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Brian Stanfield

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  1. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Hugh Neilson in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    True.  So what lead the person who knows absolutely nothing about RPGs to buy a Hero System game?  They aren't sitting at the grocery store checkout or the bookstore waiting for an impulse buyer to grab one on a whim.
     
    I think a broader "about the game" discussion (probably an expansion of the back cover text (or, viewed another way, the back cover text is the elevator pitch of the detailed "value proposition" in the book itself) would be a better focus for this brief section of the game.  You can sneak some "what is an RPG" in there, but we also get "you get what you pay for and pay for what you get", "simulate cinematic fiction" and, for this complete game, the type of game it is designed to deliver.  For the system as a whole, it's "the toolkit to customize your Hero System game, or even build your own game from the ground u".
  2. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Chris Goodwin in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    For a long term campaign, setting is king.  I'll give you that.  
     
    If all I have is a rulebook (assume Champions Complete for the sake of argument) and an adventure, I can get started playing.  If all I have is a rulebook and a setting, I still need an adventure.  If I have a rulebook and a couple of adventures, I can start a campaign.  
     
    Personal experience here.  I tried to run a Champions campaign.  I had players, I had characters, I had villains, I had setting.  I didn't have an adventure.  I bombed.  I didn't turn them in to Champions players.  This was the group I'd been playing D&D with for two years, starting with the D&D 5th edition Starter Set and the 5e Players Handbook.  
     
    True, the Starter Set assumes the Forgotten Realms, but it gives about a page of countryside map, not much setting other than the actual areas the adventure takes place in, monsters, spells, the minimal rules needed to play characters up from 1st level to 5th.   To me, that is a complete game.  
     
    This is not me saying what I think is needed.  This me saying what experience, successful and not, has shown me is needed.  The D&D 5th edition Starter Set is a complete game, IMO.
     
     
    In order to get a successful product line, we need more people playing the game.  Period.  
  3. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    I would assign more faith in setting, if-  well:
    Millennium City
    Vibora Bay
    That college Steve has up in the store
    Atlantean Age
    Valdorian Age
    Turakian Age
    Tuala Morn
    Hidden Lands
    Stronghold
    Terran Empire 
    Meriquai Falls
    Johlros
    Hell's Half Acre
    Kazei 5
    Widening Gyre
    Monster Island
    The Mystic World
    Hudson City
    Worlds of Empire
     
    And I can't remember how many other setting books from even further back- 
     
    Had attracted an audience larger than _us_.  By that I mean people already big into HERO. 
     
    A setting is a picture of a place that you use as a backdrop for your story.  Yes; you need one.  But you don't need two-hundred-odd pages of a setting to sit down and play a game, or to even be interested in playing.  I started playing Traveller with the little black box.  There really wasn't much in there for setting. 
     
    I started playing D&D with box whose color I don't remember, but I remember that the rules were thinner than the 1e Champions book (though it would be a year or two before I learned that), and the highest level listed in the book was _three_.   Yep.  Third level.  It didn't have _crap_ for setting, not even the vague inferences that having to join a service made about the Traveller universe.  The closest thing we had to "setting" for D&D was pencil and ink lines on graph paper. 
     
    The list goes on, or course: Star Frontiers:  we don't like these worm-looking guys.  Have fun. 
     
    Gamma World:  there was an appoclypse, maybe nuclear, not sure.  Anyway, mutants. 
     
    Aftermath:  something really horrible has happened that has brought about the end of the world.  You decide what it was. 
     
    Twilight 2000:  the war's over, and you're stranded in Poland.  No; there are no maps.  You don't have orders anymore, so....   Well, it's Poland.  Do what you ordinarily do in Poland, but with guns and maybe a Humvee.  A green one. 
     
    Seriously.  And some of those games have launched legacies. 
     
    Even Champions-- the game that we come here regularly to celebrate and discuss, had _no_ setting. 
     
    First edition was published in '81. Seriously, damned near all of it: rules, Enemies 1, Escape from Stronghold (Hillariously subtitled "Adventure #1 for Champions" ) , and Island of Doctor Destroyer.   That was.... Setting, I guess? 
     
    Even wieder was that all the published adventures throughout 2 and 3e were totally unrelated to each other.  I think Circle and M.E.T.E appeared in the same book, but had no relation to each other.  Same with Blood and Dr. McQuark:  neither was filled out enough to make a 24 page book on thier own,  UT if we combine them..... 
    Scourge From the Deep was just _nuts_ if you wanted to work it into any cohesive setting (though it did give us the drowning rules). 
     
    To be honest, that campaign book that came with Justice, Inc?  Dude, that was positively _decadent_ in terms of setting for the games then.  But we still play it. 
     
     
    It was forty years ago, and we are still in love, so I'm thinking that "setting is nice" might be more appropriate. 
     
    The problem with setting is best illustrated with the current HERO books, and that classic example of setring: World of Darkness (or Vampire, for those looking for a short handle). 
     
    Yes, it blew up _tremendously_ huge, and some of that can be contributed to setting.  Timing and topic had a lot to do with it, but the setting was undeniably very popular.  There was tons of it!  The just kept pumping it out.  Hell, why add new races and new monsters?  Think of a monster?  Build a damned game around it and toss it in World of Darkness!
     
    But it's gone now.  Sure: there are, just like HERO, some diehards still plugging along.  But for the most part, it's just as dead as HERO.   But how, with that amazing setting? 
     
    Too damned much of it.  Too much setting, too much restriction imposed by the setting, too much sameness.  In short, people gobbled up every little thing they could read about it, and after the information overload, they just got tired of it. 
     
