Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

[Guest taxboy4]

There must be heaps of them written, I can DM well on the fly but hate writing adventures and npcs, would love to buy / download some?

 

Any thoughts??

[Markdoc]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Yep, I'd love some too.

 

Just to show I'm not all take, take, take, here's a fantasy campaign I wrote up.

 

Volume I

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Adventures.zip

Volume II

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Sengoku_NPCs.zip

 

The setting is medieval japanese, but it'd be dead easy to file off the serial numbers and drop into your own setting - especially if you drop out adventure #20 and add in "stop evil conspiracy of your choice" instead.

 

The first quarter of the campaign started life in my fantasy game anyway - I just adapted it to Japan

 

I am writing a new Fantasy campaign at the moment (sword and sorcery level), but I won't post the adventures until I've used them myself, so don't expect the first installment for 6 months or so

 

It should end up being another 600-page epic though!

 

cheers, Mark

[MitchellS]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Two reasons why there are not more Fantasy Hero adventures:

 

1- They sell poorly. Usually only 1 out of 5-6 gamers [the GMs] buy them.

2- There are so many d20 fantasy adventures in the market that it's fairly easy to buy one and convert it using creatures from the Bestiary and MMM.

 

Fantasy Hero: Battlegrounds sold poorly. If you don't have that adventure then you should pick it up.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

2- There are so many d20 fantasy adventures in the market that it's fairly easy to buy one and convert it using creatures from the Bestiary and MMM.

 

Another reason that the FH specific adventures sell poorly - there's lots o adventures out there to compete against. I use just about any genre-appropriate game scenario in my campaigns. Get a feel for the adventure and opposition, and write up appropriately challenging opposition in the theme of the scenario.

[Markdoc]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Another reason that Fantasy (or any) modules are not common as commercial products?

 

The links I posted to my Sengoku game have actually been pretty popular - literally hundreds of GMs have contacted me for the downloads and even today (about 4 years after I posted the adventures) I still get a couple of emails a week asking about them.

 

Even if all of those GM's were willing to pay 10 bucks to download the adventures (pretty damned unlikely, of course) that meant I would have made maybe 8-10,000 bucks, max. Shucks, if I did this full time, I could maybe make 10,000 bucks a year

 

OK, a real game company with some advertising could attract way more eyeballs, but most of those won't turn into sales, and in any case authors are unlikely to walk away with 10 bucks per copy from a commercial product (to put it mildly). It's just not financially viable, when you consider how much time and effort is invested.

 

So it's down to the fans.

 

cheers, Mark

[Greatwyrm]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I wonder if the pdf PulpHERO adventures sell well enough, if we'll see FH ones as well.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

There must be heaps of them written, I can DM well on the fly but hate writing adventures and npcs, would love to buy / download some?

 

Any thoughts??

Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds is a book of vaugely linked adventures. You can easily treat any of them as stand-alone individual adventures though.

 

As for publishing single adventures, as someone else pointed out they're not really good money-makers. Hero has recently started a series of barebones electronic publications (the current releases are all Pulp Hero adventures) under the Hero Plus name. It is possible that they will eventually start doing adventures for other genres as well - but these will probably be unscheduled "Steve had an idea and felt like running with it" type of things so I wouldn't bother watching the upcoming releases schedule to closely in hopes of seeing them show up on it.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I'm actually surprised myself that there aren't more available. You can find some to download, but with all the creating GMs out there who must be creating adventures it seems odd that more don't provide them for download or sale. Perhaps it just isn't worth the effort to write them up as a final usable form (I know a lot of my adventures are sketchily written and handled mostly on the fly).

 

I have recently started a small adventure with some willing players. I will probably try to donate it to the gaming community when we are finished, but I am essentially writing it as we go (keeping a session or two ahead of the players), so its not ready yet.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I always thought that HERO gamers were rather more independent than their peers that use other gaming systems. I've seen several comments over the years about how it is better to not use pre-written adventures. I wonder then, under what circumstances would y'all use a pre-fabbed adventure? Would it be a "filler" to place as a distraction from the normal campaign, a source of inspiration, or something else?

 

It seems to me that pre-fabbed adventure scenarios would have to be pretty generic or built around a common setting (such as the Turakian or Valdorian Ages). I think something like that would have the widest audience.

