sentry0

Quick update:

• I fixed a bug with multipower slot costs
• I did a pass through the Enhanced Senses and have them sorted out

Next on the block is probably going to be working on template support.

I will be doing family stuff for a bit so I won't be able to develop or push the updates I mentioned in this post until sometime after Christmas.

5 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Friend I pulled out my copy of Hero Basic. It’s design philosophy was that it  has 6th rules and boiled down to the *ahem* Basics of play and if you wanted to upgrade to the full rule set you could easily because then it would be an extension of the Basic Rules. The opportunity is there. 
 

You know what happened to Hero? We have too many people saying that if you aren’t playing Hero their way (Either by edition or specific rule choice) then you really aren’t playing Hero.

I ran a table for first time HERO players the other week using nothing but the BR and it went completely fine.  I count that as a successful test of the design philosophy behind the BR in my mind.  

I liked it so much that I plan on running like that for the foreseeable future with that group.  The Encyclopedia Heroica is there if you need it but honestly, the BR is a very solid product as is.

And yes, edition snobbery is a poison on the forums.  I like all the editions of HERO that I played but I like 6th the best.  That said, I wouldn't suggest you come back from 2nd or 4th to 6th unless you personally feel like it.  I'm not here to bash players for liking an edition and my eyes almost roll out of my goddamn head when I hear someone ripping on edition y because reasons.

I found this little gem the other day on reddit...

I'm skeptical that going backwards in time to release Champions 2 would attract anyone to the game who isn't already here.  Building a KS is hard work and many of them fail.  I personally wouldn't consider contributing to one for HERO that doesn't move the system forward.  The game has evolved over the years and is at a better place than it was, I'm not interested in paying money for a less capable version of 6th. I'm not one of these people who believe that 6th is a bad iteration of the game, I actually believe it's been a very good mechanical step forward but packaged to fail.  If you want a stripped down version of 6th you can use the BR and it would still be more capable out of the box than second.

I'm also not interested in backporting rules from successive editions.  I have zero interest in jumping through hoops to make a power that can easily be made on 6th.  So sell me on this idea that spending the time, money, and effort on this KS would attract anyone other than grognards who are probably already here.

As for the suggestion that the newer editions are built with programming in mind?  Highly doubtful.  I'm hip deep in revising my app right now to read from HD character sheets and there are many, many exceptions to rules that make writing the code problematic.  There are much easier system to code for like OpenD6... which coincidentally, I have.  My OpenD6 app includes tools to architect world's and build characters as well as play the game.  It was significantly easier to build a more functional app for that system than HERO.  If HERO was built for programmers in mind than shouldn't it be easy to code for?

The assertion that later editions were built by mathematicians for not other reason than to be pedantic about math falls flat for me too.  Balance is hard and a continuous process.  Anyone who plays MMOs or online video games that are actively supported by developers will get this.  Again, I like 6th and see it as a natural evolution to the game at this point.

Lots of things were simpler 40 years ago but the reality is that modern gamers are different now.  They have different expectations about how games should work and feel.  They like apps and tools to build characters with.  They like using tablets and phones at the table.  So tell me again why releasing Champions 2 would attract these players?  Because they can kill a tree to make a character and be unsure of the math?  Right.

I'm starting to deploy the 1.2.8 beta build... this build fixes a bug which would occur when trying to load a character with a missing or empty trait such as a character built with no Talents or Perks.

Keep checking the table at https://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/98754-hero-system-mobile-20/?do=findComment&comment=2740009 for status updates.

The beta test for iOS should be live now.

I am pleased to announce the start of the first open beta of the Hero System Mobile app. In this beta you may test the experimental feature of loading characters directly from Hero Designer files. To test this new feature simply load a character file created by Hero Designer which ends in .hdc.

I want to call out that the old way of loading characters by exporting them as XML remains unchanged. This means that you can try the beta with a minimal risk to yourself as you can always load your characters the same way you always did.

