Markdoc

There's a reason Herodotus earned the sobriquet "the Father of Lies". That's a little unfair, but he did like to embroider his stories. However, fisticuffs at Marathon can't be laid at his door. Here's what he actually wrote (Rawlinson's translation): The two armies fought together on the plain of Marathon for a length of time, and in the mid battle, where the Persians themselves and the Sacae had their place, the barbarians were victorious and broke and pursued the Greeks into the inner country, but on the two wings the Athenians and the Plataeans defeated the enemy. Having so done, they suffered the routed barbarians to fly at their ease, and joining the two wings in one, fell upon those who had broken their own centre, and fought and conquered them. We have comments about the battle at Marathon from several Athenian authors and they all agree the Greeks won because their heavily armoured infantry were not much affected by the Persian archers on their swift approach, and once the heavy infantry got in among the lightly-armoured Persians, they broke the Persian wings and then enveloped the centre and slaughtered it. The weapons involved appeared to be good old fashioned spears and swords. cheers, Mark

True enough - and I actually liked 300! I'd been waiting ages for a western/european fantasy movie to adapt wuxia elements. I was just pointing out that it was fantasy. You don't actually use a shield like that. In fact, it's pretty safe to say that no spartan used their hoplon like that - ever. As far as we know, the shield bash wasn't trained with the hoplon. It's really poorly designed for it, for a start. Even if you overlook its enormous weight and size, the handgrip is actually placed right at the edge of the shield. The shield was further secured to your arm in the middle near your elbow (and often supported by a strap that went around your neck) making it awkwardly placed and unwieldy to swing. In the movie you also have people throwing swords accurately and swiftly enough to pierce armour and leaping 10 metres from a standing start while holding 10 kilos of assorted gear. Now in the last D&D campaign we played I actually had a character who could leap up to 20 metres from a standing start, but you you probably don't need to point out to most people that's fantasy. In the case of the shield art depicted, though, it might not be as obvious. So yeah, very cool in a high-fantasy game, but not at all realistic. cheers, Mark

Well, perhaps, it's better to say that 300 gave people a completely unrealistic view of how you could use a shield in combat. To actually use a Hoplon like that you'd need a STR of about 30. cheers, Mark

Indeed in the last campaign, "Independent" was used as a way of handling geases and magical powers for one school of magic. You could gain magical powers (with the +2 limitation, which helped reduce cost) by a magic ritual, but you had to take a geas at the same time. If you ever broke the geas, you lost the power. This was a simple way the cult involved could very rapidly generate a hero for its cause: all the cult members kick in some Xp ... er, "Life force" This had the interesting side effect that you could (permanently) give your powers to someone else - for example in one case, a dying NPC got several PCs to swear to avenge his death, and then gifted them with his magical powers to help track his killers - and a geas. They got to keep the powers only as long as they pursued their quest Independent is a useful limitation: you can do lots of things with it, including one thing which can otherwise be problematic: gift the PCs with short term powers. The trick to handling independent in the case of PCs spending their own points, is good communication ("If you take this limitation there really is a very good chance you will lose it for good at some point"), and in general not letting a PC sink so many points into an independent power that the loss of it will cripple the character. In my game, PCs only gain Xp for sessions that they attend, so PCs can end up with quite different Xp totals over the course of a longish campaign. When a PC dies (a rare, but potential outcome) or wants to start a new character, they start with Xp equal to the PC with lowest Xp total. That makes it unattractive for a powergamery type to ditch a character if it loses an independent power to start afresh, which goes some way to control that aspect. That said, it's never been a problem in my game. I have had players who chose independent powers and there have been cases where those were lost, but we have never had any whining about it. cheers, Mark

