Storyarama

So, has anyone here attempted to do a Hero System campaign set in Lego World? My wife has gotten the idea for a campaign set in a Lego World (Movie/TV style, not video game style) , and she asked me for mechanics recommendations and thoughts, so I had some ideas...

All characters have a VPP and Inventor skill for building things out of bricks, but they have to break things around them to get bricks to build with.

Characters cannot die, but also cannot heal naturally and have to be repaired or rebuilt, either by themselves if capable, but otherwise they're at the mercy of their fellow players and their "healing/medicine" rolls.

Any failed roll results in a side effect from the GM depending on how badly the roll failed,  and of course, comedic effect. The side effects would mostly be minor, like if you wind up with three arms, you would have to make a DEX check whenever attempting an attack in combat to make sure you use the correct arm(s), or you might have a -1" to movement because one leg is shorter than the other, etc. The effect would last either until the next time the character "dies" and gets rebuilt, or until the next day when someone can make another attempt to "heal" the character of the side effect.

So, what other ideas do you think a Lego Hero game should have?

For simplicity sake, I would make Telekinetic Martial Arts as a PB with Gestures (martial maneuver) instead of using TK. But hey, that's the nice thing about Hero, you can do it which way you feel more comfortable with.

It happened to me once on 10d6, but based on how many sessions of Champions I've played in my life, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Welcome aboard Storyarama. 

Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Hi, my handle is Storyarama, and it came from a time where I was doing Storytelling as a hobby.

My first time playing was with AD&D 1st ed. I was actually headed to summer camp when I heard some of the kids on the bus talking about what spells they were taking, and I just had to find out what that meant. That was the week of summer camp that changed the whole direction of my life.

My first time GMing was a couple weeks later after camp, when I put together a dungeon and had a buddy run a party of characters through it. Apparently, giants and first level characters do not mix well. TPK. Oooops. Learned some important lessons though.

Currently running: Champions 5th ed., Fantasy Hero for 5th ed., AD&D 3.5

Currently playing: Champions 5th ed., AD&D 3.5, Star Wars D20

I'm sure everyone pays attention when Foxbat tweets stuff.

Oh...you said "respected hero". Sorry, never mind.

Keep in mind that the prequel trilogy was the equivalent of an all- or most-Jedi game, while the original trilogy was the equivalent of a more rounded campaign.  

 

When running a Star Wars game, you'll probably want to write up a "Force System" equivalent to how you'd write up a magic system when running Fantasy Hero.  

A "Force system" sounds too...stifling. After all, throughout various old canon (pre-disney) materials, you would see Jedi using different Force powers than the standard ones presented in the movies. So, I think a "Force system" might stifle a lot of creativity from the players as they create and grow their characters over time. Sure, traditionally Jedi couldn't use The Force to grow larger or smaller, but in a RPG campaign, why couldn't they be allowed to do so as long as they keep it within reasonable boundaries, such as one or two levels of Growth or Shrinking? It allows the player to customize their Jedi, while still retaining the flavor of the genre.

Seems a sensible route.

 

Man, that vitality rule is terrible. Yeesh.

Tell me about it. That's why the GM wants to use Hero instead. Then you can use The Force as much as you have END for, and can actually recover END much faster than Vitality. I know the developers of the D20 Star Wars didn't want the Jedi overpowering everyone else, but that was just ridiculous.

The conversion I ran across is D6 to Hero. D6 WEG really nerfs Jedis. But since it was designed from the Orginal trilogy, there is a reason why there was no powerful Jedi left.

 

From what I seen from D20, you have a slow progression of Jedi powers. Is the slow progression what your players chafing.against?' With Hero, you could give the players access with more powers just keep them low.

   They're not chafing against the slow progression of getting powers, just the fact that they can barely use them more than a couple times a day. It's set up that if you use any of your Force powers you take Vitality damage, which is sort of their version of STUN. But unike STUN, which you can just recover by taking a recovery, Vitality takes much longer to recover, like hours. So, you can only use the good Force powers a few times before you run out of Vitality and can't use the Force for hours. Plus, attacks against your character also damage your Vitality, so getting hit a couple times can leave you unable to use your Force powers either. It's very frustrating being a Jedi when a simple punch to the face can leave you unable to use The Force at all.

