Brian Stanfield

Names like this (taken from Turakian Age, though not a critique of that setting by any means):

Shularahaleen

Thugoradanirion, god of strength

Sikirarthasanaila, goddess of stealth and guile

Whandurashaneshir, god of dark magic

UGH!!!!! Why are fantasy names virtually unpronounceable, and so polysyllabic that I have to stop and sound them out phonetically before I can continue on?! Is this inherited from Tolkein? Is it supposed to be proof of the sophistication of a culture? Hey, it takes us five minutes to say hello! It takes even longer to read an account of it in a fantasy novel! It rips me out of immersion instantly. 

This reminds me of the story my Mom used to tell me about the King's son named Stickystickystombonosirombohoddyboddyboscoickenonnuenoncomberombetombo. Not surprisingly, when he was in danger and everyone had to relay the message that he was drowning, they couldn't get to him in time to save him because his name was absurdly long. The King's next son was named Zip.

On 2/25/2020 at 7:22 AM, Tywyll said:

 

Almost every major game these days needs multiple books. Pathfinder, D&D, WoD,  HERO. I can't think of any big name releases out now that don't use a multiple book format. Exalted 3rd ed maybe, but that rulebook is like 900 pages, so that ought to have been multiple books!

 

Even FATE has multiple rule books, Dresden Files was released in two books, my list goes on.

 

There are a few one and dones, but they are all indie releases or oldschool games really. 

Unfortunately, HERO System doesn't have the FLGS presence that the games you mention have. D&D used to be under one cover, but they soon learned, with AD&D, that people will buy every book TSR created, and beg for more! One of the reasons I switched to Champions, and ultimately Fantasy HERO, was because D&D was coming out with a 2nd edition, and I refused to give them all of my allowance all over again just to get the same game I already had. The appeal of Fantasy HERO was that it was a one-book game! They released a Bestiary, which was actually pretty helpful but not necessary for playing. The ideal of the one-book game made HERO System appealing. Justice, Inc. is probably the best thing HERO System ever released, in my opinion, as a one-box game. It's brilliant, includes just enough to keep it open to many variations, and also includes a campaign book with lots (and lots) of adventures and plot seeds. Box games are out of vogue now, except for D&D's basic set. But I've given up that idea, which has been covered in great depth here.

DOJ would not be well-served with yet another multi-book set. The 6e rules are out of print anyway, and Champions/Fantasy HERO Complete are barely present in physical form. My idea in this thread is to try to create a one-book game that can be taken to conventions, game shops, or whatever, and sold as-is as a complete game that new players can pick up and quickly play. As the system is now, this is impossible, even with Champions Complete, since there is no setting and no pre-built anything provided for new players. 

On 2/25/2020 at 7:15 AM, Tywyll said:

 

And actually this would be something that could be produced via the license. If your setting/adventure guide had all the character creation templates (ala what's in Champions 5th or 6th but keyed to X genre), all available talents, powers (spell system/psychic system/etc), gear, plus an adventure...and a note saying  you need X Complete to play, that would be the closest we could come to making a 'Complete Game' for HERO.

So this is the other model I suggested earlier, but nobody has really bitten. It seems like, instead of a bunch of different independent games, we could instead keep the same independent settings, and in those books tweak all the dials and levers to offer the templates, gear, powers/spells, power levels, etc., so it's basically a ready-to-play game supplement to the core rules. This may make more sense in the big picture.

No matter the approach, however, there's always going to be a problem of narrowing down some items while still needing to remain vague and open about others:

• Want all the rules included in one book, and abilities and gear pre-generated? No problem, but what if you want to play a variation of that game and don't have the appropriate gear? Let's say you are playing Action HERO but you'd rather include mad scientists with super psychic powers or something. Well, you're going to have to buy the core rules to modify the game yourself.
• Want to write a game book that takes all of the variations into account? Well then you're going to have to sacrifice brevity for the sake of being more inclusive. Action HERO may include a section on all the different genre variations, and perhaps even include a resource guide for each variant. The game will be more complete, with no need for any other books, but the game itself will necessarily be a longer book. You may even have to create several different settings for the different versions of the game.
• If you do more of a setting/campaign book, then you don't need to present the rules since you'll be depending on the core rules to take care of that. Now you have more space to play with, either in terms of different variations on the genre. But you're asking people to buy more than one book, with the possibility that they'll be overwhelmed by the relentlessly wordy core rules presentation. And you still may have to include more than one setting, which makes things more complicated.
• You could do a different setting/campaign book for each possible variation of the genre, offering each as a supplement to the core rules. Each book would be a complete game based on the core rules, but by itself would be unplayable. It would be like all the GURPS genre books: great resources, but not actually rules in and of themselves. Many problems are solve by this approach, but it still requires the core rules, with can be daunting.

