Doc Democracy

I had a lot of fun for about a year. They changed it about two months ago and it changed the gameplay enough to put me off (combined with a focus on Red Dead Online) and I have not been on much.

Tips?  Don't spend money on anything but VIP, and then only if you can log in every day to collect the per Diem benefits.

Focus on the campaigns and ways to earn astral diamonds, you can buy lots of stuff using astral diamonds.  The early levels are MUCH easier if you buy a companion early on.

I had most fun when playing in a party, so much better than solo play.

Doc

39 minutes ago, Duke Bushido said:

 

 

OOhh-- Doc!  

 

Please be careful with that word.  While most english-speaking countries understand what it means, it's a pretty high insult in this one.

 

(No offense taken personally, mind you: some of us _do_ know what it actually means  )

 

Really?  I am completely blind to this. Educate me?

On 11/27/2019 at 7:16 PM, Steve Long said:

Unfortunately setting books just don't sell well enough for us to keep doing them, or to expand on the ones we have -- which is a shame, because I'd love to have the chance to do that.

I guess that is what the Hall of Champions is all about.  Dilettante gamers writing for love rather than to make a living with the time and motivation to fill in the gaps and detail and where any monetary reward is a welcome bonus rather than something that needs to pay the rent...

Also a bonus as nothing there needs to considered "canon".

Doc

Ah!  Spot the man who does not know Anime (me!!).

Did I jump into this before I really knew what it was about?

If we are talking comic book translating into game mechanics then there is a whole new set of issues.  Not least that comic books have no balance requirements beyond the needs of the story as far as the author is concerned.  Players never live according to narrative rules and never only use powers for the good of the story.

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

If that was intended to make me feel better, I'm afraid you missed the mark.

Well I found no corroborating articles.  If you want, I would be content with you ascribing this to my failing mental capacity and that people are actually more moral (or at least come with a higher price ticket).  😬

I think your biggest issue is going to be that the fundamental principles of FATE and HERO pull in different directions.  They rely on different tropes to do their work.

HERO is, at heart, a gamist style game seeking to emulate heroic action.  FATE is a narrativist game, also seeking to emulate heroic fiction.  Saying that, it is obvious you need to focus on the heroic fiction element.

The big issue with the setting is that it will be hard-wired into FATE mechanics and so there is likely to be disconnects in how things get done.  Personally, I think you need to step away from the mechanics of how FATE is doing something and ask yourself what you need to happen in-game.

With "Mystic Eyes of Distortion" you started by asking how to make an attack that cannot miss.  Come to us with how characters would experience this power and ask how HERO would model that.

I am familiar with FATE but not settings, FATE never struck me as a system that used absolutes either, so it might even be worth thinking through where the chance to fail came in FATE....

Doc

23 minutes ago, Chris Goodwin said:

I'm out of reactions for the day.  Someone tag Duke for me!

I got him for ya Chris.  Always happy to rep Duke....

I think this is a thing that could be handled by a campaign setting, if you are the GM.  If the campaign makes a ruling that powers due to being a mutant must take the Unified Power limitation then I would allow the drain to be against mutant powers rather than requiring a variable sfx drain.

It does require the campaign to recognise mutant powers as a thing but it is a pretty clean mechanic.

Doc

21 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

So this person's integrity is for sale for less than $1000.00 a year. That's actually quite sad.

Well, they did polling in the UK (will try to see if I can find the reports) in both the Scottish independence and Brexit referendums.  In both there was a significant number of people who would be convinced to switch their vote if one result provided them with a £500 personal benefit...

Doc

On 11/19/2019 at 12:42 PM, Duke Bushido said:

I just want to know where the "edit your signature line" tools went.  😕

You spend too much time writing posts and not enough exploring the software....

https://www.herogames.com/settings/signature/

😎

Doc

9 hours ago, Surrealone said:

 (I believe there's a term/word for holding others to a standard to which one does not, oneself, conform/adhere.  Hypo...something.  Hrm, if I could only remember the rest of it...)

😤 Not helpful...

7 hours ago, Duke Bushido said:

This works, but so long as we're discussing it, humor me long enough to let me discuss (briefly; I swear!    I'm too tired to go into more depth!) why I don't like it.

 

Only Duke says he is going to brief and means less than 15 paragraphs...  😬

I understand what you mean when you say you don't like mook rules but I think your rhetoric is crooked.  🙂 Your example of two brothers, PI and gang member being treated differently in the rules  requires a twisted application of the rules, you are not a mook because of your occupation, you are a mook because of your importance to the story.

I was essentially showing that, in HERO, it is easy to dial up the lethality or dial it down to suit the needs of the game, and it should not all depend on how killing attacks work.

