sentry0

Thinking out loud here after I had a talk with a fellow gamer in the office.  Is making comparatively dumbed down pre-gens really a good strategy for attracting new players?  I'm not saying they need to be overly complicated but what about making characters with some depth as well.  Have a mix of pregens, some comparatively simple and some with a little more crunch.

Show how you would make a mutant vs a person in powered armor.  Don't be afraid to add some interesting Limitations into the mix so people can see the depth and range possible in a HERO character.  What about someone who has OIAID on their powers?

I once made some pre-gens for a game and they were all fairly straightforward but I made sure they all had one power that was more complex then just a simple Blast.  I was trying to showcase on each character that you could do some really cool things with the system.

I guess my train of thought here is leading me to think that having a range of complexity in characters for pre-gens is a good thing.  Stopping well before you reach Hyperman's John Wick level of write-up for complexity of course.  Sure, some simple characters are good but you want to leave an impression on a perspective player that the system has depth, lots of it.  Don't overwhelm them but tease them.  It's a feature after all and one that I suspect we all love on some level.

I feel like I need to echo ScottishFox's last post... D&D starts innocuously enough but quickly degenerates into a soup of modifier addition, rules, exceptions to the rules you just learned, spell interpretations, and don't forget GM house rules.  The more levels you get get the worse it becomes and the more laborious actually playing it becomes.  Sure at first level it seems pretty damn easy but it spirals out of control quickly once you get a few levels under your belt.

My GM literally has a flowchart that we use to tell if our rogue can use his backstab.  And it's not a trivial flowchart...

I don't think a canned adventure with pre-gens is a magic bullet but I think it's one giant leap forward from where we are.  Actually breaking down the characters and showing you how to build would be another huge step forward for new players.  It's giving a man a fish and teaching them to fish... best of both worlds.  Put it in the HoC and make it "Pay What You Want" to get the best effect.

Someone needs to step up and do it... maybe a collaboration between people on this board needs to happen.

This is probably one of the most underrated docs in the download section right now...

If someone were to take the same approach for Champions I would think it would go a long way to teaching people how to build and think in HERO.

An Usagi Hunt is this boards Salem witch trials.

2 minutes ago, cycosurgeon said:

Would "recoverable" be valid since if someone hits a landmine type trap ( fire trap in fantasy ) they explode. But if they don't hit it then it is recoverable.  Would traps that destroy them selves have feedback on them?

I think it entirely depends on your SFX if it's recoverable or not.  A claymore could be recoverable theoretically but maybe not so much for a fire rune trap.  

I don't have the books in front of me but it sounds like you would be talking about a RKA with a trigger advantage.  Add in a recoverable charge and focus limitation and you would have what you're looking for.

I should point out that I was never able to get the application Icon to work.  

If anyone has any luck with it please post here and let us know what you did.

Here's a quick overview of how to run Hero Designer on a Chromebook.  My testing was done on an Asus C434 running Chrome OS 78.  I personally ran into a number of issues with Java on Debian Stretch that took my some time to track down so I figured I would share this with others.  The magic ingredient for smooth running Hero Designer on Stretch was to pass in -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true as a command line argument... after that all the slowness, artifacting, and UI flickering went away.

Assumptions

• Minimal proficiency with Linux and the the command line
• Linux (Beta) enabled under Settings
• Debian Buster installed under Crostini (this is the default Linux distro installed, assume this is the case unless you know you installed another distro)

Get Hero Designer

Get yourself a copy of Hero Designer from the store and put the zip into your home directory.  Make a directory to put the unzipped Hero Designer files into:

mkdir ~/Hero\ Designer

Unzip your Hero Designer into the directory you just created:

unzip ~/HeroDesigner.zip -d ~/Hero\ Designer/

Install Java

Update your packages:

sudo apt update

Install Oracle Java:

sudo apt install openjdk-15-jdk

Verify your version of Java:

java -version

You should see something like the following:

java version "13.0.1" 2019-10-15
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 13.0.1+9)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 13.0.1+9, mixed mode, sharing)

