Steve Long

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? First off -- folx, let's not spend a lot of time and energy discussing "Legendary Hero" here, please. If and when we do that book, there'll be a separate WDYWTS thread. Let's keep this focused on MH, 'kay? They're not aimed at any specific genre. Different perspectives on gods, ways to use 'em in a campaign, and how they tend to vary from genre to genre are all part of what's covered in Chapter One. The gods are presented consistently throughout the book, and the approach I choose to adopt is made clear so that someone who prefers a different approach will understand what he needs to change.

Re: Question: How to make the weapons from the book Sorry, but I don't generally answer "how to" questions. However, I will point out one thing I think you may be overlooking -- Medium, Long, and longer weapons have to pay for Reach (see 6E1 284); they don't get that extra length (which can be advantageous in melee combat) for free.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Well, as I mentioned in my intro post, I am going to cover the cosmology and "setting" of each mythos to some extent. That's about it on this subject, though; I'm not going to write up Asgard as a Base any more than I'd write up the Kingdom of Vestria as a Base in The Turakian Age. But the Norse section does include a few paragraphs on the Nine Worlds and on Asgard, with other bits of Norse geographic fun scattered throughout the section; other mythologies will get the same treatment to the extent possible.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Folx, let's use some common sense here, please. Of course MH is going to include character sheets for common divine servants. What kind of a write-up of Norse mythology would it be with no valkyries? The same goes for similar servants in other pantheons. As for Templates -- no. As I've already said, Chapter One is going to have write-ups of common divine abilities that you can use to build your own gods if you like, but that's it. There won't be "Generic God" character sheets or anything like that. If you want to customize a divine character sheet, there'll be plenty throughout the book you can easily adapt. Generally speaking you're not going to see any of this -- that's not what MH is about. I've written about things like how religions work and so on in FH, and that's about all I have to say on the matter. There'll probably be some info in Chapter One about divine-mortal interactions and offspring, etc., but that's about it.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? I don't want to go into here, but I have a pretty clear and, I think, consistent vision of what goes in which book that I think most readers'll be satisfied with. After MH comes out you can take a look and I'll explain my reasoning in more detail if you like.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Quite honestly -- they probably won't. I'm certainly going to do my best, but the fact remains that the best-known Western mythoi are far better chronicled in English (and far more consistently) than the Eastern mythoi. Nor does it help that trying to chisel a single coherent body of, say, Chinese myth out of thousands of years of history and multiple cultural variations within China ain't exactly an easy task. But I'm going to give it the ol' college try and will let you judge the results for yourself.

Re: Telekinesis versus Vehicles First, unless he's paid for the Line Of Sight (+1/2) Advantage, Telekinesis isn't a LOS power; it has a range (and Range Modifier) per the normal rules. So that may affect things. Beyond that, the rules for stopping moving objects with STR (6E2 26) are what you'd use to resolve this situation. Though with 86 STR involved I expect this character has a pretty good shot at stopping that jet.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? That would certainly be interesting to write about someday, but it's beyond what I can do in this book. I'm going to have enough trouble just getting the basic mythology research done without delving into more of this stuff! Where possible I'll include what information I can reasonably dig up in sidebars and cosmology sorts of discussions, but that's about the best I can promise.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? To the extent I want to write about that, I've already done so on FH 374-83. That's about all I think the average gamer needs on the subject. That's not what MH has ever been intended to be about.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? OK, now this is an intriguing suggestion. I have the Bonnefoy book and will see what I can pull out of it (it's one of many books I have that I'll review as I write MH, and that may cause me to expand or change my ideas of what'll be in the book). The Heissig book sounds intriguing but that's more than I'd like to spend on this subject, but we'll see how things go and perhaps I'll change my mind. I doubt they have it over at UNCG but I can probably check there too if necessary. Thanx!