    Why was Lugosi the best Dracula?  You didn't see anything!  You knew there was the monster.  You _saw_ the monster as he stalked his victim.  Then there was a close up on his grotesque and lurid grin, he hunched and dove--
     
    And the scene cut, or his cape obscured eveything-  his directors knew that nothing was better than what the audience would invent in their own minds.  There was enough setting to get you moving, and nowhere near enough to mire you down. 
     
    Complete?  Give me an adventure, or enough setting that I can make something appropriate to what's been give.  Don't give me two hundred pages of an entire world:  the party isn't going to walk too terribly far from the starting point, anyway, not for months.  Don't bother me with what I don't need. 
     
    The most popular setting book of all time, according to some, was Greyhawk.  I owned it, as I am sure many of you did.  What was that little miniature staple-bound book, anyway?  Maybe 40 pages?  Sure, it grew, but it grew over time; it didn't beat the zeal out of me with six chapters on political intrigue and four more on tax-funded infrastructure.  I don't want to play Phantom Menace; I'll call you if I get bored. 
     
    A setting is a backdrop for your adventures; it's nice scenery, and names for the places in the distance.  Other than that, at least for the first few months, it's an oil painting.  Stunning, if done well.  But no matter how well it's done, you can't play it.  Not even a little bit. 
     
    So: nice, but _almost_ optional. 
     
  4. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Hugh Neilson in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    To me, the game is not complete if I cannot make my own characters, nor are pregens required to make it complete.  However, the "pregen as sample character" makes a lot of sense in general, and even more in Hero specifically. 
     
    Of greater relevance, a "complete game" without those pregens needs to have something more than "here's a few hundred pages of build parts - make a character".  You can present characteristics, skills and perks like we do now.  But not Powers.  You need something more akin to "Talents", pre-made special abilities with their price clearly labeled, and their mechanical components NOT provided.  Put them online or in an appendix, but the players don't need that game design - they just need the game we used them to design.
     
     
    Or you could allow characters to buy Blasts or AP Blasts.  Put the price down.  Maybe that is "Blast, 5 points per 1d6" and "Armor Piercing Blast, 7.5 points per 1d6".  Or maybe it is builds "Waves of Cold - the character emanates a field of frigidity from his hands in a triangle 12 meters to a side, with one point in any hex adjacent to the character, moving away from him.  All within the cone take 6d6 normal damage, versus energy defense" with a fixed price; "Frostbolt - the character fires off a ray of cold, rolling OCV vs DCV to strike a single target.  If he hits, the target takes 12d6 of normal damage, versus energy defense" - cost is 60 points.  "Ice Slivers - the character projects a burst of sharp ice rolling OCV vs DCV to strike a single target.  If he hits, the target takes 8d6 of armor pierceing damage, versus energy defense".
     
    Can you tinker with the builds?  Sure - but AFTER you learn the basic rules of the game.  Maybe our game has no powers with Penetrating or Autofire - then we don't include those mechanics.  In Hero, you can do that - but not in our game.
     
    The key is that the abilities are presented in bite-size chunks, actual abilities, not spaghetti code ability design mechanics.
     
     
    All of this. 
     
     
    Not, IMO, 100% essential, but at least 90%.  They are not nearly as likely to play it if someone has to build the adventure from scratch.  Maybe, however, the adventure(s) get sold separately but at least some small sample scenarios would ideally be included.  Maybe they are enough to earn 10 xp, after which you write your own, or buy Book 1 of an Adventure Path, or separate adventure modules.
     
     
    This. Is. Crucial. 
     
    We are not giving them tools to design a game.  We used those tools (Hero System) to build the game they will play.
     
     
    Well, you sort of do.  You need enough "setting" to place the adventures in, and let the players build a backstory in.  What you don't need is an atlas and a complete world.  You need enough pieces for the characters to exist, and those first adventures to happen.  And no more!
     
     
    Well, now we are getting the product line. 
     
    You can buy supplements with new powers and/or ways to alter existing powers.  You can move to full Hero system design.  But you DON'T have to - you can just keep playing with what you have.
     
    You can make your own adventures, and settings, and what have you.  Or you can buy adventure books, setting books, enemies books, etc.
     
     
    I think you need to restrict the "complete game" to one genre/subgenre to present something they can play, not a toolbox from which they can build something to play.  That also allows some greater depth in the (sub)genre chosen as we don't need a little bit of many (sub)genres.
     
    But Danger International would be a great starting point.
     
     
    This.
     
    This this this this this this this.
     
    THIS!!!
     
     
    And that is great - if they WANT to build their own game, with everything wide open.  But many do not.  For them, we provide what they want:
     
     
    We use the system to build the game so they can play it.  Yes, we removed a ton of options.  They don't want them - they want bounded options spelled out for them.  If you don't, use the system and build the game you and your group want.  But that's not what a lot of the market wants.  So let them have what they want too - or someone else will, and that someone else will get their gaming dollars.
     
    How many supplements do D&D and similar games have?  They want options, and lots of them.  But they want the pre-built.  So give them what they want!
     
     
     
    Both fine examples and maybe good templates for how much to include, and how much to leave out.
  5. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Chris Goodwin in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    When I say starter set I'm also not referring to a beginner's set.  The D&D Starter Kit happens to use the D&D 5th edition Basic Rules, but when I played through it we used the full D&D 5e ruleset.  
     
