Al_Beddow

Originally posted by Space Cadet

45 frelling dollars?! The bloody thing had better have gold trim on it for that kind of money. Sheesh!

Space Cadet

Figures its that high, it's from Mongoose.

Nuff' bad things said about it.

The link wasn't posted... The ad I saw was pretty much just a grainy pic of the station with the B5 andx d20 logos.

Re: Tech level concept

Originally posted by ZootSoot

My idea was an attempt to define a society not by a single tech level but by specific numbers related to the technology level of five basic areas. these are:

 

Communications

Food Production

Transportation

Energy Production

Manufacturing Technology

 

Does this look like a useful/workable idea? Any ideas on what could fill in the blanks?

I love the catagories you've come up with along with what you've done in each of them. Sounds like a potentially great article for Digital Hero.

Source Material is the only reason I will pick it up. I'm not a fan of d20 and only play anything d20 for 2 reasons:

1) Kingdoms of Kalamar

2) Spycraft & StarGate SG-1 (which will be using the Spycraft d20 system).

Thank you... first once over looks good. Lots of ideas for stuff in my Star Hero campaign.

Originally posted by Captain Obvious

Gaah! My eyes!!

**ROFL**

Sorry about that. I just wanted to ensure that armitage got the point.

Besides the fact that y'all can go look at the original B5 RPG rules, I just saw an add in the current Dragon Magazine for "B5 d20"

The darkness spreads...

Except that acceleration is increase in velocity per second.

I believe that is what I said.

If your acceleration is 5" (1 G) then the 1st second you have a velocity of 5" and move 5". The 2nd second you have a velocity of 10" and move 10" (total 15"). The 3rd second you have a velocity of 15" and move 15" (30" total). And so on.

Again, you are re-quoting what I said for velocities, but your distances are wrong in this quote. As you later state: x = Start Position + (Original velocity * time) + ((acceleration * time squared)/2)

So,

- At the end of the first second you have accelerated to a movement rate of 5" but only gone 2.5"

(0.5 * 5" * 1 * 1).

- By the end of the second #2 you have accelerated to a movement rate of 10" but only gone 10".

- At the end of second #3 you have accelerated to a total movement rate of 15" but only gone 22.5"

(0.5 * 5 * 3 * 3).

Your numbers for the total distance moved at the end of 1, 2, and 3 turns are correct, but your basic math in the beginning is off.

That one was so good I e-mailed the original question and Steve's ENTIRE answer to some friends of mine.

I read one along the lines you are talking once, I'll have to do some serious digging (if I even still have it).

The problem is the whole thing was more of a "spoof" of current super hero's. The premise was:

The hero's secret identity was a TV new reporter.

He flew by thinking 'happy thoughts"

His home planet was called "Cronk"

The radioactive substance that drained his powers was called "Cronkite." (Get it, Walter Cronkite?)

Over the decades, the bad guys had been putting tiny amounts of Cronkite in everything, bricks, cement, glass, etc. so when the super hero when to resume his career, his powers were significantly reduced.

I haven't whipped out my copy to proof read the context, but it doesn't sound like a typo. 1G does equal 60" per turn after the first segment. It's an acceleration, so it increases over time. 60" per turn per segment. A lot of the "optional" rules use velocities in terms of hexes per turn.

Like many other RPG's, Star Hero doesn't say "increases" 60" per turn. It says they must MOVE 60" per turn and then goes through explaining how to calculate what the movement rate must be per segment to get that.

To accelerate at 60" per turn, that is equivelent to an increase in movement rate of 5" per second (assuming a SPD of 12).

So in Turn1 Seg 0 they would be going 5", T1-S2 it would be 10" etc until at T1-S12 they would be going 60", by the end of T2 it would be 120", end of T3 it would be 180" etc.

A Deceleration of 1G would just be the reverse of course.

That sounds interesting. Definately a different type of magic. That would even work well in a fantasy campaign (heck, it's already been done a little in the Chronicles of Amber).

Originally posted by Gary

The trouble is that all official products are going to use this +1 G = +5 Str. It's a factual error that should be corrected, especially since the correction is as easy to do as the current rule. For example, if the book stated that a greataxe did 1/2D6 HKA while a dagger did 2D6 HKA, lots of people would be outraged and demand a change. Sure people could house rule it, but they would prefer if the damage values were reversed "officially".

That has always bothered me. To be under 1G acceleration you would have to be increasing your velocity by 60" per turn (in the HERO game mechanic). Acceleration means "an increase in speed", and not "travelling at a constant speed".

That said, some of the GT stuff was just fine...but it needed editing. Badly. Did you see the Spinward Marches sourcebook?! I gave up and used my Traveller materials.

I had ALL the GT stuff, then sold it after giving up.

G:T had one template for Aslan and none for Vargr, then in Alien Races 1 they put out a DIFFERENT template for Aslan.

GT:Far Trader - The floor plans don't use hexes that are 1m across, then when you add them up the FIRST level of the cargo hold on the Emperess Marava deckplans had twice as many hexes than the ENTIRE ship was supposed to have.

GT:Far Trader - Ever try to design a Star Sector with the trade rules?

Ship Maintenance and operation costs - now there was a headache. IT took me about a week of pouring through the books to figure it out. When I finally did, the Emperess Marava class ships required something like 29+ hours a day of routine maintenance, yet they only had ONE engineer in the crew. Talk about some major overtime!

The basic issue is that Hero Games/DoJ wants nothing to do with the proposed site. They won't approve or dissaprove of it.

