Blackmoor Vituperative

Fantasy Hero (Third Edition)
Steven S. Long

• Paperback
• 415 pages
• Publisher: Hero Games (2003)
• ISBN: 1-58366-016-x

Caveat: Reviews are bunk. Trust no one’s opinion but your own.

I have always been a fan of Fantasy Hero. For the first two editions (since the mid-1980s), Fantasy Hero was Hero Games‘ fantasy genre version of their core role-playing game, Champions. Fantasy Hero was a great game: you could pick it up and play it without a lot of work. It gave you enough of a setting to spark your interest, but not so much that it stifled your imagination. You could play the game the same evening you brought it home, but the setting was open enough so that you could drop in just about any details you’d care to add. And of course, it used the same clean, elegant game system as Champions. In many ways, it was the perfect fantasy game.

Unfortunately, the third edition of Fantasy Hero breaks this trend. This is arguably the most inappropriately named role-playing game Hero Games has ever published. This book should have been called “How to write your own Fantasy Hero book”. It’s not a game, it’s a massive volume of advice for people who want to write a game. Someone who actually wants to play a fantasy game can buy D&D and play, or they can buy Fantasy Hero — and then go buy D&D and play.

I am not saying that Hero should not put out a book on “How to write your own Fantasy Hero game”. I am just saying that such a book should not have been called “Fantasy Hero”. It’s just one more example of the rule-mongering that has sadly taken over Hero Games’ product line in the last few years. Its roots began around the time of the fourth edition of Champions, with the publication of the Hero System Rulesbook as a thing separate from Champions, but it didn’t fully flower until H5 (e.g., Hero System Fifth Edition). There’s a good reason that the Hero System Rulesbook didn’t sell well. Most gamers want rules that disappear: they want to play the game, not read textbooks on game design.

In fact, the entire thrust to separate the mechanics from the setting to the point of putting them in different books undermines what used to be one of Champions‘ and Fantasy Hero‘s most touted strengths. In the old days (the early 1990s), one of the many great things Fantasy Hero players could brag about was “it’s all in one book”. Well, not anymore. Now you literally can’t play the game unless you buy at least two or three books. Has Hero Games been trying to mimic D&D‘s model of splitting up the core rules into two books? There are so many good things that Hero Games could have adopted from D&D; it’s unfortunate that they chose one of that game system’s weaknesses to emulate. You can see how successful this scheme has been by looking at the shelves of your local game store.

Don’t get me wrong: Fantasy Hero is an interesting book, and I’ve enjoyed reading it a great deal — but I also enjoyed Aria, and when’s the last time you saw anyone playing that ? Interesting or not, this edition of Fantasy Hero is simply not a game, and a game is what anyone who bought the last two editions of Fantasy Hero wants and expects when they buy the third. The previous editions were games you could buy and actually play. Hero made an enormous mistake by releasing a manual on fantasy game design rather than publishing a game: releasing setting-specific books like The Turakian Age (gods, what an awful title) does nothing to ameliorate that grievous misstep.

Aside from all of this, the execution of the book is quite good. The writing is clear, if not concise: the author tends to ramble on well after his point has been made (not that I have much room to criticize on that count). This may account for some of the sheer bulk of the book: it weighs in at 415 pages, nearly twice the page count of earlier editions. Despite that, I counted less than a dozen grammar, spelling, and typographical errors, which is respectable in a game book even half this size. The index is marvelously complete, and I did not find a single errant page cross-reference in the text itself (and there are a lot of them). If only that text had been a role-playing game!

It’s truly a shame that Hero Games has not learned a better lesson from their most successful competitor: the third edition of D&D has been an enormous success because the books are attractive, the system is playable, and the default setting is interesting enough to spark the player’s interest without imposing so much baggage that it stifles their imaginations. Hero should have learned from that example. Instead, the third edition of Fantasy Hero adds a staggering amount of complexity on top of a system already encumbered by too much of it, and yet it doesn’t provide a default setting or even a playable system at all. It is, quite literally, unplayable, and that fact damns the book regardless of the author’s intentions.

Style: 3/5 (on par for most current Hero Games titles)
Substance: 3/5 (a reasonable amount of information)
Usefulness: 1/5 (completely useless)
Adaptability: 4/5 (much of the content can be adapted to other games)
What’s it cost: $25.00 – $30.00 (eBay, Amazon, and the Hero Games web site)
What’s it worth: $15.00 – $20.00
Who should buy it: Someone who wants to write a fantasy role-playing game using Hero System game mechanics.

“It appears that marketing America still has plenty of time to do it over, but not nearly enough time to do it right.”

Succinct and right on target. Go read the article.

Last Saturday Susan and I went to the Naro for a show called “Night of the subversives”. The schedule was to include a one-act play, “Green”, a band called “Everybodydies”, and the movie Suburbia (which has had the title “Rebel Streets” every time I’ve seen it on the big screen).

It was really, really bad. It started out with the incoherent “play”, which mainly consisted of people moving props around and one guy yelling profanity at someone in the projection booth (which wasn’t part of the performance). Why did anyone think we would want to watch that for an hour? It was like watching someone get evicted from their apartment, but without any of the drama. I wanted to laugh (lots of people did), but it would have been mean laughter, like when you see that Star Wars kid embarassing himself on videotape for the world to see. Okay, I laughed a little, but mostly I was just bored and irritated. At least Star Wars kid had enthusiasm.

