Eisenmann

2 minutes ago, Rails said:

It seems to be:

 

https://www.herogames.com/store/product/1055-heroes-in-a-hurry-pdf/

 

Oh, geez. I browsed the store and didn't see it.

Thanks, Rails!

Hello,

I was wondering if Heroes in a Hurry was available as a PDF, sans print.

Thanks!

I think GM Joe is looking for the Hero System's unique selling proposition.

Turtles all the way down?

I'm exploring Hero because I want to run a campaign where the characters will change over time, where the players will have a lot of options for crafting their character.

I've played (and hacked) a lot of Fate. It's fun and it's easy to make it fit a concept. But, for me, a few problems have appeared when using it. I'm often running 1 on 1 games and it doesn't work that well, with the generally expected flow of Fate points via compels and tagging. Also, if the player doesn't embrace the rule of kewl then the game can become difficult for the GM to keep pushing forward. Also, the skill pyramid can feel constraining over time. It's really not that difficult to push a small set of powerful skills to the top of the pyramid. Not that removed from here is that characters tend to change over time, rather than grow. Another aspect (see what I did there?) is very particular to me, I'm a bit burned out on Fate. I love it, but y'know.

I've played a lot of OSR games, where fantasy can be played at the drop of a hat, but for the idea in my head, I don't want to start the PCs out as rangers, wizards, fighters, and thieves. Certainly I can have them all start out as 0-level classless characters, but a PC at the 'normal' level in Hero is more durable, considering the nature of the damage system.

I'm looking for enough flexibility to create the magic system for my setting idea that's more game than hand-wave. I'm just not there yet, even though I've been a member since 2006, when I first bought Hero Sidekick.

Whelp, that pretty much looks similar to what I've been thinking, except 408 pages seems a bit much for an "out-of-the-box" game.

From what I've gathered from following the Kickstarter, it's going to be a boxed set of everything that you need to play the game, from the very beginning to advanced - kind of a BECM analog. One key distinction, I think, is that it's billed as being powered by Gurps. They're streamlining by reducing user facing computation at the game system/building block level.

A brief survey of my group said the same thing.  

 

However, is this product intended to get people's feet wet (to overuse a metaphor) or be the start of a campaign?  It can be the latter, if that's what the people at the table want -- and it's perfectly serviceable for D&D style fantasy.  (SJG's Kickstarter for Dungeon Fantasy, Powered By GURPS, sure did well enough.)  

I'm currently playing in a Gurps fantasy game that started out in an OSR system. The switch happened not because of limited character builds but because we wanted to try Gurps and its skill system, getting away from the periodic attack roll. Character development was a consideration but it wasn't a primary motivating factor.

I've been exploring Hero for the flexibility. I already have ideas for my full blown campaign but I'm just not there yet. One of the comments that I heard from the players when creating characters was that they wished that they could see what starting characters should look like, where the points should be spent.

Exhibit A for my position upstream:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying-game-powered-by-gurps

Have you tried Hero Combat Manager yet? I haven't, but it takes care of a lot of that stuff for you (from what I understand).

By shifting points around OCV and skills, I mean at the character modeling stage. I'm that far back on the curve!

So you show the new player a system that can simulate a Dwarf Fighter, Halfling Rogue, Human Cleric and Elf Wizard, and the ask "why don't we just play D&D which has all of these without investing any brainpower in learning a new game?" I think that is a valid question. Providing some options that do not work in D&D provides a reason to consider this game instead.

 

The problem is that the best sample characters would then be ones which do things the players are frustrated cannot be done in their current game. Those frustrations won't be consistent. But we might pick an armored Arcane Caster, for example, to show a non-D&Dism.

If you want more people to play Hero then they have to have a familiar reference point that will translate into deeper usage of the system. Getting your head around the works is enough work.

Edit:

The sheer flexibility of Hero makes it difficult to know what one of the more traditional types even looks like on paper, without the wisdom garnered from experience playing the game.

In addition, Lucius, I let my beginner friend play around with Hero Designer, but it really didn't help him at all because he didn't have any sort of reference point for which skills, talents, etc., were really useful because he didn't yet understand how the game played. Even after I bought all the Fantasy Hero Hero Builder packs he was still not very comfortable or clear about what to choose. He had no rationale in his mind yet.

There's no way that I could build out powers with Hero Designer. My current project is about running the hero's journey where the PCs start out as skilled normals, so the software was nice for shifting points around the various character aspects, that is skills vs OCV, etc. That actually helped get us to the table. Even then it took a lot of book referencing and rule section unwinding.

