Is Iron Heroes Dead

[AnthonyRoberson]

Fiery Dragon seems to be letting Iron Heroes drift into obscurity. Does anyone know if a 2nd Edition is in the works?

[ValhallaGH]

More or less. You can check out the official IH forum here and talk to the owner when he pokes his head in (Adam Windsor, a.k.a. CrowroadAW). Adam has said a couple of times that there is currently no incentive to do a second edition.

As Hydromaster said,

"Dead" is as in "Dead in the water". As in it isn't going anywhere right now. But it's still there, it still kicks ass, and you can still play it.

[Celebrim]

Was it ever alive?

After looking over the rules, I basically said to myself, "That has some cute ideas, but I wouldn't want to play it past the 'E6 gritty' tier, and if you are just going to do that, you don't need Iron Heroes because the base 3.X D&D game works just fine."

Seriously, IH was a huge disappointment for me because it didn't look like it worked as advertised. I'd be quite surprised if there were ever more than 100 or so Iron Heroes campaigns in the whole world. I bet many people bought the books, but much like most GURPS source books, I bet mostly they became reading material.

[Aus_Snow]

Pretty much, yeah. As well as 'reading material' though (if that's so,) it has proved useful to a number of GMs for various hacking and splicing, in particular with 3e, most likely. What number, no idea. But I was (am? I lose track - of where some of my house rules originally came from, I mean) one of them, for instance.

So many gamers seem to move onto whatever's currently being printed and sold in shops, as in this very week, kinda thing. Or, perhaps more to the point, whatever's being hyped, right now. And it never ends. . . But you might have a point too, Celebrim, about how many people ever used this system, whole cloth.

It really didn't help that Mike Mearls got some way through making this RPG, then went over to WotC, for [you know what]. It shows. Plus, it's extremely crunchy, and kind of awkward (well, IMO.)

[Voadam]

It was a dissapointment for me because though the idea of powerful high fantasy warriors not dependent on items is super appealing to me, the mechanics were far more fiddly than I like or want. Accumulating token pools are too much resource tracking and management for my tastes.

I allowed a player to play one of the classes in my 3.5 game with suitable adjustments though and it went fine (most combats did not last long enough for tokens to matter). I really like the concepts for villain classes in 3e I think a lot of powers are neat and can easily be adapted as feats in normal 3e, etc. It works fine for me as a sourcebook for my OGL games.

I also like the settings and modules designed for a heroic low spell high fantasy setting.

[Azgulor]

Even if it is no longer actively supported, nothing is preventing you from running an effective IH campaign.

While ultimately, IH was more "wahoo" than I was hoping for, it has been a goldmine of ideas that I've imported into my OGL games.

Skill Groups - I like the concept but didn't steal this one. One of the better systems for skill challenges

Armor as DR

Combat Maneuvers/Stunts - dropped whole cloth into every d20/OGL game I run.

Combat Zones - same thing

Racial/cultural mechanics


IH for many never seemed like a finished game -- fair enough. However, I've found it to be a great quasi-toolkit to borrow from.

[1Mac]

I'd be quite surprised if there were ever more than 100 or so Iron Heroes campaigns in the whole world.

I ran one IH game and PBP'd in another, so either I was aberrantly over-represented or there were more IH games than you think.

I agree that the game never "felt finished," but that didn't stop people from running patched, houseruled versions of the game. My impression was that the typical approach to IH was somewhere between rules-as-written and the toolkit approach Azgulor uses.

[ValhallaGH]

Originally Posted by 1Mac

I ran one IH game and PBP'd in another, so either I was aberrantly over-represented or there were more IH games than you think.

I agree that the game never "felt finished," but that didn't stop people from running patched, houseruled versions of the game. My impression was that the typical approach to IH was somewhere between rules-as-written and the toolkit approach Azgulor uses.

Having run four different IH campaigns, and knowing of at least three others that got run, I'm agreeing with 1Mac.

It wasn't truly finished, it was really fiddly, and it was difficult to integrate any sort of magic system that didn't make things stupidly over-the-top. It was a wealth of ideas to mine, tweak, play with, and discard.
And it was a heck of a lot of fun.

You are not your magic weapon and armor. You are not your spell buffs. You are not how much gold you have, or how many times you've been raised from the dead. When a Big Bad Demon snaps your sword in two, you do not cry because that was your holy avenger. You leap onto its back, climb up to its head, and punch it in the eye, then get a new damn sword off of the next humanoid you headbutt to death.

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I ran an IH campaign for 6 or 8 levels or so. It was not perfect, but it had some very good concepts and ideas in it.

Maybe tokens where to fiddly, but they were one way to keep resource management in the game and "tactics" without requiring spells or making the game boring.

Also, villain classes where a great win and should have come way earlier to my games, because they sure made things easier for me to run. (No wonder 4E D&D adopted a similar concept).

[SSquirrel]

One of the biggest problems with IH was the fact that Mearls admitted the book was really incomplete. The magic section was especially lacking. When the author eevn says it isn't done and apologizes, but it gets released anyway, I really don't have any interest in buying it. If IH got revamped a bit, fleshed out in the places it needs it, I would consider picking it up. I'm not going to knowingly pay for an incomplete game though.

[Azgulor]

Originally Posted by SSquirrel

One of the biggest problems with IH was the fact that Mearls admitted the book was really incomplete. The magic section was especially lacking. When the author eevn says it isn't done and apologizes, but it gets released anyway, I really don't have any interest in buying it. If IH got revamped a bit, fleshed out in the places it needs it, I would consider picking it up. I'm not going to knowingly pay for an incomplete game though.

