Questar

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I don't make any claims regarding how good a GM I am. I have my strengths and weaknesses. Quick math is not one of my strengths. Nor do I have the kind of memory that can instantly recall what the basic OCV is for all the PC's and badguys. I have to look it up. Yes, I can make it a bit faster by having it all on a single sheet, but I still often have to look it up. There are a lot of GM's who are better at this kind of tracking than me. (That is, they can keep this kind of stuff in their head.) I expect my players to help me out by knowing what their OCV is. Player A says. "I'm going to shoot the badguy with my energy blast." Me: "Okay. What's your OCV?" Player A: "A 12. I'm putting my Overall level into it." Me: "Okay, how many hexes away ... let's see, eight hexes, so that's a range penalty of -2, for a 10 OCV. He's partially hidden behind that crate, so he'll have a +2 for partial concealment." Player B "Maybe you should spread your blast, get a better chance to hit." (Knowing that Player A is not that experienced, I allow Player B to offer him this advice and consider it, so that Player A can learn the system better.) Player A "How do I spread my blast?" (Player B takes time to explain the mechanics of this.) Player A "Okay, I spread it for a +2 OCV." Me: "Okay, your OCV is now 12." Player A: "I rolled an 11, did I hit?" Me: "Hang on, let me see what his DCV is." I check the sheet, see where any levels might apply, and come up with a DCV of 10. I add the +2 DVC for partial concealment for a final DCV of 12. Me: "Yes, it's a hit." There is a typical example of a very simple combat manuever, a PC simply firing an energy blast. But all of those steps must be walked through to resolve this very basic attack. When you add martial arts, bouncing attacks, bracing, etc., etc., etc. ... the complexity goes up, and the time required to walk through the additional steps goes up too. Those options are terrific for a detailed simulation of combat and allow the player a wide latitude of attack options. I consider it a strength of the system, and it is a part of why I have always played Hero over other systems. But it's a strength that comes with a corresponding weakness, in that it takes time to calculate these things. The best GM in the world still has to go throught the steps of calculating OCV and DCV and applying modifiers. If you "ballpark" it all the time, then the players will eventually figure it out. I have had GM's who did this, basically just estimating to save time, and I found it annoying as a player. Why bother buying extra levels or coming up with a surprising maneuver if the GM is just going to sort of ballpark it anyway? If you feel these mechanics "get out of the way" when you are playing, it likely has a lot to do with being extremely familiar with the basics and as Ghost-Angel said, having a focus on using just a few tactics. I think it would probably be easier to look for one that's already out there than to try to create one. There are dogfighting rules out there that are probably better than any I could come up with myself. I recall a terrific game from years ago called "Fight In The Skies" that really captured that sense of using altitude and manuevers as the core tactics in dogfighting. I've also glanced through the Crimson Skies clix rules for dogfighting, but haven't given them a thorough read. Possibly, combining something like Fight in the Skies with a simpler combat system like Savage Worlds would work to get closer to what I want, I don't know. But integrating systems can be tricky, too. What do you do, for example, if you have a flying character who doesn't use a plane? How do you integrate such characters into the dogfight? That's the very kind of consideration that made Hero give dogfighting rules such a simplified approach.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero But consider how you might feel if somone wanted you to start a campaign with, say, a d20 system rather than Hero. Would you feel then that the mechanics were not really a factor in your enjoyment? Would you feel that what really mattered was the feel portrayed in the game by the players? If it's all in what you make of it and your own attitude, then how can you espouse a preference for Hero or any other system? It sounds like you're saying that all systems are equal in your eyes, because the actual mechanics are not as important as the imagination the player brings to it. While I would agree that ultimately everything rests on the player's imagination, I think the mechanics of the system can help or hinder the process. On some level you must think so too, because you do prefer the Hero system to others (as do I, in general). I think that's why Hero lends itself well to all sorts of different genres. Because to be able to simulate superhero comics, you have to have a system that can do just about anything.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I think there's more to it than that, which is why I have chosen Hero in the past over other systems for the kind of gaming experience I wanted. IMO, the system DID make a difference, and Hero gave me something I couldn't get elsewhere. But even supposing you were right that any restriction was rooted in my interpretation rather than the system itself, the restriction would be real, nonetheless. I can see this being true in my case one one level, anyway. I mentioned in another thread that playing fantasy wizards in the Hero system was unsatisfactory to me because it always felt to me like I was playing a superhero, not a wizard. If I had started out using Hero in fantasy campaigns as a wizard, then I likely wouldn't have felt that way. But because I began with Champions and clearly understood the superhero roots behind the logic of the mechanics, that became my association with the Hero system. I could see that the foundation behind the different decisions in creating the system was based on an attempt to recreate superheroic stories and combat. I thought it was brilliantly achieved. And it was clear to me that if the goal had been a different genre, different sorts of decisions would have been made. From a rational standpoint, and this is where I agree with part of your point, there is no reason why the mechanics in Hero could not apply equally well to a fantasy wizard as to a superhero. I understand that. But human beings are not just rational, we are also intuitive. On some level I cannot escape the superhero associations I have with the system. You can put it down to a limitation of mine rather than the system, but that doesn't change the fact that it is real. In fantasy games, I dealt with it by playing warriors rather than wizards. With pulp, things are more complex. I have some specific things I'm looking for. For example, dogfighting, which I find unsatisfactory in Hero. The crucial elements of use of altitude and airspeed are just not modelled. I'm not faulting Hero for this. This is probably true of any RPG that is not specifically designed to be a dogfighting game, and for flying superhero characters it is better left out. The sort of nod and handwave that Hero gives ship-to-ship dogfighting is probably the best way to handle it for supers, and keeps things from becoming even more overly complex. But for pulp, I'd really like to find something that brings out the feeling of dogfighting that is described in many of those old aviator pulps. I think I'd want something similar if I were playing a Star Wars type of campaign, though realistically the dogfighting would be vastly different without gravity ... more like the way flying characters "dogfight" in Champions. Anyway, this example is not just a limit based on my personal interpretation of the system, but a desire for a different type of game mechanic than what is inherent in the system. There are other examples I could cite about what I'm looking for, but this one is probably the most concrete.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I'm not familiar with Star Hero, but I assume it does use the same basic mechanics of the Hero system. You still have segmented, phased movement with combat broken down into one second intervals. You still attack and defend with the same maneuvers and resolve damage the same way. What got me to thinking about switching the system for pulp was the success I had in the only pulp session I ever ran by heavily modifying the Hero rules. Suddenly the game had a very different "feel" just because the mechanics had been modified to a degree. I was surprised at how much I liked how this worked and how much it helped me get closer to the pulp "feel" that I wanted. But it still had some rough edges that I wasn't satisfied with. I reasoned that if a modification of the system helped push me in the direction I wanted to go, that I could get even closer by finding a more fully developed system along the lines of my modifications. All very subjective, of course, but it opened my eyes to just how much the system itself imposes a certain style of play on a game.