Rules and book

[steph]

In your fantasy game. How many time do you open your books ?

 

Steph

[Ndreare]

I only look up monsters or the GM Screen tables in play.

In my group we consider referencing the rule book bad form during combat or action because it only ever slows play.

[bigdamnhero]

I only look up monsters or the GM Screen tables in play.

In my group we consider referencing the rule book bad form during combat or action because it only ever slows play.

Basically this (regardless of genre). I'd rather handwave it even if I'm wrong rather than slow things down - then I look it up afterwards so I know what the correct answer is for next time. Occasionally, if I want to make sure of a specific rule I'll ask a player to look it up while I'm handling another player's action.

[Ndreare]

One of my worst gaming experiences involved playing Pathfinder and it turned out to be two hours of looking up rules in a four hour convention block. (I felt cheated out of my con game time, and will never sit at the same table with any of those people again.)

At the time I remember asking, why don't you just make something up and the other players saying it was okay, just let the GM look it up. I got up and left. Nothing, takes me out of the game the way everything stopping so rules can be looked through, except maybe arguing over rules during the game.

[bigdamnhero]

One of my worst gaming experiences involved playing Pathfinder and it turned out to be two hours of looking up rules in a four hour convention block. (I felt cheated out of my con game time, and will never sit at the same table with any of those people again.)

At the time I remember asking, why don't you just make something up and the other players saying it was okay, just let the GM look it up. I got up and left. Nothing, takes me out of the game the way everything stopping so rules can be looked through, except maybe arguing over rules during the game.

And those same people will sneer at Hero for being too rules heavy... [sigh]

[Christopher R Taylor]

I almost never used to until 6th edition then suddenly I got paralyzed and thought I had to look everything up to get the exact rule.  Turned out I already knew 99% of the time but I had this brain freeze, and I think it started turning players off the system.

[Ndreare]

I almost never used to until 6th edition then suddenly I got paralyzed and thought I had to look everything up to get the exact rule.  Turned out I already knew 99% of the time but I had this brain freeze, and I think it started turning players off the system.

Oh man what a bummer. I hope you can get your mojo back and your players return to Hero.

[Ndreare]

And those same people will sneer at Hero for being too rules heavy... [sigh]

Lol, funny you say that. Because i have heard so many times from people how hard Hero is by people who normally don't give it a shot.

[bigdamnhero]

Lol, funny you say that. Because i have heard so many times from people how hard Hero is by people who normally don't give it a shot.

To be fair, if I had never played Hero before and I looked at the size of the textbooks, I would probably conclude that too.

[Nolgroth]

To the OP question: Only when I really need to clarify something that I have almost no experience with. Which is to say, "not very often."  I do tend to keep cheat sheets of things like Combat and Martial Maneuvers, the DEF/Body of common objects and weapon/armor tables handy. As to the rest, I wing it. Most of the time, I get it pretty close to spot on with what the books say. As long as you remember the meta-rules which guide Hero design, you can get by pretty well. I tend to build my opponents before the game or I use the "about this much better/worse than the character average" method when designing opponents on the fly.

 

One thing I like to do before every game, time permitting, is to go over my plans for the scenario, NPC write-ups and PC write-ups. If I have any questions, I go research the answer before the game starts. It is part of my duty as GM.

 

Now, my players are a whole different story. It is not as bad with Hero as it used to be with D&D, where some rules lawyering @$$ would go back and read the text on every one of his spells, class abilities, etc, looking for a loophole in the language he could exploit. It still happens from time to time. Little things like Narf's Hero in Two Pages summary has cut that down a lot.

[Nolgroth]

To be fair, if I had never played Hero before and I looked at the size of the textbooks, I would probably conclude that too.

 

To be fair, even knowing how much I know about Hero, I look at those two textbooks and conclude that.

[Spence]

It depends,

 

If teaching a group new to HERO, then we keep the books on the table for the first few sessions.

 

Once the group has been playing a while, only on the odd occasion that some extremely rare obscure and unexpected rule comes into play.....

[Wardsman]

It depends,

 

If teaching a group new to HERO, then we keep the books on the table for the first few sessions.

 

Once the group has been playing a while, only on the odd occasion that some extremely rare obscure and unexpected rule comes into play.....

Shouldn't the GM have a campaign setting sheet done up? And should that have the pertinent rules?

[Spence]

Shouldn't the GM have a campaign setting sheet done up? And should that have the pertinent rules?

 

Generally.  But HERO isn't a cookie cutter class/level system.  It is at the extreme end of individual customization.  

 

Hence, I always allow for "extremely rare obscure and unexpected" to appear.  Also remember that hero is also driven by "special effects" of the defined power/ability. 

 

Even with campaign guidelines and reviewing PC write-ups, there has been more than one time where the end result of a build turned out different than it initially appeared it would. Especially with a intelligent and creative player.  

