Brian Stanfield

Okay, guys.
 
It's done.
 
Now I've got to get Jason's attention and get it to him.
 
Then it's on to the next one:  I reckon I'll start with the first few Adventurers Clubs that a forum member was kind enough to loan me before deciding where to go next.  Star HERO (pet project) and Cyber HERO got back-burnered now that there are actual scans of those products in existence (though really: they could be a lot better.  ).
 
I'm going to tell you straight-up that there is a thing in the Western HERO final version that bugs me:  The spine and the rear cover don't align quite properly.  However, I'm done.  I'm just done.  I've been using my precious and rare spare time on this, wedging it in here and there-- sometimes working on it _literally_ less than five minutes at a time, and what?  Since November last year?
 
I'm done.  I'm including the covers and spine as separate elements for anyone wishing to make corrections on their own.  I know it was a labor of love, but I just can't look at it any more......  Birdy's got to get the hell out of this nest!  
 
 
 
 

Welcome to the forums, Greysword! Out of curiosity, how long have you been playing in the HERO System? This isn't a challenge to your authority or anything like that, I'm simply curious. Many of us have been playing the games since the rules were only 70 pages and really easy to learn. I think @Duke Bushido is on to something when he doesn't play past 3rd edition. Trust me, you'll learn this if you spend enough time on the forums. . . .  (Love you Duke!)
 
So, perhaps you're misunderstanding my question. I'm not interested in dumbing down the rules permanently for casual gamers. I agree that gamers are smart and can figure this stuff out on their own simply because they want to. But what I am interested in is how much can you boil the game down for teaching purposes so that casual gamers can get into gaming. I've got a new group of 6 and only one of them is an experienced RPGer, so my challenge is to not only teach them what role playing games are all about in the first place, but also how to explain rules mechanics to people who've never experienced the concept before. It's not insulting to try to come up with better ways to teach the rules. I'll let the full ruleset come into play after they get used to the basics.
 
Ok, so this is more what I was asking for. I think experienced gamers who are used to rolling dice for various reasons have forgotten what it's like to be a beginner who has never rolled dice for anything other than Monopoly. Subtracting a dice roll from 11 + your Offense (I like your simplification there) just doesn't make sense to someone who doesn't understand the concept of how the roll functions. The first formula is much more intuitive, and that's all I teach. Maybe later I'll switch it up on them when I don't want them to know the DCV of their opponents, but for now, it's so much simpler to jut give them a target roll.
 
As you say, dropping the acronyms helps too! There have been lots of various suggestions for this over the years, and I'm always curious about different ways to present the information so it doesn't confuse a new player.
 
Thanks for the input! Enjoy the forums!

It seems like you don’t even need #3 as long as people are willing to share their adventures at no cost. I’m not sure how the licensing works, but maybe it would be possible to have an adventures section in the downloads page of herogames.com where people could share their adventures with the rest of the community. No one profits from it, and it wouldn’t be compromising any IP . . .
 
The adventures really wouldn’t even have to be all that complex or complete. They’d need just enough to give people the tools to run an adventure right away. Characters & villains, the main point of conflict, and a series of interactions, and you have something playable. 
 
I wonder if anybody would be willing to try something like this?

Hugh Neilson I have some characters back in the day that have weird characteristic numbers. I do have a 17 DEX somewhere and I know I have a fantasy character that has a 17 STR. Why? Because I didn’t look at Figureds and look at pricing but said to myself if sample characters had 18 STR and if I see the guy a less STR shouldn’t it be less? If I post some of my designs, you guys will see the inefficiency and may have your heads explode.  Bye most of my original Champion character’s stats were based off my original character built for me. So I have a bunch of 26 DEX because that’s what my original had.

To be fair, some of those villains are only "little" in comparison to TA's resident Dark Lord. But the Thunese gods, in particular, represent as great a threat to the Earth as Kal-Turak himself, if not even greater.
 
