Goodman Games

Hi Folks,

I wondered whether any more HERO fans lurk around here?
Would love to talk about rules, settings and conversions!

I'm a big fan of the HERO system! It's been several years since I actually had anyone to play it with though.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat as mythfish... Played 3rd and 4th Edition Champions heavily from 87 to about 91 or 92, but have only managed one or two games a year since, usually at DunDraCon.

I have the massive black tome that is 5th Edition Hero System, but haven't made very much use of it.

My favorite Champions character (and maybe all-time character) was Ace, the teenaged mutant who didn't have full control of his powers, or of his mouth for that matter. He was my primary character for the era mentioned above, and he really grew in an organic way across those games, which made him memorable for me and for the guys I played with at that time.

I made a 'grown-up' version of him in the waning days of that campaign, after he had 'been away' for a while, but never got to bring him back since the campaign evaporated. -- But I did play that version earlier this year, at DunDraCon, with one of the other campaign members running the game. It was gratifying to revisit the character in an older form and imagine how he's changed.

Okay now I'm going to geek-out and give you his plot arc. He was a teenager when he started to play at being a superhero. He didn't have control of his myriad powers, and made a lot of bad choices, but his heart was always in the right place. When I decided it was time for him to grow up, I decided it would be more dramatic if he went away and came back to the campiagn with a new attitude, like a kid going off to college and coming back four years later older and wiser, still recognizable, but with experiences under their belt they couldn't get at home.

Well, like I say, he never actually came back since the campaign went away, too. But I never totally let go of the character. In a one-off game with some of the folks from the original campaign, I played another Ace, a young girl who admired the original Ace and was angered by his 'giving up' (he was just gone! He must have lost faith!) and took up where he left off, or at least tried to do so.

Eventually, I imagined the events of his dissappearance like so: He moved away, and came up against a very powerful (undefined) foe who litterally knocked him into the middle of next week -- Ace was blasted into the future. Getting there was like skipping a rock on a lake, with Ace as the rock. He flashed into one year in the future, existed there for awhile and then skipped again, five years this time, again spending many months there before skipping again to his final destination -- about 80 years in the future. There he became a freedom fighter -- called The Liberator -- in a hellish nightmare world that is conveniently undefined beyond the adjectives. There are oppressors, there are victims, there is doom, gloom, hopelessness, blood, devestation, death, war and horror. Eventually, he learned as much as he could about how all this came about and found a way back, more or less, to his 'own' time.

So he came back, with the personal goal of trying to avert or lessen this dark future. As I would play him if I had any sort of campaign to play him in, he exists along side his young self and alongside this young girl who admire(s/d) him. I like how the complex temporal stuff appeals to my adult sensibilities and how the 'Ace Family' aspect appeals to the kid in me who remembers reading the Batman Family and Superman Family comics of the 70's.

If the undefined qualities sound akward, let me briefly explain. The orignal character was not concieved with an extensive background. This allowed my to play the character in response to the adventures at hand and define him based on what he faced. There was no chaffing of the I'm-a-wilderness-warrior-in-a-city-? sort, that we sometime run into as roleplayers. I think this freedom is what allowed him to grow and made him so memorable. By not defining the horror of the future world, I can respond to events in any given game as if they do or do not relate to that future in a completely improvisational way. It's fun!


...er, what was the original question?

@GnomeBoy - *laughs* You're welcome! Just share everything you need to let go off. It's okay! *pats GnomeBoy's back*

@Mythfish, GnomeBoy: thanks for replying.
I think that HERO is arguably the most complete rules set ever written. And it is highly playable, too. A marvelous system. For me the reason why I do not play it that often is the sheer amount of prep work that needs to go into a well thought-out campaign.

I game mastered Champions 4th Edition for a little while but my group moved apart. Later I tried to start small HERO SYSTEM sessions for one-off adventures but it never really caught on. Recently I started a DARK CHAMPIONS campaign placed in Hudson City but I only had one play session so far.

