Hero under the name of Champions first came to my attention in 84 when I arrived at the regular DnD game I'd joined not long before and was told of a change of plans.
In the late 90s when Hero games tried to switch us all to Fuzion and abandon Hero system I decided it was time to move on and look for other avenues. It took a while, but fan pressure eventually kept the Hero system alive and shortly after it left for new hands and a new edition.
I bought that new edition, even though I was gaming elsewhere, and until recently it sat on my shelf collecting dust. I no longer had interest in Champions, and some of you may already be able to associate my name with a few online discussions on the matter.
The original Star Hero came out in the late 80s, and quickly faded from view. I gather it failed to be a truly generic system and failed to gain the support and popularity it needed. I was originally supposed to playtest an alpha version of the game - having been contacted by the author to join his group. I never made it to the session - but I did hand over my character idea, a mantis-like insect alien with racial memory and telepathy. By the time I actually found a copy of the game years later it was long out of print.
So that's my background with Hero and Star Hero. You may be wondering why it's me who's writing this review.
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Recently I've begun looking at the system again, and during their half-off damaged books sale I picked up a copy of Star Hero with some dents on the cover.
The book bills itself as a complete review of the science fiction genre and how to game it in Hero. If it comes up short on that promise, I haven't yet found where.
Physically you have a softcover book with the standard Hero games layout. If you've got any Hero system book, you already know what this book will look like. The art is moderately appealing, albeit somewhat masculine. Very few of the images called out to me saying 'run this idea' or 'make this character'. In fact I only count three in that category - pages 65 (the guy at the bottom who looks like a Dr. Seuss character smoking a cigarette), 136 (the 'displacer-cat' on the shoulder), and 139 (the frowning cat girl with glasses). At least one image repeats on pages 211 and 277. While most of is drawn with decent skill, the subject matter of the visuals just doesn't pull me. Hero's in house design layout is effective, but stale. When I open a book like BESM d20 or Silver Age Sentinels even without the art I have gaming ideas. With Hero, I get great ideas, but only from reading.
If the book strikes you the same way, don't let it deter you - what's in there once you do read it is well worth it. I'm presently at a loss as to why I'd ever need another Science Fiction RPG, and hopefully the rest of this review will explain why.
The first chapter of the book focuses on genre. Some thirteen different subgenres are looked at in brief (paragraph to half page) with a short note at the end of each about its basic gaming nature. From there the book looks at elements of science fiction: aliens, clones, computers, and more - 20 different themes are discussed and where more details are available page numbers are given - such as pointing us to the chapter on psionics. From there the book looks at 'meta-genres'; putting comedy, horror, romance, mystery, satire, or tragedy into your science fiction. The last two pages of this twenty one page chapter cover mixing Star Hero with other Hero genres - pulp, super hero, western, fantasy, vigilante, and a short paragraph on others.
The second chapter is all about characters. The first question one might have in making a generic 'science fiction gaming' genre book is how to put in all the aliens when you have no idea just what alien races a potential GM will use... Star Hero addresses this wonderfully with 'meta-races' that cover common themes. There's a package for insectoids, felines, herdfolk, reptiloids, plants, and many more. Combine this with the long list of environmental and cultural packages and you've got your bug-eyed monster of the week (want a feline merfolk philosopher [contemplative] race? - how about making them 2 inches tall? - combine packages and go). Most of the packages list a number of options you can use to customize to get you started on building a specific species. They can easily be used as is, or you can tweak them just a little with Hero's design engine to get unique results. Finally for packages they cover common professions - diplomat, colonist, cop, pilot, spy, techy, and so on. If you know the Hero system, you know you can take these packages or ignore them, and even if you take them you can take from them selectively without penalty. All they serve to do is get the mind going in a structured direction - give you ideas and maybe speed up character creation.
The next section of the chapter goes through the basic elements of Hero system character design and shows how to use them in Science Fiction. What are appropriate characteristics? How should skills come across? What are the everyman skills (the ones you can get a default roll in for free) in the various subgenres of science fiction? Learning languages in a galaxy full of aliens? Comments on perks (want to rule an interstellar empire? Or just be anonymous?), and talents (universal translator, etc). Powers are looked at from a science fiction perspective, and finally so are disadvantages.
