5 Ways That Everyday Heroes RPG Improves Upon D&D 5th Edition

This video is a breakdown of 5 of the changes that were made in Everyday Heroes, from the core 5th Edition rules. At the end I also do a brief summary of the product line and what I think of the Everyday Heroes RPG.

[@Ars_Fabula_TTRPG]

It’s funny. I literally saw this book at a local shop on Sunday and just started Dimension 20’s Unsleeping City campaign last week. I think the universe wants me to run an extraordinary ordinary people campaign lol

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Seems like a mandate to me.

[@SigfriedTrent]

Your video was a real pleasure to watch as the lead game designers! Thanks so much for sharing it and I'm delighted that you enjoyed it so much.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

That is awesome! In that case I should be thanking you. Absolute blast going through your books, and I can’t wait to see what you do with some of my other favorite IP’s (definitely got my eyes on Highlander and Rambo for sure!). Keep putting out great content, you have made a fan here!

[@nathanielwilder5990]

Thank you Justin, love the vote of confidence. I want to play Spycraft (from the d20 era) 5e using Everyday Heroes

[@nathanielwilder5990]

Also maybe a mix of Spycraft and Shadowrun

[@booksbricksandboards783]

I tell you what, if you want to play Shadowrun, you might want to check out Cities Without Number. GREAT system for that. It isn’t 5e but it has some DNA with Edges and Foci. Good luck with your Spycraft game!

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Thanks for watching, EH is my favorite variety of 5e.

[@megasquidd]

This was exactly the review I needed for this. Most of what I was seeing seemed like it was a sponsored advertisement. I agree with you that the heart of the 5E system was very good (I'm talking about the old starter set booklet). I like the change to armor, and the genius points sounds genius. I loved the old d20 Modern system. I'm not sure it if was good, but at the time in my early 20s it was so much fun. I think I'll be picking this up.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

That is great to hear, I always try to give my honest opinions on what I like and what I don’t like. Glad to hear it helped you make a good decision for yourself.

[@Dunston205]

I'm going through the core rulebook right now. Everything you said is spot-on.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Thank you! I was very pleasantly surprised in my reading of the book. I was a bit nervous because the company hadn’t done anything I had read before…. But my goodness they enlisted some legends to work on that project!

[@PrimarchX]

I've house ruled the AV and PV with regard to personal armor. For every +1 the PV exceeds the AV it increases the DC of the save by +5. Otherwise the same, a successful save does no damage but the armor is damaged (resulting in disadvantage in successive armor saves).

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Interesting. I haven’t ran it enough to be able to say I like the change, but if it is working at your table then it is doing its job!

[@robocoastie]

The binding on the Core Book is SUPERB. No matter what page you are on the book lays flat. That is a well worth expensive feature of the Core Book. I'm waiting for the Pacific Rim adventure from kickstarter to be complete on Roll20. In meantime I am going to introduce game to people with Highlander adventure. Thanks for this review. It copies the "wealth" system from Troll Lord Games' "Amazing Adventures 5e" but AA is really toward noir, or pulp stories. Everyday Heroes is definitely geared for 21st century. AA fits well for sci-fi as well as 1930s-40s but Everyday Heroes does not have that sci-fi ability feel. In the end EH will have more popularity (and the all important Roll20 support) making it the winner people will gravitate too.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

I agree with the binding quality, which is a personal obsession for me. So many companies put out sub par quality physical books, it is great to see some of the small folks really nailing it! Sine Nomine is another that does a great job on their offset print bindings. Agree completely on your comments on TLG as well. I actually like the Highlander book the best out of the releases books so far. I have a POD copy I ordered when it first went up on Drive Thru.

[@SH4n1AC_C4C7]

I stumbled on this book at my lgs yesterday. I saw that there was a Crow companion book. This led me to wonder how well this system would lend itself to something like Evil Dead.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

I think it could easily handle Evil Dead. There are already some enemies in the “bestiary” section of the book that could be used with minimal changes as Deadites. There is actually an OOP Army of Darkness RPG (I have a couple copies of it) that is based upon the same system as the Buffy RPG as well. But back to your original question, I do think it would be effective at running Evil Dead.

[@SigfriedTrent]

We actually made a pitch for an Army of Darkness license as we are all big fans of it. We didn't land it, at least not yet. :)

[@booksbricksandboards783]

@@SigfriedTrent Well, if that comes to fruition, I will be buying (and talking about on my channel) it as well. I have the Eden Studios book, but it would be great to see it get the Evil Genius treatment. One thing that I really appreciate about the first two Cinematic Adventure books is that you made very playable adventures while being absolutely true to the source material. The appreciation of the IP oozes from every drop of ink, but the game design is tight and doesn't suffer from being a slave to the IP. You have a great team there Trent. I very much look forward to supporting you all in the future!

[@marcoantoniosalazarmatamor3014]

Ditto. If AOD lands, I’ll buy it.

[@SquirrelGamez]

Jack Burton and Snake Plissken were my heroes (aside from the smoking)!

