Bare Bones Hero – an experiment in (over)simplification

[bigdamnhero]

My wife of many years finally expressed a willingness to try out this weird RPG hobby of mine. While she's way smarter than me, my wife doesn’t have a high tolerance for complicated game rules. (With board games, she’ll play Pandemic or similar, but anything more complicated than that is “too much like work” for her.) I debated using a rules-lite system like Fate or somesuch, but I wanted to use a system I’m intimately familiar with so I could do all the heavy lifting rules-wise.

 

So I decided to see just how much I could simplify Hero while still leaving it recognizable as Hero. Below is what I came up with FWIW. I’m not necessarily recommending them for your game, and I don’t think I’ll be incorporating most of them into my other games. (I still like the SPD Chart!) But if nothing else it was an interesting experiment in system simplification, and I feel it gave me some insight into what's truly essential to Hero vs. what's not.

 

Overall: I concluded Hero really has two core mechanics:

• Roll 3d6 and subtract it from this number (ie Skill/Char Rolls).
• Roll these dice and tell me the total on the dice; I may also need the “BODY” total (ie Normal damage/effect rolls).

So I did everything I could to reinforce these two mechanics and avoided introducing other mechanics whenever possible. The two biggest changes that came out of this for me were:

• Instead of OCV, I listed an Attack Roll for each of the character’s attacks/weapons/maneuvers, equal to OCV +11 +/- any maneuver/weapon modifiers. This gave each attack a #- roll associated with it, which makes it look just like a Skill/Char Roll. This is really just a change in presentation than a rules change; I've been doing this for my convention/demo games for years, and it seems to really simplify combat for newbies.
• Killing Attacks: This may be the biggest change, and perhaps the most "controversial." We calculated damage using the same mechanic as Normal Attacks, but applied the damage as per Killing Attacks. For example, a 3 DC Killing Attack, which would normally be 1d6K, rolls 3d6; the die total is STUN, the “BODY” total is BODY damage; the only difference from Normal Attacks is the BODY Damage ignores nonresistant defenses. Essentially this turns Killing Attacks into a +0 AVAD Advantage, while saving you from having to explain a different mechanic of calculating damage. I had tried this one before for a con game, and it freaks the hell out of experienced Hero players - “Did you mean to give me a 6d6 Killing Attack!” - but it’s easier for new players if they only have to learn one damage mechanic. Statistically the two methods don’t produce identical results, but it’s a pretty minor difference, especially at Heroic levels.

Other changes:

• Primary Characteristics: Instead of listing their actual values, I just gave relative ranges: average, good, excellent, and so forth, along with Skill Roll numbers. I had the actual values in my notes for places when they are relevant, like using DEX for initiative; but I was surprised how rarely they were actually needed.

• For STR, I didn’t bother listing the Char Roll; just the # of dice for STR damage, which is used far more often.

• I dropped the Speed Chart: One less Characteristic, and no need to describe the turn sequence beyond “Sarita is fastest, so she goes first.” (Behind the scenes, I just gave everyone SPD 3, and after every three Phases I’d say “Take a Recovery.”)  

• PRE Attacks: Instead of introducing another mechanic, we just used opposed PRE Rolls (or PRE vs. EGO), with modifiers as appropriate. This provided remarkably similar results, tho if I'd have to put some more work into fleshing this out if I was thinking of introducing it in a "regular" game.

• PD & ED: Combined into one “Defense” stat. (Behind the scenes, I just gave all characters the same PD & ED.) Resistant Defense was just listed as “Armor.”
• Ignored END: (Behind the scenes, I just built all characters with enough END to make it through a typical combat.)

• I called DCV “Evade” just to eliminate an acronym; and since I wasn’t using OCV it made sense. (I might’ve preferred to use Dodge, but didn’t want to confuse it with the Maneuver.)
• There weren’t any mental powers in this game, so I was able to ignore OMCV & DMCV.

Anyway, interesting experiment: results submitted for your consideration & comment.

[dmjalund]

The logo could be a skeleton in a hexagon

[Doc Democracy]

It is a good process to go through.

 

My personal thought is that the complexity of HERO gets shouted out in the character sheet.  If you can provide her with a more narrative character sheet with a few numbers here and there, there is no real need to simplify the system.

 

Of course you can do some further work to change that.  There were a few examples of that kind of sheet in the sticky thread on subject...

 

Doc

[Christopher]

Forget adjustment powers. Every rulesystem has a set of "those rules". And for hero that has to be Adjustment powers by a clear margin.

[Markdoc]

I did a similar thing a couple of years ago - that's discussed here.

