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Re: Playing 3.5 after Fantasy Hero DnD is playable, but certainly not what I would call the best system on the market. With 3.x I can stand to sit through it, and even run a game of it, but I do end up feeling tied down. That said, DnD does have a certain feel to it, but I suspect that is personal nostalgia. When I sit down to DnD I remember being 11 years old, watching smurfs, freaking out over my sister putting my dice in the oven, or running her through the 'S' series of modules. I remember days of 1gp = 1xp, and mistakes in my read of the treasure tables causing it to be 3000gp per orc and not per tribe of orcs, I remember all 18 stats, I remember characters named 'herpes' because my older brother told it me 'sounds like an elf' and well, not knowing what it meant it sure did. I remember the cool and funky art of those old days, and the novelty of an RPG. That is what draws me to DnD... It's one of the good parts of my childhood... When I play DnD in a more in depth and flavored setting, the flaws of it start coming to mind. When I'm not just chasing down monsters I can take off the rose colored glasses of childhood memories and then I realize what I have left is just not letting me do what I want to do in the crafting of complex stories. I got back into DnD with d20 because Fuzion had made me very hostile to Hero games, and let me finally move away from the system and not feel a need to put up with the problems it has. It left me without a super hero option for some years - wandering through games like 'Sailor Moon' in attempts to construct an alternative (and comments by me and others likely led them to make Silver Age Sentinels out of a Sailor Moon adoptation). But it has worn thin over time. I can play through dungeon crawls for a few years, but unlike some of the groups I played with when playing d20 - I can't stick to it for decades at a time, and even when I do do it I have to peel in deeper and start doing things with my characters that upset the paradigms of the game. DnD can handle more than Dungeon Crawls now, but it doesn't handle it well by comparrison - and that fact sticks with me all the more because I know the alternatives even better than I do DnD. Having played GURPS since 1982 (Melee, Wizard, TFT) and Hero since 1984 - my thought process starts there when I work out ideas, and then has to translate over to DnD. For me DnD is always about limiting my ideas, narrowing them down to its paradigms. Even though those paradigms are wider now, they are still constrained. There are old threads on DnD boards where I try to explain to people why I find leveling a problem for me as a GM - it forces my storyline in a certain direction. DnD people generally do not understand this problem, or why I have it - they think differently than me. To them it is natural and they quote one set of mythos to back their paradigm where I see another set to back mine. That is just one case among many. It became especially stark in the last DnD campaign I played in. The GM kept us at level 2 for half a year - the length that a normal DnD game takes to reach level 20 - and I just started getting really frustrated with the lack of character growth and the fact that it was not playing like DnD. It was that leveling paradigm again, only in a different way. The game was not following DnD's paradigm. At that point, I started realizing that the urban no combat intrigue game we were playing would work so much better in all those other RPGs I own... It started to be a drag to go to the sessions, and that drag has extended out to it now being a drag to run my own DnD game - which is now set to end soon. I will move on to Fantasy Hero, but I face players who do not desire the move, and fear that I may lose half or more of my group in the process. But, at this point I'd rather not game than game in something that doesn't pull me anymore. Give me a simple dungeon crawl and I'll show up for your DnD game, but only if the kill rate is at least one PC per session... DnD for me is a boardgame without the board - and in that you need challenges and HARD won victories. Give me plot, story, character depth, long lived PCs, and so on and I will flee back to a system that will let me excel with that style of play.

Re: Story Art Games Most of the stuff on the site seems to be for d20 or science fiction. What's up there for Hero and where?

Re: In Defense of HoJ

Re: HUDSON CITY: What Do *You* Want To See? My only concern is in the thread on the Harbringer. Other than that I trust that I will get a highly detailed setting. A note - San Angelo was boring, Freedom City was exciting. Both were highly detailed presentations of the cities they covered. The difference was in the angle they took - one was just too mundane, a city with heroes, as opposed to a city about heroes. Make sure it is a city about its genre, and not a city with its genre.

Re: Five magics On the elements, why did you make number five 'Void?' In the real world, the fifth element is Spirit. Five types? Shamanism (Altered States / Spirits / Voodoo) Elementalism (The five elements) Witchcraft (Women's Mysteries / Mysterious / Sensual / Divine / Seasonal / Herbal) Alchemical (chemical / scientific) Daemonology (Summoning and binding to enforce will / Summerian)

Re: Any missing deities? You need to give these genders, and the norm there is a 50-50 split. Look into nordic mythology a little, and file off a few serial numbers. I'm lost as to why 'Mandor' has women in there, along with the other elements. Do women pray to him/her when they get their monthlies? Or did you mean this diety to cover 'men who are sluts,' rather than women?

