Doc Democracy

Thank you. I am hoping to put together a HERO toolkit, documenting my construction of that to help anyone else that wants to use Roll20 not just to be able to use the stuff I have done but to extend and adapt it to their game. It us all pretty simple once you are in there meddling but it looks awfully difficult and abstruse from an outside perspective. A bit like HERO really! :-)

I was having problems in creating a list of manoeuvre macros. I have worked it through and produced a guidance document that might prove useful to others. You can see that document here.

I hate option 1 as well. -1 suggests that you think the power will fail reasonably often due to this? It is the equivalent, system wise, of choosing a 9- roll to use the power. Rather than have to make all the rolls against all of the people, why not just make the 9- roll each time. I realise this loses some of the flavour of it being tailored to the willpower of the particular opponent but it avoids a lot of rolling...and a lot of MCV checking before those rolls...

I am beginning to get a hang of the macro language on the site. There are limitations - the big one being you cannot display both STUN and BODY of a the same roll of dice (though I coming round to the idea of rolling twice and displaying - it should not be too disparate too often and it might even be reasonably interesting not to always know that a high STUN is accompanied by high BODY and vice versa). If folk do play on Roll20, please chat here to see if there is stuff I might play with and see if I can find a resolution or come over, join the sandbox and try it yourself... Doc

On this day, 17 years ago, the moon was torn out of Earth's orbit and the brave personnel on Moonbase Alpha were lost to us forever...after 2 series and 48 episodes... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wr41gaM_ow

It worked - not many points spent on END or REC. It is part of the design and is easy if players do not want to think about END etc too much. In this game there was also a big emphasis on BODY rather than STUN... I guess that it would work just as easy if the base was 3 with an extra action after the second action, then after the third and then after the first (if you want that six action villain to strike terror into the hearts of the heroes...) :-)

I played a League of Extra-Ordinary Gentlemen style game - one major power for each character - where I presented the system as though everyone had SPD 2. 2 actions per round was standard. I did however have characters with bonus actions. If someone had one bonus action they got to go one additional time after everyone else had their two actions. One henchman of the main villain (who was SPD 2) actually had 2 bonus actions - he went after everyone had one action and then again once everyone had their second action. It seemed to work quite well - no misunderstandings among the players at all. Doc

though, the plastic surgery suggests strongly that I am wrong! :-)

You have all presumed that JmOz meant scarred individual when he typed scared. Possibly he meant 'sacred'?? I can see real value in the signet ring being able to mark someone as sacred...and I would presume, for most, this to be a welcome action rather than a hostile one...

The SPD chart was cutting edge when it was introduced, I think I said this in another thread recently, but, in a world where gaming has become more sophisticated in both RPGs and boardgames we tend to expect more elegance. I think it is time someone with a really good background in game mechanics had a good look at the SPD chart and brought it into the 21st century... In fact, while HERO has been through quite a few editions, the actual backbone of the game system has remained almost entirely unchanged. All the thought and development has gone into the powers and skills and other bits and pieces. Maybe there is an argument for the next edition to radically think about the core gameplay of the system.

Yeah - if you dont want to pick one of the solution posts create a post yourself referencing the answers you liked and choose that one for the solved listing...

It looks like Narosia is indeed just this... Shipping to UK not expensive either. I guess I know where my next £40 will be spent...putting my money where my mouth is. I missed any chat and talk about this. Did it feature much on the boards?? Doc

Yeah, I think that any product 'powered by HERO' should seek to leverage existing stuff. It should be possible to deliver a real Turakian Age game - you want a cool name for that - where not only do you not have sight of the HERO system details, you do not need them. As Tasha said, everything in there would be pre-built and players would put stuff together from things in the game. What would make it a HERO System product would be an online PDF that detailed the builds and decisions made. HERO geeks could use that to toolkit and tailor the product. Those interested enough in the setting might be drawn into the HERO system because they want to change stuff but probably the majority of folk would simply play the game as presented and never really touch the HERO system beyond those glimpses provided by the game book... I like to think that I am not drawn by high production values and then I look at my bookshelves and see the high gloss stuff that I have bought and never played... Doc

Maybe you did not get what I meant. TP 1", only usable on others - SFX - hands reach through the force wall and draw item or person back through it. I am not sure what kind of transparency the force wall needs for this or how it compromises the protection from anyone else's attacks. You are effectively making a grab with the teleport rather than your hands, though the item grabbed ALWAYS lands in your hands. The teleport could be resisted by making a STR vs STR roll - as the conceit is that it is actually the character reaching through. Doc

Have you considered having a VERY short range TP, only to move people/stuff through your FW, only if you make a successful grab roll? This would seem to give you the functionality you want without compromising the force wall...and I do not think it would cost many points. Nugatory expense to get the game effect you are looking for... Doc

But if you wanted to stickle, then it would be Hero System board of it was a generic question about how a particular power worked and if there were alternatives that might be better placed. It would be Champions if it was more focussed on how a particular build worked for the Superhero genre... I tend to post in Hero System when I am looking for real rules lawyer types to go over something hard to determine its point value, its balance and its managability, I come to Champions when I am more interested in how something might play in game and achieve a cool effect... Fine distinctions and, as Grail Knight indicated, we are not too worried about it.

