Herolover

Definative Western Duels (I wish) This is going to assume that you are wanting cinematic duels. As someone stated earlier the real thing bears no resemblance to what we see on tv. If you want the real thing make no changes to combat whatso ever. There are two types of duels. The "staredown" and the timed duel. Timed duel. This is the duel where there is a woman dropping a handerkerchief, a clock or town bell set to go off, or the ending of a stop watch song. The duel starts at phase 12 (of course) The GM secretly picks a turn and a phase when the "timed action will happen." An example would be 2nd turn phase 5. The characters use their actions to perform PRESENCE attacks or other interactive skill actions. This could have several effects on their opponent, making them act slower, makeing them nervous and wanting to draw early, or making them nervous giving them penalties to their attack rolls. A duelist could draw before the time, but then they would look bad/loose/be dishonored/bad stuff. When the timed action goes off the players a free to draw and the looser is probably dead. The other type of draw the "staredown" is effectivvely the same except there is no "timed action." So why not just draw first and shoot you say? Because if you draw and first you can be charged with murder.

Ahh, come on. Who wouldn't want to play Master Shake? Of course you could do a SeaLab 2021 campaign based on the movie TINFINS, with the obvious tie-in to Griselbies!

I have been thinking an "Aqua Teen Hungerforce" campaign would be good....

When I first heard of this change I really groaned, but knew my players would be happy. I started a campaign and kept my campaign limits pretty much the same and the situation is that I have some very nice well rounded characters that feel a lot more like the characters you see in the comic books. The one thing that I have noticed is that it seems that I have more characters with high DEX's and high SPD's. That might just be my campaign though.

I have a character that can summon spirits and ask them questions about different subjects. How would you do this?

I too would be interested in seeing what you have. I of course assume you have Golen Age Champions which I recently picked up and discovered it was better than I thought. I tried once to run a WWII adventure, using another system, based upon the movies Kelly's Heroes. If you want Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves you can look into Weird Wars by Pinnacle Entertainment Group. It has it all and is a pretty good resouce book.

Guns, Guns, Guns First let me tell you about a website you want to check out. http://www.btrc.net/html/catalog/catmain.html#CORPS The specific products you want are 3G3 and More Guns. It is written with real world numbers, you use joules and other numbers and from there you can derive information for GURPS, HERO, Traveller, and about 4-5 other systesm. 3G3 is a great book, available for download, that will allow you to make up many different guns from many time periods. One note though the numbers they come up with for Hero system or very differnt than the numbers Hero give. That said I do not know how or why Hero comes up with the numbers they give. What I can tell you is that OCV is a measure of the guns accuracy which is based upon many different factors including barrel length, bullet type and a couple of other factors. Range modifier is almost directly rated to barrel length.

Just to fill you in, according to the FAQ if you spend 2 or 3 points you get an 11- regardless of what your characteristic is. So the above example you give really isn't accurate.

Okay. I have a skills question. There are basically two types of skills those based off characteristics and background skills which are not based off characteristics and have a standard cost. Now, I understand mechanically what the difference between the two are and I understand that background skills (namely knowledge, professional, scientific, and languages) represent knowledge the character has received over time. My question involves cost. A skill based off characteristics generally cost 3 points for the base skill and 2 points per +1 added to the skill. In general a Background skill cost 2 points for the base skill and 1 points add +1 to the skill. So my question is why would any character want to buy a background skill not based of their characteristic? It would seem to be cheaper to buy the necessary characteristic higher and just base the skill on that characteristic. Since this is the case why not just have background skills based on relative characteristics? Why have the option for a non-characteristic based skill at all? What is the purposes of it? Under what circumstances would you, as the GM, not allow a player to buy a background skill based on a characteristic?

Okay. I have a skills question. There are basically two types of skills those based off characteristics and background skills which are not based off characteristics and have a standard cost. Now, I understand mechanically what the difference between the two are and I understand that background skills (namely knowledge, professional, scientific, and languages) represent knowledge the character has received over time. My question involves cost. A skill based off characteristics generally cost 3 points for the base skill and 2 points per +1 added to the skill. In general a Background skill cost 2 points for the base skill and 1 points add +1 to the skill. So my question is why would any character want to buy a background skill not based of their characteristic? It would seem to be cheaper to buy the necessary characteristic higher and just base the skill on that characteristic. Since this is the case why not just have background skills based on relative characteristics? Why have the option for a non-characteristic based skill at all? What is the purposes of it? Under what circumstances would you, as the GM, not allow a player to buy a background skill based on a characteristic?

