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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mudpyr8" data-source="post: 1490547" data-attributes="member: 16162">I think plenty of people have weighed in and shared their thoughtful opinions. I have a few points to add.1. Hero is the Gamers' Toolkit. Says so on the book. There is a whole section devoted to the discussion of altering the rules to fit the genre. I think many people overlook that. Hero's flexibility allows you to do anything. Unfortunately, Hero's flexibility requires you to do everything.Is this good or bad? Depends on your point of view. Many Hero players enjoy building their characters and playing the game. Other players just want to sit down and pick abilities from a list. For the latter, there are many wonderful books (UNTIL SuperPowers Database, Hero Bestiary, Vehicle Sourcebook, Minions, Monsters, and Marauders, Grimoire, and so on). However, those books still present one person's view on how such lists should be created and as such may no jive with an individual player's preconceived notion about what is cool.None-the-less, Hero still allows you to use that list as a framework and to change any of those items to better fit your campaign. This is a good thing, but impossible without a core set of rules and guidelines about effect creation. In d20 terms, how do you design a balanced 7th level spell? You don't, you make it up based on your subjective judgement about whether or not that is the correct power level. Is this to say Hero is perfectly balanced? Absolutely not. The ability to teleport would destroy most feudal societies, especially if it is easy to do, so the GM has to decide whether or not that is appropriate.Just because you can make an effect doesn't mean you should.2. Presentation. I agree that many Hero resources are presented in a "crunchy" manner. This doesn't mean there isn't good source material there, and many of the campaign sourcebooks are excellent.I will share one thing that I and my company are doing to address some of this. This year we will be publishing a licensed Fantasy Hero setting. The goal is to create a fantasy campaign and present it in the format that is acceptable to the players that want to focus on the story surrounding an ability or trait, and less on how it was built. Will the crunchy bits still be there? Absolutley, but in a fashion so as not to distract the reader. We believe this will do a lot to provide a different model for how Hero is presented and played, regardless of whether the specifics of the setting engage you.Hero is heroic, which makes it ideal for fantasy game. Dealing with hordes of bad guys without getting turned into guacomole is something Hero does very well. And it does it while still allowing a degree of control concerning combat that most systems do not allow. GURPS is an excellent fit as well, and perhaps 4e will address some of the cinematic limiations of that system. Until then, I think only d20 accomodates that cinematic combat, unfortunately at the expense of player control of the combat. Don't get me wrong, I like d20 a lot, but I enjoy my Hero combats so much more than I ever did my d20 ones. Please take a look at <a href="http://www.narosia.com" target="_blank">www.narosia.com</a> and see what we're doing. We'll be at Origins and GenCon, running 2 sessions at each, so if you have the opportunity stop on by.I will also second a comment made by a previous poster. The online hero community at herogames.com is one of the warmest and friendliest I have seen on line. Everyone is willing to offer a constructive opinion about how things run in Hero. The master of the game as it were, Steve Long, even has his own forum where you can post questions directly to him. I have never seen a question go unanswered for longer than a day, and most of mine were answered in under 4 hours. Better support from a game company is hard to find.Thank you.</blockquote>

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