Neverway

Re: Beginner Character Creation

I'd start here:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/77944-Hero-In-Two-Pages-Complete

In my opinion, the most important bit to understand for character creation is "Reason from Effect". You can find it in 6e (check the index), there's also a bit in the FAQ: http://www.herogames.com/herogames/faq-reasoningfromeffects.htm

You can find the two of those (sort of) put together at Killer Shrike's site here: http://killershrike.com/GeneralHero/HEROAnatomy.aspx although it references Fifth Edition, it's almost all applicable (just check the costs of examples if you intend to use one in a game).

For just sitting around and making up characters for fun, I can't recommend Hero Designer enough.

The best tip I can give for where to start when making a character is to decide what you want the character to be and what abilities you want them to have first then use the rules to make that idea work. In my experience, the Hero system doesn't work to well with the "one from column A, one from column B" type of character creation and will leave you stranded if you come to it with nothing in mind. That said, most genre books will have a section on making characters appropriate for the genre and include prebuilt powers/talents/templates/etc.

Re: Seemingly Silly Things to Model

James Bond: You own stock in everybody on Earth named James.

James Bond: Mind Link to everybody on Earth named James.

Re: Godzilla Haiku

Again nature proves

the works of men are folly

go go Godzilla!

Re: Do I need the 6th Martial Arts book?

Is my Kajukenbo in there? We've been woefully under represented in the past.

 

~Rex

I must be getting old. I had to read your post three times before discovering that you did not, in fact, practice Kaijukenpo (Godzilla's goin' DOWN!)

Re: TVTropes's opinion about the latest edition of the HERO System

Well' date=' it is a Wiki. Input is based on what the editor thinks is correct.[/quote']

 

More to the point, it is a Wiki. If you find mistakes you can fix them yourself with approximately the same amount of effort it takes to complain about them. Unless changing it would make it suck.

Re: TVTropes's opinion about the latest edition of the HERO System

There is no "beef", as Sean suggests (I think...) if you click through to the They Changed It Now It Sucks page, you'll see that they're mocking people who say that. As such, it's taking a poke at some of the die hard 5e® fans who complain about 6e.

Re: HERO System 2-Page Intro - Finalizing

Heh. OK' date=' fixed (along with a couple other little things I spotted). [/quote']

 

...or you could cut back the margins, that would work too.

 

Added a little background image to make it purdy...

 

Isn't hexman a trademark requiring DoJ's permission to use? And I'm fairly certain the image you added is under copyright.

 

Excellent work though, if I had rep to give, I'd hit Narf and teh bunneh both. As it is, I'll merely be keeping a copy of the pdf.

Re: HERO System 2-Page Intro - Finalizing

1) I generally go with whatever looks better in that instance.

 

2) Nope, just slightly larger. It's now 10-pt, not 12-pt.

Must be a bad case of oldeyesitis on my part, I could have sworn it was a different font. Oh well.

3) "I before E, except after C". Sooner or later, maybe we should actually follow the rules of spelling for english.

Right after they explain why the past tense of 'is' is 'was' and not 'ised'.

4) Fixed.

 

5) Fixed.

 

6) In general, they are indented. However, I did miss a few. Fixed, but it's now 2 and 1/3 pages.

 

7) Intentionally. It's meant to imply that there are, of course, far more options than those.

 

 

Suggestions for shortening the length would be very welcome. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble uploading at the moment, but most of the text is the same.

I'll look it over again, but I'm thinking that the only way to shorten it is going to be to say less.

Edit: Having had another read through, I think you can get back down to two pages by eliminating the costs from CV and following entries ending at Martial Arts. It's either that, pull out the examples (I think the document is better with them in it), or reduce the font size to eight point (ugh).

Re: HERO System 2-Page Intro - Finalizing

Update uploaded. Link: Here' date=' for those too lazy to scroll up. [/quote']

 

A couple of the "issues" I have with your document look to be due to different style books but I'll toss them in anyway. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version of the document and stealing… err, being inspired by it.

 

 

1) You tend to capitalize the first letter of a parenthetical phrase (Like this), I was taught to treat it like it was part of the sentence it was in (like this).

 

2) The Math section is in a different typeface than the rest of the document.

 

3) The section on the Body characteristic has a misspelling in the second sentence. It should be "their" vice "thier".

 

4) In the movement section, the parenthetical phrase following Leaping has the word Upwards capitalized.

 

5) The Perks section is in a different typeface than the rest of the document and includes an additional blank line between the header and the body.

