phookz

Re: Skunks

Re: Fantasy Art Thread I'm sure everyone on this board knows of him, but Frank Frazetta was a true master of the fantasy art form. He passed away on May 10th, 2010. R.I.P. Frank Frazetta. http://frankfrazetta.org/ http://goldenagecomicbookstories.blogspot.com/search/label/Frazetta Here's a great post about Frank's artistic genius: http://sirspamdalot.livejournal.com/68226.html

Re: Real Locations that should be fantasy Wow, stunning. Reminds me of the Fortress of Solitude.

Re: Quantum Propulsion Machine May Lead To Propulsion Without Change In Mass I was watching Sci Fi Science on the Science Channel last night; the episode was "Exploring the Universe" and was about how to build a theoretically plausible FTL drive. I was surprised to see this exact theory in the show. It was a good episode if you can catch it - here's are some brief clips from it: http://science.discovery.com/videos/sci-fi-science-exploring-the-universe.html http://science.discovery.com/videos/sci-fi-science-traveling-at-warp-speed.html

Interesting stuff, especially for those of you looking for new ways to do drives: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24499/

Re: Cut 'em Off at the Horsehead Nebula! Those three posts are a great read, and educational to boot. Good stuff. Repped. :thumbup:

Re: Fantasy Art Thread That's really cool Bunneh - I'd rep you if I could.:thumbup:

Re: Love for Non-Casters?

Re: A Storeowner's First Impression I agree with you. Since 4E there has been a drift into more complexity. The CV system is more complicated, though I've seen vehement arguments to the contrary. OCV + Die roll vs DCV + 10 would be simpler.

Re: A Storeowner's First Impression Well, even without the Monster Manual you can build NPCs for people to fight, but you are correct that there's nothing there for goblins, orcs, dragons, oozes etc. I would think the newbie player would be hard pressed to come up with all of this on their own in HERO as well without some guidance or examples to look at. Granted - HERO is a superior system for this since all of the rules are based on a well established framework as opposed to a bunch of one-off abilities and powers like D&D. But that's what's different about the systems.

Re: A Storeowner's First Impression Your point is well taken regarding minimalistic art. Apple is a great example of minimalistic art. I deliberately didn't weigh in on whether the HERO art was good or bad - I don't have any data other than my own subjective opinion, and I'm not in the graphic arts business so it wouldn't be worth much anyway . I just wanted to make the point that the artwork, including the cover art, is very important. Maybe not to everyone, but to enough people to make a difference. I wasn't aware of the MSRP for both books for B&M stores - I wonder how many people browsing the shelves will know.

Re: A Storeowner's First Impression This isn't really a fair comparison, as you're throwing the Monster Manual into the D&D pool but not the Bestiary in for HERO. So it's $70 for D&D PHB & DMG, as compared to $80 for 6E1 & 6E2 (before anyone cries foul, the $80 is an assumption that the books are purchased in a brick and mortar store since this thread was started from that viewpoint, and I'm assuming you don't get the bundle price in a B&M store, you can get them for only $70 online or $80 with the PDFs thrown in as well, which is a great deal:thumbup:).

Re: A Storeowner's First Impression The cover matters... a lot. If it didn't, why would almost every book have cover art? Cover art costs money, money for the artist to produce, money for the printers (no art or solid colors would be cheaper to print). To say the art doesn't matter is naive. I doubt the cover art will be the deciding factor for most of the sales of a book. I suspect it is a rare case where the cover art is the deciding factor. But it can make a difference. A flashy, well done cover can make the difference between someone picking up a book and someone picking up a book next to it on the shelf. It's advertising, and our culture spends a TON of money on advertising, so I think it's fair to say that advertising works. The more people you are able to get to pick up your book and thumb through it the more likely you are to sell that book. Sure, you've got to have good content once you get them there, but if you can't get them to pick up the book in the first place your content isn't going to make any difference.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Further proof that the new app doesn't hold a candle, IMO, to the original app, at least from an aesthetics standpoint. There are lots of very cool options and transformations you can do with the new app, but the end result doesn't look as good as the original with the Timm style. Nice pic though Pariah.

Re: The November Nine DrDestiny did something like a contest where he asked for submissions on characters to do. This thread is for the nine winners. Edit: Here's one of the original original threads: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75782

Re: 6th Edition Character Sheet Very cool sheet bunneh. Making a one-size fits all export for that would be tough with the way the text is laid out on the right of the character image, but if it was put into a straight column it wouldn't be too bad. I've never tried to make an export template, but I've seen one that someone else did (I think it was Doc Democracy) and it was pretty brilliant how far they were able to take it.

Re: The November Nine Very cool. Can't give you any more rep right now, but I can give you kudos. :thumbup:

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See? Something that might help bring new players in would be a one-page summary of a brief combat. I seem to remember something like this from 4th, but something like a brief script of a GM and a couple of players entering a combat and completing a turn or so of it. Granted - for those of us that have played the game there isn't much value in this (but I always find them fun to read), but for the player/GM new to the system something like this could really help put the rules in context. Champions 5E had some great information in it about creating adventures, but I'd like to see a little more exposition and hints on planning and creating sub-plots and story arcs. These seem so important to the superhero genre, more-so than other genres IMO.

Re: Love for Non-Casters? I think Ice9's example shows that. Sure, you could turn on impairment rules and hope for the best, but these powers provide a much better chance of achieving that effect. I think by definition you're going to have a hard time coming up with even semi-realistic builds that can match the breadth of magic. Magic is a free pass to do just about anything - based on concept alone it's going to be very hard to match that. That's not to say that you can't have a lot of options and cool tricks (feats, knacks, whatever) for the non-magic users, but you're not going to be able to match the versatility of magic without some pretty strict guidelines on what magic can and cannot do.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine No address either, or maybe invisible, or really, really small?

Re: Love for Non-Casters? I too never really liked the idea of the divide by 3 for points on spells - it always seemed unfairly skewed for casters. The argument that this is necessary in order to model other games just makes me think the source material is unbalanced, and maybe isn't worth modeling. As has been pointed out, there is nothing preventing other character archetypes from buying additional powers. But I've never seen the suggestion that they should get a cost break for them just because. Personally, I'd rather do away with the RP/3 rule, but it does mean pointing out your own spells and using frameworks in order to be cost effective. I see nothing wrong with frameworks - casters and non-casters should be allowed to use them equally.

Re: The November Nine Seeing as how at least one of her fingers ends in a tentacle, I'd venture a guess that the tentacles are from her. Very cool pic.

Re: CHAMPIONS 6E -- What Do *You* Want To See? I think this is a good idea. I think it would be better at the front of the book in a brief "how to use this book" section. It could touch on the scope of the book and describe what other books would be helpful. Should probably be in every genre book... might be there now, I don't have access to them right now.

Re: Searching the 6E PDFs: HH is for Helpful Hint Best. Tip. Evah. Repped.

Re: And 6e print books start to arrive