Tag Archives: Hero’s Banner

Election Day Sale!

The U.S. mid-term elections are fast approaching. I encourage everyone to go out and vote next Tuesday, November 2, 2010.

In honor of the political system that has given us all so much, I’m offering $2 off your next order of Mars Colony (pdf or book) or Hero’s Banner (pdf only). All you have to do is post, tweet, or otherwise tell me what politician, living or dead, you’d most like to play Mars Colony with. Send me your response (or a link to your response) along with you PayPal payment, and I’ll refund your order by $2.

Sale ends midnight, November 2.

Hero’s Banner Rules Modifications

As a preview of some of the advise and suggestions I’ll be releasing for Hero’s Banner, I thought I’d post the major rules changes.

Passion Checks

Change 1. No player is allowed to make less than three passion checks until his character’s passion score reaches at least 50 points. As a result, no player may initially take less than the 30-point bonus when re-rolling a failed conflict check. This change serves to speed up play, but still allows for narrative control when it most matters: during endgame.

Change 2. Players are no longer required to bring in one of their connections when making less than three passion checks. In play, connections inevitably show up. Either the GM frames a connection into a scene directly, or the players include them naturally. Otherwise forcing a player to integrate his connection into a scene after the fact is a bit artificial.

Breakdowns

Under the standard rules, breakdowns occur whenever a player rolls doubles on a passion check. The player then immediately stops making passion checks. So if the player was supposed to make three passion checks and rolls doubles on the first, then he would ignore passion checks two and three. In play, this rule unnecessarily slowed the pace of the game.

Change 3. A breakdown still occurs on a roll of doubles, but the player should finish making the full series of passion checks before narrating the breakdown.

Endgame

Change 5. Players are no longer required to use the chart described on page 72 when narrating their epilogues. Instead, the narrating player should answer the following questions during endgame:

  1. Did the character have any regrets?
  2. Did the character live a fulfilling life?

When answering the questions, the players should take into consideration the number of connections he has under the “winning” influence, as well as the people he had to thrust aside to accomplish his goals.

The original chart sometimes imposed artificial restrictions. Endgame is more meaningful when the players address open-ended questions that get at the same meaning.

Hero’s Banner Update

I’ve been toying with a second edition to Hero’s Banner for some time now. However, I’ve never been able to justify the work it would take to revise an entire book — a book that generally stands up just fine in my opinion. Would I make some changes to it if I was starting from scratch? Yes. But the game is three years old now, and I am a big believer that, once released, art should stand on its own. (I’m looking at you George Lucas.)

So where does that leave things? Well, within the next day or two, I will be putting the final touches on a short document that updates Hero’s Banner as I play it now. This document will be free to everyone. What’s more, because it will be a short web release, I will be able to update it from here on out forever. I encourage everyone who is interested in Hero’s Banner to give the new guide a quick read-through and perhaps give the game another chance.