In between I had illusions of grandeur, trying to convert a couple of different settings to HERO. But it's one helluva lot of work and so far I always came to the conclusion that it might not be worth the effort (fearing that I might not get enough players convinced to actually play it).
Did you try something similar?

Edit: a couple of days back when I was reading into BRONCOSAURUS REX again I pondered the idea of converting the setting over to HERO. Does anybody know whether there are D20 to HERO Conversions out there?

I've never actually GMed a HERO game, I always was a player. And alas, I've never been in a superhero campaign that lasted more than a few sessions. Our longest-running HERO game was actually a low-magic Fantasy HERO setting (but I still got to play with rules a lot because the GM let my character buy some "powers" on the basis of his herbalism skill).

I love that you can use the exact same system to describe literally damn near anything without having to come up with any new rules. It takes practice, yeah, but it's totally worth it. I love coming up with wacky superhero powers and then trying to translate them into HERO. There are very few I haven't been able to figure out something for (although doing it in less than 250 points is sometimes hard).

As long as we're swapping character stories, one of my favorite heroes is a magic-based hero called Glyph. Most magic heroes in the comics have a wide variety of powerful things they can do, and I wanted to get as close to that as I could with only 250 points, in as few powers as possible. I started him off with only Detect Magic and a magic Power Blast with Variable Advantage and Variable Disadvantage. It turned out to be not as versatile as I'd hoped, but still a lot of fun to play with.

I vaguely recall that in the back of the 4th ed Fantasy Hero book (Or maybe it was somewhere else) there were guidelines for converting HERO to 2nd Ed D&D. I also recall they weren't very good and you may as well just take the concepts and remake them from scratch in HERO rather than trying a direct conversion.

Update: If anyone is interested, I found some really cool conversion rules (D&D 3 to HERO) from one of the Hero System buffs KILLERSHRIKE:
http://www.killershrike.com/FantasyHERO ... yHERO.aspx

@mythfish:
You might have build your GLYPH with a Variable Power Pool or a Multipower Framework. That way you could link together some powers with a common special effect (like magic). Might give your heroine some more options and powers. But I agree - sometimes it's hard realizing your character idea within the allotment of points.

Yeah, but I decided that way was too easy.

Yeah, I know them. I got the old Fantasy Hero and also the sourcebook you mentioned for 4th Ed. They are okay but far, far from comprehensive.

@Mythfish, GnomeBoy: Since HERO became known through CHAMPIONS, is there any specific Superhero Genre that you prefer? Or any you would love to see?

It still kinda blows my mind how versatile that rules set is. And I never thought it was hard to pick up to begin with, after the basic concepts were in your head, because it was so consistent. After playing with it for years, I could still think of weird, random powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men which I could easily (most often) sum up with a power and modifier combo. The main rules only took X pages, but conceptually, that system is bottomless.

On the downside, I had many (friendly) arguments with folks over Telekenesis. I think they changed it in 5 Ed, but in 4 it was NOT a way to move anything. It was STR at range and that was it. But folks got hung up on the name, "you move stuff around the room with TK, Jean Grey has TK, I saw Escape to Witch Mountain, I know TK when I see it" etc. Moving things was Flight, Usable on Others.

Hey, Myth, wasn't there a Variable Special Effects advantage? That can cover a lot of ground, i.e. you've got an Energy Blast, but it could be ice, fire, cosmic rays, magical ectoplasm, etc. changing turn by turn or encounter by enconter, as needed.

As for genre, well we played Champions, and I've only ever dabbled in any varient of Fantasy Hero. Our Super Heroes were generally straight up 80's style heroes. Dark Champions came out as things were waining, and I can't recall if anyone even picked it up. We had a broad variety of adventures, from preventing demonic incursions into the mortal realm, to preventing world conquest by mad men, to bank roberies. Used some 'core' villains and we created our own. It was a cooperative campaign, had about five players and everyone GM'd at least a bit if not a lot.

