Scott Ruggels

Didn’t that used to be called s “Radiation Accident?”

A little depressing, but yeah, I can see. Do it as art, not a business. (at least what I am attempting to do.)

There is one rumored to be starting up "real soon now", but I am skeptical. There is another but I think it's just for a single retailer (Walmart). We'll see.

In Champions, usually simple flying energy projectors, or Bricks. In Fantasy Hero, straight up fighters. I am bad at math, and fumble resource management under stress, so I keep things simple.

That quote, out of context, could be pure gold.

Diamond Distribution. Seriously, it messed up the comic industry.

One of our GMs used a a low speed, a really low speed, that scared the hell out of all of us. it had a speed of 0.8 (estimated). If you buy your speed down, you get a whole lot of points, So the Shafer Death bot was born. When Activated it would go on Phase 7, then next turn on Phase 8, and then next turn Phase 9... ect. ect... It turned a coordinated team of superheroes into panicked screaming monkeys, when it one shotted the brick, and then slowly turned its attention to the survivors. We then had 13 segments to take it down before it shot again, and we were speed 5 and 6. it managed to shoot again and took out the Speedster. Taking it down was one of those heavy sweat incidents.

More than welcome. Glad to help.

That's how I take it. the Hit Location table ARE the critical hits.

What happened is for the non-gaming forum, and frankly I expect there are members on both sides of the argument, and that unless you want a Facebook or Twitter Rage Storm, here, it's best just to drop it.

There was a PDF discussed in the Fantasy Hero forum, "The Fantasy Hero Primer" which was 28 pages that presented a reasonably good introduction to the rules with three sample characters.. it was slim and the players I sent it to, expressed interest. Something like that with a simple card stock cover would be easier to do. (I would volunteer to do some of the cover art for a small fee, so we DON"T have the generic cover, like generic beans at the store. As to DOJ, I think the biggest problem is distribution. Assume there is NO WAY a modern hobby shop will allow anything but D&D and pathfinder, or expensive German board games to grace their shelves any more. The distribution of table top games has collapsed outside of major publishers. DOJ needs to work out more online marketing.

I have more issues with many con committees. but that's way off topic.

Hell, I can only affor two plus internet. I have Netflix, for number two I am waffling between Crunchyroll and HBO GO for Game of Thrones.

Pretty much.

I think in our campaigns back in the early 80’s all of our heroes bought martial arts with XP eventually, especially after encounters with high speed/ high dex martial arts villains. Can’t use that shiny energy blast when you are face down on the concrete. It eventually became part of the super team package deal.

As someone about 2-4sessions from wrapping up The Mummy’s Mask, I am loving watching this party navigating the same encounters that we did last year. You guys are a lot nicer than we were.

Isnt that MHI?

In the other thread, Fantasy vs. Superheroes, in the discussion, the most popular and selling background setting, especially for casual players is generic, D&D fantasy. Anything other than that needs a kickstarter to fund publication, and then sink into obscurity later. Sure there are a few exceptions, but they are beloved properties, and still niche (like us). When Magic the Gathering hit at Worldcon in 1993, it hit a stable tabletop RPG industry. Who knew that it, and the growing capabilities of home game consoles would nearly kill table top? The money was sucked right out of the hobby. I think its it’s only because of game groups, mostly D&D, that kept playing through that interregnum, that the hobby slowly grew back. I only came back to it because a friend in the social environment, Second Life, bemoaned the fact it was hard to find new players for hisD&D game until he found Roll20.net. I expressed curiosity, and informed him I had used to play D&D. Now I am happily back (and will be sitting down to a 5e game in two hours). I know now how many of you look at Greyhawk Generic Fantasy like looking at a sardine flavored wedding cake, but that is what is accessible to the mainstream. The other thing is that table top is gaining popularity because of celebrities streaming tabletop games on YouTube and Twitch. Adventure League which is slowly pushing out card games at the hobby shops isn’t hurting the growth. My realm where I play now, VTT, mostly Roll20.net, has implemented scripts for D20, D&D5e, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and FATE. Hero is not well represented there yet. It should be. I am just putting it out there. I can’t put my money where my mouth is, because I cannot program or script, and I have been medically retired and am on a fixed income in an expensive city, but I offer ideas freely from how ever many years of experience. What I think needs to be done is more evangelizing out among the people using a background that is already familiar with, so the learning of the system is the first priority. Then we can branch out into other backgrounds and optional rules. Getting the system out in front of people, on VTTs, streaming, or running a game for new players at the game shop or convention would help things a lot.

Good lord, Duke... You type fast. XD.