Create an Application Launcher

Start by creating a .desktop file for Hero Designer:

sudo touch /usr/share/applications/hero-designer.desktop

Make the launcher executable:

sudo chmod +x /usr/share/applications/hero-designer.desktop

Cut and paste the following text into the desktop launcher file you just created:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Hero Designer
Comment=Create characters for the HERO System
GenericName=Hero Designer
Path=/home/YOUR_USERNAME/Hero\ Designer
Exec=sommelier -X --scale=0.8 java -Xms32m -Xmx64m -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true -jar HD6.jar
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/home/YOUR_USERNAME/Hero\ Designer/hdlogo.png
Categories=Utility;

Please note that you MUST replace the YOUR_USERNAME text with your actual username... very important!

That's it, after the desktop launcher has been created you should be able to launch it like you would any other app.

51 minutes ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Okay... got word from my GM that I AM SUPPOSED TO READ the Turakian Age before the game starts, so I may have further comment later.

Damn, that seems like a lot to expect from a player lol.  Maybe he would be nice enough to point out the parts that would be pertinent to you as a player instead?  

I start small and build from there these days too.  I'm in the process of building an all mutant campaign world where the players are literally the first major group of mutants to exist.  There will be other mutants in the world but the vast majority of them will be ages 11-21.  The players will be able to have a profound impact on the game world and their choices will decide where the world goes and how it evolves.  The general public won't even be aware if the existence of mutants, although that will be changing very quickly.

I'm not planning on basing this in the CU, I don't want the baggage and want to start small.  Players will tough but near human and be vulnerable to more powerful conventional firepower like shotguns and heavy arms.  300 points with a 40 AP cap, some mandatory limitations and complications... and off we go.

Anyways, that's my current project.  I'm employed full time in a demanding job, married, etc.  I don't know the numbers so I won't speculate on where I am on the GM spectrum.  I think a lot of us who gamed when we were teenagers simply had no choice but to roll-your-own because money was tight.  I never abandoned that mentality.

I'm guessing some combination of a stretching to grab the opponent, a trigger on stretching for the initial damage, a trigger on the HKA when the grab is broken.  It could probably all be built in a MP.

You could probably substitute Linked for Triggered on Stretching too.

21 hours ago, TranquiloUno said:

Just like if I crack my shin on the coffee table in the dark. Am I at full CV? No! I'm in pain! But did I go limp, fall to the ground, and totally lose awareness of my surroundings? Also no.

I think you and your Herculean strength need to find a lower PD/BODY coffee table if stubbing your toe is causing you to be stunned.  That, or invest in Nightvision, it's dirt cheap when bought through a focus.  Maybe buy up your CON too while you're at it.

1 hour ago, ScottishFox said:

 

This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

I've seen a decent drop in player attendance at one store I play at and the other is holding steady.  It's certainly not the overflowing mass of new players that it was a couple of years ago.

 

I feel like adventure content - Professionally written and illustrated - is a huge missing piece for Fantasy HERO.

 

I've been running 1 or 2 Fantasy HERO tables a week for a couple years now and ALL of the players had to be lured over from D&D.  Once that was done I had to run Pathfinder or D&D content - converting on the fly to HERO - since there is so little created for Fantasy HERO.

Even back in the 80s I was primarily using D&D adventures with a mix of some home brew content

 

We played through Evermist and it was very enjoyable, but in terms of production value - it is not going to pull dollar bills out of pockets when compared to a Pathfinder or D&D 5e product.

I hear what you're saying but I've always been a DIY kind of GM.  Although I certainly appreciate a good setting book crammed with NPCs and plot seeds to use as a playground.

HERO is great system for DIY, I've gone on the record stating my fondness for the setting books like Turakian Age... it fits in nicely with my mentality.  Weaving in player backgrounds into the world and giving people freedom to explore their characters in a big sandbox is where it's at for me.  I also realize that not everyone appreciates this style of play and there is plenty of demand for canned modules.

Hopefully the Hall of Champions will provide some cool adventures for those types of GMs.