I'm trying to find a happy medium, which may not actually exist. But it's fun (for me at least) to consider the approaches in light of what's been done before, and perhaps even more importantly, what hasn't been done before. 

20 hours ago, dsatow said:

You want to leave whether they reveal their secrets or not up to them. You can, however,  help them along based on your scenarios and environment.  Start subtly and watch the player reaction.  If they feel comfortable with this, you can expand otherwise back off.

 

Examples:

In the former Red Sparrow:

1. They encounter another Red Sparrow whose skills appear to be very similar to the player.  That player can make Int rolls to determine what the other Red Sparrow will do.
2. The team encounters a spy and tracks them back to their base of operations.  Again, the PC can make Int rolls based on what spies generally do.
3. A security incident at the League of Nations has them tracking the player down.  Some suspicious items in her background sent up red flags.  If they don't respond to this threat, the player will be arrested by the League of Nations task force and possibly scapegoated.
4. Maybe the program hasn't had a spy as good as her and want to take her back in.  Several current Red Sparrow trainees come after her to take her back.  Of course, the trainees are conditioned not to talk about the program, but other players maybe curious why this trained assassin group are after the player.  This scenario is a hit the players on the head with a brick scenario.

In the former actress:

1. A millionaire obsessive fanboy has canisters of film, publicity photos and posters, of the character.  They may even have gone so far as to send a detective to take pictures of her in stalker-ish fashion.
2. Family is big with the Romani in a Clan-Mafia sort of way.  If she is a practicing Romani, this might be included to her being sold as a bride since as she's no longer an actress her worth is declining.  Her extended family sold her to take advantage of what worth she has now and the bridegroom has come to collect.
3. The players come across a circus they need to infiltrate and guess what, the circus has an opening which the player has done before.

Consider a good portion of these stolen! I actually had some ideas along these same lines, but hearing them presented back to me reassures me that I was on the right track. Thanks for the plot seeds!

20 hours ago, zslane said:

I sorta feel you're over-thinking this. Just let them play the game, and if some secrets are accidentally revealed, just let it happen. It's not going to ruin the game. It is all valuable learning experience for the new players anyway, so don't sweat it.

19 hours ago, Tech said:

As a GM, I don't reveal PC's backgrounds. I let the players decide how and when, if at all, they want to tell their character's background to another character.

18 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Yes and no.  While I would not design the game around revealing or maintaining their secrets, building their backgrounds into scenarios makes the game more focused on the characters.  If a character has KS's of Japanese history, geography and culture, and speaks Japanese, it would be a shame to have the whole campaign proceed with no link to Japan, ever.

On 2/24/2020 at 6:53 PM, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

I'm of the opinion that giving new players (any players really, but mainly new players) access to information out-of-character that they don't have in-character is a Bad Idea.  They're learning to pretend to be their characters, don't make them multitask by also pretending to not know things.  The human brain is not good at having-but-not-using information because it's very good at having-and-using information. 

 

That said, I feel that the sharing-of-secrets is a great way to bring a party together.  I'd personally suggest running adventures early on in which revealing parts of the background will make things much easier, then follow that up with reveal-adventures wherein the secrets come to light. 

I sorta am overthinking this, but I'm doing it in the interest of teaching good roleplaying habits. For example, when the driver in our last scene is waiting in the car, but then suddenly wants to participate in the conversation in the restaurant, we had to remind her that she wasn't actually there in the game. The balance between in character and out of character discussion is new to them, and I don't want to complicate it even more by making them have to bracket out what they know as players, but couldn't possibly know as characters. We all just roll with it as we go, but I was curious if anyone had any methods to minimize the "multitasking," as Gnome put it.

Thanks for the feedback.

11 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

Make the elves do it!

 

 

But there are no elves . . .

17 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

As for poop. One way to use it interestingly would be if you’re out in the forest tracking an animal. That is a legit way to know if an animal is in an area. 

Wow, can you imagine the modifiers to the Tracking Skill? +3 to your roll if the creature is "extra poopy" . . . . Build an entire modifiers table of gastrointestinal circumstances!

I'm running a Pulp HERO campaign, and some of my characters have really (I mean really) interesting backgrounds mired in secrecy. These are all new players, and some of them really dug deep for their character conceptions. I'm proud of them just for that. However, now I have some characters with secrets, which are included as Complications. It makes for some good possible drama within the group of PCs as well as the players themselves.

