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

We're finishing up this look at HU2e today.

This being a superhero game, superpowers are a thing. The procedure for determining powers varies by Type (Phyiscal Training doesn't have to do this), and that is adequate. One can--and should--critize the game for being incapable of replicating the existing characters upon which these Types are based, but in terms of technical writing what is there is okay.

The gear and guns list is the same that Palladium uses in every other contemporary or futuristic product line that it has in its catalog. Barely adequate, especially as costs are frozen in time and what is available is never updated to account for changes in availability or technology. (Especially laughable for firearms, which have changed greatly since the 1980s.)

There is no consideration given to campaign play at all. There is no consideration given to scenario play. Nothing at all akin to the treatment of adventures and campaigning that AD&D1e provides in its manuals, and--again--this is consistent with Palladium products across the board.

Palladium consistently publishes under the assumption that the user is already familiar with Cargo Cult norms, and with playing (A)D&D- and doing it wrong. This is the only reasonable conclusion to draw from the combination of the lack of care given to matters that competent game manuals always address, and the published opinions of Siembieda himself past and present.

The only conclusion to be drawn is simple: as a technical manual, it is almost fit for purpose; the reason for it being a failure has a lot more to do with failures of game design than failures of technical writing because you can't write rules or procedures that DO NOT EXIST.

The sad thing is that there is just enough present in the manual that one can see that a useful product can be had, but that it requires the user to finish the job that he should never have to do because he bought this product to do that for him.

You don't buy a Glock expecting to build it up from parts, half of which you have to buy separately or fabricate on your own initative; you should never tolerate a product professing to be a fantastic adventure wargame (i.e. what a RPG actually is) that doesn't deliver all of the necessary rules and procedures necessary and proper to fulfill that function. Yet that is commonplace with Palladium products.

It does not need to be.

Fixing this can be done, and I will explain tomorrow where to start and how, despite the fact that nothing can (and thus won't) be done until Siembieda retires and sells off the company.