Khymeria

I was one of the contributors and playtesters for 5E D&D for WotC from the beginning and the first half of the edition cycle, and what you have said about D&D being more confusing than Hero System is spot on. Hero System, learn the rules and put some effort into really learning character creation and your done. In D&D, everything works differently, every class ability, spell, racial ability, magic item, and monster. Each has statistics, just like Hero System, but each also has the dreaded text to be interpreted, misinterpreted, misconstrued, and the second paragraph, the one that has the negative, always gets forgotten by the player and you have to go and look it up, and interpret it, misinterpret it, etc. D&D/Pathfinder appear to have a million options, but if you have to take them to keep up with the neverending encounter scale and the rest of the party, are the really options? If 80% of the advanced paths and feats for martial characters require either Power Attack or Weapon Focus, then is it really an option. If there are a million different choices that will never get chosen, then they are just noise. I will take the system that lets me and my players build exactly what we want, learn one system for everything, and the system is a formula that is consistent in nearly everything in the game.

Me too. I use Obsidian Portal for this. It works well and is easy for new players to catch up.

If you have six players let them each roll one ability and the combined abilities are the abilities, put them where you like is a pretty decent method to get everybody involved if you are compelled to roll dice for primary statistics. Other than that though, rolling pretty much sucks because somebody is always sad.

First I call each session an “issue” and not “episode.” Anyway, I get inspiration from comics, often team books because I have a group of players. The Defenders, Avengers, Justice League (to a lesser extent because of the high power level) in a standard game, but that would change based on the campaign. Outcasts or teen games would be different. I like to watch old crime shows from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s because it’s pretty easy to change victim and location and boom, now you have a whodunit that was pretty easy. A supers game can pull from anywhere because of the range of abilities and power level. Supers can handle a Cthulhu so bust out your Lovecraft. Digitize the heroes and put them in a video game, Tron style. Perhaps they need a Fantastic Voyage and will figure out unexpected and unintended ways to use their abilities.

Hero System has an intellectual buy-in to open the locks, but once you pick the lock you’re done. Many other systems (looking hard at you d20) have different rules for everything and everything has a description that is open to interpretation. You can’t just read the formula and you need to constantly memorize what you saw and where.

D20, when you absolutely, positively want to look unskilled at your specialty, accept no substitute.

Well I will put up a link to this thread for him so if he wants to answer that question, he can. We play online and he has a really good grasp of the rules and tactics and is an excellent listener who usually understands what the positions are for the characters. I like that as a GM, he forces me to up my description game. For my other players I can show a token or piece of art and that is that, but for him I need to describe things. Usually my home games have written out descriptions just like any published adventure you would buy, and I am a fair to decent writer so that works well. We put all documents in text format for him usually and just throw up the hdc files for the other players and he posts his stuff in text. Honestly, he is one of the best players I have ever had the pleasure to share a "table" with and we would all be lucky to have a roleplayer with the attention and engagement that he has.

Good idea, if I am trying to create an atmosphere of fear, my face will get the job done. It's why I use a screen usually.

I did this a lot more when I was younger. I do have a Pandora channel crafted for horror mood music and another one for fantasy. Now when I dim the lights I can't read the adventure.

Sometimes I will dig deep and come up with some strange ways that to defeat the threat that the characters can discover through investigation. This is where skills like Journalism, Research, Antiquities, and such can really start coming in handy. Like the characters finding out the key to stopping Dorian Gray from terrorizing one of their DNPCs is to find his portrait and destroy it. That sort of thing can be a lot of fun for the right group of players.

I have a player in my online game that is blind and we can't send him hdc files but instead convert everything to documents for him. I am not fully aware of all the particulars but as I understand it, he cannot use Hero Designer and has a whole different set up for character creation. Hope this helps and if you have more specific questions just message me and I can ask him or try to put you in touch.

Wow, this is an old post and I found an online group but always happy to get an in person group and meet some new local gamers. I am in San Francisco by Ocean Beach, couple miles to Pacifica.

There is definitely a level of player buy-in that needs to exist that no amount of challenge, setting, or ambience is going to overcome if it isn’t there. Excellent point!

You might get some inspiration and a kick out of “Batman Ninja”. Not the best of the DC cartoons, but it’s got a similar vibe for samurai and mech.

This is going to differ for each group. If you are trying to strike fear in players, it helps to set a mood. Cultivate a Pandora channel or set up a playlist of appropriate mood music. Lighting is good in person (fear is super challenging to cultivate through mood online in my opinion). Description is next, the more the better, the more shocking, disturbing, and chilling the better. Imminent danger to characters works well if the players have investment in the characters. But mileage may vary based on players.

The upcoming Victorian Hero has a lot of horror, both fictional and reality, meshed altogether if that’s what you like. The Anopheles: Atrocities From Beyond mentioned by @Lord Liadenand a couple other adventures in that style, is what led to the invention of a Madness mechanic. One way to create fear is to have characters lose pieces of their mind bit by bit. It’s that whole Lovecraft vibe, only you are involved through your character and not just reading it. Some wounds take longer to heal than others.

Funny you should mention that. I was thinking of relying on PC natural greed, curiosity, and player gullibility to get them to inadvertently release the big bad and escape the wacky tomb.

My "table" is full, but if I have a player drop, which life happens and there are six players, so the chance is good. I will also keep you in mind if I decide to run another game. It is easier to deal with the same time zone. If I do run another game i will post it.

In my fantasy world, there is one culture that is pretty much centered around death, but in a way of respecting the process and inevitably. They have a massive cemetery, revere a death deity (not evil), and do have to look out for cults of the undead or necromancers. They believe that burning will stop corporeal undead but the incorporeal undead are still possible with strong souls or personalities. With those individuals, the remains are wrapped in consecrated bandages that don't allow the corpse to be animated or the spirit to leave the corpse, essentially trapping you soul in your lifeless body for all eternity. This practice is typically reserved for wicked individuals that pose a threat even in the afterlife.

I played in a Special Ops game where all the PCs were from different branches of the military with elite training, Delta Force, Navy Seal, Force Recon, Parajumper, etc. We were not all the same rank, but we had chain of command and a mission and that was usually enough to keep things in check. I did kill another PC for endangering the mission from my sniper position on the order of my commanding officer once though come to think of it.

I ran this back in the day and had each player make a few characters, the Supply Officer and random engineer and such so they could mix things up a bit for personnel and on away missions. They were good roleplayers and in it for story so they chose one player to be Captain and then did a pick rotation a few time’s through. It was fun but also works best on a smaller starship for impact.

I find using the optional rule that STR can't more than double the dice of the HKA keeps things in check. That 70 STR Ironclad with a 1d6 HKA would do 5 1/2 D6 with a 15 point power on a focus even. It is an easy one to exploit but also easy to stop from exploitation.

Shogun.hdc Akiro Takahashi.hdc

I think that could be a lot of fun, useful in many different games, lean on some of the vehicle stuff as well. I’m a fan of genre books, hence the writing of the upcoming Victorian Hero book. I think deciding what not to include when you have such a wealth of inspiration would be difficult but fun.