So what I'm wondering is, have you ever had a situation like this in your campaign? How do you go about protecting the PC's secrets from the actual players while playing the game? Or do you? I like the idea of some secrecy among the PCs, obviously, because they don't know each other yet. I also like the idea of the players themselves discovering new things about each others' PCs as the game progresses (just as their characters would). But this makes for some dicey moments when the players are trying to play to their backgrounds without revealing all of their backgrounds. 

For example, I have a player whose PC was part of a pre-Soviet "Red Sparrow" program, so she has all kinds of training as an assassin. But none of the characters know this because she left Russia and became a translator at the League of Nations, and is so cosmopolitan that she no longer appears to be Russian. Her skills come up in the game, and I try to encourage her to remember what she can do, but she tends to say things like "Oh yeah, because I know how to kill people," or something like that, which immediately attracts the other players' attention. She's still learning how to play, after all. 

I have another player who is a former Romani circus performer turned silent film actress with a heavy accent that didn't translate into the "talkies" very well, so she had to retire. The players know her as an actress, but nobody knows her background. I keep trying to remind her of things she can do in certain situations, but she too, as a new player, is not completely cognizant of hat she's revealing in her comments about her character. 

Given these two examples, what would you do in situations like this? In reality, the players don't seem to remember the little slips, so it's probably not going to spoil the surprises later as their backgrounds get revealed. But it's a bit nerve-racking for me to try to keep track of what's been revealed and what hasn't. 

What I don't want to do is have the players soliloquy their backgrounds to each other as PCs, as so often happens with new players (I actually had one player's PC say to another PC "I'm surly and I don't like people" ). But does it make a difference if the players actually know the information about each other's PCs? They could all be invested in developing the story if they have all the information, but it loses some of the fun of genuine revelation later in the campaign. 

What do you think? Keep in mind, I'm trying to teach role-playing best practices to my new players in the process of playing. 

I got the HTML copied. You can go ahead and delete it again so it doesn't take up so much space. Thanks again.

No worries. I've fiddled with a couple of the RTF exports, but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and brush up on my HTML skills.

20 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Heromakr.exe, that came on a 3.5 Floppy that came with the BBB< which I worked on. I do miss that program.

I've heard of it, but it happened during my hiatus between 3rd and 6th editions. Has someone done a HERO Designer export that resembles it?

44 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Here's an old FH character. with a fair amount of experience:

I like that character sheet. Where did it come from?

13 hours ago, Gauntlet said:

I have found that Fantasy Hero character's (especially in high magic campaigns) have a tendency to become much tougher than Superhero character's do as the campaigns go on.

 

Without knowing the particulars about your campaign guidelines, it’s hard to know why fantasy characters seem tougher than supers. 

It could be because there is too much power variance between character types. A 12d6 fireball with AOE vs. a 2d6 sword with a couple of CSLs is not balanced. One character will seem so much tougher than others around him. In a supers game, however, everyone will have similarly powerful attacks, and so it won’t seem so out of control or imbalanced. The relative toughness of characters won’t seem out of whack.

Its also possible that magic has some sort of cost divisor making it more affordable and therefore more out of balance with other characters. 
 

8 hours ago, sinanju said:

 

I've got this idea for a fantasy game (or novel, I suppose) in which all the classic fantasy "races" exist: elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, giants, minotaurs, etc. Everything but humans. They're all the creations of a long-gone Ancient civilization. They were created at slaves, cannon fodder, "monsters" for hunts (the Ancients liked the most dangerous game), and playthings. Except humans. Because they're like breeds of dogs--unless you carefully police their bloodlines, they quickly degenerate into mongrels, i.e., humans. Given that the Ancients vanished long ago, there are a LOT of humans. They are, in fact, the majority of the humanoid population. All the other races exist as well, but mostly in their own lands, where they've carefully controlled their breeding for all these centuries. Sometimes they practice "exposure" of infants who aren't X enough. Sometimes they simply expel (or otherwise ostracize) someone who doesn't meet their standards. A lot of "elves" and "dwarves" wandering the world outside their own enclaves aren't *really* elves and dwarves, at least according to their own kind (though these individuals wi'l probably never admit it, and might even fight you for saying it). If you're sufficiently "off" from the ideal, you're a half-elf or half-orc or whatever. And even more reviled.

 

In fact, the only ones more reviled than half-breeds are complete mongrels--i.e., humans. Yes, they're the largest population, and they're not as strong as dwarves (on average), or as graceful as elves (on average), and so forth. But they're tough and overall pretty successful as a race, and they breed like rabbits. And with no regard for lineage--well, except the sad few who occasionally try to claim there's a Human standard, but even most other humans are like, "Dude--give it up. We're all mongrels. Embrace it."