The band was okay. If I hadn’t had to sit through the previous wasted hour, and if there had been a bar, the band might have even been pretty good. As it was, I was annoyed and waiting for the damned movie to start. Another hour wasted. One good thing about the Naro is that you can bring in outside food, so I took off about midway through “Everybodydies” to get some victuals from the 7-11 down the block. That made the rest of the wait more bearable. On the other hand, the admission price for “Night of the subversives” was only five bucks, so I shouldn’t complain but so much.

Finally, Suburbia started. If you weren’t into the punk scene in the mid-1980s, this movie really pegs it. Sure, it’s over-the-top melodrama, and it’s easy to find faults with it (like the cop father — could he have been any nicer? I sure never met a cop like that when I lived in Orange County), but overall it’s a great snapshot of a moment in time. It was even worth waiting through two hours of grief to see it. I may get the DVD from Netflix to listen to the commentary. I hear that Spheeris really does mock the poor girl who got stripped in the first club scene (I guess she symbolized New Wave, or posers, or something). And yes, some punks of the time really were that violent. Not me, of course.

It’s that time of year again. I wish they’d just go ahead and get rid of the stupid IRS. It’s an anachronism, a useless drain on the economy, and an onerous burden on every business and taxpayer. Get rid of it already.

The Fair Tax is as good an alternative as I have seen. I would prefer not to pay it at all, of course, but the thugs with guns will never permit that. “Protection” rackets are like that.

Some evidence that Europeans are smarter than Americans: a study carried out Sunday 2005-03-06 by XiTi Monitor on a sample of web sites from five European countries, on a total of 16,650,993 visits, indicates that Firefox usage among consumers in Europe may be much higher than it is in the USA. Of the countries studied, Germany ranks highest at 21.4% and Italy ranks lowest at 8.6%. The United States, by comparison, currently ranks around 6%.

1. Germany: 21.4%
2. France: 12.2%
3. UK: 10.9%
4. Spain: 9.0%
5. Italy: 8.6%

This study shows that the German web surfers are very advanced, with 21.4% of users preferring Firefox. For web sites whose target audience includes Germany, compatibility with Firefox has thus become an essential requirement.

…It is important to note that these measurements were taken on a Sunday, i.e. at the time of peak usage of Firefox. Indeed, one always observes less usage of this browser during the week, since businesses are slower to change than individuals.

You can read the original article at the XiTi Monitor site.

Here’s something funny. Last year, some time during the summer, I discovered the Hero Games discussion forums. For a while, I was pretty active. During that time, I encountered a person who went by the name of Kara, who pretended to be a witless floozy. A pretty lesbian floozy, no less. I pointed out the obvious: that this persona was typical of men playing women, and that it was insulting to both men and women. Naturally, I got flamed for it. I let the matter drop. People don’t believe lies because liars are convincing. People believe lies because they prefer them to the truth. It’s human nature. It’s why the Libertarian Party gets less than 1% of the vote, and it’s why attempts to eliminate Social Security prior to its inevitable bankruptcy will fail.

Well, it turns out that “Kara” was a guy named Fred Bittick. (Shock! Gasp!)

I spoke the facts plainly, as I would with rational adults, and was treated rudely as a result. That wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last. Human stupidity and belligerence has kept organized religion in business for well over a thousand years: that won’t be changing any time soon.

April Editorial from Scientific American Magazine

Okay, We Give Up

There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense, and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there’s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that’s a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because of a lack of scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits to blindly building an anti-ICBM defense system, that can’t work as promised, that will waste tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars and imperil national security, you won’t hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration’s antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that’s not our concern. No more discussion of how policies affect science either – so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools’ Day.

THE EDITORS
editors@sciam.com

from:
Scientific American
April 2005

Here’s another case of a company (ab)using the legal system to make the world a less creative place. That is no surprise, but this is: this time, the evil corporation is Apple. An employee at Google created a Mac OSX inspired interface, where the icons enlarged when the cursor rolled over them, complete with a little love poem to OSX. Ah, the pain of unrequited love: Apple appears to have objected (Apple has sought patent protection for its rollover technique), and the offending page is now missing from Google (however, you can see a mirror of it here).

A patent for a rollover? Are they kidding? No, sadly: they aren’t.

Mark my words: if we don’t reverse this trend of permitting companies to subvert the legal system for their personal (or corporate) gain, it is going to be the downfall of our society. That isn’t hyperbole, folks.

Library Of America has published the works of H.P. Lovecraft, whose birthday (were he still alive) is March 15. There’s a saying that most geniuses aren’t recognized as such until they are gone. Lovecraft is a profound example of that phenomenon. When he died at 1937, he was practically unknown. John Miller has a pretty good article in OpinionJournal that sums up (very briefly) Lovecraft’s life and influence. I particularly like this passage:

“Now all my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance in the vast cosmos-at-large,” he wrote upon successfully resubmitting the original Cthulhu story. “One must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all.”

If you are still using CVS, you are putting yourself through unnecessary pain: Subversion is here to make your life easier. I have been using it on my projects for the last year or so: I won’t use CVS again if I have a choice in the matter.

If you are new to Subversion, or perhaps new to version control in general, you’ll need a client to access the repository. Jeremy Jones has written an OnLAMP review which compares and contrasts RapidSVN, TortoiseSVN, and the command line, which you will find useful and educational: Subversion UI Shootout. He’s included screenshots, examples, and has taken the time to explain how each client handles specific commonly-performed SVN tasks. Check it out.

On the other hand, if you have heard of Subversion, but are leery of migrating your precious code repositoty, you should read Ben Collins-Sussman’s Dispelling Subversion FUD article. He gives you the straight dope on Subversion’s real and imagined weaknesses.