jtelson

This past summer, as an exercise, I designed a handful of settings for another system - now that 6th is out I've been looking back over them with an eye towards Hero and have been reminded of one of the few things I've never been able to wrap my brain around a mechanic for in role-playing: The Reveal. Here's how I described it last August We’ve all seen it, the end of the movie, episode or arc where the jig is well and surely up, the villain of the piece has all the cards, and the heroes’ hopes have been dashed upon the pokier rocks of inadequacy. But wait, in the blink of an eye and aided by a series of rapid flashbacks the truth is revealed, our crafty protagonists have been 9 steps ahead of this vile beast all along and order is restored to an otherwise topsy turvey universe. The reveal, when done well, is one of the coolest tricks in the screenwriters bag o guns, when done poorly it just sits their limp and accusing like so much crap. So, how do we bring a technique that’s all about fooling and then entertaining the audience into a medium where generally there is no audience and, lets face it, in all likelihood your players don’t include the likes of Henry Gondorff. (Don’t know who Henry Gondorff is? Go forth now and rent The Sting, we’ll wait) That then is my question - is there a way to do The Reveal as a regular item in Hero, preferably one that doesn't involve the players having to have actually pulled off a con? My Savage Worlds solution can be found here. I'm not convinced that it would work.

Re: Behold, the Apocolypse Pod! Seems small

Re: Points and Parameters for a "Sunday Drivers"-like scenario Hmmm - Number of points would probably depend on the number of players and how involved you wanted the scenario(s) to be - my first pass would probably be 250 points per player divided evenly between teams. I think there would need to be a 'buy in' cost for People to prevent the I have an infinite number of baseline bodies running around. I haven't picked up Ultimate Base (yet) but it might be a good resource for you to start with.

I'm finding that many of the setting ideas I've had of late are divided containing 2 (or more) worlds (In my head I say bifurcated but I've yet to convice me that that's an accurate use of the term). The easiest example of what I mean would be a cyberpunk type game where everyone was a netrunner and a significant portion of the game was spent netrunning but there are an increasing number of other setting ideas to where that sort of thing happens. A time travel game where, while in the past, characters posses special abilities. A Wuxia game where the characters pass back and forth between the 'real' modern world and a version of Jianghu where it's possible for them to have different abilities in each world. A setting similar to The Matrix. An 'It Came fron the Late Late Show' knockoff centered around 100 Nights and a Night rather than movies. Hopefully you get the idea - So my question is has any one run this kind of setting, if so how did it play out, and did you/how did you model it in Hero. My thoughts on the subject range from simple (flat limit on single world abilities based on intention of usefullness) to complex (Multiform - different character in each world) but I'm curious what others have done or considered doing.

Re: How to Build? : Ignore Pain

Re: Building Bouncing You could also go with a Selective Area of Effect(Radius) Blast with Autofire and a limitation that you trigger damage shields.

Re: Building Bouncing Limited Flight (bouncing) with No Turn Mode (+1/4) - Levels With Move By, Move Through, and Multiple Move By. Throw in some impact damage mitigation and you're good to go.

Re: "Slick" Hero? In honor of Rockwell's Birthday I say "It's alive!"

Re: Arabic-language name help needed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_names_of_god

Re: Areas that trigger other power's limitations? You could also increase the value of the limitation on the wet-ware based on how easy the shut down effect is to acquire.

Re: Areas that trigger other power's limitations? OK, let's take it from the ground up... As GM you need to decide how you would like the game world to work - this is independent of the system. What is involved in concecrating an area, who can do it, how hard it is, how common is doing it, are there levels of concecrated, how long does it last, what unconcecrates it, what effect does concecrated ground have on thing X, thing Y and Thing Z? Once you've decided how the world works then you go to the rules and work out how to model it. So, let's say ground can be concecrated in 2 ways - permenately for Graveyards and churches but there's also a secret ceremony once taught only to Inquisitor's where it can be done 'on the fly'. Concecrating Churchyards requires a long ceremony done by at least 3 priests plus a congregation, requires a supply on inscents and holy water, it's done once but regular Masses reinforce the effect (if attention isn't called to the land the god ceases to care about it), it can be desecrated by a counter ritual or by the commision of an act of betrayal against the worshipers, undead cannot rise on Concecrated Ground, Demons cannot enter Concecrated Ground and Divne Servitors can move freely between Concecrated Grounds. So - once that's decided you beging looking to build the effect - first decision is critical - do you build the targeted effects against Demons, Undead and Servitors into the concecration or do you make it part of those beings templates? Generally I use the later - so if a character is a demon they have these limitation/complications, if they are a Servitor they may take these powers. Once you've decided what effects are integral to beings and what are integral to the ground you can actually choose the mechanics you want to use and decide how/if they need to be changed It's a longterm change so this is likely a spiritual transform ground to concecrated ground. Fairly simple and straight forward - AOE, maybe surface (need to revisit description of effect and decide if contact with soil/ground is required), Reverts if Masses aren't said regularly or if major betrayal occurs (the desecration ritual would also be a spiritual transform or perhaps a dispel so doesn't really need to be considered here). There are a lot of time/components so as to make the power inexpensive and of course only a high priests really need to have it. Then I look at Demon and Undead Templates, decide how common churchyards will be and guess how often the complications/limitations will be relevant. If I'm setting the game only around the small town of Holyville then these are probably fairly major limitations, if I'm running Necropo-raiders then then they're not likely to be worth as much - depending on how I decide to do the 'On the Fly' conceration.