Fight smarter, not harder Seriously, though, a sharp sliver of metal, even if it's just the size of a butterknife, can still be lethal, if it's in the wrong place. I don't use kolbolds (in the D&D sense) in my game, but in the last campaign, the players had to deal with an infestation of small malicious fae creatures of a similar type. They had a STR of 3-5, so equivalent to a human child, and were about the same size or slightly smaller, limiting them to using tiny picks, or dagger-sized weapons. Obviously, a creature with a max 1/2d6 HKA and 5 BOD is not going to go toe to toe with a human warrior. So their tactics emphasised levelling the playing field, so to speak. Traps help. Nothing terribly sophisticated, in this case: a cord across a passage, or oil on some steep stairs, a pit trap, a biggish stone swinging on a rope, even just a short pole poked out of a hole, to trip a running PC. A player who fell would be swarmed by a dozen of these creatures, springing out of their holes and stabbing for his unarmoured bits. They'd flee any serious resistance ... But the players soon learned that they'd be back. And they had honey-combed the area with tunnels too small for the PCs to contemplate. The PCs had to be constantly vigilant against darts from dark corners, a tiny spear in the leg from behind, attacks on sleeping characters and traps. They won through of course, but not before every character had a half dozen or more tiny wounds - some them poisoned - and they flatly refused to go back once for more loot after they had gotten what they were after the first time. And the only "powers" these guys had were a small amount of tunnelling, a highish DCV/DEX to reflect the fact that they were small and fast, and 4 PSL to counteract hit location penalties (it's easier to hit the face, if it seems twice as big to you). Cheers, Mark

Again, I'd take the easy route. Prior to the arrival of the Fir Bolg (who, if we're using Irish legend as a starting point were also invaders) the land was probably mostly bog, heath and woodland, inhabited by the fey folk and various monsters. The fey almost certainly had (and still have) their own conflicts, but as a loose tribal society didn't have country-wide wars or kingdoms for you to worry about. Basically, what happened back then is lost in the mists of prehistory and legend. In Irish legends, the Formorians preceded the Fir Bolg, but there's no real problem with simply switching them round. So you have a situation where various invaders arrived, set up their own kingdoms and expanded. All you really need is a short history (you can swipe a list of Irish kingly names from here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irish_kings) and to indicate on the maps where their old territories used to be. If you need stories for the history swipe (and mix up) the stories attached to various kingly names. Voila: instant history For example - I just chose one at random - Echu mac Muiredaig was exiled from his kingdom by his brother, went overseas to live with Gabran the Traitor and returned to retake his kingdom. How or why you can yourself decide if it ever become relevant, but in the meantime you have a name and a brief history prepared should a question ever be asked like " Who built this tomb?" and when you tell them, "Who was Echu mac Muiredaig, anyway?" As for the gods,though not exact copies of the Irish ones, they clearly have much in common. I'd swipe the closest appropriate history, mutate it a bit to suit your fancy and call it good. That way you get the desired flavour without having to invest a huge amount of time, and - perhaps more importantly - the gods will feel familiar to your players without actually being nailed down to a specific historic deity. cheers, Mark

I'd go with the option that "goblin-folk" is just a generic name for the less-attractive types of fae - bogies, hags, giants, trolls, flibbertigibbets, dearg-due, etc. First off, it's truer to the background and second, it's more fun: as GM you can add in whatever sort of monster you feel like. I'll admit to bias: this is exactly what I do myself. You needn't invest a huge amount of time in this: you can take (for example) the stat.s for a goblin from the regular fantasy bestiary, call it a bogle, give it a quick description, and off you go. It's just become one of the minor nasty "goblin-folk". My advice wold be to get a book on celtic myth, find some monsters you like the look of and either write them up yourself or steal something from the bestiary that would fit and just change the description. Point-in-case. For a Runequest game I ran (using Hero rules) the PCs needed to slay a giant boar that was terrorising a woodland (a good celtic-y sort of monster). Rather than work it up myself, I just used the stat. block for an elephant, and described it as a giant boar, with bristles of brass. cheers, Mark

