Quote from: Darrin Kelley on April 22, 2021, 04:22:48 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on April 21, 2021, 09:48:45 PM
Can you tell us who? And any details about the original idea?

Michael Surbrook. I spoke to him at a Q&A on Discord.

He didn't give details of what the original idea would be. And I didn't press the matter,

He said the HERO System is dead to him now. And I just wished him good luck.

My guess was either Surbrook or Heimforth, with Steve Long as a distant 3rd. Definitely a loss for DOJ but also a loss for the Hero community.

Hero is sadly dead. Their online store is a joke, they are selling full-price PDFs while offering no previews or even page counts to give an indication of what you're buying. WTF?

My impression is that Steve Long has always been a stand-up guy, but everyone else involved in the company well...they don't inspire confidence.

It's 2021, the last gasp was Champions Complete and that was released in 2012. Nine years ago.

RIP, it will always be a great game and one of the pillars from the first decade of RPG design but it's a historical artifact at this point.

Quote from: RandyB on April 22, 2021, 03:17:06 PM
...
There's making the rubble bounce, which I endorse, and there's making more rubble out of the rubble because the rubble is not bouncing on its own.

Salting the earth, grinding their houses to dust, and placing curses upon their progeny also never gets old.

The rubble bouncing will continue until morale improves.

No reason to give the current hero games even a glimpse of daylight.

Quote from: Jaeger on April 23, 2021, 01:43:26 PM

Quote from: RandyB on April 22, 2021, 03:17:06 PM
...
There's making the rubble bounce, which I endorse, and there's making more rubble out of the rubble because the rubble is not bouncing on its own.

Salting the earth, grinding their houses to dust, and placing curses upon their progeny also never gets old.

The rubble bouncing will continue until morale improves.

No reason to give the current hero games even a glimpse of daylight.

I walked away from Hero over a decade ago. Key phrase being "walked away".

They are doing more damage to themselves than any of us can inflict. And I've reached the point of having better things to do with my gaming time and Internet time than obsess over the corpse of an old friend, no matter how once-beloved.

Quote from: RandyB on April 23, 2021, 02:10:46 PM
I walked away from Hero over a decade ago. Key phrase being "walked away".

They are doing more damage to themselves than any of us can inflict. And I've reached the point of having better things to do with my gaming time and Internet time than obsess over the corpse of an old friend, no matter how once-beloved.

I don't.

Typing out a one or two sentence missive, and clicking on 'post' to kick HERO's dead donkey once again is no trouble at all.

In replying to your posts, I have been given the opportunity and pleasure of spitting* on their rotting corpse 3 more times.

Thank you.




*edit: ( I don't want people to get the wrong idea and assume that I would spit on the rotting corpse of hero games if it was on fire. That is what Gasoline and Marshmallows are for. )

They lack of any new material beyond third party really hurt and continues to hurt Hero Games.

Though what really did much damage is the lack of any real change with 6E Hero System with no attempt to try and reach out to new players. Instead firmly wanting to cater to only their current fanbase. As well for at least I think 5 years if not more perhaps even for a decade it took the current owner(s), to reissue the core 6E set on print on demand. Imagine not being able to buy the first core book of the two part core set. So for years all they had was volume 2 for sale. Which was not going to sell well because who buy the volume 2 of a two part core set. If one was okay with PDF one could get the core yet it was kind of hard to get anyone interested when one cannot have access to the core set in print.

Like Sjgames they take every and any opportunity to miss any and every opportunity. I never saw and really huge demand for a 3E revival of 3E Champions. I did and still see interest in 4E and later. Many wanted if not rules light less crunch and complexity. Again like the fanbase for Gurps they want to lament the fact they cannot find GMs and/or players for games using the Hero System. Yet Hero Games better not change anything or it will kill the Hero System. As if the rpg is not already 3/4 of it's way in its grave. While also hiding behind any change and using the Sunken Cost Fallacy as a shield.

It's kind of sad to see yet absolute no sympathy on my part. Not any longer either for the fans of Hero System, Gurps, Harn or other similar rpg companies who refuse to try anything new and insist on wanting to cather to niche group of players who get smaller and smaller.

They should have stuck with what they had instead of knowingly killing themselves on the edition treadmill. Or whomever now controls the IP as at one point it changed hands and I believe changed hands again? Whomever thought the damn "five year plan" was a winner shot themselves and have only themselves to blame.

It reminds me of a certain famous and pedigreed game company that languished under its latter-day management for a decade or more until the founders stepped in and fixed things up. While it was doing nothing and letting its IP rot, the peanut gallery could only surmise that something was wrong, without knowing what or how bad it was. Turns out it was very bad.

I suspect the same is true for DOJ Hero Games - the individuals responsible (and Steve Long is not one of them, as a minority owner) almost certainly have shall we say, significant character flaws, it's just that these facts are not in the public domain. The simple and most charitable explanation could be that they are doing other things with their lives and Hero Games now occupies a negligable part of their time and attention, so it withers on the vine. Likely, it's worse.