Then again, there are potential foes for PCs with a much narrower focus or scope of operations. One outstanding example from Nobles, Knights, And Necromancers is the Red Talon Guild, a network of slavers who kidnap people from parts of Arduna where slavery is illegal, and transport them for sale to places where it is legal. This group is never going to be conquerors, but their operations span thousands of miles, involving a  network of gangs of thieves and smugglers, tribes of barbarians and bands of mercenaries, and manors or castles along their trade routes where they can stash their victims. PCs who aren't ready or interested to save the world, may be highly motivated to track down and recover a kidnapped friend or family member.

Where do I start. I have done art for R. Talsorian Games’ TFOS, Cyberpunk 2020 and it’s supplements;
Hero Games for Fantasy Hero, Danger International, and several Champions supplements(4e-5e); Tri-Tac System’s FTL 2448, Bureau 13, and various supplements; plus a few D20 supplements. Lots of game art in there but I also did comic book work for Antarctic Press, Radio Comix, and Graph-X-Press. 
 
Then I went into Video Game production.....
 
But I Digress. 

Yes. It's backwards, and kind of dumb.
 
I tell new players how to calculate their Attack Skill: 11 + OCV, write that down. This is your Attack Skill, everything else can be added afterwards if you like, or before if you like.
 
Example: OCV of 7 is an Attack Skill of 18-.
If you have are performing a Martial Maneuver that gives -1 OCV, and have three Skill Levels, and will apply two of them to attacking that's a +2 OCV; you can add them up, a net +1. And add it to your result. Your Attack Skill never changes, so if you roll a 10 you hit a 9 Or Less DCV (18-10+1 = 9); It's much simpler and they always have the same Attack Roll just written down like they do with their Skill List.
 
It's about an order of magnitude easier to describe the OCV/DCV/Attack Roll interaction as a Skill Challenge than it is with the presented formula in the book.

Take a look at something like Gnome Stew online, which is a gaming blog that discusses these issues. You may find something you like, and may find some games that are interesting to you. There are also many gaming podcasts out there. Many of the people from Gnome Stew are on misdirectedmark.com, which offers a variety of podcasts discussing these sorts of issues. They also have a lively online/social media presence, which may give you an idea of where gaming is headed these days. 

No worries. I woke up a bit grumpy and found some posts in a couple of forums to be off point and less than helpful. Not yours so much, but it wasn’t a bad idea to perhaps restate my question in more concise form. I have a tendency to lose my point in the midst of rambling. 

I forgot to mention this: in my most recent group, I gave everyone a folder at the first game session which contains:
A pre-gen character that I built based on session zero and our group discussion of the characters they want to play. The “HERO in two pages” document. It’s really a pretty concise summary of the game mechanics. I also gave each player the introduction to the 6e HERO System Basic Rulebook that I printed out from the PDF. It’s a little more detailed than the 2-page document, but in 10 pages covers the character sheet and the game mechanics in a little more detail. If they feel adventurous, they can read this for more depth. They aren’t required to read this, but I encourage them to at least look it through. Ten pages, Duke! Beat that! I also have a bunch of playing aids, mostly from the downloads section of hero games.com, and I laminated them all so that they can mark on them and stuff. Seriously, the laminator is a game changer for a GM!!! And it’s so cheap nowadays that it’s insane not to get one. I don’t own any stock in any laminator companies, but you should all go to Amazon right now and order one! 

Guys, this isn't a discussion about which edition is best. That's a different thread. Please go argue on that one.
 
My question is edition-neutral. It doesn't matter which edition you're using, my question is still the same: how much can you simplify the rules (primarily for teaching purposes) without losing the game itself? This is also not a discussion about what can be borrowed and inserted into HERO games from other systems. If you go back an look at the original post, I'm only using a rules-lite game as an instructive tool, not as the end goal of this discussion.
 
So let me restate: if I can learn another roleplaying game in one evening, or learn and play it in one 4 hour game session at a convention, what can I take from that experience in order to simplify HERO enough to teach to beginners?

That's a good reminder! Thanks for that.
 
