Mark Taylor

Re: Bringing new players to HERO System. Quite a lot of other posts I remember reading have suggested the former is hard. I was interested in hearing about what approaches people had tried and why they think they failed (or succeeded). Good luck with the latter.

Re: Bringing new players to HERO System.

I'm curious because the difficulty of bring new players to HERO System has been much discussed on this board (and on RPG.net). I'm just about to begin two HERO campaings (Ninja HERO and Fantasy HERO) and have six players signed up for each. Some of these players have heard negative things about HERO system (the usual - overly complicated, difficult math, yadda yadda) but still it took very little persausion on my part to convince them to give it a try. I've just told the players that I'll make it as easy for them to get into the system as I can, that I think most of the criticisms are greatly exaggerated at best, and that if they have a desire to learn more about the system than they will need to play then Sidekick provides an excellent (and cheap) introduction. What are the main difficulties that other people find in trying to persuade new players to give it a chance?

...For making Fantasy HERO Battlegrounds such a good-looking book, both externally (the cover) and internally (the awesome maps). I think these are actually the best looking floor plans I have ever seen in any gaming book. Well done, and may DOJ have the good sense and taste to employ your services in many future projects.

Re: Free version of the HERO System

Re: Free version of the HERO System To be fair, that should wait until 4th Ed. comes out, as it's only a couple of months away. Unless GURPS has suddenly become as customizable as HERO in terms of building character abilities, HERO will still rule in my book.

Re: Disad Advice Can I give a word of advice? One of the most important aspects of GMing is staying in control, and if the players aren't convinced you're the boss from the very start that can become very hard to do. What I'm getting at is this - these disads are so abusive that if it is still possible at this stage you really need to give the player the impression that you never even considered allowing them, and you need to do so with what I'd call "minimal politeness". I.E. don't necessarily be outright rude but make it extremely plain that you don't particularly respect the attempt to abuse the system this badly. In this case, I would actually laugh out loud at some of these disadvantages in front of the player (which would be all the easier because the attempt to get away with taking the multiple oxygen dependencies is genuinely amusing). Rude? Perhaps slightly, but trying to abuse your good nature as a GM is also rude. The reason I'm giving such advice is that while it's possible that this player genuinely misunderstands the disadvantages system, it's more likely that he's simply trying to push you to see what he can get away with. The trouble with players with such inclinations is that if you give them any inkling that you considered letting them getting away with it, they will try to push it again and again, which in the long run will do nothing but detract from the game as a whole. Bear in mind that there are plenty of other aspects of the system a player can try to abuse besides disadvantages once game-play has begun and the last thing you want in your game is a player who will argue with you about your interpretation of the rules every five minutes. I've seen campaigns literally fall apart or be reduced to an exercise in farce because of GMs who weren't willing to clamp down hard on this kind of thing. It might seem harsh to be so blunt with the player, but in the long run it will only make your campaign better for everybody involved.

Re: Free version of the HERO System The Resource Kit is extremely useful. I was lucky enough to get a printed copy while it was still in print. It didn't occur to before but it does have pretty much what fredrik_nilsson was asking for - a character builder's "price list".

Re: Free version of the HERO System I can't speak for DOJ, but from what company representatives have said about this topic before I think Sidekick is as close as we are going to get to this. It is, after all, only $10 (£7 here in the UK). I got my copy as soon as it was available at my FLGS and I personally think it's extraordinarily good value for money. I'm going to encourage all my players to get copies when I start running my next campaign.

Re: Powers that turn off after a given time interval I can see your point. I'm going to take a look at this and may consider changing it. I am the GM. I'm building some pre-fabs that player characters can take. To use Costs End Only to Activate in this case was a conscious choice on my part. Again, the value of the 'lasts one turn' limitation is in question.

Re: Ultimate Brick usefulness outside a supers game The Ultimate Brick should be every bit as useful outside of a supers game as The Ultimate Martial Artist could be outside of a martial arts game - i.e. it depends on how many options and how much rules detail you want to make available to certain types of character. Personally I intend to use both UMA and UB in my next fantasy campaign, if for no other reason than because magic users always seem to outdo other fantasy character types in terms of the options and rules detail available to them. Anything that helps even the score for other character types has to be a bonus! I just got The Ultimate Brick for use in a Ninja HERO campaign in fact, and it looks really useful. And to go totally off-topic, I now have every non-Champions HERO System 5th Edition book that has been released so far.

