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I came to the HERO System not having any idea what to expect. Having played D&D and Exalted, I was looking for a change: a new story idea had begun to form in my head, and I knew the story would require a new game system to realise. Said system would have to accommodate the following:
o a modern-day setting
o a wide variety of power levels, starting with low-powered characters (“normal” people— bus drivers, insurance salesmen etc.), through competent professionals, and culminating in a low-powered superheroic power level similar to maybe 15th level D&D characters
o an array of cross-genre thematic elements, including conspiracy, guns, magic, demons, and science fiction components
I own GURPS 4th Edition, but I was finding some elements of the rules and organisation a little frustrating, so the question of which game or generic rules product to use for my new campaign was still open. It should be stressed that at this time I had never played HERO or Champions, and I was not looking for a product which placed any emphasis whatsoever on “superhero” gaming.
I read a number of reviews of HERO products on rpg.net, and basically did not see many bad words written about the product line. Hence, I picked up the core rulebook and started reading it, with the specific application above always at the back (and often the front) of my mind.
First Impressions
It’s been said by many people before: the HERO System 5th Edition Revised book is a big rulebook. (I’ll just refer to the thing as “HERO” from this point on.) It is, in fact, a whopper of a rulebook— a 592-page tome. Pages are printed in black and white only, on what looks like unbleached paper, and the font is small.
I know that some people just flat-out refuse to buy or play HERO because of one or more of the above points— namely, that the book is just “too big” or the paper “unacceptable”. Well, if you insist on a maximum size in inches, pages, or words for an RPG product and HERO is over these limits, then there’s really no point in reading on with the review. The book is the size it is, you can squint at it all you like and it’s not going to get any smaller. For me, the issue was not “is this book too big?” but “is reading the thing going to be worth my while?” It is that last question that this review tries to address.
As far as the paper goes, well, I didn’t experience any technical problems in that department. Sure, you’ll want a decent light to read by as the contrast is not as high as bleached paper, but other than that, the paper looked fine.
A quick flick through the book revealed illustrations maybe every 3 or 4 pages, of varying quality, and depicting images from a variety of genres. The pictures did not seem obtrusive, and their quality seemed pretty reasonable on average.
One word summed up the book for me: businesslike. This book is not aiming to win you over with visual impact. This book is not really trying very hard to sell itself from the shelf. In fact, for such an unashamedly large book, the thing has a muted feel to it. This book has been built to be used: the binding is durable, more durable than just about every other RPG products I own; also, the book stays open when laid down flat, which is particularly important to me as I do a lot of writing on a PC and frequently need to have a book open on the desk. Lastly, the book seemed surprisingly light for its size and page count. This is also important for me, as I go to every gaming session carrying everything (including beer) in a rucsac, so less weight is a good thing.
In short, the book felt like a workhorse product, with function taking precedence over form.
This, for me, was a good thing— I immediately felt that HERO was not suffering from an identity crisis. The book was not confused about its target market, and was not trying to appeal to twenty different incompatible markets. You get exactly what it says on the tin, as the saying goes: if you want glitz, full colour printing, shiny paper, and fantastic colour art which will focus your imagination on one particular setting or genre, then you will not find it within the covers of HERO. It is hard to imagine that this is one of those books you buy with certain expectations, only to end up feeling like you’ve been conned once you’ve actually finished reading it.
The Thesis
HERO presents itself as “the Ultimate Gamer’s Toolkit”, saying so on both the front and back covers in big type. (Nothing on the cover mentions superhero gaming.) The blurb on the back touts the system as offering “ultimate flexibility” and being able to support all major genres.
Thus, inside the book, I was not expecting to find any campaign setting information, although I was expecting to find guidelines to create a campaign. Likewise, I expected to find examples of a few spells and adversaries, presented as illustrations to help a GM apply the rules to his own creations. I did not expect to find lists and lists of genre-specific spells or abilities: in fact, I was rather hoping I wouldn’t find them. (I didn’t.)
I did not expect to be able to run a game using HERO without doing some work. As stated, I had a particular cross genre, varying power level campaign in mind, and I expected HERO to provide me with the means to realise and run that campaign for an acceptable level of effort. I also expected to be inspired, to at least some degree— I expect this of all RPG products I buy, and is no small part of why I buy them.