I can see a street level game where the default 'everyman' has 2x BODY from killing attacks.  I can see that game also having +3D6 to PRE attacks by default if using a killing attack.  Suddenly the presence of men with guns makes a room of people stop and do as it is told.

You might want the PCs to be fragile and allow them to buy off those everyman limitations.  You might decide the PCs and their 'named' opponents buy those things off for free.  It might be that, of the brothers you mention, only one is a PC and the other a DNPC, in which case their susceptibility to killing attacks could be significantly different.

It all requires the GM to have a laser-like focus on the rules of the game he (or she) wants to run. 

In some genres, I want mook rules, I want the players to be able to go into the bar in downtown Hong Kong, machine guns blazing, kind of knowing they will be OK but having to be more circumspect at Professor Lou's lair.  That, to me, is the essence of a cinematic game.  It even works in LotR style games where Legoland might run through a battle slaying orcs by the dozen but spend twice as long duelling with an enemy captain.

As for bloodless games, I too tend away from grimdark, even in my reading material.  I think it needs to be possible in HERO to deliver that and the way of doing it should not simply be reaching for the killing attack.

I think I need to consider whether this is one of the fundamental books HERO is missing.  The book that helps the GM set up the game he wants to run.  Guidance on how to tweak the fundamentals to deliver a range of core gaming experiences.  Maybe I should be thinking of getting that into the new marketplace

Doc

5 hours ago, PhilFleischmann said:

Exactly.  That's my point.  A RAW 1d6 KA does 1 BODY on a bad roll, and 6 BODY on a good roll.  With the 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2 scheme, a 3d6 KA (with this new method) does 3 BODY on a bad roll and 6 body on a good roll.  And that good roll is 1 in 216, as opposed to 1 in 6.

 

It depends on the style of game you're running, but realistically, killing attacks are dangerous and unpredictable.  You don't have much control over exactly how much damage they will do.

 

When I was a young boy, my mama told me, "Son,

Always be a good boy and don't ever play with guns."

Well I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him take about 6-7 BODY, which wouldn't be enough to kill him.

An excellent point.  I do think however that we are looking for the killing attack mechanic to carry a big burden.  I do not think that these changes on their own give us what we want, the question we need to be thinking is whether this is a decent tool for the toolbox.

I think that the proposed method for killing attacks is probably very cinematic.  I like it for that reason.  If you are playing a grittier game then there needs to be more in there, and I think that this is a better platform to build even the grittier elements.

In the Johnny Cash scenario, I would expect that the GM has toned up the gritty aspect of this world.  Mooks have the Phys Lim that they take 2x BODY from killing attacks and the GM uses BODY multipliers on hit locations, so a gut shot is 3x BODY, on top of the 2x for being a mook a saturday night special doing 3D6K (equivalent of the old 1D6K) will average 3 BODY (x6) which is 18 and more than enough to take any mook out.  Even hitting them on the leg (a 1x multiplier) will do, a minimum of 6 BODY, disabled and crying in pain.

The hit locations would add an element of swing to your 1920's gangster games (see what I did there) and the physical limitation allows deadliness to be ramped up even further, without even thinking about defences etc.  It is this level of customisation that should be the selling point of the game system.  Having the core mechanic deliver more predictable damage makes it possible to have the same weapons have wildly different effects on mooks, soldiers and bosses despite them all wearing the same cut of suit...

Doc

11 hours ago, Tywyll said:

 

No, I downvoted your rude and insulting posts. You then just went and downvoted everywhere I disagreed with you, because unlike you, I've not made snide remarks or personal insinuations. So, it's hardly tit-for-tat. You got downvoted for making rude remarks. But hey, you believe what you want to believe and just do you.

11 hours ago, Surrealone said:

Not once did I intentionally target anything rude or insulting at you or your group.  And yes, I absolutely gave as good as I felt I got with downvotes.  As previously noted, if those who initiated the downvotes will retract them, I will, as well.  (I didn't start the downvoting … so I also won't start the retractions.  I like to be consistent.)

I thought our problem in HERO was that we were aging middle-aged and (mostly) men.  Not the target demographic. 

As an interested third party, I think none of the earlier posts warranted downvoting, though they may have warranted noticing in the discussion.

I know I sometimes feel hurt by comments on the forums but I think downvoting only exacerbates disagreements and encourages bad behaviour.

I know I ALWAYS think I am in the right, I expect many opinion givers on the internet feel likewise.  I am asking one of you (if not both) and everyone else to go back and remove all the downvotes. 

Then see if we can discuss like true old gamers who like the same game....