 

The point side of the campaign guidelines may set point limits/caps and available powers/limitations/advantages.  But the virtually unlimited free range of the system and the possible combinations can still surprise even the crustiest of the old hands.   

 

It is probably the main reason I always return to HERO.   It doesn't require a splat book every month to remain fresh. 

 

I mostly play Supers, Pulp or Horror.  But the Fantasy Hero games I have played have been hands down the most epic of the genre I have ever played.  The unique ability to actually make exactly what you want is incredible.

 

But the major down side of all HERO games is that, unlike any class/level or template system out there.  The GM and Players really need to be on the same page, and I mean really on the same page, character/NPC generation-wise.  With other games the very game mechanics will funnel everyone to the same page balance wise.  HERO relies on the Players as well as the GM to do this. 

 

This is both it biggest strength and weakness.

[Tasha]

re: Pathfinder. There is ZERO reason to open any Pathfinder rulebook during play. That doesn't mean that you can't look up rules, just that there's better resources than the books. since Pathfinder is OGL, there is a Website that has all of the rules (third party and Paizo). just google the rule you are looking for with d20pfsrd as the search. You will find the rule in minutes. Well within the time it takes for a player's turn to come up.

With Hero, I am playing so rarely that I find that I need to look up rules more than I did in the past. I usually delegate the rules look up to one of the players so we don't stop playing.

[Ninja-Bear]

It depends,

 

If teaching a group new to HERO, then we keep the books on the table for the first few sessions.

 

Once the group has been playing a while, only on the odd occasion that some extremely rare obscure and unexpected rule comes into play.....

Im about the same way. I try to have gaming sessions though that allow for looking up rules so everyone is familar with them.

 

Thou a bad game I had as a GM (running a different game system), I had a player call me out as to where I got my modifiers from. I found it but well was ticked by it but kept my cool.

[Ninja-Bear]

Also as a player, if I have a ability and want to use it from say source book like UMA, I write down notea and reference biok and page number for ease of reference.

[Wardsman]

re: Pathfinder. There is ZERO reason to open any Pathfinder rulebook during play. That doesn't mean that you can't look up rules, just that there's better resources than the books. since Pathfinder is OGL, there is a Website that has all of the rules (third party and Paizo). just google the rule you are looking for with d20pfsrd as the search. You will find the rule in minutes. Well within the time it takes for a player's turn to come up.

 

With Hero, I am playing so rarely that I find that I need to look up rules more than I did in the past. I usually delegate the rules look up to one of the players so we don't stop playing.

Since everyone  but me has a device that is web able now I might put a site with my house rules on the LAN.

Drupal would be great for that.

[Cantriped]

When I am GMing Pathfinder, I use my rulebooks constantly.

I own physical copies of most of the OGL material, and my favorite supplements, and I generally limit my players to using material I own in print.

Usually I find and bookmark all the bestiary pages for monsters I need to use beforehand, and keep whichever one the players are currently fighting open behind my screen. In addition, I have to reference the Grapple rules at least two or three times every scenario (lots of monsters in Pathfinder rely of grapple related tactics), and for some reason I just can't keep them memorized so often I need to leave the combat chapter open during play for that purpose. Otherwise I use the internet via my phone to look of specific feats, spells, class features, etc.

 

When I am GMing HERO system, I use my rulebooks perhaps once or twice a session.

I own copies of both CC and FHC, I keep one on the table for my players to reference, and one for myself behind the "GM screen" (my laptop).

I read through the entire "Characters and the World" and "Combat" sections of the rules as close to immediately before play as I can, and keep a bookmark at the beginning of the combat section just to be safe. I find and set aside stat-blocks for enemies in PDF format, and leave them open on my computer. I know the rules for HERO (at least CC/FHC) well enough that I rarely need to check them (Grab is my bane in all systems). Since I am often heavily involved in character creation, I know all of my players capabilities, so I've never had to audit a character sheet during play.

 

Regardless of the system, If I feel the need to check a rule, and I can't find said rule within 3 minutes, I hand wave it and move on; going back to check it during a lull, break, or after the session ends.

[bluesguy]

When I am GMing I rarely have to open the books..  Some of this is because I will hand wave anything that isn't that critical.  Some of this is because I have two players who have the rules almost as well memorized as I do.  And if it has to do with combat, well I use Hero Combat Manager to help me (shameless plug)

[Nolgroth]

The Pathfinder needing books open versus Hero not needing them is simple; Hero may have an incredible amount of flexibility but it also has consistent underpinnings so that once you learn, you don't need the books. Pathfinder may or may not have that same level of "beneath the hood" consistency, but it hides it from anybody not willing to go through all the steps to break it down and reverse engineer how they build things. I actually suspect that Pathfinder is much more arbitrary than Hero and probably has more "sacred cows" than Hero by virtue of its ancestry. That lack of a solid foundation requires too many exceptions to the rules and thus requires a constant reference.

 

Just my $0.02.