Problems With Fantasy Hero Complete and Newbies

[Christopher R Taylor]

To the extent that I can tell, 6th edition was the first in which END, STUN, and BODY were considered defensive abilities for these purposes. 

 

And that, only because their costs had been reduced so radically that what was once reasonably balanced now became very powerful (especially for endurance). 1d6 heals 5-30 points of END, unless you half it.

[Cantriped]

1d6 heals 5-30 points of END, unless you half it.

That is true, and sounds really broken until you consider that Healing is also much less effective in practice because of its Maximum Effect rule. 

Unless you put Delayed Re-Use on it, you can only Heal a maximum of 30 END per Day with that power, and unless you put Cumulative on it, each subsequent roll only heals by the amount it exceeded the first roll, regardless of whether the target has already spent the END they regained.

To make a Healing power that functions even somewhat similarly to systems like D&D, you end up paying 25 Active Points per 1d6 of Simplified Healing reusable every Turn (instead of every day); or 30 APs if it is also Cumulative (so that you can Heal a target multiple times in a turn without having to exceed the previous roll to have any effect). 

[Brian Stanfield]

I think we've now hit on the real problem for newbs.

 

I'm going to venture a guess that you're reading the past two pages of posts in the same way I am: why has this backslid into a rules debate about healing?

 

These are the complex discussions that, while interesting and important, are exactly what intimidate the newbies from posting. Let's try to stay on track here. . . .

[Cantriped]

I'm going to venture a guess that you're reading the past two pages of posts in the same way I am: why has this backslid into a rules debate about healing?

 

These are the complex discussions that, while interesting and important, are exactly what intimidate the newbies from posting.

Because we are Herophiles (for better or worse). However, I can agree the subjects of Healing, and new product design really should have been split off into other threads some time ago. In that regard I apologize for derailing your thread. To be fair, I am trying to also post useful information relevant to the original topic (helping a new player learn HERO), but I think most of us have already given you all the guidance regarding that topic we could think of. I'll continue to ponder it, as I expect I'll be having to teach a new group Fantasy Hero Complete​ sometime this year, and post anything I come up with (useful or otherwise).

[TheDarkness]

I think one big issue is that, to simplify Hero is naturally complex.

[Christopher R Taylor]

All of these efforts and ideas only work if people take them and go out as "evangelists" (to abuse a term) for the system where they live.  At conventions, at game stores, in schools and colleges, in gaming clubs.  If a product like Champions Begins or Fantasy Hero Begins are created, its of no use sitting on a pdf shelf at Hero games or on your computer.

[Nolgroth]

I'm going to venture a guess that you're reading the past two pages of posts in the same way I am: why has this backslid into a rules debate about healing?

 

These are the complex discussions that, while interesting and important, are exactly what intimidate the newbies from posting. Let's try to stay on track here. . . .

 

What do you mean by "newbies?"

 

Seriously, these kinds of conversations are what nearly drove me to completely drop the Hero system in the not too far distant past (like this very past autumn). This kind of minutia is exactly opposite to what Hero needs right now but it seems to be all that we have. I realize that every system has and needs those that drudge through the rules looking for inconsistency and whatnot, but it can be tedious to read all of the minutia and rules "lawyering" going on. It certainly does not make the game fun and as Brian pointed out, it can be very intimidating to those who do not have a long history with, or knowledge base of, the Hero System. How about we stick to figuring out what will make newbies more comfortable with adapting the Hero System and leave the rules debates to other, more appropriate, threads. Maybe you can toss up threads like Rules Lawyering: The Cost of Dex  and put a big disclaimer in the opening post like WARNING: This thread is intended for advanced users to debate the finer points of the Hero System. The contents of this thread are not required to have fun using the Hero System.

 

Just a suggestion.

[Chris Goodwin]

I'm going to venture a guess that you're reading the past two pages of posts in the same way I am: why has this backslid into a rules debate about healing?

 

These are the complex discussions that, while interesting and important, are exactly what intimidate the newbies from posting. Let's try to stay on track here. . . .

 

It started out as a thread on packaging the system for new folk, which is one of the usual "strange attractor" topics.  But most threads here tend to wander anyway.  Still, I will try to do my part to keep it on topic as well.  I know I'm one of the biggest contributors to this tendency, and for that I apologize.