 

Which handily explains why the various other races (or sub-races, if you like) all have fairly specific descriptions. If they don't meet that standard, they're not really that race. And why humans come in all shapes and sizes and colors (hair, eyes, skin). And why, of course, every race is convinced that *they* are the pinnacle of humanoid forms, and everyone else is inferior. Good enough for a traveling/adventuring companion, maybe, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one. Especially those humans.

Wow! I love this idea. Next time I run a fantasy campaign, I very well might steal this idea! (Nothing publishable, though, so your IP for your novel is still safe!  )

Thanks again. Do you make announcements when updates are made?

Hi Simon,

I'm curious: what updates have been made to the new update of HERO Designer? I've been happy with the previous version, and like to use the print to PDF option in it. I'm trying to decide if I should update to the new version, knowing that I'll lose that feature.

Thanks!

17 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

So... expensive...

You'll be the first cover, Scott.

20 minutes ago, Greywind said:

 

Or the book from 3rd edition. It should still be valid.

I totally forgot about that one. Of course, it's not a complete game, as it requires Danger International and Champions to use it fully. But it's a great example of how a campaign book can crossover and become a game book with a few tweaks.

16 hours ago, Sketchpad said:

I don't think photoreal covers will draw in any more people than having comic book artists on a cover.  

Maybe you're onto something here: photorealistic covers of the artists who do the internal art! I'm sure it'll sell! 

4 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Circling  back to the "complete game", I know one comic/game store ordered Champions based on the crossover potential of comics and games, not realizing the buyers would not have a game they could play in that big, beautiful book.  After watching that, and the Villains books, sit on the shelf month after month, they never stocked another Hero product.

Same with my store. And probably every other FLGS around. They did get copies of Champions Complete, but it's lost in the sea of other HERO System books that don't sell, and so will never sell either. Seriously, selling a game that's not a game (Champions, Dark Champions, Fantasy HERO, etc.) is a horrible model for a store trying to attract people to games they may never have seen before. "Hey, I hope you enjoyed this book about a game genre. Now go get two (out of print) volumes of rules about a game so that you can eventually create your own game. Don't forget the setting book about the world for your game. Isn't this fun?! Hey, where's everybody going . . . ?"

2 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

How about a Super Agents game? 

That would be Dark Champions, wouldn't it? The "super" part of it entails all the powers and such, which is what I'm trying to get away from for a rebooted "complete game" idea. However, I think it should be a sidebar or an appendix item pointing to other books in the toolbox that can be used to modify the game for use as super agents or whatever. 

1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

I have never seen photorealistic art on any Champions cover

Sorry, I missed the "photorealistic" part . . . . I bit on the group shot on a cover. 

11 hours ago, dmjalund said:

How about taping the popularity of the Avengers and have a Champions book with photorealistic art, including an Avengers inspired group on the cover?

I think that was the idea for most of the Champions covers, pretty much ever. But to tell you the truth, I don't think that draws the consumer. Champions 6e is absolutely beautiful, but it didn't really save the franchise. 

When I first learned Champions, I was always a bit put off that there weren't all the characters that I was reading in the comics. This was long before I understood copyright and stuff like that. But I think people look at "generic" supers on a cover and think (like I used to), "Hmm, another Avengers ripoff. Where's the actual Avengers game?" I wish DOJ had the clout (or the sheer nerve to try) to license Marvel characters. They would be swimming in cash by now. As it stands, I don't think there's any way they can benefit from all the supers movies, which seems absolutely crazy! But it requires marketing, which just isn't happening. 

4 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Thank you!  Maybe I will.  I'm trying to make it as editionless as possible.  

 

 

Of course, (at the peril of bringing up edition wars) the characteristics are going to be the primary problem here. Perhaps dual-listing characteristics, or perhaps an appendix in the back for whichever edition you aren't covering in the primary text. Actually, I think that may be the best approach: a sidebar pointing the reader to the pre-6e characteristics. In the actual game itself you're going to be breaking down the skills and powers to what fit in the game anyway, so you don't have to worry about what translates perfectly between editions. Just pick what you want, leave the rest out, and then point to the appendix for alternatives. 

5 hours ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I've wanted to see this one for years.  I've got some notes in various places for it in fact.  

 

I love your list of countermeasures! You should run with this as a game! Maybe if you write it up as a "setting," you could put it up in the Hall of Champions.