To get into the beta simply click the following links and follow the instructions:

I want to stress that loading characters directly from Hero Designer files is still very much in the experimental stage. A lot of power costs simply don’t calculate properly and I’m certain there will be other bugs! If this scares you then I would ask you to consider carefully if you want in on the beta.

Currently, only characters created in the following way qualify for loading:

• The character must be 6^th edition

My goal is to eventually fully support the other templates and 5^th edition but I’m starting small for now before I expand the scope of development.

You can report bugs by using any of the methods below:

• Use the app bug reporting facilities;

• DM me via this site;

• Email me at phil.guinchard@gmail.com;

• Post in this thread.

If possible, please send along the character you’re testing with so I can examine them in detail; this is super helpful for my debugging.

I plan on doing a lot development over the holiday break so the beta builds should be coming your way at a much quicker clip than before.

Thank you to anyone who tries the beta, your feedback and support is greatly appreciated!

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Looks great so far. When will it be on the Apple store?

It is currently on the App Store and the Play Store.  

This version I'm working on will probably be in development for a bit more but I think I will open up the beta to the general public.

I'll put up some links to join the beta in this thread tomorrow when I have a beta build ready.

So it's been a while since I did anything with this project.  Real life got in the way for a bit there but I'm back at it.

Here's some of the goodies I've been working on:

• Primary/Secondary Characteristic display
• Naked Modifiers
• Compound Powers
• VPPs
• Various bug fixes reported by the first round of testers

Here's a screenshot of the Characteristics screen with a character that has a bunch of characteristics purchased as powers and set to add to secondary characteristics:

I've added a toggle labelled "Include Secondary Characteristics" which will add or remove any characteristics purchased as powers and set to add to add to secondary characteristics.

When set to the off position this is what the same character looks like:

There's still lots left to do but I'm thinking of opening up the beta to the general public soon.

More details to come.

6 minutes ago, Doc Democracy said:

There is merit in everything remaining constant - there is never a question of "What do I need to roll?" it is always the same.

That's the feedback I got from my table of new HERO players.  They have D&D 5e under their belt, OpenD6, and a couple of boardgames like Gloomhaven as well.

It was interesting to me to hear that tbh.  I personally don't care, I'm fine with the RAW.  Maybe that's just because I'm used to the divide and it takes fresh eyes to point it out to me.

3 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

With skills, the difficulty was 10.  I treated every improvement to base skill as a plus on the sheet, so Stealth 11 or less was listed as Stealth on the character sheet; Stealth 13 or less was listed as Stealth +2.

This is a nice way to do it too, I need to think on which way I like better

That's interesting... yes, gamers are fickle

I was thinking of going with the old OCV+roll vs DCV+10 for combat.  That's pretty much a well established alternate way of rolling to hit.

For characteristics and skills I was going to go with 21-roll which gives the same probability of success as it does RAW.  This would mean a 13- roll would become 8+ on a character sheet.

I think it will be fun as an experiment to see what my players think... at the very least I'll float the idea out there about having a single session run "Roll High".

I recently introduced HERO to a table and the feedback I got was that rolling low for everything except damage was weird. 

It wasn't a math issue, just honest feedback I got from the table about consistency.  

9 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 As was I, though my introduction was with Steve Petersen, and Bruce Harlick running it at Pacific origins in the late summer of 1981.  My General RPG introduction was at a friends Dinner Table learning D&D from some 7th Graders.

 

My first RPG was Darksword with my friends in their basement - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28273.Darksword_Adventures

D&D followed of course, and so much more... good times.

1 minute ago, Scott Ruggels said:

 

So rather than a re-issue of the First Edition for the 40th Anniversary,  you would suggest a re-issue of the Second Edition Boxed set, with the Viper adventures, Dice, Map sheet, and such?  Seems eminently plausible as 2nd Edition as I remember, wasn't that different from First Edition... was it? 