 

Crud. Doing the random thoughts thing again. A few years ago, I tried to get a web site up that would act as a repository for pre-created adventures. I got a little, hmmm.. the term "over ambitious" seems to fit, and the site basically went down. Now with HERO Games being alive again, 5th Edition (revised) out and an "official" setting book or two to work with, I've been toying with the idea since then of rethinking my strategy and giving it another go 'round.

[Old Man]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

FH's flexibility in character creation does make it more difficult to balance adventures. In certain other systems, you have a good idea of the capabilities of a party of X-level adventurers that probably consists of 2 fighters, 2 spellcasters, and 1 thief. In FH there is no such guarantee. On top of that there is the extra flexibility of custom power creation--it's quite easy for the whole premise behind an adventure to collapse because the wizard happens to have bought Clairsentience, or Mind Scan.

 

Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted. IMO one serious problem with Hero is the initial learning curve. I can't imagine someone buying FH and 5er off the shelf and learning it all from scratch, especially if their RPG experience is limited to d20. Prewritten minicampaigns, including pregenerated characters, would make it much easier to creat new Hero players.

[Fitz]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

For me, it basically boils down to laziness. I tend to run my campaigns mostly on the fly, with the most basic notes and scribble-maps, and turning that into something Useable By Others would usually be quite a big job.

 

Mind you, I'm not running a regular game at the moment, so maybe it would be a way of getting a sort of pseudo-GMing fix

[Old Man]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I, too, am a lazy time-constrained GM, so even going through old d20 modules ahead of time to work out the conversions is difficult and annoying. And besides, wouldn't we all rather play FH than d20? There's an annoying sameness to D&D/d20 adventures. I don't want to see Carrion Crawlers and Rust Monsters in my FH game. I don't want to see a +1 longsword. I want new. I want fresh. Some of the more unusual d20 settings, like Dark Sun, converted wonderfully to FH for just this reason, but published adventures for such are harder to find for the exact same reason.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

My big problem with creating any such thing is that I would want to use resources such as Monsters, Minions and Marauders or the Fantasy HERO Grimoire. I'm not sure how much of that information could be included for ease of use and how much of it would have to be pure Book, Chapter, Page reference, so that I wouldn't infringe on any copyright or IP laws.

 

I agree that a few modules for introductory players would be very useful. I think the above worry is really what is keeping me from moving any further with the project. I mean, what aspiring HERO-phile would like to take the time to page through four different sourcebooks to look for monster, spell or item references? I suppose that they could all be totally customized, but there we are back to a massive investment of time and energy just to work up the stats.

[MitchellS]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I' date=' too, am a lazy time-constrained GM, so even going through old d20 modules ahead of time to work out the conversions is difficult and annoying. And besides, wouldn't we all rather play FH than d20? There's an annoying [i']sameness[/i] to D&D/d20 adventures. I don't want to see Carrion Crawlers and Rust Monsters in my FH game. I don't want to see a +1 longsword. I want new. I want fresh. Some of the more unusual d20 settings, like Dark Sun, converted wonderfully to FH for just this reason, but published adventures for such are harder to find for the exact same reason.

There are a lot of new and fresh d20 adventures out there. They're not all the same. To me what a d20 adventure gives me is a full plot with a beginning, middle, and end. What I want to populate that plot with really just depends on what monsters I want to use from the various FH books. Good ideas are golden and there are plenty of d20 adventures out there with good ideas.

[Seraphym]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

There must be heaps of them written, I can DM well on the fly but hate writing adventures and npcs, would love to buy / download some?

 

Any thoughts??

 

I am finishing up a 7,000 word adventure that I wrote for Digital Hero. As soon as I can sort out why Steven is not recieving my emails, maybe I will be able to actually send in a proposal.

 

Everything is done for the adventure including maps. NPCs still need a little work.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

There's a decent "dungeon crawl" type adventure in this section of the "Free Stuff" part of this website. You'll also find three very well-done free adventures on Robert Harrison's fine Fantasy HERO Treasure Trove website - scroll down to the "Scenarios & Settings" section.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Yep, I'd love some too.

 

Just to show I'm not all take, take, take, here's a fantasy campaign I wrote up.

