Personally I liked the separation of the secondary characteristics as it simplifies the accounting but I can understand why a guy who's converted every character in the DC and Marvel universes for previous editions might throw the book at the wall.

The big problem with HERO's character creation is that power modifiers and frameworks are essential to building effective characters.  Divorced from that it's a dead simple points buy game.

Quote from: David Johansen;1046807Personally I liked the separation of the secondary characteristics as it simplifies the accounting but I can understand why a guy who's converted every character in the DC and Marvel universes for previous editions might throw the book at the wall.

The big problem with HERO's character creation is that power modifiers and frameworks are essential to building effective characters.  Divorced from that it's a dead simple points buy game.

Pretty much. Especially frameworks throw a spanner in the works for new players. I've seen them trying to work it out from the condensed summary found in Champions Complete, and then implement. Not easy...

The real problem with 5E/6E is that it completely misread the market.  5E tinkered around the edges, and changed things just enough to invalidate a lot of 4E material, but didn't really "fix" anything (whatever one might think needed fixing or not).  And it came out at a time when fans might have entertained some reasonable cleanup, such as the removal of figured characteristics.  Then after a bunch of people invested in 5E and got settled in with the new edition, then they decided to make some serious changes.  

In neither 5E nor 6E, was there a host of new customers anxiously waiting for, "the same massive stuff, only more."  It is a fairly simple game to play, but relatively difficult and time consuming to setup a world and characters.  Skip 5E, go straight to 6E, and provide some solid support for a simplified version with a good campaign, it might have worked.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1046820The real problem with 5E/6E is that it completely misread the market.  5E tinkered around the edges, and changed things just enough to invalidate a lot of 4E material, but didn't really "fix" anything (whatever one might think needed fixing or not).  And it came out at a time when fans might have entertained some reasonable cleanup, such as the removal of figured characteristics.  Then after a bunch of people invested in 5E and got settled in with the new edition, then they decided to make some serious changes.  

In neither 5E nor 6E, was there a host of new customers anxiously waiting for, "the same massive stuff, only more."  It is a fairly simple game to play, but relatively difficult and time consuming to setup a world and characters.  Skip 5E, go straight to 6E, and provide some solid support for a simplified version with a good campaign, it might have worked.

Yep, in 7 years (2001-2008) DoJ turned out around 100 HERO books which is close to the number of books HERO and ICE put out for 1E-4E.

6E came out in 2009 and over 3 years did around 30 books, roughly 1/2 just slightly modified reprints of 5E genre books and supplements. They have produced one new book since 2012. Licensed product has accounted for all but one Hero book since 2012. Fantasy Hero Complete came out in 2015 and is the last book to date published by DoJ.

They literally have not provided books that 1E-5E players would have any reason to buy unless they didn't buy them during the 5E era.

Had 5E made the 6E changes in 2001 instead of 2009 they may have still ruffled feathers, but players of the older editions likely still would have bought the supplements. There were people who disliked the relatively small changes done for 5E, but many did hang around the HERO forums and bought 5E product.

https://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?36959-Hero-System-6th-Edition-(Vol-2-Combat-and-Adventuring)

QuoteBut as with the D&D corebooks, while I have to give these titles high marks on both style and substance, that doesn't necessarily mean I endorse them wholeheartedly.

It again comes down to my general feeling that the new edition of HERO System would trip up veteran players while not necessarily being easier for non-HERO players to learn. In particular I think that not only do some things cost more than they should but that some costs are added that didn't need to be there before. This is why the point quota for starting characters has been increased. This is basically point inflation - you're paying more to get the same value than what you had. Or sometimes less.

Why am I so hung up on the matter of point inflation? Because, generally, the more points a character costs, the more complex it is to design. In some cases that's a good thing, which is why modern HERO has a lot more Skills and options than write-ups in the old Champions books. But in order to get those options that are now spelled out in rules, you have to pay points, and spend time and thought on just where those points should go, and each recent edition of the game has required you to build a PC on more points to get what he "should" have for a starting character (mainly on the Superheroic level). However given that as many Powers were reduced in cost as increased, and Skill Levels increased somewhat but not substantially, and the cost of former Primary Characteristics were reduced to account for their not being a base to other Characteristics anymore, it's clear that the prime culprit in the "point inflation" is the need to buy one's base CV stats in addition
to getting Combat Skill Levels.

Again, it is similar to what was done in Mutants & Masterminds' 2nd Edition, but there it was done on a relatively cheap and simple scale. I might be less bugged about the new costs if they hadn't decided that "Figured" Characteristics included CV and Mental CV and even then I wouldn't have minded so much if they didn't split them further into Offensive and Defensive values so they have to be bought twice. Especially considering that OMCV, unlike OCV, is useless to anybody who isn't a mentalist- which means for all effective purposes that stat doesn't exist for most characters, defeating the purpose of the differentiation. Of course that's just my "grognard" perspective. But from the standpoint of the new player, who probably came off an Attribute+Skill system like White Wolf's, they won't automatically assume that Characteristics would have no effect on combat values, and having to buy those values from a separate average is computation that they didn't have to do before.

