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Traveller HERO Preview PDF

http://www.starherofandom.com/h_traveller/index.php

Wow... could this be my first ever Infraweb scoop???

I realize this is not the ideal forum to post it in, but there's no Trav HERO forum here as yet.

Re. the PDF, I'm afraid TH looks like it's going to be what, well, it was going to be all along. An add-on to Star HERO, not a freestanding game as I had hoped.

I've never played HERO, for lack of opportunity. I'd love to try this out, but buying FRED and SH to be able to use TH is simply too much $$$ for me. But I'm sure others will be delighted.
 
You probably don't really need Star Hero (there's good stuff in it, but it's a genre book like GURPS Space, which means it's largely about creating a setting, and Traveller is a premade setting).

No real way to avoid some version of the baseline Hero rules, though (there may be a minimalist version floating about; I forget what it's called). The Hero system is too big to really compress into a freestanding game.
 
If I don't need Star Hero for TH, that would be great news. I'm not daunted by having to learn HERO per se--I've always been meaning to. It's just that having to buy and read 2 books to make sense of 1 supplement would be a bit too much.

Well that, and my lingering suspicion that playing HERO with anything but supers is like driving a Ferrari on four cylinders... I may be wrong, though...
 
Hero is definately a chunk to learn, and since I haven't actually seen the current TH PDF, I don't know for certain if you need SH, but generally speaking Hero avoids putting new rules in supplements, so you can usually make sense of any supplement with just the basic rules.

If you need SH for anything, I'd bet on environment rules, gravity rules, and worldgen.
 
The "minimalist" version of the Hero System rules is called Sidekick. It's available from Hero's Online Store for $14.99 (and free shipping).
Go to www.herogames.com and click the Online Store link.

Definitely worth a look.

Although you can get use out of Star Hero (and The Ultimate Vehicle, Terran Empire, and the Spacer's Toolkit books as well), Traveller Hero is designed to let you use the Hero System to play in the Traveller Universe.
 
Yes, I know of Sidekick... must resist urge to go there... just yet...

See, right now I'm doing a crazy thing: I'm discovering Rolemaster. I never played it back in the day and finally decided to check it out.

But that means I'll have my hands full (with charts) for the foreseeable future. Going for Hero now would be sheer madness... overkill...

And yet I looked at Fantasy Hero the other day, and it looked back at me and smiled. And now this Traveller Hero thing happens.

I think I may be doomed.
 
I've had a herotraveller game going every other friday for about 6 months now..not alot of 'shoot-em up' but intrigue/politics.
their's the financier/ship owner: a human noble with a secret, the human captain: a dishonored imp. navy officer, the security:ex-imp recon marine vargr, and an ex-marine grunt.

so far, the vargr got seduced by a female vargr belter, the noble got the responsibility to take care of the daughter of an Aslan diplomat, the ship was targeted by anti-imperial terrorists, they discovered a listening post that was set up to spy on the imperium and those involved are either long sense gone or have established power in the local government. They got sued, shot at, lost and almost blown up by a booby trapped jump drive.

all in all, not a bad few months...but hard to do a CT conversion on the fly when the players do something unplanned. Hero system's real big weakness, hard to improvise with.
 
That fits my experience trying to run TravellerHero once before; it was too hard to convert things on the fly. And I say that as a gamer who has played and loved Hero for over 20 years.

The TravellerHero book will take care of a lot of that. The working group has put together a LOT of material to eliminate that work. (Yes, I am a member of the TravellerHero Working Group, though not an employee of either Avenger or Hero.)

Oh, and Pierce, I forgot to mention that Sidekick is available as a PDF for only $7.99, if PDFs are your thing.


Fantasy Hero is a lot of fun, too. My co-GM, a long-time D&D player/GM, is now running a FH game for our group and we're having a great time with it.
 
Having run a bunch of Fantasy Hero in the past, I can tell you up front:

Hero is a Three-Tables-in-play system.

Table 1: The hit Locations Table (On the CS)
Table 2: The combat actions table (on the CS)
Table 3: The Speed/Actions table (Memorizable: 12 phase actions table.)

The weapons and armor tables are seldom needed in play. Most of the HSR are powers rules with great examples, and loads of options. It's probably the clearest ruleset out there.

The irony is that, for being such a "Complex" system, it's actually quite simple and elegant.

Mr. Long is, however, a bit perfectionist.... and the rules reflect that.

Looking over the preview, It looks much like it will be HSR4/5 and the T4H rules; star hero not needed.
 
Originally posted by Aramis:

Hero is a Three-Tables-in-play system.

Table 1: The hit Locations Table (On the CS)
Table 2: The combat actions table (on the CS)
Table 3: The Speed/Actions table (Memorizable: 12 phase actions table.)
Table 1 is actually an option, so you do not have to use it. Personally I have always found that it is only necessary if the characters are wearing a hodge-podge of armor. Doing so can be kind of interesting and also encourages players to invest in Combat Skill Levels. This lets them make called shots with some chance of success.

In FH or TH the Speed/Actions table will be easy to memorize, as everyone will have roughly the same speed.

Without some modifications the 'Deadly Traveller Combat' issue goes away using the Hero system. (You can shoot yourself in the head with a .44 magnum and have to roll really well to actually die.)
 
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