Brian Stanfield

Thanks for the leading questions. I am a bit vague about what I'm asking. Sorry. I don't have anything particular in mind, I was just curious if there's a way to model it. Let me try to flesh out a few of the points I'm curious about: In the Harry Potter movies, the wand chooses the wizard. A borrowed wand will work, just not as well. Your own wand will work better (stronger) for you. However, when you capture someone else's wand, it changes allegiances. Voldemort captured the Elder wand, but it wasn't really his (it was Draco's). When he tried to use it to attack Hogwarts he nearly split it asunder trying to push as hard as he could. So, is there some sort of way to model this? Would a borrowed wand be a Drain? Would your own be an Aid? How about the blowback from trying to push too much magic through a not-your wand? ​In the Circle of Time books, everyone draws from the same One True Source for their magic, although not everyone has this ability. It is limited to some sort of genetic trait or something (like a Talent I guess). But here are some of the drawbacks:If you draw too much of the Source, you'll burn yourself out: you "still" yourself, and no longer have access to magic permanently. Others can get together to still you by joining their magic in order to cut you off. Basically like blowing too much amperage through your magical fuse so it gets blown. You can get healed, or "reconnected," but at a significantly lower level than before. How to simulate this . . . ? Although this all seems unrelated, I think I'm looking at it as what happens when you try to sip magic through a fire hose, when you've been using a straw most of your life. In other words, is there a way to simulate the over-use of magic with disastrous results. In Hero, we have spells with a set amount of AP, so you can't exceed it and there's no problem. The limits are built in. But is there a way to exceed those limits at the risk of losing it all. I guess it would be like Pushing a spell, with side effects, right? I'm just curious what different ways there are available to do this, or perhaps some problems I haven't thought of yet.

So I was watching the last Harry Potter movie where the Elder wand sort of rejects Voldemort. I've also been reading Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series where one can burn oneself out by hanging onto and drawing too much from the One True Source, which then burns one out like a light bulb. Of course I started thinking about this in Hero System terms. Would this play best as a sort of mana system? Or is there a better way to model this?

So are you thinking of doing something like this for Fantasy Hero as well? I'd love to do some work on something like this, but I'm working on a dissertation right now which is a huge time suck. So it won't get done any time soon. But if you were to do it . . . .

True enough, but again those would be more specific campaign guidelines that a GM would create for a longer campaign. Something built for a few introductory adventures doesn't need to have too much of a rationale other than, "This is typical for starting characteristics, but your GM may adjust them for a longer campaign." I like your Champions begin post above. Do you have a discussion going about that? Can you point me there? One problem I have is that it maybe breaks things down too much, although I'm sure you have good reasons for that. Would you be doing each session with a pre-gen character, or would each session be done with only the characteristics discussed? Can you actually have a battle on the first session without an understanding of Recovery and things like that? I only ask out of ignorance and not as a full critique. It seems like session 6 is more like what I was thinking, with the other sessions explained more succinctly and clearly in an introductory text.

Yes! This was the one glaring omission which my buddy picked up on right away. He kept looking for the chart because I kept telling him it existed. I just hadn't noticed it didn't actually exist in Fantasy Hero Complete. I like that the older character sheets actually had the beginning base characteristics listed on them. I'm thinking of redesigning a new sheet to give those baselines for an average PC.

Whoops! I meant 5 times more mass, not 5 times denser. I got ahead of myself there.

So I'm wondering, wouldn't density increase be an important aspect of becoming a bear? I don't have the rules handy, but a grizzly bear would be about 5 times denser than a human, which would offer a great deal of advantage in terms of what Knasser2 was suggesting, such as plowing through a group and knocking them down.

Very nice. I hadn't given it much thought, but you are right. Really, all we need is something to get beginners through a handful of adventures. Then they and their GM would have to decide on what the next step would be: run with Grischun, do Turakian Age, their own setting, etc. But by then they'd be ready to tackle something like that, and that's really what I'm trying to accomplish. Just an "over the hump" type of initial exposure to Fantasy Hero to get them hankering for more, which would give them the desire to want to read the rules more thoroughly. And then they can begin to argue over how to build half-dwarf nautical super-mages . . . .

I meant to say something about that too. Whoops. So, yes, it's a GM problem for sure. Really, my experience in D&D is that nobody is roleplaying anymore, they're just trying to min/max their characters and don't role-play their weaknesses. This is a GM thing, sure, but it's also the people playing the game as well and what they expect. But I think the point that everyone was debating is how to rationalize lots of races in a beginners' game where there won't be a lot of background material, etc. Just making dwarves, elves, dragonborn, whatever, is interesting, but it's not very nuanced when you don't have the setting in which to situate them. That being said, I'm all for offering variety, as long as it's not overwhelming to beginners. A few easy racial template variations is good enough for a beginning adventure. Who cares if there is a 1,000 year history between elves and dwarves when it's your first adventure. Worry about that stuff when you need to come up with a more complete setting, at which point everyone will probably want to create new characters anyway, now that they hopefully know what they're doing. Right? I think for complications it makes sense to have a list of pre-made complications that fit with the racial and professional templates, and then just a few others to give some options. The complications aren't really all that hard, and don't take up that much text space either. But I think your suggestion of 3 sounds about right, although I think it makes more sense to say 25 points, or whatever, as the game does.

