posted Feb 6, 2012 9:38 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
Looking for a reference to the gods of the world? Wonder whether the Hercules of myth could tackle Thor? Curious how you could use the massive cosmology of the native americans in your game?
Mythic Hero can help. Follow the Kickstarter link to the right, give your support, and get your reward! |
posted Jan 5, 2012 6:28 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
[
updated Jan 5, 2012 6:42 AM
]
As the Hero team put it: "If this project is funded, many things become possible. If not, things get really hard."
Even if you aren't terribly interested in the book, perhaps a funding of $10 would be enough to give the project a little kick.
As far as dimension spanning despots go, this book will be off the hook. Whether or not that fits your gaming style is open to question, but I would like to see more Hero Kickstarter projects to be sure.
While initially I wasn't all that interested in the project, as I have thought through the campaign opportunities I think this could be a lot of fun. Characters could be from almost any dimension, dedicated to ensuring the Empress is unable to conquer any more dimensions. Fighting her could take the campaign to many different bizzarre places, on adventures that rival the craziest 60s and 70s sci-fantasy worlds.
Plus, you could play a reprogrammed Nazi Robot with skull throwers that shoot skulls with laser eyes along side Thundarr the Barbarian, Merlin the magician, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now seriously, who wouldn't want to play that game?
|
posted Dec 6, 2011 7:21 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
[
updated Jan 5, 2012 6:42 AM
]
Over on RPGnet they’ve got a thread discussing the recent news about Herogames. I see a lot of "Hero is too hard" or "I don't like to do math" or "Hero missed the boat by not making a light version", and as a result that's why they are where they are.I have to disagree.Look around. How many other games have lasted, true to their core, for 30 years? Answer: Very few.D&D evolved all the way to 4th Edition. How does that compare to 1st Edition? Not even a little. Superficially, sure, but it is a completely different game.Traveller went through multiple iterations before coming back to its original 2d6.Perhaps Basic Roleplay, powering CoC has made it that long, Tunnels & Trolls, and Palladium but nothing else. Palladium is a very good example of a system that has stayed true to its core all these years.My teenage self, sitting down to create champion after champion in 1983 was building 12d6 Energy Blasts with +3 OCV and a Stealth skill of 13- based off my DEX characteristic in the EXACT SAME WAY as I do today. Herogames is facing a challenge they have faced before and many other companies face: what do you do after you have written everything? Sure, there are a couple of genres untouched by Hero (Cyber, Horror), but they have produced more genre books and support material than nearly any other company out there for an audience a fraction the size of Paizo's. DOJ has demonstrated nothing but strong business acumen when it comes to managing their product responsibly, and I see the recent decisions to be no different. I think it makes perfect sense to go to a more product/project based approach for individual freelancers than to have staff writers at this point. Even the material that hasn't been updated to 6E doesn't require a full rewrite... 5E and 6E just aren't that different.Introducing 5E and 5ER and 6E is what has allowed the company to stay around as long as they have. I imagine without those large ticket items, the company would not have been able to sustain itself.What I also see here is this idea that if a game is no longer supported by a company, which isn’t the case here, that somehow the game is dead and cannot be played. I just don’t get it. Unless production of the game stopped and left it incomplete somehow, then perhaps that is true, but in most cases the game continues to work as it did when you were playing it (and having fun) while it was supported. Gaming is a hobby. This means we pursue it because of the satisfaction we get out of participating in the hobby and not for pure consumer entertainment. A lot of arguments I see levied against many game companies stem from this consumer entertainment point of view. “People want to see X,” or “Why didn’t they do Y with the story?” or “Why aren’t the maps in full color at battlemap scale?” I think such products are great, and if one has a great story I buy it, regardless of system. But such products, which are at lower price points, are sold to less than one out of 5 players -- the GMs. So, if your playerbase was 50,000 then you would sell 10,000 at best at a price of $20, for $3 in margin and generate $30,000. If your playerbase is 1/10th of that you generate $3,000. You can’t run a business