Is Iron Heroes Dead

[SSquirrel]

Bullocks. For starters, the AD&D 1e PHB did not contain the to-hit charts for combat, which were essential to play. In point of fact, since the very beginning the rules for AD&D have been split across three books. An alternate PHB can, therefore, be considered to be a. . . er. . . PHB. The PHB is not — and never has been — the whole game.

Apparently TSR didn't consider the other books too important since the original PHB came out in 1977 and the DMG wasn't out till 1978. 2E had all the needed info. 3E and 4E have all the needed info, 4E especially, since magic items are even in the PHB. The PHB has always been what the players need to play the game.

Wikipedia didn't have a month of release for the 1E DMG, but here is the publication order for 1E. The mantra we always hear, and we heard all thru 3E as well, was that the PHB was all you really needed to play. There is a reason the alternate PHBs contained so many of the same rules. If you weren't using the d20 logo (which required the "Requires the PHB, DMG, MM" or whatever that exact text was), you had to have the complete info or else you were just making more books.

1977 Monster Manual
June 1978 PHB
1979 DMG

 

[Nellisir]

I think you mean it the other way around.
IIRC, "designer" is the guy coming up with the general ideas and concepts of the rules, the developers refine it. Ultimately, I don't think that Mearls wouldn't have been able to do that refinement, too - but he got a new job.

No, I think I meant it as I wrote it, but we've both got it right. The designer is the overall "writer". The developer makes sure the mechanics are in line and working, and comes up with new ones as necessary. As I said, I think Mike's strength is in the mechanics, and having him do both (or as his critic would have it, design, development, editing, marketting, and playtesting...) would detract from that. WotC hired him as a developer, not a designer, and that keeps him focused on the development. From the Monster Manual catalog blurb: "MIKE MEARLS is the lead developer for the Dungeons & Dragons(R) game at Wizards of the Coast, Inc. In addition to his design and development work on 4th Edition, Mike has developed numerous 3rd-Edition game products including the "Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Sw"

I assume the last word should be "Swords". That's not my error.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I seem to recall that the magic system was added to the book as a last-minute thing, and that IH wasn't going to HAVE a magic system originally... I like IH. I like a lot of his other Work, Cityworks for FFG for example.

 

[Greg K]

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.

This is my take as well. I liked the first two things that I saw from Mearls which was the combat maneuver system in BOIM and a class he had done for AEG. I also found his books for the Quintessential Books and Cityworks to be decent and liked the additional ranger fighting styles he did for another book. However, after seeing IH along with some of his musings leading up to 4e (on both ENWorld and WOTC's site) and gaming in general (at Monte's site) had me hoping he would not have a head design role for 4e despite, initially, hoping that his hiring by WOTC meant that he would.

 

[wingsandsword]

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.

Well, we must have been one of the hundred.

I'll agree with the "felt unfinished" remarks, the book could have used a few more months of editing and R&D. It was playable, but it was like running beta-test software.

If anything, it was playable for short campaigns but the holes showed up under prolonged play. The lack of a coherent magic system, and some significant balance issues with some classes showed and did hurt the long-term playability of the game as-written, but for a very-low-magic where game balance wasn't of paramount concern it was pretty good.

 

[jedavis]

My family played (and quite enjoyed) a short campaign using IH in post-apocalyptic Atlanta, and I'm currently fermenting a WH40kd20 houseruleset based on IH (or perhaps more accurately 'running on a tweaked IH core'). I also once had an IH Berserker in a normal D&D game; he wasn't allowed to have any magic items (had an allergy to them), so he used his share of the loot to buy and maintain a bar. He was both fun to play and most effective in combat (particularly during long adventuring days when a normal barbarian would have had to conserve rages).

On resource management: I actually sort of liked the token resourcing system. It was novel, fairly simple, and made playing melee fighters interesting again without overly complicating things (like, perhaps, ToB). Also, as I mentioned earlier, the 'no daily limits' on the tokens were a big selling point for me.

On the magic system: yeah, it sucked. The party arcanist's primary functions were Beast Lore and Healing Lore. We ended up switching to Green Ronin's True Sorcery for our magic; they had a chapter near the end about using the system with IH.

 

[Pyoor]

Huh, I never got the impression it was designed for grim and gritty or even that speeding up higher level play were the design goals.

I thought it was high powered high fantasy, low magic warrior based D&D. I thought the design goal was to make warrior types powerful enough to stand without spells and items and as mechanically intricate as D&D spellcasters with their own warrior powers and resource management mechanics.

I didn't read all the design diaries and such but I thought the advertising/marketing was clear that it was high wuxia for D&D warrior types in the style of Crouching Dragon.

If you were not interested in D&D wuxia and looking for grim and gritty I can see your disappointment.

My disappointment was I did not want the increased resource management.

I agree. I love IH’s and continue to use it as a resource for inspiration.
I am particularly fond of the idea that the warrior gets better as he progresses, instead of getting better gear. I wish they came up with a better mechanic than the tokens, but I think it was a fun take on d20.

 

[Walking Dad]

There will be possibly an IH PbP on this very board:

Advance warning of absence, and some musings.

 

[TerraDave]

IH was a huge disappointment for me

I "broke" the story on Iron Heroes on ENWorld--when it was still called Iron Lore--starting a huge thread on it and getting my name, or at least "TerraFave" on the front page. I thought it looked real cool.

What came out was less 3E compabtible, and a little more cutting edge then I had hoped. I never did play it.


But I do play 4E, which has martial exploits, easy to use monsters and villians, and less magic item dependence. It would be pretty easy to remove magic items or magic using charecters from 4E all together.

So I like to think I got something out of Iron Heroes after all .

 

[Will]

I eagerly bought Iron Heroes, as it was billed as taking a new direction on a bunch of stuff that often annoyed me in 3e.

I then found out it's answer to all the problems I had was... to march way off in a direction I didn't like (mainly, all that resource management).

Well, fine, that's a taste thing. The unfinished/poor magic has been gone over, but what really bugged me were some basic systemic issues. Like, how do you multiclass? (system crash)

Amusingly, the first part of this was my repeated experience with 4e, which I suppose is a good indication I'm not on Mearls' vibe.