What is sad about Hero is that their plans to gain interest in their system to me at least has two approaches. It's all or nothing or grasping at straws imo. I would have done a 4E version of Champions now or Hero Now. I don't see too many people who were that huge fans of 3E. Plenty of fans of 4E and yet they choose an edition that seemed to me at least less popular and hoped it sold well. 6E was just such a strange beast imo in that it did nothing to draw in new fans, catered only to the old fans and the changes simply were not worth the price they were charging to me at least.

The running joke is that the 5E core could stop lower caliber bullets while looking like a college textbook well lets make two of them. If someone who might have been interested though intimidated by the size of Hero 5E was going to run to the hills with 6E. While the full color was nice the company was well known for black and white and again misread their target audience imo. No matter the production values many were and still are not that interested in that level of crunch and complexity even in full color.

Nor really doing any kind of editorial work on Champions from what I hear. I don't hate the guy yet giving us the Heor version of 1E DMG was probably not the best thing to do.

If Hero Games has some long term master marketing strategy I just don't see it.

Quote from: Darrin Kelley;1143251I've had it for a couple of weeks. And I already discovered a major problem. Movement. There is no way to increase it as a basic function. You have to take a power to exceed the 6 hexes of running everybody starts with. This also applies to all other forms of movement. You have to take a power to do anything with it.

This is just frustrating. Because it shows that the game was not finished when it was rushed to publication. Playtesting should have caught such a gaping error.

Can you provide some context? It doesn't sound like an error, as much as a different way of handling it. Are the costs for the "super movement" in CN the same as directly increasing "running" in 6E? Perhaps the author is trying to capture a 3rd edition style that subsequent editions moved away from?

Quote from: sureshot;1143301What is sad about Hero is that their plans to gain interest in their system to me at least has two approaches. It's all or nothing or grasping at straws imo. I would have done a 4E version of Champions now or Hero Now. I don't see too many people who were that huge fans of 3E. Plenty of fans of 4E and yet they choose an edition that seemed to me at least less popular and hoped it sold well. 6E was just such a strange beast imo in that it did nothing to draw in new fans, catered only to the old fans and the changes simply were not worth the price they were charging to me at least.

The running joke is that the 5E core could stop lower caliber bullets while looking like a college textbook well lets make two of them. If someone who might have been interested though intimidated by the size of Hero 5E was going to run to the hills with 6E. While the full color was nice the company was well known for black and white and again misread their target audience imo. No matter the production values many were and still are not that interested in that level of crunch and complexity even in full color.

Nor really doing any kind of editorial work on Champions from what I hear. I don't hate the guy yet giving us the Heor version of 1E DMG was probably not the best thing to do.

If Hero Games has some long term master marketing strategy I just don't see it.

If they really wanted to do color to bring in new gamers while maintaining the connection to the past, the correct tactics for that strategy would have been two-fold:

1. Do a reference book of rules with all the powers, build rules, etc.  Though not to the crazy extent that 5E went.  Make it black and white and boring, because that is what it is.  It's a book for the GM and the occasional interested player to make things for the campaign.  You won't make mint with this.  You won't bring in new players.  But you might keep the existing ones.

2. Then do single book, self-contained implementations of particular settings and genres with powers already calculated and setting information. Include only enough repeated rules to get people started.  Make this color and splashy.  Put some effort into layout.  Do more than one, but don't go berserk so as to cannibalize your own sales.   That is, don't do "Fantasy Hero Complete".  Don't do "Fantasy Setting X" and "Fantasy Setting Y" (at least not at first).  Pick one 4-color idea, one fantasy idea, maybe a street level or Justice Incorporate style idea, look at them really hard, rank them, and then come out with about 1 per year, including the first one launched about the time the boring reference book does.  

Bonus, the reference book doesn't even need to pretend to be exciting, which means its page count can be dedicated solely to what it is.

Now, I still don't think that strategy is a good one with Hero, because I think something more radical was needed to spark it.  But if that strategy is the one picked, at least give yourself a fighting chance.