[Lucius]

What do you mean by "newbies?"

How about we stick to figuring out what will make newbies more comfortable with adapting the Hero System and leave the rules debates to other, more appropriate, threads.

 

Just a suggestion.

 

I'm sorry. I'll try not to derail the thread again.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary is afraid that "figuring out what will make newbies more comfortable" will prove to be absolutely impossible without "rules debates" but we'll see.

[Chris Goodwin]

To bring the thread somewhat back on topic, I'd like to propose that "wall-o-text" Power writeups be put behind spoiler tags.  

 

"Plus One Weapons":  It's not impossible that during the course of adventuring you'll run across magical weapons.  Weapons with bonuses grant +1 to hit (OCV) and +1 point of damage for every point of bonus; every +3 worth of bonus equates to +1d6 Killing damage.  (Bludgeoning weapons such as staves and clubs, if magical, grant +1d6 Normal Damage per +1.)  

 

Weapons with generic bonuses of +2 or greater are uncommon, and those with +4 or greater are very rare.  Bonuses of greater than +1 are often specialized in nature, only applying to certain types of targets.  

 

Example:  The magical broadsword Dragonbane is +1 generally, but +3 against dragons.  The sword gains +3 to hit, and +1d6 Killing damage, against dragons, but is +1 to hit and +1 damage against all other creatures.  

 

Similarly, magical armor can provide bonuses.  Every +1 armor bonus provides +1 to resistant PD and ED, and +1 to the wearer's DCV, above and beyond the armor's normal protection.  Magical armor and weapons also do not encumber the owner.  

[Brian Stanfield]

No worries, everyone. I don't think anyone was trying to derail anything. Thanks for the input you've given so far. Everyone has really good ideas on what can be done, but what I was hoping was that, rather than theorizing about what is scaring off the newbies, I could actually get some insight from the newbies themselves. Eisenmann's last comment seems to sum up how largely unsuccessful this has been. I do appreciate your suggestions though.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Eisenmann's last comment seems to sum up how largely unsuccessful this has been

 

 

Without any kind of explanation, its not much help.  If the complaint is "the rules are complicated enough that people disagree on some aspects, I have to agree with Cantriped who noted

 

I think that is a problem in almost every table-top RPG, and if you think this is bad, you should spend some time trolling the Paizo Forums. Pathfinder was written, in the words of its developers, "conversationally"; as a result the books are rife with inconsistent terminology, contradictions, historical revisionism, and rules that can only be inferred to exist, but were never actually written anywhere.

 

 

Reasonable people will disagree on any game more complex than Chutes and Ladders.

[L. Marcus]

That's Snakes And Ladders, surely?

[Ninja-Bear]

A sample.game I ran had a very simple.premise. It was a party of dwarves. Each dwarf was built as racial average and with one profession. The part was on the road to town. They smelled something foul and laughing. investigating, they find some goblins roasting a man at arms-alive. They kill them. The man says save my employers! Merchant husband and wife. The dwarves track down the foul beasts and saved the merchants. Plus the merchants give them a contact in town. Done.

 

Two points, there was a couple of choose one from the lists which I had them choose before the adventure.

 

Second, If I did this in FHC, I would also allow a few points to add to characterisitics. Didn't want to deal with figured in fifth.

 

Oh and they were 100 pt in fifth. People still had fun.

[Ninja-Bear]

One thing I would change was not to give a fighter 3 different csls with a newbie. Not saying a newbie couldn't gronk it. but my brother had a hard time and he's not new to RPGs.

 

Second problem (again my brother) was meta. Instead of a classic thief, I created Lockbanes. They were dwarfs who could do some thief skills like find and remove traps but wouldn't pickpocket or backstab. He couldn't gronk dwarfs to be like that. More importantly he wouldn't just slide with it because it was my freaking world.

[Cantriped]

When I am building a new character for a new player in Champions or ​Fantasy Hero Complete:

 

I give them no more than one type of Combat Skill Level (and I ususally make it 3-pt CSLs). Likewise I give them no more than one type of Penalty Skill Level (usually just a couple of Targeting or Range PSLs with whatever their CSLs apply to). This way the character can have a "specialty" (something D&D/Pathfinder players are used to having), and I have an opportunity to teach the new player what Skill Levels are and how they work in a specific circumstance.

 

I try not to use Compound Powers anymore; such as... 

