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.