For a full-price hardcover I'd agree. For a $10 PDF, however, you're missing out on some good stuff.

[SSquirrel]

Yeah, I still haven't gotten too into pdfs. I own some stuff that way, but I vastly prefer a physical copy. The pdf is great when I need to do a quick wordsearch to find something specific or if I had a laptop, but I don't own a laptop. Pdfs are handy for being able to stick gaming books on my USB key and look at them at work tho.

[frankthedm]

Fun ideas, good to mine from.

I have to echo the "felt unfinished" comments.

AC as DR just aggravated the problem of 3.5's way too good Power Attack.

Would likely buy a new Iron Heroes that used Pathfinder as a base.

[Khairn]

I used EN's Elements of Magic instead of Mearl's IH magic system, with the core IH classes and the combination worked great. I would have loved to see what kind of magic system Monte could have created to fit into the IH mold.

IH is still one of the very best 3PP 3e variants that I purchased over the years.

[SSquirrel]

That crown still goes to Arcana Evolved for me.

[Smeelbo]

Mike Mearles is famous for completing the easy stuff (i.e. writing enough words to fill his contract), but avoiding the hard work (i.e. editing, revising, balancing, etc.). When you're paid by the word, there's little incentive to finish your work.

Iron Heroes is no exception.

Smeelbo

[Wik]

Harsh words, Smeelbo.

For the record, I loved Iron Heroes. We ran it a few times, and the group loved it. The player of the Arcanist had a lot of fun when he screwed up and brought negative effects to the rest of the group. The Archer got to do all sorts of fun stuff (and he wasn't bad in a melee fight, either!), the Armiger really had fun taking hits, and our Weapon Master was an absolute terror. We got things to around 5th level, and yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Tokens were a bit messy, true, and there were some definite problems. But we had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately, I loaned the book to one of my players, who disappeared for a while afterwards. And now I only rarely see him... and each time I mention the book to him, he says "yeah, I'll get it back to you".... and then I don't see him for another six months.

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Smeelbo

Mike Mearles is famous for completing the easy stuff (i.e. writing enough words to fill his contract), but avoiding the hard work (i.e. editing, revising, balancing, etc.). When you're paid by the word, there's little incentive to finish your work.

Iron Heroes is no exception.

Smeelbo

That sounds perilously close to being a personal attack. In other news, only a teeny tiny percentage of contracted designers aren't paid by the word.

[Celebrim]

Originally Posted by jdrakeh

That sounds perilously close to being a personal attack.

It was a little harsh, but for my part, I'm more inclined to overlook an attack that borders on the personal if the person is a public figure where such attack is directed at the person's public works. If for example, someone where to say, "Celebrim's work on 'The Explicatae Incompositae' proves he just doesn't have the chops to be a great game designer. His work lacks imagination, his technical prowess is limited, and he shows no signs of doing the hard work necessary to finish the project.", I consider that a valid review (even if I disagreed) of my work. In the case where I had actually offered the work up for sale at $39.95 I would expect people to offer up occasionally such scathing reviews of my work. After all, I'd demanded $39.95 from them. The least I could do is suck it up when someone said, "You suck. I feel cheated. Get a new job."

Mearls is hardly my favorite designer either. As I look over his work, I don't see alot that just jumps out at me as a must have.

My biggest problem with his work on IH is that it doesn't accomplish what I think it was implied it was setting out to accomplish. The IH product wasn't marketed on how well it would play from 1st-5th level, but on how well it would play from 10th level on. What I think most people wanted from the product could be summed up as 'grim-n-gritty low magic and speedy play at high level'. IH never felt like it could deliver.

I think IH is a great game from 1st-5th level. At low levels of play it looks like it could be alot of fun. I very much got the feeling that the product was offered up having never been play tested beyond 3rd or 5th level or so.

I very much got the impression that Mearls found ''grim-n-gritty low magic and speedy play at high level' to be a very hard task to achieve, and that he in effect cheated by taking magical abilities and putting a thin cosmetic of mundaneness on top of them. Painted up high magic play posing as low magic play is just not what I wanted. I can do wuxia just fine with standard D&D.

All that isn't to say that I wouldn't put Mearls on a design team or that I think he should get a different day job. I think Mearls is brilliant at the small scale stuff. I think he's very imaginative, and capable creating very innovative and flavorful subsystems. And he's prolific as anything. If you want words to pad out your work, Mike is definately your man. I just don't think I'd tap Mearls to be head designer for an entire system.

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Celebrim

It was a little harsh, but for my part, I'm more inclined to overlook an attack that borders on the personal if the person is a public figure where such attack is directed at the person's public works.

Well, Smeelbo's comment was directed at Mearls himself, not his works, as evidenced by the lead in "Mike Mearls is famous for. . ." IANAL, but since Smeelbo is asserting that Mr. Mearls "is famous for" [not completing his commissions], I think that he (i.e., Smeelbo) needs to offer up proof of that, otherwise it seems that he's also treading dangerously close to libel. Regardless, the comment seemed nasty, petty, and unsupported. It's one thing to say that IH seems incomplete*, but quite another to claim that X designer is notorious for padding his projects with filler, while failing to deliver on substantial content.

*Seeing as how IH was marketed as an alternate PHB, not a stand alone game, even that complaint seems pretty ridiculous, however. IH wasn't without its flaws, but criticizing a product that was never meant to be a standalone game for not being a standalone game is absurd.