making that kind of money, you only succeed when you sell something to your entire playerbase on a regular basis and how much material can you really generate that can be sold to that group? Hero has covered all of the bases now, twice (5E and 6E) so now what... a 7E? Maybe people believe there are millions of players out there, a fact that simply isn’t true. The true size of the gaming population is elusive, but likely somewhere between 300,000 and 1,000,000. I know a lot of gamers and roughly 1 in 20 goes to conventions. Considering that GenCon comes to 30,000, not all of them roleplayers, I think it’s a fair guess. I wish there were better data, and that companies like Paizo and Wizards would share their sales numbers, but alas I don’t know.Herogames’ direction makes sense, and I expect to see a lot of smaller publishers (meaning not Wizards and not Paizo) taking a similar path -- freelance produced material built around a solid core.Everyone’s experience with Hero is different. Unlike most games, Hero is a toolbox - take what you like, use it as you will. I’m comfortable with the game in a way many people aren’t and my combats are fast, gritty, and fun. I run the game for people who have never played it before and can blend strong narrative with mechanics that allow players to feel as if they have succeeded based on their character’s abilities and not narrative or mechanical whimsey. When I run at a convention combine 2-3 social challenges, with time for roleplaying, with 2-3 combats that are structured as creatively as I can, and we get through that in 4-5 hours with people who have never played Hero before. I’ve run many games in Savage Worlds and Pathfinder (and historically 1E, GURPS, Rolemaster, Ars Magica, Gamma World 1-4, Unisystem, Warhammer) and few games come close to giving me and the players the options we get in Hero. We can go into what Hero does that other games don’t, but I think that is really more appropriate in another metagaming thread, but to say that the system doesn’t move fast, or that some specific mechanic in the game is broken is akin to saying that Hit Points are dumb. Hit Points are Hit Points, nothing more or less. You either like them or you don’t, but they aren’t “broken” and “improving” a core feature like that often changes the game in fundamental ways such that it is no longer the same.Darren Watts once told me that Hero is not “huge” or “detailed” in order to define how your game is run. The detail is there so that if you want to know how something can be done in the rules, they’ve already had the arguments so you don’t have to. Do you have a better way of doing something? Great! Do it! Want to wing it and make a judgement call that’s appropriate for the character in that context? Awesome!I played in two Hero campaigns, sci-fi and fantasy, run by a great GM that had never run the game before. He knew the core mechanics and what the key difficulty thresholds were. When he ran the game he applied those principles without knowing the rules and most of the time he was right. More importantly, he was never so wrong that someone like me who knew the rules was bothered by his judgement. That’s one of the great things about the game - you can run it as rules light or heavy as you want, but the framework is there when you need it.There is no other game on the market that lets me run a Fallout game, my own fantasy campaign with three unique magic systems (one of which supports improvisation), Half-Life, Marvel vs. Left4Dead, and Cthulhu. Some of you might ask why I wouldn’t just play Call of Cthulhu, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder, and Darwin’s World. In the case of CoC or M&M you might be right, those would be good systems to play for those games. But Pathfinder doesn’t have 3 unique magic systems and doesn’t support improvisation. Darwin’s World isn’t Fallout and the effort necessary to make it so is at best the same necessary to make Hero fit that mould. If I am a pure consumer, willing to play with whatever published materials are presented me, then those are appropriate paths. But step off those paths and I have nowhere to go. I couldn’t run my fantasy campaign in Pathfinder without completely writing new magic systems from scratch, something I don’t have to worry about in Hero. Hero isn’t for everyone in the same way that changing your oil isn’t for everyone. Some people enjoy doing their own thing and creating their own materials and others are happy, skilled, and excellent gamemasters running published adventures appropriately in the context of all of the source material. Hero serves the former and leaves the latter to be supported by the freelancers that have a passion for producing such materials like Steve, Darren, the folks at Blackwyrm games, and me. If that means a small print-run for 500 people, so be it. That is the the hobby. Those are the fans that go to conventions, and based on the games run at cons, Hero is doing better than nearly everyone:GenCon 2011:D&D 4E 357 17% (includes RPGA events) Pathfinder RPG 279 13% (includes PFS events) Shadowrun 97 5% (includes SR Missions) Misc 10-37 17% (e.g. Eclipse Phase, 7th Sea, GURPS, AD&D, The One Ring, M&M) Small 1-9 27% (e.g. FATE, Dark Heresy, HackMaster, Hollow Earth Expedition, NSDMG) Total Events 2134
