Steve Long

The latest PDF from Elvensong Street Press (i.e., me ) is now available! Legions Of Hell is a direct result of feedback from you, the HERO System fan. When I posted a couple months ago about PDFs of monsters I was considering creating, I got multiple suggestions to do a PDF of demons. Well, ask and ye shall receive. Legions Of Hell contains character sheets for nearly sixty demons. Within its pages you’ll find such terrors as the Barbtail Demon, Book Demon, Crowned Demon, Fell Assassin, Infernal Soldier, Prince of the Pit, Slime Demon, Worm Demon, and Demonticore! Each demon is ready for use in any game -- they could be minions of DEMON or the Demonologist in a Champions game, the summoned servitors of an evil wizard or priest in Fantasy Hero, or the fiend possessing a little girl in a Horror Hero scenario. The possibilities are infernally endless! And all five dozen demons can be yours for just $4.99! Legions Of Hell And also still available for Elvensong Street Press: Acquitaine Acid Magic Lightning Magic Ranger Magic Pestilence Magic Lava Magic Expanded Warrior-Magery Desert Magic Books Of The Undead, Vol. 1: Skeletons Books Of The Undead, Vol. 2: Zombies Books Of The Undead, Vol. 3: Ghosts

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? And I definitely appreciate that. Times are tough for many folx, and not everyone has as much discretionary income as they might like. It was very gratifying to get as many pledges as I did! There's some art to it and some science, as with many things. One of the benefits to have been involved in running several (successful and not) is learning the ropes; it's also very helpful to be able to compare notes with industry colleagues (a lot of us spent a lot of time doing that at GenCon). I think I had a pretty good slate of rewards given the resources available to me (e.g., I'm not the company, so I can't offer free other books and PDFs). I did think of one later on ("sponsor a god") that I'll probably add in if I ever try again. I had some dandy ideas for stretch goals, but I never got close enough to succeeding to need to announce any. Hopefully I'll have the chance at some point, since a couple of 'em were really neat (IMO ). And I'm reaching the point where I have enough gods written up that I could do a Mythic Hero Smackdown event at cons. In fact, I might want to hurry up and finish a couple of the more popular pantheons (Greek, Egyptian) for just such events.

Re: List of all HERO System Products Woot!

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? In theory, true. In practice there are still obstacles, the first and foremost of which is that I want to be paid for my time, my skill, my hard work, and my research expenses. The opinions of a number of jackass idiots on RPG.Net and the like aside, I cannot survive on "the profits," and that's not the way any sensible business should be run regardless of whether the writer and owner are the same guy. So even if the manuscript were 100% finished and ready to go, I'd still want to raise enough money to compensate me (retroactively). That's a huge stumbling block regardless of how I want to sell MH. Now, if I were able to raise enough money to publish the book, then absolutely what you suggest becomes possible. There'd be one big hardcopy book, of course, and one big PDF. But I could also sell PDFs of just this pantheon, just this group of pantheons, whatever. Heck, since it's just assembling PDFs I could probably take custom requests from individual fans. Those sales would be icing on the cake, an extra hunk of profit that my poor little bank account would be quite happy to receive. Believe me, I dream of being able to do this stuff. As I write up a system for Finnish magic and several dozen Finnish spells, I dream. As I read about Aztec human sacrifice rituals, I dream. As I make sure Mjolnir does enough damage for Thor to kill Jormungandr before the Midgard Serpent can poison him to death, I dream. And when I dream, I usually dream big, with a full-color hardcover book illustrated by top artists and laid out by someone with considerably more InDesign skills than li'l ol' me possesses. And a Kickstarter that succeeds to such an extent that I could offer up some of the really cool Mythic Hero extras I have in mind.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? The truth is the MH Kickstarter did better than I expected, and it attracted a lot of people who haven't posted to any other Hero-related Kickstarter AFAICT. So the question is, has Kickstarter become so much better known that another Kickstarter for MH would raise more money? There's no way to know without doing it, but my guess is "no." Even assuming everyone who pledged before pledged again (which is doubtful), making up that $7,000 gap isn't feasible. The subject isn't of sufficient interest to enough gamers, my name doesn't have the cachet that the likes of Monte Cook's does, I'm not a gaming cartoonist, there's no major IP attached to it. Unfortunately for me, people are not willing to pay large sums of money to read the end result of my researches. Thanx! Mine too. And then after that I could do The Ultimate Weapon, The Ultimate Armor, The Pulp Adventurer's Guide To The World, and every other major project I've wanted to create for years and years.