   Basically, I think my GM is looking for something like low powered Champions but Star Wars instead. Reading earlier posts in this thread, I see that some suggested using Ninja Hero to let the non-Jedi beef themselves up without the Force, and that seems like a good idea. After all, in the Star Wars setting The Force is in all things and creatures, so even the non-Jedi may use the Force, just not conciously  as a Jedi does. A smuggler might have Danger Sense as that gut feeling when something's wrong. That bounty hunters exceptional skill with a blaster might be her subconciously using the Force to guide her aim.  That diplomats instinctive ability to dodge blaster fire might be him subconciously using the Force to know where those shots are going to land. Etc. So, there's no reason that non-Jedi can't also have special powers, they just wouldn't be as obvious or showy, because they don't even know they're using the Force.

So, if my GM uses Star Hero for the Equipment, Vehicle, and Weapon stats, and Ninja Hero and The Ultimate Books for special abilities for all the characters, that should probably work. Any powers with visible special effects, or mental powers, either in the Main book or the Ult. books can only be used by Jedis or Sith, unless your race has that ability as a racial ability. So, how does that sound for workability?

Well, your first concern is whether you believe you can create a plausible setting in which a guy with a gun can compete with a guy with a gun and superpowers.  There are several approaches you can take, as I see it.

 

1) The Mage approach where Jedi are super powerful but wear no armor and need people to watch their back

2) The nerf approach (which d20 does) so somehow having superpowers doesn't make you any better than those who do not

3) The SWTOR approach where you give non-force users so many abilities and special tricks that they basically are as powerful as force users

4) The Story approach where the game is less about combat and so the edge having the force gives in that is less significant

5) The heroic approach where guys like Vader and Luke are unusually gifted and normal Jedi just can't do all that stuff so easily, making them less awesome

6) Everyone plays a different sort of Jedi, so the balance issues don't matter

7) The Academic approach, where Jedi are very powerful, but spend so much of their lives learning to control the force that they are basically worthless in other areas like engineering, flying a ship, interaction, etc and those skills balance them out in other characters

8) All Jedi are NPCs so there is no balance concern

 

Hero is a system that will very easily let you build your Jedi and give them all the powers you want, but they will cost quite a bit, so the best approach is probably for the Jedi to start out as an oldish padawan (you know, not a little kid) who learns as the game goes along.  This will give them a few things like a force shove and some overall levels to demonstrate the force guiding them, but not the full suite of powers right away.

Well, do you know which conversions on the web take which approach? That way I can tell him which one to look at based on what he approach he favors.

I know this post hasn't updated since July, but I have a question regarding Star Wars Hero and thought someone might have a good answer.

My gaming group has been running D20 Star Wars and getting really frustrated by the limitations of Jedi in the game, because they've really nerfed Jedi to bring them in line with the other classes. So, the GM asked me about doing the game as Hero since I've been running a Champions campaign for them, and the Star Wars GM thinks it would be a good system to use for Star Wars. So, since there is no official conversion available, what do you think is the best conversion on the web? Doing a web search, I see a few options available and just wondered if anyone had used them and what they thought of them.

I have the book, and have ben looking for an opportunity to run it for awhile now, but my long-timr group was already established in the standard Champs setting. But, there's a Con coming up (well, we call it a Con, but it's really just a yearly gathering of friends.), and I'm thinking I may run a session of Gestalt. So, let me ask some questions of the collective Champions brain trust.

   Have you run/played in the setting? Are there things you learned during play that might help a newbie to the setting? Suggestions? Tips? How was it for you? Did you enjoy it, or would you recommend a different setting?

   Thanks,

   Storyarama

Re: Fantasy Art Thread

Hiya all,

When I look at these posts, I don't actually get any images except on a couple of them. Instead I get the following...

""

So, how do I get the actual image?