Durzan Malakim

Yesterday marked six years of me never having to pretend to be a guy again, and today, like every March 31st, is International Transgender Day of Visibility, so it's a double celebration for me.
 
Being visible as a trans person is important to me for two main reasons. For one, to remind non LGBTQ+ folks that people like me exist and are real people who are part of their communities. The other reason is to help older trans people who think that they're too old to transition know that it's never too late. I started my transition at fifty-two and it's still the best thing I've ever done for myself.
 
So, like the title says, happy Trans Day of Visibility.

In the books and Netflix series a cortical stack effectively grants you Life Support immortality by way of an obvious inaccessible focus. The books describe rich people having banks of blank clones for them to download into. One punishment in this world is to forcibly remove someone’s digital self from “their” body and adding the now empty body to the public bank of available bodies. The first book has the main character walking around in someone else’s body and having to deal with their nicotine addiction and attraction to another character. This might be a transform attack in Hero terms. Transform from human body to cortical stack digital human freight and vice versa. 

In the books and Netflix series a cortical stack effectively grants you Life Support immortality by way of an obvious inaccessible focus. The books describe rich people having banks of blank clones for them to download into. One punishment in this world is to forcibly remove someone’s digital self from “their” body and adding the now empty body to the public bank of available bodies. The first book has the main character walking around in someone else’s body and having to deal with their nicotine addiction and attraction to another character. This might be a transform attack in Hero terms. Transform from human body to cortical stack digital human freight and vice versa. 

In the books and Netflix series a cortical stack effectively grants you Life Support immortality by way of an obvious inaccessible focus. The books describe rich people having banks of blank clones for them to download into. One punishment in this world is to forcibly remove someone’s digital self from “their” body and adding the now empty body to the public bank of available bodies. The first book has the main character walking around in someone else’s body and having to deal with their nicotine addiction and attraction to another character. This might be a transform attack in Hero terms. Transform from human body to cortical stack digital human freight and vice versa. 

In the books and Netflix series a cortical stack effectively grants you Life Support immortality by way of an obvious inaccessible focus. The books describe rich people having banks of blank clones for them to download into. One punishment in this world is to forcibly remove someone’s digital self from “their” body and adding the now empty body to the public bank of available bodies. The first book has the main character walking around in someone else’s body and having to deal with their nicotine addiction and attraction to another character. This might be a transform attack in Hero terms. Transform from human body to cortical stack digital human freight and vice versa. 

I'm used to players surprising me when I GM. I'm not used to surprising myself as a player in @Steve's game. This week I surprised everyone when a standard lightsaber duel instead became my "Han shot first" or "Captain Mal kicks a man into an engine" moment. My character, retired Imperial Marine Brigadier turned space Pirate Captain Nemos was supposed to duel his hunted Judas Cain, a former Imperial Navy Captain and possible Zhodani infiltrator. Before the fighting started, Judas began villain monologuing about how the outcome of the duel didn't matter because he had several clone backups to carry on his search for vengeance. Not only would he keep sending clones after me until he killed me, but he'd also hunt down my crew to avenge the death of one of his other clones that we had killed with a nuke. I don't begrudge the man for having clone backups because I also have a clone backup, but we have very different views on the nature of clones and whether the sins of the father (the original) fall on the child (the clone).
 
My character thinks of his clone as more of a twin brother with his own identity, wishes, and desires. Given their shared history, their goals are mostly aligned, but had my character died in the duel, he'd not expect his clone to carry on the grudge or avenge him. In fact, he'd explicitly not want him to carry on the grudge because Captain Nemos has a greater mission he wants to complete. I even recorded a message along the lines of "if you're hearing this then I'm dead" to tell my clone to carry on the greater mission. However, when I learned that the duel wouldn't end the grudge, I realized that there was no point in being honorable and fighting fair. So I asked my fellow PC @L0rd_Magg0t to "take the shot" from his sniper overwatch position. I used the distraction to decapitate one clone, and then next phase I disarmed (literally) another clone that was acting as his second. I was surprised by how much outrage I felt about the duel not mattering. It felt like Judas was bragging about being able to cheat until he won, so I decided to cheat first. I learned in that moment that this character has a weird code of honor. This code of honor includes the idea that clones are not disposable copies of the original that are enslaved to carry out the original's will. It also includes not suffering the insult of breaking your word. For Captain Nemos the outcome of the duel was supposed to settle the matter, but Judas Cain broke his word by not being willing to abide by the outcome of the duel.
 
It was a great role-playing moment for me, and I look forward to seeing what consequences come from this choice. I think this is the most morally gray character I've played. No one thinks of themselves as the villain of their story, but Captain Nemos is just one "ends justify the means" choice away from being a bad guy. He has principles, but if you're on the wrong end of them he looks pretty villainous.

