TranquiloUno

I'm not sure that's true....
 
Certainly people don't buy an RPG *just* for the art but I have also certainly bought any number of RPGs over the years sheerly based on cover and interior art. 
 
I think any pile of words can be a functional game system. I don't think people buy RPGs because of the words.
 
I think the book has to spark something in the person. Blue and yellow don't spark nuthin' for me.
 
Dr. D vs Seeker made me want to play that game without ever reading it.
 
I remember loads of Classic Enemies based on their art.
I remember buying Champions in 3d based almost solely on the cover art.
 
Since we're a bunch of Hero nerds here I know we all love our system of choice but I don't really think a system has ever sold a game.
I think art sells games.
 
Art invokes creativity.
Art informs potential buyers\players about all kinds of things about the game without them having to read a proverbial thousand words.
Art actually gets potential players to read those thousand or more words of the rules to actually play the game.
 
Shadowrun? Battletech? Bought 'em for the art.
Warhammer\40k? Art. In fact Warhammer and it's family are probably the best case for art being the only thing that really matters. IMO.
All those terrible Palladium games I used to play? It was the art that did it for sure.
Talislanta? Barely remember the system. Loooooove the art and the world and still wanna play that game solely based on the art.
 
Rules are bullshit (to an extent)\no plan survives contact with the enemy.
 
But pretty pictures are always pretty.
 
Art sells product.
 
IMO at least.
 
Gets pricey tho!
 
 

A couple of things I see Reduce Penetration used on is a version of attacks where there is a large number of attacks but at the same time autofire doesn't cut it for some reason.
 
In one game, a 4d6 RKA with reduced penetration was defined as a two pistol shot to the same point on the person.  It could have been autofire, but the PC wanted to always hit the same spot with the two gun fire.  This made the damage on par with two guns and the stun damage much more in line with the game.
 
In another game, the speedster had an energy blast no range defined as multiple punches to the same spot.  The reason he didn't use autofire was due to the end cost.  The attack gave him a reasonable effect with out a massive drain on End.
 
 

Lee, totally agree. The base 10 STR still has to have END used but since END cost is 1 pt/10 pts, the END cost for the base 10 STR would be 1.

Nope as the above two Posters notes. No, the additional STR wouldn’t require END. Now if you wanted to, you can slap on the appropriate limitation.

I'd say that the STR increase granted by the charge(s) does not cost END to use, but the base STR still costs END. So, if you have a 10 STR and a power that gives you +40 STR on continuing charges, you could use 50 STR where the +40 costs 0 END (because of the charges) and 2 (or 1 I don't remember) END for the base 10 STR.

My understanding is charges don't cost END to use or activate, even if continuing charges. Since charges do not cost END, you don't need to buy reduced END on it.

A Major Side Effect which causes half the damage of the power would be -1/2.  That would be doubled for a Side Effect that happens every time he uses the power, so -1.  However, no defenses would apply to the damage taken from a side effect. 
 
I find that impact from Normal Damage to be very harsh, as the character takes a lot of BOD.  The rules allow for alternative side effects.  My bias would be to define the Side Effect as a STUN Drain.  That means only STUN is taken, but it is regained at 5 points per turn, not at the character's normal rate of recovery. 
 
The effect of Drain against a defensive power (which includes STUN in 6e) is halved, so losing 1d6 CP of STUN is a loss of 1d6 STUN.  Drain is a 10 AP power, so taking 1d6 STUN Drain for every 10 AP of the power used is an Extreme Side Effect (AP in the power, but with a minimum of 60 AP, or 6d6 STUN).  That's a base -1 limitation, doubled to -2 because he takes the damage every time.  Or cut it in half - 1d6 STUN drain per 20 AP used (minimum of 3d6 Drain) for a -1 Limitation.
 
Note that the Side Effect is technically based on AP in the power; as a GM, I'd allow it to scale, but some GMs may not, or may reduce the limitation value to compensate.  This is very much a "discuss with the GM" limitation.  I'd probably allow 1d6 stun per 10 AP recovered as normal lost Stun as a -1 limitation.  It would be -2 as a Stun Drain, so reducing that for normal recovery and scaling halving that limitation seems reasonable.  I might consider -1 1/2, depending on both character and campaign context.
 
If this is the character's main attack power, then he will not likely be very effective in combat.  If he has lots of other options and this is not likely to be used very often, it becomes less limiting.

