Foolish Frost

Re: Teen Fantasy Hero As someone who has run this kind of campaign, I can point out some aspects and pitfalls we ran into. The concepts of the game were: The world is a standard high-magic fantasy world. It has been long enough for some amount of industry and organization has begun based on magic. No, they can't mass produce magic, but magic can mass produce mundane things in factories, creating a culture that can actually support a luxury based economy. Books, entertainment, and other features of real life piecemeal 'infect' the world. For example, bards often have enchanted musical insturments that allow them to play concerts of aggressive (read revolutionary rock) music for large crowds, and the use of illusionists in performance are common. How much of 'modern' life has been adapted differs widely according to territory and economy Feel free to ignore the above, but facts are: Most people don't want to play a teen game that does not involve teen styles and concepts. That almost always involves popular media. The concepts of the school and students: Teachers are ALL adventurers. They come in to train students as a requirement of their licence to be a legal adventurer. The students are in the school to learn how to use their skills responsibly. Spell casters, for example not only learn academic skills, but practical training in how to deal with combat and restrict collateral damage. Students WOULD have to live on campus, and the school would DARN well police itself to prevent incidents. Do I need to tell you that they would be watched like hawks? Do you really want a child prodigy demon summoner to get a sudden idea that a few civilian sacrifices could get them quite a bit of power? There would be no "villain" training. It's silly. Truly sociopath characters would likely be removed from the school. ...and then life. Yes, evil characters would make it through school, but they would be able to hide their nature effectively. Character would be sent out to deal with issues akin to their skills. Sending out younger students with a few seniors and teachers to deal with a goblin infestation would be normal. I would like to point out a few animes that touch on this idea: Freezing (http://www.hulu.com/freezing) Demon King Daimao (http://www.hulu.com/demon-king-daimao) Harry Potter (read a book...) And a ton more that are even more improper for young audiences... Overall, the play style normally deals with players being the "problem teens", meaning they are often in the wrong place at the right time. They are often tolerated due to how effective they are, and quickly stomped on when they fail. The players normally define their own clique, taken from the oddballs from other school groups. You can run the story as anything from a high-power anime where all the characters have the power to raze a normal city to the ground, to scooby do, where the only thing they can rely on is their wits and tools. It's kinda a wide spectrum.

Re: Best book for a Victorian setting is... Hey, if it works, why knock it. And American Victorian era had GUNSLINGERS! Double win!

The 1897 Sears and Roebuck catalog reprint, ISBN 1-60239-063-0 This little book allows you to price out just about anything the players can come up with, with prices and sometimes detailed information about the item's use. Combine that with information about the salaries paid in 1890, and you have a darn good idea of how much money to allow players in a short time. Unskilled Labor $1 - $2 a day. Skilled Labor $2 - $4 a day. Expert Labor $4 - $8 a day. This varies largely from area to area, based on demand for the services. Anyway, just thought I would point that out for people wanting Victorian era gameplay. Enjoy!

Re: Fantasy Hero Review of Fantasy Hero, 6th edition, Hardback Opening Notes about Hero System, 6th edition: While this is not a review of Hero System in general, it should be noted that the Hero System 6th edition Core books are needed to make full use of Fantasy Hero. This includes two $40 books: One for character creation, and the other for game-play rules. Hero System is a point based character design system allowing nera infinite character and setting options, but with little in the way of hard guidlines for beginners. Overview of Fantasy Hero: Fantasy Hero is a 480 page hardback, in 7 chapters. These chapters are listen in the Chapters section of this review. Chapters are easilly paged to due to color "tabbing" along the edge of the book that makes the chapters easilly visible even when the book is closed. An index in the back of the book offers easy access to just about any term in the book. Chapters: Chapter one deals with Genre conventions common to Fantasy settings. Chapter two character creation guidelines and some common templates for classes and races. Chapter three discusses fantasy combat, ranging from how combat works, to armor and weapons, and even mass combat rules. Chapter four examines magic and how it might work in your campaign. Chapter five advises on how to develop your own fantasy worlds, including geography, demographics, and the civilizations it contains. Chapter six guides gamemasters on how to run fantasy campaigns, including how to deal with special environments and villain design. Chapter seven ends with sample characters and works of fiction to help drive your imagination. Final thoughts: Overall, this book is a series of guidelines for building your campaign world, or converting one to hero system from another system. It does this quite well, but offers no coherant world of it's own. At no point does this book lain to be a setting book, but most RPG rule sets offer a default world for the game master to work from, so it feels slightly odd for it to be missing. On the other hand, Hero System has ALWAYS been a toolkit system for players and game masters to make their own settings, so the book does it's job quite nicly without such trappings. It does include a nice selection of racial and class templates, allowing a standard fantasy setting to be assembled much faster. It also offers several magic systems that your setting can use, including not only spell systems, but magic item creation. Samples are spread throughout the book, offering samples of eveything from weapons and armor, to spells and magic items. Scoring: Organization: 10 out of 10 (I can say nothing bad about the organization. It just works.) Crunch: 10 out of 10 (that's pretty much the point of the book.) Fluff: 5 out of 10 (It does have a ton of setting options, and quotes from dozens of books.) Physical Quality: 10 out of 10 (It's a hardback, good paper, good binding. Pretty much the apex of being a book...)

