Steve Long

Re: Guns In The MHI RPG Oh, there'll be accessory charts. I don't regard that as especially complex, and I definitely think things like scopes and suppressors are needed for MHI.

Re: Guns In The MHI RPG And for the record, my list of guns and other weapons in the MHI novels runs to over 70 items.

Something came up recently in a comment on the Kickstarter page that I though was worth sharing here. One of the Kickstarter’s backers, Brian Smith, asked a question that I’m sure has occurred to more than one MHI fan who’s been following the project: And here’s how I responded: All that said -- we are, of course, both willing and happy to hear from MHI fans about what they want to see in the MHIEHRPG, gun-wise or other-wise.

Re: Comic Book (Marvel / DC) Character Write Ups? I've moved this to the Discussion area, since it's not a rules question.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Well, I haven't given up hope yet, and I hope y'all won't either. In the meantime I'll continue to keep y'all updated as I make progress on the writing. Currently I'm working on Mayan mythology, which should be a relatively short chapter. Then I plan to head on to Greek and Egyptian, in that order. Once I get those two done I will have enough well-known mythoi done that I can run "Mythic Hero Smackdown" events at cons, if anyone's interested in that.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? It's hard to say for certain because they haven't been available for really long periods of time, but so far the pattern seems to be that I sell a few dozen of each PDF. That's barely enough to justify the monster and spell collections, which require relatively little work. It's nowhere near enough to justify any PDF that requires a significant amount of work, including Acquitaine and any portion of Mythic Hero. If I did try another Kickstarter, I highly doubt I would offer individual chapters or mythoi as rewards, for several reasons. First, that significantly increases the amount of work I have to do, and the administrative burden on me to fulfill the rewards. Second, I don't believe it would significantly increase the amount of money coming in (if anything, I would likely be "slitting my own throat," as you say). Let's look at what MH brought in. I had $25,784 dollars pledged by 284 backers. 126 of those backers only pledged for the $25 PDF level. Thus, 44% of the backers contributed only 12% of the project's income. If each of those people had instead pledged at the $75 level, the project would have earned $32,084, thus coming so close to succeeding that someone might've helped put it over the top. Obviously there's no way to get most (if any) of those backers to increase their pledges by that much, so that's just a pipe dream. But I think there's a strong argument to be made that I'd be more likely to succeed if I didn't offer a PDF-only option at all (or increased its cost) and focused on trying to get a smaller number of highly enthusiastic backers to pay even more to make MH a reality. Third, the idea just rubs me the wrong way -- as you say, I'd rather do one large book. Sadly, I think that is the case -- or perhaps more accurately, there aren't enough people willing to pay enough to make it succeed. (Which I totally understand -- there's only so much most people are willing to pay for a book, even a big one, and I don't blame 'em one bit, especially in tough economic times. I'm humbled and deeply appreciative that I brought in over $25K in pledges as it was.) I'm still keeping my eyes open for ways to make the project work, and keeping my li'l brain churning with ideas and possibilities, but for the time being I don't see a way to close the gap -- aside from me paying for the whole thing myself as a labor of love, which I'm not really in a position to do.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? There are several considerations involved. First, I'd have to decide how much time, effort, and expense I'd want to put into making it look good as a PDF. I'd have to do at least some layout work on it, so that it wouldn't be just my raw word processing text, but if it's nothing but words and character sheets I could do that myself (in fact, I'd have fun doing it; I like doing layout). But that wouldn't be very appealing to most consumers, I expect, and would limit what I could charge. To really make a decent production out of it, I'd have to consider having it illustrated, and that could get very expensive. That, in turn, would raise the price of the product, but would also tend to make it more appealing to the average consumer. Second, I'd have to decide what other associated expenses have to be covered. For a PDF only, this would primarily mean compensating me for my time, effort, and skill. There wouldn't be any cost of goods to manufacture. In terms of how your general question about "what are the costs of production," you can find my breakdown of cost estimates here: http://stevenslong.squarespace.com/mythic-hero/2012/2/6/where-does-the-money-go.html. Assuming those numbers still hold, without the costs of printing and shipping I would still have to raise $24,450 to break even -- which would be extremely difficult if all I have to sell is a PDF that I can charge at most $29.99 for. If there was no art in the PDF, the break-even point would become about $17,000 -- much lower but still virtually unattainable if all I have to sell is a PDF. But the truth, economic issues aside, is that I don't want to do just a PDF. It's too much work to have nothing to show for it all but some digital files. I want a big, grand book that everyone can own and love and treasure, something that I can show people and that I can gaze upon with deep satisfaction. Ideally I want it to be full-color, too, to live up to how I see it in my mind's eye when I'm dreaming, but given that I couldn't even raise the money to publish it in B&W that's probably a bit beyond the pale. There is a certain logic in that, and I can't deny it. However, occasional appearances to the contrary aside, I am not just a cold-hearted, pragmatic businessman. I am also an "artiste." I want to do Mythic Hero right, as I define "right," and if I can't then I don't want to publish it at all. To do so would be heartbreaking. If I felt there were bucketloads of money to be made, my pragmatic side would probably argue me into publishing regardless. But since there aren't, I'm not gonna publish it unless I'm happy with the way I do so. If I can't get money, I've at least got to get some amount of personal satisfaction.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? There definitely aren't as many sources on these mythoi as I'd like; I've had to pay a pretty penny for some of the ones I've tracked down. Unfortunately the source material often tends to be rather sparse, but at least for Sumerian and Assyro-Babylonian there's enough to work with to provide lots of useful information for gaming purposes. Besides, who doesn't want to take on Tiamat in a fight? Factoid by way of illustration: the Sumerian and Babylonian chapters, despite being pretty thorough treatments of the subject IMO, total about 17,000 words or so taken together. The Aztec, Finnish, and Norse chapters are each 20,000 or more words apiece, because there's a lot more information and material to work with. To put it another way, they don't suffer from the problem of broken clay tablets costing mythologists useful data. And I agree on listening to epic poetry (Gilgamesh or otherwise). There's a certain rhythm to it that makes it captivating listening, as opposed to just reading. Much like you "get" a Shakespeare play much more when you watch it performed.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Depending on how you define "Middle Eastern," I'm making good progress on those. Assyro-Babylonian and Sumerian are both done, but I haven't yet done any work on Canaanite or Persian. Or Egyptian, for that matter, though it's relatively high up on my schedule.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? For those of you who are interested in a Mythic Hero update, I just finished the chapter on Aztec Mythology. It came in at 20,000 words, meaning I now have approximately 130,000 words written on a book I can't publish. But I'm having a lot of fun doing the research and writing just for my own satisfaction. Next up: Mayan Mythology! As long as I'm in Mesoamerica I might as well get it all done while stuff's still fresh in my mind.