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? I think there are sufficient differences to leave them as distinct categories. Though I may end up changing my mind after I dig back into it; one can never tell.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Before we go too far down the road of thinking about "Legendary Hero," let me be clear: Vainamoinen and pals are not appropriate for that book as I conceive of it; they're staying in MH under "Finnish Mythology" right where I think they belong. Gods and other such whatnot are too wrapped up in their doings, IMO, to cut them out of the mythic herd and change them to "legendary" status. I can certainly see why some of you would argue for the switch, though. The gods aren't nearly as involved or as well-described as in, say, Greek, Norse, or Yoruban mythology. But there's enough there for me to work with, so Vainamoinen & Co. should go in there with 'em.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? If I agreed with that, there'd be no point in writing this book. There are lots of mythology books out there; this will be the only one with HERO System information on gods, creatures, items, and other related cool stuffs. Those who don't think gods should have character sheets are, as always, free to ignore 'em. Having them in print won't hurt anyone. And for those who do want 'em, they'll be available. It's a win-win.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? This all falls into that same "beyond the scope of this book" category, unfortunately. It's an intriguing subject, no question, but one for another book sometime.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? They will be if some god who's getting written up in the book wields them, or they're otherwise interesting enough to stat out. I've already written up Excalibur for King Arthur's character sheet, f'rex.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? I never do at this stage of things. I'm just guessing that with all that I want to cram into the book, and the work I've done so far (I've done partial descriptions of several mythoi in my "copious spare time"), I'm guessing it could easily be a 300+-page tome.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? To answer your questions, megaplayboy: 1. I have a copy of TPO that Peter Adkison gave me somewhere around here. I may take a look at it while writing MH but I certainly don't want to "copy" it or anything like that. 2. Only to the extent that the "Templates" covering standard divine powers in Chapter One provide this info. Beyond that you'll just have to adapt an existing god to suit. 3. Some of the people you list (Vainamoinen, Sigurd/Siegfried) clearly belong in MH. Some (Musashi) are purely historical, and therefore outside the scope of LH as I envision it. Beowulf would definitely go in there; I should've remembered to list him. But in any event I'm glad you like the idea. 4. Sorry, I don't want to delve into made-up mythologies. In any event, Dean Shomshak's already made good use of that stuff in the Champions Universe's multiverse. 5. Those which are appropriate for the book and useful will at least be mentioned. 6. This will be covered in Chapter One. 7. "Space gods" are a separate subject already sufficiently covered in Champions Beyond and Galactic Champions, IMO. That's not really an appropriate subject for MH. 8. I'm not sure I understand what you mean here, but it sounds to me like it's beyond the scope of the book except insofar as I go into how to use gods in various genres in Chapter One. 9. I don't think I want to take up page space in what's already going to be a huge book for this. I'll let gamers pull 'em out of the individual gods' character sheets if necessary. 10. This touches on the topic of potentially offending religious believers. I struggled with this a good bit in deciding to include Chinese, Hindu, Japanese, and Voodoo, all of which are living religions. I ended up including them because (a) it's not like we have a lot of readers who belong to those faiths, and ( the book would seem distinctly sub-par without them, since they're major mythoi. Also, as a more or less atheist to some extent I think that all religious believers are nuts, regardless of faith. However, I decided against including Christian mythology because (a) most of our readers are Christians, making it much more likely people would get offended, and ( it's a complex enough subject that it would add a huge amount of work to what's already going to be an enormous book. At the most, I might include some angels in the Demonology section, but that'd be it. 11. Unless I touch on that in Chapter One, that's not something I care to cover in the book. 12. I have enough to handle just dealing with Human mythologies; I'm not going to start making up mythoi for fictional species.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? Well, I was going to post a picture of my mythology library, but even converted to a PDF it's too large for me to include here. Perhaps some other time.

Re: MYTHIC HERO: What Do *You* Want To See? I mentioned above something called "Legendary Hero." This is a book we've vaguely considered that would feature characters and beings from famous legends that don't rise to the level of mythology (i.e., that don't generally involve gods and the like). I'm interested in doing this because (a) it would let me shorten MH a little, and ( it would let me cover fun subjects that are totally inappropriate for MH. However, if we're going to do it, we need to decide before MH goes to layout. There are two parts of MH -- the Arthurian Legends and the bogatyr section of Slavic/Russian -- that are more appropriate for "Legendary Hero" than MH. Other possible subjects for inclusion in MH are: Robin Hood The 1,001 Nights (Haroun al-Rashid, Sinbad, Alladin, Ali Baba, all that fun stuff) Roland and other such folx from various European sagas I'm not sure that there's enough material there for a whole book of the size that we like to publish. Nor am I sure there's enough consumer interest in "Legendary Hero" to justify considering it as a separate product. So, if you'd be interested in seeing a Legendary Hero book that's distinct from MH, let us know!

