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Brian Stanfield

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  1. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I always paraphrased this as "When in doubt, kick open the door and spray the room," but yeah! One of the things I really like about PbtA in particular and games like it (Blades, etc.) is that it is hard crafted into the game "Make your characters lives interesting" and the whole idea of "hard moves" by the GM... initiated because of how a player rolled/failed a roll... is just great. The GM doesn't have to be a master paragon of directorial timing and imagination... the dice provide the impetus... "oh... rolled a 4 on your Infiltraion move? ok then... as you are hiding behind the desk, you hear a flurry of running feet, an "In here!" and the office door flies open and two of Bronski' men start spraying the room with sub-machine guns!"
     
  2. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Spence in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    If only you had been there to save us! I had a couple of sessions, two years running at Origins, where the GM's goal really was character development of characters he'd been using for 20 years. What we did became part of the running story that he had spent an hour relaying to us before we played. Maybe it was only low grade character development, but it was really, really not fun! So when I say "no character development, combat only" in the description, I'm dead serious. Although you bring up a good point: my claim really should have been "no role playing, combat only." Regardless, my experience has run the gamut, not always for the best.
     
    I think that what @RDU Neil suggested about "The Plan" would make for a perfect one shot at a convention. Start with the backdrop, describe the scene, let them do the "montage" version of setting everything up, and then get right to the combat (if that's indeed what you're looking for). It also works perfectly for one shot simulations. How would a samurai stand against a Medieval knight? Let's set it up! James Bond vs. Jason Bourne? Do it! This is one of the reasons I was drawn to HERO in the first place back in the '80s. As everyone started to figure out the "universal" nature of the rules, and more games came out to flesh out the "system" with more games (Justice Inc., Danger International, Fantasy HERO, etc. ), the possibilities became limitless. Perfect for "roll playing" simulations.
  3. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    Understood. Upthread I was really just responding to your confessed simulationist tendencies. But I’m totally with you on this. Storytelling is the point, otherwise we’d be playing tabletop war games. 
  4. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I actually disagree with this. I can tell a novel worth of character development in a short gaming session, while combat and guns are blazing. The problem is, people think "character development" is some drawn out thing that "happens over time" like just trying to live inside the skin in some simulated way. Character development is really about demonstrating some core, fascinating aspects of a character within a narrative arch, and can be done in ten sentences spread out across a game. Hell... in ten minutes of a demo of Protect the Queen, I created a character out of thing air who went from "some guy accompanying the queen" to "the tragically fated hunchback gardner who died for the queen after years of psychological torture, knowing only the love of her cold touch" and had people going "oh my god!" in his final scene... and that was like six sentences in four quick scenes in ten minutes (with three other people doing their thing as well in that time.)
     
    Character development is critical, or it is all pointless.
     
    This kind of thing is not at all what I'm talking about. This is about arguing stat blocks and such, and if you want this, you need to do systems programming to actually create such a simulation.

    What I did with my Harvey Storm Shoot-out... had three PCs and two NPCs, and by the end, everyone, including the dead ones, had stories and personalities and moments of pathos... even though 95% of the evening was rolling dice and shooting and stabbing stuff. When one PC got his hand nearly chopped off and had to hold it together with duct tape while gutting it out and trying to cover his friends... when another got shot through the kidney and was bleeding out, and the third had to make a desperate play to finish off the badguy before he died, it was tense and felt emotionally immediate.
     
    I had not desire for "simulation" as an objective program... I want to know who that samurai is and why he is fighting the knight, and what will it cost him to win or lose... AND at the same time, the clash of swords is detailed and unique and intense... because when one of those blades bites deep, everyone at the table cares what happens.
     
    Without that... without pathos... none of it matters.
     
  5. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Spence in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I've seen the same thing in some games run by either very new GM's or really bad GM's.  But that fits a lot of con games where there simply is no time to meander around as well.  The reality is that a con game is a very short game with somewhere between three and a half to three hours of actual play time.   The initial time from start to as much as an hour is spent explaining play.  I prefer investigative games such as the various Gumshoe games or Call of Cthulhu these days, but putting together a short investigation is HARD, so I tend lean to more action oriented Nights Black Agents or Fall of Delta Green for cons.
     
