steph Posted January 24, 2017 Report Share Posted January 24, 2017 Hi there, I am looking for references in terms of steampunk, gothic, london and horror. In the first place I look for links with the hero system, secondly your suggestions in role playing game, setting and books on these themes. My player ask for a campaign in the victorien London. TY in advance Steph Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantriped Posted January 24, 2017 Report Share Posted January 24, 2017 The Widening Gyre by Bill Keys. For sale here in the Online Store. There are some wild inaccuracies in the Game Elements and Character Sheets presented therein, but the campaign setting itself is quite interesting and well written. Outside of Hero System... The film Steamboy, the online comic Girl Genius. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigdamnhero Posted January 25, 2017 Report Share Posted January 25, 2017 Definitely second Widening Gyre. There's another steampunk RPG called Uber Steampunk by Steve Metze (who did Ultimate Metamorph) which some great stuff that would be easy to convert to Hero. I'll also recommend the animated film April and the Exrtaordinary World. Good silly fun, a little less over-the-top than Girl Genius. (Not saying over the top is bad; just a different flavor.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadDomain Posted January 25, 2017 Report Share Posted January 25, 2017 The Widening Gyre by Bill Keys. For sale here in the Online Store. There are some wild inaccuracies in the Game Elements and Character Sheets presented therein, but the campaign setting itself is quite interesting and well written. Outside of Hero System... The film Steamboy, the online comic Girl Genius. Wild inaccuracies? Would you care to elaborate? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantriped Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 A selection of "Wild Inaccuracies" within The Widening Gyre: On Page 13, General Willian James "Dead" Boddy has a power called "Army of the Dead" which summons 16 100-point Undead. On Page 15, General Boddy's Troops (his Summoned Undead) are 175-point Undead... Meaning he can't actually Summon the Undead the writer provided as an example of Undead Summoned by him. On Page 23, Oberst Friedrich Steppenwulf* has a power called Wolf-Form which is a 250-point Multiform. On Page 25, Der Oberstolf (his Wolf-Form) is a 478-point Character... Meaning that he cannot actually transform into the wolf-form described for him. On Page 26, Die Wolfe* also has a power called Wolf-Form which is a 150-point Multiform. On Page 27, Die Wolfe Werewolf Form (their Wolf Form) is a 250-point Character... As above, they cannot actually transform into the wolf-form described for them. *There is also the issue that in both of these cases the True Form was built on fewer points than the Alternate Form, which is of course prohibited in Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete (see CC 81, or FHC 95). Ideally the larger forms should have been the ones to pay for the Multiform. On Page 49, Sun Wei-Fang has a power called Summon Demon which summons a 125-point Demon. On Page 76, Lester Crow also has a power called Summon Demon which summons a 125-point Demon. On Page 43, Minor Demon (the only example demon provided in the book for them to summon) is a 150-point Demon. Meaning neither of them can actually Summon the Demon the writer provided as an example of a Demon Summoned by them. There are other Game Elements which I disapprove of the construction of, but which aren't actually inaccurate per-say. For example, on page 80, the Lightning Rod Death Ray is described as being so obscenely inaccurate it sometimes hits allies; this description also appears on Page 22, under Death Rays. However, although they did give the Lightning Rod Death Ray the Inaccurate limitation, that modifier alone won't actually cause it to hit an ally in combat. In order for the Death Ray to actually have a significant chance of friendly-fire it would have to have been built with Area Of Effect (Xm Line, Nonselective; +?). These are all things I found in the first hour I perused the PDF (before my physical copy had been delivered), there may be more I haven't caught yet. I'm more than capable of "fixing" most of these "mistakes", one way or the other. But to be fair, I shouldn't have to go through correcting basic rules errors in a professionally published supplement (even a third party one). Thankfully, the quality of the world design is top-notch. I could still see myself running a Widening Gyre Campaign... it just would have been nice to have been able to use more of the Game-Elements without modification. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 Is there any possibility that those are the result of an edition jump? The elimination of figured stats and the addition of new stats from 5th to 6th seems to cause point inflation in general. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantriped Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 Honestly, I can't even begin to explain how so many huge mistakes ended up being published... Every hypothesis I've come up with is either highly unlikely, or so unprofessional it would make me sound like an ass to postulate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigdamnhero Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 *There is also the issue that in both of these cases the True Form was built on fewer points than the Alternate Form, which is of course prohibited in Champions Complete and Fantasy Hero Complete (see CC 81, or FHC 95). But that was expressly permitted in 6e (6e1 p266). Widening Gyre - at least the edition I have - was published before CC/FHC. I can't speak to the other issues/errors, other than to say "sharp eye!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 Honestly, I can't even begin to explain how so many huge mistakes ended up being published... Every hypothesis I've come up with is either highly unlikely, or so unprofessional it would make me sound like an ass to postulate. Have you read Fantasy Hero Complete? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cantriped Posted January 26, 2017 Report Share Posted January 26, 2017 Cover to Cover half a dozen times, same goes for Champions Complete. They are my primary rules references, I use them daily. While I agree FHC could have used another editing pass, tabulation issues and minor typos are somewhat inevitable when you are your own editor. The worst real mistake I've found in FHC is that the Climbing Skill (FHC 30) and the entry for Climbing in Environmental Conditions (FHC 164) list contradictory penalties. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DreadDomain Posted January 27, 2017 Report Share Posted January 27, 2017 A selection of "Wild Inaccuracies" within The Widening Gyre: .... Ouch... a revised edition with the much better Savage World cover perhaps Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tkdguy Posted January 28, 2017 Report Share Posted January 28, 2017 The Victoriana rpg is still being published, although you'll have to convert to HERO. Castle Falkenstein is long out of print, but you may find a copy at your FLGS. Steve Jackson produced a version for GURPS, so look out for that as well. If you need ideas, there are quite a few Steampunk movies on YouTube. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phydaux Posted February 10, 2017 Report Share Posted February 10, 2017 Try this: It was decent. Could have been much better. The author made some odd creative choices, IMO. Then again, I am highly critical of my fiction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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