Next we have that vital section - putting together the Universe. You won't find the detailed charts and random tables for putting it all together like you see in Traveler, instead you get essays on how to do it, what choices to make for what desired result and so on. Universe design is split into three chapters. The first for galaxies, sectors and stars, the second for systems, planets, life, surfaces, and other objects, and the third for a survey of our own solar system.
The first universe chapter begins with galaxies. After a bit on the Milky Way it covers different 'real estate' to be found within galaxies and some ideas on just how crowded they might be with advanced civilizations. Sidebars discuss travel between galaxies - how to discourage or encourage it within your setting.
From there we move on to star sectors. The text discusses mapping them (covering, in brief, the choice between the two dimensional model seen in settings such as Traveler to the more logical but harder to visualize for some three dimensional model) and some interesting things you can have wandering through them - like nebulae, comets, and starless planets. There's an interesting sidebar on a new set of theories in physics giving the universe possibly eleven spatial dimensions rather than the three we perceive with our senses - and the idea that this could be used to come up with a means of FTL travel and or communication. Not to mention it gives me an itch to make an adventure where our strapping afro-sporting heroes are "TRAPPED! In the Fifth Dimension!" - Complete with alien princesses and pseudo Asian masterminds from 'Planet X'.
Stars themselves come next, and the text mentions looking at them from both 'hard science fiction' and 'space opera' perspectives. One of my few complaints with Star Hero comes in this section - they have a method for randomly making stars which is not capable of creating our own sun -a G2V star- because it generates all three values in one die roll and covers only numbers of 0 and 5. The information in the section however is invaluable trivia on stars, black holes, and other objects to be found in a sector.
The second Universe chapter is all about planets. It starts with creating solar systems. Covered here is setting the location of your planets and how to know where what types of life can find habitable worlds. After filling in your system with rocks, you've got to figure out what each of them is. The first section covers putting together the physical stuff - orbit, mass, moons, rotation, atmosphere, climate, etc. There are notes on life in unusual atmospheres and terraforming that are quite handy.
Finally we get to life and other things -on- the planets. The overview section covers an assortment of exotic forms - energy beings, carbon-methane, and so on. From there we have guidelines for the chances of intelligent life in either 'hard science' or 'space opera' settings, a note on colonies and another on multiple intelligent species.
After that we're given information about the surface of a world - is it earthlike, icy, airless, or what? What resources does it have, water, and so on. Then the book sidetracks from the pattern for a bit to give you a section for building 'other objects' in a solar system - asteroids, comets, space stations, and so on. Including rules for attacking asteroids, just in case...
The third universe chapter gives a short survey of our own solar, as so much science fiction takes place 'right here at home.' The chapter gives some basic facts about each major body in the system, and some of the various moons of interest. The chapter ends with a page on some of the nearby stars.
From there we move on to civilizations.
The civilizations section begins by looking at a few possible ways to set up your future society - Utopias, Tailfins 'Sci-Fi', Stereotypes, and so on. They cover each theme and what complications you're likely to get from trying to game them. I sure could have used the note on Utopias being boring back in the 80s when I was 14 making my first fantasy setting - after the mages solved every problem on my world, I realized I had nothing left for players to do. This book though, gives ideas for you budding Roddenberry's out there who just have to make it all go right... These days with my political science major, I'm more likely to need the section they have on Dystopia crossed with the notes on false-Utopia.
From a look at the core of civilization design the text moves on to aliens. In the character creation chapter we got this from a game mechanics point of view, here we get to look at it from common science fiction archetypes, as well as how to make your alien PC-compatible. Here the text looks at some basic issues of psychology as well as how to build or customize the packages seen in the character creation chapter. From there the book moves to NPC alien species, and what roles you might need one for.