Fair question, and I of course thought about that very example while I wrote it. heh, heh. Don't mind the man behind the curtain . . . . But really, any time I've ever played D&D we had elves, humans, and half-elves (who are hate by both humans and elves), dwarves, and whatever else, with no consequences. I think that is more like what we're talking about here in this example. And nobody ever looks sideways at a halfling. It's when we started getting guys who were dragon born walking into remote human bars and chatting that I realized I had to get away from D&D again.

I was just having this same discussion with my friend when I was trying to teach him Fantasy Hero. We were discussing what sort of game setting we wanted to create, which only added to the overload he was experiencing. But it was interesting that he intuitively understood that anything could be built in the setting we created, even if he didn't understand how just yet. He was always bothered by how easily the races seemed to get along and live with each other. He was more interested in creating a primarily human world, but with cultural differences that were distinct. We had fun talking about the possibilities, but it also overloaded me because now I had to create an entire world for us to play in. So, just as we discussed about player overload, there is GM overload as well. I think you don't need to rationalize anything for an introductory document. It's just a way to get over the hump and start playing. Then, once you learn what you're doing (more or less), you can restart with more rules, or rebuild what you've already done in a fuller setting, or create backstory as you go (like a story-telling approach) and add new rules or game elements as they become relevant.

I guess this is more like what I was imagining happening. Of course you went right for the spells, which is the hardest batch of decisions to make! But done well, like with an appendix to explain the builds, it can slowly open them up to the rules as a whole.

Quite true. I guess the approach to build individual games that are "powered by HERO" has some real appeal. Monster Hunters International is a really sharp game, and they should all have that sort of impact. The problem: it takes lots of work to build a game for yourself, which people will complain about. Of course, waiting for someone else to build that game means that you're stuck with the decisions they make for you. And then everyone would complain about that too! "Hey, why are there winged people in my game?!" So, back around full circle. A basic beginner game to introduce the rules and give a guided tour through the tool shop. Then they can pick up the tool kit and build it themselves, or just go ahead and pick up Turakian Age or something like that.

Next observation, related to the last. The greatest untapped strength of HERO is its scalability. I've mentioned this before, but it really has the potential for scaled levels of learning the game. Rather than throw all the rules out at once, they can be introduced a little at a time until the whole network of game elements is understood. As has been mentioned before, other games such as D&D do this with a level-based system, so that the rules are learned a little bit at a time, with new abilities and things coming over time. The overall volume of rules is actually more complicated in D&D, but they lower the learning curve over time. In all honesty, I re-learned D&D with the 5th edition last year, and played with a group weekly, and I remember that, even after reading both of the core books, I still had no clue what was going on. I just had to go through the motions of building a character and hoping for the best, and then learning at the table by asking lots of annoying questions that nobody but the older GM understood (coming from the old AD&D days). Even then, I was frustrated by all the special cases and loopholes that everyone but me had figured out. This is one of the reasons I left D&D in the first place and committed to Fantasy Hero in the late '90s. I know that one of my biggest hurdles when re-learning HERO system's 6th edition, after a long hiatus, was looking at all of the options and being unable to distinguish between what was essential, or to even distinguish if some things were more essential than others. For example, in terms of combat there are so many maneuvers, and then martial maneuvers on top of those. Hero Basic helped reduce some of that, but it still seemed like a lot to digest at first. The powers/advantages/limitations is even more terrifying, and the skills can be daunting as well. It felt like, if I was to understand some of the rules, I had to know all of them before it would make sense. I know that was a problem my buddy was wrestling with as well when we talked about what was holding him back. So is it possible to boil things down to the bare essentials in each section of Fantasy Hero Complete for the purposes of a walkthrough that follows the same pattern as the book? In my mind, this would be a mid-level in-between step. A sort of "here are the bare essentials that you need to get under your belt before you go learn the full system." In addition, would it make sense to have a completely barebones "basic" introduction before that? So as someone suggested before, perhaps a first chapter or basic .pdf to introduce the stuff at the most basic level, with some pre-fabs and some basic rules, a few adventures. Then would come the intermediate part with a more fleshed out presentation of the basics (as already introduced), with more advice and rationales added throughout, with documentation and references to other texts, and an appendix with the build information, etc. Should it be multiple steps in one document/book, or should it be two document/books? Like the old D&D Basic & Expert sets from the early '80s (the red box and the blue box)? Or would just one document that covers it all be more in line, such as the GURPS Lite .pdf that is free online and comes in at 30 or so pages? Just a few more thoughts. Or actually, reflections on already-discussed thoughts. *And just a reminder, I'm not trying to recreate D&D. I left it for a reason, and moved on to broader horizons with Fantasy Hero for a reason, so it's not a matter of trying to recreate what the other games do.