In other words, there are changes made that didn't merely complicate the game but complicated it unnecessarily. And if you're trying to keep HERO veterans while trying to recruit new players, the last thing you want to do is make the game unnecessarily complicated. Which is why I'd said in the 6E1 review that the new edition doesn't require you to learn the game all over again, but it doesn't streamline things for newbies. It also throws in enough significant changes that when I tried explaining them to my gaming group, they were fairly unanimous in not wanting to try 6E, which means I won't get to test-run it, which is why I said I wouldn't be getting the hardcopy books.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1046766The 5E revision doesn't do much more than correct errata and fold in a bunch of material that wasn't yet written or they didn't have room for in the original 5E.

6E was a different story. It made the most radical changes since the 4E consolidation--removing Comeliness, disconnecting Figured Characteristics, and others--and a number of fans weren't happy with the revisions. It was produced in a high-cost prestige format--2 volumes, full-color, lushly illustrated hardcovers that ran a total of $80 at most LGSes.

Thanks, that really is a huge difference. So much of what made Hero / Champions was figuring out combinations of stats to hit important points, like that next rank of Speed.

I have to say I am enjoying Fantasy Hero / 5th Edition Revised though. It really doesn't require that much page flipping as compared to (seemingly) more simple games like DCCRPG.

Quote from: Aglondir;1046174I didn't think it would make it, but:

$21,297 pledged of $20,000 goal
620 backers
39 hours to go

That's tremendously low, anyways, for such a well-known game line.

Compare that to Alex Macris' latest KS, what with Macris not being without his own controversy, where for some ACKS sourcebook he's funded at $16K (of a 15K goal) with 9 days to go.  And that's not for a main book, it's for a supplement for a game that is pretty old at this point.

Edwards & Hero System? Tuna & Ragu? "Reply Hazy" But if he does something with it, good luck to him.

I'd be surprised if there are many HS groups left, though. Seems like more of a nostalgia drive.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1041213Isn't Ron Edwards that Forge guy with the crazy theories that have been debunked for the most part? Honest question, I know that name from somewhere, but I don't honestly know where.

Sort of, yes, but you put it in a very strong way that seems aggressive.

Ron Edwards is the guy who created "The Forge" message boards to encourage independent RPG authors in their creations. He has written quite a few RPG systems, the most famous being Sorcerer, but also including Trollbabe, Elfs, and others. His GNS (Gamist Narrative Simulationist) theories were an attempt to make RPG theory more academic, but what it seems to have done is mostly cause a rift in the RPG community whereby some folks think he's a genius and others think he's a nut. Whether his theories were debunked or not probably depends upon who you talk to, as he was mostly trying to discuss styles of play and I'm not sure you debunk that.

Anyway, he is very polarizing in the RPG community and Champions isn't his usual style.

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EDIT: Sorry -- didn't realize this was a 10-page thread. This has probably been discussed 8-9 pages ago.

A friend of mine gave me a copy of Hero 6th edition. 466 pages just for character creation?

Um, yeah, I'd rather do GURPS.

Quote from: finarvyn;1080391Sort of, yes, but you put it in a very strong way that seems aggressive.

Ron Edwards is the guy who created "The Forge" message boards to encourage independent RPG authors in their creations. He has written quite a few RPG systems, the most famous being Sorcerer, but also including Trollbabe, Elfs, and others. His GNS (Gamist Narrative Simulationist) theories were an attempt to make RPG theory more academic, but what it seems to have done is mostly cause a rift in the RPG community whereby some folks think he's a genius and others think he's a nut. Whether his theories were debunked or not probably depends upon who you talk to, as he was mostly trying to discuss styles of play and I'm not sure you debunk that.

Anyway, he is very polarizing in the RPG community and Champions isn't his usual style.

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EDIT: Sorry -- didn't realize this was a 10-page thread. This has probably been discussed 8-9 pages ago.

I don't recall having been answered.  I say 'debunked' because he believed that his theory posits that the three styles are distinct and separate, except that in all the discussions pro and con have proven that if these distinctions exist they work WITH each other to varying degrees and enough people have claimed there's another 'style' called Immersive also exists.

Also theories exist for two reasons, to be validated or debunked by experimentation, and GNS has.  Otherwise it's just an opinion or a manifesto until it's proven or otherwise.

Quote from: finarvyn;1080391Sort of, yes, but you put it in a very strong way that seems aggressive.

Ron Edwards is the guy who created "The Forge" message boards to encourage independent RPG authors in their creations. He has written quite a few RPG systems, the most famous being Sorcerer, but also including Trollbabe, Elfs, and others. His GNS (Gamist Narrative Simulationist) theories were an attempt to make RPG theory more academic, but what it seems to have done is mostly cause a rift in the RPG community whereby some folks think he's a genius and others think he's a nut. Whether his theories were debunked or not probably depends upon who you talk to, as he was mostly trying to discuss styles of play and I'm not sure you debunk that.

Anyway, he is very polarizing in the RPG community and Champions isn't his usual style.

Well, apparently Steve Long likes him.

JG

So did it ever ship or is it still pending?

Quote from: James Gillen;1080411Well, apparently Steve Long likes him.

JG

May just be a case of opposites attract. HS died for me after 4E. Going through 5E the local joke asked if it was written by a lawyer.

When we found out it was, it made a lot of sense. But Edwards?

Seems like that's like hiring a gender studies major working for Cosmo to take over Hustler.

Quote from: Omega;1080413So did it ever ship or is it still pending?

It states it'll be released in June.  I'm curious about it, still.