 

6) You don’t indent the second or following paragraphs in any section with more than one paragraph.

 

7) The Complications section ends in an ellipse rather than a period.

 

 

The nits, I pick them.

Re: Waking up with not-so-super powers

A long time ago I had an English teacher who said she wanted to have the power to make people wet their pants on command. Very useful in traffic. Very satisfying to use in traffic at the very least.

Re: Power Skill with No Power

So what does a Power Skill get you if your character doesn't have any "Powers" per se?

 

I would imagine the most common case would be "Gadgeteering" so we can start with that if people would like.

 

I'm interested in what Hero players would consider to be legitimate uses of the Power Skill "by itself" so to speak.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Power Skill: Palindromedary

It would, I think, be a good place to start a newly developed (or developing) power. Depending on the campaign, it could represent someone whose psionic powers have just awoken. Alternately, it could be used for something that accentuates the feel of a character but isn't worth the constructed cost such as a wizard's cantrips (low powered spells that people generally don't want to spend points on, but make your wizard feel more "wizard-y"). Of course, this depends on how the GM allows the skill to be used. I'm assuming a fairly liberal allowance here, treating the Power Skill like a low Active Point VPP with a RSR. Exactly like the rules say you shouldn't.

Happy Holidays!

Re: HERO SYSTEM MARTIAL ARTS -- What Do *You* Want To See?

I am shedding bitter tears of anguish. After two hours of hunt and peck typing and page look-ups, I fat fingered my post and the entire thing disappeared.

To answer the last question first, as an owner of both UMA and NH I'm going to buy HSMA regardless. If for nothing else than having everything in one book instead of having to flip between two. The addition of gobs more chi/martial arts powers is just gravy.

Anyway, here's a few things I'd like to see in HSMA.

First, I'd like to see an additional fictional martial art for simulating video game fighting styles. An example of what I'm talking about can be found at http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php/577-Fighting-Game-Hero?p=717290#post717290

Second, like a few other previous posters I'd like to see some discussion of tournaments added. How the GM can handle them, what sort of rules and structure are generally used, how to modify things for the more fantastic power levels, etc.

The following may seem a bit picayune and I apologize in advance if I'm being overly nit-picky.

UMA, In the section for constructing martial arts and martial arts maneuvers, the maneuver basis are listed in both the Maneuver Basis and Helpful Elements tables. While it's probably an indication of my limitations and not a problem with the presentation, I find this confusing and would like to see the maneuver basis removed from the Helpful Elements table with the information added to the Maneuver Basis table in both the HTH and Ranged sections.

The Abort element description says that it can only be added to the Block, Dodge, and Escape (based off of the Exert element) elements. However, Block and Dodge already have Abort built in. I'd like to see the Abort element made an option for the Exert element instead of its own thing.

Speaking of the Exert element, it doesn't have an entry in the Element Descriptions section, please add one.

Likewise, several of the entries in the Ranged Maneuver Helpful Elements and Restrictive Elements are missing write-ups in the Element Descriptive section.

The Powers section of UMA contains several example powers with limits that are not applicable to all campaigns and power levels (e.g., Ch'i aid on pg 119 and 120). Although you've probably already done it as part of merging UMA and NH, I'd just like to nudge your elbow a bit and say I'd like to see these restrictions removed in preference to the campaign power levels discussion elsewhere in the book.

In NH, page 64, the Character Types table has five entries and the Character Abilities has six. I'm not sure which one is right, but I think they should match.

I'm a martyr to the Cause...

As mentioned by a couple of other people, both Wuxia and Anime contain much larger ranges of power than are indicated in the descriptions and tables on pages 63 and 64 of NH. I would like to see the discussion expanded a bit to indicate that the power level names are taken from what a casual fan may be most familiar with and the power level of the campaign should be set based on the desired power level not the source of inspiration for the campaign. E.g., A campaign modelled after a high school sports anime would use the Realistic power level even though it's an anime. Likewise, emulation of a mountain smashing wuxia film would use the Anime power level. This probably holds true for Video Games also.

Those are my thought for the moment, thank you for considering them.

Re: The Chicxulub impact

I opened this thread hoping for a tale of how attractive and sassy young women and have changed the face of gamming; but, in my heart of hearts, I knew it was going to be a Blackleaf joke. It wasn't until I was reading the article that I noticed that I had misread the thread title. Darn that wishful dyslexia.

I want to know the chixclub impact.