Blinding Blast:  Blast 1d6 (5 APs) ​plus Sight Group Flash 1d6 (5 APs). Total Cost: 10 points.

For two reasons: First, because they force me to teach the player about at least twice as many Game Elements simultaneously. This bogs down play, and increases the chances of the player falling off the learning curve.

Second, they are harder to read and understand. Formatting styles vary for compound powers depending on the source. Some writers use "plus"s, others use a format similar to Power Frameworks with line breaks, names for individual components, etc, others still use whichever format is most convenient at the moment. Not to mention, modifiers; some writers will use an "All Slots;" tag to collect all the common modifiers into one location, others will duplicate common modifiers in every slot. Regardless of the format you end up with a block of text which is intimidating to new players. From personal experience, a player who doesn't understand a Game Element will simply ignore it during play, which not only frustrates them (because who likes feeling stupid?), but potentially makes them believe their character is weaker than they actually are (and who likes to be unable to contribute?).

I used to have a really bad habit of writing enormously complicated Game Elements (usually Compound Powers), and new players I tried to teach suffered for that. They didn't seem that complicated to me, because I am fluent in the Hero System's language, but I was wrong. As a result, I try to keep things simpler now, but its a hard habit to break.

 

I outright won't use Variable Power Pools for new players. VPPs are an advanced game element that require the player using them be completely fluent in the ruleset.

 

If I am building the new character to the new player's specifications, I try not to allow them to pressure me into building them a more complicated character than they can actually play. It is difficult, the appeal of the system is that you can "Build Anything", and as an experienced GM you probably actually can. But when building their first characters, my goal as GM is to allow them to take baby steps into the deep, deep pool that is the Hero System. If they jump in too deep they'll drown... and blame me for it.

[Eisenmann]

Without any kind of explanation, its not much help.  If the complaint is "the rules are complicated enough that people disagree on some aspects, I have to agree with Cantriped who noted

 

 

Reasonable people will disagree on any game more complex than Chutes and Ladders.

 

It's not a complaint that people disagree on some aspects per se. It's that the game system becomes more opaque by it, especially in the context of this thread's topic. 

 

The disagreement may have been categorized as HERO-esque inside baseball stuff but it looks fundamental from a new guy's perspective.

[Christopher R Taylor]

One thing we discussed in the Champions Begins thread is the simplified character sheet, which doesn't have anything but the stripped down basics of what players need.  So no modifiers, no details, combat values listed as a roll (OCV+11 - 3d6 results, so 8 OCV is listed as 19-) and so on.  The principle is stripping down everything to its absolute minimum information to be as direct and simple to understand as possible.  I built one that's a bit too spare and simple but gives the concepts, with color coded blocks so the GM can easily direct attention to an area.  "Go to the red section in the middle of your sheet, that's combat info"

 

Something like that would be useful for this as well, its not meant to be a permanent sheet for play, but an intro sheet to make things extra easy for beginners.

 

Another thing we discussed was multimedia.  To me it feels childish, but players really like the idea of cards and pictures and stuff they can hold.  Chips for mana, something tangible and different than a sheet of paper.  Its a way to baby step them away from where the computer hands you everything with nifty graphics.

[Cantriped]

I like the idea of having cards to represent groups of game elements if you are running a game where everything is pregenerated. In lieu of an Adventurer's Gallery, you could use a collection of cards to build characters with. For example, you might be able to cram the entire characteristics block (and perhaps a racial template) onto one side of a standard sized trading card, and on the other side include an illustration and instructions for finishing the character; like "select 50 points worth of Complication cards, select up to 75 points worth of Skill Set and/or Special Ability cards, and select up to 150 gold worth of Equipment cards".

 

Bowls of 1, 3, and 5 point STUN, BODY, and END (and perhaps MANA or Charge) Tokens could also be very helpful for tracking consumable resources.

 

The only issue I see with this approach is production costs. This isn't something a GM can undertake for their personal group, most of us just don't have the equipment or funding for that. And on the publisher side, putting together a box-set with cards and tokens and adventures is an expensive undertaking that may not sell well.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I do like the idea of character cards with basic info on one side and art on the other (male and female versions) so people can go through them and see what they have for their premade PCs before getting the character sheet.  Just name, what they are like, what their abilities are, nothing in gamespeak.