There's an X-Men character called Forget-Me-Not who has that power.  People just don't remember him, but he's in lots of their adventures helping out and doing stuff that later seems like luck or some amazing coincidence.  Its a great concept well handled in the comics.  He does heroic things but gets no praise or notice.

Things have continued to percolate on in this campaign, and it looks like we have gotten past the midway point. A year and a half of real time since it began has gone quickly.
 
in our last session the PCs finally managed to find the Treasure of Sindal and were in the process of sorting it. An old Hunted showed up, and they launched a high-yield nuclear torpedo from their cloaked Harrier-class vessel in true Klingon Bird of Prey style.
 
Unfortunately, they realized too late that they would also be caught in the blast radius, forcing the pilot to high-G it out of there with only a brief window of time, like something out of the Expanse. Some commentary was exchanged before that on the foolishness of wizards landing a fireball too close to their own feet. Launching a multi-megaton nuke at too close of a range is the Traveller equivalent.
 
Deciding to clear up some old business, they headed back to the pirate haven of Theev. One of the PCs was shocked to be given a seat at the Council of Theev instead of the group being taken out back and getting their brains blown out. The PC in question is now a bit paranoid about this setup, and has already dealt with one revenge assassination attempt by a member of the former Council member’s kin.

I love PC decision-making. It's easier to turn your foppish dandy of a cousin into a cyborg-zombie than to just tell him and the rest of the family of freeloaders that they get nothing but a place to stay. I look forward to Gaston's future hijinks even if the most likely scenario is returning to find him resting peacefully in the local cemetery. Without some outside help, I don't see the Vanderbilts getting the better of EDI.
 
I almost got our crew out of the low berth prison business, but Krrsh pushed our disloyalty buttons. We can't be leaving tasty breadcrumbs behind for Judas Cain to sweep up. As it is we're leading him to a potential stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure that won't get us and the entire sector into any trouble.

Just ran through a demo with DOJ (Hero Games) and have the full approval to proceed. We've got one last visual bug to squash (hopefully today) and then we can release to the wild. There will also be an announcement by Hero about this.

Did a full combat today and discovered some key bugs that need to be squashed. Sorry, folks. We'll get it out soon.
 
The gang from Atomic Sky needed to deal with a gang of raiders before the raiders launch an attack on one of the comms the group protects. Things got a little dicey for them, but overall they owned it.

Everything is working. I'm working on getting the github repo migrated to the public and registering with Foundry.

It also requires v11, so make sure your Foundry is up to date. I haven't added Equipment and Weapons from the Basic book yet, but that's a minor issue overall. We will get that in there eventually.

 
You can also see we have all the Power Text in the compendiums for easy reference. Same for Complications, Perks, Talents, and Maneuvers.

 
The fields are also all there and aligned to HeroDesigner. When we add the HD import feature (Full version), all of those "items" will be automatically created on the character and updated.
 
I will announce when it is available for install on Foundry soon.

Okay, just got all the final powers, complications, and maneuvers compendiums done. One minor tweak to layout and I can release. This takes a couple days (have to set up the site in GitHub and publish via Foundry process), but we should  have something soon. 

Feedback, bugs, and requests will be tracked via GitHub once it's up. We'll let this cook a bit to refine the basics, and then we can push to crowdfund the full version. 

It turns out that the original Harrison Vanderbilt IV was the evil clone all along. Unless we alter the clone's memories or personality, I suspect that we'd end up with two runaway grooms galavanting about the galaxy. How many clones variants will it take until we end up with our own version of Kang the Conqueror? May I suggest Harrison the Holocaust? Or I suppose we could go the Star Trek mirror universe route and create a clone for each of us.

I love PC decision-making. It's easier to turn your foppish dandy of a cousin into a cyborg-zombie than to just tell him and the rest of the family of freeloaders that they get nothing but a place to stay. I look forward to Gaston's future hijinks even if the most likely scenario is returning to find him resting peacefully in the local cemetery. Without some outside help, I don't see the Vanderbilts getting the better of EDI.
 
I almost got our crew out of the low berth prison business, but Krrsh pushed our disloyalty buttons. We can't be leaving tasty breadcrumbs behind for Judas Cain to sweep up. As it is we're leading him to a potential stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. I'm sure that won't get us and the entire sector into any trouble.

It's been a while since the last update. Our intrepid group of pirates have made a lot of progress in the campaign, traveling up into the Spinward Marches to the distant worlds of Mirage and eventually all the way to Neumann, a journey of almost twenty-five parsecs or 13 jumps. They almost managed to catch her at Fist, at the most Rimward border of the Spinward Marches, but they encountered complications that enabled the nanotech infected scientist to escape and continue to Mirage.
 