Re: Darkness: Can be penetrated by Nightvision. Thanks everybody for the input! I'm inclined to agree with Agent X's interpretation, and it seems a more elgant construction for what I want to achieve than using change environment.

Re: Powers that turn off after a given time interval While constructions using Uncontrolled or Charges are possible, they seem overly complicated for what is needed. I decided to simplify things by just making lasts only until end of Turn a -1/4 limitation. The logic behind this is based on the fact that making a Constant power Instant is a -1/2 limitation. Here are a couple of examples with descriptions in plain English and then in game terms. They are based on Fu Powers from the Feng Shui RPG, BTW. Please tell me if you think these work, people! 1) You can act with no penalties in partial or complete darkness until the end of the turn: Nightvision (5 Active Points); Costs Endurance (only to activate; -1/4), Limited Power (lasts only until end of Turn; -1/4). Total Cost: 3 points. 2) When you target and successfully hit an opponent in HTH combat with this power you do no damage, but instead a 1" radius area with the opponent at its centre is plunged into absolute darkness until the end of the turn. The area remains centred on the opponent even when he moves: Darkness to Sight Group 1†radius, Usable as Attack (+1), Costs END Only to Activate (+1/4) (22 Active Points); Limited Power (lasts only until end of Turn; -1/4). Total Cost: 18 points.

The above question and answer from the current Rules FAQ seems to directly contradict the first paragraph under Costs Endurance on 5E 185, which suggests that Costs End Only to Activate is an official -1/4 limitation and can only be bought for a power which normally does costs no END. Am I misinterpreting something?

I may be missing something obvious, but how do I model a power which costs Endurance to activate but not to maintain, but automatically turns itself off after a given amount of time (say, 1 Turn)? I need to build a number of powers like this. Some normally cost END, some don't - but all will need to cost END only to activate and then automatically turn themselves off after a certain time interval.

Re: Earthdawn Magic Weapons to HERO As a player of Earthdawn, I agree with the posts here - it isn't necessary to model this which some obscure power build, the GM can simply define what powers become available to spend experience points on when certain knowledge is gained. To quote the answer to an entirely unrelated question from the 5th Edition rules FAQ, "When and how a character spends Experience Points is entirely up to the GM." That statement contains all the rules you need to model this.

Re: Ye Old "Hero is Hard" Debate It's true that HERO has a steep learning curve compared to other game systems, but that's mainly because the rules for practically everything are all in one book. I think many other RPG systems are just as rules heavy, but they tend to spread the rules for different types of abilities or situations over several supplements. They include only what's strictly necessary to play the game in the core rulebook. This way, the rules seem easier to learn because you get to absorb them in bite-sized chunks.

Re: THE TURAKIAN AGE Reviewed On RPG.Net

Re: 5th Edition News My Fantasy HERO campaign is slated to begin in October, so the timing is spot-on.

Re: Open or hidden dice Hey, I'm only 5'6". I could hide me behind a GM screen.