Re: Areas that trigger other power's limitations? Change Environment should still work - Intense Magnetic Field is in the examples and "any other noncombat effect of equal magnitude listed on the accompanying table, or which the GM permits (the exact effect should be determined by the GM)" is one of the combet effect options - Holy Ground should fall into that - It only activates complications or limitations but seems to fit both the letter and spirit of the Power.

Re: How do you build a vampire template in 6E? ...or maybe a susceptibility to feeding that maintains the transform...

Re: How do you build a vampire template in 6E? Add a Side Effect (The Same Transform but to Self) to the Vampire's Bite Attack - and require using the bite to feed - Reduces the Template cost a little and keeps the well fed vampire a vampire?

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares I had been toying with CSI: Dis, but Arcadia could work as well

Re: The Ultimate Base Having been a Sales and Purchasing manager for a game distributor (in the 90's not rescently), I can tell you that how well Hero (or any second tier game house) has met it's release dates would be a major factor in how we handled their products - particularly considering that most game stores probably aren't getting 5+ of the non core Hero Products at release (I know the 2 largish FLGS near me stock 1 of the new Hero Releases and the 2 small ones are pretty much 'by order' for non-core products). If I were looking at Hero Products after 6th edition (Scheduled for release in August didn't ship until October), I'd be very concerned about their ability to meet my customers' expectations with their current (new) printer. Absent any other information, minor releases wouldn't be pushed as preorders (until I could be confident of a ship date) and I would place my order with Hero based on a % of previous performance determined by what my sales team believed they could move and my thoughts on the saleability of the product. Once we sold through that, we'd collect orders until our needs reached 90% of our minimum Hero Games Order (Determined by them or us whichever was greater), at which point we'd attempt to get more in stock. I can't speak to Distributors having dropped the ball on previous products but from the outside Ultimate Base getting benched at the distributor level makes a certain amount of sense; sorry.

Re: Balancing the numbers This has not been my experience - with the exception of 1 campaign I've always seen speed variation without incentivizing it.

Re: When sfx lie We pretty much have two things going on here The first is the example - how well does DCV map to the Effect (regardless of Special Effect) 'Indestructable'? As with any single power, it maps inadequately; as part of a suite of powers designed to achieve the Effect 'Indestructable' (regardless of Special Effect), it can be an effective addition that shouldn't strain any reasonable level of credulity. The second seems to be the questions: Must the underlying builds for Effects (regardless of Special Effect) be Obvious? Is there a GM obligation to reveal 'How it's done'? To which my answer is 'No' and if pressed 'We're not playing Hackmaster'. And I suppose to answer the post's central question 'Do special effects lie?' - Yes, always if you're focused on mechanics; No, never, if you're focused on the game.

Re: When sfx lie Part of the issue here is that "Indestructable" isn't a Special Effect it's just an Effect (and as an absolute generally an inappropriate one for Hero), the Special Effect is 'Why/How are you Indestructable?'

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares

Re: When sfx lie

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares A few eggs?

Re: Cellular Shapeshift I've had players apply it to represent non-quantifiable characteristics so tags like 'Noble' or 'Hero' - generally as applied to magical effects

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Astronaut trapped in the 1600's fighting an evil overlord - I see Ming running an empire of steam punked pirate captains - this could be awesome

Re: Genre-crossover nightmares Spurs Jackson and his Space Vigilantees - excellent - I knew we'd been on the Moon since the 50's, but the 30's, hmmm Space launches work better from closer to the Equator - during the Nazi build up in the 30's they established secret bases in the wilds of Southern Texas/Northern Mexico - creatng rumors of Monsters and Aliens to keep people away - Heros are Cowboys - investigate site get caught aboard rocket to one of the giant secret Nazi moonbases - Cowboy's blend in with the slave labor - cause an uprising , take over the base and from there strike at the other Nazi Outposts (Which is of course why they were never brought to bear on the allies in the 2nd world war). Throw in a native population; a few mercenary groups working with the Nazis but could be converted and a whole lot of very bad (but consistant) science. I think I could make that work