Thanks to plentiful expenditures of HAPs at the climax of that adventure, they were able to enact a cure to the nanotech plague on Neumann that had consumed half the planet, ending up getting paid but then subsequently banished from that world. They then made their way back down to the Trojan Reach, trying their hand some more at doing some honest trading along the way. They had done some of this on the way up as well.
 
During their long journey back, they picked up an archaeologist who paid High Passage all the way to Drinax, who had a message globe dating back to the end of the Sindalan Empire, getting the PCs involved in a hunt for a legendary treasure, not of gold and jewels, but planet-destroying weapons of biological and nuclear varieties.
 
The last session had them reach the world of Cordan, where they had gained landholdings and the rank of Baronet thanks to helping the Baroness Lux there. In the many months they were gone, one of the PCs who comes from a fallen, formerly noble family, had his mother show up with a whole retinue of the family, all looking to squat and plunder basically. Thanks to a technological find they made while in the Spinward Marches, they had obtained the equivalent of cortical stacks for use. Using one of them to replace one of the PCs useless cousins with a copy of their ship's AI personality was discussed and almost happened but was stopped at the last minute when the PC decided against the plan after initially being for it.
 
The transhumanism elements of the campaign continue to shine as a major subplot. One of the PCs is a cyborg; they killed and cloned a towering Aslan male pirate lord named Irontooth and implanted within the clone body a copy of their ship's AI; several members of the crew are either robots or advanced bioroids; the captain acquired a genetically altered spare body they keep in a Low Berth to aid him in alternating between his pirate guise and his old Brigadier ID; and they have a dozen spare cortical stacks that one of the PCs is just aching to use, to make more copies of the ship's AI and implant them into organic bodies.

I look forward to the Basic Version and the follow up Kickstarter.

The last 5 weeks were extremely busy for me outside of game development (work/vacation combo), but now I'm back to more "normal".

I just sent another round of revisions to the dev team, and turn around is pretty quick. I'm thinking another few weeks and I'll be able to review with the Hero Games team, identify any last major bugs, and then we can release for wider use/testing.

Please be kind and patient once we do that. I am funding this privately, and want it to be a reliable solution, but as feedback comes it, it may take some time to address any issues. We will be using GitHub (requirement for Foundry) so there will be a process there to submit bug reports and feature requests. We will not be accepting any such items here in the forums (too messy to track).
 
I have been fielding some questions here and there so I will summarize my responses for the rest of you. Remember, our objective is something that will work as well (or better) than a hand-written character sheet, support HD imports (making it super easy/fast to use), and automating the most critical parts of the game (in the Basic version) and then enhancing that in the Full version.

I do intend to support Custom Characteristics, but only probably in the Full version.

Part of what is taking time is setting things up in a modular fashion so that anyone, private or for profit (with an appropriate license from Hero Games), can create equipment, power, skill, talent, perk, or complication packs. That means we have to have a flexible infrastructure for Foundry "items" that can be detailed as desired.

When those items end up on the character, we want them to be 1-click for effects and END tracking.

Encumbrance (RAW) will be in Basic. Hit Locations will not be in Basic. The Basic Rulebook is the guide for the Basic version. Full will have that. I also want to, where possible, support alternate encumbrance systems (it's on the list, but not a priority).

Release Cadence
First: Basic Version Collect feedback, bugs, and feature requests Fix immediate issues Use this feedback to inform the dev effort for the Full Version and refine the Kickstarter budget Fund the Kickstarter Incorporate any features/improvements appropriate for the Basic version Add additional features, functionality, and content for the Full version As will all software endeavors with this small a team, this will be iterative and we will do our best to address things and find a way to support everyone's play style where feasible.

Foundry Version 11 just dropped, and we have been developing for Version 10, so that is also an effort we have to consider.
 
My goal is to be using this in my next Hero Game I'm developing (Atomic Sky) before the end of the summer. I can't say what the timing for the release of the Full Version will be, but I intend to put together a larger team that can help build that out more quickly, especially since it is building off the Basic Version. Aside from some key features (e.g., Hero Designer import, Hit Locations, Attack automation, Damage automation), most of what we are adding is content (skills, talents, perks, powers). Then I would expect content packs to come out based on demand (Bestiary, Martial Arts, Equipment Guide, Villains, etc... probably in that order).

I would love to be playing Atomic Sky next summer with the ability to drag and drop monsters from the Bestiary, modify them with the mutations I need, and go.

Clarification: this is not a web-based Hero Designer. It won't replace Hero Designer.