I was seeing that too, but I'm not sure it has to be two different things. It could be a stripped down campaign with simplified character creation, but with sample characters to work from. Or perhaps a step-by-step tutorial on character creation with templates to work from which already have the proper skills and things worked out and balanced, but with explanations or rationales in an appendix. I'm not sure yet because I'm still mulling things over. But I like a lot of the ideas that have been floated out here. They all seem to be compatible at some level, and could lead to something good!

That's the spirit! I like where you're going with this.

Fair point. We've talked about so many things I can't keep them all straight yet. But in all honesty, I'm wondering if giving them very basic character options if it wouldn't help, rather than pre-gens. I think Cantriped bought up the Character galleries as a possible option. It would act as an interface for the character creation process, and give them some guidelines of "what a character is supposed to look like," but also give them some leeway to make some choices. That way we don't have to have this ongoing debate about which fantasy tropes to include or exclude.

Gee, thanks Mom.

So, don't forget that part of what I'm trying to figure out in this thread is how to teach character creation, not just give pre-gens to play with. I think there is some value in offering some pre-gens, but I find it more useful for my purposes to offer maybe a more streamlined template approach to character creation, up front, at the beginning, so you don't have to go digging for them in an unfamiliar book. So let's not get too worried about which pre-gen characters to include because they would only be examples, not the only options.

I kept waiting for a punchline about your mother . . . . If you're serious, that's pretty awesome. As for the paper minis, I think that's a really good idea. However, the other stuff that you suggest gets really expensive right away: FHC and 18d6 Hero Dice is $60 right off the bat. I was already thinking along the lines of including those dice, but they're pretty pricey. The other stuff is definitely a good idea. What I was considering was something with a very low price point so someone could justify buying it on a whim from a gameshow without feeling too put out. The D&D starter kit is $20, and although it's really sparse, it seems like something that would be doable. I'm not trying to simply mimic what WoC is doing, since they have hordes of cash to back whatever they do, but it is an interesting idea.

This is great information. Thanks! It gives me some stuff to think about. What do y'all think about an actual inexpensive boxed version of something like D&D puts out? The box seems to be an attractive item on a gameshop's shelf, and feel a little more like an investment into something. The free .pdf download of GURPS Lite is the other alternative, but it requires people to already know that GURPS exists, and to go looking for it. What's your opinion about something like this? (Note: this isn't a logistical question, just a "what if I lived in an ideal world" type of question).

These are all interesting questions I've had as well, but wasn't ready to bring up yet. I guess now's the time. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Christopher, you've done some licensing with DOJ. What's involved? Any ideas what would be involved trying to bring a different entity to DOJ for a game in the way Monster Hunters International did? Because, seriously, just having something like Harry Potter Hero would draw buyers no matter what game system it's attached to (and yes, I know that's not realistic, I'm just giving an over-the-top example). I know we don't really have much say in what they decide to market, and how, so it may all be a moot point.

I agree with what you're saying at the end. I don't think it's worth recreating D&D so that people who play D&D feel more comfortable. Those people will just play D&D. However, there are no particular tropes in HERO, which is maybe part of the problem for beginners. Being told you can create anything, but not having certain familiar tropes to work with, is a bit daunting. But it's part of HERO's tradition to offer templates to make this part of creating easier. So with enough templates, and enough (but not too many) unique choices for character creation, it can allow a player to be creative and interested in the process. Part of this would require, as you point out, a little tour through the character sheet, then explaining the process section by section with references to Fantasy Hero Complete for more detailed explanations. Thanks for your input on this!

It's an interesting idea. Of course none of us see this happening, ever. But as Cantriped and I have noted before, not everyone is a fan of Hero Designer. Some of us actually prefer books and paper to plan things out. It actually gets you to read the rules, which is essential. A "Hero Designer only" approach wouldn't have the rules anywhere in it, other than brief descriptions of some of the options, etc. Hero Designer and Hero System are not the same: Hero Designer is a tool to assist in applying the rules in character creation, and that's it. Apart from that, there is no good way to market something like this. Sure it's a digital world, but books still have a place in it. The herogames.com store is holding serve, but it's not expanding the market by any means. What I'm looking for is something that could help learn the rules and how to play the game, as well as character creation at a very basic level. Hero Designer, even a stripped down version, is not really very intuitive for new players. I'm looking for a very simple presentation of the game that anyone can pick up in an evening.

I don't know if you caught it earlier in this thread, or in other threads, but there has been a lot of talk about how there should be "powered by HERO" versions of games out there for this same reason. Monster Hunters, International is a very good example. But that's also the Steve Jackson Games strategy: repackage and re-release the same thing over and over (and over and over) again to pump as much money as you can out of it. See Munchkin, or the scores of GURPS books. Hero has tried to explicitly avoid this strategy with the Complete books as standalone, all under one cover rules, but they also may have hampered their ability to offer opening-line products for their game such as we're discussing here. They customized the rules for the different settings (Champions and Fantasy), but they've really missed the opportunity for a well-developed fantasy setting in the way that MHI was done. But that, again, is the tradeoff for a universal set of rules: more unlimited options means fewer actual decisions made for their products.