[@booksbricksandboards783]

It’s all in the reflexes.

[@DungeonMagister]

As someone who has done logging work, the picture at 5:57 makes me itch, because if you picked a log up like that, you would have dirt and maybe even ants falling down your shirt.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Lol! I’m guessing that the artist only knows logging through fictional accounts. I know that any logs I pick up are put in a fire very shortly thereafter!

[@Goober4473]

Awesome, thanks for this!

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Appreciate it! No problem.

[@bryanalexander7571]

I actually like Everyday Heroes very much. I'll soon be running a campaign based on the Uncharted video games and now that you've mentioned it, I'll almost certainly have a Curse of Strahd campaign set in the German Alps. I don't like that they made the notion that this was a spiritual reboot of D20 Modern when they knew that most people who remember D20 Modern fondly are thinking of Urban Arcana and they further knew that they weren't going to come out with Everyday Arcana until some time in 2024. Not a huge deal since D&D has a huge amount of magic that can be readily adapted but still kind of a sh*t move.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

I can see your disappointment in that choice, but I guess my counter would be along the lines of what you already alluded to…. If you are looking to do magic with a 5e rule set, that is readily available in WoTC core books. I think that urban fantasy (like Dresden Files for example), is probably better done in a lighter rules set, to allow for more narrative interpretation, rather than trying to balance hand grenades and hand guns against fireballs and flaming hands. I actually really like how Savage Worlds handles this aspect.

[@robocoastie]

Magic with Modern 5e is present in Troll Lord Games' "Amazing Adventures" as an option in several ways. The problem is if you insist on 5e they have abandoned it and have been selling out their stock for $10 for the book. They are furthering with Amazing Adventures with their "Seige Engine" ruleset (which is really 3e "fixed").

[@weirdguy564]

Seems like a good set of rules. In particular I look at D20 games and prefer any game that changes how the Armor Class mechanic works. For example, Swords and Six Siders changes armor to be fixed, raised up if you wear a helmet or a shield, or both. Body armor itself is used as damage reduction, but never to zero. Or Dragon Warriors which has a second dice roll to determine if you penetrate armor (weapons do fixed damage, so no third roll needed) I checked it out, and the price of the PDF is quite high to me, however. Its $30 for just the PDF file.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Agree on the PDF. The book however, is very fair. I picked it up from Atomic Empire less than $50, and it is a full “PHB,DMG, MM” so to speak, in a single book. I bought the PDF as well (mainly because I like to have the option to access my library anywhere), but if it were just available as PDF I would not be as high on the value. Thanks for watching and definitely agree on the comments.

[@smugly6793]

I’ll have to give that a go

[@booksbricksandboards783]

@@smugly6793 For me it is the best parts of 5E, without the baggage, and some changes that made a lot of sense. I didn't bring it up in the video but the firearm rules for burst and suppressive fire were really good as well.

[@SigfriedTrent]

Hopefully as time goes on we can bring the price of the PDF down so it's accessible for more players. Initially, we have to be careful about keeping cash flow going so we can fund the next set of projects. Once we have a strong library of books out we can take some of the margins down a bit. The economics of game publishing are rough sometimes and we want to be able to stick around long enough to make lots more. Because our game is under an open gaming license (soon to switch over to ORC when it's ready) the rules themselves are sharable and I believe there is at least one online export of it, though it's still a bit rough. There is also a quickstart, though its rules are a little outdated as it was written during playtest. We are making an update to that currently so folks have free access to the core mechanics at least.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

@@SigfriedTrent Totally understand the economic concerns. Especially with the added cost of licensing involved, you have to be very cautious about your pricing strategy to ensure sustainability of the company. I want you all to stick around for a long time, so hopefully others will help support you all by picking up a copy (or like me 2!) of the core rules ;) .

[@Ger3214]

Easiest way to improve on 5e, play something else. Great video though.

[@booksbricksandboards783]

lol. If you have watched my channel a while, you know I feel pretty similarly. I will say though, there is a solid core that shines through in this game, unfortunately so much is bolted on top of it in 5e it is basically unrecognizable.

[@zombietotseater3894]

Could be a good predecessor if it weren’t for that suck ass art. Rules are solid, but that horrible art keeps from pulling the trigger on a buy

[@booksbricksandboards783]

Art is always a subjective matter. I actually really like the art throughout the entire line.

[@Mitsurugi2424]

Not gonna lie, I'm a little disappointed. I was really hoping for something closer to 5e, but modern. I only played a little d20 modern back in the day, but I remember it being pretty close to 3.5

[@booksbricksandboards783]

That’s a fair statement. If you REALLY love 5e and all it’s bits, you would likely not like the changes. I had some issues with 5e and felt like the changes addressed some of them. I will say that it is close enough to 5e that you can use 5e material with on the fly conversion, so not too far from the original.

[@Mitsurugi2424]

@@booksbricksandboards783 I appreciate the reply, and the clarification. I will give it another look.