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNAIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! I don't think there's any real mystery here. It's the benefits of being associated with a NYT bestselling series of novels that have a really enthusiastic fanbase. While I would personally rather create our own stuff than do licensed games, the blunt fact is that Larry's fans outnumber Hero fans by a considerable margin -- and fortunately for us many of them are not shy about expressing their love of his works by pledging money in support of the Kickstarter.

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNAIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! Yup, that's 'cause he set up the account. And usually it is him posting under the Hero banner on Kickstarter. But in this particular case I'm helping out in exchange for a really good trade and a draft pick next year. Ah, sorry, I totally misunderstood. Yes, increasing the size of the print run with a higher amount of funding is certainly a possibility.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? intp -- yes and no. Yes, in that I am still intensely interested in writing the book. In fact, I'm so interested that I continue to work on it in my "copious spare time." Since my Kickstarter failed I've finished the Assyro-Babylonian and Finnish mythologies chapters, and am currently working on the Aztec mythology chapter. If I can find a reasonable way to produce and publish the book, I would gladly do so. No, in that unless and until I'm convinced I have a strong chance of success I'm not going to bother spending my time and effort on another Kickstarter (or what have you). The gaming public spoke pretty clearly seven months ago and said they didn't want what I was offering. I haven't really seen anything that convinces me that situation has changed. A lot of game designers are raking in tremendous amounts of money with their RPG Kickstarters, but I have no reason to believe at this point that I could earn any more money with a new KS than I did with the first one. There are simply too few HERO System fans (combined with however many "mythology for gaming fans" I can scare up) to fund a major project of this sort, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I definitely appreciate your interest, and that of the other folx who ask me about MH from time to time (or respond to my "update" posts about it on my Facebook feed). It's always good to know when one of my ideas strikes a chord with a fellow gamer.

Re: THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNAIONAL EMPLOYEES' HANDBOOK & RPG Is Now Live! First, just to be clear, I'm the one posting over on the Kickstarter page. Jason has enough to do these days so I'm riding herd on the MHI Kickstarter. We're considering lots of ideas, but just to respond to your first one, gojira: there is no way in the Multiverse that "more core books" is going to be considered as a stretch goal, not unless we get far, far into the six figures. Reprinting both core books from scratch could easily cost more than we're trying to raise for the MHI RPG. We definitely want to come up with some good stretch goals, but we have to be very, very careful with them. The $45,000 goal is basically Hero's "break even" point on this project; it's not designed to net Hero Games a large profit at that point. (The profit would come from additional sales after the fact, etc.) So any extras we want to add are going to have to be planned in advance to make sure we don't end up losing money on the whole deal.

Re: Rule Clarification from Thread Absorption as a Defense You’re absolutely correct and I was absolutely wrong. I overlooked part of my own text. The defense provided by Defensive Absorption doesn’t depend on the roll. I’ll go correct the initial answer. If you limit your defense to only apply against HTH Weapons, then it only applies against HTH Weapons. A Ranged attack isn’t a HTH Weapon so it wouldn’t apply against such an attack (even if that attack involved a HTH Weapon being thrown).

Re: Absorption as a Defense Sorry, my first answer was incorrect (I overlooked part of the text and some bits of APG2), so I am changing it: As stated in the text on 6E1 166, “Each BODY of Absorption purchased counts as 1 point of PD or ED.” So if a character purchased 20 BODY Absorption, he gets 20 defense. The fact that he can Absorb up to 40 doesn’t give him 40 defense. The Defensive Absorption is in effect at all times against any attack it applies against that the character can Absorb; the character doesn’t have to have Absorbed anything yet for the defense to apply. If the character is unable to Absorb from an attack (either because his Absorption does not apply to that attack, or because he’s Absorbed all the can Absorb), then the defense does not apply (see APG2 22).