Re: Anyone have Tomb of Horrors? Tomb of Horros (which I have) is as bad as it is for the same reason the Spiked Chain is a problem in 3.x DnD: It is not bad in and of itself, but it triggers all of the 'wrong' aspects of the game system together in one lump. In 1E AD&D traps were often save or die, and undead drained levels or had save or die powers. Convert the module over to Hero and chances are a beginning group of 150 point PCs could take it on... By itself, the concepts, traps, and creatures in it are not overdone - they just exploit all the weakpoints of 1E AD&D. Much like the spiked chain - a weapon that trips and harms people out to a flexible distance, is not a bad concept, but combined with AoO and the way most reach in DnD 3.x is not flexible (because Monte or somebody never saw anybody use a spear and adjust the grip on the fly - which even I know how to do...) the spiked chain just happens to trigger the system's weak points. I suspect there is a legal issue in scanning in the map... But I also know it can be found online if you look in the right ways... (and not from any place under my control). Tomb of Horrors was actually my first ever roleplaying experience. Given that I survived as a solo player all the way up the end (where I was merely informed that my character died and I lost, with no option to play out the encounter), it is not a hard module in terms of play skill. All you need to do is not trigger those built in game system weak points. In a convertion to Hero - which lacks those weak points - this would not be hard to do.

Re: FH Racial Balance question for the GM's As long as you charge double once it is over characteristic maxima (20) it will, if not balance, be a lesser issue.

Re: DEX SPD CV Advise Speed 2 Farmers, Levy. 3 Soldiers, Guardsmen, Mercs, Lancelot, W. Wallace (Braveheart), Elite Guards, Maximus (Gladiator), Gimli, Conan, Arthur, Aragorn, Beowulf, 4 Xena, Hercules (Sorbo), Leagolas, Ninjas. Dex 10 Gimli, Boromir 11 Soldiers, Guardsmen, Knights 12 Average Elf, Personal Guards 14 Elite Guards, Gandolf, Mercs, W. Wallace, Conan, Aragorn, Galad, Lancelot, 15 Gorgon, Authur, Maximus 17 Hercules (Sorbo) 20 Leagolas, Xena CV 3 Farmer 4 Soldiers, Guardsmen 5 Mercs, Elite Guards, Knights, Arthur, Gimli, Gorgon 6 Tarzan, Maximus, Aragorn, Boromir, Ave Elf 7 Hercules (Sorbo), Conan 8 Leagolas, Xena Strength 13 Soldiers, Guardsmen, Leagolas, Rand, Aragorn 15 Mercs, Elite Guards, Knights, Arthur, Perrin 18 W. Wallace, Boromir, Bullwief (13th Warrior) 20 Conan, Tarzan 30 Ogre 35 Troll, Beowulf, Balrog, Hercules

Re: DEX SPD CV Advise Well speed only comes into play in combat, so a noncombatant wouldn't have much use for it...

Re: DEX SPD CV Advice These are fairly good numbers for mid-line and main-line combatants. I tend to recommend something similar. Though I would cut damage to 6n/2k for a mainline combatant, and lower for everyone else. Most people will have about 1d6k-1.5d6k, or 3d6n-4d6n - essentially a str min 10-13 weapon. Most range at 3 for speed, and rear-liners can get away with 2. Dex: fast guys: 17-20 most: 13-15 rear-line: 8-11 CV: mid-line 5, front line 6-7, rear line 3 to 4. Frontline: people who are warriors in one sense or another, skirmish battles are what they do - be it with skill, magic, or brute strength. Midline: the adventurer or rogue. a person who is competant in a fight but not themed for it. Rearline: the scholars, bards, spies, seductive types, farm boys, and other people who are in the adventure for unusual reasons. These are the people who are themed towards some other special talent and combat is merely something they try to survive. I tend to put up a stop sign on any player who has any stat over 'characteristic maxima.' I'll make them explain it and give me a lot of theming around it - and if I feel it's too much of an issue / detraction I'll make them cut it.