4 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

There are also a few examples of racial unorthodoxy in TA. The Drakine we've already touched on in several posts here; in some ways they're a reptilian parallel to Men, generalized in their skills and adaptable to almost any environment. But they are culturally distinctive, have several ethnic sub-types, and are otherwise not just reskinned Men.

 

Trolls are also rather distinctive. These are not the infamous D&D regenerators, but more like trolls from Norse mythology -- giant humanoids, brutish in appearance but intelligent, masters of smithcraft, with their own exclusive style of magic.

 

I haven't seen anything in fantasy quite like the Migdalars. Dwelling beneath the Earth, with formidable telepathic powers and a tyrannical attitude, they fill an ecological niche in Ambrethel similar to the Illithids/Mind Flayers in D&D. But physically Migdalars are massive and powerful, with four arms, no heads (their brains housed within their torsos), and their "faces" on their chest and stomach.

 

I really appreciate how Men in TA aren't just generalized. Their are quite a few ethnic groups represented, with distinct appearances, languages, cultures, clothing, and so on; usually inhabiting specific areas.

I was very fond of the unpronounceable dog men of that setting myself.

27 minutes ago, urbwar said:

Where do you download the compatibility logo? 

You can get the logo from DTRPG I believe.  You should message Jason S. Walters if you're interested in doing something... he can give you access to the material.

You could make the argument that you can have both dull and unusual side-by-side in a setting.  D&D 5e has the standard fantasy races with a couple of more interesting ones.  It's a smart strategy to appeal to traditionalists and people like me who are one chaotic neutral  halfling rogue away from smashing their head into the table 🤪

I'm running Hero Designer on a Chromebook using Croustini (Debian Stretch) with Oracle Java 13 installed.  I'm seeing a really strange behavior when I launch the app.

The first way I launch the app is by using the following command: 

java -Xms32m -Xmx64m -jar HD6.jar

This will run the application but it will be painfully slow and there will be artifacting in the UI.  So I started playing around with my options and I found that if I passed a command line flag after the HD6.jar reference the app boots up and runs (mostly) fine.  It doesn't matter what flag I pass in, it just works.  The app looks slightly different too, the splash screen is even different.

This is the command I run when things work with a minimum of issues (there's a slight display issue with file folders, which I can live with):

java -Xms32m -Xmx64m -jar HD6.jar -Ddummy=0

I'm attaching the trace.log in case your curious.

trace.log

23 hours ago, Hastur said:

To clarify: yes this Fate is the anime not the RPG.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, that's probably the best solution.

 

As for GM permission, none of the powers here are for me, the GM was having me help him build powers for NPCs and make other players powers more accurate to the setting, so for the most part it should be ok as long as it makes the power work the way its supposed to and it functions in the confines of HERO.

 

I built a character that has no innate magic with the intent of side stepping my lack of knowledge about the setting, he's just a super intelligent person that discovered "mana" called it "Metaphasic Radiation" and thinks he can use it to make the world a better place... Long description short the GM let me make a Power Ranger... After the first session though, it was realized my character seemed a lot stronger than everyone else's, and I asked to go over someone's character sheet to compare and see if i missed something, and I ended up going over their stats and powers and showing them and the GM how they could build the same character effectively but saving over 100 points for new stuff. And henceforth, I have been helping the GM tool abilities for stuff.

It's never a bad idea to have a HERO Sherpa for new players when it comes to builds.  I guess that's you 👍

35 minutes ago, Greywind said:

Obviously a party without a barbarian, sentry0.

 

• Rogue tries to listen at door
• Barbarian kicks in the door
• Melee ensues

It's true, no barbarian in the group. 

The funny thing about this group is that they always split up in dungeons... it would drive my crazy as a GM.  There's also a healthy mix of murder-hoboism at the table... ah well.

35 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

My own theory -- which anyone could legitimately dispute -- is that movies and television shows are a more passive activity than role-playing games. People don't watch them to create stories and characters, but to be told stories and shown characters. There's no automatic mental connection for them to a medium that lets them take on the roles of their heroes and craft their own adventures. OTOH D&D has always been marketed as a role-playing game, and is what most people aware of the concept think of when they think RPG. And since D&D is of the fantasy genre, other genres don't occur to them as alternatives for role-playing. Obviously there are exceptions, but those exceptions are relatively small in number. Like us.

