Tell me about HERO.

[Anastasia]

I've seen this system used by Bjorn and Brian - it appears to have some roots within Tristat, but I'm utterly unfamiliar with it. So I ask for some basic details and opinions on the system, since I figure it has to do something right to get adherents. I'm mainly looking for a good, experienced picture and why the system works, as well as why it fails.

[Merc]

Well, first off, I'd recommend looking at:

http://www.soulriders.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=672

It gives a decent overview of the system and you can start seeing some people's opinion on the system.

On a personal note? I haven't actually -played- with the system, so I can't say how well it works in practice, but I can say that looking at the book, it's certainly intimidating for new players.

The book can be classified a blunt weapon due to its size, and has a psychological warfare edge to it once it's opened. It's ridiculously complex looking, and the amount of math necessary to create a sheet is staggering. I'm most definitely going to want a guiding hand when I do my chargen for Brian's HERO game.

[Bjorn]

Brian's written a fairly in-depth review, so I'm going to stick to an impressions sort of thing.

HERO predates Tristat.  They're both classless systems, but that's about all they have in common.  In fact, in many ways they are diametric opposites.  Tristat is about fast play.  HERO is about being able to cover all the bases.

The good stuff about HERO:

1) Character creation.  You can do anything you want -- HERO has its roots as a ruleset for a superhero game, where this is a prerequisite.  This is my number one reason for loving HERO -- you can make beautiful, unique characters.   No other system I've played comes close to the wealth of options that HERO offers.

2) It's well balanced.  This isn't a matter of "there's a thousand ways you could do it but only one is the right way," there's significant benefits for exploring the range of options.  There aren't really any dominatingly-useful skills/powers, and the skills that are less useful are meant to be that way.  There's no dump stat; everything has its place.

3) You can do whatever you want.  This should be true in every system, of course, but in HERO it's true with less GM fudging.

4) It scales well.  This is a problem any system has: how do you quantify characters if you have to span the spectrum from kittens to tarrasques?  All systems break down somewhere (the famous "mage dying to housecat" of AD&D).  Many systems just ignore this problem and assume everything's going to be on the same general power spectrum; most of the systems that span enormous power ranges either end up with distinct rule sets (RIFTS) or weird logarithmic progressions (Marvel Superheroes).  HERO does a pretty good job of representing a broad diversity of power levels with a single core set of rules.

The cons:

1) It's complex.  Most of the complexity is in character creation, not in play, but there's still a lot of modifiers and possible rules to cover.  It's pretty easy to get bogged down in the math.

2) It's broken, which is wierd to say, given that I said it was well-balanced.  Essentially, there's two possible issues: one is that certain combinations of powers and/or advantages can be game-breaking; the second is that it's easy to take a bunch of limitations that, well, aren't.  The last part is a problem in any system with limitations, of course, and the key is to make sure they actually are limitations, but the generality of the system makes this issue a little worse for HERO.  As for the first, the rule book conveniently labels powers which have the potential to create problems, so the GM knows what to check.

In short: a literal reading of the rules of HERO produces a system that is broken.  It's well-balanced if the spirit of "limitations should be real limitations" is adhered to.

3) Sometimes classless is better.  It's not easy to crank out stereotypes in HERO, which is a real pain from the GM's perspective.

Comparing is to Tristat, the other genreless classless system that seems to be popular here, my own impression is that HERO has variety, and Tristat is generic.  If you were making a melee specialist in Tristat, he'd probably end up with pretty much the same general build, regardless of whether he was a high school boxer in a shoujo game, a monk in high fantasy, or a grim and gritty urban vigilante.  In HERO, they'd all be really different characters.  Of course, the flipside is that you can make a Tristat character in less than two hours. ;)

[Anastasia]

I read Brian's review. While good I was looking for more direct and casual feedback overall. That and since it's been awhile since it was written and more games have been played, perhaps perceptions have changed.

The main vibe I get from casual observation and that's supported here is that chargen is a nightmare. That's a fairly big stumbling block; every game has it's issues there but HERO always gets that bad press. Merc's right, it can be intimadating. However, the other aspects do interest me - flexibility can be awesome and unique builds are always good.

As for Tristat vs HERO? Pretty much. Tristat, for it's flaws, tends to be simpler. I know when I run it I tend to make a bunch of custom abilities to help fudge things along. This is fine, I suppose, but if you stretch it too far, you may as well go with the system that's already that way?