I think something important to bare in mind, even a 'straight jacket' like class and race game like D&D has been allowing custimization for years. Every since 2nd edition, they've allowed tweaks and choices that meaningfully impact that kind of characters you play (kits), and of course this ballooned in 3.X and continued in 4th and 5th. Players may not be able to build anything they want, but there are so many options, it's not difficult to build something approximating the image they have in their minds eye. Also by presenting cool bits to chop and change around, it gives players options that 'next time I want to play an X, Y, or Z'. I think Killer Shrike's online Hero campaign is actually an excellent example of this...he's created so many magic systems and character types in his Urban Fantasy game, that if I bought it as a book I would be drooling at the opportunity to play all the different builds. I don't know why, but for me at least, this is more engaging than knowing ahead of time I could just make anything I want. And I'd say I'm not alone in this, based on the success of games that do just this. 
 
I only mention this because a lot of people who seem to be talking about the surperiority of HERO over D&D and it's ilk seem to forget or be unaware that they long since moved away from 1E's 'every fighter is the same except for their magic items' model. Note, I'm not saying this about you Hugh, just your first comment reminded me that the needle has shifted a loooong way since 1E, even if the 'build it yourself' mechanic isn't present. 
 
So a PbHS approach could work by presenting new and fun options, pre-created for players to pick from, but let's not pretend that the competition is still treading the same ground it did 40 years ago. 

Oh, a wise guy, eh? Why I oughta...
 
 

I wish there was a HD export that stripped all the needless cruft out. So you could have a play sheet with just the bare bones of effects/spells and stuff. 

I hadn't realized how hairy power construction could get until I started converting some Pillars of Eternity spells and had to use compound powers and custom powers here and there.
 
On the character sheet the combat summary (on Tasha's Ultimate) is so brief the players can't use it, but the full power description is so heavy that nobody can read it.  These are guys that play Anima, Pathfinder 2.0, D&D 5e and other games.  Veteran gamers looking at me like, "Bro, I can't read this shit.  What do you want me to do?".  This is our 3rd FH campaign...
 
So I'm in HERO Designer (an amazing product) and I'm going through the characters to simplify all of the charges, incantations, gestures, and other limitations into VERY simple things like Lim: Spell -2, Cast Time: 3.0s and it's taking HOURS.
 
Then later I was in the restroom and pulled up my Advanced Player's Guide 2 book and on the back of the book in giant yellow letters - "EVEN MORE RULES!".
 
Which made me want to read an adventure, only they basically don't exist.

Trigger Sense:  (Total: 44 Active Cost, 15 Real Cost) Clairsentience (Touch And Sight Groups), Perceive into a single other dimension (Immediate future: 1 phase ahead), Costs Endurance Only To Activate (+1/4) (44 Active Points); Precognition/Retrocognition Only (-1), Limited Power Only for Trigger (-1) (Real Cost: 15)
 
Lucius Alexander
 
The palindromedary wants to buy Roy Rogers on a Trigger
 
 

Black Widow has also been very useful in areas other than straight combat. In the first Avengers, she was the one who saw through Loki's ploy. In Winter Soldier she demonstrated her mastery of stealth and spycraft. In Civil War during the airport battle, she was the first to realize Cap and Bucky would make for the Quinjet, and was there ahead of them, in a position to turn the tide of the fight. And of course, in Endgame she stepped up to take over running the Avengers.
 
Hawkeye's explosive arrows in the first Avengers were pretty devastating, to a degree that, admittedly, subsequent movies have rarely shown. But he always displays keen tactical sense. Cap used him very effectively as a high-ground sniper and observer, coordinating the actions of the rest of the team. To be honest, when Hawkeye is in assassin mode he's so cold-bloodedly efficient, he scares me worse than the Hulk.

I re-watched Age of Ultron last night, and was favorably impressed.  Its still not nearly as good as the first Avengers movie, and Ultron's bizarre method of destroying the world which really was never adequately explained or made any real sense still is lame... but it was smarter than I remembered upon first watching.  And Scarlet Witch's mind-messing with Tony Stark explains a lot of what happened to him later.  She has no real control over her powers and I think she really scrambled his brains long term.  Its the only thing that makes sense of his nearly insane reactions and behavior after that.

Both, but the movie presented the argument so badly that bothered me more.  It felt less like "we have a story that will unfold naturally" and more "we gotta pit these guys against each other, give me a reason!"

I thought it was particularly weak, by contrast, since Tony's entire motivation made zero sense other than just sheer panic and wanting not to feel responsible.  All of the arguments he made were utterly weak and ridiculous, they made no sense.