 

Basically I left the mechanics untouched, but simply put a "skin" over them, so that the players did not have to deal with Hero mechanics at all. It was such a huge success that I have been thinking that I will use a similar (more finished) approach for my next FH campaign. As a GM, I liked one particular aspect, which is that by hiding the mechanics, the players did not waste any time in trying to finesse the game system, but simply went for flavour .... while at the same time, I remained able to tweak the system to produce whatever I needed, which is Hero's strong point.

 

For the next game, I am almost certainly going to make one house rule, which, interestingly enough, is one you chose to implement too, which is getting rid of killing attacks as a seperate mechanism and just rebalancing AVAD to use that instead. The more I play around with it, the more I am convinced that we don't actually need two mechanisms to resolve "I hit him with the thing", and that all we get out of it is needless complication. That's discussed in more detail here.

 

cheers, Mark

[ghost-angel]

Does this mean we'll get your wife at the regular gaming table sometime? Because that'd be awesome.

 

Did you mention the Lift of the Characters STR? Even in abstract terms (can lift a tank; can lift 2 men; etc) ?

 

I like the PRE Attack mechanic much better than the standard roll, it always seems to be PRE Attacks are way less impressive that they should be unless you can stack way too many modifiers on them. PRE vs EGO seems like a nice solution and folds into the Skill Vs Skill Mechanic.

 

A while ago I started to write my OCV down as an Attack Skill presentation, much faster.

[Nolgroth]

As a recent convert to FATE, I wonder how heavy those rules would be to lift?

 

That said in all snarkiness, I love the "re-skin" you did to Hero. I've personally all but given up on trying to run a Hero game. I just don't have the patience for creating characters with Hero anymore. This kind of inventiveness almost makes we want to consider doing something similar. Almost.

[Markdoc]

As a recent convert to FATE, I wonder how heavy those rules would be to lift?

 

That said in all snarkiness, I love the "re-skin" you did to Hero. I've personally all but given up on trying to run a Hero game. I just don't have the patience for creating characters with Hero anymore. This kind of inventiveness almost makes we want to consider doing something similar. Almost.

 

After more than 30 years of Hero GM-ing, I have a big backlog of Hero stuff (both published and my own), so it takes relatively little effort to create "new stuff". That takes a lot of the sting out of it

I've tried FUDGE and despite me really, really wanting to like it, it just didn't light any sort of fire for me, so I've never looked at Fate.

 

cheers, Mark

[bigdamnhero]

My personal thought is that the complexity of HERO gets shouted out in the character sheet.

Agreed. I already use a greatly streamlined character sheet, and have posted examples...somewhere...I'll get back to you on that. But I was trying to simplify it even more than that.

 

I did a similar thing a couple of years ago - that's discussed here.

 

Basically I left the mechanics untouched, but simply put a "skin" over them, so that the players did not have to deal with Hero mechanics at all.

Nice. And I like the "skin" concept. One of the things I tried to do to make it easier for me was to minimize actual changes "behind the curtain," like for example giving everyone the same PD & ED so that I only had to list one Defense stat on the sheet.

 

Does this mean we'll get your wife at the regular gaming table sometime? Because that'd be awesome.

Heh, no sure we're quite there yet, but I'm still working on it.

 

Did you mention the Lift of the Characters STR? Even in abstract terms (can lift a tank; can lift 2 men; etc) ?

Yes, I listed the Max Lift. Although since this was a Heroic game and everyone was well within human norms, I could've probably skipped that as well.

 

I like the PRE Attack mechanic much better than the standard roll, it always seems to be PRE Attacks are way less impressive that they should be unless you can stack way too many modifiers on them. PRE vs EGO seems like a nice solution and folds into the Skill Vs Skill Mechanic.

Yeah, I love PRE Attacks, but I don't love the fact that modifiers usually count so much more than the character's base PRE score. I'm thinking I might put some actual thought into the Skill-vs-Skill idea and see if I can't flesh it out into something usable.

 

As a recent convert to FATE, I wonder how heavy those rules would be to lift?

Fair 'nuff. I was less worried about the weight of the rules, and more about the (lack of) familiarity of the lifter. I've been playing and running Hero for 30+ years, so I know the system pretty well; I've played like 2 Fate games.

[bigdamnhero]

Attached is the actual character sheet we used. We decided to play a Firefly game, so there weren't a lot of Powers or complex equipment, which helped keep things simple.

 

For comparison,you can see an example of my "regular" character sheet format here. If you're thinking it looks similar to Teh Bunneh's character sheet, that's not a coincidence.

Inari.pdf

[bigdamnhero]

Looking at the character sheet, I remembered one other simplification, which was to leave out Combat Skill Levels. Sorta. Behind the scenes, I gave her +1 with Small Arms, but I pre-added that to her Attack Roll rather than listing it as a separate value to worry about.