As I said, I don't have an OFFICIAL relationship with the company now, but since I am pursuing one that would just muddy the waters.

Of course, I will be glady posting links to all the sites that Have been doing HERO conversions (you can't get into much trouble posting a LINK). ;-)

Originally posted by ShelleyCM

I've only played "real" Traveller once, and "real" MegaTraveller once, and didn't have anybody die during creation -- whew! I've always played Traveller in GURPS, even before there was GT, thanks to my husband's excellent adaptation.

Shelly,

too bad your husband couldn't sell his stuff to SJG, I might have stayed with GURPS if he had been able to.

I see the spellbook as more of a collection of the mage's notes and a guide to his overall knowledge of magical workings than a rote listing of a finite number of spells that he knows. It's more of a toolkit (not unlike our beloved FREd ), a collection of general magical knowledge that he uses to prepare the spells he needs on a case-by-case basis.

I agree. I really don't care for the systems which insist that a mage must "memorize" a spell for each time it will be cast. HackMaster does this but they at least give a REASON that makes a modicum of sense.

I've been thinking about the project over the last week and my wife pointed something out. I am working on becoming a "Legion of Hero's" demonstraitor. If I do that and also put up the conversion website, it could easily be seen as something "psudo-official" by DoJ/Hero Games.

So, I've had to change my approach. I'm still looking for an angle on putting up a fan website supporting HERO 5th Ed, but I can't head up the conversion project webeffort.

Nobody at DoJ/Hero Games has said anything to me about this, and I haven't asked. This is coming totally from me after considering the point my wife made.

Thanks for all your interest. Maybe next time I get a great idea I'll think it through a little better first.

Yes,

As I stated, we must honor copyrights. For some folks this means just posting the proper copyright notice, while for others you must go through a great deal to get permission.

So... when someone submits to add a new setting/start a new conversion, they need to provide the link to the proper page where the owner discussions their copyright (like I did for Paramount/Star Trek).

As for Steve L. We don't have permission but he didn't say "NO". We are on our own. We WILL follow and comply with the policies listed on the HERO website. HERO Games Policies

Ok, try this link...

Coversion Project WebEffort Main Thread

Thanks Arooo. Here is the e-mail I've sent to Steve L.

Steve,

I've started an effort to bring together all the folks doing "conversions" of their favorite settings into the HERO System Fifth Ed. (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2700). One of the folks in the discussion, Arooo, pointed out that I should have run this idea by you first (DoH! How dumb could I be to have forgotten this).

 

Anyway, I have read the policy page and would like your blessing to do this. As you can see by the thread where I am discussing the project, I am a big proponent of protecting copyright and intellectual property. The goal is not to step on anyones toes but to provide a great site that will (hopefully) help generate interest in HERO System 5th Ed. With that in mind, I am VERY open to what requirements you might wish to impose to protect you and DOJ.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read this and respond.

Al Beddow

WebEffort Submission Guidelines

I've posted preliminary submission guidelines in the original thread. These are open to review and suggestions.

Al

WebEffort Submission Guidelines

I've posted preliminary submission guidelines in the original thread. These are open to review and suggestions.

Al

WebEffort Submission Guidelines

I've posted preliminary submission guidelines in the original thread. These are open to review and suggestions.

Al

WebEffort Submission Guidelines

I've been asked to post some submission guidelines. In coming up with some I'm most worried about violating copyrights. Why? Well, besides the fact it's against the law, some companies like Paramount Pictures are very adamant about going after people who violate their copyrights. So, there is some CYA in these guidelines but hopefully without being obnoxious about it.

I. COPYRIGHTS

1) Everything posted/supplied must recognize the copyright holder of the original material.

For example, The "Star Trek" conversion section will have at the bottom of each page "STAR TREK is TM & COPYRIGHT 1996-2003 BY PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED." (This example was taken from the official Paramount ST Site at http://www.startrek.com/termsofuse.asp item #3 "Terms of Use.")

2) All work must be credited whoever did that particular part of the conversion (including a method for others to contact the person should others have suggestions/questions). If you wish to have it posted "anonymously", just state so when you send the material in, but I will need to know who you are. (In this case I will forward contact requests to you instead of giving out your info).

3) Permission must be obtained to use any graphics obtained from the original copyright holder. If YOU created the graphic then the same rules apply as in #2.

II. SUBMISSION FORMATS

1) You can send submissions in either MS Word format or as a plain text file. If using MS Word please use Arial 10pt for regular text and Courier New 10pt for tables. This will greatly help me with converting the material to the website.

2) All graphics must be JPEG or GIF. Use JPEG for photos that don't have large areas of one solid color, and use GIF for graphics with large areas of one solid color. JPEG doesn't handle large areas of solid colors well.

3) Please don't send me a graphic that is 1024x767 and in 16 million colors. That would be a huge file which would take forever for folks on a dial-up Internet connection to download. I'm only going to drop the color depth and size so of something so large so it won't bog down the site so please, save us all some heartache here.

III. MORE THAN ONE PERSON WORKING ON A CONVERSION

1) If there is more than one person working on a particular conversion (say, there are 5 people working on different parts of a "Hero: Babylon 5"), I would prefer that all of these folks work together so we don't end up with 6 different views on what the Hero stats are for a standard "Star Fury." In fact, I encourage folks interested in a certain setting/book/TV/Movie series to work together on that particular project.

2) Again, I am not going to be reviewing material to see if it is "correct." I am just providing a place for folks to put up their work converting a setting to the HERO System 5th Edition.

I hope this isn't too heavy handed. I am very open to suggestions.

Al