Re: Damage Reduction and AVAD NND. Yes -- an NND is just a form of AVAD.

Re: Red Winter Correct. I wanted to include some new villains specifically from the MMO, and the members of Red Winter were good candidates IMO.

Re: Does Piercing Effect Damage Reduction or Damage Negation. Sounds like a fun campaign! Neither Damage Negation nor Damage Reduction has any effect on Piercing. Damage Negation reduces the DCs in an attack with Piercing points before the damage is applied, of course, but that doesn’t change how Piercing affects the target. Similarly, Damage Reduction reduces the amount of damage an attack with Piercing ultimately does, but it doesn’t diminish the effect of the Piercing points.

Re: Summon, increased number and expanded class You're reading the rules correctly in terms of how many Summoned creatures you can have total. If you want to restrict how many of each sub-type you can Summon, apply a Limitation to the power. Generally this is going to be a -0 Limitation since it's not very restrictive at all, but depending on the situation, the nature of the power, and the campaign, it might have a higher value.

Re: Possession 1. Yes, the victim is considered a separate character from the character Possessing him. So if the Possessing character wants to enhance the victim’s Characteristics as you describe, he’d need to use Aid or Characteristics with some form of the Usable On Others Advantage; if he wanted to grant the victim a power the victim doesn’t have, the Possessing character would need to use UOO. 2. Yes (though of course the GM is free to rule otherwise if he thinks doing so wouldn’t cause any game balance problems or would otherwise be appropriate).

Re: What does the term "innate" mean in HERO system rules? "Innate" isn't a term of art in the HERO System; it has its usual meaning. In the context of Entangles, what it means is a power or ability that a character possesses personally -- "in his own body," if you will. It's not a power that's dependent on, for example, a Focus. For example, an HKA defined as a sword usually cannot be used to break free from an Entangle (since it's an Accessible Focus), but one defined as claws usually can. It sounds to me like you're approaching this problem the right way. If everyone in the group recognizes that a specific rule or attack is unusually effective given your style of play, or that it's unbalancing the campaign and spoiling everyone's fun, you discuss it and reach a mutually acceptable solution. That's part of the GM's job, after all -- keeping the campaign balanced and fun. If this situation continues to cause you concern, I'd suggest posting in the "Discussion" area (if you haven't already) to get input from other players and GMs. They may have run into the same issue and can offer advice based on their own experience. Glad you're enjoying the game!

Re: AID question See 6E1 136, under the heading "Maximum Effect."

Re: Leaping and Attacking The general rules for making Multiple Attacks with Move Through/By (6E2 74-75) apply in this situation, along with the GM’s judgment. If he thinks the targets are lined up in such a way that a Multiple Attack while Leaping is possible, he can certainly allow it.

Re: Invisibility Fringe and Megascale Senses As a default rule, the answer to both questions is “no.” However, the GM can certainly make exceptions as necessary to simulate the way he wants things to work in his campaign. For example, in a “Top Gun” campaign where aerial dogfights in modern jetfighters occur in every scenario, the GM will probably want to have specific rules on how stealth technology and radar interact. (For that matter, he might decree that stealth tech be built with Change Environment rather than Invisibility, which resolves the issue without the need for any special rules.)

Re: Transform Corpse to Zombie Each GM is of course free to rule as he likes for his campaign, of course, but as a default rule, the answer is “no.” Allowing that would be to follow the strict letter of the rule while ignoring its obvious spirit. The recommended way to “create” things like zombies, robots, and other Automatons is the way it’s done in Hero Games books — Summon.

Re: Combat Ready? Offhand, I have no idea. There's no such ability listed in PH, or in the Ultimate Index covering all 5E books. If it's something from a 6E book it's not immediately ringing any bells. My best suggestion would be to ask the player where he got it. If you want a response from anyone (not just me), I'd suggest re-posting in the Discussion area, since only I can answer here.

Re: Sleep Deprivation There are rules for sleep and sleep deprivation on APG2 112.

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNAIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! Just three days to go and we're close to some great stretch goals -- if you haven't pledged yet, please come help us reach 'em! And don't forget to pick up some MHI dice and a patch while you're there. MHI RPG Kickstarter

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNAIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! Just three days to go and we're close to some great stretch goals -- if you haven't pledged yet, please come help us reach 'em! And don't forget to pick up some MHI dice and a patch while you're there. MHI RPG Kickstarter

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! Just three days to go and we're close to some great stretch goals -- if you haven't pledged yet, please come help us reach 'em! And don't forget to pick up some MHI dice and a patch while you're there. MHI RPG Kickstarter