Doc Democracy

There are not many politicians who burnish their reputation after they leave office. I think Jimmy Carter drew a poor hand during his presidency but his decency and honesty, especially the honesty, should be a shining example to politicians all over the world seeking legacy. More decency and honesty from our politicians would be VERY welcome.

I don't think it is a game killer either. I have softened to take a player-centric approach to the game and things that make the game "easier" for players that use the rules is good for me.

This is part of the action fuzziness in HERO. For example, all your movement takes place in your phase. If you are SPD 4, and decide on segment 3 to do your full move, 30m, then that all happens in segment 3, it does not stretch out until segment 5. If you hold your action until segment 5, you get the full benefit of 30m movement. If you can hold to the last fraction of a second to travel 30m, why not also get the full benefit of the recovery (as long as you have not used END or been harmed during that time)? Doc

My instinct is to agree with you but in game terms, what difference do those things make to those characters? In the comics they are geniuses and all fill the same space in stories. It feels to me like the science skills are almost equivalent to the special effects that we give to powers, they don't cost extra but they give small context-specific bonuses or penalties. I think they are most useful at deciding which PC might be the one who notices the important information or makes a conceptual link in the adventure. Also, while there is indeed a difference between superhero and heroic genres, I still think we should be looking at ways to use skills to flesh out the characters rather than bleed them of points. Doc

Ah! But we are talking held phases, not aborted ones. The character has waited to see what is happening and whether they need to react to a situation but they didn't and so they recovered their breath a bit... Sounds reasonable to me...

The difference is that you have gained options and flexibility. There is a school of thought that all assets, like options and flexibility need to be accounted for and you should not be allowed to gain advantage in this way. I think it is second generation old-school thinking, and I think that it reduces fun at the table by removing a bit of agency from the players and, for me, takes away from the tactical game of combat and utilising the peccadilloes of the speed chart...

Interesting question. My instinct was to say, of course I have, but on reflection, I think the answer is no (to the end part). I spent INORDINATE numbers of hours building things but the design was always how I could make the system do something I had seen or thought about, concept-driven tinkering (hmm, wouldn't this wild west themed villain be great with Guys and Gals minions? What if the Gals had a garter they could throw that choked you! How would I build that?). I can honestly say I never looked at a mechanic, or limitation and wondered how they would work in combination... So, when I am struggling to make something work, I go rummaging through the rules, and I may have done that so much I have attained a level of mastery but, even at the start of the 1980s, I found it almost impossible to sit down and read a rulebook without falling asleep. Doc

I am inclined to agree with you but am not sure it was done correctly. I think that the point inflation due to skills is not equivalent to that using powers. I think I would always spend 75 points on powers than 75 points on skills, even in an heroic game. I think they could have had "framework skills". PS: policeman could have had a bunch of skills under it, all at the ability level of the PS. The PS increases when a set number of sub-skills increase through experience, at which point all sub-skills increase to the PS. Or something like that. 🙂 Doc

Yeah - the granularity of the skill system is something I have mostly body-swerved. I liked the simple PS: policeman from the earliest editions. I dont mind being more specific for some things as long as they make the character stand out but it is impossible to buy all the things that make a scientist a scientist in any kind of detail. I think it might be cool to have lots of charts like the language chart that shows that 5 points in Medicine give 4 points in pharmacology, 3 in a variety of biological sciences, 2 in social work and 1 in a bunch of related stuff. 🙂

I never really "got" this logical train. Every time I bought a new edition, I saw it as new suggestions on how to play. I guess my approach to the game was never to know/master/follow the rules but to play the game. As such each new edition was additional possibility, not an increasingly heavy blanket on my creativity. I have never talked about whether I play 2nd edition, or 4th edition or 6th edition, simply that I play Champions. As a player I would comply with all the rules of the table (I would tell the GM I intended to be book legal but they would need to check because I make so many assumptions in my head) and be content to adjust my character as the GM wanted. Ultimately I will play my powers not the game mechanics. If the GM focusses too heavily on the mechanics (of whatever edition) then we might not be a great match. Doc

It is worth checking out and spectacularly set up to run straight out of the box. You can get the player characters, campaign and first scenario done in a reasonable evening's gaming. https://scratchpadpublishing.com/spectaculars

There are apps given permission to override the sleep function aren't there? I think at least one or two pdf readers do it.

If you want a "I would love" feature, then it would be allowing the GM to set up a group for players round the table to join. Rolls could then be shared within the group - it would make the app more useful at the table. Players should be able to join the group with an alias (the name of their character most obviously)

Yeah, I have nothing to contribute in terms of development but I have found the app a great tool.