    But back to the main point. 
    Character Development and Role Playing are two different things.  They affect each other, but they are different.
    Role Playing is playing out the roles, morals/ethics/beliefs and personalities of the character in question.
    Character Development is the evolution of a character over time for the character in question.
    A con games' characters are given a prebuilt role/morals/ethics/beliefs/personality either by the GM as pregens or as hasty builds by the players for the game. 
    A four hour slot is generally not enough time to get a feel for the character let alone do any development.
     
    A con one shot is enough to get in a fun brawl/fight or some basic generalized role play.  But unless it is a one-on-one game the other players are going get enough "stage time" that development will be at a minimum.  Over the years I have seen con game sessions where one player pushes their attempt at "character development" at the exclusion of the rest of the players.  It usually ends badly because the development bubba is disappointed that they couldn't get through their entire mini-drama and the rest of the players come away from that new game they were trying believing it sucks and was boring. 
     
    There is a time and place for everything. 
    A four hour con slot is there to give players a taste of a new game system.
    Or it is there for players to get a chance to meet new players.
     
    What a four hour con slot is not for is developing a long term personality for a character.  
  6. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to assault in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    If it works for Raymond Chandler...
     
    "When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand."
     
     
  7. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I think more people ought to put in their convention description: “This is about combat, not character development.” It would help people know what to expect, and then you could get right down to the dice rolling. 
  8. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Doc Democracy in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I agree, one of my most enjoyable games was a recreation of the last scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  The GM parcelled out Sundance to one player, Butch Cassidy to another and the other four got a squad of Bolivian lawmen.  The first problem for the outlaws is to get to the stables - they are in the cantina with two pistols and 12 bullets each, their rifles and ammunition is on their horses and then they have to get out before reinforcements arrive, the Bolivians have taken up positions on the walls in cover but the outlaws are MUCH better shots.  Bolivians go down more quickly and fire less often but the outlaws are hugely outnumbered.  The GM was simply there to adjudicate and timekeep.
     
    Fantastic game for a convention, used a custom system that recognised the difference in class but still made it dangerous for the outlaws simply to run for the gate to the compound and freedom...
  9. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I actually did that for one session of my ongoing Secret Worlds game (action conspiracy game using HERO). I gave the players three generic Deputry U.S. Marshall's (allowed them to spend a few points to make them individual) that were part of an elite operations squad. I ran an adventure where they had tracked three escaped Bosnian gangsters to a bad neighborhood in Houston on Aug 25th of 2017... the day Harvey made landfall. They were cut off from support and had to hit the house as the storm came beating down, while running into more than they bargained for.
     
    It honestly was a brilliant rain-lashed, storm battered shoot out, with a bloody fight with a juiced up psychopath, bullets ripping through walls and doors, blood and death and bodies everywhere. Too much fun. 

    I'm not so sure I'd have the same luck at a convention doing something so generic, but if the players were in the right kind of groove...
  10. Thanks
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Chris Goodwin in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    When I take over the world, my first plan is to buy DOJ and start producing boxes of the different HERO games again! And lots of adventures.
  11. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from RDU Neil in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I've toyed with the idea of getting my simulations fix by running single-session, single-scene simulations, such as a single gun battle, with pre-gen characters. No story needed, just set the scene with "shoot the bad guys," and then go. You could do something different every time, and you get your simulationist fix without having to worry about all the other requirements for a more narrative game.
  12. Thanks
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Duke Bushido in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    When I take over the world, my first plan is to buy DOJ and start producing boxes of the different HERO games again! And lots of adventures.
  13. Thanks
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Amorkca in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    When I take over the world, my first plan is to buy DOJ and start producing boxes of the different HERO games again! And lots of adventures.
  14. Haha
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Scott Ruggels in How Dungeons And Dragons Somehow Became More Popular Than Ever   
    Oh easy, he just punched you in the gut and stole your lunch money, straight up.
  15. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    You never know, Scott-- you might have one copy of each printing.  
     