I think one of the things that has made Marvel so good is recognizing genre's within genre's and, despite their flaws, the characters are heroes, willing to sacrifice themselves and fight the good fight just because it needs to be fought. Sometimes even on opposite sides (Tony and Steve) or trying to play the middle (Widow and Hawkeye). As has been mentioned, one of the things I thought was much better about the MCU civil war over the original comics one is that you could actually recognize why each side did what they did.

I'm currently running a Galactic Champions game, so our space battles also include flying spandex people punching spaceships. We mostly use standard Hero vehicle combat (6ed), but I wanted to use a vector-based movement system with at least a passing resemblance to how objects actually move in zero G instead of looking like the usual WWII dogfight. (Basic concept swiped from the minis game Full Thrust.) We've only had one space combat so far, but it worked really well: the players found it easy to understand after just a couple moves, it played quickly, and really gave the battle a unique feel.
 
No hexes: freeform movement measured using rulers or measuring tapes. The exact scale is handwaved, but 1 “movement unit” = 1cm on the map. (You could use 1m = 1” but you’ll need a big playing space!)

We ignored the Z axis and just did everything in 2D. In my experience/opinion, trying to simulate 3D on the tabletop is way more trouble than it's worth.
 
A ship’s Flight is how fast it can accelerate; there is no maximum velocity. (I mean theoretically there is, but I’m pretty sure you’ll run out of table long before you approach 1 C!) Ships can move NCM if they want, with the usual effects on CV.
 
For each ship you need to keep track of three things:
- FACING is the direction the ship is pointing – indicated by the miniature’s facing
- COURSE is the direction the ship is moving, which may not be the same as its facing – indicated by arrow on a disk or a counter
- VELOCITY is how fast the ship is currently moving – we tracked velocity using 2d10s (ie a velocity of 24 is reflected with a 2 on one die and a 4 on another)
 
Ships move and act on their Phases as normal. Movement is a 4-step process:
- The ship drifts in the direction of its current Course for its current Velocity in cm. Leave the Course arrow in place to mark the ship’s starting position.
- From its drift location, the ship can then move normally up to its full Flight move in cm. There is no Turn Mode, and rotation is “free” so basically they can move wherever they want up to their full movement. The new Facing is in line from the drift point to its final location, to reflect the direction the ship was applying thrust.
- Measure the distance from the starting position (the arrow) to the final location (the mini); the distance in cm is the new Velocity.
- The new Course is in line from the starting location to the final location; move the course arrow up to the final location.
 
Combat is handled normally after movement. For simplicity, I let ships & character do a full move and attack at one additional range band (ie -2 OCV).

Movement Example: A ship with 24m of Flight is currently moving towards the right, which we’ll call 3 o’clock; its current Facing and Course are the same and its current Velocity is 10. The ship wants to accelerate. First the ship’s mini drifts 10cm towards 3 o’clock, and the arrow is left in place. The ship then moves normally, and decides to move 24cm straight ahead. The distance from start to finish is 34cm, so that is the ship’s new Velocity. Its Facing and Course are unchanged. Move the arrow counter up to the final location. Note that for linear examples like this you could’ve just added 10+24 and moved the ship forward 34cm.
 
The next Phase I took pictures! Ship’s Course and Facing are both still towards 3 o'clock, Velocity 34. (The arrow is on the disk under the ship counter, but you don’t need to see it until you move anyway.)

 
Say the ship wants to turn to port/left. First, the mini drifts 34cm to 3 o'clock, leaving the arrow in place.

 
From there the ship moves its full 24cm to 12 o'clock. The ship’s facing is now towards 12 because it was applying thrust in that direction.
 

 
Measure the distance between the starting and end locations, which comes out to around 42cm – that’s the ship’s new Velocity. The angle from start location to finish is the new Course; move the arrow up. (I left the arrow on top so you could see it.) Looking at this pic it looks like the ship counter got bumped out of alignment, but it should still be facing straight towards 12 o'clock.

 
On it’s next Phase say the ship wants to stop. First the mini drifts 42cm along its current course (call it 2 o'clock). Then the ship moves 42cm (using NCM) back towards 8 o'clock, ending up where it started. Velocity is 0; new facing is towards 8 o'clock, and the Heading counter is removed (or ignored).
 
 

I'm not sure that's true....
 
Certainly people don't buy an RPG *just* for the art but I have also certainly bought any number of RPGs over the years sheerly based on cover and interior art. 
 
I think any pile of words can be a functional game system. I don't think people buy RPGs because of the words.
 
I think the book has to spark something in the person. Blue and yellow don't spark nuthin' for me.
 
Dr. D vs Seeker made me want to play that game without ever reading it.
 