A question for any new people that may still be reading:

 

Picking up a new game, are you more excited to see familiar character types like Elf, Dwarf, Human, etc, where you already sort of know what they are and are curious "how does THIS game handle them?"

I'm far more interested in seeing familiar character types. That way it's easier for me to get oriented and help my players to do the same.

I actually have a test scenario that we run through, when trying out a new system.

On that note, another question for those new to Hero System:

 

Do you use Hero Designer? And if so, how helpful is it?

I bought Hero Designer as part of a last ditch bid to learn the builder aspect of Hero. And It's excellent. I was just about ready to move on. Though still not up to speed on powers and what-not,  I at least can have some confidence in the characters that I build with it.

Right, and eventually the players get to see it too, just not at first.  Baby steps.

If we're talking about a Red Boxy Fantasy Hero here, the GM's job should be as commensurately simplified as that of the players. And perhaps Expert provides the peek into the depths of the game.

Just a comment from the newb peanut gallery, who's still following along.

Eisenmann, I really like your idea of using little beads or whatever, or Cantriped's tokens, to track different stats. This is visually intuitive. The only possible problem I can see is that players need to keep track of specific numbers of STUN, for example, to determine whether their characters are stunned (compared to their CON). Perhaps this may be one of those rules that could be eliminated for basic play, but it's pretty basic to the game. Do you use a card for the aquarium stones to show what the pool is, and what is used? It's possible to indicate "if x number of STUN is moved from your pool, you are stunned for one phase," or something like that. What do you do?

The stones are color coded to the highlighted fields on the character sheet - red for Body and yellow for Stun. Being an impromptu hack it didn't remedy as much as it could have. We still had to remember the stun threshold. Your idea for cards as a visual base is a good one. Then the numbers would be right in context.

I want to note that, in my game, characters have relatively low body and stun. Heck, the PCs are skilled normals and most of their world isn't that potent, making the use of stones as a running gauge of reserve pretty easy.

I like the idea of having cards to represent groups of game elements if you are running a game where everything is pregenerated. In lieu of an Adventurer's Gallery, you could use a collection of cards to build characters with. For example, you might be able to cram the entire characteristics block (and perhaps a racial template) onto one side of a standard sized trading card, and on the other side include an illustration and instructions for finishing the character; like "select 50 points worth of Complication cards, select up to 75 points worth of Skill Set and/or Special Ability cards, and select up to 150 gold worth of Equipment cards".

 

Bowls of 1, 3, and 5 point STUN, BODY, and END (and perhaps MANA or Charge) Tokens could also be very helpful for tracking consumable resources.

I've been using  colored glass aquarium stones for tracking  those bits. Even though each stone represents 1 point of value it's made game play a lot easier, especially as compared to working out what's spent/recovered and then writing it down it down. The flow of points as stones has helped reinforce the flow of the game. Remember-and-catalog is pretty disruptive for new players who are also trying to figure out what to do in-game when it's their turn.

As far as cards go, an interim step could be a PDF that can be printed and cut out versus a full print run. I'm a big fan of cards as artifacts in other game systems too, such as GURPS, Mouse Guard, etc.

Without any kind of explanation, its not much help.  If the complaint is "the rules are complicated enough that people disagree on some aspects, I have to agree with Cantriped who noted

 

 

Reasonable people will disagree on any game more complex than Chutes and Ladders.

It's not a complaint that people disagree on some aspects per se. It's that the game system becomes more opaque by it, especially in the context of this thread's topic. 

The disagreement may have been categorized as HERO-esque inside baseball stuff but it looks fundamental from a new guy's perspective.

I think we've now hit on the real problem for newbs.

I discovered, contrary to much of what you read online, HERO is very easy to play once you're at the table. After I got my hands on Fantasy Hero Complete, I used the pregens found in the book to stumble my way through a few sessions where a 10 year old had no trouble with gameplay execution. Even at the time I knew that I was ignoring some things just to get the game moving. At that stage, just seeing things such as Active Points in a writeup is distracting. While it may be helpful for connecting that particular thing to the deeper power of HERO, it helped make the GM handwaving feel uncertain, which doesn't boost confidence.

In addition, things like Active Points didn't help me keep running that game with HERO. A few sessions in, it was clear that one of the PCs was too powerful in comparison to the others. I sat down to see if I could rebalance everyone but I just didn't grok enough of the system to make it happen. I just rebooted it with HeroQuest 2.

Awesome! It looks like you pretty much got bit by the same bug as most of us. One book leads to another . . . . I like Chris Goodwin's introduction as well, and don't want to step on his great work. I'm not trying got steal his thunder, but even he will admit that we've all played Hero for so long that we don't remember what its like to look at the rules for the first time. So this thread is intended to allow some beginners to give some input into what kind of product they'd like to see. What would be the most helpful to you for learning the rules for the first time?

