Toadmaster

Re: Reaching Across the 19th Century Aisle I'd buy it, I assume it would also include some pre-pulpish aspects like Jules Vernes & E.R. Bouroughs stories and Wild, Wild, West? Sounds like a good idea and it makes sense to combine them so your Scotland Yard investigators can take a journey to the wild west or your cowpokes can visit the big city.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Hitman series from Eidios for the PC and Playstation, far from the mindless shooter game I expected (nothing wrong wth mindless) it actually has an interesting plot that would not be bad for a small 1 or 2 player DC game. Throughout you are not really sure of the reasons for your missions or if you are doing right or wrong, and there is alot of mystery about your own background. It reminded me a little of the movie The Professional too. Has anyone else played through this series and had similar thoughts?

Re: Tentative 2006 Schedule Psychic wars is for StarHero, I asked about this one at the con and that was what I was told at the DoJ booth. Glad to see DC get a non-supers, non-crime fighting (presumably) based supplement, maybe that will finally get my enthusiasm for DC back where it should have been from the start. Looking at the 05 and 06 schedule it looks like Pulp will have plenty of support, along with Horror I may have to try to start a Cthulhu Hero game. Did one years ago with Justice Inc and had a great time.

Re: Inspirational Reading Joseph Wambaugh has written several books that could be good for a GM planning a law enforcement campaign, of the top of my head he has written the Onion Field about the kidnapping and murder of a police officer outside Bakersfield, CA and Lines & Shadows based around a police unit trying to reduce criminals preying on illegal immigrants along the California / Mexico border. He also wrote many episodes of the old TV series Police Story which if you can find it on late night TV can be another good source of ideas. on the more militant side Dogs of war, Fredrick Forsyth. This is a fairly realistic (supposedly) portrayal of a mercenary action in Africa. The book is much more realistic than the movie of the same name, although the movie isn't bad overall. Blackhawk down & Killing Pablo, Mark Bowden. Ok, these are not fiction but both would be good material for setting up a DC military or paramilitary campaign. Blackhawk down you are probably familar with, the book gets into far more detail than the movie. Killing Pablo looks at the US involvement to fight Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the history channel has done good shows on both of these for those who don't want to read. WEB Griffon has several series of books, I've only read his Soldier, spies series that follows a group of WW2 OSS operatives but he has series based around law enforcement and modern military as well. Not a book but Uncommon valor is a decent movie showing ex-military personnel setting up a mission for personal reasons (rescuing POW's in Vietnam), unlike most of the movies with similar themes it is done quite "realistically" and was actually loosely based on an actual planned operation. This was clearly the inspiration for Here there be Tigers, a module for Espionage by Kevin Dockery. Richard Prestons The Hot Zone and The Cobra Event, the Hot Zone is not fiction but is a pretty scary look at biological agents and actual events, it is written in a novelish way. The Cobra Event is fiction based on a biological attack on New York, it follows a group of CDC investigators tracking the infection, think of the movie Outbreak but a lot less Hollywood. Larry Bond is a less known techno-thriller writer along the lines of Tom Clancy.

Re: To serve and protect

Re: Feedback wanted on this background idea Sounds similar to Scout too, a Dark Horse comic from the 80's. I could see some potential for a modern western or the world from Mad Max or CarWars, moderate tech, fairly modern communities but vast areas of no mans land in between.

Re: Tentative 2006 Schedule Ok, I'll buy that, its supers but not champions.

Re: Tentative 2006 Schedule I'm sorry that this is going to be negative but I am really sick of the whinning about not enough Champions stuff, it happens every year and it really turns me off of HERO everytime. Champions gets the largest share by far everytime while many other genres are not even represented. I had to wait two freaking years for Dark Champs just to find out that the emphasis was on Champs and why on earth would somebody not count DC supplements like The Animated Series as a Champions product? Anyway rant out of the way, I'm happy to see Pulp will be getting support and Horror is on the list. Nice to see some other stuff like the Celtic beastiary and Ultimate skill too.

Re: Inconsitancies I agree with you, it is not an inconsistancy in the rules it is a poorly built character. The fact that many "official" writeups may have this issue doesn't mean anything more than maybe they need to be adjusted to be appropriate for the genre.

Re: Where else do you roll down? Thank you, everytime I see one of these threads (and it seems to be weekly) I am tempted to comment but I know I wouldn't be able to keep from being sarcastic. I mean most of the time they comment on how much harder the current method is and then go into convoluted mathematical discussions that make my head hurt and I think, hmmm the current system is simple but your argument makes my head spin with numbers, yeah, HERO's system is broken. It's pretty simple, in 20ish years of playing HERO I've never had any player who didn't grasp the concept pretty quickly. I'd love to see the discussions that would be generated by a truly complicated game like Aftermath or Phoenix command if they were still widely played.