After the aliens section the book goes back to civilizations, but this time we're looking in detail at how to build one. Here we get tech levels, planetary populations, economics (and hey, this part is even handy for fantasy GMs that want to look at say, distribution of wealth or alternate currencies), government systems and scales, agencies (how to build a spy agency for your bug eyed monster - or even a legal system. There's a page on languages, and perhaps one of my favorite entries - the section on diversity. Why does every Klingon have to be a warrior? What about the guy who comes from the Klingon version of Nunavut, or Jamaica? Ever notice how in so much science fiction all the aliens of a given race act like faxes of each other - there's a little blur from the transmission, but it's mostly the same thing over and over again... This section of the book notes that trend, and its place in the halls of 'rubber-science', and then goes on to address ways to get more variety. There's also a caution against using this to map in real world cultural issues on the grounds of likely triggering issues with players who see what you're doing but don't see the issue the same way. Anyone who listens to either Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore knows that it can be tiring to get preached at - even if you agree with the preacher. The culture section that follows diversity gives us only a paragraph each on a number of interesting topics - architecture, art, mass media, education, cuisine, literature / drama, recreation, and religion / philosophy. Still, short as it is, it's great information.
Yeah, I was preaching there.
The next chapter is Technology. Star Hero talks about how to design your own technology scale, and gives a sample one that goes from 0 to 12. Sidebars then list out key steps in technology for different fields, and notes 'Rubber Science' entries in parenthesis so a hard science GM can exclude them from her tech trees. There's also a good essay on alternate tech paths, varying tech paths, and the presence of obsolete technology in an advanced world (we still use paper after all, even if computers technically make it obsolete - an advance doesn't mean the old way will disappear). The book also covers alien technology, just because it's a ray gun and you know ray guns doesn't mean you know this ray gun...
The book then goes on to discuss that ever present topic in science fiction of 'the prime directive', as well as how to handle technology advances during the game and some thoughts on what is 'rubber science' and deciding what to do with it in your game. For example, FTL is rubber science in that 'Einsteinian' physics says it is impossible (though I keep reading that the newest stuff is making ground on challenges to this), so it is a case of Rubber Science - albeit the most likely one for GMs to let in anyway. The section essentially suggests the idea of 'thinking through' your rubber science idea to give it a frame of 'pseudo logic' and it's own 'custom vocabulary' - then takes that idea and runs it through an example to show how it would impact a campaign setting.
After the core technology chapter, we get the weapons and armor chapter. This chapter reads mostly like a shopping list of gear in Hero system mechanics, but does also have plenty of commentary on making choices for your campaign and figuring out why you want this or that in or out.
Following on that we get 'Other Technology' where they cram in everything else. Computers, Cyberspace, Robots (including Asimov's three laws just in case you don't know them already - and hey, I didn't the first time I ran a Sci-Fi game), Power sources, Biotech, Teleportation, and so on. Each element gets an essay on what you can do with it, and some sample stated out pieces of gear. The explanations are fairly well done and detailed.
A very short chapter follows on how to get all this stuff into the hands of PCs - how to figure out a price for it in 'credits' based on the point cost of building it with the Hero system mechanics.
The chapter after that covers everything you need to know to use the Hero mechanics to build starships, stations, planetary vehicles, and mecha. The section is quite thorough and detailed and it is at this point that I wish I owned a copy of 'Ultimate Vehicle' so I could compare and try to root out any inconsistencies. That said, everything you'll need is right here, and it does cover the different types of FTL technologies you might choose from and how to build them in Hero - warp drives, jump drives or gates, or whatever. The little footnote on how to calculate time dilation when approaching light speed is interesting stuff, and has a handy chart for the people who don't want to be doing math over it. Another interesting footnote tells us how much damage you have to do to vaporize a planet...
The second to last section of the chapter covers space combat. The rules here attempt to address the differences between Space Opera battles and realistic battles - we get a choice of movement systems, and choice of starship actions systems. We've also got rules for hit locations, character actions, and other crew activities (medical, repair, and other crew skills). The chapter ends with some sample vehicles and space stations.
Now we move on to two popular themes in Science Fiction.
Starting with Time Travel. There's an interesting note at the beginning of this chapter than in real world physics, any form of FTL is in effect a form of time travel, and that physicists are in fact working on ideas that show it as possible to go back and forth in time - barring minor technical details such as needing absurdly vast amounts of energy... After that the chapter expands upon the existing time travel mechanics in the Hero system's extra dimensional movement power. It also goes into detail over many different ideas about time travel and its possible impact. Then we get a full section on running Time Travel campaigns.