    The existing Fantasy Hero Complete "starter set" (electronic supplemental material) uses the full Fantasy Hero Complete rules.  There's no reason there can't be "complete game" sets that include everything but the rules; I'm fine if "complete game" includes the rulebook, even the full toolkit, as a separate book or books.  
     
     
    Good question.  Danger International is self contained and limited.  It assumes not just genre but a particular play style (i.e. no powers, agent-level, gritty).  In theory, yes, we could reproduce that, as long as we're assuming a genre and play style.  No, it's not the toolkit -- and that's a feature, not a bug.  
     
    Everything about the full HERO System toolkit ecosystem assumes everything is wide open, and that GMs and players will have full access to it.  It's kind of hard to reconcile that with a pregenerated world, power sets, power systems (magic systems, psionics, etc.), source material (monsters, villains, spells, gadgets, etc.).  Believe me, I've been told a number of times that what I want is "dumbing down" the system -- no, I don't.  I want something that I can open up and be playing in an hour.  
     
    There's no reason a complete game has to dumb anything down.  "Starter set" doesn't have to mean for beginners!   Pregenerated source material doesn't have to be "dumb".  
  6. Thanks
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from drunkonduty in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Ok, rampage over . . . for today at least! I'm off to bed. I hope y'all have tons to comment on for tomorrow. I have lots of time to kill at the office!
     
    Oh! And holy cow! I just tipped the 1,000 post mark! I feel like a grown-up now!
  7. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Hugh Neilson in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Whoa! I hadn't thought of it this way. It's not exactly what you're saying here, but you made me think of something different. What if each of the settings was presented as its own game? So there would be the core genre book for Champions, or maybe Champions Complete, to show all the possibilities. But what if the setting became the place where all the dials and levers from the toolbox were tuned for the setting, and then campaigns and adventures were included? So the "game" would be integrated into the setting. Vibora Bay would be it's own Champions game, and so would San Angelo, etc. They'd each be their own standalone games with their own presumed settings, sharing the same core rules. All the special rules, power settings, custom builds, etc., would be unique to each game this way. 
     
    Just a thought. . .
  8. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to DShomshak in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Oh, and while we're trading academic citations, I'll ad Guy Swanson's Birth of the Gods. Swanson stresses the diversity of supernatural beliefs: EG, while many cultures ascribe awe-inspiring natural phenomena to gods or spirits, they don't agree on which phenomena require divine explanation; the idea that people in some way continue after death is near-universal, but the form of continuation varies widely; and so on.
     
    Swanson's book attempts to test the hypothesis of sociologist Emile Durkheim, that the symbolic referent of the sacred/supernatural is society itself. Like a spirit, society is immortal, nonlocal, intangible, and posse3ssed of nonmaterial powers. Swanson finds strong correlations between several common supernatural beliefs (high gods, superior gods, reincarnation, witchcraft/black magic) and particular social structures. But none are 100%.
     
    Dean Shomshak
  9. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Scott Ruggels in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Whoa! I hadn't thought of it this way. It's not exactly what you're saying here, but you made me think of something different. What if each of the settings was presented as its own game? So there would be the core genre book for Champions, or maybe Champions Complete, to show all the possibilities. But what if the setting became the place where all the dials and levers from the toolbox were tuned for the setting, and then campaigns and adventures were included? So the "game" would be integrated into the setting. Vibora Bay would be it's own Champions game, and so would San Angelo, etc. They'd each be their own standalone games with their own presumed settings, sharing the same core rules. All the special rules, power settings, custom builds, etc., would be unique to each game this way. 
     
    Just a thought. . .
  10. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Scott Ruggels in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    So, looking at Danger International, one of the "complete games" of yesteryear, actually takes on all of those sub-genres in one game. Perhaps it's too generic for any one of them, but as the book is presented they all pretty much blend together seamlessly. The whole book has pretty much a consistent feel throughout, although it may lack some of the super-spy qualities of James Bond or Mission: Impossible. I'm not sure that there would need to be separate games for each, although perhaps supplements centered around the core game that tease out each sub-genre would work. Sort of the opposite of what the genre books do now. As I said earlier, I'm just spitballing here, but I think Action HERO is a great place to start because there is a gap in the product line these days, and it also is the simplest (i.e. most "real life") rendition of the game without all the Powers and Modifiers to muck up the presentation.
  11. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Scott Ruggels in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Oy! Don't even get me started on the presentation! That's an entirely different problem, best left to a different thread maybe. . . . Or maybe not. I'm willing to listen to constructive ideas.
     
    I have a friend, Drew Tucker, who was an artist for one of the first (if not the first) sets of Magic: The Gathering. I should know, honestly, but truth be told, I knew Drew for 15 years before I ever knew this about him! He's a fantastic artist, and I have some of his work diplayed at home without realizing how incredibly freaking famous he is! I say all this because I once asked him if he could do a few sketches for me if I ever got around to doing a Fantasy HERO Basic manual of some sort, and he agreed without pause, and offered the art for free. He mentioned he did some work for most of the game companies (did some stuff for one of the D&D monster manuals, maybe from 2e?), and that's when I learned just how accomplished he is! So I have access to his work, and a whole lot of ideas, and can probably get some great art to use. But I need something to put the art in first . . . . 
     
    Which may or may not have something to do with this thread.
  12. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to zslane in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    It's not just "ideal", it is absolutely necessary. Until it happens, we will continue to see the HERO System fade further into obscurity year after year, just as it has done for the past decade. This discussion continues to reappear every six months precisely because there is no perceivable hope for a "complete game", i.e., complete product line, in the system's future.
  13. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from tkdguy in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Ok, rampage over . . . for today at least! I'm off to bed. I hope y'all have tons to comment on for tomorrow. I have lots of time to kill at the office!
     
