Brian Stanfield

I'm totally with you on this point. I thought FHC was pretty ugly in general. The font, for God's sake, is so characterless and could have been so easily changed to something interesting. Most of the art is from the FH6e book, just black and white. But you're right, this looks totally generic and really uninteresting to someone who doesn't know HERO System. I've been talking to Ron Edwards, the guy who is doing Champions Now, and his goal isn't to revitalize the older editions. He's instead trying to apply emergent story theory in an easy to digest Champions 3e format. There may not be any artwork at all, I'm really not sure. You can get a free copy of the playtest document to see what he's up to. It's sort of like applying Aaron Allston's Strike Force to old-school (i.e. simpler) rules, with an emphasis on the emergent world aspects that he calls "story now." It's a great read, but is not intended to replace the 6e ruleset. It's more like a personal experiment on his part.

If you're curious, you can look at the GURPS Lite document for free. It's a very basic introduction to the game in 32 pages, which made me feel like I understood the game in 30 minutes, something I wish HERO would do . . .

You've got a lot of books already, but don't feel like you have to have them mastered. That's a LOT of alternate rules 'n' stuff to keep track of. You may want to have copies of HERO Basic on hand for quick reference for the players, or get Champions Complete for a very concise explanation of most of the rules. And don't shy shy away from looking at all the material from earlier editions. 5e has a ton of resources to borrow from, and the conversion to 6e isn't all that hard.

You may want to look at Champions Complete for a more concise version of the 6e rules. If you have Champions 6e, Chapter 5 has a "Superhero Gallery" which gives a list of quickstart character types that would help you build an assortment of characters in a very short time. Also, High Rock Press cleared its Kickstarter for Character Creation Cards, which should be coming out in the near future. They'll help create characters in minutes.

This is really useful! Thanks for posting it.

I agree that Vondy's spell method is straightforward and easy to get started. With each spell being a skill, it seems that you could simply add to the AP as you develop without making it too complicated with spell levels. You may require a quest or off-screen study time and a skill roll to change the spell, or perhaps have someone teach it, but that is easily varied based on your preference. (If you want to really make each spell scalable, you could make each spell a small VPP and vary its AP based on how much of a penalty you want to take on the RSR.) Which brings up the skill roll issue: I think it's beneficial to have the "Requires Skill Roll" to simulate novice, intermediate, and advanced wizards without a spell level system. Generic Skill Levels could be bought to offset the skill penalties, and the more experienced players will have more skill levels. This simulates a novice being less reliable due to the RSR penalties, and how a more experienced wizard can virtually ignore the penalties once he has bought enough skill levels. So you could have a wizard with one big spell and lots of skill levels to make it more reliable, or a variety of spells of varying success based on their AP, or anything in between. Does that all make sense?

You may consider getting Fantasy Hero Complete as a concise version of the rules (including a basic skill-based magic system). It is a much shorter version of the 6e rules (95% compliance at least) and would be easier for new players to digest. It includes a lot of the stuff from Fantasy Hero in terms of character templates, etc., and skills and talents specific to the fantasy genre.

One idea that comes up frequently in other threads is that you may want to hide as much of the game jargon as possible. It also helps to have a stock set of spells to start with. For instance, have a "session 0" where everyone gets together and organizes their party, and decides what their characters will be. You can start working with them on the character generation, perhaps let them do much of the work themselves. Do the finishing work for each of their characters, do all the number crunching for them, etc., before then next session. Then you can create two character sheets: one with all the detailed builds and all the minutiae that may be confusing to them, and one that is as simple as possible, with very basic descriptions for the things that need explanation (fireball, 8d6 blast). They can use the simple sheets for beginning play, and then use the detailed sheet to see how things like a fireball spell are actually built (with all the advantages & limitations, active points and real cost, etc.).

That link is awesome! Thanks for that. This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. I love what you did with Millennium City. That's a great idea. I'm a Midwest kid, so it fits really well into the kind of narrative I'd be interested in developing.

So here's a problem I can never come up with a good solution for: what to do when I create a city, or even use one of the campaign settings in HERO. Let's say I'm using Hudson City for a Pulp HERO setting. It definitely has a New York feel, but I also want to use the Empire Club in the game, which is explicitly set in New York, among a couple of other cities globally. So, do I drop Hudson City somewhere on the Eastern seaboard, or do I replace New York with it? Or something else? There are benefits to either situation, so I'm looking for what has worked for others. If I simply place Hudson City in place of New York, then any reference to New York would simply be replaced by Hudson City. Simple, right? But it does take away a little bit from the historical feel of the game if I replace the country's largest city without explanation. This would be like Sue Grafton does with the Kinsey Milhone mysteries: invent a city (Santa Teresa) and simply replace an existing one (Santa Barbara) in the stories without any explanation of why Santa Barbara doesn't exist. But this would be harder to do with pretending that New York doesn't exist. I could go the way of Millennial City (replacing Detroit) and say that New York blew up and is replaced by Hudson City, or something like that, but I'm not so fond of that option. The other thing I could do is just drop Hudson City somewhere on the East Coast and pretend like it's always been there. This makes actual history still fairly constant (since I don't have to explain away New York), but it invites some other problems: Why would something like the Empire Club be in Hudson City, when New York is just right up the coast. Or I could have H.C. be the base for play, and commute to New York when needed. Anyway, the main problem with this approach is that it affects the other cities on the Eastern seaboard (at least theoretically). So, what have you done in these sorts of situations? Any genre is fine (pulp, Champions, Dark Champions, etc.), as long as the advice has some rationale for the decision made. Thanks for your suggestions!