    The first printing cover art for the campaign book featured smaller characters and the back cover had Peterson and Alston as characters dead-center.  The second printing used a different artist and featured larger characters (making the "real" characters more easily identifiable: I always thought the first printing cover art was more concerned with skirting possible legal issues     ).
     
    Can't tell you about the rules book, though.  For some reason, the Justice Inc I have (picked up at a yard sale) had one of each campaign book in it.  Kind of neat to see side by side.  
     
     
    And while we're at it:
     
    Chalk me up for missing boxes: nothing like a little box for organization.  And of course, making for thinner rules books, as "rules" and "theme" could be split into two books.  you could toss in a couple of folders for NPCs, villains, what-have-you...   And a map!  It was so much easier to provide maps when you had a box-- or even a saddle-stiched rules book (the way Autoduel Champions did it).  But this is getting me nowhere, so....
     
     
  16. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    Not the two loose books, but the boxes, yes.  (ignore the terry cloth tablecloth:  It's a sound-absorbing table cloth I made from two layers of bath sheets: the wife works nights, and dice-on-wood is not the easiest thing to sleep through.     Unexpected bonus:  it greatly reduced the concerns over spilled coffee ruining character sheets and game books!).
     
    In total, I have at last count 9 boxed sets and six loose rules books: those not pictured are at other locations, either borrowed or just staying there so I don't have to carry them back and forth.  Any time I find a boxed set for twenty bucks or under, I pick it up.  I'll pick up a loose rules book for up to ten bucks.  It might seem extravagant, seeing as how I've got a _beautiful_ scan of that book, but.....
     
    The law says I can make one digital copy for every book I own.  I made copies of the scan (a total equal to the books I own, and no more: it might sound incredibly anal, but think about guys like Christopher above: he worked his butt off to put his product together.  Is it just and right that ten thousand people should get it for free?)  to loan out, but stopped doing that when one of my players let me know he found one of my scans on a pirate site.    I recalled the scans as best I could, and now only loan out the books.
     
    I had thought about making physical back-ups (also legal, but only one per) using my scan as the pattern, but the price of having new ones printed and shipped to me-- well, it's around ten bucks a copy.  Easier just to pick them up when I run across them.
     
    And Brian:  Only two of those boxes still have the original dice, so they're not all complete.    
     
    Oh: almost forgot!  One was a bootleg (box and all!) I picked up as "new in box!" from -- -well, let's say a famous and reputable online vendor of out-of-print game material.  I'm not trying to call them out because I think they were suckered, too.  It was one of the greyscale covers (easiest to bootleg) and was created from a _beautiful_ scan or a new PDF someone put a lot of work into.  At any rate, the give away was that none of the originals were printed in _TONER_!     The map was on white stock, and the dice were casino size.      The Viper's Nest scenario was on too-high-quality paper, and the catalogue insert was from the wrong year (though it even included the marketing card; nice touch, that. But it wasn't on card stock: it was on regular paper).
     
    The vendor was great: I called to tell them they were suckered.  They offered my a return UPS slip and a refund, on the spot.  I declined, simply because my kids didn't know it was bootleg (I bought it for them, to show them how exciting opening a new game was   Yeah, I'm a sap like that....).  I told them that I simply wanted to make them aware of the problem (wrong plastic, too: the original wrappers way back when were hard and crunchy and tore so easily you might tear it on accident, like cellophane: this was modern vinyl shrink-wrap).  Ten minutes later, I got an e-mail with a gift certificate for the entire purchase and shipping price (which was, I admit, stupidly high-- but it was "never been opened, still in original wrapper," so I bought it (yes: knowing I was going to open it, but I'd likely never have another chance to open a "new" boxed set of Champions with my kids, right?)  with a message apologizing for the situation, telling me to return or keep the item as I saw fit.  (I kept it).
  17. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Scott Ruggels in Duke's scans   
    I'd whine about Copyrights, if I had not been an admin for a now long defunct art board and would have to patrol for "Art Theft". ack in the late 90's -early oughts.  