 

Volume I

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Adventures.zip

Volume II

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Sengoku_NPCs.zip

 

Sorry, Mark, but I'm afraid Angelfire isn't cooperating. This is what I get when I try these links:

 

"Angelfire does not allow direct linking from offsite, non-Angelfire pages, to files hosted on Angelfire. This practice of 'remote linking' reduces our ability to serve out the homepages of our members quickly and efficiently."

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Sorry, Mark, but I'm afraid Angelfire isn't cooperating. This is what I get when I try these links:

 

"Angelfire does not allow direct linking from offsite, non-Angelfire pages, to files hosted on Angelfire. This practice of 'remote linking' reduces our ability to serve out the homepages of our members quickly and efficiently."

Just "Copy Link Location" and paste it into your browser location bar and hit return instead of clicking on the links.

 

That'll take you right to the files.

 

TB

[Teflon Billy]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Yep, I'd love some too.

 

Just to show I'm not all take, take, take, here's a fantasy campaign I wrote up.

 

Volume I

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Adventures.zip

Volume II

http://www.angelfire.com/ok3/markdoc/marks_books/Sengoku_NPCs.zip

 

The setting is medieval japanese, but it'd be dead easy to file off the serial numbers and drop into your own setting - especially if you drop out adventure #20 and add in "stop evil conspiracy of your choice" instead.

 

The first quarter of the campaign started life in my fantasy game anyway - I just adapted it to Japan

 

I am writing a new Fantasy campaign at the moment (sword and sorcery level), but I won't post the adventures until I've used them myself, so don't expect the first installment for 6 months or so

 

It should end up being another 600-page epic though!

 

cheers, Mark

What edition of Hero are these adventures/NPCs made for?

 

TB

[jcfiala]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Fantasy Hero: Battlegrounds sold poorly. If you don't have that adventure then you should pick it up.

 

Fantasy Hero: Battlegrounds was marketed poorly. I only recently found out it had adventures in it!

[Curufea]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

I'm quite happy with my ongoing enlarging of my campaign setting of the Western Shores. It's freely available if still a "work in progress".

 

I could write up the various adventures I've been putting my PCs through - but I fear they are so customised and hand tailored to the characters and the setting they won't be much use, other than to give folk ideas of their own. Hmmm... now I'm wondering if a madlib would work for some parts of it.

 

[edit]

http://www.curufea.com/games/western

[Markdoc]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

What edition of Hero are these adventures/NPCs made for?

 

TB

 

they are 4th, but since almost none of the NPCs use funky builds or powers that have changed significantly, you can use it with 5th pretty much as-is. The vast bulk of the NPCs are human fighter and rogue types.

 

The only change I can think of that would affect the characters is that one or two use damage shield for counterstrike type attack and that some of the characters have healing bought as Aid. Those can still be used as is, but the price would change slightly.

 

cheers, Mark

[MitchellS]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Fantasy Hero: Battlegrounds was marketed poorly. I only recently found out it had adventures in it!

To my knowledge Hero Games doesn't do marketing for any of its products. I can only say that the information about FH:B has been on the website for about 2 years in the products section: part of 2003 as a next year's product, all of 2004 as a this year's product, and all of 2005 as a last year's product. So from that standpoint FH:B got as much marketing as every other Hero product produced.

[jcfiala]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

To my knowledge Hero Games doesn't do marketing for any of its products. I can only say that the information about FH:B has been on the website for about 2 years in the products section: part of 2003 as a next year's product' date=' all of 2004 as a this year's product, and all of 2005 as a last year's product. So from that standpoint FH:B got as much marketing as every other Hero product produced.[/quote']

 

Hm. But it's only recently that I've started really hanging around this webpage, because it seemed to me that all of the Hero gamers in Denver had been kidnapped by those pesky space aliens.

 

Perhaps it would be better to say that it's named unfortunately? I think 'Fantasy Hero Adventures' better underscores what the book is about than 'Fantasy Hero Battlegrounds'. Ah, well. Too late now, and it's not like Steve Long needs me following him around and giving him unsolicited advice.

 

"Damn you space aliens!"

[Old Man]

Re: Why are there no Fantasy Hero adventures / Modules

 

Steve Long isn't perfect, you know. Surely he is a godsend to Hero gamers but I actually think he writes too much, which reduces clarity. And he needs to tie up his layout people in a pillowcase and drop them in the river.