Re: Fantasy locations that should be real Tower of the High Clerist, from dragonlance. Best tower map evah. Bugger. Nobody has ever scanned it to the internet. Go fig. They have this map of it, but it fails to offer the wonder of the original game map.... http://tohs.webs.com/High%20Clerist%20Tower.jpg

Re: Just got 6e *impressed* Friendly advice that took me a bit of learning: Most games, you pick a race and class (or some variant thereof) and then use that as a framework for building your "character". This will NOT work in Hero. Don't do it. before cracking the books, decide on what the character should be like in normal English. Write a paragraph about the character. "Woodsman who uses a silver axe and hates wolves..." Expand on it with some ability ideas. "My Victorian character wears a corset that is reinforced with steel bands that can stop bullets and knives..." Fact is, Hero suffers from the "plague of plenty": You have so many options it's easy to lose track of what you're trying to do and get caught up in the details. Design a theme for the campaign, use that to design the characters, and then figure up the powers and abilities after that. Anyway, welcome!

I'm looking for a 6th edition set of GM charts and/or GM screen. I can print them off from pdf and have them laminated, but would like something that was made fully for 6th edition. If nothing is out there, I guess I can make my own. I just didn't want to re-invent the wheel.

Re: The Ultimate Base Then the final question is this: Did HeroGames ship any of this book to Alliance distributors? Because if not, then none of the stores using them are going to get it...

Re: The Ultimate Base I'm not sure that's a faster option, considering my last order took about a month to receive from HeroGames. And let me point out: Nobody has it. If someone outside of HeroGames was listing it available, I could easily agree. This is a case of nobody has it EXCEPT HeroGames, pointing to the only thing they have in common being the problem. Either way, until my local gaming shop does get it, I'm not spending money. I was just trying to point out that something was wrong with the distribution of the book, and since that means reduced sales, I figured that HG might want to know.

Re: The Ultimate Base Well, My local game shop is the Rusty Scabbard, and they use Alliance distributors. Alliance says they have no copies. Also, Amazon is not even listing the book. You can see here: http://www.alliance-games.com/publicaccess/ Just search for the ultimate base. If fact, it's not advertised to sell online anywhere but a few online stores: Here and paizo... Paizo says preorder, too...

Re: The Ultimate Base Any idea when the local game shops are going to see this? Even online distributors are still talking about pre-orders instead of it being in stock.

Well, funny enough, we decided to play a dark sun game right before all the hubbub about it. We came up with the following preserving/defiling rules. Essence Cost: 1 per 5 Essence points Essence is an endurance reserve for Sorcery. Without an Essence reserve, no matter how many Sorcery based spells the character knows, they cannot power them. Essence point cost is balanced against the setting. Suggested Essence points by character 'experiance/ability'... Wizard END Level Apprentice 01-10 Sorcerer 11-20 Master 21-40 Archmage 41-80 DragonKing 81+ Essence Recovery: The character does not have to buy recovery, as it is built into the rules of Defiling and Preserving magic. Preservers recover an amount of Essence per hour, without harm to the environment, based on the land he is currently in. Preservers know how to store this Essence for later use, but run the risk of running out as their essance reserve drains. Defilers are able to draw the same amount of Essence in just moments (a single action), turning an area of ground and plants into ash around the Defiler equal to a 1" (2 yard) radius around the Defiler. Each time the Defiler draws energy this way, the circle of defiled ground increases another 1" radius. A Defiler cannot defile a radius larger than his Essence score, and ceases being able to draw Essence until he moves to a more fertile postion. They also cannot defile more land than they can store essence. Any time a spell caster uses defiling to gather power, a point of the spellcaster's Essence becomes Tainted. This is cumulative, and can quickly lead to a spellcaster's Essence to be completly tainted in a short time period if the character is careless. Tainted Essence cannot be recovered as a preserver (by the hour, without defiling), and can only be recovered by drawing Essence as a defiler (and thereby Tainting ANOTHER point of Essence). The character can only recover Tainted Essence as a preserver again by refusing to draw energy as a defiler. Each month the character refrains from defiling, he cleanses a number of points of Tainted Essence equal to the least fertile land he has been in during that month (see the same Essence Recovery chart). Regardless of how long he is in a forest, if he enters the wastes for a single day, he will only recover 1-2 Tainted Essence at best. Essence Recovery Chart: Terrain Recovery Lush 10 Abundant 7 Fertile 4 Infertile 2 Barren 1 Defiled 0 Sorcery spells: ALL spells and abilities based on Sorcery cost Essence as a form of END. Spells cannot cost 0 end, but can cost reduced/increased END or END only to activate. Sorcery limits: Sorcery cannot make use of the powers Aid (druids/clerics/psionics), Ego Attack (psionics), Endurance Reserve (limited to setting), Extra-Dimensional Movement (Dragon), Faster than Light Travel (N/A), Healing (druids/clerics/psionics), Mental Illusions (psionics), Mind Control (psionics), Mind Link (psionics), Mind Scan (psionics), Summoning (druids/clerics), Telepathy (psionics), Transfer (Dragon), and Transform (to heal/make life/restore environment: druids/clerics/psionics). The game master can of course allow some or all of the above abilities, but it should be noted that 'normal' sorcerers cannot. Note this allows spells developed in just about any setting to work, but it should be noted that some spells (that can create water, or allow travel through time) are not allowed, or only work for some classes. For example, A follower of the spirits of Water might be able to create water, but just about no one else can. A sorcerer COULD detect water and make a spell to draw it to the surface to be drank, though. ------------------------------------------------------- How's that work?

