Quote from: RPGPundit;598772I really have no interest in anything Hero does; nor can I imagine anyone new will either.

RPGPundit

You're a sour fuck, aren't you?

Quote from: RPGPundit;598772I really have no interest in anything Hero does; nor can I imagine anyone new will either.

While I believe that it wont' be wildly popular there is always going to be a subset of gamers that systems like Hero and GURPS will appeal to. The main problem is they both took the idea of being a generic toolkit to an unnecessary extreme. Which alienated 3/4 of those gamers. They want to play a complete RPG and not have to build one themselves. This caused Hero Games and GURPS to decline to decline in comparison to their competition. And compounded with the smaller RPG market this was a very bad things for both games.

Math heavy, tactically detailed system are not going to be appealing as Fate/Fudge, Savage Worlds to do it yourselfers.  By releasing the all in one Champions RPG book, Hero Games returned to what made the game so great. A complete RPG where you can make any type of superhero with a lot of details. With the added bonus of being able to mix and match other genres in the Hero System.

Now if only GURPS would do the same.

Quote from: estar;598813Now if only GURPS would do the same.

I would buy GURPS Banestorm Complete in a heartbeat

They also need to support their settings better...

but thats just me...

Long time Hero System player here.

I think the campaign books that came out for Hero 5 were the best they'd ever done.  I know a lot of people love the Big Blue Book of Hero 4 but for me, 5 was the sweet spot and Star Hero, Fantasy Hero etc. for Hero 5 (which would totally work with 4 or even 3, mind you - that's the beauty of Hero system up thru version 5) were amazing.  I always thought the Hero 4 genre books were just blah.  F'rex I think the ball was badly dropped on Robot Warrior - so much potential, wasted.

This..."Hero 6.5", if you will, seems intriguing.  But I'll stick with 5 as the ultimate version for me.

With that said, let me also say that the sales numbers listed do my heart a great deal of good and of course knock Pundit's statement into a cocked hat.  It wasn't that long ago that a company could sell 5000 of any given RPG book and it be a runaway success but to know Hero can still move 30k copies does my heart well.  At $30 a copy that's very nearly a million bucks and that ain't bad.

From a psychological standpoint, 4e had a lot of "chunking" which was basically undone by 6e. 5e was already showing too many bolts for straightforward builds. Uncoupling the secondary characteristics in 6e just worsened the problem. You went from having a half dozen sets of numbers with 5-10 entries, and a dozen poowers and skills, to a large number of primary characteristics with little organization and hugely detailed power writeups. Also, Steve Long is a writing machine, but he definitely did not play Hero the way I did.

I'm cautiously interested in the book, but the price does seem high for a small softcover book. If that's the pricing reality, why not just go print-on-demand?

Quote from: pawsplay;599066From a psychological standpoint, 4e had a lot of "chunking" which was basically undone by 6e. 5e was already showing too many bolts for straightforward builds. Uncoupling the secondary characteristics in 6e just worsened the problem.

Spot on analysis. I'm also a long-time Hero player who wants to like 6e (and owns it) but the lack of said "chunking" means it is pretty tough going.

Take the 1200 pages of Hero 6e Vols 1,2 and Fantasy Hero. Forge a set of campaign guidelines specific to your campaign. It will be awesome but you will have produced a small book in addition to all of those rules.

Quote from: pawsplay;599066From a psychological standpoint, 4e had a lot of "chunking"

What does "chunking" mean in the context of RPG design?

The thing is, aside from being an awful, overly complex point-buy system, HERO (Champions) was actually godawful at effectively emulating the superhero genre.  That's the sin that's unforgivable to me.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;599309The thing is, aside from being an awful, overly complex point-buy system, HERO (Champions) was actually godawful at effectively emulating the superhero genre.  That's the sin that's unforgivable to me.

RPGPundit

And, yet, there are thousands of Champions players who think it does a great job of emulating the superhero genre.

Imagine that- different opinions.

There's a simple answer to that: they're wrong.  The system focuses on the wrong things.

RPGPundit

Wrong, I tell you!

WRONG!!!!

Quote from: poseidon-anubis;599431good to see them publishing

classless games I have never tried, it sounds like a powergamers dream come true

Not really. Hero has been gone over with a fine tooth comb and it's very hard for an ambitious player to game the system.

For better or worse, Hero works in that respect. It's balanced. Not to the ultimate, but robustly.

And to Pundit: Champions emulates comics like DnD emulates Leiber, and Tolkein. In other words it hits some of the same notes but plays out as its own thing. That's what RPGs are to me. Not attempts to be other media, but something distinct.

Quote from: RPGPundit;599404There's a simple answer to that: they're wrong.  The system focuses on the wrong things.

RPGPundit

Well we have to disagree. What appealed about the Hero system back in the day and was does now is it flexibility in allowing you to be build the exact type of hero complete with game stats.

I get where you are coming from, this long been a dispute in super-hero RPGs going back to its first days.

To me Champions always feels like the natural way to player superheroes as an RPG. Icons, Marvel Superheroes always felt too well fuzzy for my taste.

Mind you, I really don't think any supers game started to things right until very very recently, and the first rpg to really do things excellently is ICONS.

So its not against HERO/Champions in particular in that sense of the emulation argument; I'd say the same thing about mutants & masterminds, Silver Age Sentinels, Heroes Unlimited, the DC and Marvel games, etc.
Of course, when you go into mechanics, I think Champions is also very much on the lower half of that bad bunch.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;599476And to Pundit: Champions emulates comics like DnD emulates Leiber, and Tolkein. In other words it hits some of the same notes but plays out as its own thing. That's what RPGs are to me. Not attempts to be other media, but something distinct.

With the Knockback and barrier rules, you get a lot of mindless property damage, and if that isn't superhero genre simulation, I don't know what is.

JG