Brian Stanfield

I can’t tell if the Game of Thrones fans are having an orgy or a battle royale. I guess it doesn’t matter, since GoT is pretty much both of those. 

I can't help but think that some of this relates back to the "fuzziness" of the definition of Presence.  It's a combination of having an impressive appearance, having charisma or gravitas, and being a skilled manipulator.  I think the original thinking behind removing COM was that it's essentially a specialized subset of PRE from this perspective.  And the relative value proposition of SA wasn't only that it could capture attractiveness in mechanical terms, but that other forms of impressive appearance(fearsomeness, e.g.) could also be captured by it.  Theoretically you could break each primary stat into up to 3 sub-stats each, which would make for a pretty unwieldy character sheet.

Ah yes, Unearthed Arcana. I’d forgotten what it was called. There was also stuff like Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide, which introduced skills for the first time, and things like Oriental Adventures which added new classes, and the race was on. I bought them all, hungrily, and still enjoy looking at them occasionally for nostalgic purposes, but they’re also the reason I fell in love with Fantasy HERO. It was all already in one book, plus a small creatures book (because I was too lazy to create my own monsters, but could have done it all without the extra book). 
 
As as for the Comeliness score in AD&D, I was initially intrigued because I wanted to not only be a dark and daring thief (before they started calling them “rogues”!), but a dark, daring, and handsome thief at a time when I was self-conscious about my looks. But then so did everyone else, so we all had silly Comeliness scores that really did nothing but boost our teenage egos a little bit. In all honesty, it didn’t do me much good to be good looking when my job was to go unnoticed as a thief!
 
I always understood the COM score in Champions because superheroes are almost always incredibly, archetypally good looking. But again, it became a stat that we only really used to make ourselves feel better. The actual number had an effect on our egos, but nothing much more than that. Maybe a little one-upmanship because, you know, we were awkward teenagers. Now I look at it as something that should be role played as part of the character conception, just like having a backstory and a professional skill. They shouldn’t be payed for since they are mostly accounted for in the narrative of a game. As per RAW, if we actually wanted to have more proficiency than a “background” skills, we had to pay for them, but nobody ever did because it rarely came up. As the rules suggest, if my character conception wants me to be a concert pianist, but that won’t come up in game play more than once or twice, then I shouldn’t pay for it. But I should role play the heck out of it. 
 
Likewise, we all just assumed we were archetypally attractive and fit and such as part of our characters. If I played a concert pianist-turned crime fighter, I’d be an attractive concert-pianist-turned crime fighter. We didn’t role play it too much because we would have had to spend all our time sitting around admiring each others’ good looks and never getting anything else done! 🤪 
 
Ok, that last part maybe not so much, but you get my point. Just like we did with the AD&D characteristic, COM was something we didn’t bother wasting points on when in the end it was something that we didn’t even really bother role playing. I mean seriously, who wants to play James Bond, but only average looking who gets rejected by women all the time? If someone did have that concept, it would be a Complication anyway. We just assumed our appearances in our character conceptions and descriptions. It didn’t do anything in our playing from a mechanics point of view. I’ll go on record as saying I’m in favor of dumping it as a Characteristic that doesn’t come into play very often (especially for supers) and introducing it as a Perk for the few individuals who have a character concept that is out of the ordinary from the campaign assumptions (such as “all super-powered characters tend to be super-hot as well”). I have a new Pulp HERO campaign in 6e right now with a couple of players who made a specific comment about how striking their appearances were. I gave them the Perk. But all the players described their appearances in their character conceptions, and expect to role play their appearances in the ways they want/expect them to play in the game. No Characteristic needed. 
 
I will I’ll add one caveat, though: I jumped from Champions 3e to HERO System 6e, so I never went through all the edition changes, nor participated in the Great COM Debate (nor do I want to: it seems to have resulted in more of a scorched earth policy on each side of the debate). I appreciate how people are attached to different editions and their concurrent rules, and they should play those editions, or home brew what they want. No skin off my nose either way. I only offer my COM observations from an autobiographical place to explain why I don’t miss COM. Please (please, please, please) don’t misconstrue it as a judgment on anyone’s preference for or against COM.