Re: Pregnancy and combat As a father of a 4 year old I agree 100%, I drove from SE Arizona to Central California with a 7-8 month pregnant wife and a 3 mo old puppy, it was not possible to pass a rest stop without stopping to pee (if it wasn't her it was the puppy, usually both). In my case the shriek at husband for no reason was replaced with get feelings hurt for no apparent reason. I can't believe somebody was offended by any of this and I wonder if Mag has ever been pregnant or around somebody who was, the last month or two my wife was definately impacted by her condition, on the other hand it didn't keep her from climbing trees, in fact she fell out of a tree the day she went into labor (which probably also explains alot about my son )

Re: more gun bunny goodness. You are probably right, it will probably have some success as a varmint gun and there are many that will probably buy it just because they can. If the ammo is cheap enough it might make a fun plinker but I doubt the ammo will be cheap. If you want one though you should probably get one quick, I can see some news story brewing up anyday about the new Copkiller gun ala teflon bullets, Glock, .50 BMG media hysteria. So what if the AP bullets won't be available to civilians, the media will quickly overlook that triffile and lock onto the P90's early claims to defeat body armor.

Re: The Hero Damage of this gun Another in agreement, I like the +2DC but it will take a little playing with to see how practical it is. I was fooling around with the break points quite sometime ago (pre 5th ed) and found something as simple as putting the .50 BMG up to 3d6+1 made a huge difference, suddenly there was room for those bigger than .30-06 but smaller than the big magnums rounds, the break points work fine for most cartridges up to 2d6 and then way to many get lumped together to be any fun. Any thoughts from someone more mathematically able than me as to what effect using a more linear damage chart would have on the game? Obviously defences would have to follow a similar path. I often have the feeling the +1 for 2x really only benefits the game by keeping supers cheap, although GURPS which uses a linear damage system does start to run into the issue of so many dice that you might as well use the standard effect rule (2d6+1 for a .45 ACP, 7d6 for a 7.62mm NATO and 13d6 for a .50 BMG for the GURPS challenged)

Re: Horror Hero Now I pretty much take the opposite approach to this, I'd like to see a HERO book on Horror that has a section on each sub-genre to be used along with each genre book (Supers Horror to help take your Champs game into Horror, Pulp Horror to be used with Pulp to make a better Pulp Horror game). Now I know some will say DOJ should not make books that reference other books but unless HERO is going to make their books 2 or 3 times the size they already are I don't see how all the options can be covered while including sections for combining genres can be done with very little additional page count. I haven't seen much reference from DoJ to doing a Horror book, I've been under the impression that like Post Apacalypse it is not a genre they have a great interest in so think it can be tucked into the various genre books. Personally I don't think that is true based on all the stand alone horror and post apacalypse games out there but that is the attitude I have picked up from previous discussions.

Re: Another gun that makes even ME go "WHY?" It seems the past few years that as soon as a newest "most powerful" hand gun is produced somebody has to top it. I remember all through High School it was the .44 Magnum and .460 Weatherby (most powerful handgun, most powerful rifle), then in the late 80's along came the .454 Casull and the Barret "light" fifty, even then things stayed pretty static. Sure you had some limited production weapons like the .44 Automag, .445 Super Magnum, .500 Linebaugh and such but those were very limited semi-custom weapons. Seems like it was the very late 90's when the current supermagnum thing kicked off, .50 Action Express, .440 Casull, .460 Ruger, .500 S&W and now this. But I can see some value to these weapons... if you have a problem with Rhinos getting into your trash I've held a .500 S&W and a .44 Magnum in my hand, I don't think you really even need a gun with the .500, just drop it on the burglars foot, he won't be going anywhere until the cops bring in a forklift to get it off of him. As far as the .460, .454, .45 thing that is not uncommon, the title of a round is not usually all that accurate, a .44 Magnum is actually .429, I guess .43 Magnum didn't sound as good, the .38 Special can be used in the .357 Magnum because in reality both are .357" in diameter, many .30 caliber rifles are really .31" or even .32"

Re: What's the Worth of 4th Ed. Books? It kind of depends on what type of games you play. The biggest differences are the price of some powers, lims, disads etc. If you are playing heroic games where knowing the point cost of every item isn't really that important then it is pretty easy to use 4th ed books. If you need all the point values then you will have some conversions to do. Either way though the 4th ed books are quite usable, since the basic rules are not that different. Even the 3rd ed books have a lot of value but those will take alot more work since the changes in the system are more wide spread since many of the basic rules have significant changes. For genres like the old west (Western HERO) or horror (Horror Hero) that are not even on the to do list at this point, 4th ed it is the only way you will see a HERO supplement for who knows how long, even for something like Pulp (Jusctice Inc) which is due out this year you may find useful information because the 5th ed books are not just updated versions of the old books. At the prices I've seen most of the 3rd and 4th ed stuff go for (cheap) it can't hurt to have both.