Quote from: Aglondir;1143309Can you provide some context? It doesn't sound like an error, as much as a different way of handling it. Are the costs for the "super movement" in CN the same as directly increasing "running" in 6E? Perhaps the author is trying to capture a 3rd edition style that subsequent editions moved away from?

They are not the same. Not even a little bit. The only way to buy different modes of movement is to reskin and modify Flight. Which is extremely clunky at best. You cannot improve movement in any other way.

Quote from: sureshot;1143301The running joke is that the 5E core could stop lower caliber bullets while looking like a college textbook well lets make two of them. If someone who might have been interested though intimidated by the size of Hero 5E was going to run to the hills with 6E. While the full color was nice the company was well known for black and white and again misread their target audience imo. No matter the production values many were and still are not that interested in that level of crunch and complexity even in full color.

My introduction to Hero System was a 5e hardcover that I bought as a reference material for ideas (in case I missed anything), cuz I had been working on a homebrewed effect-based system that was basically Hero-light, except that it had been inspired by MSH (FASERIP) mixed with elements of D&D and other systems. And if I hadn't already been working on a similar system I wouldn't have bothered even reading or buying Hero 5e, cuz that thing was monstrous, wordy AF and hard to follow. I used to joke that you could kill someone with it with a well-placed blow to the head, and that a regular attack with it could probably do 1d6 clubbing damage in D&D.

It took me multiple read throughs to even get the gist of it, cuz the core system was over complicated and the book engaged in excessive use of acronyms for numerous game stats and power adders (or whatever "extras" are called), which made it had to remember WTF anything meant. I joined a thread about Hero System a few months ago over at the Pub, where the topic came up, and a couple of experienced players told me that 5e was probably the hardest edition for people new to Hero.

I guess when ICE went under and stopped publishing for Hero 4E the fans were willing to overlook the wordiness at first just get a new version of the Hero System. Savage Worlds was just entering the market so no competition. Then they wanted to cater to an ever shrinking fanbase, coupled with what seems to be marketing strategy where moneys throw darts at balloons. We have the current state of Hero. It also took YEARS to even get 6E products to Print on demand. At one point they had a bunch of 6E volume 2 for sale in print yet no Volume 1 except in PDF. Whose going to buy one core book in PDf and the other in print.

With 6E they doubled down on not what to do and expected the fanbase to bend over and be happy with the final result.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;11433191. Do a reference book of rules with all the powers, build rules, etc.  Though not to the crazy extent that 5E went.  Make it black and white and boring, because that is what it is.  It's a book for the GM and the occasional interested player to make things for the campaign.  You won't make mint with this.  You won't bring in new players.  But you might keep the existing ones.

Correct. I would add: OGL it.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;11433192. Then do single book, self-contained implementations of particular settings and genres with powers already calculated and setting information. Include only enough repeated rules to get people started.  Make this color and splashy.  Put some effort into layout.  Do more than one, but don't go berserk so as to cannibalize your own sales.

Correct. Start with a fantasy game that can appeal to D&D players. Everything is pre-built. There are no power construction rules. Instead, those 84 pages (last time I counted) are for spells, monsters, and treasure. So for example, a Wizard spell looks like this:

Lightning Bolt: A bolt of lightning springs forth from your staff (or wand) and strikes a single opponent in range.

• Casting time: 1 phase
• Roll: Spellcraft skill
• Damage: 10d6
• Defense: ED
• Requires: Incantations, gestures, staff or wand, 5 END
• Cost: 11 CP

Not this: Bolt Of Magical Force: Blast 10d6; Extra Time (Full Phase, -½), OAF (wand, staff, rod, or the like; -1), Gestures (throughout; -1), Incantations (throughout; -½), Requires Magic Roll (-½). 11 CP.


General Principles

• No number crunching. The player simply selects from pre-built options to make a character.  The GM simply selects pre-built monsters and treasures.
  