Yeah - it is the book-keeping chore that is the issue. I haven't looked at it since it was first introduced as the book-keeping put me off. I think that it has to be a purely player thing as it is nice to have some kind of longer term resource management issue that has a side effect on the short term combat one. I have toyed with making LTE simply recover using REC once per day. That way I can have a list of LTE used and each day reduce that by REC. It would be easy to up the limitation values go up from a day to 2 days to 4 days to a week to a fortnight to a month. I think I would be more likely to charge players LTE for stuff and to build powers that use it that way... (I am hoping that RAW have not changed to just this and I have missed it....)

OK. First character is done. I have put Maelstrom in the sandbox and uploaded the macros as a PDF to the boards. Right now if you are on the site you can use the macros to see how it looks on the chat. If you sign up then you can tinker with both the text and the functionality. Right now it only does basic stuff - I have not attempted to draw out the defences or even to check if the attack hit or not. The dice do not, to my limited knowledge, allow me to display STUN and BODY and so I have gone with STUN. If you hover over the result in the chat box then it displays all of the d6 results - highlighting sixes in green and ones in red - allowing a quick calculation of BODY. I have also included some additional information that could be useful in play. Doc

There have been a few threads talking about using Roll20 to play Hero games. It is a lot of work to get things looking decent. I have created a sandbox over on Roll20. I will make anyone who joins a GM so that we can all work on generating resources that we can bring back here to share. :-) If you want to go look at the sandbox I have been playing with, you would be more than welcome. You can join the sandbox at https://app.roll20.net/join/1628298/KcEqwA and I will give you GM rights so that you can look at the guts of everything. Doc

Hmm. You would go a shorter distance but you would hit harder. I would be inclined simply to reduce KB by 3 for each additional G but add 3 STUN.... :-) All gut, no analysis...

Things that I impose get less buy in from the players than stuff they come up with themselves. I will work with them if they want but you get more colour and depth when it is self-generated by the players and I use their generic elements to tie them into campaign specifics.

I think that the trick with the science fiction is to give the players enough information to know their place in the hierarchies that exist. Let me show you my thinking when planning a SciFi game for my group. My players would chafe if they were constantly trying to pay the mortgage. They would also chafe if they were overly constrained by rules of society. They would however too eagerly jump to excessive violence etc if there were not constraints on their behaviour and conduct. They need a heavy hand on the team building - they are prone to building characters that are cool in their heads but do not take anyone else into consideration (my way of doing this is to require each player to give their character a reason why they would want to go adventuring with at least two other characters - no three character loops allowed unless they are beyond the two connection requirement). They need to understand that while they hold mega-destructive powers that they cannot make liberal use of those in most areas. They need to trust that I will not be looking to trip them up in civilised places when they visit those, as long as they obey the rules. I need them to have ready contact with the shakers and players without thinking that the slightest slip will end in their immediate destruction or, conversely, that because they have dealt with Mr Big in something underhand that they have leverage there. I need each adventure to have something cool in it. I need to watch out for something in each episode that they resonate with and see if I can re-introduce that, possibly with a view to making it something bigger. That is my context when thinking about it... Doc

Hmm. I think it is probably a probability based question. If you have a 14- chance with your skill roll and the power is 40 active points, then your chance of getting that power to work reduces from 91% to 50%. If you have two skill rolls to make, both 14-, only one affected by the 40 active points, then your chance of getting that power to work reduces from 83% to 45% if working from -1 per 10 points. If you have two skill rolls to make, both 14-, both affected by the 40 active points, then your chance of getting that power to work reduces from 83% to 25% if working -1 per 10 points. It reduces from 83% to 55% if working -1 per 20 points. If you have two skills then you need to have them both affected or the chances increase for a greater limitation. If one skill is affected -1 per 10 and the other -1 per 20 then the chance of success reduces from 83% to 37%. Personally, I would go for the primary skill taking -1 per 10 and the secondary -1 per 20. That is not a terrible outcome as it means going from one 14- skill roll on a 40 point power to two 14- skill rolls makes the chances of the power working drop from 50% to 37%. Or something like a 10- roll to a 9- roll (which is worth an additional 1/4 limitation!) Doc PS: obviously, due the bell curve all of these numbers change dramatically depending on the initial skill roll and the active points of the power...