Re: Collapsable weapon 5th ed Setting trumps special effect. They have tricorders, sword would be recognized instantly. This means the effect is nothing more than a flashy way of drawing your sword, and PROBABLY would not even surprise your opponent. I mean, look at thier weapons. Now, if you had that sword in a medieval game, THEN they might blink. I advised a presence bonus for intimidation?

Re: How to deal with items that offer powers... Cool. I'm goin to take it since none of you screamed in horror at the build for two Ship's Wheels, they're properly formatted. As a side note, I'm thinking about renaming them StarWheels. Not sure why, but it's nicer sounding. <wanders back to the Great Black Book of Everything make things that are wierd>

Re: How to deal with items that offer powers... Flying ShipsWheel, Minor: Flight: 20"/160"/125mph based on speed 2 (40) x8 non-combat speed when flying (10) on ships 100 tons or less (+3.5) Reduced End, only to activate (+0.25) can only be attached to an independent, mostly hollow 'ship hull' (-0.5) take one day to install (-1) OAF-Bulky-Independent-Unbreakable, (-3.5) Gestures, must hold wheel to use (-0.5) Must have Transport Familiarity: Flying ShipsWheel (-0.25) Active Points: 237 Total Points: 35 Flying ShipsWheel, Common: Flight 40"/320"/250mph based on speed 2 (80) x8 non-combat speed when flying (10) on ships 1600 tons or less (+4.5) Reduced End, only to activate (+0.25) can only be attached to an independent, mostly hollow 'ship hull' (-0.5) take one day to install (-1) OAF-Bulky-Independent-Unbreakable, (-3.5) Gestures, must hold wheel to use (-0.5) Must have Transport Familiarity: Flying ShipsWheel (-0.25) Active Points: 517 Total Points: 77 Ship's Sight: Clairsentience (20) Mobile Perception Point within 3280"/6.5km(5) x8 speed and range (30) Reduced End, costs nothing (+0.5) One sense only: Vision (-0.25) Cannot look inside masses (-0.25) can only be attached to an independent, mostly hollow 'ship hull' (-0.5) take one day to install (-1) OAF-Bulky-Independent-Unbreakable, (-3.5) Gestures, must hold wheel to use (-0.5) Must have Transport Familiarity: Flying ShipsWheel (-0.25) Active Points: 82 Total Points: 11 Ship's Sail: FTL Travel (10) on ships 100 tons or less (+3.5) ship only travels 1/100 of the speed of light in a star system (-0.5) sail shuts down when crossing paths with any mass, long before impact (-.25) can only be attached to an independent, mostly hollow 'ship hull' (-0.5) take one day to install (-1) OAF-Bulky-Independent-Unbreakable, (-3.5) Gestures, must hold wheel to use (-0.5) Must have Transport Familiarity: Flying ShipsWheel (-0.25) Active Points: 45 Total Points: 6 Total Active Points: 644 Total Points: 94 Now, the question is, "Am I still doing it right?" this one has multiple powers: Ship's Sail allows a ship to go fast between planets, while still allowing for there to be travel time worth mentioning. It does not work when within 'combat range' of another object of 'reasonable' mass. You also have to reach orbit on a world before being able to use it. The Ship's Sight is simple: it allows the user of the Ship's Wheel to not only visually zoom in on 'nearby' objects, but also allows them to look at all sides of it, get a good profile of the ship, and watch for hidden dangers. Both of these Ship's Wheels use the SPD attribute of the 'vehicle' they are attached to, allowing it's design to change how well the Wheel works. Oh, if you know what I'm emulating by this point, you get your very own virtually Miniature Giant Space Hamster!