The Culture: The Search For Good Hobby Game Manuals: Heroes Unlimited (Part One)

Introduction

(Following from Friday's post.)

This week we'll be looking at Palladium's superhero game, Heroes Unlimited 2nd Edition ("HU2e"). I'm comparing it to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, with the former standing in for Palladium's catalog in general due to how similar they all are.

The purpose of this series is to analyze these as technical manuals. The purpose of a technical manual is to teach the reader how to perform a task or use a product, and playing a fantastic adventure wargame is both simultaneously. Good technical manuals make this easy. Bad ones make learning how to do the thing far harder than it ought to be.

To give this the space required, I will break up the process across the week's posts. Today will be Character Generation, and we'll go over core gameplay procedures and operations over the rest of the week.

Making Your Man

AD&D1e: The specific method for generating Ability Scores is left to the discretion of the Referee (DMG p. 11) so I consult the campaign's Frequently Asked Question page for the answer to this question. It says "Method III" (ibid) so for each Ability I roll 3d6 six times and take the higest result; this gets me STR 15, INT 15, WIS 15, DEX 17, CON 17, CHA 15.

From there I am at liberty to decide Race (Human), Sex (Male), Class (Fighter), and--subject to Class restraints--Alignment. I decide to make another go at my long-frustrated objective of becoming a Bard; he begins play as a True Neutral Human Male Fighter, age 16.

HU2e: Page 15 says that you start by generating Attribute scores, followed by Hit Points/S.D.C., and then superpower types. However, this is all done with a caveat revealed by reviewing the superpower categories. Many of them alter or outright replace whatever you roll, making this step seem out of place and thus out of order; the Order of Operations should be "Determine Superpower Type" first, and then Attributes, etc. due to how great the influence on the rest of character generation your power type has.

That said, we roll 3d6 to determine scores in the following order: Intelligence Quotient (IQ: 12), Mental Endurance (ME: 13), Mental Affinity (MA: 14), Physical Strength (PS: 11), Physical Prowess (PP: 11), Physical Endurance (PE: 10), Physical Beauty (PB: 16), and Speed (Spd: 12). We have one score at 16+, which entitles me to an additional 1d6 throw; this comes up a 4, granting us a final PB score of 20. This is a supermodel-level pretty boy, and somewhat charismatic with that MA score.

Over on Page 17 we see that base Hit Points is our PE score +1d6; a throw of 3 gives us 13 Hit Points to start with. Base Structural Damage Capacity (S.D.C.) is by super type, so we'll come back to that one. (For those of you familiar with HERO, this is akin to the Hits/Stun divide; for d20 folks, HP/VP.)

Page 20 gives up a random percentile table for determining super type, omitting Mega Heroes (i.e. Superman-level stuff; HU2e is closer to Marvel than D.C.) and Crazy Heroes (for all those Moonknight/Deadpool sorts). A role of 65 puts us at Physical Training--the "Super Normal by stupid-levels of Git Gud" type--so we turn to page 187.

Already we have a hiccup; right away we're told "...because they will be adjusted with bonuses from every physical skill selected" regarding the Physical Attributes and this carries over to Hit Points and S.D.C. (pg. 189 gives us a base S.D.C. of 30, and there's a lot of bonuses to work with) so my earlier objection about Out of Order procedural steps holds.

Next I go back to Page 44 to determine Education. This is another percentile table, and I crash out with a throw of 02: Street Schooled. I start Streetwise, Prowl, either Knife or Pistol proficiency, and my choice of three Rogue skills, two Domestic skills, two Technical skills, and eight Secondary skills. I have a 33% of being a current or former gang member (32%; yes), and I must spend a Secondary skill to be more than functionally illiterate.

Now I hit another snag. Physical Training character forfeit an entire Skill Program. Street Schooled characters don't have any. The spirit of the rule is that Physical Training is so demanding that it compels sacrifices of other opportunities; a quick talk with the Referee reveals that he concurs. We agree on forfeiting all of the Secondary and Domestic skills, but my man is literate in return. I pick WP: Knife, Cardsharp, Palming, Pick Pockets, Business & Finance, and Law.

The super type grants me six Physical skills (Boxing, Wrestling, Climbing, Swimming, Running, Gymnastics), four Espionage (or Rogue, if Selfish/Evil) skills (Detect Ambush, Detect Concealment, Intelligence, Seduction), and martial arts powers right out of Street Fighter.

I then decide on going either "Strong and Tough" or "Fast and Lean"; I choose the former. Then I decide on my fighting style: Aggressive and Deadly, or Defensive and Fast- also the former. I have a Type-specific Combat Training skill.

After bonuses, I start with six attacks per round. Mental scores are unchanged; Physicals are boosted to PS 44 (and considered Superhuman), PP to 12, PE to 19, PB to 24, and Spd to 26. Hit Points start at 44, and S.D.C. at 125. I choose to be Unprincipled (Selfish). Random rolls on the rest of the character trait tables reveals: Illegitimate birth, Average weight, Tall height, Schemer/gambler/risk-taker, life saving of $10K, American, Big City boy, Low-class laborer, and potential realized in early teens.

Putting it all together, he's a former faceman for a gang that learned to fight to protect himself early on; he turned out to be good at it, which got him the attention of fighting pros and the Glowies that manage that racket. He learned from men that trained, managed, and ran champions and stars alike- a real Rocky style story. I put him at 21, and in Current Year context he's a rising MMA fighter that cross-trains as a stuntman with ambitions of being like Georges St-Pierre, Scott Adkins, and so on. Right now he runs (but does not own) a gym catering to those same people, and otherwise is a street-level super ala Daredevil or (at most) Batman.

Observations

AD&D1e!Bob took a lot less time than HU2e!Bob did. AD&D1e may be scattered between two books, but there is no contradictions or sloppy procedural organization to be had; HU2e does and is, and that's before a lot of the fiddly stuff involving skill and power selections (Physical Training is very simple by comparison).

I didn't bother with kitting either Bob out; that can be another post entirely.

What I did notice with HU2e (and I remember this with HU1) is that the possibility of letting your initial batch of supers generate the setting as they generate their mans is a viable option, depending upon what is rolled; a super campaign is defined a lot by its heroes and villains, as they are reimagined mythical heroes with all that implies, so when you get an Alien hero, you also get implied lore about What Is Out There that can be worked with and the same goes for Mystics, Robots, etc. so you can skip supplementary material like Gramcery Island.

Palladium's work is scuffed, no doubt, but it's not a total waste of wood pulp either. This is a manual that would benefit from a redesign far more than a ground-up rewrite, as a lot of what makes this game wonky is poor editing- as later posts will make clear.