I am not a huge fan of the more heavily narrative systems but I do get frustrated by the 40 year-old game skeleton of the HERO System. There are things to learn from what has happened in the gaming world in those decades. In Spectaculars there are environmental elements that need to be addressed. powers work narratively some if the time and not in others - for example, SpiderGuy can (narratively) swing down and gum up all the CCTV with his webshooters but looking to hinder BigBadMonster needs (more gamist) engagement with the mechanics. There were disconnects in the system for me but I hit a more heavily superheroic "feel" to the game more often than I do playing Champions. HERO has focused so heavily in balancing the power system in character creation, it has neglected making those powers feel more superheroic during play. I have ideas and trying to put them into words, and when they are good enough, I will share them. Doc

I have read it and read it and still cannot work out what word "pedometer" was supposed to be....

You considered drafting as a text then cutting and pasting into the board editor?

$15 in 1980 is equivalent to just over $50 today, so three books comes to $150 in today's money. I reckon the wrong turn HERO took was pulling its focus out instead of simply providing a supplementary core HERO book. Champions could have progressively become more focused on a core HERO System supers campaign, with more defined game standards. Similar for Fantasy HERO, Justice Inc and Danger International. Supplements could have been produced to play games in each genre at different power levels with different skills, starting points etc. Imagine a 450 page Fantasy HERO that had a defined magic system, skillset, Bestiary and some adventures. it is easy to do. You would only need the core book to do your own tinkering and world building. Splat books would gavenew magic systems, new beasts, ideas for building fighter types etc etc. Doc

What a shame I missed this, I could have done my second HeroBoards personal tour of the Palace of Westminster. Cardiff is within striking distance of London which is where Dr Who and Torchwood were filmed. In Scotland you could have hit Edinburgh Castle with a ghost walk. Come back down via York - home of the Vikings. Head out from there to Whitby (Dracula) and the Holy Isle. Always something you can do in the future. Doc

Thanks Duke. I find that 30 years playing this game means this is a community I find hard to leave. Where else can I talk HERO with any hope other people understand. 😁 I strop, flounce off, lurk for a while, then feel the need to comment, resist that until it is just too overwhelming. Doc

I can understand where the OP is coming from. What are the things people are thinking about when setting guidelines for their games. Personally, I am thinking about the kind of fights I want to be in the game. I like fights to be tense and potentially over very quickly. I hate fights that drag on over turns and turns. So. I look at the kind of damage per turn generated against defences. Obviously a lot of this stuff relies on averages etc. but it gives an idea of those combats. So, if I know brick style characters have defences of 30, STUN of 60 and REC of 15 and I want a fight potentially over in two turns, opponents need to generate 75 STUN after defences over those two turns. A SPD 4 brick, that hits 50% of the time, will average 4 hits and so needs to do 49 STUN per hit, or about 15D6 attacks. A SPD 8 martial artist, hitting 80% of the time, will average about 10 hits over that time, and so needs to do 38 STUN per hit, or about 11D6. The problem is that EVERY character is a moving part with different combat values for offence and defence, so there is a lot of eye-balling and adjusting. It also assumes everyone stands tie to tie, whaling away until someone falls down,no knock back, movement, etc. But it delivers a baseline. Good rolls or getting a tactical advantage will end fights faster. Getting matched up against someone more vulnerable to your abilities ends fights faster. Lots of dashing about, using cover (and other things that make a fight more interesting) etc will make a fight take longer. So, @Cloppy Clip that is how I set up my guidelines, thinking about what feel I want for the game and matching things to achieve that. The stuff in the book gives you decent starting points but, IME, no more than that. Doc

It doubles each time, geometric rather than arithmetic progression. Otherwise it would be overly expensive to get as fast as many heroes should be in movement.

It is possible. My son tested positive in November and we isolated him in his bedroom, aired the house, wiped surfaces, upped our hand-wash routines, and wiped down everything coming out of his room. His meals were delivered on a tray, he left them outside his door in the evening, we picked them up in the morning (to minimise exposure to air from his room when the door opened). We might have been lucky but we stacked the odds in our favour. Good luck. Doc

For me that particular restriction is sided at someone creating an NND power. When you are creating a power, you should not define the defence as being a lack of something. You should not create a power where lacking sight is a defence (forcing a weakness on an opponent). That does not preclude lacking a defence, sense or something else working as a defence when that would make sense based on the SFX of the power. So being deaf might protect you from a sonic NND where the SFX is maddening whispers but would nit protect you where the SFX is deeadly sonic vibrations. Doc

You know, as entertaining as the discussion is, is the whole thing not covered by a physical limitation. Either "Dies if EGO reduced to zero" or possibly a dependence on positive EGO score. When it goes below zero, they will die unless that EGO recovers to a positive score.