So please, this change at Hero isn’t doom and gloom, nor is it a revolt of the fans that they somehow messed up the product with 6E, which is the same thing that was said about 5E, and 4E before it, and therefore their product is somehow broken and unwanted. The fanbase is a specific size, the game industry is not a growth industry, and when you finish a product like 6E what more is there to do?If Craftsman or Kobalt sell you a complete automotive toolset, how many more are they likely to sell you over the course of your life? None. My uncle, a race car mechanic, has had the same toolset for over 20 years. Sure there are tools here and there he needs to buy, but he is unlikely to shell out thousands of dollars for tools again. Having seen the evolution of Hero from 1E to 6E I’m not sure there is much left to do. Would I buy an updated Ultimate Skill to 6E... probably, but I already have the 5E version of it and none of that content is different so... is full color glossy worth it? Probably not. The Hero crew has been a great guiding force for me. I can’t say however that they will be missed, because they aren’t going away. Hero lives on, as available to play as it ever has been. Who knows, maybe something wickedly creative will come out of all of this.Thank you. |
posted Sep 6, 2011 8:16 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
2012 Convention Season has a lot going on, especially with some recent notes about multiple events in Indy during GenCon.
U*Con (Nov 11 - Nov 13): This is an annual event for me and I welcome you all. Hosted in Ann Arbor, MI it's one of the best regional cons I've attended. http://www.ucon-gaming.org/
Origins (May 30 - Jun 3): I know some people are upset by the date change, and hopefully it won't collide with Memorial Day, but I am glad there is some distance between Origins and GenCon. At least this year, May 30 works perfect for me.
DEFCON (Jul 26 - Jul 29): Not a gaming convention, but one I still need to attend. This year it was at the same time as GenCon and having to choose was unfortunate. In years past they have been back to back so getting some distance with GenCon is also good. If you are interested in Information Security, there are few conventions that can compare, and from a value perspective there are none.
GenCon (Aug 16 - Aug 19): I like this a little later in the month, especially since I attend DEFCON as part of my day job. Unfortunately, this year the MotoGP is going to be at the same time so there will be a premium on space. I think hotels don't allow reservations outside of a 330 day window (at least that's what one site reported to me), so mark your calendars for 9/20 to see if you can get a room. Check the links below for a discussion.
http://community.gencon.com/forums/t/27516.aspx
http://www.wthr.com/story/15392632/motogp-renews-through-2014
|
posted Aug 10, 2011 12:45 PM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
[
updated Aug 10, 2011 2:06 PM
]
Decompressing from GenCon and reflecting on time well spent. Great games all around. I think my only regret is not having enough time to wander the halls or slow crawl through the Dealer's Hall.
I had the absolute pleasure of hosting a group of Icelandic gamers. This is the second time these guys came to GenCon and not only did we get to game ( Narosia: Sea of Tears), they were generous enough to bring me bizarre Icelandic candies. I also got to hang out with them on Saturday night and learn more about the Icelandic gaming scene. What a great group of gamers.
The new convention center was great, and I thought the Dealer's Hall was fabulous.
New games I picked up:
Good stuff all around. I saw a lot of new FATE games as well as many polished Savage Worlds products. One that really caught my eye was Interface Zero, a well developed, polished cyberpunk setting using Savage Worlds. I would have liked to try out a session of the game to see how it captures the cyberpunk feel. Maybe I'll run one.
I definitely got a sense of a vibrant gaming industry. Attendance seemed strong. All of my events were attended with registered tickets instead of generics, which I usually get 1 generic per event or so.
I also very much enjoyed the traditional Hero Game dinner with the Legion of Heroes. These GMs put a lot of effort into running the official 28 events. Overall Hero accounted for 112 events, and many Legion of Heroes GMs ran events not under the official banner. Huge thanks to Steve Long, Darren Watts, and Jason Walters for all of their efforts.