But I think a possible solution to the whole complexity issue is to have new players come up into Hero the way it was done in the past.  introduce the complexity in stages, rather than dropping 6e on them.  If they like Hero, they may climb the ladder themselves. 

 

But in all seriousness, the way to get more players is to get more players into F2F situations and play. I don't see a lot advocacy for  itinerant GMs  putting up flyers in FLGS or other venues, offering to run. Almost all RPG players started as visitors to someone else's table.

 

This is true, that's how I got into HERO

Has anyone ever bit the bullet and run an entire game using a "Roll High" approach for action resolution?

Asking for a friend.

8 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

Hero needs one they make money on.

And some sort of something to sell.

 

I played City Of Heroes from late Beta through the first year.  I  had two accounts for a while to hold all of my Alternate characters after I filled up every server.  Still, one of the biggest chunks of money NC Soft got from me came from micropayments to the costume shop.

There's not enough users on my free app to come even close to recouping the costs of development.  A paid app would have even less users depending on how much you charge for it.

19 hours ago, Crazyleo said:

I was introduced to Heroes way back in 3rd edition when a friend of mine was running a Heroic level campaign based on Star Wars. Since then I fell in love with the system.

 

Then in 2004, I found myself playing a little MMO called City of Heroes. Since that time, I wanted to set up a campaign based on CoH using Heroes. But I never found the right group who was willing to play in this type of setting. Now, the group that I’m in are willing to try (currently playing Starfinders with a bit of Scion thrown in) playing this system. (One player already made his character)

 

So I’m excited to see how my two great Super Hero loves is going to work 

Welcome to the forums  

5 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

Hmm. 

 Takes money out of Hero Games pockets as my app is free

 

 

I think I see the problem. 

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at but my app is designed to work with HERO Designer and not step on either Hero Designer or Hero Combat Manager's toes.  I develop the app for free and give it away to a marginalized gaming community as a way of giving back.

The BR is actually a pretty good attempt at trimming down the rules, I'm quite fond of it as it's written.  Yes, it's missing some power write ups but it's a great soft entry into the system and clocks in under 140 pages and can be purchased for $15.

Writing this theoretical product to introduce players to the game could be based around the BR instead of the encyclopedia heroica.

Slightly off topic; I don't think that many people will pick up HERO as their first gaming system with things like Critical Role and the massive popularity of D&D.  Going after virgin gamers like that is a losing proposition instead I would focus on people who already have a game system or two under their belt.  

10 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Because good software development is it's own expensive nightmare of a project.  and the design phase is the most important.  Do we cede tabletop, because we don't have a decent phone app? Then I guess it's ceded.

 

We also have Hero Designer which does what it's supposed to do: make characters for 5th and 6th edition.  While it's true that it doesn't work on phones or tablets it still runs on desktop and laptops which gives it a lot of device share.

Theoretically, I could add in the ability to actually make characters in the HERO System Mobile app but that does 2 things:

  1. Reinvents the wheel; for better or worse, we have Hero Designer

  2. Takes money out of Hero Games pockets as my app is free

The current experimental work I'm doing for reading in HD files could be expanded to write as well.  I'm just not super interested in doing it for the above reasons.  If there's a big demand than I would consider it but I've literally only had one person ever mention it.

Look like @JmOz is ahead of the curve for pre-gens... https://jawedel01.wixsite.com/kountry-gaming/copy-of-hero-games

Perhaps these could be used?

27 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

I have this one rulebook.  I can play a superhero game.  Using the same ruleset, I can play a fantasy game, or a science fiction game, or an old west game, and while I may want to choose different toggle options when putting the game together, I can look at the characters and know exactly what they can do.  I don't have to try to guess whether a special ability is going to balance with others, or whether it's going to break my game, and 99% of the time my assessment will be correct.  I can do all of that without having to learn a new ruleset, or even open a new sourcebook.  

That's very true but let's dig a bit deeper... why is it so flexible?