Ah yes, Unearthed Arcana. I’d forgotten what it was called. There was also stuff like Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide, which introduced skills for the first time, and things like Oriental Adventures which added new classes, and the race was on. I bought them all, hungrily, and still enjoy looking at them occasionally for nostalgic purposes, but they’re also the reason I fell in love with Fantasy HERO. It was all already in one book, plus a small creatures book (because I was too lazy to create my own monsters, but could have done it all without the extra book). 
 
As as for the Comeliness score in AD&D, I was initially intrigued because I wanted to not only be a dark and daring thief (before they started calling them “rogues”!), but a dark, daring, and handsome thief at a time when I was self-conscious about my looks. But then so did everyone else, so we all had silly Comeliness scores that really did nothing but boost our teenage egos a little bit. In all honesty, it didn’t do me much good to be good looking when my job was to go unnoticed as a thief!
 
I always understood the COM score in Champions because superheroes are almost always incredibly, archetypally good looking. But again, it became a stat that we only really used to make ourselves feel better. The actual number had an effect on our egos, but nothing much more than that. Maybe a little one-upmanship because, you know, we were awkward teenagers. Now I look at it as something that should be role played as part of the character conception, just like having a backstory and a professional skill. They shouldn’t be payed for since they are mostly accounted for in the narrative of a game. As per RAW, if we actually wanted to have more proficiency than a “background” skills, we had to pay for them, but nobody ever did because it rarely came up. As the rules suggest, if my character conception wants me to be a concert pianist, but that won’t come up in game play more than once or twice, then I shouldn’t pay for it. But I should role play the heck out of it. 
 
Likewise, we all just assumed we were archetypally attractive and fit and such as part of our characters. If I played a concert pianist-turned crime fighter, I’d be an attractive concert-pianist-turned crime fighter. We didn’t role play it too much because we would have had to spend all our time sitting around admiring each others’ good looks and never getting anything else done! 🤪 
 
Ok, that last part maybe not so much, but you get my point. Just like we did with the AD&D characteristic, COM was something we didn’t bother wasting points on when in the end it was something that we didn’t even really bother role playing. I mean seriously, who wants to play James Bond, but only average looking who gets rejected by women all the time? If someone did have that concept, it would be a Complication anyway. We just assumed our appearances in our character conceptions and descriptions. It didn’t do anything in our playing from a mechanics point of view. I’ll go on record as saying I’m in favor of dumping it as a Characteristic that doesn’t come into play very often (especially for supers) and introducing it as a Perk for the few individuals who have a character concept that is out of the ordinary from the campaign assumptions (such as “all super-powered characters tend to be super-hot as well”). I have a new Pulp HERO campaign in 6e right now with a couple of players who made a specific comment about how striking their appearances were. I gave them the Perk. But all the players described their appearances in their character conceptions, and expect to role play their appearances in the ways they want/expect them to play in the game. No Characteristic needed. 
 
I will I’ll add one caveat, though: I jumped from Champions 3e to HERO System 6e, so I never went through all the edition changes, nor participated in the Great COM Debate (nor do I want to: it seems to have resulted in more of a scorched earth policy on each side of the debate). I appreciate how people are attached to different editions and their concurrent rules, and they should play those editions, or home brew what they want. No skin off my nose either way. I only offer my COM observations from an autobiographical place to explain why I don’t miss COM. Please (please, please, please) don’t misconstrue it as a judgment on anyone’s preference for or against COM.

We've pretty much hit all the high points of the Great COM Debate so don't feel like you've missed anything but  some minor flaming.

I use the equipment tab for Resource Pools, and the Perks tab to track the cost of them.
 
Works very well, but I have to manage the point costs in the pools myself. I use the notes of each ability to help me do this...like "Real Cost: 4". I do wish there were a built in option to track it automatically, but it's not that big of a deal. 
 