    Oh! And holy cow! I just tipped the 1,000 post mark! I feel like a grown-up now!
  14. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Chris Goodwin in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Let's get away from the starter box ideas, at least for now (believe me, I sympathize because this has always been a pet idea of mine; see the link above for the thread I started). I'm thinking more along the lines of what I know is one of your favorites, Danger International. One book was all I needed, and I was off and running. Can we reproduce that anymore? 
     
    I agree that Fantasy HERO Complete does include all the stuff if you get the electronic downloads, but seriously, some people don't even know that the PDFs even exist! They should have been included in the book, although I understand that they were Kickstarter goals or some such thing, so maybe not intended to be published. But the Complete books are just lacking in . . . I don't know what. Verve? Like Gnome BODY (Important!) said, the presentation is just tone-deaf! The font alone in Fantasy HERO Complete is simply atrocious! They are "complete," but so devoid of guts and feeling that they seem like dehydrated versions of games. How can they be presented, all under one cover, but also usefully organized?
  15. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Chris Goodwin in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    So, looking at Danger International, one of the "complete games" of yesteryear, actually takes on all of those sub-genres in one game. Perhaps it's too generic for any one of them, but as the book is presented they all pretty much blend together seamlessly. The whole book has pretty much a consistent feel throughout, although it may lack some of the super-spy qualities of James Bond or Mission: Impossible. I'm not sure that there would need to be separate games for each, although perhaps supplements centered around the core game that tease out each sub-genre would work. Sort of the opposite of what the genre books do now. As I said earlier, I'm just spitballing here, but I think Action HERO is a great place to start because there is a gap in the product line these days, and it also is the simplest (i.e. most "real life") rendition of the game without all the Powers and Modifiers to muck up the presentation.
  16. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Lord Liaden in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Okay, last time I'll say this and I'm done: No, it makes sense. It's logical and internally consistent, given the premises of the world. For practical purposes it makes no difference to the people of Ambrethel, because they and their gods still interact the way one would expect them to, similarly to how gods and mortals have usually interacted with each other in legend. There's nothing inherently "silly" about that -- gods are still a big deal, and can greatly enrich your life or make it hell. You want "true" gods who created the world and don't need worship? They're there.
     
    Nobody "prayed" imps into existence. People conceived of them, believed they're real -- just as people in the real world did -- except in this world that belief made them real. Same with elves, gorgons, oni, selkies, and everything else that human imagination populated our world with.
     
    I get that this concept offends your sensibility of what is right and proper. It's not to your taste, and using it would make you uncomfortable. That's fair. But that doesn't make the concept inherently wrong, silly, or stupid.
     
    There is one other point related to your suggestion that Ambrethel's gods act as intermediaries to the cosmic powers that might be useful to know: while that isn't any sort of formal arrangement, per The Mystic World it's not uncommon for those powers to effectively possess a god of similar qualities or habits, and use them as avatars to act on Earth. For example, Death will sometimes "ride" the death gods of various pantheons when it wants to take a more direct hand in mortal affairs. The Native American deity Coyote is normally a minor mischief-maker, but when possessed by The Trickster, embodiment of random, chaotic events, Coyote can transform the world.
     
    EDIT: BTW, I'm sure you understand that if you did want to game in TA, you can just declare that the gods actually did create the world, and there's no connection to a wider Hero Universe. Of course then you'd have to explain the presence of other gods and other beliefs; but you'd have to do that if you patterned your setting after real Earth, as well.
  17. Haha
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Gnome BODY (important!) in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    It's been a long day and it's the first chance I got to respond to my own thread!
  18. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    You remind me of an anecdote:
     
    I got into roleplaying quite by accident.   I love dice.  I mean I _love_ dice.  I had a rather extensive dice collection at one time (no; not just the pillow sack full; I mean an actual collection: dice whittle from bone certified back to the 1700s; iron dice cast and beaten into shape, actual bone "dice"  from hip bones of deer, etc.  They appear in every culture, every period.  Surely no one person travelled the globe and introduced them to everyone else.  There is something that draws us instinctively to the randomness of dice.
     
    I guess it's the "randomizing" element of dice that... well, Hell; I'm too damned old to care what anyone thinks of me at this point,  I never cared much at any other point, so let me just say it:  there is something mysterious about dice.  We can predict and average and graph, but we can't tell what any individual throw is going to do.  Combine that with the history of dice-- dice-based fortune telling and even gambling seem to predate recorded history-- and you get people deciding their fortunes-- even their fates-- on one unguessable roll.  On purpose!  People who have made a decision to let the random action of the universe decide what their lives will be---
     
    It's...  well, it's more than "romantic;" it's _haunting_.  I've been fascinated with them since I was just a little kid-- I mean that first board game with the colored die: move to the next space with that color.  It was spellbinding-- I controlled everything.  I could pick the die up-- I could pick it up the same exact way every time; shake it the same exact way every time.  Throw it onto the board and it was _different_.  Nothing I could do would control the result.  I had complete control of everything right up until I tossed it into the air
     
    and the universe took over....
     
     
    I never got away from it.  To this day, rolling dice is just the greatest mystery, and as an adult, and understanding the math-- the averages, the graphs, the potentials, the tilt of this and that and the angle or roundness of the vertices and weight and size of the die---- 
     
    and knowing that when I throw them, it's all meaningless.
     