The rest of the breakdown looks like this: D&D 4E 357 17% (includes RPGA events) Pathfinder RPG 279 13% (includes PFS events) Shadowrun 97 5% (includes SR Missions) Misc 10-37 17% (e.g. Eclipse Phase, 7th Sea, GURPS, AD&D, The One Ring, M&M) Small 1-9 27% (e.g. FATE, Dark Heresy, HackMaster, Hollow Earth Expedition, NSDMG) Total Events 2134
Of course I have no idea what attendance was like. Games with 50 or more events accounted for 56% of all events. It's nice to see a rules-light game system like Savage Worlds doing so well. I accidentally stumbled into Pinnacle's main Savage Worlds ballroom in the basement (odd) of the Omni. 29 tables, packed, with Savage Players. About 1/3 or so were women to boot. It seems as if Pinnacle has carved a nice niche out of the market. Other than not being able to hear, they seemed like they were having a blast.
This next year is a focus on two things: Narosia, and cyberpunk. My notes are coming together well with both, and the Narosia magic system is finally stable. Thank you to all of the players, my home team included, that have braved the mighty essence flows to tame these magicks. My cyberpunk goal is to put together a talk for DefCon next year "Hacking in RPGs" and to present a meta system for dramatic cyberinfiltration. Since Cyber Hero is on the schedule, I think there is some good timing here.
Now it is time to get ready for U*Con. Onward to Ann Arbor!
|
posted Jul 11, 2011 7:27 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
I ran Revenge is a Dish... this weekend at Warriors3 Comics and Games in Wayne, MI. This is the latest Narosia adventure, and continues the story from last year's Troubled Waters. While none of the players at Warriors3 had played the previous adventure, the tie ins were understood very quickly and I think it will work even better for those that had played that before. The player mix was 2 new Hero players, 1 relatively new (played 3-4 times), and a Hero veteran. One of the new players played the most complex character - Mos Verik, an Archmage of the Silver Circle. The magic system in Narosia allows for, and according to some of my regular players requires, improvising spells. I am very happy with this adventure. It combines a mystery, investigation, divine interaction, combat, and a believable set of puzzles, traps, and obstacles. The story came off very strong and I have hopes that it will be well received at GenCon where I will be running it twice. A huge thank you to the players at Warriors 3 for giving me essential feedback and support. May Alantra protect you, Aelos keep you, and Toletren guide you all. |
posted Jun 27, 2011 10:31 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
Well, another great Origins has come and gone. It was great to see the Legion of Heroes GMs as well as the Hero Games staff. The level of camaraderie with the team is really and truly enjoyable.
This was a shorter Origins for us as we only ran games on Saturday and Sunday. The response to Fallout and Marvel Zombies was outstanding and I apologize to those who didn’t get to play. My take away from this is ultimately that we will run fewer unique events with more frequency (i.e. we will run two Fallout events per con).
Fallout ended up going off the rails in a very entertaining fashion. Suffice to say that there was a classic Michael Bay moment of the team doing the Right-Stuff walk down the street with explosions and flame in the background. Not really part of the adventure, but one of the players is notorious for his "plan b".
Marvel Zombies also ran smooth. There is an interesting combo that can be made between the Avengers and the X-Men, allowing the team to bypass part of the adventure. Unfortunately we did run out of time as we were having too much fun.
Fantasy Hero: Reclamation continues to be a good solid introductory dungeon crawl using the stock Fantasy Hero characters. While it is a very direct scenario, it is full of multiple solutions, options, and approaches. The group actually attempted to execute on them all, splitting the party three ways at one point, which was incredibly entertaining. Great way to end the con.
There was also a scheduling snafu so none of our introductory “Be a Hero” events were in the book. We do very much enjoy meeting new players. Thankfully we have them running at GenCon.
GenCon is fast approaching and we have a full schedule. In addition to Fallout and Marvel Zombies, we are also running Eclipse Phase Hero… title Transhuman: Autonomic Restore and another Star Hero adventure to introduce the new release of Star Hero (using the stock characters from Star Hero). We also have a new Narosia adventure “Revenge is a dish best served” which is shaping up nicely.
New Games Acquired:
• Fiasco
• Don’t Rest your Head
• Kingdom of Nothing
• Those Pesky Humans
• Resident Evil Card Game
• Arcanis Fast Play
… looking forward to giving these a shot. |
posted Jun 27, 2011 9:44 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
Checked out the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and free adventures. In the process, discovered a new games store: Game Links in Fowlerville, MI. These guys are making a good effort and we will be running some games there soon.