You can see this in action on my Here There Be Monster and Metacyber characters, campaigns in which I use Resource Pools. 
 
Attached is a character from the currennt HtbM campaign, Drew. He has a Psychic Pool (campaign specific), an Equipment Pool, and Contacts Pool. You'll want the HtbM campaign rules in your CampaignRules subfolder to fully see the character in Hero Designer...you may have to re-apply it to the character (Current Character -> Load Campaign Rules)...or just look at the raw hdc file in a text editor if you don't want to fuss around with Campaign Rules for some reason.

 

HereThereBeMonsters.hdr DrewAltman_155_ks.hdc

I can’t tell if the Game of Thrones fans are having an orgy or a battle royale. I guess it doesn’t matter, since GoT is pretty much both of those. 

We do?

Brian, I think you can trace the RPG Evolution through D&D.  Back in the AD&D 1e days, we had the three books.  We got a lot of adventures, the Deities book (HC), then the Fiend Folio (HC), and maybe another HC monster book.  And all sorts of "generic" FRPG supplements that were clearly AD&D but could not say so due to copyrights.  Then we got Unearthed Arcana - new rules, including that COM stat.  And it sold.  NEW RULES SELL!!!  So we started seeing a lot more new rules.  Because many, if not all, players in the group would buy rules, only a few (the GMs) would buy monster books, and only one needed any given adventure.
 
Then we got 2e, and tons of new rules.  But also a glut of settings (each with variant rules) that cannibalized their own market.  And we got a company in serious financial trouble.
 
Next came 3e, and this was, to me, revolutionary in that it was not what every new edition, for every game, had been to that point.  It was not the same concepts and rules with a fresh coat of paint.  Rather, it was a completely different game.  As were 4e and 5e.  That is a model Hero never adopted - you don't need to buy new books since the old ones remain largely, if not entirely compatible.  I recall early comments on 4e that people could see the core or near-core races and classes that were missing, and know exactly what the "new books" would hold.
 
And, as you note, D&D, which added COM well after Hero was on the market, dumped it not too long afterwards.

Heh.  Thought I'd check. 
 
I did the research (Google spreadsheet) quite some time ago; started looking through PDFs, remembered the spreadsheet, and saved myself a bunch of time.   

Seduction Skill appeared in the former four products I mentioned, but not the latter two.
 
Both Greywind and Gnome Body (important) accurately determined what I originally meant from context.  

He knows the same way I know.  The context provided by the following sentence and the post he was replying to. 
 
To be more explicit, you mentioned looking for the origin of Seduction in a set of core books, He replied with a list of non-core books.  His second sentence began with "It's not in", confirming he was talking about the location of something.  The only thing you two had been talking about the location of was the origin of Seduction.  Therefore his list of books were the origin(s) of Seduction according to his research. 

+20 PRE Defense; +5 Ego Defense, limited duration: 10 minutes.  OAF: dog biscuit. 
 
Gotcha covered.

A collection of comments by GoT cast members in interviews as to how they feel about season 8.  Although not said in so many words, their subtext makes it pretty clear what they really think.
 
 

Heroic level games where the use of special abilities and powers are difficult and rare but generate a dramatic effect while being very exhausting... I think that is a GREAT place for more traditional END rules... and in fact remove ways to make reduced END possible. I'd just figure out a formula that shows "X END per action = Y Actions before REC/vulnerability is necessary, and how many RECs before back to full" as a way of comparing playability. Can certain characters effectively "go forever" with their main action/attack... while others are effectively limited like they had charges? That kind of balance needs to be very clear, and are the players ok with how that will actually come about in the game?  "Hey... the warrior can only really swing a sword, but he can do it all day... the Wizard gets maybe three actions... but they will be whoppers!  Are we ok with that?" (e.g. only).