    When I think about it too hard, it's scary, in a humbling "we are but specks in an infinite cosmos" sort of way.
     
    When I just enjoy waiting for the next roll, guessing what it will be, and waiting-- over and over again-- until I'm right....   There's a childish joy; my joy, from the child in me that still remembers how exciting that first colored die was---   and I _love_ it.
     
     
     
    At any rate, I had a rather extensive dice collection by the time 77 or 78 rolled about.  I had moved, made new friends, and had dice randomly displayed here and there.  "Oh, cool!  You must really love games!"
     
    Well, I like dice.
     
    "Dude, you have a _lot_ of dice!  Have you ever role played?"
     
    I did a couple of stage productions in school.
     
    "No; I mean like where you and your friends-- have you ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons?"
     
    Ehhh...  _sort of_....?  Nothing great.  I don't really think that's my thing.  I'm not really into hobbits and elves and crap.
     
    "No; I mean the way you play: you make up a character and act out like what that character would do or say of how he would react; have you ever done that?"
     
    I did a couple of stage productions in school.
     
    "No; Dude; you are not getting this.  It's like making up an adventure movie, only you come up with your own lines and stuff as you go."
     
    So...  like a party game?
     
    "Kinda; yeah.  But then you want to do something, right?  So you can't just decide that you _do_ it; you just say you _want_ to do it, then you check your skill level"
     
    My what, now?
     
    "You have like skill levels and things that tell you kinda how good you are at stuff.  If something is sort of easy, then you get bonuses; if it's hard, then you get penalties."
     
    Penalties?  You lost me.  If I'm good at it, why are there penalties?
     
    "Because you need a target number."
     
    And what's that?
     
    "Well you have to roll that number or better on the dice--"
     
    Dice?
     
    "Right.  When you want to try to do something, you roll the dice, and they will tell you if you can do it or not."
     
    The dice decide?
     
    "Right.  You take your target number and your bonuses or penalties and then you let the dice decide---"
     
    Tell me more.  No; wait!  _Show_ me......
     
    "Sure!  My buddies Kevin and Jim have been itching to get a Traveller game up, but we haven't finished the D&D module yet--- Hey!  Do you like science fiction?  Like spaceships and aliens and stuff?"
     
     
    And that did it.  Right there.  I didn't sit down because I wanted to be the next Conan or Legolas; I didn't want to be the next Magic Space Wizard.  I wanted to let the dice decide my fate.....
     
     
    And I've never regretted it.  
     
     
    Now over the years-- between friends, family, nieces and nephews, moving, giving things away, -- life in general, very little of my once-prized dice collection remains (I have a couple of hammered iron dice, a couple of antler dice, and a very few others still left), but it's amazing how many _more_ dice I have now than ever before!  
     
    I just _love_ dice.  
     
    This only seems to apply to dice, though.  Card games suck the blue ones on a donkey.  >:(   They freakin' _wish_ they were dice!
     
     
    Dude, I am _really_ sorry about that.  I may have to erase all of it and just start here, at the actual anecdote:
     
    I once had (and still have most of) a set of about two-dozen bright yellow dice with oversized black pips.  When I was teaching new players, I would insist they use these dice, as they were _much_ easier to read, meaning that I or any of the other players could help them determine their successes and failures until they got the hang of it.  One player jokingly referred to these dice arranged in a neat rectangle as "the school bus," and the name has just stuck, given that they were used mostly for the purposes of education (no one picked them on purpose:  they were called "the school bus;" that should tell you immediately just how damned unpleasant they were to look at!    ).
     
     
    I had a problem player many years ago-- you may have heard me mention Davien a time or two.  It was absolutely _astounding_  how phenomenally well he rolled, and how his success always seemed to be proportionally to both the smallness of his dice and his distance away from other players.  (Weird, right?!).  I got sick to death of it, and one day I stumbled across a set of twelve dice in "school bus" colors---  30mm dice.  
     
    "Here, Davien.  You wanna play; you use these dice.  Period."
     
    It took about fifteen minutes before someone coined the phrase "the short bus."    
     
     
     
    {EDIT}:  Thread Tax:
     
    What makes a game "complete?"
     
    Damned if I know.  But I know when it ain't!  
     
     
    seriously though:  having everything you need to play a game:  An understanding of the world-- mood, attitude, grimness--- Look at HERO 6e: all the talk about having a hundred dials and switches you can throw and twist and boom!  Instant game!
     
    Well a "complete game" is one that has _done_ that already:  It has all the switches thrown and dials set to create a defined world and a defined tone and gives you enough setting and background to place yourself _in_ that world, at least enough to feel like you are a part of it.  There is enough "here is how the world works" to get you going (I really don't need every single detail; just give me enough to get the feel for it; I can wing the rest), preferably some sample characters and information on them; enough NPCs to people at least one adventure, and ... well, _at least one adventure_.  Two or three is better, even if they are short and simple, because they tend to reinforce what the world is.  Sure, if there's only one adventure, it's better to be a bit more detailed, and preferably open-ended so I can just sort of bump along continuing it until I can get something together on my own.
     
    Instead of fifteen optional ways to do something, I want something that says "in this world, it's done this way."  Less generic; more specific.  If HERO core rules get any more "universal and generic," they won't need cover art; they will need a white cover with black letters that says "Game Rules."  Package it in white box labeled "Game; boxed set" and include a 36x48 sheet of white paper that says "Map" and white-covered book of Mad Libs that says "Scenario."
     