Quite possibly a DCC campaign starting with the Free RPG adventure (0-level) followed by the venerable Keep on the Borderlands. I think that would be outstanding amounts of fun. |
posted May 26, 2011 7:05 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
posted May 23, 2011 11:35 AM by Toletren - Enaros of Knowledge
Sunday, May 22, I ran the adventure in the EP quickstart rules in Hero. It ran great. The adventure was a lot of fun and the players, once they warmed up to the openness of the EP setting, had a great time. The question that I wanted to answer with this was: is it worth running in Hero?
I think the best answer is... maybe. It really depends. If you are a Hero n00b and just coming to the system then probably not. The EP system really will be the easiest way to get you into the game and I don't think you will miss anything by doing so. However, if you are a Hero System fan then you will very likely enjoy playing the game in your favorite system. Nothing is lost in the translation. The real advantage to running this in Hero is grittier action/combat. I can say that without reservation having run the adventure first in EP and this second time in Hero. I enjoyed the combat scenes a lot more from a tactical/action perspective. However, I am not sure whether that is necessarily a win for everyone. Certainly the group I played with had a blast with the detailed combat rules. The EP combats were a little more narrative and not as deadly, although they certainly weren't a cake-walk either. Things like grappling and such were definitely more detailed in Hero, but that really isn't a surprise or a criticism.
Eclipse Phase is a great setting and a great set of rules. The rules are just detailed enough where they need to be and serve the setting extremely well. I only have two main gripes with the system: - The Speed trait
- Burst Fire/Autofire rules
That's really it. They are minor gripes, but they are there none the less and after reviewing the EP forums I am not the only one.
I think the potential of having a player with a 3 Speed go 3 times as often as most of the combatants (speed 1) is a little unbalancing. I prefer to have everyone with a SPD 3 in Hero, and then allow the mods to take that up to a 6. This means that the mods that enabled someone to be Speed 4 in EP would make them SPD 6 in Hero, which is superhuman, but only 2x as fast as the average combatant. I think this is especially appropriate since in Hero you can make multiple attacks as part of the rules. already. The EP speed system works just fine, and actually works exactly like the Hero Speed system, I think it is just way too generous. By comparison, if someone in Hero could act 4 times the average combatant (SPD 3), they would have a SPD of 12 and Hero players know exactly how unbalancing that can be, even with 1000pt characters, and here we are putting it into a 400-500pt context.
Burst Fire/Autofire This issue is a straight criticism, but I see why they did it (simplicity). If you burst fire you do more damage (+1d10). The problem with that is that it increases the chance of penetrating armor and causing a wound - realistically that just doesn't work. If your body armor can stop 1 round, it can stop multiple rounds (assuming they don't hit in the same spot) - extra hits do not create increase the likelihood of penetration. Is there a simple solve? No, not in EP. There are solutions, based on the MoS like you have in most systems but the bottom line is if you are a bit of a gun bunny then the EP rules will eat at you just a bit.
Hero has its own challenges with "realism" but I don't play it for gritty simulation, I play it for dramatic realism like I see in an action movie. In the adventure we actually had people using the Suppression fire rules to great success - it definitely had the effect of suppressing the area. The players had to get creative with how they were going to respond, as by suppressing the area the bad guys were able to move up and take cover in an advantageous position. Obviously, the scene has to warrant getting this tactical but, frankly, that's one of the things I enjoy about gaming. I want to have a strong narrative storytelling series of skill challenges and roleplaying opportunities, punctuated by gritty, hard hitting action, where casualties measure their pain in terms of discrete injuries to specific locations rather than loss of hit points.
I will post the characters as soon as I correct some typos. I do have a full HeroDesigner template with all of the morphs from the QuickStart rules, as well as a prefab with all of their equipment. I will continue to develop the materials as long as my players show an interest and I hope that helps some other Hero fans enjoy the awesome Eclipse Phase setting in their favorite system.
Big thanks to the crew at Warriors 3 Comics and Games for hosting me. I appreciate the opportunity to do these playtest events with an earnest audience prior to showtime at Origins and GenCon. Game On! |
|