On a different note, I literally just took a book off of my game shelf two minutes ago and found your illustrations in it! Teenagers from Outer Space, if you remember that far back. I was actually going for my copy of Toon after playing that at Origins last week, and TOS was right next to it so I flipped through it and your name popped right out at me! Totally crazy serendipity!
 
What else have you done?

That would be accurate, then.  Peterson likely bought the rights to the image when Hero was stamping out the original. 
 
And Savage Lands knows a built-in marketing tool when they see one. ;l

On a podcast about animation, and working within it, there was a discussion about Learning Styles, and the differences. The example was starting talking about "The Animators Survival Kit"by Richard Williams,on how valuable it was as an animation reference, and text book.  But one of the two presenters then used that to jump off to extol the virtues of "The Illusion of Life" by the Senior Disney Animators, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. The other presenter acknowledges it was an important book, but could not get through it, and considered it a slog, and learned nothing, and then proceeded to exclaim the benefits of YouTube tutorials. The first presenter said that talking tutorials were in one ear, and out the other for him, and they surprised each other in how different their learning styles are. They mentioned a third style, but I forget at this time what it was.  People learn in different ways, and I think that needs to be taken into account."
 
In the times I taught people Hero, which admittedly were few, I would first go over the basics verbally, and then I would paperclip  Hints and References to the outside of my GM Screen. A Page for the night's speed chart (one the combat started),  a sheet with how to calculate what DCV you hit with your roll. I would also not conceal DCV's of the villains at first. I think having Laminated reference cards is a great idea, as well as having character sheets in sheet protectors, so you can mark the sheets the same way you can mark the hex mat. Miniatures are very important for new players to understand the spacial relationships and the context of their actions. 

I think there are two elements to this question when it comes to Hero;
 
How much can you simplify so someone can play a character they have in front of them? (i.e. the Con Game)
How much can you simplify character creation and world building?
 
Showing someone how skills work, how modifiers effect things, and how combat works is very different (in any game system) from showing them how to create a character or campaign.
 
For example, you could remove Combat Maneuvers from the system, and utilize a system of Combat Skill Levels only to simulate various shifts in how martial combat works in play. Most of the rest is flavor text. Even the free maneuvers and basic maneuvers, like Multi Attack could be drastically simplified to "take more than one attack action and you incur a -2 to every attack action per extra action taken" - this isn't even an uncommon aspect in gaming.
 
But, if you want to simplify the creation process, that isn't as easy - but I don't think it's out of reach.
 
Doing something like removing Endurance completely as both a stat and a consideration in character builds can greatly affect how someone approaches their build and the game.
 
Someone could do something like remove the Speed Chart, but keep Speed - as a number of dice you roll in the Initiative Phase; Body on the Dice = Actions per Turn. Going round robin until people start to run out of Actions to use, keeps DEX basically the same. Would this simplify things for new gamers? Maybe, it's not entirely foreign idea and prevents the standard back-and-forth most systems create.
 
Now, what any one of us might remove and still be what we consider a "Hero System Game" may vary quite a bit. But as I said before, as long as you keep the core tenant of separating Mechanics from Special Effects you can still capture the essence of what Hero is. Regardless of what other unique, and recognizable, elements the system has over others.

I totally got that.  It's the reason I prefaced my potentially digression-causing comments with a large "this isn't for digression" note. 
 
 
 
I got that, too.   That's what I offered:  my own suggestion is drawn from what I actually do:  I use an edition that, given the built-in compatibility, is very much pared down: it's seventy-two bare-bones pages. 
 
Playing heroic non-fantasy makes it even smaller, though you can't completely eliminate the powers, as you need them to build equipment.  However, if the GM is prebuilding the equipment, then sure: pull out twenty pages of powers and pare it down to not much over fifty pages of bare-bones HERO system rules.   Pull out two pages of world building, and your almost dead on fifty pages.  
I like Basic and the Sidekicks for the same reason: bare bones, quick read, easy reference to thumb through during the learning process. 
 
