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Doc Democracy

HERO Member
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Everything posted by Doc Democracy

  1. 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
  2. I have read it and read it and still cannot work out what word "pedometer" was supposed to be....
  3. You considered drafting as a text then cutting and pasting into the board editor?
  4. $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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. 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.
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 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.
  12. I see this, I guess that I forget that I use reputation as an evreyman quite heavily in my games, where you might burn Heroism and the results of that boost your reputation. But that feels like double dipping. As I said, I like the idea of used Heroism becoming experience Points, if you burn a lot of heroism on a massive victory, perhaps some of those points should be used to bolster reputation until you have time to build your Heroism again. It is kind of the opposite of the points you make below, is it really heroic to bully your way using Heroism to win? 🙂 Circular argument, I know, and I will need to put some thought into this. Ideally, I agree with you. I think I like the instant gratification of stuff though. I don't think that is what I am saying, if you are at no risk, then you are obviously not heroic but I think players welcome signposts from the GM of just how much risk they are taking. Will think more on what I am talking about though. I can see the risk you highlight. I agree, positive reinforcement instead of punishment beatings...
  13. I think it is the job of the system to encourage genre play, I don't think there should be a serious tension between playing the game and emulating the genre. That is why I want a mechanism rewarding heroic behaviour baked right into the game. I reckon you slightly underestimate the tendency of players to want more of stuff. If I use heroism as a measure in the game, enough will be seeking to accumulate the "good thing". 🙂 I want them to have a significant effect and, should a player, or group, want to spend their heroism, then I think they should find it aids them to waltz through a difficult/impossible scenario. That would fix the value of heroism in the game and, hopefully, further incentivise heroic action (to accumulate more points). Yeah, this is probably also key. I think that I need to ensure that there is lots of narrative use, where social interactions with NPCs becomes easier the higher the heroism of a character is. When Captain Whitebread, with heroism of over 20 asks the general to trust him with the nuclear missiles needed to defeat BigBadGuy he should be significantly more likely to say yes than when StreetSlasher whose heroism bumps along in single figures asks the same. Every interaction should promote high heroism. Even bad guys will preferentially attack low heroism characters (you put down the most dangerous opponent first). Players should be getting a clear message from the game. A key consideration for me would be what bad actions do to heroism. I am not inclined to take things away from players, that is not fun. What I might need is a tally of bad actions (I need a good name for this), but when you actively act in selfish or dangerous manners, you begin to build up a karmic debt (which might actually be a good name). Future heroic action would pay off that debt before it once again begins to add to the Heroism characteristic. I think there might also be a need for the game to alert players when they should be accumulating and when they should be spending. In TORG, the GM declares certain scenes to be standard and others to be dramatic. In a standard scene players would know they are safer to risk less optimal actions to build Heroism and in dramatic scenes they may want to consider the use of Heroism as outcomes are more critically important to the adventure. Going back to TORG, I got disillusioned with that kind of thing. If I used my points to "win" the scenario, and another player did not, then my character progressed less quickly. It was a perverse outcome. However, I like the idea that spent Heroism become experience points. If you simply hoard it, you get passive benefits; if you spend it, you get temporary in-game benefit and potential character growth. Doc
  14. OK. Am still putting together bits and thinking about this. I know I want a HERO player to recognise it's bones, but a novice would only see a game. One element of Golden Age that is not inherent in HERO is two-gisted heroism. This is not the 1970s comics code authority goody two shoes but that feeling of fighting for want is right. I am thinking of adding a new characteristic called Heroism. It would be a dynamic thing. You can gain Heroism by suffering bad things for heroic reasons (taking a hit to save an innocent, intervening when it would be sensible to stay hidden, leaving an opponent alive when it would be more convenient to kill them). You can spend Heroism much like you spend Hero points. In the meantime it provides help in being heroic, when resisting mind control to do something evil or bad, you add your Heroism to your EGO. When resisting presence attacks, or succumbing to fear attacks when protecting the weak and/or innocent, Heroism can add to Presence. Anything, essentially, that makes a Hero a HERO. 🙂 I think I see it very much trying to make Hero points much more fundamentally part of the character (they have always felt a bit added on). I also wanted them to have a passive effect that would drive heroic play (putting a bit of narrative in the game). Thoughts?
  15. We played a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen style game where I asked players to pick an actor who would play the character if it was made into a film (and put those headshots on the character sheets). It actually made visualising the characters easier for everyone (though I got tired of casting the bad guys). 🙂 Doc
  16. OK, I bought it as soon as I saw the news it was live. Not used it though? Anyone given it a road-test? What are the high and low lights? Doc PS: Why isn't there notifications on the site to tout it?
  17. My work goes slowly but I intend to deliver some GM help. I want encounters to be more than just fighting. Spectaculars sets up a scene with things to do, both for the heroes and the villains. It means there is more to do than just whale on the villains (and vice versa) and it puts boundaries on how long a fight will go on. So, what are secondary aims? Secure items, rescue bystanders, stabilise the environment, protect secret ID, deal with environmental issues. What else? And what does this mean and how does it work? Well,I am thinking that I will make heavy use of change environment. I will use distraction style secondary aims to reduce chances to hit until it is dealt with. I am hoping that I can encourage encounters that demand wider use of skills or minor powers, a little bit mire narrative. I am also thinking about setting up everyman-style contacts and reputation. Dealing with these secondary issues should make changes to these things, hopefully driving greater engagement with the setting and NPCs and to drive heroic play. Doc
  18. My secret ID is safe then! Being a Parliamentary officer was very useful though, I was in and out ten minutes after arriving at Westminster.
  19. I only went because 1-my wife wanted to and 2-as a Parliamentary officer, I did not gave to use the public queue. My wife was delighted we got caught on camera. I am the one in the mask...
  20. No offence, and I would not be surprised if there were not many refrains of God save the Queen Long live the King appearing on social media. Personally, I am a republican and feel very few emotions about this. Much more concerned about working out how it will impact my work over the next two weeks.
  21. I think the salutation would be God save the King. We never ask God to save a Monarch that has died.
  22. Sounds like an everyman power pool with no conscious control. Every power in the pool would require an expendable focus which would provide access to a power for a limited period of time. 🙂 The key is how they work in the game and I think that would be down to you. My suggestion above would mean that every character in the game would have the potential of additional power but no direct way of accessing this. The no conscious control aspect takes away the ability of the player to control and manipulate the pool. If you come up with the crest system, then owning a particular crest would "activate" the power pool to do something particular. I think, beyond this, there is no need for any additional HERO mechanic. Doc
  23. My intention is to include at least three or four adventures from what was my last campaign with my home group, one that explains the dynamics, sets up superherodom in Europe at this time, suggests the origins of superpowers in this world and how they will interface with the war, ancient magic and modern science. (No lack of ambition, just the talent and willpower to deliver on it! 😉)
  24. Spend a bit of time to provide pared back character sheets with good descriptions of powers in words rather than numbers...
  25. I want a pretty four-colour game, though pre CCA as I want to learn into the WWII aspect. I think the UK setting needs to be significantly different from US superheroes, more directly involved much earlier in the conflict. However, am digging into the three Golden Age supplements I have to take what I can. Simpler builds, more one-dimensional powers are what I am looking at. Should also have a more detailed focus on UK politics of the time (am considering a bit of a rehabilitation of Neville Chamberlain).
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