More on topic and less an attempt a "humor", it sounds like the opening volley of someone’s Terra forming project. Drop a couple of big ones on opposite sides of the planet to wipe out the top of the food chain as well as destabilize the ecology, then move in with your seeding project. So, what happened to stop it?

Re: Containment - FRED

I'm not only failing to ignore it, but I'm failing to ignore it in public!

Re: Obscure Research Help

My first post on this didn't seem to take, so I'll have another go at it.

As Basil stated, the first telephone exchange in Budapest was opened in 1881, and guess who the Chief Electrician (and later, the company engineer) was?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla (last paragraph in the section "Early years")

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Publications/Documents/WP-83-020.pdf includes a short history of telephony in Hungary in the first few pages. The document requests no quoting without permission, so you'll have to read the four or five pages of interest yourself; however, it corroborates the 1881 date and adds a few facts. For instance, it was required to give both the name and number of the party being called, indicating that you picked up the phone and rang an operator. Also, it states that fully automatic switches (direct dialing) were not installed until 1928.

The number of subscribers varies per source, but http://books.google.com/books?id=ajeNDt-QsyIC&dq=budapest+1900&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=tVhuSoCOMYfGMN2CqeQC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4 cites > 27,000 in 1913 (page 61)

Interestingly enough, for a city that claimed it's own telephone inventor, Budapest was one of AT&T's customers for telephone equipment.

In the early 1900s, AT&T engaged in businesses that ranged well beyond the national telephone system. Through the Western Electric Company, its manufacturing subsidiary, AT&T affiliated and allied companies around the world manufactured equipment to meet the needs of the world's telephone companies. These firms also sold equipment imported from the United States. By 1914, International Western Electric Company locations included Antwerp, London, Berlin, Milan, Paris, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Tokyo, Montreal, Buenos Aires, and Sydney.

I couldn't find anything on actual exchange names, but the people at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TENproject/ might be able to help (their web site/database didn't include anything on Budapest, Hungary, or Austria-Hungary). About the only thing I can say with confidence is that they would have been in Hungarian.

Re: Obscure Research Help

I'm working on a noirish Jewish pulp story set in Dec 1913. The story is occuring in Budapest. My ordinarily strong search-fu has failed me. I need info on Budapest's telephone exchanges. See, I told you it was obscure. I know the exchanges were established in 1893, that by 1913 they had 6,500 subscribers, and that they had an innovative pre-radio "telephone broadcast" you could call in and listen to. I don't have any information on the names/neighborhoods of the exchanges, or whether you called the operator with the exchange and number you wanted (like in the US) or just manually dialed.

 

Will rep for answers.

Hmmm. Budapest telephone exchange was opened in 1881, Chief Electrician... http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla/Early_years

http://books.google.com/books?id=SnjGRDVIUL4C&pg=PA247&lpg=PA247&dq=budapest+telephone+%22automatic+switch%22&source=bl&ots=qHdVlEg-U9&sig=5ewYLu5xDyCZhY7t1rvuZ9GAQZY&hl=en&ei=3BRuSre3AZPgsQO3iqTKDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1 states that Budapest pioneered (locally, not globally) an automatic switching system in 1910 and had a full comercial system by 1928 (scroll down a couple of pages to the tables). So no manual dialling in 1913, you'd call into the exchange and have someone complete the call for you. Also note that AT&T provided all telephoney equipment to Europe for a while

http://books.google.com/books?id=ajeNDt-QsyIC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=budapest+telephone+numbers+historical&source=bl&ots=mp7Coz9JQw&sig=RVl2-TrOQE4A188QipQ-qoI_dPg&hl=en&ei=TRluSq-hN5TgtgPl8qXKDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9 States that in 1913 there were over 27,000 subscribers (page 61).

http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/91/ is mostly about Russian phone service, but shows the influence of AT&T on early European phone numbers (especially the letter-numberr comnbination for phone numbers) although it only gives Russian examples.

Hope this helps

Re: Fighting Game Hero

And now' date=' cause nobody wanted it, [b']Video Games Style Martial Arts[/b].

 

--snippage occurs--

 

Apropos of absolutely nothing, I've converted this to a PDF, printed it out, and stuck it in my copy of UMA at the beginning of the Fictional Martial Arts chapter. Although I'm too lazy to try and figure out how to get Hero Designer to spit out a file with only the martial art in it, I'm posting a copy of the PDF if anyone wants it.

Presuming, of course, that steriaca doesn't object.