I think it is a combination of the players not having the opportunity, my style, and the players characters not really "knowing each other." I can't/don't have the opportunity to get together or talk with the players through the week. We get together every other saturday so that is all the time we get.

Ahh the same problem I have always had. I have had this same problem. I love sci-fi, but I also love the idea of "ray-guns and swords." The problem is why would anyone want to use a sword. I realize I am going to go over things others have said, but I would like to make a good list. 1) The Dune thing. This is the force field that for whatever reason stops guns. 2) Starship damage. This is the situation where starships are so fragile that everyone is scarred to fire a gun. 3) The cultural/honor thing. This one could be really hard because as someone pointed out what reason would you have to say yes you can shoot two times, but after that you have to use a gun. 4) Limited gun. The problem here is you have to come up with why the gun is limited and why no one is using other guns. The best reason I like is that the setting has just come out from under a time period of "the long night" where technology went backwards and it is just now coming back up. You can say guns are rare. 5) Law. Maybe a strong government or stronger race has outlawed guns forcing those who have them to hide them.

I am GM'ing a Champions campaign set basically in the Champions universe. The seven characters are varied 350-400 points and working with PRIMUS as a group. My question is what kind of adventures do you run to bring the roleplaying out of your group. I have run one or two really good roleplaying sessions and would like some ideas for some more. The characters really don't "hang" out together so how should I get them to roleplay more together? Do you run players seperately and just switch between players or what?

Okay. I finally got a chance to read this thread. 1) I have always had a problem with how HERO scales up. However, my main problem is with BODY not with DEF or damage. 2) In any weapon there is a point at which the amount of damage the weapon does is not going to go up with any amount of significant. As an example of this take a look at the sword of 1700 and the sword of today. They both do the nearly the same amount of damage. Look at the gun. The M-16 of today doesn't really do significantly more damage than the M-1 Garand of WWII and I am sure the next gun in the world’s arsenal will not due significantly more damage than the M-16. There comes a point in any technology where the damage done by the weapon is maxed out and the only thing left is increasing ammo, lowering weight, and dealing with other factors. 3) Now, I know someone is going to say oh, but what about rail guns or gauss weapon. What will kill a person more an M-16 bullet or a rail gun bullet? Both are going to be dead. Yes, the rail gun may do a little more damage up to say an extra d6. However, the real ability of the rail gun is the lower weight due to smaller ammo, etc. 4) One thing I noticed that people did not mention on this list is the secondary effects of damage. I haven’t had a chance to read TUV yet, I do have it, but a very accurate way to do damage is to have a number of secondary effect rolls based upon the amount of damage done. You could do a secondary roll for every 5 BODY done. That means a 25 Hit will do 5 secondary rolls where as a 10 hit will only get two. 5) I base the above idea on that fact that in ALL combat it is not really the amount of damage done, but what is damaged. Take WWII naval combat as an example. 90% of all shells fired from guns at other ships missed. 10% of all the shells fired sunk all the ships. A single 5†shell could be far more deadly than a broadside of 16†guns, obviously not because the 5†shell does more damage, but because it hits something more vital. The weapons of the future are going to be more powerful than the weapons of today. That goes without saying. However, the damage the weapons of tomorrow do are not going to be extremely greater than the weapons of today. The difference is going to be in range, accuracy, weight, rate of fire, ease of use, etcs.

You know.....you could....I mean...you could make your CC2 file available for download. I figure you aren't ready to do that yet, but you could keep it in mind.

Ahh, the fun of it all. I was the GM and I had a player that was secretly being watched by DEMON. Well, he was attacked by DEMON agents getting out of a van and luckily for him his teamates were able help subdue the agents and capture the van. The group investigated the van and used it and agents to discover that the local DEMON bases' entrace was located at a local parking garage. The group wasn't prepared to attack the DEMON base and for other reasons in the campaign wanted to use the knowledge of where the base was and the fact they knew it against DEMON. The question was then what to do with the van. The first idea was to park the van and fill it with high explosives so that when DEMON opened it up they would go off doing great damage. Just to put this in perspective the following situation occured several months after the first bombing of the World Trade Center when terroist planted a car bomb in a parking garage. I kindly pointed this out to them so they went with idea number 2. Idea number 2 was to use the van as a plant. They wanted DEMON to continue using the van. However, they had throughly torn the van up in their investigation and it had gotten damaged in the fight. So, they fixed it and took it back to DEMON parking it in the garage. I couldn't resist asking if they took it to the car wash and got it detailed for DEMON as well.

