Where in Hudson City would you place the Empire Club? Both the club and the city are going to be "home base" for the characters, at least to begin with.

Since the map is so extensive, and the electronic version is so darned useful, I'm going to base my campaign in Hudson City, but I also want to use the Empire Club as a plot device and a home base for the players. So, where in Hudson City would you locate the Empire Club? I've seen a couple of references to Hudson City in the 5e Pulp Hero supplements, but nothing in the Hudson City book itself. I'm not sure what makes the most sense for placement. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Ha! I'm sorry for your time in purgatory. But I appreciate the back seat GM-ing. So, to see if I'm clear on this, if I have 6 players, you're suggesting 3 prequels where they meet? All the players can watch each prequel as a group, and maybe give input as we go? This seems like a great opportunity to micromanage the teaching of the game: Scene 1 is the Skill Roll scene where the two players maybe to a Skill vs. Skill challenge. Scene 2 could be maybe a Presence attack to stop a pickpocket or something. Scene 3 could be a scuffle where a few punches are thrown. I could even have a Scene 4 where they all sort of run together so they all meet . . . . Or maybe that's too much meet-cute for one night. But see what you think of this: each character is given a mysterious invitation from some Mr. X of some sort to meet at a particular place. Maybe Mr. X actually rigs the paired meetings to see how they will react while he, of course, secretly watches from the shadows. Each pairing will lead to them eventually learning of each other's invitation. The three pairings then meet at the Empire Club, where Mr. X is a benefactor to their becoming members. They are then all brought together to accomplish some task to judge their worthiness for membership. Something like that. Thanks for the idea! Back seat GM all you want! I'm just thrilled that all my players are on board with this genre! I need to start a raffle on who becomes the first Nazi puncher . . . .

There's obviously not a definite answer to your question, as in "No! You can't do that!" I'm actually interested to see what you find out with your experiment. But I'll just throw in a couple of observations, for whatever they're worth. In D&D there's a bit of transparency, mostly because everyone has the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook, so they already know what the numbers are, even if they aren't supposed to peek. But from the side of someone who was in a 5e game where I didn't have any of the books, I know I was frustrated no knowing how a witches' coven worked. Our group's challenge seemed insurmountable, and we spent two weeks in abject angst trying to find a way to beat them. We eventually did! If we had known the rules ahead of time, we probably could have beaten them a lot sooner without any bit of worry. But also no sense of accomplishment either. Not knowing actually did increase the dramatic tension, at least in this particular situation. There is a certain value in being able to fudge numbers when you need to, especially with new players. Again, in the situation above, my buddy was running the 5e encounter and fudged some of numbers so we didn't get our rear ends handed to us. It might make sense for players to have Knowledge Skills about certain types of enemies, such as orcs or whatever, and have "standard" stats for them to refer to. But for rare encounters, or special enemies, it seems like a player wouldn't know the specifics of what's coming. Giving them stats for a 1000 point dragon ahead of time may give them an advantage, but if they're not ready for the challenge, then it's probably not time to give them that kind of challenge yet. I guess the key is to decide how much of the world the players should know without having to learn about it. Heck, if they go to Ye Olde Fantasy Librarie to look in the encyclopedia of dragons, then they have justification to have the stats. But if they are encountering their first dragon ever, why take the fun of uncertainty away from them? Make them earn their knowledge of the dragon, perhaps through several encounters. They may have to run away the first few times, which only makes the final encounter feel like a real success. But again, that's just a narrative concern, and doesn't necessarily apply to your campaign. So, on this, I had this specific kind of encounter a few days ago in my gaming group. It was Betrayal at House on the Hill, not a role playing game, but the similarities are close enough. The players uncovered a dragon as their haunting, and had to run around trying to find certain mystical items to help them fight the dragon. This was all they knew. They needed the items, and didn't know anything about the dragon. I was the dragon, and chased them down one at a time and killed them. At one point, one of the players pretty much summed up everyone's frustration when she exclaimed, "Damn! How much damage can this thing take?!" I cornered the last player, and after a couple of tries, she actually was able to kill the dragon. It was a sense of accomplishment for everyone, even though most of them died. I tell this story for this reason: if I had told them ahead of time everything about the dragon, they would have been a lot less worried. It had a number of hit points equal to the number of players, and reduced every attack's damage by two. They didn't know any of this, although they easily figured out how much damage it could deal. This is obviously not the same as an RPG like Fantasy HERO, but it does seem instructive: not knowing made the encounter more frightening and challenging, as well as more rewarding. YMMV Regardless, let us know how your experiment goes. I'd love to hear precisely because it's not standard RPG form. Good luck!

Three legs?! Luxury . . . (Sorry to derail your thread!)

In a hobbit house, you might find a sausage big enough to club someone, or cheese hard enough to cut someone. A very sharp cheese indeed!