  19. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to DShomshak in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Incidentally, I vaguely remember a short story by, I think, L. Sprague deCamp in which a con man decides the big money is in religion, so he invents a god and uses his acting and oratoriacal skills to popularize it. The donations start rolling in! And then the god manifests. Oops.
     
    DeCamp, Saberhagen, Leiber and Anderson also wrote a lot of SF as well as Fantasy, and I suspect it shaped their development of the "belief creates gods" trope. As I alluded above, it seems to me like a clever notion for people who like playing ideas but who don't really care much about faith or religion.
     
    I have to include myself among that group. When Steve Long assembled the CU, he adopted a lot of the mystic cosmology I invented in The Ultimate Super-Mage. In it, I had belief and story creating spirits, gods and entire dimensions. This seemed like a good justification for the "kitchen sink" nature of the standard superhero universe, in which an angel of the Lord and the mighty Thor can be equally real. Marvel and DC kind of waffled on this, with talk of a Supreme Deity who was strongly suggested to be the Abrahamic Deity while the pagan mythic figures were merely powerful entities living in pocket dimensions. I wasn't willing to privilege one mythology over another, so I made Yahweh as much a creation of human belief as Odin or Zeus. And having the gods all be delusional, believing their own myths, sidestepped the clashing origin myths. At least the gods aren't all consciously lying to their worshipers.
     
    TA is part of the CU, so it has to use the same cosmology. This world can't be created by gods, because the contemporary CU's Earth wasn't created by gods. One may not like this approach to Fantasy world design. But it's a consequence of splicing together two different genres. Which, as I have said before, I don't think was a good idea in the first place. So I don't entirely disagree with Phil on this.
     
    Dean Shomshak
  20. Thanks
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from DShomshak in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Xenophanes, and for what it's worth, he talked of cows and lions in his example. 
     
     
    So these are two different things, really, which was my original point. Blake's example is cynical and probably not untrue. The ancient polytheistic gods were embodiments of natural phenomena (the sun god, the fertility goddess, etc.), so they were worshipped before they were named, and only later were they personified in pantheons. So the gods were in one sense "created," but not out of nothing as it feels in TA. The unscrupulous part is probably equally true.
     
    But the example of Hinduism, with its thousands of gods, is a different example. It's probably a good analogue to TA in some ways. Sure the gods don't have to be "real" for rituals to have power, but in Hinduism they're all just different aspects of Brahman anyway, so they are individual ways to the God. So even if I create an angry lobster god to worship, it is the aspect of Brahman which it represents that has power, which is (presumably) already there in Brahman; I've only selected my perspective of Brahman to emphasize for worship. Did I "create" the angry lobster god? Sure. Does it get its power from me? I didn't create the angry lobster god, whom I shall now call Crustaphelous, out of nothing. Or did I? This is the constant paradox of Hinduism. It's all Brahman anyway. But it's definitely not saying that these gods were created by humans and get their power from human worship, and then believe in their own existence based upon that worship. 
     
    This is where I part ways from the TA pantheon. It seems a bit shallow to suggest people were so stupid that they decided they needed a god of war to believe in who could give them power, so they randomly started to believe in it, and then it became real and self-aware, and therefore became able to give the believers power. This was my original comment on the circularity of it all. But it is, after all, just fiction. Maybe it's all, after all, just fiction . . .
     
    I'm not really trying to push a theological debate. My original point was that these are the reasons why I never cared much for deities in RPGs.
     
     
    These are EXCELLENT points, LL, and I find them entirely satisfying reasons for accepting the TA pantheon as it stands.
     
    As I said, I'm not really trying to start a religious war here, I was just pointing out something in an earlier post that I probably should have been wise enough to just leave alone, mostly because it's just my own personal idiosyncrasy and not an issue with the TA setting. Sorry to needlessly derail things! Although I'm glad I did because I finally got some answers to the questions I've had for years about these things!
  21. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Lord Liaden in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    What the various allusions to gods in Hero books all but state, is that godhood is an evolutionary process. In several different books there are references to "proto-gods;" created out of human imagination, but not yet at full divine power, part of a coherent pantheon or mythic cosmology, having their own dimensional realm, or other trappings of true mythic gods. There's even a write-up for a "failed" proto-god in Book Of Dragons. Even after a god comes fully into being, it's still subject to further mutation as its worshipers' beliefs in it change over time. For example, one of the Atlantean gods during their era of global empire is a war god named Ares, but he's more of a noble warrior than the Greek god of that name, and also judge of the dead and ruler of the Underworld. Tikarion, the ancient Atlantean king of the gods, is in several ways very much like the Turakian god-king Kilbern. During the Turakian Age, Mordak the leader of the evil Scarlet Gods, is also the god of darkness; while in the later Atlantean Age, the kingdom of Kaphtor is patronized by a god named Mor'daki, who looks different from how Mordak is described but is also a god of darkness.
     
    EDIT: This can go also go for demons in the Netherworld as well, albeit in kind of the opposite direction. For example, many of the famous devils from Western grimoire demonology -- Beelzebub, Astaroth, Moloch, and others -- began as Middle Eastern gods who were "demonized" by their Israelite neighbors. As their cults were displaced by newer religions, these gods devolved into demons sustaining themselves by consuming the souls of the damned.
  22. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Amorkca in What makes a complete game "complete"?   
    Oh no! Here we go again, right? I've followed and participated in lots of different discussions where people wish that HERO System would release complete games rather than genre books or campaign settings. But I'm a bit unclear what would be considered a "complete game," and what would make it appear to be "complete." I'm all for it, but I'm not entirely sure what it means. I know, I'm bringing up that same thing that routinely gets brought up, but I think it is valuable to at least be clear on some of the nomenclature that gets used so we can be clear on what people actually want to see from HERO System.
     