[Carthrat]

A note with Hero.

1) Excel is awesome. I don't have a copy of the excel file Brian made for tDaT, but it was incredibly helpful with figuring values; it was all done for me! You should post that so we can all partake in the awesome.

2) With Excel in place, the hardest part of the game was figuring out how the powers worked. Once again, I look at tDaT (and because I wasn't playing when this happened, this could be wrong), and look at the way Brian seems to use them; he'd assign powers to people, presumably explain how they worked, and THEN let them build on them. In essence, he'd give them the basic gist of things, and they'd go on from there.

I belive Bjorn is doing something similar with Past Sins. I'm pretty sure Dune did basically the same thing in SM with Tristat, and people started putting their own spin on things later. I think that's a real cool way to introduce people to new systems, and god knows Hero certainly needs it.

[Bjorn]

I belive Bjorn is doing something similar with Past Sins. I'm pretty sure Dune did basically the same thing in SM with Tristat, and people started putting their own spin on things later. I think that's a real cool way to introduce people to new systems, and god knows Hero certainly needs it.

I'm doing it in Past Sins for thematic reasons, not practical.  It does have benefits from the "introduction to the system" perspective, but I'd only recommend it for very short campaigns (with basically no potential for character growth) or very long ones.

[Anastasia]

I belive Bjorn is doing something similar with Past Sins. I'm pretty sure Dune did basically the same thing in SM with Tristat, and people started putting their own spin on things later. I think that's a real cool way to introduce people to new systems, and god knows Hero certainly needs it.

I'm doing it in Past Sins for thematic reasons, not practical.  It does have benefits from the "introduction to the system" perspective, but I'd only recommend it for very short campaigns (with basically no potential for character growth) or very long ones.

Seconding Bjorn. That works best for loooooong games with a lot of rope to hang yourself with. One shots aren't it.

[Brian]

For those who wanted it, here's the HERO spreadsheet I made (it's pretty simple).

[Dracos]

A salute again to Brian's char sheet.  It's a great representation of the fact that hero really works better when you let computers handle all the math and recognize that outside that, the system gives tons of flexibility.

Dracos

[Dracos]

I belive Bjorn is doing something similar with Past Sins. I'm pretty sure Dune did basically the same thing in SM with Tristat, and people started putting their own spin on things later. I think that's a real cool way to introduce people to new systems, and god knows Hero certainly needs it.

I'm doing it in Past Sins for thematic reasons, not practical.  It does have benefits from the "introduction to the system" perspective, but I'd only recommend it for very short campaigns (with basically no potential for character growth) or very long ones.

Seconding Bjorn. That works best for loooooong games with a lot of rope to hang yourself with. One shots aren't it.

No, I'd actually agree with Bjorn on very short/one shots.

Character creation can take a lot of time, and I do think there's a significant advantage sometimes to "Campaign WITH pregen'ed chars" model, both in hero and elsewhere.  If I'm playing a 4 hour long one-shot, I'll appreciate not spending an hour or ten building the character.  Even if it's just the powers, that's the most  time consuming portion usually, and on a flat scale, reduces the amount of character creation needed by 30 percent.  Folks playing for weeks are going to want their own distinct powers most the time.  Folks playing for months on months are going to have the opportunity to buy such even if you give them powers (unless you specifically restrict it), which can make it a good booster without hampering creativity with character.

That said, I'd never pull out Hero for a one shot.  It's reasonably involved and really, if you want that level of flexibility for a one shot, just play diceless with some written up stories.  The GMs time is valuable too and they could probably run two sessions in the time it'll take them to whip up all the npcs and pcs for a game that's supposed to be a few hours long.

I wouldn't play Hero without a pc.  Yes, it has a more sane math system than D&D, but that's backed with the fact that you can get a lot of dice rolling and those games (Whitewolf for example) just are better with a digital roller.

I felt that this system, particularly, made the lone super enemy deal pretty workable.  The fact that it worked on a speed rather than round by round allowed the ability to remove the whole "Team goes 6 times, Enemy goes 1, Team goes 6 times" deal.  I recall assistance being around, but Brian seemed to easily enough deal with it without having to mod up rules around reducing defense or anything.  I could recall wrong.

I really should buy the book.

Dracos