Zombie Cultists from Hell have taken Natalia!!! "Zombie Cultists from Hell have taken Natalia!!!" --- That was the line the PC's got over the phone from 'Mrs. Peel', their supervisor with The Foundation at Sebastian Manor. Natalia is the name of an ex-PC who was sent into a coma at the end of the final battle of the last plot arc (she went disabled and the player had a planned replacement PC). So the events are: Nergal (a Babylonian sorcerer priest who lives forever by stealing bodies) wants to possess Natalia - somehow he has figured out that the comatose woman being stored in the 'hidden section' of the local asylum is a speedster and would make the perfect new body for him. He brought in some 'nurses' from Canada when the hospital hired a number of foreign nurses through a temp agency and had them set up the strike. These fake nurses (a man and two women) conducted a ritual to bring zombies in from the netherworld, and used them to distract the place while they carted away Natalia. They took her out to the lawn where patients and visitors can stroll about on rare sunny days - now covered in mist and zombies, and gated away. The PCs know this, and they know they left to somewhere on this world. They know the zombies came from another world, but are now still on this one. They have three 'disabled' zombies. In the ritual they found a pentagram and candles all over Natalia's room, and blood - the cultist's own blood spilled to power their magics. Postcognition has allowed them learn everything above, including the identities of the nurses and the fact of Nergal being behind it. The PCs also ran into 'Ms Red Herring,' also known as 'Paisley', a mercenary I used in the first adventure as kidnapper. She's an illusionist with a hyper-sense of fashion (she is actually physically vulnerable to bad taste) who always puts her signature 'paisley' on something about her. She's apparently just working a normal everyday job as a nurse in the asylum, from what the PCs can tell, and they followed her around hard harrassing her for quite some time trying to get more out of her (she's got maxed out mental defenses however, so they can't pluck her mind...). Paisley figures key in their fates, and when I ran the last story arc -a dimension hopping story line running to parralel worlds- she was present on almost every world - in half of them she was on their team, married to one of them, or somehow linked to them. What they lack, and what I lack, is how to go any further - how to find Nergal, the cultists, the 'Zombies from Hell!!!', and their comatose teamate. I'm at a loss as to where to go from here.

Re: Does your character blog? I joke with my players from time to time that they could just 'look it up on www.supervillain.com.' None of them has tried the address yet, so I haven't yet decided what is actually there... But it will have to be something, just because, well... it has to be. There was an old issue of Impulse where he found a villain's residence by going to the guy's homepage to get directions, and I've always wanted to do something silly like that.

Re: sheer madness... Thing is... Is Hero really complex? In some ways yes, but in others no. I remember back in the days of 3E we used to recruit people to Hero away from other systems by telling them how it was so rules-lite compared to the competition. About half of Hero's complexity is in the presentation and the packaging. Most of the other half is in the math of dealing with advantages and limitations - which factor mostly into Champions. Imagine keeping the sidebars, keeping the detail of explaination, keeping ALL the text as it is right now --- and still managing to shave off maybe 20 to 50 pages, or even more, and still be very legible.

Re: sheer madness... Cut the type down by 2 points, and remove another 1 in the spacing between lines - it might actually be -MORE- legible. Contrast 5E to the typeface of MnM, which is probably on the smaller end of the spectrum, to see what I mean. You could go down tht far, further, or not as much. But 5E's face is a space hog. A smaller font means less pages which means lower cost to print. A slightly thinner book also means it is less likely to scare away new people. Old hats to Hero know what's inside, and know they'll like it. It's not like Fuzion where you had a system change, people already into Hero are not going to be turned away by it, so you need to find a way to make more new people get turned towards it. The size of the book is one of the major things that turns them away. Yet the same word count can be done in a smaller book with superior layout. Sometimes I think some people oppose things just out of fear of change, even when the change is to something that can be shown to be an improvement. In this case, anything which cuts page count without cutting content or readability would be an obvious improvement.

Re: sheer madness... It's a question of illusion. With the 3 DnD books you get the equivalent in Hero of the 5E book, Fantasy Hero, and the bestiary (yeah, the DMG does have genre info about running fantasy). They are thick when you stack them together, but alone, not so much so. The visual presense does a lot to make people wary. If the book does not need to be as bulky as it is, if making it appear to be a lighter read can be done without actually cutting any content, then doing so will make it less of a scare off for new players. And frankly, most of the gamers I've known over the years don't like to read... It frustrates me to no end, but's in my experience it holds true.

Re: Cultural Superstitions and Forgotten Practices Speaking of childhood things... I learned to lift my feet when the car went over railroad tracks to avoid catching bad luck. Still do that out of reflex sometimes - and San Francisco has old tracks popping out of the roads just about everywhere. There's also the idea that finding a penny face up is good luck, but face down is bad luck. I might use this one in a story I'm working on... From a post I made in the non gaming forums: seeing an owl means you or someone you know will die. For modern games - wearing tin foil on your head protects you from telepathy and mind control. In fantasy you could let this one actually work, as tin was more valuable than diamonds or platinum put together before modern mining and smelting made it as cheap as old news. A fantasy character with enough tin to make a helmet is probably wealthy beyond belief. On the breath angle - keep cats away from the beds of children or they will steal their breath when sleeping. And of course... when a black cat crosses your path...