Re: Question for Dean Shomshak If I ever get to publish Mythic Hero, you'll see a lot more gods, built on lots of points. But not necessarily the same as they would be in the CU; the Tezcatlipoca of MH differs in many respects from the Tezcatlipoca in CV1, in the process providing me with a great sidebar about "customizing gods for your own campaign and personal opinions."

Re: Rules Clarification: Extra Time and MPP Slots I gotta go with Option 5. I think this issue's going to come up so rarely that it can safely be left to the GM to decide for his own campaign.

Re: Announcement: The Monster Hunter International RPG! Not just "any day now" -- now! The Monster Hunter International Employee's Handbook And Roleplaying Game Come on over, support the project, and get some great rewards!

Re: Active Costs for Weapons in 6E2 In the case of the Great Mace what you're overlooking is the Length -- a M weapon adds +1m Reach, and that has to be paid for. Technically speaking under the rules for Stretching you could leave it as +1 Active Point (and +1 Real Point), but I sometimes prefer to err on the side of caution and, in this case, round 1.5 up to 2. In the case of Killing Damage ending in -1, there is no separate cost; as noted in the Damage Class table on 6E2 97, 2d6-1 is the same DC as 1.5d6 and technically would have the same cost (25 points in this case). However, in the interest of distinguishing weapons more precisely, I often use the "increased damage differentiation" rules on APG 56 (so that, for example, 2d6-1 would cost 27 points).

Hero's Kickstarter for the MHI RPG is now live! We'd appreciate your support to make this awesome project a success. The Monster Hunter International Employees' Handbook And Roleplaying Game

Hero's Kickstarter for the MHI RPG is now live! We'd appreciate your support to make this awesome project a success. The Monster Hunter International Employees' Handbook And Roleplaying Game

Hero's Kickstarter for the MHI RPG is now live! We'd appreciate your support to make this awesome project a success. The Monster Hunter International Employees' Handbook And Roleplaying Game

Hero's Kickstarter for the MHI RPG is now live! We'd appreciate your support to make this awesome project a success. The Monster Hunter International Employees' Handbook And Roleplaying Game

Re: Resistant Defence/Defence and Defence Powers: Active Point Limit Since there are no official rules regarding point limits, this is really a topic for the Discussion board, so I've moved it there.

Re: Granting Damage Shield There's no contradiction here. You're misinterpreting what a No Range power is. A No Range power doesn't let you "grant" a power to someone else; that requires various forms of Usable On Others. A No Range power lets one character affect another character at touch distance (typically with an attack). In the case of a Damage Shield, the Surface affected is the character -- and if he touches someone (or to put it another way, if someone is made to touch his Surface), that person is affected by the attack. It doesn't "spread" to that target, the target's simply affected.

Re: Announcement: The Monster Hunter International RPG! The plan is to start it October 1. However, we may be delayed by a couple days because we need to get a video clip from Larry, and he's still busy with his book tour/recovering from his book tour. If we don't hit that date it shan't be long thereafter. We'll broadcast the word near and far when it goes live.

Re: Real Locations that should be fantasy Those of you who are on Facebook and are interested in this sort of thing, please check out my Wanderings In The Fantastic World page. It's pictures of amazing places on Earth, with fantasy/gaming captions provided by yours truly. Wanderings In The Fantastic World

Re: Damage through a wall Use the same rules as attacking through a Barrier (6E1 171), since a Barrier and a wall function in more or less the same way.

Re: When do you halve DCV during a sweep? I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions about the 5th Edition rules anymore. However, I can suggest, in general, that you consult the DCV Checklist (which you can look up in the index), which in either 5E or 6E describes the proper order in which to perform operations that affect DCV.