Next we get Psionics. The format here is similar to that used for Time Travel. While noting that there is no evidence in science whatsoever for the existence or possibility of mind powers, it is still popular in the genre, and the chapter how it might work in theory as well as in game mechanics - showing how to use Hero to build the common themes in genre psionics. From there the book talks about the issues of rarity and social impact, comes back to rules issues, and then jumps to a section on running a variety of different types of psionics campaigns. It all ends with some pre-built sample powers you can slot into a character to get you going quickly.
The next 34 pages are the GM chapter. Personally a lot of the first 257 pages looked like the GM chapter to me, but this chapter addresses directly building campaigns for different themes, subgenres, settings, and subjects. It has adventure design, and includes one of those ever-fun random plot generators; the sort that tell you you're hooked by the enemy to solve a mystery and opposed by a rival. Nothing special there, I've got one of those in half the gaming books I own. The text around it however, is much better - it talks about plotting for a couple pages, then dealing with disconnects - things that work in fiction but have trouble in gaming (including everybody's favorite - what to do when the hacker plugs herself into the net to keep the rest of the players from making a Starbucks run). Hero GMs will be delighted to see the section on using the various disadvantages. If you're like me, you love this part of Hero in theory but always have trouble getting it to work right in game. They give us four pages of solutions to work with.
After adventure design we get a section on running the environment. What does gravity do to the encumbrance rules, how to run getting stuck in a vacuum or an unusual atmosphere, and so on.
After that we get several pages on making your villain. Figuring out what qualities that person has, how plot hooks might tie into a villain, and some common archetypes - showing how they can be useful, problematic to the game, or spiced up for variety. This stuff is going to see use in my fantasy game...
Finally we come to some sample characters. We're given the crew of an exploratory ship set in the 'Terran Empire' setting also published by Hero. The characters are interesting and -thankfully- all of them are built to exactly 150 points - which allows us to gauge the viability of different options. I was a bit upset that in Fantasy Hero all but the mage were on 150, and that one exception had an extra 20 points - making it invalid as a comparison. The one thing I have to say though is that the captain of this team looks like the captain on cartoon network's 'Sea Lab'. After seeing that, there'd be no way I'd be able to run this group without resorting to bad humor... Those heroes are followed by a team of potential villains to use against them, and finally a set of generic NPCs - the doctor, merchant, scientist, and security officer.
The book ends with a two page bibliography sorted by subgenres, and very long index - 4 pages and 4 columns to a page.
Well, actually the book ends with a one page advert for Ninja Hero, but even after that is one blank page.
Analysis:
The book billed itself as a complete review of the science fiction genre, and it is fairly thorough. The many essays on so many different topics are invaluable. Regardless of the game system you choose, this book will make a strong addition to your collection.
Some of the random charts could use more detail and more options, like the plot generator or the star generator (that can't make our own sun). But it's likely that after you read the essays around them you'll have no desire to use them anyway - you'll prefer doing it yourself with the rich information in the text.
If you play the Hero system and like Science Fiction you should own this book. There's no reason not to. This book really does get it all down, and I'm frankly amazed at the breadth of information it covered.
I'm feeling inspired to do a Star Hero game now...
If you don't play the Hero System and are considering it, you'll want to read a review of the Core Hero rulebook and consider that first. I will say that Hero plays out just fine at the 'Heroic' power level used in Fantasy, Modern Day, and Science Fiction. Where I have issues with Hero they are at the Super Hero power level. This book makes a very strong entry into the genre, and I would highly recommend considering it over any other options for Science Fiction gaming.
Where most competitors will give you a Future game that is strictly typed to a certain flavor or locks characters into pre-made archetypes and pre-made species, this book gives you the tools to find your own flavor, your own archetypes, and put out your own aliens. Yet it does that in a way that will also let your players simply open the book and make a character with very little work from you. The labor cost of entry for a Star Hero game is not that high, despite it being so open. You have the tools to start, and the book really serves to make sure nothing will ever 'get in your way' and cause a stop.
In substance, this book clearly gets 5 out of 5.
In style, it's about average - the layout is nothing new, the art is nothing special. It's very easy to read though, at no point does the design hinder you (and we all know books where that is the case). The organization of the information is exactly right - If you start on page one and keep going it will come to you at just the right point in time, it really flows well. So in style, I'm going to give it 4 out of 5.
So I guess that, under enworld's system, we'll take that 4.5 and round it up to 5.