I remember loads of Classic Enemies based on their art.
I remember buying Champions in 3d based almost solely on the cover art.
 
Since we're a bunch of Hero nerds here I know we all love our system of choice but I don't really think a system has ever sold a game.
I think art sells games.
 
Art invokes creativity.
Art informs potential buyers\players about all kinds of things about the game without them having to read a proverbial thousand words.
Art actually gets potential players to read those thousand or more words of the rules to actually play the game.
 
Shadowrun? Battletech? Bought 'em for the art.
Warhammer\40k? Art. In fact Warhammer and it's family are probably the best case for art being the only thing that really matters. IMO.
All those terrible Palladium games I used to play? It was the art that did it for sure.
Talislanta? Barely remember the system. Loooooove the art and the world and still wanna play that game solely based on the art.
 
Rules are bullshit (to an extent)\no plan survives contact with the enemy.
 
But pretty pictures are always pretty.
 
Art sells product.
 
IMO at least.
 
Gets pricey tho!
 
 

Surbrook's Stuff has an Astronaut template, which may be a better fit for the Expanse than some of the templates in Star HERO.
 
http://www.devermore.net/surbrook/herosource/other/astronaut_template.html 

I got the '88 version of GURPS Space to compare and contrast with the 5th ed Star Hero book.
Roughly the same content IMO.
 
Templates and write ups might be very useful. Or not at all.
Haven't determined who the players are going to be so the entire Spaceship Combat aspect might be totally off-screen.
 
Hero seems pretty workable. I think the trick will be more about finding adventures for the PCs if they don't come up with a good collective identity and skill set(s).
 
The Expanse characters map pretty well to the Pilot (Dex guy), Engineer (Int gal), Captain (Cha guy), Security (Str guy) and even Medical (RIP Shed\"Wis" guy, I guess?) with Bobbi and Avasarala being more Str\Fighter\Combat and Cha\Int\Social types. 
That and a nice ship are a pretty good basis for a game.  But the show\books do make integrating multi-POV splitting-up-the-party type antics a lot easier.
 
I'm thinking about blowing up Earth the first session and seeing what they do. Maybe give them a free medium freighter with some secrets too.
 
Disaster movie kinda feel.
 
And then maybe psionics via protomolecule tech.  
 
Shooting for a, "One tiny ship in a huge universe".

AGE system is pretty much Traveller with roll-high a la most modern d20 games, and also Mongoose Traveller, and it adds the Stunt Die.
 
I approve of 3d6 roll-high.
 
However, in these days of "all games are 5e or PF2 at conventions" (and maybe Cyberpunk REd and Shadowrun and Call of Cthulhu) finding AGE is about as rare as finding HERO.
 
That said, I hope the Expanse sells gangbusters and encourages more RPG producers to grow the science fiction pie.
 
(And that 7e HERO, when it comes, moves to roll-high for everything so we can get all the RPG newbies 5e D&D yanked out of the mainstream...)

While this is absolutely true, I respectfully disagree with this part:
 
 
 
Hero needs a game.  A complete playable-out-of-the-box game that people can pick up, learn in- well, preferably a couple of hours, but no more than an evening or two-  and have up and running for the weekend. 
 
Thats the point Chris has made before about 3e: those complete games were not just genre books.  Benchmarks and an already built magic system,  some idea about the world around you, a Theme a tone, and pre-built equipment to buy or at least to model your custom stuff after. 
 
Hero doesn't have anything like that.  The last one they had was MHI, which _vanished_.  One day people are bad mouthing the author of the source material while there are 660 copies in the store, the next minute they are _gone_. (I bought myself one to support my favorite game system and my views on "one thin book".  I liked it.  I decided to order my brother one (he's a fan of the source material; I am not), and dude: they were _gone_.) 
 
You can pick up MHI and be up and running in a couple of evenings.  You can't do that with Basic.   Sure: you can if you already know the system and a setting and campaign limits and style, but nothing has to offer will give you more than a place to play and some mechanics.  There is no complete game. 
 
A prebuilt D&D conversion is not my idea of a good time, but I am willing to bet I could read it and play a game from it, if I wanted, with no prior understanding of D&D or Champions. 
 
Look here:
 
 
 
Yet another "how to build a power" thread.  Fine: they're fun, right? 
 
Having a few known-up-front suppositions about the game itself would make it a lot less confusing.  I mean, Scott reached all the way back to campaign material published for an actual complete game (4e champions) to get an answer. 
 
Now if this was for a spell in Fantasy Hero, a pre built magic system might have pointed right at the answer; a pre-built spell list might have made the question superfluous. 
 
