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Especially for newer players, it can often be overwhelming to read a rulebook with several hundred pages before you can even start playing. Here, the simple ruleset of How to be a Hero can work very well for first roleplaying experiences. But even for experienced players, this system offers a lot of freedom to quickly implement new settings and ideas and just get started!
What is How to be a Hero?
How to be a Hero is a free, beginner-friendly and minimally restrictive ruleset for tabletop RPG campaigns. You can download the 21-page PDF here. The project now runs through a registered association and has a large community on Discord and other social media platforms.
You may have already heard of Hauke and the tabletop RPG adventures from RocketBeans on YouTube. Some of these sessions were also played using the How to be a Hero ruleset, which is why the system might seem familiar to you.
What’s special about this ruleset?
Character creation in How to be a Hero is very simple. You can freely come up with abilities that your character should have. These are then categorized into one of three “talents” (Acting, Knowledge, Social). Finally, there are a few simple calculations and you get a value that represents something like a percentage chance to succeed on a check.
Since there are no fixed abilities, the rules work in any setting. It doesn’t matter whether you want to create a knight, cowboy, or space marine – with How to be a Hero it’s super easy to find the right values and build the perfect character.
How do I get started?
Your first stop should probably be the How to be a Hero Wiki. There you’ll find not only the rules but also finished adventures and all the links to join the community. I personally found the adventure Where is Waldemar, where the players go searching for a house pig, particularly funny.
If you want to check out a bit more about the topic first, you can also watch videos where people play using the ruleset. Many of the finished adventures can also be found on YouTube. Here’s the video for Where is Waldemar, for example:
The video for “Where is Waldemar” is unfortunately no longer available, but here’s another video for “Jailhouse Boogie”. Both are great adventures that I can recommend!
I hope you’ll try out this interesting ruleset. Maybe you’re also new to the hobby and will find your way into playing through this system.
If the 21 pages are still too much for you, there are also One Page Adventures where the entire rules fit on just one page. Maybe that’s something for you too?
Image source: howtobeahero.de
