ArthurFronz

Re: Kingdom Rules - Used in Any Supplements?

I completely agree' date=' this seems like an EXTREME cool idea to me.[/quote']

 

Great

 

My friends and I recently finished a lengthy 2nd Edition Exalted campaign (White Wolf system). It's an incredibly fiction rich system that emphasizes the development of God-like powers where PC's can take on, and lead entire nations. There are mass conflict resolution mechanics (both physical combat and social). But while I always loved the fiction, I found the rules system (d10 die pools of attribute + skill) too abstract for my taste; especially when "scaling up" adventures. At the high end you get "perfect offenses" opposing "perfect defenses" and die pools so large you end up ROLL playing rather than role playing. I found Charms (the basic unit of all Exalted abilities) cool when your PC has Essence-2 or 3 (modest supernatural abilities). But charms have MANY interaction problems when your PC grows to Essence-6 and beyond (able to challenge Gods in celestial bureaucracy and take on entire armies).

 

That's where Hero comes in. To my way of thinking it's toolkit provides robust mechanics with a STRONG degree of internal consistency. And it's all balanced at high power levels (given it's roots in Champions). That's such an awesome basis from which to "scale up" into the Kingdom level. I think this is an enormous competitive advantage to the Hero system in this regard. For those who want to learn how to "swing a sword" and progress to greater levels where they provide modifiers to their father's Kingdom level rolls and eventually playing actual Kingdom turns themselves as they run everything from criminal organizations to cities and nations.

 

Wondering if anyone else has made published forays in this direction. Does anyway remember the old MERP Supplements by Iron Crown (e.g. Arnor, Mirkwood, Minas Tirith, Moria)? In the back they always had a "military table" that showed you "kingdom level" troop organizations and strength. Thought that was very cool. The old Pendragon system has sourcebook called Nobles. It provided a method of diagramming and managing the economic and military development of your feudal holdings. You fleshed out your castle, surrounding towns, economic resources with a neat notation system. "The Ultimate Base" has provided the best framework for this genre of thing I've ever seen. I hope people "run with it" and enjoy it!

Rules are presented in "the Ultimate Base" (6th Edition) for the creation and play of kingdoms. I've haven't tried these yet, nor seen them discussed much in the forum. They seem extremely cool to me.

The ability to "zoom out" into a broader level of play, complete with character to kingdom interactions is awesome. Provides a whole new dimension to metaplots. An entire set of player adventures could therefore impact one "turn" at the kingdom level with modifiers based on the player's success (or failure) at the tactical level.

Anyway I'm using the Kingdom rules to define a Fantasy genre campaign setting and was looking for any examples published by others. Anyone know of any supplements that contain them? Some writers for the "Kamarathin: Kingdom of Tursh" supplement published by D3 have mentioned Kingdom rules online. I'm wondering if they actually use them in that book or any others.

Any "Kingdom Rule" sitings would be appreciated. Thanks.

I'm modeling NPC's for my first Hero campaign; a Fantasy setting. I'm having trouble, however, wrapping my brain around CV's (OCV, DCV). Most other systems I've played model combat effectiveness through a Characteristic (innate talent for combat) + Skill (training/learning) approach. So I assumed in Hero, CV's were the innate part and skills were learned.

So take an average town citizen who volunteers in their town militia. I'd model him with a CV of 3, with a few combat skill levels representing training in a narrow area (spear or something). When I look 6th edition material for "combat progression" across the range of possibilities, I was surprised to see that CSL's don't seem to matter that much. Combat modeling seems mostly about CV's & maneuvers which surprised me.

Take Yeung Li, the Kung Fu character in from the back of 6th edition v2. He's got serious MA ability, which is modeled as OCV/DCV=6, cool maneuvers, and a combat skill level of "+1 with Kung Fu." That's it, a +1 Kung Fu skill??? Maybe CSL's aren't designed to matter that much, just a small "swing factor" for folks to allocate on top of their core CV effectiveness + maneuvers. Is that a better way to approach it?

Let me end with a specific question. If a person with average natural ability (OCV & DCV = 3) goes to a monastery and dedicates their life to the study of Kung Fu, what increases? Clearly they will build up a menu of maneuvers. But in addition to that, do their CV's grow significantly with one level boost in CSL OR is it the other way around? Remember, in this case I'm modeling a fighter who's bringing mostly training to the equation rather innate lethality.

Any advice/perspective is greatly appreciated!

Re: For you mathematically able out there

I've just begin building a new Fantasy campaign based on Hero 6e. This will be my first Hero campaign and I'm VERY interested in getting any info you'd be willing to share about your 3d10 conversion.

I was studying the "average/normal human" baselines (6E1 437) and probability distribution (6E2 280) as prelude to large scale NPC construction. But because my campaign is Heroic (rather than supers) I'd like a bit more granularity in the middle of the bell curve than 3d6 provides.

Folks mentioned some 3d12 posts, but I wasn't able to find anything solid using the forum search. Because I'm so new any guidance would be greatly appreciated (e.g. what formula do you use for base CHAR rolls, skill rolls; do published skill/situational modifiers stay the same, does xp spending still yield the same published modifier progressions ... its just a longer path now that your dice are larger?). Very curious.