• English, not Hero-ese. Some abbreviations are fine (every RPG has some) but we never should see the parentheses and fractions.
  
• No option-itis: This is standard dungeon fantasy. We don't need sections on different magical mechanics or explanations on the sub-genres of fantasy.
  

Aglondir,

I like that spell listing a lot.  However, if going that route, the spell still has to be calculated by someone.  So I'd do that in a separate PDF and provide a download link for anyone that is interested in examples of how to modify the spells.  Then maybe have an appendix in the printed book, no more than a page or two, that gives the directions for the download and a brief example and introduction to how it works, but mainly referring to the other documents.

All you really need to make that work well is a coding system to link the human-readable spell from the encoded version.  In the PDF, don't include the fluff at all.  It's redundant for the purpose and would make the PDF a pirate's dream for not buying the color book, defeating the purpose of the whole scheme.  Also, that gives GMs that want to make their game more approachable a template for how to do it even when they do enjoy monkeying with the full list of powers and making their own.  In fact, that is often how I ran Hero:  Do all the calculations with the help of another player or two, then give simplified options to the rest of the players.

Summary of the above - present a game built with the Hero toolkit, not the toolkit itself. Keep the toolkit "under the hood", and provide the toolkit separately for those interested.

Quote from: RandyB;1143391Summary of the above - present a game built with the Hero toolkit, not the toolkit itself. Keep the toolkit "under the hood", and provide the toolkit separately for those interested.

But of course they have done that, and still not big sellers. Narosia comes to mind, and there are a few others...

Champions Now is not as complete as Fuzion was as a system.

Let that sink in a moment. It's an inferior product to Fuzion in just about every way.

Quote from: shuddemell;1143406But of course they have done that, and still not big sellers. Narosia comes to mind, and there are a few others...

IMHO - The 'toolkit' Hero system itself needs to be streamlined, simplified, and cleaned up before you can even think about doing a complete game.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1143384Aglondir,

I like that spell listing a lot.  However, if going that route, the spell still has to be calculated by someone.  So I'd do that in a separate PDF and provide a download link for anyone that is interested in examples of how to modify the spells.  Then maybe have an appendix in the printed book, no more than a page or two, that gives the directions for the download and a brief example and introduction to how it works, but mainly referring to the other documents.

All you really need to make that work well is a coding system to link the human-readable spell from the encoded version.  In the PDF, don't include the fluff at all.  It's redundant for the purpose and would make the PDF a pirate's dream for not buying the color book, defeating the purpose of the whole scheme.  Also, that gives GMs that want to make their game more approachable a template for how to do it even when they do enjoy monkeying with the full list of powers and making their own.  In fact, that is often how I ran Hero:  Do all the calculations with the help of another player or two, then give simplified options to the rest of the players.

Thanks. The spells are already built. They just need to be translated out of Hero-ese.

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Quote from: shuddemell;1143406But of course they have done that, and still not big sellers. Narosia comes to mind, and there are a few others...

Hero Games has never done it, at least they way I am envisioning. Narosia was a 3PP.  Danger International (1984) and Western Hero (1991) come close, but neither have powers/magic/psi/whatever. The Fantasy Hero products of the ICE era had package deals, which are on the right track but still fall short of the idea I'm thinking about.

Quote from: Aglondir;1143609Hero Games has never done it, at least they way I am envisioning. Narosia was a 3PP.  Danger International (1984) and Western Hero (1991) come close, but neither have powers/magic/psi/whatever. The Fantasy Hero products of the ICE era had package deals, which are on the right track but still fall short of the idea I'm thinking about.

Obviously, I cannot speak to what you are imagining, however I would say that for something like that to be successful, it likely would have to be attached to a known IP to draw people into it. I personally think that Narosia (yes it was third party) was the right idea but without a head of steam built from an IP, most people won't change to a new system. It's one of the things D&D has really going for it, a legacy. It hasn't been the best game for a long time, but it is the best known and that goes a long way to ensure their survival that Hero and others like it just don't have.