Re: sheer madness... Yes, but peering over the corner of the page of Sidekick they will still see the copy of 5E sitting on my end of the table, and the thinking is that 'eventually I have to read that as well'. The bok is just too physically big, which is more a factor of its typeface and layout than its actualy text content - at least when I actually put it side by side with other books I own that's the conclusion I draw. The content of the book needs to continue to appeal to Hero fans, but something about it should also be made to draw in newbies, or at least not repell them. This is something that can be largely achieved with only a slight shift in layout.

Re: sheer madness... I don't know if the above wasd in jest, but it is a reality for many non Hero people. If the new book is even thicker, it will only make it that much harder for me to sell my players on it. Use a smaller typeface, so you can cut page count. Mutants and Masterminds pulled the trick of a small type face in order to get a book with a lot of content down to a thin size. However they went so far that a lot of people felt the opposite of how they feel about Hero - people felt ripped off. Find a middle ground.

Re: The 'Elminster' of Hero: Harbringer of Justice? That is what makes them the 'icons' or samples of the genre. What good is a sample of a genre to me as a GM or to my players if it is outside the scope of normal play? Look at the DnD iconics - they were constructed at key levels of DnD play to show a sample group through the levels. Look at Dai Blackthorn from GURPS - he's a 100 point character that has been present in every edition of GURPS to show an example of a fantasy character. Look at the Freedom League in MnM's Freedom City - they're built to an average PL of 10 to show 'the archetype' of a super hero team. Thus you can slot them out and slot in the PCs, or place the PCs alongside them and not have the question of 'why do we need the PCs in this setting?' They also serve to really help newer players and GMs know how to design a PC that works for both that game system and that setting. Harbringer smacks too much of 'this is my personal campaign and everybody who plays in it is just there to give me fanboyism.' He's like an Elminster - with him around, why bother having anyone else? What point is there in only being around to get the issues that fell off his table? Make him an iconic rather than an Elminster - make him a peer to the PCs rather than their 'lord and master' and he suddenly works to uphold the genre - in character design players could look to him for ideas on working out a concept, and in play the GM could use him as an ally, contact, or even opponant. Let him get his extra 680XP through play, and not in the initial writeup... Sure he may have been the author's PC for years, but the setting is not the the author's game once we buy it.

Re: Movies Of course, sometimes Hero does DnD better than DnD does - as with Turakian Age. Note on the DnD movie: It violated DnD's rules in many places, and I still can't figure out what race the purple guy was... So if I wanted to simulate it down to the last detail I would not choose DnD.

Re: Just picked up 5th ed. What genre(s) do you intend to focus on? That will naturally shape your purchases. I think the second grimoire at least is more fitting to Champions than to Fantasy Hero (too expensive and too high of effects), but the concepts can be mined down to spells for Fantasy Hero. The Fantasy Hero book itself has a section on magic system design that will tell you how to do free form magic systems. "The Gift" in particular is a good example.

Re: The 'Elminster' of Hero: Harbringer of Justice? I've become used to iconics as per DnD, and the major NPCs in Mutants and Masterminds - all of which are usually built as genre or setting examples and thus built to show what you can do on the normal game settings. Harbringer was just way too much in the old day, and he was also the author's PC, making it somewhat worse by having him be the ultimate example of a DM-NPC. Thus the title of 'Elminster' of Hero. I'd like to see him on a more normal scale, especially as he is the character that 'holds up the genre' of the HUdson City setting. To me it is even more important for the iconic character to balance out than any other character.

Re: DMH: PHYs Lim: Hormonal I don't know... Everything that comes to mind for me when I hear this one is something I would tell the player to take off their character sheet as either not worth points and / or not relevant to the game. I want more detail than some one liner out of their disads. And just what is 'hormonal' anyway?

Re: Cultural Superstitions and Forgotten Practices I believe under elizabethan england it was customary for a young woman to bare her breasts as a sign of virtue and virginity: discovery.com article Out of this comes out figure of justice, which has a bared breast to show her virtue. Though I would not recomment the following if you have any women gamers in your group, in classical Athens and in Chosun dynasty Korea women could not leave the home ever during their entire lives. The only exception was when they married and thus went from their father's house to their husbands. In Korea this was the practice for upper class women, and in Athens it applied it applied to families of citizen.