How DnD screwed up Heroscape

[Smithy Winfred]

Originally Posted by Hellfire

Plus it makes RPGs so much more expensive. Although I've had fun w/ RPGs with and without miniatures.

I wasn't going to buy minis, but having the Heroscape minis already available made it a great use of the figs. Plus, it's cool being able to actually see your figure beat up a giant dragon on a table rather than having to imagine it all in your head.

[Tornado]

Originally Posted by Smithy Winfred

I wasn't going to buy minis, but having the Heroscape minis already available made it a great use of the figs. Plus, it's cool being able to actually see your figure beat up a giant dragon on a table rather than having to imagine it all in your head.

That is too bad. Some plastic on a table will never compare to the images in my mind while role-playing. It helps to have a great GM that paints the scene in your imagination.

@Chachi: Wow I have never heard of anyone who played Robotech. My group never even played and I owned(still own) all the books. We got into Rifts also. I always found the world a bit overwhelming. It took real restraint to run a good game, IMO. I have played in some really good Rifts games at Gen Con. A lot has to do with the GM.

[Tornado]

Yeah, sometimes we break them out, depending on the scenario. I tend not to because players try to get some sort of advantage, like moving behind someone and attacking them in the back. We usually just use a dry erase board/map if we need a visual.

[Chachi]

I used to play RIFTS and ROBOTECH in middle school in the late 80's and early 90's. We had no idea what "minis" were..lol

But we did make a tactical game from MegaForce toys (because they were freaking rad!) and it was fairly decent!

[The B.I.V.]

Just to clarify, I don't think DnD killed off Heroscape. As others have said, HS was mostly dead by the time Wizards got ahold of it.

I'm just glad it died when it did because I don't like all the little changes that came with the DnD Master set and 3 waves. If it had continued on at that rate, HS would be a very different game by now, and not a good one.

[caps]

Originally Posted by The B.I.V.

I'm just glad it died when it did because I don't like all the little changes that came with the DnD Master set and 3 waves. If it had continued on at that rate, HS would be a very different game by now, and not a good one.

I disagree.

[The B.I.V.]

Yeah, I was a huge Palladium player, too. Palladium RPG and RIFTS mostly, but we did some TMNT/Ninjas n Super Spies/Heroes Unlimited mashups, too. Those were some seriously fun times...

[Chachi]

Too bad Rifts never took off more. Such a great universe. GLITTERBOY FTW!!!!

[Tornado]

Rifts is still going strong. The company Palladium nearly went under as a result of someone on the inside embezzling money as I understand it.

They had created a card game like Magic for Rifts(I saw a sheet of uncut cards at their Open House) and I believe they were even working on possibly a movie and/or a video game when things went terribly wrong. I am fairly sure, support from the fans was the only thing that kept them afloat. They were forced to sell untold numbers of original and out of print works to keep their business going.

I went to the first Palladium Open House and had the extreme honor of playing in a Rifts game GM'd by the late great Erick Wujcik(creator of the TMNT system and the original GM for the Palladium RPG). Rest in Peace.

I still consider the original Palladium RPG to be the best role-playing game ever printed and my own RPG is heavily based upon it.

It is very cool to hear about others sharing in the same kind of fun my group experienced. We used to play weekly and sometimes twice a week, anywhere we could find to play. A decrepit basement, a camper up on blocks, and a horse barn to name a few. I miss those days.

[Garada]

Originally Posted by Tornado

Rifts is still going strong. The company Palladium nearly went under as a result of someone on the inside embezzling money as I understand it.

They had created a card game like Magic for Rifts(I saw a sheet of uncut cards at their Open House) and I believe they were even working on possibly a movie and/or a video game when things went terribly wrong. I am fairly sure, support from the fans was the only thing that kept them afloat. They were forced to sell untold numbers of original and out of print works to keep their business going.

I went to the first Palladium Open House and had the extreme honor of playing in a Rifts game GM'd by the late great Erick Wujcik(creator of the TMNT system and the original GM for the Palladium RPG). Rest in Peace.

I still consider the original Palladium RPG to be the best role-playing game ever printed and my own RPG is heavily based upon it.

It is very cool to hear about others sharing in the same kind of fun my group experienced. We used to play weekly and sometimes twice a week, anywhere we could find to play. A decrepit basement, a camper up on blocks, and a horse barn to name a few. I miss those days.

That all sounds awesome!

We used to play either [or both] TMNT and Robotech every weekend - sometimes just my buddy Zach and I, but often with a larger group. We NEVER used miniatures for these games, although we always made detailed drawings of our characters and mecha - at one point we even got little Macross Veritech Models to paint in our pilot's custom color scheme and Micro Machines cars to represent their wheels, but purely as a fun visual aid, not to simulate any combat.

As much as I LOVE Robotech [I even named my daughter Miriya], I think the TMNT game was my favorite.

One cool part of the old TMNT game was the random character creation table - if you wanted to, you could roll to figure out HOW you got mutated, what level of education / training you had and even what sort of animal you were. I also loved how you could select the level of mutation for each physical feature [your facial features could look exactly like the animal you mutated from, or could be almost normal human with only a few vestigial traces of the animal you once were, etc]. The books were jam packed full of descriptions and information, and new books introduced new animal types [such as koalas and kangaroos in the 'Mutants Down Under' book]. 'Transdimensional TMNT' added dinosaurs to the mix plus a ton of new background and character creation options. I once made a mutant Pug with a time-travelling Karmann Ghia using that sourcebook!

The best part was that if your TMNT group traveled back to medieval times [or to a sword & sorcery fantasy dimension]... BAM! You could seamlessly use all of the Palladium RPG books [their answer to D&D] for reference, scenarios, adventures and campaign info. Want to add Super Heroic elements to your game? Heroes Unlimited. Craving espionage or a deeper martial arts / combat system? Ninjas & Superspies. Need to include some Horror elements? Beyond The Supernatural. Mecha / Anime? The Mechanoid Invasion or Robotech. Post-apocalyptic? Rifts or the excellent TMNT spin-off After The Bomb.

Palladium was by far the best 'generic' RPG system at the time I was playing. I'm not sure what's out there on the market now, but back then it just destroyed its main competition, GURPS [which had a ton of cool sourcebooks but nowhere near as much personality or the cool licenses that Palladium books had]. I have grown to prefer the old West End Games D6 system these days for its utter simplicity - in fact, when I run an RPG I use my own home brewed RPG system that is a mash-up of a simplified / streamlined D6 Legend [for non-combat and social interaction elements] with Heroscape [for combat]. The players really dig it, especially since they don't all come from a role playing background, and it strongly favors actual ROLE playing over rules-lawyering and munchkinism.

Anyway, sorry to get your thread so far off topic, B.I.V., but you brought back some great memories!

[The B.I.V.]

[Dr.Goomonkey]

Yeah the Shadow are a bit wrong, and same with the small bases... Treasure Glyphs I feel like were a good idea, just couldn't have been executed worse...

The only positive I can really see from it is the Uncommon Hero, though yes they are hardly ever used multiple time, I can see why they should exist. Dumutef Guard for example should have had more than one life, but since Uncommon Heroes didn't exist they had to make him a weakling Common.

Also with the focus of Heroes I feel like that would have been fine, if they still gave them synergies together, but it seems like not very many of the figures have any Bonding or Auras (yes I know a few of them do, it just seems like a smaller percentage than there should have been) and at least to me, often times the one who chose a more bonded army wins, and that's not how it works in DnD 'Scape