The best published adventure I ever ran in it was Wings of the Valkyrie, which started with a murder mystery and lead the heroes into time travelling back to the dawn of the Nazis. A great, well-written, well-conceived adventure with broad scope, wonderful dilemmas, and fun set pieces. I've been half-wondering about running it again at the con next year.

Totally random, funny Ace moment: Ace was vulnerable to teleportation. His powers were based on the vague concept of "bio-energy" (as if he had 1000 times of something that normal folks have but can't apply like he could) and teleportation disrupted the flow and caused pain. His best buddy was Rook, who's entire power suite was based on teleportaion effects. The two were having a tough time taking out a few bad guys, but finally the dice were rolling in our favor and the end was near. Rook asks Ace if he needs any help, and Ace confidently says no. Rook uses an area effect blast to take care of the two goons bothering him, while Ace is one segment away from clobbering his foe. But the edge of Rook's explosion just tags Ace's postiion. The damage from the blast is, like, 2 points, no problem. But it triggers the vulnerability! ...2d6 of damage later Ace is out cold, and Rook has another bad guy to mop up....

Oh, absolutely. Since it has been around for over 25 years I still don't quite get it why it didn't develop into one of the most used and best known game systems... Nearly everyone whom I explained the system to was impressed by the versatility of the mechanics. Strange how history goes sometimes.

Well, 5th Edition sees this revised: Telekinesis is also for moving objects. Generally, they fixed a great deal of trouble-spots and 5th Edition is the best HERO there ever was. Still, it's compatable with older editions. Which game system can claim that?

I like 80s heroes, maybe 'cause it was my decade. Heh heh. But I also like the modern, grittier graphic novel feel of superheroics.

Your funny Ace moment was indeed funny!

...And still they didn't rectify by calling Power Defense "Adjustment Defense". Back in the day I used that, hoped they'd get it in 4th (nope) and wondered if they finally get it in 5th (nope). It makes sense and means you can abbriviate all the defense types without confusion - PD, ED, FD, and AD, instead of PD, ED, FD, and PD (again).

Okay, I think that and the t-port thing covers all my Hero System gripes.

Imagine..., a game system with only two gripes...?

BTW, Call of Cthulu has had, um, six editions (?) and they're all pretty much compatible with each other....

Hi all

I am a long term, since 1983 or so, a champion of the Hero System

More later

That's right, of course. You could also name RuneQuest or Basic Roleplaying System from which Cthulhu has been derived. All of them are faithful to their original core system with only rather minor adjustments over the course of time. I find this amazing and it shows a really profound knowledge of game mechanics on behalf of their designers.

Well, okay. But you could argue that Flash Defense and Power Defense are POWERS whereas the other two (Physical Defense and Energy Defense) are CHARACTERISTICS. Imho there's not really a need for the designers to abbreviate Powers in the same way they abbreviate Characteristics. Maybe it was even done deliberately to distinguish them. Just a thought, though.

Hey, I've remembered something tricksy about HERO that I was never able to find a satisfactory solution for....

Back in the day, I had a character whom I wanted to use, essentially, a Spidey-Tracer. I never could come up with a way to do that that everyone could agree on (we all played and took turns GMing). Some designs were too cumbersome and expensive for what it was, others were elegant, simple and cheap, but usually someone had serious misgivings that it covered the bases and was fair.

Anybody ever find a good, fool-proof way to simulate something like that...?



Ok, so I just got that. Nice.

My first instinct would be to go with some kind of Sense or Detect power, but that might fall into the category of solutions that people had misgivings about. I'll think about it some and get back to you.

Could you help me out and explain what you mean by that? What is a "Spidey-Tracer"?

Though not an oft-used trick, Spider-Man has these wee little gizmos that he can fling onto villains or get-away cars or anything really, that he can then track using his "spider-sense". Generally, when he's slumped on a rooftop, all beaten up with a torn costume and a bad bruise on his temple, and the villain is cackling and flying off to inflict more damage to the city, or steal the rest of the gold shipment or take Gwen Stacy to the top of that bridge, Spidey will attempt to fling the tracer at the villain. IF it sticks and IF the villain doesn't notice, and IF he can stay within range, Spider-man can follow, even if he can't see any sign of the villain, by using his spider-sense to sense the signal the tracer puts out.