    Let me start with a few definitions/categories:
    Rulebooks and rules supplements: 5e, 6e, APG I & II, Champions Complete, Fantasy Hero Complete, Champions Now Genre books: Champions, Pulp HERO, Fantasy HERO, etc. Campaign settings: Hudson City, Turakian Age, etc. Enemy/organization/character/creature books: Enemies, VIPER, Champions Villains Vols. I, II, III, etc. Power/equipment books: Champions Powers, HERO System Grimoire, HERO System Equipment Guide, etc. Adventure books: Well, as everyone points out, there just aren't any of these anymore. There used to be.  
    So, I'm going to try to summarize some recurring points, and ask some questions, I guess in a sort of scholastic way:
    Proposition 1: The 6e (or 5e, depending on who you ask) rules are too big for beginners to learn, and too cumbersome for system mastery! 
    Nearly 800 pages of rules, rulings, options, buttons, dials, etc. make for a monstrous toolbox. Is there a way to pare down that toolbox to the bare essentials that can be taught? Something other than Basic Rulebook? Proposition 2: HERO  System needs more complete games. 
    Champions Complete and Fantasy HERO Complete are marketed as "complete" games, but they lack campaign settings and adventures. Without campaigns and adventures, players are left in the wild with these so-called "complete" yet unsupported games. Proposition 3: A complete game should be ready to play.
    It should ideally be learnable in a weekend, and playable with new players in an evening (probably a pipe dream, but an honorable goal). It should have a setting and plenty of adventures, or at least a couple of adventures and plenty of seeds for homemade adventures. Proposition 4: The lengthy powers builds inhibit a streamlined game experience.
    Several lines of a power build, with all the Advantages and Limitations, make the game too mathy for some people. The complex builds also make the character sheets sloppy and hard to read. There should be a simplified player interface for new players that doesn't scare them off with all the HERO jargon.  Proposition 5: What is the definitive, DOJ-supported edition anyway? 
    Some people stick with 5e because it most resembles the original game(s), enough so that it's still supported in HERO Designer. Some people prefer 6e, but others can't stand it because it retools some fundamental HERO stuff. The new Complete books: aren't they just streamlined 6e? Champions Now: the rules have been so completely gutted, and powers even renamed in awfully confusing ways, why is this even supported by DOJ? Are any of these things actually supported by anything other than 3rd party efforts at this point? I know I'm forgetting some things, but I'm sure they'll come up! 
     
    So here's what I'm a bit confused about: how can you get all these things together in one "complete game" without it also becoming 700 pages long?
    The Complete books are around 250 pages long, but some would argue that they don't have complete settings and adventures. So are they even "complete games" in and of themselves? Perhaps there needs to be more Campaign and Adventure books? But then you're making the books INcomplete when you require other books to make the "complete" books playable. Hall of Champions offers some new content, but is any of it "complete" in the sense that they can be used with complete settings in an ongoing campaign? Should a "complete game" be depending on 3rd party content to be playable?  
    I know there are economic considerations driving the actual content that DOJ offers. This is more about the "wish lists" that people keep submitting. What are people actually wishing for? What would an actual complete version of Champions Complete or Fantasy HERO Complete actually look like?
     
    Here's what I'm wondering: Doesn't this end out making the idea of "complete games" start to look more and more like the toolbox model that 6e pursued in the first place? Couldn't there be a new kind of book category, maybe a catalog of Gamebooks, that act like genre/setting/campaign/adventure books all wrapped up into one, without having to rehash all the rules in each new game?
     
    Let's say I'm going to try to revise Danger International. I'm going to rename it Action HERO just to fit in with the HERO title motif (not my idea, but I like it). What should I include in this project? 
    I don't really need to reissue the rules, do I? They've already been done several times over. Perhaps a brief summary of the rules in 50 pages, with lots of references to the appropriate 6e1/6e2 volumes? Why should I reference the rules in Champions Complete as my resource, as seems to be the inclination promoted by DOJ these days? (50 pages) I can pretty much cut out the Powers section entirely. They're only really used to build weapons, gadgets, vehicles, and stuff like that anyway, so I can spend some space on those items without rehashing the entire Powers rules. I could offer a one or two page explanation of how the Powers are used to drive build all the items, perhaps even an appendix on how they're built, but I don't have to teach how to build a modern gun. Again, each Gamebook would set it's own dials, as people say, and render the extraneous material in sidebars referencing the Rulebook toolbox. Lists of equipment, weapons, vehicles, gadgets, etc. (5 pages, maybe) In this example of Action HERO I'm choosing a modern setting in a familiar world for a very specific reason: I don't have to include a setting. It's already out there in your everyday experience (I'm stealing this, by the way, from Ron Edwards's Champions Now, because it's a great idea). Perhaps instead of a specific setting, I'd offer a "state of the world" section, and offer some adventure seeds based on all the global hot-spots and crisis situations. (Let's say 50 really detailed pages to help foster new adventure ideas) There'd be an appendix with pre-gen characters ready to play. (10 pages) There'd also be an appendix with some interconnected adventures that can be played right away with the pre-gens. (25 pages?)  
    This seems simple. 140 pages simple. But is it "complete"?
     