There is - as in most things - a middle way. I tend to run multiyear campaigns (the last game lasted about 4 1/2 years real time and covered about 4 years game time, the prior one lasted about 4 years real time and 5 years game-time). And so on. In both cases, the campaigns had a defined story arc and they ended more or less precisely where I planned them to end when I drafted them, years before. To do that successfully and still have a coherent story, requires plotting things out well in advance. Besides, I'm addicted to those forehead-slapping moments when the players realise that something that happened ages ago is directly relevant to whatever it is they are doing right now Nobody - except certain GMs - likes a railroad. Players like to feel like their PCs have some sort of relevance, and most GMs will feel pained if they have to direct the action by telling the players - out of game - that they have to do something "for the good of the game": it means that the game is not, by itself, compelling enough to get the PCs moving in the "correct" direction. So the middle way combines both a sandbox and a path (not a railroad). The difference is that you can wander on and off a path, and come back to it sometimes by another path. I do this by sketching out in broad details the whole story arc, together with important sections,a timeline and a conclusion. I also prep. all the backstory material (important NPCs, geography, economy, politics, what monster live where, etc.) Not in great detail, but in outline. When the adventure advances to a point where that detail becomes important, I fill it in. If it never does, I don't bother (and thus don't waste time). I also prep a bunch of generic environments (ruined castle, dungeon, slaver's ship, noble's palace, medium sized village, etc) and a few generic encounters (army patrol, peasant militia, bandit group, Militant wizard and lackeys, etc) and ... important this one ... some suitable names based on local culture (so that I don't have to try and find a name for an NPC off the cuff: no "Bob the Barbarian"). That's the sandbox. So if the players decide that something else has suddenly merited their attention (like in the last game, they got heavily involved in investigating a minor NPC who had no connection to the main story at all), then I am prepped to cover that. I also write mini-scenarios which have no connection to the main plot so that I have something meatier to offer the players when they decide to go off-plot, and which can be dropped into the storyline at various points. just for variety's sake. I am never - literally never - caught off guard if the PCs decide to wander off and do something else, because I have all the materials to run games on the fly. It might not be Ennie stuff, but it works. The trick to getting the players to decide to advance the plot themselves is actually very simple: it has to be interesting to them (so that they want to find out what happens next) and (preferably) it should offer them something they want for their PC (wealth, power, revenge, a neato-magic sword, whatever) The last key point is that I try to never write scenarios where the PCs must do precisely this one thing to move forward. There should be consequences if they fail (or fail to act) and it's fine if there is one way that works best, plus a bunch or really suboptimal choices. But the PCs should never lack for actions to move the plot forward, and it should always be clear to them at least one or two things that they could be doing (even if some of those things are dangerous or difficult) and even if it is not clear which of them they should be doing. A well-written scenario in a campaign should always have a "PCs screw up" option for the next step. Of course, if your players are the Red Box Ninjas, then none of this would help, but I've had about 6 different groups over the years (with quite different backgrounds), and this approach so far has worked with all of them. cheers,Mark

It's odd, because I think of Laws as a creative and imaginative guy who can't actually design games for **** - which is why, I think, he's never had a hit, even when working with popular, branded material. My personal feeling is that he's too in love with "form" to ask the all-important design question "Does this work?" Ie: function. Any game, no matter how sketchy, can be made to work if the group is prepared to compromise and discuss and fudge things a bit. And in pretty mich every rules set there will be areas of ambiguity - that's the nature of language. But any game where two well-meaning people can read the rules and vehemently disagree on their interpretation is, in my opinion, poorly designed, poorly written or both. Cheers, Mark

Is there a reason you don't want to simply use the Dispel power? And if you don't, do you intend any dispel to be automatically succcesful if the skill roll is made, regardless of the power of the spell? That would certainly cut down on magery (and would be a good reason for non-magic focused characters to invest in some sorcery skill). Or would the skill roll be based on the spell you were trying to Dispel? Regards, Mark