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I wouldn't call Hero combat clunky or overwhelming. And I have become adept at running it over the years of experience I've had with it. Some years back our group consisted of three players and a GM. Combat went fairly quickly, everyone was experienced with the rules and it never seemed to drag out. However, I can't recall that it ever FLEW. Sometimes we were into it so much that it seemed to fly, but actually a regular combat still took quite a bit of time. We'd look up and be surprised at how much time had gone by. Now we have a group that is six, sometimes seven players and a GM. The players are at different levels of experience, some of them relatively new. Combat at times just seems to creep along. With a higher number of PC's, the number of villains is often higher too. A GM can only do so much to move things along in a situation like this. Believe me, I've been through all the options (single combat challenges, breaking into two groups and having players run villains for the other group, etc.). I can't compare Hero's combat system to others as I haven't played others much. But I do find Hero combats are time-consuming, and it's my strong impression that most people who have played other systems find Hero to be slower than most due to its complexity. If I had to point to one thing that slowed things down the most it would probably be determining the current OCV and DCV in any given attack. With so many different ways that each can be modified, it can take time to remember them all and apply each one. Applying damage and tracking phases is a breeze for me, since it's all taken care of by my GMaid software. That being said, I think the main reason I am dissatisfied with Hero for the pulp genre is that after years of playing Hero, I feel the need for a change to stimulate my thinking and change my gaming mindset. In the past when I felt sor of burned out, I might create a new character or even start a whole new campaign. But to move into a different genre now, I feel like I need to shake things up even more and find a completely different approach.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero No doubt, if the players aren't into it, no RPG will work, whatever the genre. But it hasn't been my experience that Hero "gets out of the way" of the players. I'm speaking specifically about mechanics of combat here. While Hero offers a staggering array of options, it requires a lot of attention to detail to play out those options and resolve them. You must be willing to invest a certain degree of time to simulate that level of detail. And when you have been doing it for quite awhile you develop certain expectations and mindsets about how to do it. Assuming such a positive attitude by players and GM, I think it's inescapable that the system used will have a big impact on the game. Not all systems are created equal. Not all of them do all things equally well, and some are more suited to a particular kind of gaming experience than others. Sure, you can create a good game with a variety of different systems and have a lot of fun. But if you're going for a particular kind of flavor, choosing the right system is very important. That's why I have always used Hero for my superhero campaigns. I just feel that it provides me with the full range to create the kind of superhero gaming experience I want. I don't think I would like a d20 game nearly as well, no matter how good the attitude of the other players and GM. My players have a positive attitude to my games, and while they may not be all that familiar with original pulp source material, they know Indiana Jones and Sky Captain and The Shadow to some degree. I think they could move into a pulp setting easily enough. But if they do, I want to give them a gaming experience that is significantly different than the superhero campaign they're used to. I want the game to have a faster flow and wilder feel. I think it's legitimate to try to look for a system that will help me accomplish that.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I will indeed check this out. Thanks for the tip. Savage Worlds does seem to be a faster-moving system than Hero and more suited to the fast and furous pulp genre, but I am not totally sold on it. I will have to playtest it at some point I suppose. I am not sure that it is worth learning a new system if I can come up with a way to radically modify Hero for my purposes. Spirit of the Century may give me some ideas or point me in a direction I hadn't thought of.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero And I hope you have a blast. I'm certainly not trying to convince anyone to use a different system. I've hardly ever played anything else in years of gaming. I mentioned Savage Worlds, but I haven't played it, just skimmed through the free "demo rules" on the website. I don't know whether it would work for the kind of "pulp-feel" I am looking for, but reading the posts here is making the conviction grow that Hero really won't give me that gaming experience. For me, it's not just a matter of speeding up combat or even of cultivating a particular "attitude". I have been down all of those routes to some degree or other, and I think the HERO combats I run are really as fast as they can be. I use a software program called GM Aid which tracks through the speed chart, remembers who has a held phase or half-phase, rolls and calculates dice for the villains (and heroes too, if they want), applies defenses automatically and instantaneously does the math for things like explosions, damage reduction, and so on. I've had years of experience with the system, and have a sense of when to linger and I know how to push things along. But maybe it's because I have been playing so long that a sort of "hero-game" mindset has crept into my playing. It all has basically the same feel to me no matter what genre I play. I am still approaching the game with the same sort of strategies and expectations, just on different levels. (And I have played the system with all sorts of different point levels.) And since for me, the genre I started with was superheroes, every Hero game feels like a modifed version of superheroes. That is okay in a way, because that is the genre I have enjoyed the most. But when I played in a fantasy campaign, my wizard character began to feel to me like a low-level superhero. I think what I may be wanting in a pulp campaign is something that would make me approach the game in a really different way with a different set of priorities and mindset. Maybe what I am envisioning would be closer to a narrative style of playing where the mechanics of the game are more hidden, and the players take their actions not by calculating OCV and counting hexes, but just by having a sense of what they can do and reacting in character. There would still have to be some underlying mechanics, but vastly simplified, so that it didn't intrude and become the focus of the game. Again, I'm just thinking out loud here. But Hero is designed to be a detailed *simulation* of combat, played out second by second. This is exactly what you need to depict the frame-by-frame action of comic book superheroic combats. And certainly you can run combats in a pulp setting with the same level of detail. But the source material of pulps has a different feel to it when I read it. The combats are less defined, without drawing a picture of every detail, without describing every punch or bullet. It gives the *sense* of fast and furous action, but in a more abstract way. Often the reader is seeing things through the eyes and emotions of a single character, and the emotional state of that character is often the focus, rather than specific description of the combat. So perhaps what I am looking for is more a *sense* of combat rather than a *simulation* of combat to some degree. Something that doesn't feel like a frame-by-frame depiction. And something that moves so fast that you aren't stopping to think about range penalites or the bonus you get from a martial maneuver. And something that encourages the player to think outside the box of the phased, segmented movement of Hero. Is there such a system? I don't know. I've never really been tempted to look much outside of Hero before. But my particular enjoyment of the pulp source material makes me want to find a system that could capture those aspects of it that I enjoy. And maybe if I find something, I can persuade my players to give it a try.