 
You could write a custom document, but I never have (at least not yet) simply because I have lots of copies of seriously-pared-down HERO. 
 
Want go further, you pull out the miniatures rules as well, though I find that seeing the minis in place and interacting with them seems to help new players pick up combat a little faster.  That might just be my imagination, however. 
 
Again: I was simply answering the question of "how low can you go" with the example I have found works best for me. 
 
I genuinely wasnt trying to derail this into edition wars, simply because there too stinking many threads on that already. 
 
 
 
 
 
Possibly Basic (pull out material as suggested above: and martial arts.  Pull that out.  "I hit him" and "I kick his friend" are sufficient at first), but I don't know if it's a four hours and play book: it's kind of a slog to read, as there is a lot of referencing backwards and forwards in it. 
 
The sidekicks are a bit much for that as well, being twice the size of a basic, but they are a bit easier to read. 
 
Or use an older, rules-lighter edition. 
 
Or write a custom document. 
 
I may have to get around to trying that (again). 

I would say, run a Danger International scenario, or some other modern game's scenario converted to Hero, using the edition of your choice.  Pare everything down to Danger International levels of detail and Stuff.  Agent-level characters, lower power level, primarily skills-based, heavily curated list of Talents, gear for no point cost, no Powers, a lot fewer moving parts.  That's essentially what I did at GameStorm earlier this year, except I used actual Danger International.  The two players who'd been in my aborted Champions game "got" it in a way they didn't seem to previously.  Don't be afraid to use the heroic level gritty rules.  Come with a number of pregenerated characters; modern scenarios leave lots of room for specialists who don't fit into fantasy style character class niches, which will help them as well.  

OK.  To use Neil's example.  The players want heavier weapons. 
 
One of them suggests that the Plan should have included getting a cache of just such hardware on top of the lift. 
 
I say that this is eminently possible and for them to be there, they need to roll the Dice Pool (for this example presume there are 4 dice in that pool). 
 
The players decide if they want to use the Pool. There is no chance of the cache not being there. By rolling the dice they know there will be a cache.
 
What the players do not know is whether this will leave them with dice in the pool or not.  It is very unlikely (but not unfeasible) that they would roll 4 sixes. 
 
If they go ahead and roll the dice they might roll 6, 5, 3, 3.  That means the Pool is now 3 dice.  Next time they want to use the Pool to implement the Plan, they only roll 3 dice.  They can keep using the Pool until there are no dice left to use.
 
If they had wanted an EMP device above the lift then I might have said, yes, but only if you lose a dice from the pool if you roll 6s or 5s.  In the above example, that would leave them with only 2 dice.
 
I have only used it a couple of times myself and on both occasions it has added an element of tension to the table about decisions, without actually impacting the decision being made - even if they had rolled 4 sixes, the cache would have been there but they would have no Pool for the rest of the adventure...

Champions in 3-D is a great place to start. The PDF is available, and the actual book is still available in the store (I had to double check: it’s rare for a book that old to still be available). It will most definitely spark your imagination. 

Take a look at something like Gnome Stew online, which is a gaming blog that discusses these issues. You may find something you like, and may find some games that are interesting to you. There are also many gaming podcasts out there. Many of the people from Gnome Stew are on misdirectedmark.com, which offers a variety of podcasts discussing these sorts of issues. They also have a lively online/social media presence, which may give you an idea of where gaming is headed these days. 

