Doc Democracy

I did not play games that were nothing but combat. I am saying that other games now deliver more game out of combat and seek to do more to drive genre emulation in combat than HERO does. I can do things to make HERO deliver more but it does not do these things out of the box. I can throw out house rules and tell players what I want out of the game. That does not help new groups and new players. I have played lots of Champions in my time and, while playing round with these other systems, there are things, out of the box, that feel comic book in ways HERO does not. I can see players, driven by the system, play in a more superheroic way. I am not telling you I feel my HERO games are lacking, I am saying there are lots of places where I need to put in effort and in these other games, I put in much less for the outcomes I want. In short, the system supports the gameplay better.

Not sure where to go with that. 🙂 "I think you've suffered from bland campaigns" kind of writes off my experience with the game I've played for about 40 years... Anyway, I think I actually said HERO was indeed ahead of the game in 1981 with its disadvantages scheme. Those have, as someone said upthread (Scott I think), been diluted over time and I would say they are no longer groundbreaking. I agree, complications encourage roleplaying and interaction. These other systems drive interaction, mandate roleplaying, bake in genre conventions. Of course I am tempted, I appreciate the use of evolving gaming "technology" to deliver better gaming experiences. You asked for examples of what I meant, I gave them. I am not judging your games, would be nice if you did not leap to judging mine. Doc

Well, there is the soap opera element of comics, a team book is often focussed on the personal dynamics of the team with each other and organisations. I think HERO was ahead of its time with this stuff but games like Masks and other narrative systems bake it into the system rather than the added on complications HERO uses. I also like the RYG system of Sentinels that mean some of the more potent powers don't become available until health is low. It shows how comic book characters don't often reach for the big guns first thing in a fight. Spectaculars leans heavily into the flavour of the powers rather than the nuts and bolts. It sets up scenes with different objectives rather than focussing on taking the opponent STUN to below zero. Lots of gameplay stuff that bake in genre emulation. Doesn't mean you cannot do that stuff in HERO but the game doesn't push you into them. I find, in HERO, players often fall into playing the numbers rather than playing their powers. These games incentivise players to think about their powers, to engage with the broader NPC cast and to think more broadly than just fighting the villains.

I almost agree with you. But it is character creation that has been reviewed, deconstructed, balanced etc etc etc. The game system itself is pretty much the same skeleton it was way back in the 1980s. I love HERO, I think in these terms but I am seduced by the clever ways other games have of emulating comics in ways poor old 20th century HERO cannot. There are dimensions that it does not address. I am in the games powered by HERO camp, so I think each and every one of these games could innovate with the game system to achieve desirable genre emulation. As long as every game had a designers booklet (freely available online or sold as a Designer's Insight booklet) to show how the toolbox was used, bent and added to, it fits with the HERO philosophy and folk like us could open up the bonnet, rip out a few bits, bend a few more, IF WE WANTED TO, to achieve good games at the table.

You say you dont need a VTT but there is no reason you could not use a VTT to accomplish this. With the work that has been done to make HERO playable on Roll20, the base level membership of Roll20 should allow you to discuss, share maps, roll dice and play asynchronously. It actually means that Roll20's biggest weakness - its audio and video - vanishes. While it would allow real-time play, there is no need to use it that way and I think it could provide a decent platform for play by post... I would even use the bulletin board attached to the game to do a lot of the discussions - no need to even fire up the game to do those discussions and you get decent threaded conversations. Doc

Thanks for the replies guys. Your responses are what I have done in the past, just say no, put strict limits on SPD (along with probably more lax elements of other things). I was just thinking that the joy of the SPD chart is in all those phase interactions, if there is no real difference in SPDs, then we might as well not have it. @unclevladmentioned that he might manipulate END costs - go for 15 STR, +3D6 HA and then martial arts - that is almost what I am expecting - greater diversity in design, more thought about what is there and then the system forcing him to think hard about END and when to take rests and when to push himself closer to the limits. There is a lot more fun there. With the villain, I actually thought I had underpowered him. The heroes were all reasonably experienced and I had only thrown an extra 150 points on him - against 5 heroes, that seemed fine. It is amazing how long it took them to ensure he was engaged on every segment to reduce his chance of taking a recovery. I was so proud of them when they worked that out!! 😄 Happy for more commentary though.

I have been wrestling with the Speed characteristic. I love the speed chart, I love the idea of it but it has, increasingly, looked to me as something broken in the system. My first insight to that was building a speed 12 villain, he was not massively powerful, nor had great defences but he, uniquely at the time, single-handedly held of the whole player team without breaking sweat. I have looked at a number of things, I restrict the players wanting to increase their speed stat, showing them other ways to achieve the same effect, I make compacts, showing them how many additional actions they will get against 100% normals and 90% of villains just by increasing SPD 1 over what I now call the Campaign SPD. I would like some system correction in the rules though, to allow them to design outside the guidelines. My solution? Linking SPD to Reduced END. In more detail. I set the campaign SPD to 5. If Johnny Unconventional decides to make his Flash character SPD 12 because anything else "doesn't fit the vision" then the mechanical impact will be that buying reduced END on his powers will cost more. I will have a small table. If your SPD is one over the campaign SPD then no change. For every +1 beyond that, you will add +1/4 to the advantage cost. So in the game with a Campaign SPD of 5, reducing END by a half, for a SPD 12 character would be a prohibitive ×3.25 of the normal cost, you would be better going straight to x3.5 and taking 0 END. Anyone else sought to address the SPD issue with anything more than kind words and GM fiat on character policing?