    And yes I was all over the paper RPG inddustry back then, and was trying to get gigs illustrating for Analog and Asimov's, because of Janet Aulisio's work being both in Hero and those magazines. (Didn't make it though.)
     
    Currently trying to boost my skills to the base TSR levels in digital painting.
     
  18. Confused
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in Duke's scans   
    Well, crap.
     
    I mean  "Yay!", but _crap_!
     
    Just discovered that Matt Forbeck (writer of the Western HERO genre book) sold that book _twice_.   Or maybe just once, since Iron Crown owned HERO as well as Role Master at the time...
     
    At any rate, the Western HERO genre book was released for Role Master as "Outlaws."  I know this because my brother brought me a copy today.
     
    I've only perused it, but the bulk of the art is the same (that could have saved a lot of restoration work, right there!) as are the first four sections.
     
    I'm wondering if it might contain also the scenario with the confusion:  When we don't know if Adam is the dog, the preacher, or the young man, or who does what and when.
     
    If I find out it does, I may have to re-do the PDF and make that correction.  
     
     
    Though at first skim, it seems like there's more content in the Role Master book......
     
     
     
     
  19. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Christopher R Taylor in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    I plan on writing up the Player's Guide for my fantasy campaign setting as simple and direct as possible stripped down to the minimum.  Then I want to put the guts of the game with the more complicated stuff in the Master Guide for the GM to use, and this is the kind of thing I've been studying on, to try to think of what is the least a player really need to know.
  20. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to grandmastergm in Origins 2019   
    I did see his costume and the PC cereal boxes.  They were amazing!  I was playing Call of Cthulu: Sorrows in Tsavo, which was an adaptation of the Ghost and the Darkness (the killer lions of Kenya) but with a CoC twist.
  21. Haha
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Duke Bushido in Duke's scans   
    I was thinking more like Johnny Cash. . .
  22. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Duke Bushido in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    Yes.  And I _think_ there was an Adventurers Club article mentioning it during 3e.  Brian is likely referring to 6e "officializing" it by putting it in the rules book.  And if you're assigning skill levels or re-assinging them, you're still doing math.  It doesn't really solve any problems, except for the theoretical problems of not wanting you players to know the NPCs DCV, and even then, you'd have to have a group of players who don't notice that they hit when they roll eight or higher, but don't hit on seven or lower....
     
     
     
    2e.  I stayed with 2e.
     
    Yeah, I've cribbed a few things here and there from the later editions, but mostly I play 2e (except for Fantasy HERO, which is straight up 3e).

  23. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to RDU Neil in Dare I ask . . . how much HERO do we need?   
    Heck... this happens to all of us some times, even after decades of playing. I find that just reminding people, "Are you using maneuvers to hit better or harder or to be more defensive?" and let them make that decision, while they understand that they give up something in one area to gain in another. That keeps the game flowing more quickly, rather than getting bogged down in exactly how many levels go where, etc. Some people can make that decisions really quickly. Many people can't. Either way, I also try to avoid punishing people for a decision, as it was "You chose the wrong maneuver! Now you are going to pay for it!" Try to assume they make the best decision, and whatever it is, make the result dramatic and interesting. 
     
    THAT is something I blame D&D for, big time. The fact of players being conditioned to have made "wrong" decisions in character construction or playmat combat positioning or whatever. That kind of gamist play, where it really boils down to certain players trying to show off that they are "better" and have more mastery or know the lore better or whatever... I find it utter bullshit. I do realize that it fits a certain player profile, but I've long since moved away from playing with those people. 
  24. Like
    Brian Stanfield reacted to Spence in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    One-shots can be a lot of fun. 
     
    There are some games where the PCs will lose and everyone knows it.  It is how long they last and how well they die/go insane.
  25. Like
    Brian Stanfield got a reaction from Scott Ruggels in Ideas from Other Game Systems   
    I've toyed with the idea of getting my simulations fix by running single-session, single-scene simulations, such as a single gun battle, with pre-gen characters. No story needed, just set the scene with "shoot the bad guys," and then go. You could do something different every time, and you get your simulationist fix without having to worry about all the other requirements for a more narrative game.
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