The one I tried to design for my character was purely technological, since she didn't have any such 'spider-sense'. She would have a techological device that she would track with an additional piece of tech. The most elegant solution was simply having the Systems Operation skill (assuming I'm remembering the name of the skill correctly), and the rest was 'special effects' since the skill assumes accessability to technology (IIRC). It's been over a decade (!) so my memory may be faulty on this. "Nurse! Nurse -- it's time for my meds!"

Initially, I had tried to build the tracer itself, but I can't remember how I went about it. I may still have versions of the character in 'the archive', but it would probably take too long to dig them out... though the nostalgia might be nice.

I actually still play this character about once a year, since there are usualy plenty of Champions games to be had at DunDraCon each February. If I had a balanced design for the device, it'd be cool to add it back in to her repertoire, so any suggestions would be appriciated.

@GnomeBoy: Okay, here's the solution from DARK CHAMPIONS. It describes a Tracking Bug:

Effect: Images to Radio Group, +4 to PER Rolls
Target/Area Affected: 32" Radius
Duration: Constant
Range: RBS
Charges: 1 Continuing Recoverable Charge lasting 1 Week
Breakability: 1 DEF

Description: This is a device which characters can attach to cars and other moving objects to follow them. It emits a distinctive radio signal which identifies the bug's location. Tracking the beacon requires any specialized radio-perceiving device.
The Tracking Bug can reliably be "picked up" on tracking equipment primarily within 32" radius. However, much like a character can see the beam from a flashlight from far away without being inside the beam, characters outside the 32" radius may still be able to track the Tracer, if the GM so permits: from 33-64", the Image is at only +2 to PER Rolls; from 64-125", it's at +0; from 126-250" it's at -2; beyond that it would require an Extraordinary Skill Roll to locate it.

Game Information: Images to Radio Group, +4 to PER Rolls, Increased Size (32" radius; +1/4), Usable As Attack (allows the character to "stick" the Image to a target; +1), Range Based On STR (+1/4), 1 Continuing Recoverable Charge lasting 1 Week (stops functioning if it gets wet or experiences severe radio interference; +1) (76 Active Points); IAF Fragile (-3/4), Set Effect (detectable signal; -1), Image Only Perceivable On Special Radio Frequencies (-0). Total cost: 28 points.

Hope this comes close to what you had in mind!

Images to radio group? I would never have thought of doing it that way. Cool.

Zoinks! Images to Radio Group?! Great Shrinking Desolidifiers! Never came up with that one!

28 points still breaks the bank for my tastes, but then I'm known for slathering on Limitations that I can live with in order to make powers cheaper (if not always reliable).

I'm gonna hafta tinker with that one! Thanks, Argamae!

~ Wanders off mumbling about versitility of the Hero System...

-- again...! ~

Yeah, I don't think I'd pay 28 points for it either but the thing I really like about this solution is that it allows anyone with access to the right "special radio frequencies" to track the device.

Speaking as your former HERO GM, mythfish, you'd pay that 28 points. It's a weird power, it's useful, it doesn't cause damage, it's a great "support guy" power. You'd totally pay 28 points for that.

Mateo might pay 28 points for it, but I'd find some more limitations to slap on it. Requires a skill roll is always one of my faves...probably Systems Op in this case to properly use the special radio equipment and read the signal correctly. And I wouldn't bother with the +4 PER either.

Yeah, but it wouldn't be a spidey-tracer if you had to use a skill roll.

I might build it as Detect: People I've Tagged With A Spider-Tracer. Give it a range of 1-2 miles, Requires A Skill Roll to tag someone with it, IAF, 1 charge lasting about 2 days... instead of focusing the power on the tracer, focus it on the character. The tracer is a special effect.