Then I guess it's the last time I'll be involved in these threads. I obviously don't understand the basics.

I said I was not going to engage but I don't want to seem like I am ignoring you. There is nothing in the rules that say a spell has to use gestures or incantations. That is all that was said to begin with - the system as written is silent on whether spells need gestures and/or incantations (though it does provide a lot of examples with that kind of thing). It is NOT a RAW answer to tell someone that you can interrupt a spell by undertaking actions that trigger disadvantages that may be built into the spell. It is correct to tell someone that the first thing they need to do is assure themselves (with the GM for a game) that spells in the game reliably utilise those disadvantages in spells. It is because HERO is so fluid that you cannot make assumptions on how things are done in any particular game. I have, admittedly only run one Fantasy HERO game in all the years that I have used the system and the magic users in that game varied in the disadvantages they took on spells - there was no overarching spell system - the players made up their own spells and while the majority of them used gestures or incantations a substantial minority did not - simply because the players did not want their spells to be uninterruptible... That was NOT house-ruled magic, it was using HERO as written in the rules... Doc

Have you considered Duplication? Build Koniji as a battlesuit character who has access to a cool computer AI (which can all be special effects for additional senses, +INT and levels with knowledge skills). When duplicated you have a normal woman with a ship run by an AI... Doc

Just to be fair, here is an example of British police harassing a man who was actually on his way home after an interview about police institutional racism... https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jul/04/police-smash-car-window-ryan-colaco-tv-interview-racism

You are almost 100% right and that is indeed what would be the case in most stories. There are always exceptions though... I was thinking of a flywheel shield, it looks like an enormous cog. The mechanism needs wound to start it spinning, which gives no additional protection but the stored energy is good for sending to smaller cogs flying out to hit someone. Rather than solid cogs, a more fragile disk can be used which breaks into a small cloud of brass projectiles. 🙂 Doc

I am reasonably optimistic about deaths. Even if we have not gotten better at avoiding the virus, we have gotten a lot better at diagnosing, triaging and treating those suffering from it . Doctors have learned that it is not all about intubation and oxygen. All the other factors are being discovered and managed as well. We are bringing the heavy weight of scientific analysis and treatment to bear, that is what makes our civilisation so great. Don't see the crystals and homeopathic potions making huge inroads on treatment plans. Doc

This is common to all of our long-standing democracies. I think voting can feel pointless (and especially seems so) if that is all you do. If more effort was made to get people engaged with the actual process and party dynamics, true mass membership parties, then things would change. I blame Mazlo. For too many people, for too long our basic needs have been met and we have had no real incentive to go looking for power and wealth to flow down through society, we got lazy. If we want things to change, switching systems might help but it is getting folk to really engage that will make the difference. Wish I knew how to do that... 😞 Doc

I think you will find that the system allows corruption. It would not happen if people were more engaged. Ultimately it is neglect that breeds corruption.

Not sure - if I can manipulate probabilities then I am doing something, luck stuff happens to me randomly...there is IMO (obviously oh so humble) a distinct difference. 😄 Doc

I think this, in itself, tells you that the luck mechanic, RAW, should not be allowed as a major 60 point power. You can use it as a starting point for a luck based character or as a supplement to a variety of other mechanics with luck as SFX. I think luck is a difficult SFX to roleplay and if it is consistent, then it is not luck as we know it, it is probability enhancement. Doc

That is a counsel of despair Badger, and not likely to get something better in 2024. If folk don't like either option and wait for something better, nothing is likely to turn up. If people counsel despair, nothing is likely to change. Democracy, like a vegetable garden, takes work to make it flourish. Voting at every election is like seeding the plot and ignoring it until harvest time. It is unlikely you will go back and find any tomatoes, potatoes or carrots, just a bunch of nettles and weeds. We have gotten lazy, expecting the system to throw up good, principled candidates when experience is telling them that is not the way to get elected. What is needed is not new systems or rules but a deeper engagement by the electorate. of course, it might take a new system to garner that engagement. We get the politicians we deserve. Doc

OMG, there is a tag I have not seen in years. Welcome back Haven Walnut, even if it was simply to sympathise with Cancer. 🙂

They used to say that you could not tax income. Until the Government needed money and income was the best way to raise that. With enough incentive the Government can find a way to tax things - even if that means that a proportion of the stock accrues to the Treasury until such a time as it is sold and becomes part of the public purse (very simplistic, I know, but when capital accrues and when folk hide their wealth in stocks and shares a government will at some point come after it).

Oklahoma woman shot while trying to remove Nazi flag

The companies were almost forced in to that because those countries were turning a blind eye to people producing generics out of copyright. It is possible the same will happen here and Gilead (I think I might change my name if I were them) are simply cashing in before the inevitable forced charity occurs...

I think the article gives an idea of that I reckon the cost, with the company waiving any profit (but covering costs such as scientists wages), might be somewhere between $600 and $700....

Duke? You want to look and edit again? I think Brian is right, you are in dire need of a rest. 😄 Doc