Howdy Herophiles! Time for a WDYWTS thread about our next awesome book: Mythic Hero, which I've been itching to write for a long time now. Our shorthand description for MH around here is "Steve's version of Deities & Demigods," and while that's a good one-sentence pitch I think the key words there are "Steve's version." I think this book is going to go significantly beyond other gaming supplements on the subject. Or at least, that's my intent. Here's what the book will contain as it's currently conceived: Chapter One: Gods In Gaming: A review of a bunch of useful introductory material, much like HSB has its own Chapter One. It will cover "Templates" for common divine abilities, a discussion of how to use gods in your campaign (such as the various approaches, from "ultra-powerful" to "basically just like the PCs"), and even how to play gods in mythology-based campaigns. The rest of the chapters are descriptions of individual pantheons, arranged roughly in this order: the cosmology/setting; other interesting bits (such as unique magic systems, spells, or pantheon-wide items); the gods (major/important/fun gods get full character sheets; lesser deities just get textual descriptions; heroes; villains; and monsters. For example, the Norse monster section has Fenris and Jormungandr; the Russian/Slavic monster section has character sheets for vodyanoi, domovoi, rusalka, and other such spirits. Here's the current list of pantheons I'm intending to cover: American Indian (selections from major tribes like Cherokee, Haida, Iroquois, etc.) Arthurian Legends (but see second post below about "Legendary Hero") Assyro-Babylonian Aztec and Mayan Celtic Chinese Demonology (medieval Christian demons like Belial, Moloch, maybe even Satan ) Egyptian Finnish Greek and Roman Hawaiian and Polynesian Hindu Hungarian Japanese Norse Slavic/Russian Sumerian Voodoo Yoruban And then I'll have a final chapter on mythoi I don't have enough information to write up in full, like Aborigine, Armenian, Hittite, Zulu, and so on. If in my researches I come across enough information onany of them, that pantheon will get bumped to "full chapter" status. The main guideline about which pantheons get a chapter is, generally, whether the subject has good, approachable resources in English that I have or can obtain. One reason gamers in general tend to emphasize/know about Greek/Roman and Norse mythology is that there are such excellent resources available on them. My library (see picture below) contains a lot of good references on a lot of mythologies, but there are some mythoi that just aren't covered well in English (or at least not for prices I'm willing to pay ). If you know of a source for a mythos that I haven't included on my list, feel free to mention it. Please include author and title so I can easily look it up on Alibris or the like. So, now that you've got the basics... what do you want to see in Mythic Hero?

Re: THE BOOK OF THE EMPRESS -- What Do *You* Want To See? Howdy folx! Just wanted to say that with BotE now nearly done, I'm de-stickying the thread. I appreciate all your comments and input! Now you can feel free to put your desire to make suggestions about books into the new WDYWTS thread about Mythic Hero.

Re: APG II Commentary/Discussion thread Ragitsu -- you're not literally hiding it, but putting a question intended for Darren or myself on the fifth page of a thread we may or may not be reading generally means we probably won't see it, and thus can answer it. Thus in effect you're "hiding" it from us. If you have questions about the availability of specific books, the best place to ask is typically Company Questions, where we're far more likely to see the question.

Re: Powers as Weapon Elements Specific Powers have specific rules for whether they can add to (or be added to by) Martial Maneuver damage. For HA, see 6E1 231. Obviously most Powers don't do Normal Damage in HTH Combat, making the question irrelevant as to them. Typically, Weapons Elements are meant to apply to weapons -- they're not called "Attack Elements," after all. However, there is some precedent for characters being able to use their Martial Arts with specific attacks based on Powers, such as the "Enerjitsu" Ranged Martial Art for use with energy beams. A GM could certainly allow (or require) characters to buy a Weapon Element to use a given power or ability with Martial Arts if he wanted to.

Re: Combined Attack I disagree that the explanation is in any way "thin." I've said it pretty much as well as I can say it there; I don't believe I can rewrite it here to make it any clearer.

Re: Naked advantage vs compound powers First off, let me make sure you're clear on one thing, so that my answer is equally clear: there's no Adder involved here. An Adder is a separate game element. You're talking about a naked Advantage. I expect you understand that, given this question's title, but you used "adder" throughout so I wanted to make sure we're all on the same page. In this case, just add up the total amount of damage you want the naked Advantage to apply to, at the typical cost of 5 Character Points per d6, and apply the naked Advantage to that. So, if the character's maximum damage from STR, HA, and Combat/Martial Maneuvers is going to be, say, 12d6, you'd buy the Area Of Effect (4m Radius; +1/4) Advantage to apply to attacks of up to 60 Active Points. If that's not clear or you have further questions, please feel free to post a follow-up.