So, has anyone tried to do a Farscape HERO? I have the d20 version, but I was wondering if anyone has tried to do a HERO version. It is another one that I woud like to try, but probably will never have time.

I know that several people have stated they wish they had "official" HERO system dice. Well, I can't help you there, but I can get you close. I was at a convention recently when I found Earth speckled dice by Chessex. It comes very close.

I have been going over my rather larger HERO system collection and looking at the books that I have yet to pick up and I was wondering a couple of things. 1) Is anyone else collecting everything HERO? 2) I notice a couple of the books I am lacking are actually dual products put out by ICE. They apparently have stats for rolemaster and for Fantasy Hero. Specifically I am missing the Mythic age books such as Mythic Egypt, Mythic Greece, etc. I am wondering if anyone has these what they think of them. Are they worth picking up? How hard or easy would it be to convert them to 5e? 3) There are a lot of ICE "Shadow World" products. Are they worth the time and effort picking up? Any replies would be appreciated.

Hi there. I was going to be running a Stargate Campaign and ended up running a Stargate adventure. There is very little information about Stargate on the Web or around in books, so I ended up winging much of it. I have several of it made up in the form of Word files. I can email them to howeveer needs them. Just email me at bjgm@redbow.net and tell me you want the Stargate files. PS: there is one rule though. I want feedback.

Many answers Sorry I have been away, but I went to a Convention. Yes, I gm'd HERO and it was a lot of fun. First Starbuck. One of the last 1980 Galactica episodes had Starbuck crash landing on a planet. He found a wrecked Cylon fighter and pieced together a cylon warrior. After a time he was able to convince the newly re-built cylon not to kill him. Starbuck found the pregnant woman who was basically a higher form of being. They birthed the child and Starbuck sent the child in his own getaway ship. Meanwhile a brand new cylon fighter landed to investigate the crashed cylon fighters distress beacon. CY, the cylon Starbuck built, went out to face them and drew his gun taking two out, but was shot himself. Starbuck got rid of the other one, but all 3 cylons, Cy, and the woman disappeared leaving Starbuck alone. Yes, the child was Dr. Zee. There is some questions of wether or not the Galactica had shields such as in Star Wars and Star Trek. However, there was the episode were a planet had developed a cold war as ours and one side launched its ICBM's. The galactica used a force field to stop the missles from getting back into the atmosphere. The galactica does not have a "main gun per say." What it does have is: Missles, Small anit-fighter turbo lasers, and several "mega-lasers." Note however, that what BG calls "lasers" we would call plasma weapons.

Yes there was an episode of which you speak. It was in the Battlestar Galactica: 1980 series. Saying Battlestar Galactica: 1980 to a BG fan is much the same as saying Fuzion to a Hero System fan. No one considers cannon. Even Glen Larson, creator of the show, no longer considers it cannon.

In several things now I have seen attacks which make the target sick thereby imparing him in combat. D&D had the stinking cloud spell. Minority Report has the "sick stick." How would you do these kind of attacks in HERO.

You know the funny thing is of what I have seen the Richard Hatch stuff looks the best. He has written several good BG books and he seems to keep true to the series while updating it for today. I have no idea why he doesn't get more backing.

So far there have been 3 groups that have tried to get Battlestar Galactica revival going. 1) Richard Hatch, Apollo, has tried for years to get something off the ground and has even paid for and shot some test footage/trailers. He can't seem to get any support though. 2) A group, I can't remember the name, proposed a movie with Brian Singer (X-Men and X-Men 2 director) as the agreed upon director. FOX was very interested, but Singer had to leave due to issues with X-Men 2 and the deal fell apart with FOX loosing interest after Singers departure. It is from this effort that I got the drawing. 3) Currently Sci-Fi channel is working on a 4-part miniseries that is a "re-imagining" (remake) of Battlestar Galactica. No word on how good or bad it will be. Many think it will be 90210 in space. I am waiting to see.