Re: Getting the “Pulp Feel” with Hero I've posted a couple of my thoughts on other threads, but I'll go into more detail here. I found it difficult to get that "freewheeling" feel that I associate with the pulp genre when I ran some "pulp-like" adventures in my regular Champions campaign. Since I don't have a current pulp campaign, I am speaking from limited experience, but it's enough to make me question the system for this genre. I see others here have felt a need to tweak things in the rules as well, with luck chits, "push your luck", etc. Those strike me as moves in the right direction, and they are moves that take you away from the HERO system. It's far more than just a "speed-up combat" question, though that's part of the goal. In the only full Pulp session I ran, I dropped the Speed Chart, and that helped out a great deal. I found it helped not only to speed up combat, but also to keep the players actively involved at all times. Plus, it meant that the mooks were moving as often as the PC's, which kicked up the tension a lot. Tension...tension...that's a key part of the pulp "feel" to me. But I made the mooks go down with a single hit from a killing attack, or two hits from a normal attack. That also not only speeded up combat, but helped get the "feel" of the genre. In pulp, if a guy gets shot, he goes down and may well be dead. No having to shoot him two or three times, and then he falls unconscious from the stun multiplier. The mechanics of killing attacks in HERO are a big drawback to getting the pulp feel, IMO. Those are the only real changes I made, but as you can see, that's already moving away from the HERO system. I would make more changes if I did it again, such as adding the luck chits. I would use no optional rules at all, and even simplify combat further. More on that below. I don't think that pulp is stylistically close to the comics except in very broad ways. The detail needed to model the complex power sets in comics is not needed or appropriate for the simple guns and flying fists of pulp ... or I should say, for the kind of pulp "feel' that I envision personally. I don't mean that you couldn't have a fun, "pulpish" style adventure using HERO. I just mean that approaching the genre with a HERO mindset will likely still yield a game that has a complex, detailed approach to combat. It might be a fun "period" adventure, but not really different in flavor than a low-powered superhero game. That's not what I am really looking for in this genre. To me, the combat aspect of pulp is not as important as it is in a superhero game. What is important is ACTION (as opposed to combat) and a dose of the bizarre, even the horrific. It's important that the characters (in general) have to fear bullets and knives and falling from heights and ravening, rabid dogs. They must be constantly on the go, moving quickly from one goal to the next. Spending an extended time on a single combat works against this, and in HERO, even the simple combats often wind up taking extended time because of all the options available. I think the HERO system would tend to bog the genre down with details and fine points. Not that I have found a substitute system that I like (yet). If I were trying to adapt HERO to my vision of pulp, I would probably eliminate martial arts entirely. Things like fencing I would probably resolve with a skill v skill roll, maybe the best 2 out of 3 or something like that. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud. But I would radically streamline things to try to get the flavor of the genre and just to keep things moving. Well, I admit I'm still forming my thoughts. I am just giving some tentative leanings here. And it seems unlikely I will get a chance to explore this genre using any system.