Re: Open or hidden dice Disclaimer: I haven't GMed HERO System yet, but I've GMed a lot of other systems and I can't see my methods changing any with HERO. The number of systems I've run is due to the fact that I always run campaigns of deliberately finite length - usually 6 to 18 months - and then I like to move on to something new because I'm inspired by many different things and I enjoy variety. Having said that though, I'm getting tired of learning new systems so it looks likely that I'll stick to GURPS (for low-powered campaigns) and HERO (for high-powered campaigns) in future, and I'll still be able to enjoy the variety of many different campaign settings. I don't use a screen simply because I don't like the division between myself and the players. It's only a matter of personal taste, and I have no problem with playing with GMs who do use screens. Prior to running a system I haven't run before I scan whatever charts and tables I need and put them in a small booklet I can easily flip through to find what I need. That takes care of my reference needs. Usually I scan from an actual GM screen, which I generally buy anyway because I dislike having to photocopy from books too much - it doesn't do the bindings any good. As for maps, notes and such, I've never found it hard to conceal them from the players without a screen. As long as you don't lay them flat on the table in front of you it's not really a problem. Nowadays everything is on my Palm PDA anyway so that makes it even easier. As for dice rolls, my players make all of their rolls where I can see them and I make 99%+ of mine out in the open too. The <1% I conceal are reserved for rolls the players *really* oughtn't to know the result of. Whether open or concealed I don't generally tell them what the rolls are for, though often it's obvious from the context. If I think it's too obvious and shouldn't be I make a couple of spurious rolls to throw them off the scent. Another thing I often keep to myself is the level of difficulty or modifiers the players are rolling against. For example if I've decided that a player is rolling at -3 and the player tells me "made it by 2" I often will simply say "not good enough", rather than give away the modifier. Of course if the PC should logically know how difficult a task or how adverse the circumstances I just tell them the modifier before they roll. However, I *always* let the players make their own rolls, even if they're rolling for actions they wouldn't necessarily know the result of. This occasionally leads to what you might see as "problem" situations, but I don't really see them as problems. For example (a situation which arose in a session recently) a PC is performing a protective ritual which will afford him a degree of long-term magical protection from certain enemies. Now if the player critically fails this roll, his ritual will fail but he will think it has worked, so theoretically I should make the roll for him in case that happens. Of course it did happen, he rolled a critical failure. I simply told him the result, "Yeah you fluffed it, but your character is convinced it worked." Now you may think this kind of thing detracts from the game, but in actual fact I have found it really doesn't, and it has some advantages. First, it really only happens very occasionally; second, most players possess a sense of humour (if they don't, what are they doing playing an RPG?) and are capable of seeing the funny side of it; third, most players like the sense of control that being allowed to make all their own rolls gives them; and fourth, more to the point, it forces them to role-play like nothing else, and that's no bad thing. Despite keeping almost all of my dice rolls open I have never found that the game degenerates into "me vs. them" or that it makes me "just another player at the table" as some posters have said. That's so different from my own experience in fact that I have to assume there's something beyond open dice rolls causing these problems. Open dice rolls might contribute, and hiding the dice rolls might even fix it, but I find it hard to believe they're the root cause. Yes, it can happen from time to time that a roll of the dice kills a PC inappropriately, but it has the advantage that it adds a degree of austerity to a game, and in my experience it is always possible for the GM and player involved to turn an inappropriate fatality into an appropriate one. It's usually a simple enough matter of adding an element or elements to the plot which subsequently give the character's death some meaning - usually tying this to the player's new PC in some way. For example, the death of an associate can provide a motivation for a new character to become involved, perhaps to seek out revenge, or simply to find out the truth about what happened. Tying things together in this way is a pretty good method of making a PC death feel far less arbitrary and meaningless, and adds a pinch of poignancy to a plot to boot. My £0.02, which will possibly give people an insight into how I personally run games. I really don't think it's any better or worse than how anybody else here does it. It's just what works for me personally.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I f***ing hate thinking about my childhood.

Re: Active Defense Rolls What's to defend? It doesn't need one. In GURPS combat (unless you use some of the optional rules from Compendium II), the chances of hitting an opponent (even with a gun) are actually swayed far more by the level of the defender's defenses (including PD) than by the level of the attacker's skill. I don't particularly agree with that, and I'm hoping it's one of the things that will be 'fixed' in the GURPS 4th Edition rules. Actually I have some expectation that it probably will be, given that the way PD works was one of the problems that SJG brought up in the 4E questionaire. One way to do this would be to drop the active defense roll and have defenses act as a penalty to the attacker's roll. Another way would be to keep the active defense roll, but have it function like an ordinary quick contest of skills. In HERO combat, OCV and DCV have about equal weight in the outcome of an attack roll, which makes more sense and IMO is more elegant. The defender still has his chance to defend. He even has the chance to actively improve his defense by aborting to a defensive action such as a dodge. The fact that he doesn't necessarily roll any dice for it doesn't affect that. Having two rolls to determine whether an attack hits or not is uneccesary, and only slows down the most uninteresting part of any given combat - the misses.

Re: Building characters of different sizes

Re: Building characters of different sizes Or he could just buy all three just in case he happens to lose two of them.