Hero bills itself as a toolkit from which any game can be built.  What hero needs is to sit down and prove it. 

I am pretty sure you own it.
 
Though I guess the official one could be Considered abridged (what powers are missing, anyway?  I haven't cared enough to crawl through the books again.)
 
 
 
I am going to rephrase that:
 
You were playing a very specific game. 
 
I also want to look at it from another angle:
.you were playing a _complete_ game.  You weren't playing just a set of mechanics.  "playing the game the way they want you to play it" is no different from "playing the campaign I have built." 
 
It's also something that you _cannot do_ with the most recent itterations of the syatem: they are raw mechanics, presented with oodles of optional mechanics.   But there is no game there. 
 
I roll three dice and if I roll under a modified 11, I hit my target!  Oh, cool!  Here's an option that let's me roll over some some kind of number and I will know who I hit that way! 
 
Why am I hitting them?  Are they bad guys?  Am I a bad guy?  Is there some reason other method of dealing with them other than thwacking him with stone hammer?  Can I have a stone hammer?  How did I get a stone hammer, anyway? 
 
Wait a minute: you said fantasy!  Why aren't there any dwarves?  Can I be a spell jammer?  For now?  What do you mean for now?!    What's a good strength for my dwarf substitute?  No, really: what does a typical one-of-us look like, stay-wise?  What do you mean that's up to me?  Okay, well can you tell me if that's a good CV?  Well of course I bought them both up high!  That's combat value!  I'm a warrior; I should be good at all types of combat, right?  Suppose I get into an e-fight?  Be pretty bad for a warrior to suck at that, right? 
 
 
The game.  The game itself.   There isn't one. We've got setting books.  We've got geren books.  We got mechanics.  But we don't have an actual game: we don't have "this is how it fits together if you want to make adventures from the 30; here's how it fits together if you want to make a WWII tank combat miniatures game.  Here's how it fits together - what is and isn't permissible in a simply cowboys game. 
 
MHI for 6e and Lucha Libre HERO for 5e and I _think_ PS238?  Those are actual games.  No generic "martial arts," but _soecific_ martial arts, hie to use them, how to. Uy them _for this game_.  Honestly, the biggest reason LL is my favorite 5e book is t even the luchas (and luchas are always cool!) but because it was the first and only 5e product to step up to Hero's promise that this is a toolkit from which you can build a game.  It built a setting, characters, benchmarks, chose what rules were going to be used and which ones were t, and it ran with it. 
 
One can certainly argue the that playing LL HERO is nithi g more that "playing Champions, but being forced to do it Darren's way," but you'd be wrong.  Like everything else from HERO, there is the familiar "see the big book to change what you don't like" reference.  But Lucha and MHI do something no other 5 or 6 product does:  it _makes_ some decisions, and some assumptions, and puts its foot down that certain things are going to be done a certain way. 
 
This doesn't make it heavy handed; the makes it the o ly complete game to come out of 5e.  The "system" gives you a hundred-fifty switches and options and tells you to throw them yourself and make your own coherent game without bothering to give so much as inviolable benchmarks for normal. Humans. 
 
Not the most beginner-friendly scenario I can imagine, mostly because it is not- even when combined with a genre book, a complete game.  Certainly us antique hero fans can make something of it, but we are using how many decades of context to get it done? 
 
No: I have to toss myself into the corner for daring to expect there to be more than one complete game to come out of your ten-book "toolkit." 
 
 
 
 

I was being unspecific about what could have saved HERO because we've been down that road many, many times before. As much as I enjoy the exercise, I wanted to spend more time talking about what we could actually do.
 
But, yeah, for me personally, I'd go back to 4e, give it a good edit, apply the errata, and add a few things that most of us seem to agree on (like megascale, stun multiplier of 1-3, etc), offer it for POD, then call it a day. That'd be my perfect edition.
 
But the perfect edition that attracts folks at a better rate than Champions Complete? That's probably not it.
 
I don't think my game design skills are up to it, but my #1 thing to fix system-wise in order to make it more newbie friendly would be to make 11 + OCV - DCV (or OCV + 11 - 3D6 = hittable DCV -- same thing only different) a thing of the past without losing the way that formula elegantly handles (for mathophiles, anyway) the question of how to make something harder to hit. So many games just ignore the issue, and I appreciate very much that HERO addresses it without requiring a defensive "avoid being hit" roll for every attack, like some games do.
 
If I could fix that and make it a unified mechanic that works for skill throws, too, I'd be very happy.
 
But, again, it's probably not something we can make happen in the core game even if we could come up with the perfect solution.