In my own games, dead is dead. PCs die but rarely, though it has happened. But one very short campaign I ran, set in viking-era Ireland, all the PCs died after a short adventuring career, thigh deep in dead gaels, after a heroic last stand. They were then intercepted on their way to Valhalla, and recruited for a mission to Jotunland on behalf of the Æsir, since they still smelled "mortal" on account of their very recent deaths. Cheers, Mark

Yeah, the 5th edition version of Deadly Blow was a real mess. Not only was it grotesquely cost-effective, but it explicitly broke Hero System rules in its design (there were several long threads on it here on the boards). Many GMs banned it outright on those grounds (including me). In games where it was allowed, it was essentially required for every effective melee build (always a bad sign with regard to game design). The basic concept (you can do more damage) is fine and the 6th ed. version of deadly blow restores it to both rules-correctness and price balance. Cheers, Mark

I'm sorry if it came across as offensive - looking at it now I can see how it might. But really, I find this obsessive focus on a few small factors, such as OCV and DC, does the game a real disservice. It's limiting and - in my opinion - utterly unnecessary. Hero system provides both players and GMs with a wide array of tools. They are there to be used. So the comment was in no way intended as an attack - quite the oppposite, in fact, since I indicated to the poster that there was nothing at all wrong with his character: it looks to me like the problem lay with his GM. Cheers, Mark

My reaction as an experienced FH GM, would be to shrug. If a high OCV, high damage PC "broke" the game, then my reaction would be that honestly, a GM who couldn't handle such a simple challenge, probably couldn't run a good game anyway. Flash, entangle, flight invisibility, AVAD, NND, AoE accurate ... the Hero system gives the GM a vast array or tricks to challenge any character: including those whose main power is "hit things with a bit of sharp metal". A PC as described will reap mooks like hay before the scythe ... and should. That's their schtick. Against other challenges, they could very easily struggle, while the PCs who spent points on other things get a chance to shine. Not everyone needs to be a combat monster, but that doesn't mean that combat monsters are bad. Cheers, Mark

You could call it "Sim City"! Cheers, Mark Note: as a GM, you could throw the PCs a curve by making the whole thing a simulation. When they work that out, they'd have to escape the simulation and then work out what it's for and why they were being "tested" in it.

It's possible to have believable thieve's guilds, if you don't go overboard with formalising the structure: plenty of places have/had criminal groups who dominate an areas crime by 1) cutting some sort of deal with the authorities and assassinating those who don't play along, and killing or co-opting rival groups. Modern examples include the mafia, the yakuza and mexican drug cartels. Historical groups also include the tsuchi ikki: self defence associations set up by japanese peasants. Originally designed for protection from bandits and ronin, they occasionally went overboard and ended up shaking down unscrupulous landlords, tax collectors or taking on samurai who had become too oppressive ... at which point they became criminal bands. Some operated as simple local thugs, others as more sophisticated bandits and yet others as "Robin Hood" type groups. Some Yakuza groups trace their ancestry to these bands. cheers, Mark

I used a variation on this in my last campaign: I wanted one school of magic to be a risky affair, so I adapted this idea. The mechanism was that magicians of this school of magic chose a "patron" (and sometimes several patrons) - otherworldly beings who could teach spells, often quite powerful spells. All these spells required a skill roll - if the roll was failed, that triggered a side effect (specifically a transform). The transform slowly twisted the caster, either physically or mentally. The transform could be healed by several routes. Performing a service for your patron was one way. You could also persuade/trick someone into accepting your psychic debt ("Scapegoating"). This made mages of this school powerful but feared: they often performed strange irrational actions, they had converse with creatures from beyond the veil, they often had odd or even horrifying mutations or quirks, etc. It worked rather well. cheers, Mark