Organisation, Layout and Editorial Style
I just have to say this straight away: the book has an excellent index. This was a great relief. It’s a big book. By way of comparison, I would rate GURPS’s index a 6/10, and Exalted’s a 1/10. I would give HERO’s index a 9/10. (I do remember not being able to find something I was looking for in the index, but I can’t remember what it was.)
The book is split into eight major sections, listed as Chapters in the Table of Contents: Character Creation (320 pages), Combat and Adventuring (86 pages), The Environment (22 pages), Equipment (34 pages), The HERO System Genre by Genre (52 pages), Gamemastering (14 pages), Changing the System (9 pages), and Concluding Notes (a few pages along with Appendix, Index, and a blank Character Sheet). I’ll discuss the content of the book later on.
Everything seems fairly logically laid out, although I was surprised that, glossary aside, the concept of Damage Classes (a rough assessment of the degree of damage an attack causes, scaled by the type of attack to provide as consistent a measure of damage as possible) was not mentioned earlier than p.403. Sure, this is a concept that pertains to combat, and it is explained in the Combat chapter, but the concept is so important that I was a little nonplussed when I came across it as late as I did. I suppose by that stage of the book, I thought I had mastered the essentials and was merely mopping up the last few unruly details…
On the subject of the glossary— well, you need it. There is a barrage of acronyms from quite an early stage in the book: OIHID, BOECV, DCV, OECV, NCM, CuK… the list goes on. The glossary does a good job of summarising these terms, but they are easy to forget the first few times you encounter them. They didn’t really deter me, though, as a) I knew I could look them up (and I frequently did); and b) by that stage of the read-through, I was starting to become quite interested in the actual content.
It is also worth mentioning that the text has plenty of cross-references, very few typos, and positively oodles of examples (I’m assuming the S.I. unit of the example is the “oodle”). The good thing about the examples is that they do not just feature the simplest possible cases (thereby leaving you scrabbling around for clarification when you’re thinking about more complicated situations), but also feature some very complicated examples which use just about every optional add-on there is. Even the complicated examples are expressed succinctly, and good use is made of sidebars to list yet more illustrations of sample spells, powers, gadgets, and whot-not.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many examples in a rulebook. These examples undoubtedly contribute significantly to the size of the book. Good. For me, it’s size well spent. I’m glad they’re there; I felt supported by their presence, and I also felt that the author had thought through the implications and possible combinations of all the rules at length, thereby increasing my confidence in the system.
Nevertheless, I struggled initially with the distinction between “Heroic” campaigns and “Superheroic” campaigns (I’d never considered what appeared to be a bifurcation in a ruleset before), and also with the chapter on Power Frameworks, but after re-reading (especially the latter) a few times I realised that the concepts were actually quite sane and what the rules were trying to achieve made pretty good sense. I did panic a little over the Heroic/Superheroic distinction at first, as I began to worry that in fact HERO was somehow optimised for Superhero gaming: happily, this turned out to be me stressing over nothing. (In fact some people believe that HERO is very good for everything apart from Superhero gaming.)
The editorial style is clear, and expositional rather than evocative. This is my preference for books that are nothing but rules (and examples), and in these cases I prefer a neutral presentation to a chatty or informal one anyway.
On the whole I liked the style.
Now onto the content.
Content
HERO is a 3d6 roll-under point-based system which absolutely encourages tinkering and customisation. Character creation takes over half the book, and a character’s attributes are categorised as follows:
Primary Characteristics are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Body, Intelligence, Ego, Presence, Comeliness. (These correspond roughly to D&D’s Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Hit Points, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Comeliness.) These do not all cost the same number of points to increase (for example, Dexterity costs more than Intelligence).
Figured Characteristics, derived from the Primary ones, include Physical Defence and Energy Defence (these represent damage reduction), Speed (# of times in a turn a character can act), Recovery (the rate at which STUN [subdual damage] and Endurance are regained), Endurance, and Stun.
Other attributes are Movement (running/leaping/swimming etc.), Skills, Perks and Talents (these two are something like D&D’s Feats or GURPS’s Advantages), and… last but not least… Powers.
The rules allow pretty much anything to be bought up with points: the GM and the particular campaign rules determine what players are allowed to do.
This is very important point. The rules in HERO are not intended as a protective coating that you can spray over your players to prevent them from misbehaving or turning into munchkins. The rules are permissive rather than prohibitive, demonstrating what you can do, with a few guidelines to suggest what you can’t or shouldn’t. (For example, suggestions are given on how to treat Heroic campaigns differently from Superheroic campaigns.) Additionally, if you don’t like something, you are encouraged to change it (Chapter 7 is entitled “Changing the System”), although the usual balance caveats are given.
