Doc Democracy

The Grey Bastards by Jonathan French is a good book. Different take on half orcs. Interesting because the author ensures the narrative is reliably unreliable (the story is told within the knowledge and biases of the protagonist). My only criticism is that the capability of the orc antagonists seems to vary depending on story needs a bit too much. Doc

That makes no sense biologically. So, there is a widespread feature of coronaviruses that immunity gained is not retained (simply because the virus changes its antigens reasonably quickly). As for killing you the second time, if you have had a bad case that leaves your lungs damaged then ANY subsequent respiratory disease is more likely to kill you. Doc

I grew up in Scotland, sunlight was at a premium...

I used a light box* to draw on paper laid over the templates. Works well. Doc * A large tupperware box with an LED light underneath it!

To me, this is where one book games would have dual benefit. If the toolkitting info was online somewhere, then not only does everyone get a game they can play straight off the shelf, world builders (and proto world builders) can see how a published game went about it. If I was HERO, and publishing these games, I would have a podcast with the designer, talking about the book and how they used the toolkit to achieve their aims. This would be decent advertising for the game but also provide oxygen for the toolkit itself. Doc

check the conversation. Unsurprisingly, strong feelings about this. 🙂

Was listening to the Chief Scientific Advisor on the radio this morning. I think his message was that the big thing about coronavirus is that it is new. It is not particularly deadly and only to those towards the end of their allotted span. What it does not have is any checks to its spread except opportunity. In most cases folk have immunity from closely related strains and from vaccinations which slow the spread in most cases to a dead stop. The interesting factoid he gave was that, if this pans out into widespread infection then 50% of the UK would contract the virus in a three week period and 90% within a nine week period. It is that level of disruption with between 50 and 90% of the whole population sick at the same time that is the concern. Doc

Well, I do something different for every game I run really. Have a look at the content I have uploaded, there are several examples of character sheets and how I present them. The most relevant is a collection of different files. You will notice that I uploaded them all as pdfs.

My first question as a GM would be, if these powers are unconnected, how are they drawing on a central pool of charges?? Doc

I think the Hall of Champions would be energised with a slew of One Book Games for which folk could build things for, better to have a slew of micro-transactions than a sluggish flow of larger ones. I was not disagreeing with you. Even if HERO does well wit this, it is not going to compete with the 800lb gorilla in the market. I want to see more players. I want to see many more new faces on these boards coming to talk about how to do things. I want to be able to go to conventions and see people excited about running (and playing) the newest HERO game. I dream of comic book writers looking for an opportunity to write HERO adventures. 🙂 What sort of game would Alan Moore be able to write for us?

It is true, you can ask for all kinds of things. HERO has its own limitations. the difference is that with HERO those limitations are all out there to be seen. Doc

It is one thing to "allow" customisation (not sure how they could stop me once I had the rulebooks bought!) and another to facilitate it. Yup, D&D has books you can buy with other pre-prepared stuff in it. What if I wanted a magic missile that did 1D6 damage? or 1d4+2 damage? What level would the spell be? It is not truly customisable as there are far too many black boxes. Even though I could customise it, it was purely eyeballing based on experience. HERO provides a truly customisable experience as the black boxes have mostly been removed. Most systems have their own black boxes that limit the ability of the GM to really customise options and there One Book Games that we are talking about would introduce their own black boxes. What would make them different is that the engine within which they were designed is open source and replicable. Indeed, there should also be a design sheet somewhere online that laid out the detail of those black boxes (even if the majority of people never looked or even wanted to look inside). I would have regular reminders in such books to players and GMs that all the features of the game could be modified using the HERO Toolkit if they wanted to change their game to better suit their group. Doc

The humanity!! Did noone alert you to the downsides of this marriage arrangement? 😄 Doc

There is no similar analogy that covers sport and sex...Meatloaf has made that very well known (even if we are slightly vague on how far first and second base actually represents... 🙂

I think this is important to understand. HERO, with a decent GM who has the time and inclination will often be a great choice for a genre, especially if the group already know the basics. It will rarely be the best choice for a genre where someone has crafted a game to deliver that specific genre. It will almost never be a good choice out of the box. HERO is the cautious partner looking for commitment before getting to second base. Many Indies now are the smoking hot person at the club that takes you home with the promise of the night of your life. Obviously some of those don't deliver on anything beyond anticipation. And with RPGs you probably don't have to worry about catching something that will stay with you for the rest of your life, or the risk of an ongoing financial commitment (though as I write this, the potential is there... 😄 ). What we need is enough folk that see what the potential might be if you take your time and get past second base... Doc