Again, I just feel there has to be a better way to get to the dramatic moment of, "We've driven back the first wave, but gods, I can barely lift my sword!" where usually it is all about tactical rule playing, "If we rotate front line fighters every three actions, then no one ever runs out of END and everyone is always at full STR."  I hate that stuff, though a lot of people think that kind of thing is what gaming is all about. 
 

At this point, I'm hoping that the final episode ends with Bob Newhart waking up and saying, "Wow! I just had the weirdest dream." 
 
Experience Points awarded for those of you who get the joke. . . .

To be fair, Winterfell security might not be fully operational after Viserion knocked down the walls and wights slaughtered most of the security guards.

How about this: Sansa Stark is nearly killed and has a piece of metal stuck in her chest that will eventually kill her. With help from a friend, she obtains a magic talisman that keeps her alive and also gives her fantastic powers. Arriving in shiny new armor, she trashes all opposition and takes the Throne, gaining the nickname Iron Woman.
 
Too contrived?

I almost killed everyone’s good time when I was yelling at the tv during last week’s episode, for this very reason. What the hell?!
I kinda thought everyone would be a lot happier for having beaten the white walkers and ending the long night. I understand the somber mood, but I would have expected a more celebratory heroes’ good bye. I really started to wonder about the quality of writing at this point. Seriously, the Lord of the Rings moment two weeks ago with the singing and montage drove me nuts. 
I nearly lost my mind at this scene. Two harpoons killed one dragon, and then Dani actually did dive-bomb the shi-s, only to turn away when all she had to do was strafe her way through them and then turn around and clean up the rest of the fleet. I was yelling at the tv again. And then they suddenly had a hail of harpoons to shoot the ships. Why did t they use that tactic against the two dragons and both would-be successors to the throne?! And by the way, why didn’t they notice an entire fleet while they were flying around in the sky? This is nearly unforgivable writing.
Aaaaannnnd this scene pretty much killed the whole thing for me. So any plot holes! Why not harpoon the dragon while he’s just lazily sitting there? They already demonstrated their superior range. Why is Danni so determined to arch south on King’s Landing with, what, twenty soldiers rather than wait for the others to rest and get ready? I mean, this was truly embarrassing for her. No need to negotiate now. And why not just end everything and kill them all? Cersei isn’t that honorable. I’m still not sure why she didn’t kill them all when they first met at King’s Landing. 
 
And Sheesh! Cersei actually had her arm locked around hers, telling her she’s going to die. Shouldn’t her last words be, “You’re coming with me,” and then dragging her over the edge of the wall with her? 
 
Im all for dramatic confrontations, and the personal conflicts, but this is turning into soap-opera-grade writing. 
 
*Rant over*
 
Maybe. . .

I thought of the same verse!

At this point, I'm hoping that the final episode ends with Bob Newhart waking up and saying, "Wow! I just had the weirdest dream." 
 
Experience Points awarded for those of you who get the joke. . . .

Here is the thread where my alternative END rules were discussed.
 
 
Would be interested in your thoughts.
 

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and her name that sat on him was Arya, and Hell followed with her. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

This last episode had the dragon vs. ballista combat go more like I thought it would.
 
Holy crap is Danny going overkill.  The scenes with the dragon sweeping back and forth over the city like some Diablo 3 player lawnmowing a map to get all the xp and gold possible was just nuts.
 
Like, You won an hour ago just leave some civilians to rule over!
 
The formation of a reluctant alliance of betrayers was pretty clear.  Jon Snow and Tyrion both realize she's too nutty to leave alive at this point.
 
Since Hound vs. Mountain didn't play out like I had hoped for my new wish list item for the gods of HBO is that Jon takes the throne by commanding Drogon to obey him.
 
Also, I want at least 1 scene were Jon gets absolutely immolated - preferably by dragon fire - and walks out unharmed.

At this point, I'm hoping that the final episode ends with Bob Newhart waking up and saying, "Wow! I just had the weirdest dream." 
 
Experience Points awarded for those of you who get the joke. . . .