Derek Hiemforth

Originally posted by Squid

Ooooh, I like that. Evil of a new level. Of course, the advantage to not having the Transform is it makes people more prone to violence. If the goal is to actually destroy the world, people being unwilling to kill each other screws things up. I say no Transform. The world ends quicker if people are willing to nuke each other for food.

True, but the original point was to destroy it by utopia... not necessarily destroy it quickly. Immortality and universal harmony sound very nice... until you combine them with no population control and a limited amount of room and resources.

Originally posted by Squid

You've then got worldwide immortality and no fear of disease, so the only way people die is either by accident or violence. Or, more likely, starving to death, because there ain't people dying, but there sure as heck are people breeding.

Add to this a big Transform to give the whole world a Psych Lim that they fervently believe in the same religion. Doesn't matter which one, as long as you pick one that disallows birth control. Now, not only will fewer people be dying by violence (because they all largely share the same values and worldview), but the overpopulation problem will become even more dire, as the populace can neither die of old age or infirmity, nor slow the rate of population expansion by birth control.

You can also mine other games for material, of course. Possibilities include SJG's GURPS Cliffhangers, ICE's Pulp Adventures, White Wolf's Adventure!, Flying Buffalo's Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes, West End Games' The World of Indiana Jones, Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, and Otherworld Creations' Forbidden Kingdoms.

Originally posted by tiger

You forgot to list the Adventurer's Clubs 1-27 on your list

No I didn't. The Adventurer's Clubs aren't books; they're magazines. If I list them, then I would logically also need to start trying to find and list Hero-related articles in all magazines, and that's a hornet's nest I don't want to get into.

No, there was no Star Hero for 4th Edition. The only Star Hero prior to the current one was a standalone game (in the style of Danger International or Justice, Inc.) that would have corresponded to the 3rd Edition of the system rules. It was the last major book to be published before 4th Edition was released, which drastically affected its usefulness, IMO. You bought the book, and then it was obsolete just a couple of months later.

Mine was actually an out-of-game slip of the tongue. I had created a new character -- an android whose abilities centered around communication with and control of machines. His name was going to be "Interface."

 

So I'm telling my buddies about this new character, and the words are tumbling out faster than my brain can keep them organized. I tried to say, "My new character is an android named Interface." It came out, "My new character is an anderfish."

 

Somehow, the character was never played.

There's a ton of possible answers. The real question isn't how to make the target sick. The real question is what do you want the sickness to do? If you want it to kill them, then it might be a Gradual Effect Killing Attack. If you want it to make them stand motionless clutching their stomach, it may be a DEX Drain. If you want it to disfigure them, it may be a COM Drain.

 

Start from the effect and work back to the cause.

Originally posted by Keneton

Old Man: How you get this +3 DCV thing by asuming the extra phase is used dodging. . .

Can you knock someone out dodging? Dodging doesnt win fights.

He's saying that if your SPD is higher than theirs, you can Dodge on all of theirPhases and still smack them in your remaining one(s).

IMO, there's nothing wrong with the Speed Chart. When issues of metagaming and predictability arise, it's due to people using player knowledge vs. character knowledge, and not roleplaying their characters faithfully. The characters don't know that Segment 12 is always the best time for a Pushed Haymaker.

 

We've tried a couple of alternative methods for SPD, and found that they were always worse than the Speed Chart.

 

We tried the straight "roll 1d12 and if you roll your SPD or less, you act" method. The problem was that you could have Turns where a character with a 4 SPD got 10 Phases, and Turns where a character with a 7 SPD got 1 Phase. And while this of course didn't happen every Turn, it happened way more often than we wanted to see.

 

So then we tried Steve Perrin's version, where you add 1 to the roll every time you miss. The problem with that one (especially if you're not expecting it) is that it drives up the amount of actions you get. If you've got a 6 SPD, then under that system you will (over time) be going much more than 6 times per Turn. This happens because there will be plenty of times when you make the roll without the bonuses, and when you do, there is no penalty that corresponds with the bonus. In other words, there's a bonus to help you go next time when you fail a roll, but there's no penalty to help keep you from going next time when you succeed with a roll. So your 6 SPD will end up behaving as more like an 8 SPD or something.

 

Also, both dice methods negatively impacted character cooperation. It's nearly impossible to do things like Coordinated Attacks, because you have no idea when your teammate will get an action again; you may end up standing there for half a Turn waiting for them to be able to coordinate with you.

 

We also tried rolling the Phases at the beginning of the Turn and noting when they would occur, so that you always went a number of Phases equal to your SPD, but which Phases varied from Turn to Turn. The problem with that one was that it didn't really solve any of the supposed problems with the Speed Chart. You still knew in advance when you were going to have actions... it just wasn't the same from Turn to Turn.

 

In the end, we realized that the Speed Chart wasn't really the problem.

