To be honest GM screens are not worth the $20 purchase by themselves that most game companies have begun to charge. However many have begun to do a great job of putting together packages of extra material with the screen to make it worth your while. For example White wolf normally packs in a soft cover book full of extraneous information that they couldn’t pack into the book. Spycraft’s screen came with a laughable collection of forms you can find on line, and of course Hackmaster comes with nothing else (but then again that screen is well worth the $20 price tag alone! Hero’s resource pack may look like a somewhat disappointing package from its generic outward appearance this little 48 page book and screen pack a lot of information in one svelte little package.
First of all, the panel which itself, which is a 5-panel screen, is kind of surprising. Each subsequent edition from third has added a panel. Buy 8th edition the Hero screen will wrap around the GM easily. It has no artwork save from the occasional Hero games logo and is packed to the brim with charts. In fact both sides are exactly the same as opposed to designating a GM/player’s side. The screen is black and white and again is very generic in both looks and format. It’s durable and on heavy cardstock. It should hold up well to the rigors of the average gaming group, in fact it will probably hold up better than the 4th edition screen and has a hell of a lot more charts on it.
The book however is one of this product’s crowning achievements. Including a very nice abbreviated character creation book (similar to the one that used with GURPS) giving you the process and all the charts needed to create a character if you have some familiarity with the system, a great hand out during character creation. It also includes a collection of forms from the 4th edition updated for the new edition (not that they really updated much) Sheets include minion records, vehicle and base sheets, campaign sheets bio sheets and of course the hero record sheet. There are also a collection of templates in the book for range, and area of effect. These need to be probably printed on transparencies but they could be real useful for the hero GM who likes his hex maps.
And speaking of hex maps, there are three packages inside the GM screen. One for each genre (fantasy modern and Sci-fi) these maps are black and white ad printed on tan heavy newsprint. They are reminiscent of the maps that I believe originally appeared in Different worlds magazine, and later in the 4th edition screen. They are not bad, however they may need lamination before use to keep them around. The last and certainly least part of the package were three sheets of generic black and white paper miniatures. These tri-fold minis firstly do not include fold lines on the minis. They also are the most painfully black and white miniatures. No supers or agents, but kids on skateboards a fireman, a bike messenger, and other generic figs. Personally I’ll stick to using Heroclix at least until some miniatures company comes up with a good set of superhero miniatures.
While none of these things is necessary for a hero system GM this package is still a useful collection of tools and form that will be indispensable for anyone planning on using the hero system and for that it is well worth the price.
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