For me, I decided to use Pulp HERO to teach new players for the following reasons:
Heroic level games don’t require an understanding of powers at all, which is the most intimidating part of learning the game. There is a level of realism that everyone is familiar with, but also enough naïveté to make weird things possible without requiring arguments over their reasonableness. There’s science, but it’s weird science. There’s world traveling, but the destinations are weird enough that we don’t have to question their reality. I’m using the HERO System Basic Rulebook for 6e to minimize the special and complex rules. There are plenty of maneuvers and skills available in the basic rules to make for a fun game without adding too much confusion. We created characters at a “session zero” where everyone came up with character ideas that fit well together, then I designed the full characters for them. I’ll let them learn the rules first before I expect them to build characters. This is a really big deal to me, since effective character design really depends on some sense of how the rules work, especially in HERO. There are lots of debates over whether figured characteristics give new players a baseline to build from, etc. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a fan of the 6e rules and don’t find any real problem with internal consistency of the Characteristics. The bigger problem, to me, is not what the proper levels of CV are, since a new player doesn’t really know what that means anyway. I’ll make their characters, let them learn the rules by throwing them in a whole array of representative encounters, and then give them soft rebuilds after a few sessions once they get a feel for how it all fits together. The most basic encounters I cover in the first session or two are perception rolls, basic skill resolution, PRE attacks (a truly unique aspect of HERO that new players under-utilize), and a simple combat. Because it’s a heroic level game, the combat is pretty quick and straightforward with small modifiers and fewer dice of damage. 

I’m fond of the point build approach, maybe simply out of habitat this point. But it’s also what drew me into Fantasy HERO and away from AD&D back in the ‘80s, and it’s what I now use to entice current D&D players into the system. It’s at least an idea that intrigues people. The crunch is problematic though. 
 
As I wrote above, I give my new players a soft pre-gen so they can learn the rules, and then rebuild them later. I also give them an incomplete build so they can add things as they learn what’s useful for their vision of their characters. I started a thread a month or so ago about using Resource Pools for things like Skills, languages, Perks, and equipment, and some people lost their minds over it. Sure, it’s a liberal application of the Resource Points rule, but like you suggest, it makes sense to give the characters a certain amount of flexibility from game session to game session so they don’t have to have it all figured out ahead of time. From my viewpoint, it’s a balance between the spirit of HERO System and the flexibility of narrative gaming. 
 
I’m also a big fan of the Quick Character Generator in the Champions books (both 5e and 6e) because they play with the idea of archetypes and roughly balanced builds with a minimum of crunchiness. The new Character Creation Cards are another great example of that approach. I think they could easily be built for other genres as well, especially Fantasy HERO.

Do this, and be transparent about it. Tell them exactly this... you want them to invest in their characters the story and wanting to play... and if that inspires them to want to learn the crunch, great, but no need to worry about it. If you want PC actions to feel intuitively correct for the scenario/action rather than driven by mechanical efficiency or expediency, I'd recommend this. It should work, assuming you don't (and I don't think you'd do this) fall into the trap of punishing them for "wrong" decisions. A lot of the drive to rule mastery is an aspect of being punished for 'bad decisions' because you didn't know the rules well enough. Assuming you avoid that (and I assume you will) then it should work fine. Let the individual player let you know if they want to know more about the crunch.

Me too. In fact, this pretty much sums up the reason for posting this topic, except right now my % split is probably the reverse of yours since I’m new to the narrative games. But my imagination is totally sparked by their possibility. 
 
What I’m looking right now is a way to teach the game with a minimal amount of “book learning” for my players. I want to say, “Tell me what you want to do and I’ll figure it out for you” in such a way that they don’t have to worry about the rules, since I’ll do the worrying, but to also teach them the rules as I go. I guess my internal struggle is to decide how much they really need to peek behind he curtain to enjoy themselves.
 
Part of me wants to encourage them to just tell the story and roll dice when I tell them to, but part of me also wants them to learn when and why to make their rolls. I suppose this is the real art of GMing that we all need to figure out for ourselves and our groups. I want them to have fun, but also to learn. For now, I think the most important part is to get them invested in their characters and the story. Hopefully they’ll want to learn the rules once we get going. 

I love the hit locations, and will implement them in the second combat (or third, depending) to show the versatility of the game. There’s no armor in my Pulp HERO campaign, so no concerns with the bookkeeping for that stuff, but I have always loved the way Fantasy HERO allows for sectional armor in a way that makes a real difference. I think this rule alone would sell many of my fantasy-playing friends, if I could only convince them to give up D&D for just a few game sessions!