 

In terms of character creation, I started out by showing her a character I'd created for a Firefly Hero game I'd run several years back. (After converting it to my simplified format.) That character was a bit more generic, basically a female Mal, because I figured that would be easy to run "out of the box." But she wanted to make a lot of changes to the character, making her more original and far more interesting IMO. More than half of the Complications listed here were ones she suggested, including her being Clumsy. [insert proud geek husband emoji]

[ghost-angel]

This is the most awesome Complication I have ever seen:

 

Compelled to Invent Things That Don’t Actually Help

[TheDarkness]

This is the most awesome Complication I have ever seen:

 

Compelled to Invent Things That Don’t Actually Help

I'm with you on that. Stuff like that makes the game for me. When my players actually produce characters, not merely generators for effects, the play is so much better...

[Markdoc]

This is the most awesome Complication I have ever seen:

 

Compelled to Invent Things That Don’t Actually Help

 

My wife actually has that one, in real life: I am not kidding. I saw it on the sheet and instantly knew exactly what it meant.

 

Cheers, Mark

[TheDarkness]

My wife has the complication: inability to segue smoothly

[bigdamnhero]

This is the most awesome Complication I have ever seen:

 

Compelled to Invent Things That Don’t Actually Help

Exactly. Also the main reason I knew she'd be great at roleplaying, because I knew she'd come up with stuff like that.

[Altair]

I'm constantly amazed at how much presentation can make a difference. I've found that  a lot of people don't touch Hero because it seems so... I don't know, obtuse?

 

I was, and in some ways am, one such person. 

 

I can do the math, and rather enjoy statistics - I got a masters in a statistical discipline, mostly for funsies - but I hate hate hate doing bookkeeping or any heavy mathematical lifting during an actual game. Other people barely notice, but I just get kicked right in the fun. 

 

Thus, anything that abstracts away things so I don't have to worry about them, and presents the information I actually want? Makes a major difference. Thus is the origin of my 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/267-%7B%3F%7D/

simple sheet thingy.

[bigdamnhero]

Thus, anything that abstracts away things so I don't have to worry about them, and presents the information I actually want? Makes a major difference. Thus is the origin of my 

simple sheet thingy.

Agreed! Especially once I started running convention games, I realized just how much info on the standard Hero character sheet isn't actually needed in game, and only serves to make the info you do want harder to find.

 

No Complications on your simple sheet thingy tho?

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think a stripped down simplified character sheet is the best approach.  And then you can introduce new concepts each session: this week we add in knockback!  That way you wean them into the system like a computer game tutorial rather than pouring it all onto them at once.

[sinanju]

• I dropped the Speed Chart: One less Characteristic, and no need to describe the turn sequence beyond “Sarita is fastest, so she goes first.” (Behind the scenes, I just gave everyone SPD 3, and after every three Phases I’d say “Take a Recovery.”)  

 

I did the same thing in my recently-concluded Champions campaign. Except it was SPD 4. It worked well. I had people act in order of DEX, with ties being decided by going alphabetically by character name. (Yes, it was completely arbitrary, but it worked well and meant I could work out combat order well before the combats began--make a list of everyone involved in the session, sorted by DEX (and then name), then just skip anyone not involved in a given battle.

[Christopher R Taylor]

If you're going to take speed away, it will be moderately simpler (players don't even need to know their speed totals, just the GM so its not a complexity issue for them), but the only signficance of the number will be how often they get a free recovery.

[Doc Democracy]

Hmm.  Came across a few character sheets I made a couple of years ago for a birthday weekend game.  These were a series of characters from different systems that each player particularly associated with.  I jammed them all together in a game based on HERO.

 

I wanted everyone to focus on the characters and the game and everything simply worked towards what seat each player got in a game of poker (and how many chips).  The game was rigged and I had five decks of cards - four of them with pre-determined hands so that I would know what each player held and likely which player would gamble and which player would win.  The only trick was in switching decks at the right time (absolutely the most useful a GM screen has ever been...).

 

Anyway - here are the characters in a very stripped down way.

 

 

Doc

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/337-%7B%3F%7D/

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/261-%7B%3F%7D/

[Kesedrith]

Interesting.  I'm going to have to keep some of the ideas I've seen in this thread in mind.  My tactic with new players has just been to sit down with them, get them to describe what sort of character they want, and then make the character for them, explaining what I'm doing each step of the way.  With only one failure, I wind up repeating this about three or four characters in before they're wanting to take the active role and just have me sit there and provide clarifications on  the "How do I do this?" questions that come up.

 

My one failure?  My wife.  We've been playing, with breaks, for around 25 years now, and to this day she will not touch character creation.  She loves the system and that she can get the exact character that she's wanting to play, but if she's stuck with making the character herself, she'll sit the game out.