Yeah, which is why I always think about how the PCs are going to fit into the world - especially as they gain in power - before I run a game, and would recommend that any GM does the same. In the last campaign - which ran for about 4 years of frequent play - the PCs went from being local heroes in a small coastal village, to being troubleshooters for a city-state, where political fall-out from their actions could shake local governments, and ended with them making a deal with a demi-god/demon that would have significant consequences in the neighbouring kingdoms. The game before that, which lasted a similar amount of time, they went from being minor retainers of a local lord, to being warlords leading armies, and heroes taking part in a mystical tournament that would change the fate of nations. I usually start well-shy of 175pts (most of my games start at 100 or 75, and sometimes as low as 50), but typically end up north of 300 points. However, since I know the endpoint, and roughly how the PCs will scale, it always been easy to fit them into the game world. Likewise, I'm also not shy of making changes to the game world to reflect the potential effects of magic - even though I limit to some extent what magic can do. But I always think about what it can/could do, and how common it is locally. cheers, Mark

Yeah, I was kind of asking for more detail. "Harryhausen Sinbad mixed with Conan" sounds like a game I'd play in a heartbeat, but that mixed with GURPS/Arabian nights actually sounds kind of high fantasy, with plenty of monsters, which to me doesn't gibe well with "Magic is rare, seldom understood, wonderful and frightening". You could - easily - put those together, but the devil, as always is in the details. I ran a one-off game for some friends years ago, and since I wanted high magic, but didn't want to change the background (Pseudo-Byzantium/Levant) I wanted to keep it rare. Solution? Inspired by the evil sorceror in Harryhausen's "Golden Voyage" movie I required spellcasting to use BOD ("life-force", in-game) instead of END. That made magic a rare and precious commodity: potentially extremely powerful but also not something you'd call on unless you really had to, since you harmed yourself, each time you cast a spell. But in some ways, that's an extreme solution, since it really hampers PC sorcerors. It was fine for a one-off, and I'd happily run a whole campaign like that, but you'd need player buy-in upfront. It certainly would not be suitable for many games. So having a better idea of what the OP wants would help us make suggestions. If as written "Most enemies are your fellow man" then the bestiary is actually going to be of relatively little use (you'd get all the monsters you need in Fantasy Hero) - Monsters, Minions, & Marauders or Valdorian Age would be a far better buy. If magic really is rare, the published grimoire books - which tend to contain a lot of high-active point spells - would not be much use either. cheers, Mark

The simple answer to that is to address the magic system: if the PCs have easy major magic on tap, it's reasonable to assume that other people do too ... unless the GM explains why not. You can ignore that, but my experience has been that over time, that makes player absorption in the game less: it's hard for PCs to feel fully engaged when there is covert (and often overt) moments where the plotline/game makes no sense. I enjoy our D&D games, but despite the efforts of one GM to aim for high tragedy and drama, they're fun, jokey affairs. It's hard to create real drama against a backdrop of farce. I should note that a lot of GM's have a problem with this, and as a result, struggle when PCs start to reach levels of high power. I think it's important for a GM to consider when starting a campaign not just what the starting point will be but also when to end the campaign. If they are not comfortable with PCs who can cross continents in a day, raise the dead, or devastate small armies, then it's probably a good idea to plan for your endgame at the beginning. cheers, Mark

I agree completely that you need to think about how magic impacts your world design: in my opinion, it's the single most important decision you can make. But I am a bit iffy about banning powers outright, because that reduces your options, and because often that just exposes other problems. Tunneling can definitely render a standard medieval castle useless. But so can flight and teleport, or for that matter, mind-control, transform or invisibility. Even a simple darkness spell can neutralise most castle defences. As a GM, some of my biggest headches have been n-ray vision and clairvoyance. And so on. So an alternative is to build your fantasy world to match. Ditch the simple wall-and-keep medieval castle in favour of fortresses with defence in depth designed to channel attackers who breach defences and ensure defences include protection from fliers. A fortress is a big investment - so it makes sense that it will have magical defences, if magical attack is expected. Even simple alarms go a long way towards the defence. The same applies to other aspects of the gameworld. Most people may live a medieval existence, but we could reasonably expect the powerful to have access to protective magic, long distance communication and travel. That will change things. Cheers, Mark