    What's missing? Or does the entire idea miss the mark? Would other games (Pulp HERO, Star HERO, etc.) fit the same mold? Would each game just explain which dials and buttons are set and how? More importantly, unlike the genre books, would they simply make assumptions about the particular setting for the game? If that's the case, would there be perhaps a need for several different kinds of games in the same genre? Am I falling back into the Genre Book model if I offer too many setting options? Would Action HERO actually be better cast as several games: American Agents, Global Guerrillas, Mercenaries, and things like that, each with specific setting assumptions? 
     
    These are just some of the things I've been thinking about. What do you see as making a "complete game," and what am I missing? 
     
    Please, let's not get back into an edition war, or rules bloat debate. This is really just a brainstorming discussion, but I'd really like to hear from some of the regulars who have strong opinions about this stuff.
     
     
  23. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Lord Liaden in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    TA p. 90 explicitly states that the "gods" of Thun aren't gods at all, in the metaphysical sense. They're Elder Worm of tremendous magical power, too strong to be killed when Mankind and Man's proto-gods overthrew the Worm overlords of Earth. Instead they were imprisoned deep beneath Thun, similarly to Takofanes. The Thunese work to free them, and in exchange receive such trickles of knowledge and power as their gods can release past their bonds.
     
     
    The example that first comes to my mind is Fred Saberhagen's "Book of Swords" series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_Swords#Gods . Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser appear similar, in that they describe many gods as beginning first as the memory of mortal men and women, achieving godhood as their worshipers increase; and if they lose the belief of their worshipers, they may die. https://scrollsoflankhmar.com/rpgguide:godsofnehwon
     
    EDIT: I'd also include Poul Anderson's early novel (1954) The Broken Sword, which presents a Faerie dimension in which all the gods of its adjacent parts of the world are real and coexistent; but some of them have been forgotten and effectively exiled to distant corners of Faerie, particularly in Europe with the spread of Christianity. With the loss of their worshipers they become diminished, although still formidable. http://www.castaliahouse.com/retrospective-the-broken-sword-by-poul-anderson/
    (Michael Moorcock has cited The Broken Sword as having been highly influential to his own fiction.)
     
     
    Sorry to tell you, but, Yes. The Netherworld is the realm containing all the "hells" of every human religion/mythology, and their demonic denizens; and they're just as "imaginal" as the mythic gods and creatures in Faerie, and the gods, angels, etc of modern religions in Elysium.
     
    But if it makes you feel better, all these dimensions are just the Inner Planes connected to Earth, generated by human thought and life-energy (and the energy of other living things on this planet). Beyond our corner of the Astral Plane lie the Outer Planes, whose inhabitants include beings who could be considered "true" gods: embodiments of fundamental concepts of reality, such as Chaos, Nature, Death, or Time; right up to the ultimate Creator of all things, at the crown of the Sephirothic Tree of Life. These are the makers and sustainers not just of Earth, but the entire Multiverse, who existed before any mortal beings, and have no need for our worship, or any interest in us beyond our use to their own cosmic purposes.
     
    (All this is explained in the Champions source book, The Mystic World.)
  24. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Lord Liaden in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Well, to be fair, it's hard not to see a great deal of mythology as self-serving gods propitiated by self-serving people.   Even today, very many people when they pray, pray for things to benefit themselves.
     
    However, as Dean himself has pointed out, the ethical dimension in religion has evolved as humanity's theological thought has grown more sophisticated. Why should the same process not have occurred in Ambrethel, with a 5000+ year history of civilization? I wouldn't be surprised if the divisions between Blue, Grey, and Scarlet gods were a lot blurrier in past millennia, including between the gods themselves.
     
    Nothing in the books suggest Ambrethelans are aware of the role their worship and faith plays in sustaining the gods. I doubt most Ambrethelans consider their rituals and ceremonies of worship to be other than moderns do, an expression of their devotion and reverence; although as I indicated, there's a transactional component to worship in modern times too.
     
    It may be distasteful to think of divinities as deliberately misleading their followers in order to exploit them... but remember that we're talking about gods, not God. If the gods of Ambrethel were created out of the thoughts of imperfect humans, how can we expect them to be perfect?
  25. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to DShomshak in The Turakian Age is Seriously Underrated   
    Fantasy RPGs are generally based on Fantasy fiction. Fantasy fiction is generally based on ancient myths and legends, but not taking them at face value.
     
    The idea that people invent gods is not new. One of the ancient Greek philosophers, I forget which one, opined that if pigs believed in gods those gods would oink. (Or words to that effect.) William Blake had a more elegant phrasing in Marriage of Heaven and Hell about gods as personifications and metaphors created by poets, that unsophisticated people took as real with help from unscrupulous priests. The Mimamsa school of Hinduism explicitly holds that the gods don't have to be real for the rituals of worship to have power. So Fantasy authors and games aren't completely without precedent in creating worlds in which human belief creates "real" gods.
     
    Much of magic draws on symbols and concepts of divine power... but further assumes that gods (or even God) cannot stop mortals from expropriating their power in this way. See Stolen Lightning: A Social Theory of Magic by Daniel Lawrence O'Keefe.
     
    So I have no problem with the TA theology, at least in terms of internal consistency. Though some parts are fairly unpleasant, such as the role of faith: worship is the food of the gods, but faith -- belief without evidence, or even in the face of evidence -- is their wine. Which is why they don't just allow, they create religious divisions such as the Hargeshites. If faith is their wine, the gods seem to be alcoholics. And nobody's better than an addict at rationalizing their behavior.
     
    In this sense, the TA theology is very much the work of secular people who, how do I put this, don't believe in belief or revere reverence.
     
    Dean Shomshak
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