Re: Eurostar's current line up As has been mentioned, the SPD, DEX and sheer number of villains in Eurostar helped make Eurostar the most powerful supervillain team in 4E. What hasn't been noted is that most 4E characters underwent a balooning in power when rewritten for 5E. Compare 4E Ripper, for example to the new 5E Ripper. Or most any other 5E character (there are probably a few exceptions, Eurostar being one). If Eurostar had received a comparable upgrading in power as others, they *would* be virtually instoppable, even in a 5E campaigns. Instead, their power was degraded, if not in point value, certainly in combat effectiveness.

Re: Thrilling Places! That's pretty much what I had gathered by looking at the stuff available and gauging the interest I've seen on this board ... that is, there is a hard-core group of people who really love the Pulp genre (which apparently includes a number of game designers), but that the pulp genre has just not garnered a really wide audience. My own campaign is kind of a microcosm of this. I really *love* it, but most of my players are lukewarm and would rather play modern day Champions. Most of them have not had firsthand experience of pulp material, but have a concept of it based on films like Indiana Jones. Maybe that's all the more reason to get the word out that Thrilling Places is the kind of book that can be very useful for genres outside of pulp and even outside of the HERO system.

Re: Thrilling Places!

Re: Thrilling Places! I hope that the Pulp genre draws more interested players (and more support). I admit I have been surprised to find the large amount of stuff out there in other systems for pulp gaming. There *is* interest in the gaming world, but I'm not sure that HERO is the system than most pulp gamers would choose for this genre. Thrilling Places, though, sounds like it could be a great aid for other systems as well, without much need for conversion. Maybe that should be emphasized in any review. I cannot find TP even mentioned on RPG.now. It does not show up when I look for HERO products. A search with the world "Thrilling" does not bring it up.

Re: Looking for cool ideas for "puzzle-combat" Shaft, you've given me so many ideas that it's a shame I can't use them all. This combat is actually meant to be a quick and simple, one-session adventure as a change from an involved, complex series of sessions that we just finished. An arena combat on an alien world seemed like just the thing for a change of pace. But it's hard for me to keep things REALLY simple. I always wind up adding a few twists and complications. It occurred to me that most of the PC's have powers that they rarely, if ever, use. So I thought I'd try to create some situations to let them use them, and try to keep the combats from being just slugfests. (Hence the "puzzle" aspect to each combat.) The hardest part may be giving the PC's enough clues so that they can figure out what they have to do to win. I've developed the scenario so that they come to the arena in disguise and get a chance to watch their opponents fight other challengers beforehand. They can pick up clues by watching them, and then will have some time to develop strategy (and maybe acquire a special weapon) before their own combats begin. I'm hoping they can solve the "puzzle" aspect of what they need to do on their own, without too much leading by me. Of course, once they solve the "puzzle", they still will have to outfight their opponent in the arena, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Re: Looking for cool ideas for "puzzle-combat" Some reallly good suggestions here. You've given me some good fodder and grist for the creative mill. My thanks to you all.