[Eisenmann]

I like the idea of having cards to represent groups of game elements if you are running a game where everything is pregenerated. In lieu of an Adventurer's Gallery, you could use a collection of cards to build characters with. For example, you might be able to cram the entire characteristics block (and perhaps a racial template) onto one side of a standard sized trading card, and on the other side include an illustration and instructions for finishing the character; like "select 50 points worth of Complication cards, select up to 75 points worth of Skill Set and/or Special Ability cards, and select up to 150 gold worth of Equipment cards".

 

Bowls of 1, 3, and 5 point STUN, BODY, and END (and perhaps MANA or Charge) Tokens could also be very helpful for tracking consumable resources.

 

 

I've been using  colored glass aquarium stones for tracking  those bits. Even though each stone represents 1 point of value it's made game play a lot easier, especially as compared to working out what's spent/recovered and then writing it down it down. The flow of points as stones has helped reinforce the flow of the game. Remember-and-catalog is pretty disruptive for new players who are also trying to figure out what to do in-game when it's their turn.

 

As far as cards go, an interim step could be a PDF that can be printed and cut out versus a full print run. I'm a big fan of cards as artifacts in other game systems too, such as GURPS, Mouse Guard, etc.

[Lucius]

Any chance of getting this thread pinned?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary  suggests I see a seamstress

[Brian Stanfield]

One thing I would change was not to give a fighter 3 different csls with a newbie. Not saying a newbie couldn't gronk it. but my brother had a hard time and he's not new to RPGs.

 

Second problem (again my brother) was meta. Instead of a classic thief, I created Lockbanes. They were dwarfs who could do some thief skills like find and remove traps but wouldn't pickpocket or backstab. He couldn't gronk dwarfs to be like that. More importantly he wouldn't just slide with it because it was my freaking world.

 

One of the problems I always had with learning new games was that their unique worlds has different rules and archetypes, etc., which made it harder for me to learn (at least in my own mind). If I'm used to D&D character classes and races, it's hard to shift to something different. As you point out, it's a meta-problem, but a real one. I'm picturing using the traditional (i.e. D&D) tropes for the game in term of classes, races, spells, weapons, economy, etc. This makes the transition a little more intuitive. 

 

As a side note, what I do not want to include is a level system and Vancian magic. These two things are the exact reasons why I turned to Fantasy Hero in the first place in the '80s! Your introductory adventure is a great idea. I think I may have read a similar post from you in another thread before, and I really like the built-in situations that give a player their first combat, skills tests, new contacts, and XP. 

[Brian Stanfield]

To Eisenmann, Christopher Taylor, and Cantriped: I love your ideas! For the time being, let's leave production costs and logistics out of consideration. Brainstorm without constraint!

 

The cards have come up many times. Has anybody noticed the announcement from High Rock Press https://highrockpress.com/blogs/news/high-rock-press-production-schedule-2 that they will be producing character creation cards for Champions? Anybody have any idea how these cards will work?

 

This would work even better for Fantasy Hero, it seems, because a lot of things like spells and weapons can be pre-fabbed. The character classes and races could also make for great starting-points for building characters with cards. Contriped, you seem to be right in line with this sort of idea. Equipment cards, complication cards, etc., are a great idea.

 

Eisenmann, I really like your idea of using little beads or whatever, or Cantriped's tokens, to track different stats. This is visually intuitive. The only possible problem I can see is that players need to keep track of specific numbers of STUN, for example, to determine whether their characters are stunned (compared to their CON). Perhaps this may be one of those rules that could be eliminated for basic play, but it's pretty basic to the game. Do you use a card for the aquarium stones to show what the pool is, and what is used? It's possible to indicate "if x number of STUN is moved from your pool, you are stunned for one phase," or something like that. What do you do?

 

With all of that being said, I mentioned this before, but it's come full-circle: anybody remember the Quick Character Generator in Champions 5e? It has all the archetypical character types (brick, speedster, etc.) and variations on those. This would work really easily for fantasy, as I already pointed out. Does anybody have any experience with using the Quick Generator?

[Doc Democracy]

I have gone through the process of putting a character together and put it into a document.  It is not quite what I envisaged when I started but thought it might be worth seeing what folk think about it as an example to introduce the important character bits.

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/files/file/356-making-a-fantasy-hero-character/

 

Doc