1. is scales well
   • you can run low level action games to cosmically powered games in one system
2. it has a finite set of powers you build with... it's a lot like playing legos
   • Application of advantages and limitations turn this finite list into infinite possibilities
3. it separates SFX from mechanics
4. it has no class systems; build what you want, how you want
5. the only constraints are your points and imagination
6. it's a genre chameleon

Can any of this be shown in an effective way via an introductory adventure scenario for Champions?  I mean, one could tell people this but I think it's more effective to show them if at all possible.

Just asking the question at this point mostly because I think it would be a disservice to not show people the strengths of the system.  The last thing that I would want to see is some homogenized set of pre-gens that make the system look boring or like an academic exercise.

15 minutes ago, Solitude said:

 

Showing why it is the best is a different prospect from teaching them to play quickly,  and not neccesarily best addressed at the same time.

 

Unless they have played other RPG systems. 

 

One of the things that makes Hero System the best has been brought up on this thread repeatedly as though it were of necessity a negative. 

 

A strength Hero system has (which is appropriate for Superhero and detective genres in particular is the the ability to make a character harder to kill with out necessarily making that same character equally difficult to knock out. Capture, death traps, and all sorts of genre conventions are enabled and enhanced by the way the system works to do that. It does make for one more step in combat,  but the trade off is being able to replicate certain genre specific tropes much better.

 

Jim Rockford  and Mannix would have died before the middle of their first seasons if they were D&D characters,  as often as they got hit on the head. 

 

But demonstrating that strength doesn't get people into a game faster.

I'm advocating for both getting them in quickly and showing the strengths of the system.  I want it all!  I think it's achievable with a bit of carefully placed advantages and limitations on the pre-gens.  Just enough to show a new player that there's something interesting going on here... nothing too fancy.

Like I said, tease them with some of the more interesting build concepts not necessarily lecture them about it or make a character so complicated that it's unapproachable for a new player.

41 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

 

Sure, our theoretical "get 'em rolling dice first", doesn't have to be -- and already isn't -- the only way into the system.  We have multiple points of entry that are an awful lot like walls, or at least briars and brambles, than open doors.  

 

It's not dumbing down the system.  It's not "basic Hero" to the big books' "advanced".  It would be 100% the HERO System, presented in a way that makes it easier to start chucking dice at the table.  That's all.

 

 

You don't start with the advanced concepts first.  If someone doesn't know how to cook, you start them out browning ground beef, not making a Yorkshire Pudding.  

I don't think I expressed myself cleanly in my post.  Let me say like this: what's the competitive differentiator for HERO?

If you had one chance to show people why this system is the best (I know, I'm biased ) then how would you do it?  You can make a Brick or an Energy Blaster in M&M and any number of other superhero games.  If I can do that in those other systems why would I bother looking at HERO?  What's the hook for a new player to play Champions vs M&M?

A friend of mine gave me some good advice about a project I was working on; show, don't tell.

Again, I'm not suggesting making mind melting exercises in creative accounting... it's about showing them enough of the system that it actually grabs their attention.  It's a very delicate and challenging proposition but I think it's achievable.

12 minutes ago, GM Joe said:

 

Exactly! Get 'em in the door and interested, show them a good time, and they'll do the rest.

You can both get people in the door and showcase the system, I don't believe they're mutually exclusive concepts.  The trick is finding the right balance between crunch and simplicity.  I would suggest that modern gamers aren't afraid of complexity... there are plenty of video games out there that require you to build characters using levels, skill trees, action bars, and gear.  Even D&D and pathfinder have quite a bit of complexity especially when you are planning out a character. 

Extending my theory that modern gamers are actually quite sophisticated but uninformed about the strengths of HERO then doesn't it make sense to cater to them in a way that can engage them in a meaningful way?  Why hide all the good stuff from a new player?  They're uninformed not stupid... show them enough of the good stuff to entice them to dig deeper.

Anyways, it's all theoretical but if you don't play up to the systems strengths then what's the point?  There's a bunch of super RPGs out there that are good... why bother with HERO?