Western Hero

Hero System is the BSD Unix of role-playing games.

Insanely complicated to wrap your head around, arcane, full of configuration, build-it-yourself, and full of homebrew and hacking to create a working system. Lots of math. A lot of understanding of what this does versus that.

But once you understand it, the system can run for decades and still work well after other games have come and gone. It is rock solid. The character sheets are full of numbers, but the numbers logically work in four ways:

• They modify a 3d6 roll (OCV, DCV).
• They are a 1d6 per 5 points stat, like STR.
• They are a damage-based (pool or reduction) stat, like physical defense.
• This is SPD, which determines attacks per turn and attack order.

Once you know the numbers, you can play off the character sheet.

Hero System is a universal system, like GURPS, but it works on a much lower level. This system is best suited for superheroes, but you can play all sorts of genres with the game once you know how it works. The beauty of Hero System is that the entire game is built as a "game creation toolbox," and it invites you to dig in and build your own creations. 

The game is honestly a Home Depot of parts, and while you need to know a lot to use them all - once you do, you are not just "playing someone else's game," but you are building your own. It is the difference between putting together a shelf from Ikea in a rented apartment (5E character creation) and building a house and owning it (Hero System).

Once you own that house, no one is knocking on your door, telling you the rules are changing (One D&D). Or that they are raising the rent and who can live in your apartment (D&D Beyond). Or every so often, you get notices on your door that maintenance is coming in, and you have to clean your place up (One D&D Playtest materials).

Is a specific power not working right? You are the game designer; get your tools out and fix the power yourself. The cost to get started is higher, but you are the plumber, electrician, carpenter, painter, window installer, roof expert, appliance installer, and repair person.

I get it; like home ownership, Hero System is not for everyone. Some people like the curated experience that a D&D provides, sort of like a JRPG on rails. Hero System feels like Tunnels & Trolls, with lots of d6 flying and totaling damage and effect rolls. Only where T&T is highly simplified and abstract, Hero System is particular and calculated. There is also this phased particularity in the game, which reminds me of the classic Aftermath RPG (and Hero System could do a fantastic Aftermath-style game).

Some of us are sick of being forced to buy new game editions and being fed constant errata. We love using our hands and being game designers. We like to design the powers. We don't need "character classes" or "premade ancestries." And we certainly don't need privileged (and mostly anonymous) game designers telling us what we can or can't do with our storytelling and fantasy gaming.

I don't want others breaking my favorite character builds, nerfing things, and making a mess of the rules.

Just give me the tools, and I can do it better.

If I break it, I will fix it.

Western Hero?

I picked this up on a whim, and since I have boxed up and unboxed my Hero System 6th Edition books about 5 times now, I thought it would make a fantastic addition to the repeated storage attempts.

And a western game is just about as far as you can get from "what Hero System is all about" as you can get. On its face, it seemed this would be a terrible use of the Hero System and be complete overkill for a genre better done by an OSR and B/X style of game. There are no superpowers here; you have no use for a robust design system, and 90% of the rules would not be used.

Who needs rules for force walls, entanglement powers, energy blasts, tunneling, flight, de-solidification, and mental attacks in a game about cowboys in the Old West? Granted, the powers are not in the Western Hero book, and you need to get some of the other Hero System books to add them in, but the rules were designed to factor in mental and energy defenses, so the framework is still here. You could have them, though, if you wanted.

What the book does focus on is the nuts and bolts of the game system and all the options appropriate to the Western genre, which nicely focuses the game on the setting. But the book is enormous, and the rules are dense; we are talking about a 276-page game that uses all of the Hero System combat features.

Again, my mind wants to go running and screaming back into the B/X as the cave allegory, and I tell myself, "Why do I need all of this for a simple attack bonus versus AC roll?"

Because this is cool, that is why.

And surprisingly, it works well.

The game only uses the d6 and is a 3d6 and "roll equal or under the target number" type of system. It is like GURPS, but it works on a lower level and is more "on the metal" than that game. Where GURPS is a curated RPG experience, Hero System is a numerical model of a superheroic reality that also works as a roleplaying game.

I can have a completely realistic game that goes by the base rules, or I can bend reality as much as I want and allow characters to buy resistance defenses - and have bullets bouncing off the skin of the characters like they were some sort of superhero. I can flip open the power design rules of the superhero game and build gadgets, like a Gatling gun that shoots cannonballs. I can let the characters design and buy superpowers and limit the power level of the game if I want - or let it go wild. I can give a snake monster "laser eyes" if I want. I can have characters with psychic powers. An owl can have a sonic attack in a 10-meter-long cone that does stun damage.

And then you get this...

• No! The monsters need to be in monster manuals!
• You can't introduce new power systems unless you pay money to a game designer!
• You can't break the rules or bend the genre! This isn't balanced!
• Expansions must be paid books!
• We were told, "The people that play the game can't be game designers!"

Um, this is Hero System; it is all in the book. Even the "every player is a game designer" part. Seriously, people play this game together, and it all works fine. We balance it ourselves. The game gives us the power to cheese, and we just don't do it. If something is insanely overpowered, it will be insanely expensive and the only thing you can do. We are all adults here.

But the game defaults to this gritty, old-school, Aftermath reality style that I love. The game plays like a survival-horror game at its basic level. The research is well done and very complete, down to horse traits and markings. Parts of the genre that could be problematic are highlighted, and they are there for you to choose to use or ignore - the game doesn't ignore them, but since a lot of the source material was produced in different eras, it is nice to be given a warning about these elements and have readers informed.

And I sit here with a game I bought as a joke, to see how this possibly could work, and it may be the one that just gets me back into the Hero System.