This may or may not be a player’s cup of tea. Although Perks and Talents are lists of— well, Perks and Talents— the HERO book is not that big on pick-lists of a character’s special abilities, spells, special attacks and the like. You are encouraged to make your own signature abilities from the building blocks described in the rules, and the most comprehensive set of such building blocks, occupying the most space in the book, is the list of Powers.
You may not need to use Powers at all. PCs constructed for horror adventures or certain modern-day campaigns can be convincingly built just using Skills, Perks and Talents. However, for more unusual, fantastic, alien, other-worldly or futuristic effects, Powers are probably going to be the way you do things. A fantasy warrior could just be built using Skills, but if he wants to feature some sort of berserk rage in which his Strength, Constitution and Body shoot up whilst he is forced to attack every enemy in sight… well, that’s going to be built with Powers.
There are plenty of examples of effects built using Powers throughout the book, including “Berserk Strength” as it happens, but there are no extensive, pre-rolled pick-lists of abilities grouped together for easy consumption. There are other books which contain such pre-made effects: some people say these books are great as they save you time, while others say they are fairly pointless as all the rules you need to build these effects are in the core HERO book. The bottom line: if you think the HERO book is going to list just the superpower, signature martial arts combo or spell your character is likely to want, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Instead, the book tells you how you build your own.
Building your own effect from Powers is not hard. The Powers are well-described, have reasonable names that are only occasionally misleading, and examples abound. If you can’t quite do what you want from the list of Powers (all 112 pages of them), you can modify the Powers by adding Adders, Advantages or Limitations: there are 67 pages of them to choose from. If that doesn’t work for you, you can take a bunch of different effects that you have built with Powers, and group them all under a common theme or concept known as a “Power Framework”— for example, “Multifunction Energy Gun”, or “Ridiculously Lucky”. Power Frameworks sounded confusing to me at first, but they are just a way to let a character use a set of Powers which have a consistent rationale behind them (for example: “Diabolic Magic”) more cheaply than having to buy every single Power on its own. Naturally, there are restrictions on how these grouped Powers can be used, otherwise you’d be getting something for nothing. It took me a good few re-reads to get the hang of it, but it all made sense once the penny had dropped.
Like everything else (even signature equipment if you’re playing in a Superheroic campaign), Powers cost points at character creation time. Advantages and Adders increase the point cost of Powers; Limitations decrease their cost. The maths is really not hard— adding, multiplying and subtracting— but a calculator/spreadsheet/character builder is definitely useful for anything other than the most simple effects.
Powers also cost Endurance to use. (So does movement. So does using your Strength.) You calculate how much Endurance is used at character creation time, when you create the ability that uses the Powers; if you want the ability to use less Endurance, you can take the appropriate Advantage, but remember, Advantages incur a cost in character points. Thus, there is an element of balancing the “run-time” Endurance cost of your character’s special abilities against their “design time” character point cost. This flexibility is a hallmark of the system. Some may find the flexibility liberating; others may find the range of options bewildering and reach for a book of pre-packaged powers or ask the GM (or another experienced player) for help.
In truth, I found the sheer wealth of options invigorating and inspirational, although there was one element of the whole thing that it did initially take me a little while to get my head round.
You see, when you’re building your character, you don’t think about how his abilities manifest in the game world— you reason instead from the game mechanical effect his abilities have. For example, a thief has “incredible dodge”. There is no dodge Power. Instead you can take Desolidification with Limitations like “Can’t walk through walls”, “only if he succeeds at a DEX roll” and the like. You character doesn’t actually turn to a nebulous gas when a sword strikes him— it’s just that this “implementation” of dodging has the same game effect as if he did.
“What?” I hear you cry, “’Implementation’ of dodging? Whassat?”
Ah. In HERO, there are often many different ways of designing the same ability. Dodging might also be “implemented” as “+5 to DCV [Armour Class]”, with the Limitations “Must be aware of attack”, “Requires a DEX roll”, and so on.
One could argue that there is only one optimal (i.e. cheapest) way to build a given ability. Maybe that’s so. More than any other game or game system I have come across, HERO is presented less as a set of black and white munchkin-resistant game laws, and more as a tool to help a bunch of like-minded people apply some consistency to their characters’ behaviours in a fictional reality. If your gaming group constantly holds up the narrative to bicker about whether effects stack or not, then you may wish that HERO were more prescriptive than it actually is.