Originally posted by Steve Long

As Keith mentions, Derek's game was great. Anytime I have the chance to give Sinestro a Batarang lobotomy, I'm havin' fun.

 

*blush*

 

Thanks, guys! I always love doing CotSF, and I'm really glad it's so well received. Since this last run, I've got a couple of ideas that I hope might help make it even better, so we'll see how they go. {evil grin}

Originally posted by Chaosliege

Was there a large turnout of Hero gamers? My friends and I went to Orccon last year and there was only one guy there running a Hero game

 

There were 17 official convention games using Hero System, and of course many, many more in open gaming. There were (by a fairly wide margin) more Hero System games than any other system except D&D3.

Without meaning to sound like a jerk, the best advice I can offer about a Rule of X is, "Don't use one." No formula will prevent all abuse, and any formula will end up excluding something that actually isn't abusive. You don't need a Rule of X. You need a GM who has a clear vision of how he or she wants things to relate and work in their game world, and players who want to participate in that. If you have those, you're set.

 

This doesn't mean that all "caps" are bad. But trying to have a single "master formula" that balances everything has never worked, in my experience.

It has potential, but I think it would need to be handled carefully. For any Disad that has a commonality modifier, the value will change from campaign to campaign; not all things are equally common in all campaigns. You wouldn't want to see players insisting on getting "x" number of points "because the book said that's how much its worth."

 

I think a more useful and interesting approach would be a comprehensive look at what kind of obstacles heroes in fiction often face, how these classic themes translate into Hero mechanics, and how GMs and players can decide on how common and severe they are.

5th Edition Ultimate Martial Artist is of similar quality to 4th(unsurprising, since it's the same author). It's more focussed on crunchy martial arts rules goodness since it doesn't have to contain any sample campaign material. There are a fair number of new options in it. If martial artists play much of a role in your games, I definitely recommend it.

 

The 5th Edition Hero System Bestiary is vastly improved over 4th. No comparison. The write-ups are more extensive and useful, the art is much better... it's just a much better product overall.

 

5th Edition Ninja Hero is probably more useful to running martial arts games than 4th was, simply because there's so much more material in it. The 4th Edition book was shorter, and then on top of that, it had to contain all the martial arts rules stuff that's now split out into The Ultimate Martial Artist. So the new Ninja Hero probably has five times as much genre material in it. And Michael Surbrook clearly knows his stuff. Aaron Allston is a tough act to follow, but Susano doesn't suffer in the comparison, IMO. And again, better art, better production values, etc. etc.

I should have added that, of course, it is possible for an organization to be paranoid enough that all of its members have both Subject To Orders and Watched. (Intelligence agencies might fall into this category for example, as might criminal agencies like VIPER).

Another spin would be to say that the Social Lim generally represents the restrictions of being in a hierarchically-structured group, and adding a Watched means that your "chain of command" or what have you is monitoring you more closely than normal for some reason.

 

For example, all police officers might have Subject To Orders, while only those suspected of being loose cannons or bribe-takers have Watched by police. All of the Greek gods might have Subject to Orders (from Zeus), while only Ares has Watched by Zeus (because he isn't trusted), and so on.

Our group has used some special cards for this sort of thing. They're just done up in a word processor and printed on cardstock.

 

Usually, a small number of cards are given out at the start of a campaign, and future cards have to be earned. You earn cards for things like particularly heroic actions, outstanding roleplaying, unusually clever tactics or problem-solving, and so on. They're given aside from and in addition to regular experience points. Each card is only good once; when played, it's turned over to the GM.

 

The cards exist metagame... on the player level, not the character level. So if a player has characters in more than one campaign using the same type of cards, he or she can use their cards with any characters, not just the character they were playing with when they earned the cards. Players can also trade cards, or give cards to other players if they wish.

 

In my current Champions game, there are several different types of cards, each on a different color cardstock:

• Super Card: This is the default card, and the most common. You are as likely to get a Super Card as you are all the other types combined. When played, you get +2 (or equivalent) to any action. (+2 to CV, +2 DC, +2 to a Skill Roll, etc.) All of the cards below are more specific. They give a larger bonus, but can only be applied in certain situations. However, they can each also be used as a Super Card.
  
• Hero Card: This card allows you to immediately take an action (just as if you had a Phase coming up right then). However, you can only play it if you are directly trying to save the life of another.
  
• Clue Card: You play this card when stuck in an investigation, puzzle-solving, or tactical situation, and the GM provides a useful piece of information.
  
• Combat Card: This card grants a +5 to any combat action. (+5 OCV, +5 DCV, +5 DC, etc.)
  
• People Card: Play this card to receive as favorable a reaction as reasonably possible from any NPC.
  
• Skill Card: This card grants a +5 to any non-combat action. (+5 to any Skill Roll, etc.)
  

- Derek