Doc

Gentlemen.  There is a LOT of downvoting going on in this thread, some of it probably provoked by earlier downvotes.  I cannot remember seeing so many especially not in one thread.

Obviously there are no forum rules about use of downvotes but they have mostly been used, in my experience to denote bad behaviour than disagreement.  I have not seen much intemperate language or behaviour so the downvoting, to me, seems OTT.

Could I ask you to go back and think again whether you do actually want to be downvoting posts rather than simply expressing disagreement.

Doc

I have played a LOT in Glorantha, so I am pretty comfortable with the Gods being a daily part of life with a heavy influence on layer actions.

I hanker to develop a game that would feature actual god's stomping about the world, marking their territory and getting involved with PCs. 

I think the trick would be to have a system, open but not necessarily transparent, to the players about how close their actions take them to one or more God's getting involved.  It should be possible to exist without involving yourself in the business of the gods but adventurers should probably be skirting that possibility on a constant basis.

Obviously one God getting involved would increase the chances of other Gods.  Involvement might mean anything from visions at one end to being pulled into the God's spiritual domain for a quick 1to1.

I think it could be a lot of fun.

Doc

42 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

If it renders Entangles and Barriers generally useless, then I would classify it as "a terrible thing". 

There is a saying where I grew up, " If my auntie had balls she'd be my uncle".  You say "if" it renders Entangles and Barriers generally useless.  Does it?  Does it do so any more than armour piercing?  Would it not if a hardened Entangle nullified the killing advantage in the same way as it nullifies armour piercing? 

Obviously any change has ripple effects.  You argued hard that this would create a major change and then argued against mitigating the change because if it does not change things, why bother.

And yes, there are meta rules that could boil the system down to relatively few moving parts but, by that time, it is likely to have become MUCH more abstract and almost narrative.  All that is being suggested is removing a second damage system with different rolls and rules.  This streamlines things and means people have one less "thing" to learn.

Doc

9 minutes ago, Gnome BODY (important!) said:

See two posts above yours.  Causes problems with Entangles, Foci, Automatons, etc. 

 

Unrelated, but I was playing with dice and found that "2s don't count BODY, 5's count 2 BODY, 6's count 3 BODY" turns 12d6 Normal into almost exactly the same curve as 4d6.  Not remotely practical, but fun to know. 

As I note above, I don't think that is as much a problem as a feature.  I WOULD make killing an advantage like other things and it would deliver advantageous results under the right circumstances.

Doc

52 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

So a 12d6 KA will average 18 BOD.  OK - I'll toss one in my Multipower so I can blow away Barriers, Entangles and Automatons. 

Is that a terrible thing?  It would be for this reason I think it warrants an advantage but you are now in a position where one kind of attack reliably delivers more BODY per DC. 

If the only drawback is that it might be another blade for the multipower Swiss army knife then I don't see that as anything different from the current position where a player puts in NND, AP, affect desolid, etc attacks.  It simply provides another option.

Doc

Hmm.  Would the idea behind this be better if, as well as applying the damage against resistant defences, you also bump BODY damage by the number of dice and reduce STUN by the same, so for 6D6 killing attack, you count BODY normally then add 6, count STUN normally and subtract 6.

This ensures slightly weaker defences versus increased BODY damage which is the whole purpose of a killing attack.

Doc

No way to combine them?  Three heroes offer more than one does...

5 hours ago, Usagi said:

Guppy will bleed out and die in 1.4 minutes, during which time that mortal wound will have no more significant effect.

Just reading it again.  Guppy has just 84 seconds to live...how much more significant does it have to be!  🙂 If the dying character is not heroic, that is maybe three frantic attempts to save their life...no agent or minor NPC is going to do anything else.

37 minutes ago, Usagi said:

So it's better to be Stunned and reduced to 0 STUN than it is to be Stunned and reduced to 1 STUN.  You will actually recover faster from being Stunned and KO'd than just Stunned.

One key difference of hitting 0 STUN is that after your recovery and your STUN is back to 10 or 11, your END will also be 10 or 11, unlike stunned which does not affect your END.

Doc

Quote

The International Association for the Development of Apnea, which records all freediving world records, does not allow the use of pure oxygen before a static apnea attempt. The current non-oxygen aided records stand at 11 minutes, 35 seconds for men (Stéphane Mifsud, 2009) and 8 minutes, 23 seconds for women (Natalia Molchanova, 2011).

https://www.outsideonline.com/1784106/how-long-can-humans-hold-their-breath

I reckon 2 minutes in a cinematic game looks reasonable, if not slightly stingy.

Doc

I think the book should mention/ promote the cards, give some pointers on their use.  Begin building a gateway for new groups to use the rules.