The full version will allow you to import a Hero Designer export file so that the character in Foundry will be fully realized with all of the character's characteristics, skills, perks, talents, powers, complications, and background. You will be able to drag and drop powers/skills/perks/talents/etc. to build a character manually, but it won't do any power checking or calculations. Each object includes a field for active, real, and base costs (mimicking the cost fields in Hero Designer), but you have to update those fields manually. It will total your points (probably), that's about it. Think about it like a blank character sheet that you have to fill out: you can fill it out by hand, and do all the math yourself, or you can import a Hero Designer export file that will fill it out for you.
 
 

Howdy folks! I've been anxious to share this news with you until I had more than just promises to share. 
 
I am developing the Hero System for FoundryVTT, under license with Hero Games, and I am just wrapping up on the foundation before moving into automation. My goal is to keep this as simple as possible, focus on automating the things that have greatest impact (e.g., using/tracking END), and allow others to build on it. 
 
Hero for Foundry will take 2 forms:
 
Hero 6E Basic will be a FREE ($0) system for FoundryVTT that will only include content from the Hero System 6E Basic Rulebook. You will be able to add skills, maneuvers, talents, powers etc from any Hero book, so you can do more than just what's in Hero Basic. The core functionality of the system will be present:
Combat Status Dice Rolling (including counting BODY) Speed Chart/Turn Tracking Character input will be manual (type it in, drag/drop skills/perks/talents/powers) with no power calculation  
Hero 6E Complete (name to be finalized) will be a PAID ($TBD) system for FoundryVTT will include content from 6E1 and 6E2, and will be built on Hero 6E Basic with the following additions:
More automation  HeroDesigner Import Support for Complete Adventures Support for Content Packs (e.g., Star Hero, Fantasy Hero, Grimoire, etc.)  
Once the Hero 6E Basic Foundry VTT System is complete enough I will release it. Timing is unclear, but should be around June/July timeframe, possibly earlier. At that point we will gather feedback, fix things that need fixing, and then start talking about Hero 6E Complete. 
 
Hero 6E Complete will be funded by a crowdfunding campaign. We will have stretch goals related to more complex functionality, content generation, and more. Once funded, we will begin work on that, providing backers license keys on completion and then offering Hero 6E Complete for sale in the Hero Games store (and possibly elsewhere). 
 
I am really excited to be doing this. I have long used MapTool as my primary VTT for Hero, and love it dearly. However, I think the fit and polish of Foundry is finally where it needs to be and I think Hero needs to be visible and successful on that platform. 
 
I have long been an advocate for Hero. My first attempt and bringing Hero to a broader audience as the publication of Narosia: Sea of Tears. Building on that, the Hero community needs a robust VTT that is easy to access, stable, and free of subscriptions. Lastly, with the completion of my NOVA6 Game (that is my next crowdfunding project now that it is ready), I've started work on Narosia 2nd Edition and my love letter to Post-Apocalyptic play: Atomic Sky. Atomic Sky is sandbox style PA adventuring with 240+ mutations, gear out the wazoo, and a QuickStart system to make characters and start playing in an hour.
 
Atomic Sky needs a slick VTT, so here we are. 
 
Feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer. Keep an eye here for updates as we make more progress. 

I don’t know why the random, spur of the moment NPCs seem to attract more player attention than the painstakingly created ones do. It’s like an RPG trope.
 
 

Welcome to Mechanon Debate Club. The first rule of Mechanon Debate Club is: you do not talk about Mechanon Debate Club. The second rule of Mechanon Debate Club is: you DO NOT talk about Mechanon Debate Club! Third rule of Mechanon Debate Club: if someone asks why they got a downvote and you don't reply, the debate is over. Fourth rule: only two posters to a debate. Fifth rule: one debate at a time. Sixth rule: debates are civil. No doxing, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks. Seventh rule: debates go on as long as they have to. And the eight and final rule: if this your first time at Mechanon Debate Club, you have to debate.
 
Posting about Mechanon's latest efforts at world domination via AI-chatbots is not a violation of rules one or two. The unexplained downvote likely means that the debate is over though.

I personally find travellermap.com to be an excellent resource as a GM, especially since it will give me the book reference for more details.
 
Since I’ve seen books reference that it exists “in universe” as a database players can look at, it also helps them determine where they’d like to go and what kind of planet to expect when they arrive. This is helpful if they prefer to skim a gas giant and process their own fuel, for example.

Without superpowers, a reach melee weapon, modern firearms, or terrain features to exploit, one person doesn't hold a breach. You can always say that the brave hero makes a PRE attack and forces opponents to freeze or engage. Perhaps getting the result of strongly consider what you say is enough to make your opponents challenge you one-on-one.

(several nuns shuffle by piously)