That would be BadWrongFun Duke, you gotta get the components in the right order WITH the capitalisation or you are not saying it right. 😄 Doc

This year thing may have come from me. I bought Champions in 1982 at the behest of my friends who wanted to play superheroes. I read it again and again. It was at least a year before I felt competent to run a game. So while I did not study for a year, I was reading it and trying to get it in my head for a full year. Even that small book caused me to hesitate and delay. I was 16, prime time for buying and playing new games. I had run both D&D and Runequest games by that time. Doc

I have seen a lot of games in recent times that are essentially extended adventure packs. They use a ruleset that folk are broadly familiar with but tweaked for the game. It looks to me that the expectation is that you can be up and running quickly, there is enough in the "game" to run five or six sessions. At the end of that the GM might go on to do his own, or he might go out and buy a different game, that would also be good for five or six sessions. At a price of $50-60, this is exceptionally good value. For two nights entertainment for two people, this would be good value. As such, I reckon that kind of book would be a decent model. A full game, powered by HERO. Essentially a taster of the kind of game you "could" build yourself. This month we play Teen Titans, next month we play A Team, the month after we play Firefly. Each one, fundamentally the same system with the same gameplay (3D6, skills, damage resolution) but with differences. It is a long term way to sell product, each game has a few gaming sessions built in to utilise the game to its best effect. It provides an experience to the time poor and novelty seekers. It provides insight and example to those system masters who own the Big Blue Books... Brian's book sounds, to me, something along those lines. Doc

This is a political thread and this is a political story. Small p politics though rather than party politics. What a hero this guy is... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-51332811 Doc

My thought would be to provide the uninitiated with something they could buy and play without having to invest in the power rules (everything else is easy). It would seek to have a proportion of those that enjoy the game, to want to houserule it to expand the options, drawing them therefore into the HERO fold. It might be, if you had a suite of such products, people would play a slew of such things and never want to look into the black box. Ultimately it would be an easy step for groups who do not have a HERO afficionado to be able to play a HERO game.

I remember not finding a game in the original book. That's what took me so long to run a game. I was completely lost. I think that lost feeling is where most of the additional text has come from - the accumulated requests of "how do I...." that have come in over the decades, the arguments over abstruse points that caused havoc in some gaming groups and not in others. A desire to provide all the widgets that people want. Obviously the size of a book makes a difference and obviously a generic system is even more abstruse than one obviously aimed at playing superheroes (as Champions was). HERO went a particular direction when it decided to go generic and really be a play what you want system. I think the biggest issue now is that entrypoint. I would be all for Champions being a selected version of the current toolkit. All you need to play a superhero game (at a Teen Titans style game). It would provide the settings for the game at that point and pointers on how to very it. It would probably have a cut down skill list and be missing a chunk of other things. [Duke just posted while I am typing - gonna post before I read - too much invested in this line of thought!!] That would be accompanied by similar (but different) selections for Fantasy HERO, Star HERO etc. These should better enable a game to be started and for the GM to pick up the HERO Advanced GM Toolkit, which would be the full rules (possibly stripped down to rules with very little in the way of explanations and setting advice) for those GMs that really want to add more than the genre game provided them. I would even like very specific games. All Flesh Must be Eaten style, one book, very constrained elements and template characters with a bit of customisability and the necessary elements of playing the game. That would allow a group to be up and running after the GM had taken the book hoe and looked it over in a couple of days. I would want all these things to be playable for the time constrained and the HERO uninterested with the idea that those select few that chafe at the edges, wanting to know how to do something that "is not in the rules" to go looking for that holy grail of the Advanced GM Toolkit. The thing that would allow you to do mods on the game you enjoyed playing and add a demonic overlay to the zombie game, or a little bit of magic. To me, HERO has NEVER given me a game. I have ALWAYS had to go digging for it and that, I think, constrained the mass appeal of what is really a pretty simple game to play. Doc

I started in 1981. It took me a year from buying the book to running a game. I do not think there is any less of a game in 6E than there was in that early, black and white, poorly typeset book back then. Obviously I would have been more intimidated by 6E but I think there is more help in 6E to set benchmarks (I am just well past wanting to read that many words because I have enough experience to do it in my head).

Amazing how much play I have had with something that has no game in it....

My favourite bit actually...

Yup, as an internal devotee, it sounds good. I wonder how it plays to someone with no knowledge. Market testing is tough, and expensive!! 🙂