Chuk

Re: Psychic Wars Yeah, Necroscope was cool, but probably wouldn't really fit into this setting (it sounds like). You should check out GURPS Psionics, though (for 3rd edition).

Re: Psychic Wars At one point I was seriously considering a career as a parapsychologist (luckily, my undergrad degree steered me out of it.) Still, there's a lot of academic stuff out there. A good layman's intro is Richard Broughton's Parapsychology : the controversial science. And you can always check out the Rhine Research Center for a scientific(ish) look at the stuff. If you take their research totally unsalted and maybe build it up with some more cinematic results, it'd be great gamefodder. Oh, and don't forget Stephen King's Firestarter. (The Dead Zone was okay, but Firestarter's more fun.)

Re: Inspirational Reading I want to second the nominations of Dan Simmons' Joe Kurtz novels -- they're great. That guy can write ANYTHING -- cutting edge award-winning huge scale SF, modern day noir, "alternate" history (The Crook Factory rocked!), horror (his "Summer of Night" was the best book Stephen King never wrote), you name it. I'll also second the Repairman Jack novels from F. Paul Wilson. They do tend to have supernatural elements, but there's lots of other stuff in there, too. Plus they're just darn cool (I just started reading them this past summer).

Re: Magic System for Critical Review No, I think that's a pretty good limit. One thing I've used in the past is to require the mage to buy a 1 pt familiarity with any spell they wanted to do with their VPP, but I think the big skill requirements should be limiting enough (yet also flexible enough).

Re: Magic System for Critical Review Yeah, looks good to me, too. Sounds like an interesting setting and you've got quite a spell list already. I agree with the other poster -- I can see similarities to Alvin Maker, too. It also might fit in a little with something similar to Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Re: Arms Fall Off Lad I had a character that could do that, but he did it with dimensional gates, so that his body parts were still supported by the rest of his body. I just bought it as Stretching, Fully Indirect, plus some Clairsentience (character is subject to effects at that point). Once he checked out an elevator for traps by teleporting his head in -- the knockout gas in it put him to sleep. So his teammates just saw his head disappear, then a few seconds later his body fell over.

Re: Fuzion I ran a Fuzion game online for a couple-few years during the Dead Times of Hero. I used Jason Dour's Heroic Abilities plug in, and the game was a cross-genre kind of thing (equivalent to a Heroic level Hero game). It worked okay, but now that 5th edition is here, I feel no need for it. (The Shaintar stuff was really cool, though -- too bad it's gone to a new system.)

Re: Flash: Inner ear/ Sense of Gravity/ Sense of Balence Because some one has to say it: Transform, Target to Target With No Sense of Balance And it's probably even minor.

Re: Seeds of Change PBEM Well, I'm dumb enough to start up what I think will be my 5th. It's going to be using the Risus rules, though. Still looking for players.

Re: With GM's Permission ... I'm pretty flexible with them. Especially when it comes to not putting Specials in VPPs -- I loves me some Power Pool.

Re: New Crobuzon to HERO Dude, you have to do the Scabmettlers. (If I get a chance, I might.)

Re: What should be DROPPED from HERO? I don't like how Transforms (e.g. man into frog) that you could buy as one power in 4th now have to be three (Transform man's mind into frog's mind, Transform man's spirit into frog's spirit, Transform man's body into frog's body). I guess in some cases you could get by with less, but we usually just make people pay for one.

Re: The big arcade competition Once in a game I was in we had a video game competition -- my character was the only one with PS: Video Games 8-, but he was defeated by the guy with the 44 DEX. Which makes sense to me... (This was so long ago that we probably could have just walked around the corner to the arcade and played their new Stargate machine. Well, not really, but their new Tetris machine.)

Re: Ultimate Wonder Twins Must have been amazing, then, 'cuz it looked pretty damn good out here.

Re: Hero System is Just Alright With Me I knew someone would say that. Just that, in so many threads and discussions like "How would you write up a towel/flashlight/pocketknife?", you see people statting out every possible ability in great detail. While I like that Hero can do that, I don't usually have the time for it, especially if it's something like a VPP or a thug. I do like PCs to be fully statted, though. Most NPCs, too. And I'm maybe a little more lenient with special-effects based power uses than others are (at least, than a few others that have GM'd for me and several online posters are -- maybe it's actually the more common way to go.)

Re: Hero System is Just Alright With Me I like and use Hero -- the main house rule I use is that I'm pretty waffly about Transform (changing someone to a "real" frog would not require you to buy the Transform three times in my games), and I don't like the new costs for Damage Shield. And in most games I'm a little more free with the "paying points for stuff" than seems to be taken by most posters. I'd probably give it a 95%, maybe even 97%.

Re: AWESOME Cover! I agree -- the cover is damn cool. I'm looking forward to it as well.

I'm kind of torn -- I've heard really good things about Star Hero, and I'd love to run an SH game. But I already run an occasional FH game -- I have the main FH game, but would Grimoire be better? Or how about MMM? Or the Bestiary? Basically, if I get something, I want it to be good to read (FH definitely qualified there...great value for $), but I'd also like to be able to use it in gaming. FH will qualify there, too. I'm probably a little less likely to use SH, but I really like SF type games. Okay, here's my real question: Does the FHG have lots of different magic "systems", or is it all just a bunch of spells? If it's a bunch of spells, are they good, or just rehash of D&D type stuff? How about MMM? Would I be better off getting the Bestiary even if I already have the 4th edition one?

Re: Newbie Questions It might be weird, but yep, that's how it works. I think part of the rationale behind it is that you pay END for the ability to act or affect the world, and you can do that more with higher speed. Note that you can also voluntarily reduce your SPD temporarily -- so if you're just standing around but you want to keep your Force Field up, you can go down to SPD 2. Still, Reduced END is definitely your friend on constant powers. You got it. Looks like you already knew all these answers!

My current FH game is pretty much a mishmash -- two of the PCs were in jail (one for being a ninja, one supposedly for causing a public disturbance but really being held by agents for a mysterious general who is hunting him), they escaped and raided a nearby lich's tower (with the help of a fire mage who wanted to go there and check out the lich's library), only escaping with the help of an NPC stranger who appears to be some kind of rogue type. Now they're running through a D&D module I've partially converted. They do have some loose connections, but it's not really a very serious campaign, more of a hack and slash kind of thing.

Maybe vague is the wrong word...variable? Flexible? Anyway, you'd certainly have to have a VPP for Harry (in addition to his talismans (shouldn't that be Talismen?)). I agree that Butcher does go into interesting detail about the magic, I just think it'd be hard to model the process in Hero. Certainly not impossible.

Yep, it'd be great. Hard to match up to Hero, though -- the magic is kind of vague. I'd probably do it as Fudge or something like that, maybe even Risus.

This is pretty close to my own feelings on the matter -- it's not even so much that other people's GMing is so much worse than mine as that they're likely to be running D&D or some campaign world which I find boring. My preference would be "Player in a cool World, GM in my own World, Player in a mediocre world, or GM in a mediocre world". Except that last one won't happen unless someone pays me.

Hey, if I ever saw a candidate for Hero Plus, that'd be it.

He said he looked in "the bestiality". I don't think that's an official Hero supplement...yet.