OPERATION: Mountain Fortress: Military exercise in the Southern California Desert. The Military is training a unit of their new Powered Armor suits against OPFOR. Heroes with Secret IDs related to the military, will have their secret ID called up. Military Heroes with Public IDs will be called up with a bit of press. The problems arise as follows: The new Powered armor suits are armed with simulated weapon and ammunition. The OPFOR is also armed with simulated weapons. [Insert EVEIL ORGANIZATION] is NOT armed with simulated weapons, and have their first change to grab a suit... or three, outside and away from the heavily guarded research facility they were invented at. the Villains could infiltrate dressed as OPFOR, or as support personnel. The Heroes have to stop the abduction of the suits and their pilots, or failing that, Track down the missing equipment and pilots. RELATED: Over at the tank range, the tanks are trying out experimental chemically fueld particle beam ammunition, that loads in, rather than chemical propellant projectiles, in a cost saving measure to give the army powerful beam weapons without having to build a new tank and turret. The beam weapon is an AP RKS Beam weapon, that is at the edges of the campaigns power level, but needs a tank's cannon breech to fire. A case of five shell cased, one shot, reactors has gone missing. "What's that annoying Buzzing Sound?" A series of hi tech robberies of small, High value items (anything from jewels to electronics, to rare manuscripts.) The common denominator is that all the items weight less than 2lbs, and were removed shortly after any security cameras were removed. THE items were removed by a coordinated swarm of drones, each going through a careful sequence of actions to Disable security, deploy to protect the theft, and then grab the target and extract from the area. If the Heroes catch the drones in action, the drones will summon a larger swarm of armed drones to take out the heroes. I will leave the type of weapons and the number of drones to the GM.

I ended up despising those "Low mechanics" systems like Fudge, Fate, and the rest. Even with a GM I liked running them, I was supremely unsatisfied. When Killer Shrike popped up with GNS Theory, My ears perked as I was on rec.arts.frp.advocacy and watched and participated in the philosophical brawl in those old USENET days. As i said before, I came out of war gaming into RPG's, and haven't left it entirely behind (WW2 Re-enacting leads to Postscriptum, and dabbling in Arma). I came to love role playing, and making up the characters personalities. However, I did not leave my love of tactics and mechanics behind. For me Hero was/is the perfect system for what I want, because the tactics make sense, within the mechanics, and Role play gave context for the fights. My disagreement above is the Role play snobbery, in that enforcing personalities to be equal to the players. I do not know about you, but I did not game with theater majors. Games like FATE prioritize that thinking, often at the expense of plausibility, and the Theater Majors tend to dominate the session. (Now I like role playing with theater majors and actors, but in the circles I gamed it, they were not common, except at conventions, also high crunch systems tended to curb their excesses.) Also those games did not have tactical problems to solve. Solutions tended to be what is seen in movies and TV, rather than reflecting the situation on the ground. The other problem, is that you have to play with the people that brung ya. The hobby, I will say, does attract it's share of the socially inept. In a number of cases also the handicapped. What I want to see if the game, is not so much great acting, but engagement. If that engagement is because someone who is not a good fit for a hard Boiled detective, has that as one of his fantasies, then YES I will let him roll what is on the sheet, even if it's "I roll my intimidation". Now there may not be any bonuses unless they elaborate, but I am willing to allow a roll to determine the outcome. But engagement, and not reading, or checking their phone, is what I am after for good players at the table. Role play can be learned, tactics can be learned, but to learn takes basic engagement. Enforcing a table house rule of only allowing characters who's personality matches the players, sounds limiting, and , well kinda mean.

I am hesitant to add Hulu because reasons. Disneynplay will be kind of a non starter for me at least at the beginning. I will be happy with Netflix so far.

I have been reading the Pathfinder 2 playtest rules. It was free, and my GM made some noise about wanting to run it. It is distant from D20 and D&D 3.5, in that the mechanics are heavily streamlined, and introduces the action economy. Stats are now a point buy, plus racial -er ancestry feats, background feats add to your stats, and then you pick your class. You can get started quickly and combat is anbit less detailed, but it’s betterndefined. It is very different from D&D5e, but it’s not Hero. XD ...However it uses the same Fantasy background world as old Pathfinder, and it’s usually the same monsters and treasure, so setting wise it’s probably still a sardine flavored wedding cake for you, Duke. I’d suggest getting it to read, as it’s free, just to confirm your fears.

Thank you for the example. Also in Hollywood is a a tension between attitudes of Directors wanting a big budget, but knowing The larger the budget, the more studio interference and the more “playing not to loose”, I.e. protecting their investment. There is an attitude amongst executives that can be stated that “It is irresponsible for one individual to be responsible for so much of other people’s money.” This coupled with some general producers graft serves to push budgets higher. You can’t skim a million dollars from an10 million dollar film, but you can from an100 million dollar film. The problem of small budget films is getting distributed into mainstream theaters. So yeah Hollywood is just a huge tax dodge, with one giant hit or three a year to satisfy Uncle Sam