Which edition are you interested in playing? If you're talking about learning the game, that's a really important distinction here, as some people are devoted to 5e, while others play 6e (for a variety of reasons on either side of the debate). Also, what kind of genre are you interested in? That will also affect the way the rules are learned. Sorry to go super-basic here, but it seems like a good place to start.

High Rock Press had announced a plan to resuscitate Danger International a couple of years ago, but with the recent death of Michael Satran, Jason Walters said he's more interested in releasing some of his material before anything else. I'd love to see DI released again for "Action Hero" campaigns, but it seems like it will be a long way off at this point.

Holy cow! I never thought of the WPA guides. That's brilliant!

I played in a campaign once where anyone who joined the team was officially coronated with a multi-function ring that took care of the communications, geoposition, etc. It was added to our powers without cost against our CP or XP, so basically we got a few free points that only "team members" received. I'm not sure if that helps, but it was a GM call, sort of like Wonder Woman providing her team with special tech.

It's starting to look as if your swords might be a good candidate for a Multipower, perhaps with a slot for the sword itself, a slot for the chainsword attack, one for the retrieval via the chain, a slot with the +10 STR limited for disarm following a block, etc. As far as I can remember, you can use the "doubling" rule of an extra 5 points to make a second sword that is identical to the first. This will require that they are both physical, however (as far as I know), and not just the special effect. Anybody else have any ideas?

Wow! That is indefinitely suspended . . . . ?

Any time this has happened to me I go to the "Support" tab and click on "Contact Us." Leave a note and it's usually resolved in a few days.

My impression is that it will be carried by Indie Press Revolution in addition to being offered through the HERO store.

This occasionally happens. If you go to the "support" tab and select "contact us," you can send a form explaining the situation and they usually get it solved in a few days.

I like this. One question I always have on returnable weapons is what if someone catches the thrown dagger? Or just picks it up? Or maybe you even hit your opponent and bury it to the hilt in his ribs, and it gets stuck! Would STR with range be needed for these types of situations? We never "see" how the weapons return, except for maybe watching Thor's hammer smash through things to get back to him, which only begs the question: how much STR does the hammer need in order to fulfill its prescribed duty to return to Thor?

I thought about what you wrote, and spent a good chunk of the day reading about why "simulationist" has become a "naughty word." What I discovered was a very old, very long debate that I was ignorant of! You probably have more of a history with the terminology, and this is a whole can of worms that I was unaware of before I responded to your post. So I'd like to say that I'm not trying to devalue your position or promote one theory over another. Although I do value narrative in gaming, I now realize you probably have certain assumptions when you posted the previous couple of things, and I jumped into it without fully understanding the history. I'm sorry if my comments or replies seem combative. That wasn't my intent when I wrote them. . . .

I didn't cast it as a naughty word, but perhaps overemphasized over the years. My thoroughly untested opinion is that video games (even or perhaps especially RPGs) have negatively affected tabletop RPGs by being driven too much by individual achievements and less by role playing. I'm not talking "room full of theater majors" here, I'm just talking about actual interaction. As you say, it depends completely on the GM and the players. But the emphasis over the decades has been towards simulation, which a computer can do much better for what people tend to want these days. The narrative emphasis is simply an attempt to make tabletop gaming more than a craps game. If you've seen Ron's YouTube segments, you'll agree that he is emphasizing what you are saying about making Complications more interactive. All those things you list seem to be what he is leaning towards. He is, however, explicitly giving credit to the "narrative" games as an example of how this can be done well. They didn't change game mechanics, they changed the emphasis on gaming: "Hey, let's not sit around watching each other roll dice while we each have our noses in our phones until it's our turn to roll dice." Ron's project is a throwback so simpler game mechanics, mixed with the idea that Complications and such can develop over time and intermingle with the other characters. This is the emphasis of narrative based games. It's still a game, with mechanics that can be min/maxed, but he emphasis is different. On this point, I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not totally sold on the project, but I've reconsidered how it might be useful both for helping change the perception of Champions, and get it in the hands of a new generation of gamers who are more interested in the storytelling aspect of RPGs and less on the murder-hobo, video-gamey aspect of gaming. Plus it's a good reminder to us all that we get to choose the kind of game we emphasize, whether it be gamism, simulations, or narrativism (his terms, not mine). Your points are well made on this, and I appreciate you bringing it up.

I never saw the damage on the "damaged" copy I got, and that's been the general consensus of anyone else I've heard from. Order the book, it's worth it!

I'm another Illinoisan. Where are you located, j_spencer93?

Although technically true, I don't think it's a very sympathetic interpretation of what is meant by "narrative driven approach." Ron Edwards makes a really good point when he says that Champions has become largely min/max and simulationist driven largely because of the system. He wants to show a way to use the system to emphasize the emergent storytelling that other systems emphasize. A system like Fate actually does drive the narrative, in that it requires the GM and players to derive their characters as the story is told. Yes it depends on them, but the system reinforces the "role playing" part of the RPG which I've seen left out of all the HERO and GURPS games I've had the misfortune to play lately. It's unfortunate that the role playing has been lost from many of the RPGs on the market, Champions and HERO included. They became "roll playing" games. They don't need to be that way (and no, not all are devoid of role playing), and Ron's project appears to be emphasizing it.