My EGO took a hit when I was first stymied, so I tracked down the different books in the effort to learn HERO.

A glossary of TLAs and other game terms would be helpful. When unwinding rules concepts it's tough when you hit another HERO-specific game term when reading about another one, especially for the first (second, third) time. A glossary would alleviate that a bit, I'd think. The index, no matter how good, isn't necessarily helpful here.

I commend community efforts of all kinds, but I'll reiterate that one "beginner's book" does not a full product line strategy make.

From where I'm sitting, I can see a deep ton of HERO material that I can't really use - yet.

As a long time admirer of and on-again off-again student of the HERO system, I'm loving this thread.

I'd already attempted to learn Hero when I saw that Fantasy Hero Complete was being released. I bought it with great enthusiasm and dove in. I have to say that it helped but I also had to lean on Champions Complete, the 6th Edition Basic Rulebook (found on FLGS shelf), lots of forum trawling, some delving into the big blue books, and referencing one of the free GM screens. It was super handy for getting a handle on damage classes.

Chris Goodwin's How to Play HERO System was an incredible help. My players and I were able to use it as a reference - "Yup, I really do understand this part."

Great questions, guys.

I'm using Fantasy Hero Complete as the core for a heroic campaign.
 

One trick I've used is to hand out not points to start with but only complications.  So you don't actually have starting points, only matching from complications (like 25 or 50).  Then, with xps, they get more power over time.  This works best when you hand out more than the usual xp total so people don't feel completely slow in advancement.

I've found that the best way to give out xps is in clumps, not some at the end of every adventure.  Then put limits on what they can spend it on; so like 10 points at a time after several sessions instead of 1-2 at the end of a session.  I recommend not letting people buy more than one stat up at a time, and cap skills/CV which can move up slowly over time.

I like this a lot.

IF the latter you can go as low as 50 points to begin with which is roughly equivalent to 0-1st level D&D characters.

Numbers-wise, this is exactly what I'm looking for. 0-level is more of what I'm looking for out of the gate.

 

It really depends on what kind of 'journey' they're going on.

The idea is that the PCs will start out feeling vulnerable, where it's easy for the players to imagine themselves in the game. The cap, concept-wise, would be somewhere around Beowulf's retinue. I'm not sure what that would be points-wise.

Yeah, it depends on what kind of campaign you want to run.  How quickly do you want them to advance?  How powerful will they be at the end?

 

One idea I've seen (but never tried myself) is to have players build some low powered beginning characters, and then build the "complete" version of the character as they see him at the end of the story.  So you start with Farm Boy Luke, who knows nothing about the Force and doesn't have a lightsaber.  You end with Jedi Master Luke with robot hand, green saber, and all the goodies.  And as you go, the GM gradually hands out abilities based on the need of the story.  "Okay Luke, you now have some general force awareness and you can move small things with your thoughts."

Even if I don't do this for the players, I think I'm going to tinker around with this idea to get my head wrapped around both HERO itself and the campaign concept.

Thanks, guys!

I just bought Hero Designer (nice piece of software, by the way) and am starting to model things for a campaign. The idea is to model the hero's journey, where the PCs begin as young adults. Being pretty new to HERO, I'm not sure where you start out points-wise.

Some old hand tips would be happily accepted.

Thanks!

I'm thinking about a low fantasy sandbox. Hirelings will be in the vein of old school D&D; porters, torch bearers, some extra muscle when needed, etc. I suspect that the full nature of how they play out in the game will likely match my competency in running and other constraints related to Hero itself.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've run a lot of one-on-one games with a good number of different systems. I do have to re-read my copy of Fantasy Hero Complete, but I was wondering if there are specific game options that I should select to make this sort of game flow better. Things like how to handle mooks, is there an obvious (to Hero experts) shorthand for hirelings, guru ideas for streamlining, things like that.

Hi all,

I'm thinking about using Fantasy Hero Complete for a game where it's one GM and one player. Anyone doing or done it? Any tips and tweaks to better suit such a setup?

I think you will see Fantasy Hero Complete appeal to the existing Hero System fan base, but I won't be surprised if it fails to substantially reach the non-Hero audience out there. I'm not even sure it is really intended to do so. At the end of the day, FHC is of the Read & Build tradition and not really aimed at the Read & Play crowd.

I'm not sure if I'm part of the existing Hero fan base as I've never played the game. Fantasy Hero Complete has caught my attention because I checked out Champions Complete at my FLGS. Champions Complete looked a heck of a lot more accessible than the big books and I'm hoping the same for FHC.