Moving on from character creation, the rest of the book focuses on combat, adventuring, equipment, and applications of HERO to particular genres.
Combat is run in turns of 12 Segments. A character’s SPD Characteristic determines the Segments he can act in. A character with a SPD of 12 can act in all Segments; a character with a SPD of 2 can act only in Segments 6 and 12. This somewhat unusual mechanic is simply designed to allow speedy/speedster characters to have a game mechanical advantage. (SPD is an expensive Characteristic to buy.) If you don’t like it— well, delete SPD from character sheets and ignore the chart that maps SPD to Segments and have everyone act every 6-second turn. Done! (As this is a capsule and not a playtest review, I can’t comment on how the SPD mechanic works in practice yet.)
HERO is a don’t-roll-initiative system, but again, there is no reason why a group could not adopt their own initiative-rolling system (e.g. a DEX Characteristic roll). All the usual rules for knockdown, knockback, breaking things, holding actions, grappling, throwing, multiple attacks, aborting to dodge etc. are given, and there are a few martial arts styles and a lot of combat manoeuvres, most of which affect DCV [Armour Class] or OCV [“to hit” bonus].
Damage is straightforward in principle, but there are some fiddly rules for how characters can increase the damage from their attacks. There are a multitude of ways to achieve these increases (Strength, Combat “Skill Levels”, manoeuvres, Powers…) and increasing the damage is sometimes treated differently depending on the particular method used.
While the Equipment section certainly does the job of listing basic adventuring fare, if a plethora of different weapons is what you’re after, supplementary products (such as the gun-replete “Dark Champions”) may be needed to sate your appetite. Equipment is built using the same rules as everything else, which is a definite consistency bonus. In Superheroic campaigns, signature equipment costs character points— but then, it is expected that characters are rarely without items that have been paid for in this way: there are plenty of rules in HERO which discuss this subject at length.
There’s a short section on Gamemastering which includes experience point awards that are, to be honest, pretty measly… I suspect that when I run my first HERO campaign, I’ll be using bigger numbers! Still, by this stage of the book (p.555), the feeling that customisation is not only okay, but part of HERO’s raison d’etre, meant that I didn’t even hesitate deciding I’d be tweaking these point values.
Finally, the section on “Genre by Genre” deserves a mention, as a number of— well, if not iconic, at least illustrative characters help demonstrate HERO’s application to the genres of Superhero, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Martial Arts, Modern-Day Action/Conspiracy, and Science Fiction. They’re not amazingly memorable characters, but they are reasonable illustrations of how the rules can be applied to a particular genre.
Highs and Lows
Good points: good build quality, editorial style, broad consistency of game mechanics, abundance of examples, customisability and modular feel, great index. Lows: terminology fest initially has you flipping for the glossary, the lack of pick-lists and fact that there are often different ways of doing the same thing may not suit everybody, damage adding rules are a little involved.
Conclusions
Yes, HERO is a big book.
For me, HERO does what it says on the tin. It’s a gamer’s toolkit, just as it says, not a complete game+setting+monsters package like (for example) Exalted— but then, that’s not something it tries to be. It’s a physically robust and high-quality product. The rules, though slightly complex in places, are generally very clear, and the abundance of examples goes a long way both to bumping up the size of the book and to clarifying the mechanics and— importantly— their application to a pretty wide variety of situations.
In all, I found the product inspirational. While I was reading it I was imagining just exactly how I could design the particular campaign I had in mind (see the start of this review if you’re only reading the Conclusion) using the HERO system, and as I sat there figuring things out, the whole thing started to sound… cool. The product’s not flawless, but at this pre-play stage, the flaws did not seem significant (and besides, it’s a pretty modular system that does naturally encourage customisation). That dry prose can’t completely suppress a heck of a lot of passion, experience and just plain hard work that’s gone into the system over the years.
HERO may have come from a legacy of Superhero gaming, but from my reading of the book, that’s long gone. Just because the building blocks of ability construction are called “Powers” doesn’t mean that HERO has a particular Superhero bias: sure, it looks like it’ll let you do all that Superhero stuff, but that’s not all; not by a long margin, and I’m looking forward to getting stuck in to the design of my first HERO campaign.
HERO’s a big book, but for me, reading it was definitely worth the effort.
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