xenobrain

Re: FANTASY HERO Sneak Peek #1: The Cover! That is seriously the best cover I have seen on any HERO Games product, ever. For the artwork, obviously, but also for the branding and other graphics, it all works together absolutely brilliantly.

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online? I found the very flexible character creation to be a strong point, with some "kewl powerz" (particularly travel powers) that are fun to use. That said, the overall design of the game, questing, grouping etc was simply not compelling for me. I lost interest before the first month was up.

Re: Update to 6ed? I think the 5th to 6th Edition Character Conversion Summary in Free Stuff is as close as you're going to get. Edit: Beaten by seconds! Also as for nicknames, my favorites that I've heard are DBB (Double Blue Books) and SHREd, though the latter doesn't quite work as Sixth hasn't been revised yet. (And may not ever be).

Re: What is your plans for your first 6th Edition game? I'll be starting a Godsend Agenda campaign in about two weeks using 6e.

Re: Variable Point Pool in a Multipower? Actually HERO does use the term "flexible" (dynamic) as opposed to "ultra" (static) when referring to multipowers- the distinction being a flexible power inside a multipower grouping can be reduced in power to be used simultaneously with other dynamic powers in the group, wheras "ultra" powers inside a multipower can only be used one at a time. M&M actually uses the term "dynamic" in a way the means the same thing as a "flexible" power inside a multipower in HERO. But you do definitely understand what I'm trying to do! Making a multiple-power attack makes a lot of sense actually, the only issue being you don't get the point discount from slotting it inside a multipower, and the power limitations applied to the energy blast have to be applied seperately to the VPP, where I would rather have the VPP "inherit" all the limitations (or advantages) applied to the entire multipower. Thanks for the response!

I'm converting a character from Mutants and Masterminds 2e. This character has An energy blast power "ka blast" (dynamic or "flexible" in HERO terms), with a Variable structure (like VPP) slotted as an alternate power "ka shaping" (dynamic or "flexible"). This means the character can blast an enemy with energy, and at the cost of reducing the power of both abilities, "do something else", too. So how to do this in HERO? Well I made a multipower with Energy Blast as the first ability (flexible), and wanted to make a VPP as the second power (flexible). HERO Designer tells me this is illegal! An obvious solution is to just use a pure VPP and build a custom power that fires an energy blast and "does something else" too, but this gimps the maximum power of the energy blast where I would prefer to gimp the maximum power of powers created in the VPP. Any suggestions?

Re: World of HEROCraft? I've run the d20 game quite a bit. The system is actually a pretty good fit if you want to emulate a WoW-like experience. However, after a few sessions, I decided that's exactly what I did not want to do. People's minds just got stuck in the MMO and it was impossible to make the world feel like it should for an tabletop RPG. One of the main problems was scaling the world. It proved impossible for my players to think of the worlds in terms of proper scale. Me: "Okay, you're just arrived in Menethil Harbor. What do you do?" Player: "I go to the tavern!" Me: "Which one? What kind of tavern are you looking for?" Player: "There's only one Tavern in Menethil." I've tried several things such as piling on a bit more flavor text to constantly remind people that the world isn't on a tiny WoW scale, but this ultimately proved a futile effort. As for running it in HERO, I think if the above problem could somehow be remedied, it would be a blast. Classes exist in WoW, there is no reason they have to exist in the setting, and Fantasy HERO seems like a really fun way to go. I've actually had some thoughts on doing this, and built a few characters for such a game. I don't have the files anymore, or I would share I converted the races (stats, skills, racial powers) from the WoW RPG as templates, but not the classes. For powers, I actually looked at the video game for some inspiration- not a true conversion, mind, but just to get some ideas, snagging appropriate abilities and building a similar power, then adding some of my own ideas for what would be appropriate for the character. WoW is really, really high powered, both in RPG and video game form, and I built the characters with near "superhero" point values (150/100), but used the system in Heroic mode with killershrike's (Real Cost * Active Points) * 5 == value in cp metric for equipment costs. Were I to run this, I would want to have players have lots of abilities to choose from, for a nice, tacitcal feel, without them all sinking as many points as they can into one "iwin" power. I haven't quite hammered down how I would do that, but I'm thinking along the lines of limiting how many powers players can have by active point tier. For example, no player may have a power over 60AP, they may have up to 3 powers 45-60, 4 powers 30-35, something like that. And the number of powers available in each AP tier would go up as certain xp benchmarks are met. Furthermore, NCM would also be used to keep players from going crazy on stats, and force more diversity. I'm big into that, that's why I ask my players in HERO games to spend around 15-30% of their points on diversifying their characters to be useful in multiple situations. Anyway, these are just my thoughts on what I think would make a fun Warcraft game

Re: Traveller Hero Interesting to note, but what I really meant to highlight the simplicity of the books' layout. It's all pretty much packed into a simple two-column layout. There's no text boxes, sidebars, freeform margins (text flowing around an image for example), etc. There are some inline boxes and horizontal rules, but that's not quite to the degree I'm talking about. Basically, there's nothing that basic word processor couldn't do. And I don't mean to rag on the lack of art, I personally don't mind that there there is so little, especially since it keeps the price down, as mentioned. I just want to note however, that shaking things up with text boxes, sidebars, good use of whitespace and other page layout techniques can most definitely make a book much, much easier to read. Anyway, I'm not trying to rag here, I love the books and they are definitely money well spent, just trying to clarify the above point a little more.

Re: Traveller Hero I bought the two core books today and the "Patrons" supplement. While these books look like were layed out in Microsoft Word and have very nearly no art, they are just jam-packed with information. As mentioned by the GP, these books are clearly written by people with a real love for the setting. There actually is some setting information in them, and what's there is well-written. There is a history of the Imperium, it's current state, social structure etc, and some useful information about the cultures and biology(!) of the alien races. It doesn't compare to the incredible GURPS Traveller book in terms of setting information (though it does go more in depth on aliens than the core GURPS book does, unless you count supplements where GURPS wins again), but It does seem that it would be enough at least to get started running a game if you didn't have any prior Traveller books. Clearly, the piles of shiny gear, package deals and prebuilt powers is what's on display here, and these books definitely deliver on that front.

Re: D&D 4th