I don't dispute any of what you're saying, I just wanted to add that D&D and Pathfinder have a ton of high quality playable out-of-the-box adventures that allow the GM to focus on something other than writing an adventure.  I have personally observed this to be a major selling point for those players which I would argue is pretty close to watching TV.  It's akin to having a sandbox where players have predefined boundaries they can't cross.  There's nothing wrong with that but HERO has always been a tinkerer's system with less emphasis on providing playable modules and more about setting books and info... different approach, different market IMO.  HoC may allow players to change that by offering playable modules and allow us to cross over into mass appeal, we'll have to wait and see but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

My own observation is that the whole playstyle is different for those games;

• listen at the door 
• check for traps
• pick the lock
• fight 
• collect loot/grab anything not nailed down
• ???
• Profit (mainly for Wizards/Paizo )

I'm playing through Storm King's Thunder with my main group and it's pretty much this but you have a larger sandbox than usual.

28 minutes ago, Steve Long said:

I do have a couple of Urban Fantasy settings I may publish at some point. Those are pretty common these days, but since that's what I happen to be running right now, it's what I've got material for.) Perhaps sometime in the future.

I would love to see your take on an Urban Fantasy setting, even if they are a dime a dozen 😁

I have put Terra Prime on sale for Black Friday (ok, a little early).  It is currently 40% off and the sale will end on December 6th, 2019.

Please use the following link to get the discounted price: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?discount=9a8b9baf62

For those of you unfamiliar with the setting here's some background...

---------------------------------------------

The world of Terra Prime is one of conflict and contrast. A world that has been forever and irreversibly changed by a mystical calamity that the Nazi regime caused during the second World War which fused together different realities. It is our modern day world, but The Arrivals now call Terra Prime home; Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and more live side by side with humanity. High Magic has returned with the coming of The Arrivals, and has forever changed life as we know it.

This fusing of realities also acted as a beacon to the denizens of the multiverse who now seek to conquer, control, or destroy Terra Prime. Terra Prime is the source of truth which all other realities are based on, whoever controls it would hold immeasurable power over the other realities. Mad forgotten gods, undead necromancer kings, and even the agents of light and darkness, all vie to posses the jewel of the multiverse.

Included within this mini-setting book:

• Over 120 High Magic spells
• 8 race and 7 ancestry templates
• A small bestiary
• An introductory adventure for 3-6 players
• 6 sample characters

Designed for HERO System 6th Edition rules; this is not a stand alone game and requires at least the HERO System Basic Rulebook to play.

Additional files for Hero Designer are available for free on the Hero Games website: https://www.herogames.com/files/file/492-terra-prime-hero-designer-files/

16 hours ago, Usagi said:

My own superheros campaign, D-Force, is a pretty straightforward rip-off of Claremont era X-Men.  All the heroes (and most of the villains) are mutants and required to take the Unified Power limitation on any superhuman ability and any Characteristics above and beyond the Normal Human Maxima.  It really does make mutant nullifiers and the like very easy to implement.

•  

DFORCE Player Handout.pdf 1.45 MB · 4 downloads

I just got around to reading your DFORCE doc... it's really good.

Have you considered putting it up in the downloads section or expand it with more details/NPCs and put it up in the Hall of Champions?

29 minutes ago, Tywyll said:

Ah, that's a shame. I don't mind WW influence... I mean, why not? It's hard for Urban Fantasy not to feel like some good ol' WW. 

 

Interesting, I might check out Terra Prime. 

 

How do you handle magic in it?

I was going for a classic high fantasy feel for spell casters so I went with a divisor on all spells.  The average cost of spells seems to be around 6 CP.  There is nothing fancy about the spell casting procedures, it's mostly just incantations and gestures.  It's pretty generic but not necessarily the only form of magic that exists on Terra Prime...

I was reading your magic system post in the Fantasy HERO forum, it look s really cool.