Actually, before looking at gaming books, I'd think about what kind of game you want to run. What's the background? What's the overall feel you want? Is dungeon-crawling and monster-killing a major part of the game? Or is it rogues and intrigue? Or exploration and politics? From that we can recommend what would be helpful. Cheers, Mark

Or not. There's no question that if characters can - not always - but can, dish out 4d6 HKA and defence is limited, then running into a group of armed men and wailing away with your sword is unlikely to be a winning strategy. But players can - and do - adapt to the base assumptions in the game. A high damage to defence ratio means that play will be different to a game with high defences and low damage. But it emphatically does not mean a high rate of PC death or fudged die rolls is inevitable. It means that a PCs (and NPCs) will try and tilt the odds in their favour, that block and dodge become far more important, etc. In hero, especially, there's very much more than one way to kill a cat than just drowning it in cream. Understand that I'm not discussing this from a theoretical point of view: we've actually been playing fantasy hero like this for decades now, and not just a single group with an implicit understanding. I mean with a whole raft of different players and different GMs, playing in multiple different game settings, and a range of different play styles: short scenarios, one-off games and multiyear campaigns. cheers, Mark

Right. The system is highly flexible, and you can easily rebalance it. That's one reason why statements that allowing fighters to reach 4d6 KA is a problem bug me: it requires not just one, but multiple fumbles on the part of the GM before it becomes a problem. In my Sengoku-era game, we had a PC (and some NPCs) slinging 4d6 HKAs - in a game where the commonest armour was ... actually armour was not common: the PC's spent most of their time in kimonos, meaning 3rDEF from combat luck. And you know what? It wasn't a problem. But the other reason it bugs me is because really, HKA is not the problem in fantasy. mhd his the problem on the head. As a GM, if you give me two PCs - one a fighty fighter with a big-ass HKA, and one a wizard with a toolkit of 40 AP spells ... I can tell you right off who'll be difficult to handle 90% of the time, and it's not Mr. Fighty fighter. A simple entangle or flash can take opponents out of the fight just as quickly as an HKA, and as noted, there are lots of ways to ensure that it hits most of the time. cheers, Mark

I've never bothered with active point limits: to be honest, I see them as baby-wheels for starting GMs, and the frequent discussion of them on the boards seems to support my experience that they cause at least as many problems as they solve. They're an optional extra anyway, so I'd question whether you need to add them to your game at all. The best test for any power is "Is this going to break the adventures I have planned?" This is particularly true for fantasy hero, where it's not hard to build game-breaking powers for 40 AP. A simple 20 rPD, 0 END force field will render wizards all but immune to physical attacks, for example, and it's hardly a way-out power. Long-range teleport, invisibility, clairvoyance, telepathy and crippling debuffs are all possible on 40 AP. Wizards usually have better things to do than just casting an RKA, so letting warriors have their 4d6 HKA is not going to unbalance your games - particularly since you need to sink a fair few points into getting up to 4d6 in the first place (High STR, martial arts, levels). Of course, not using active points means the GM needs to be more involved in setting guidelines and vetting powers. In a way, this is already done for mundane types: the powers they most frequently have access to (weapons and armour) are fixed and simple. In my own experience, the most important thing for any fantasy hero campaign is setting the guidelines for magic, so that you get the game you (and your players) want. In that regard, active points are not that important. As an aside, in threads of this kind, I frequently read comments suggesting that if you allow 4d6 HKAs in your game that you'll have problems, but in nearly 30 years of running and playing fantasy hero, we've often had characters reaching that level of damage, and it's never been a problem. I wonder whether this perception is based on actual experience, or just theorycrafting. Cheers, Mark