Trait Driven HERO

This is a method of character design and mechanical resolution that is abstracted away from player awareness and left entirely in the GM's hands. It is primarily intended for use in a play-by-post format. It accentuates narrative play publicly, but still relies on the robust HERO System engine for resolution privately, handled out-of-band by the GM.

Implementation

Have the players describe their characters, but don't deal in game stats with them. Have them express things their character is good at and rank them with numbers, adding up to a total. Ill get to this in more detail below.

The GM then stats the player's concepts using the broad descriptions provided as their guide.

The GM may or may not allow the players to see the final writeups, as they prefer. It is recommended that the GM does not, to avoid arguments and encourage the narrative aspect of this method.

Usage

During play, have players narratively describe what they are doing, and you do the same for NPCs. However, in the background you resolve things mechanically in a controlled environment. This also allows you to not have to do segment oriented combat via play-by-post which is tedious.

Awarding XP

After play starts, rather than assigning XP to players instead have the players describe what areas they would like to see their characters show improvement in, which the GM interprets into the characters' mechanical implementations.

If the GM decides to add other abilities, the GM informs the player(s) of their character's new capabilities in similar broad terms.

As there is a certain amount of vagueness involved, there is a wider tolerance for point differences between characters as it gets interpreted via the GM's narrative layer and the players are not seeing the character mechanics directly.

Pros

• Design Flexibility
  • If the GM decides to pad or shave a character a little bit, as seems fitting to maintain parity between characters, the players will never really know. So long as their characters seem capable during game play, it is immaterial. If during game play you tweak out a character's mechanics based upon story elements, as long as you narrate it appropriately it will feel natural to the players as they never fixate on things like "hey! Andronicus has 17 more character points than Uaga now!".
• Abstraction
  • This method adds an abstraction layer between mechanics and concepts. In a narrative oriented venue, such as play by post, it eases the mechanical resolution burden and focuses on the story.

Cons

• Player Preference
  • The cons are some players want the mechanics. It may not feel like the "HERO System" to some players due to its level of abstraction, even though you are using the mechanics behind the scenes to keep it all straight.
• Trust
  • Some players may not trust you as the GM to properly define their characters. This one is pretty subjective, really. Some groups might really like it, or come to like it, some might never buy into it.

Example

To put this into a (quick) concrete example...say you are running a standard 150 point (75+75) campaign. Dividing 150 / 10 yields 15 points, which we'll call "Fate Points" (or whatever label you like).

Tell each player they have 15 Fate Points with which to define their characters with labeled Traits. Each character must have at least three Traits, and characters can't spend more than 6 Fate Points on any give Trait. As the GM, you need to have some discussion around what each Trait means to each player to avoid confusion; alternately a brief description of the Trait can be required.

If you are using Race Packages, you can translate the cost of Race Packages into Fate Point costs. Thus if to be an Elf costs 2 Fate Points, an Elf character has 13 Fate Points to spend on other things (using our example model)

In this example, we have four players: Joe, Fred, Mike, and Amy. They define their characters as follows.