Re: Military Hero While it would take some work converting it GURPS WW2 does deal with "regular" grunts, the packages in it should give a decent idea of how to set up a HERO military package. An unlikely but useful resource is Hero's own Alien Wars, even though it is for StarHERO it is intended for sci-fi military campaigns and would probably be a big help.

Re: Modern Firearms in Hero system My thoughts exactly, while the narrow damage ranges occasionally cause some issues, the many different ways damage can be handled is one of the things that makes HERO interesting. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Re: Modern Firearms in Hero system I've been peeking an eye in here and there but it seemed to be alot of the same old arguments KA needs to go, get rid of the speed chart etc plus life gets in the way occasionally, you know its not easy running an evil empire wahahahahahaha Wish I could say its because I've been to busy gaming.

Re: Pistols = Reduced Penetration I had a lengthy post early on in this discussion but the computer ate it and I couldn't face typing it again, by the time I did you seemed to have come up with something you liked anyway. But onto shotguns I was toying with saboted slugs normal damage, rifled slugs x1 Rpen, buckshot x2 Rpen and small / bird shot x3 Rpen this makes shot guns even loaded with bird shot quite dangerous but armor is increasingly effective. Slugs have a tremedous amount of energy but are typically lead alloy and large caliber so don't penetrate nearly as well as a rifle with similar energy, saboted slugs are smaller and lighter which reduces their energy but the are also smaller caliber and harder alloys which is why I gave them no Rpen. Large shot has reasonable penetration but even level 1 body armor can stop 000 buck, the smaller shot is often recommended for home defense since it is not that likely to penetrate a wall unlike buckshot. Frangable rounds are made to break up easily, they were initially made as training rounds for shooting at aircraft (modified P-39s mostly) without actually shooting down the aircraft, they eventually moved into indoor ranges and then somebody got the idea of using them for tactical operations where penetration is a bad idea. The current ones I've seen are lead powder so they have the weight of a normal round ("knock down") but break up against armor, walls etc rapidly using up their energy. Glaser rounds are a similar idea but were designed for maximum effectiveness in flesh with a minimum of ricochets, glancing hits tend to make them disentigrate, flesh opens them up for maximum disruption and a clean hit against hard surfaces makes them close up to penetrate better.

Re: Modern Firearms in Hero system Been there, done that but welcome to the club, the T-shirts are over there in the box. Glad to have another gun nut on the board but before you spend to much time coming up with formulas and such I'd search the board, this has been discussed (even cussed and recussed) and many good ideas have been thrown around. Hope I don't sound like I am discouraging you I welcome new ideas into this area but you might as well look at what has been done so far, much of what you describe has been mentioned in one way or another. While many poo-poo the idea of "realistic" gun combat in HERO there is plenty of room for improvement without making up alot of new rules, much can be done using the current rules in new ways. Piercing, reduced pen, AP, OCV, RMod, Stun mod, standard effect etc. So let the games begin Lock and Load

Re: Sex as a skill I can't believe nobody suggested the use of super skills mind control extra presence (only to seduce) etc Depends on what exactly these abilities are supposed to do when I see talk of KS: sex I think Dr Ruth, PS: sex Heidi Fleis (the buisness side of things), seduction, one of those high school girls who get all the guys to carry their books, skilled at the act the porn star of your choice and just plain "incredibly hot" without any particular ability, high Comliness but if you are talking about super human "powers" of seduction or ability I'd look beyond normal skills.

Re: Fantasy & Western Hero: Previous editions

Re: Fantasy & Western Hero: Previous editions The Hero books before 4th ed were self contained, so the first Fantasy Hero, Danger International, Espionage, and Justice Inc were all self contained. 4th ed books like the 2nd Fantasy, Western, Cyber and Horror required the main Hero book.

Re: The Zombie Game I haven't had a chance to play AFMBE so I can't really comment on the play of the game but I've been reading through it and its a great resource for building zombies and for setting up zombie games in general.