Hello and Welcome!

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Hello and welcome to The Hero Instant!

If you’ve ever wanted to fly, cling to the walls or shoot blasts of fire from your hands, this is the table-top RPG for you!

The Hero Instant is a new Super-heroic RPG featuring cinematic super-hero action, quick and simple character creation, descriptive and useful Hero and Drama traits, in-game character progression, and a novel time-keeping track and initiative mechanic.

The game is designed for both novice and experienced role-playing gamers.  Best of all, it’s FREE!  Browse through the website and send me any questions or concerns you have in any of the comments sections.  I’m eager for feedback. – Andy A

PS.  The email in the graphic here is updated as of 2025-08-18!

Gen-Con was AWESOME!

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Thanks to Gen-Con and our room-host group, Kelly’s Heroes, we really had a fantastic time!

We ran 6 games; one ‘starter’ game, 1 game featuring the West-Coast Avengers, three instances of a game teaming up the Great Lakes Avengers and Alpha Flight, and a big, 3-table, time-twisting game featuring the teen sidekicks of the JSA, the Teen Titans of the 80s, and the Legion of Superheroes of the 3020s! We all had a really good time!

My next convention will be here in Los Angeles’ own Strategicon, and then you’ll see me at Gamehole Con in Madison in October! I can’t wait to run more Hero Instant games for new players!

9 years later…

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OK, not *quite* nine years, but close enough since I last updated this site. This update is a big one! Throughout these 9 years, I’ve run several hundred games and several full campaigns, added tons of powers and powersets, and have an initiative tracker web-tool almost ready for release. I had hoped to have a ‘quick-start guide’ ready to post right now, the weekend before Gen-Con, but it’s just not quite there yet. Coming soon!

See you at Gen-Con!

Prepping for Gateway!

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Hello again, in preparation for Gateway (LAX Hilton, Labor Day weekend), I’ve been updating some of the powers (Monster, Size & Shape, Earth, Animal) and also modifying and simplifying a type of power that I am now calling a ‘Helper’ power.

A Helper power is a power that gives you another character of some kind that works along with your Hero.  It might be an animal friend, a robot, a Detective on the police force, or an elemental creature you can summon.  All of these, I realize now, are variations of the same basic thing – someone (or something) that will do stuff for you.

Each of the ‘Helper’ powers is different and unique, but from a game-design perspective, they needed to be considered and balanced together.  Check out the rules for how to create these ‘Helper’ characters, and see some ‘Helper’ characters examples and basic animal examples.  let me know if it makes sense to you.

Cheers!

Andy A

The Hero Instant at Gateway! (Labor Day weekend, Hilton LAX)

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Hey kids!

Gen-Con was fun and I met some great new people and played some great new games, but now I’m happy to be back on home and running THI at Gateway again.  It was one year ago that I ran The Hero Instant for the first time here!

This year, I’m starting to get excited about Halloween, so I’ve concocted a two-part adventure featuring some classic monster-themed Heroes: a wolf-man, a zombie, a vampire, a lagoon-creature and an electrically revived flesh golem.  Monsters!  Heroes!  What will happen?!?

  • Friday (Sept 2)
    • 8pm-midnight:   The Shadow Heroes (Episode 1)
  • Saturday (Sept 3)
    • 9am-1pm:  The Shadow Heroes (Episode 1)
    • 8pm-midnight:  The Lair of Darkness (Episode 2)
  • Sunday (Sept 4)
    • 9am-1pm:  The Shadow Heroes (Episode 1)
    • 2pm-6pm:  The Lair of Darkness (Episode 2)

Of course, as with all The Hero Instant games, you do not need any experience or special equipment.  However, if you have played at Strategicon before, I will bring your prior characters back if you want to play your own character instead of one of the pre-generated characters.  (That is, unless you took your character with you.  In that case, feel free to bring it with you.)

I look forward to seeing you there!

Andy A

Prepping for Gen-Con!

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Hello folks,

In preparing for Gen-Con, I wanted to re-write the Hero Trait Drama Trait section of the rules and character creation sections.  The changes are not big – mostly a different angle on Drama Traits to better describe how they are meant to be used.

In doing this, I realized the that I had never actually posted a section about Drama Traits in the rules.  They were mentioned in Character Creation, but they are important enough to ALSO have their own rules page.  Here it is!  Drama Traits & Drama Tokens

By re-writing that section, I also needed to update the Character Creation document, too, to make sure it matched.  Done!

See you at Gen-Con!

GenCon 2016

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Hello folks!

A busy spring here, but I am very excited that The Hero Instant will be taking part in Gen Con Indy, as part of the con’s RPG offerings.

Here are the details:

  • Thursday, August 4th  –  10 AM  –  ‘Ant Invasion‘ (part 1 of 2)  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1690841
  • Thursday, August 4th  –  4pm  –  ‘Ant Invasion‘ (part 1 of 2)  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1690842
  • Friday, August 5th  – 10am  –  ‘Ant Agony‘ (part 2 of 2)  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1690843
  • Saturday, August 6th – Noon  –  ‘A City In Peril‘  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1699362
  • Saturday, August 6th  – 4pm  –  ‘Ant Invasion‘ (part 1 of 2)  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1690844
  • Sunday, August 7th  – 10am  –  ‘Ant Agony‘ (part 2 of 2)  –  JW Marriot, Room 302.  –  ID#RPG1690845

Here’s a LINK to Gen Con’s website schedule for The Hero Instant.

‘Ant Invasion‘ and ‘Ant Agony‘ are a two-part story, but it’s totally OK to play in either part.  You don’t need to play in part 1 to play in part 2.

‘A City in Peril‘ will be run by Kertis H.  (And you may find me there as a player if there is enough space left!)  I’m enormously proud to have Kertis run this game.  It’s always a thrill when one’s game is run by another GM!

Additionally, as has been requested by several of you, there will be a single downloadable .pdf of the game’s rules and current Power Sets by the first of August, too.

C’mon down to Indianapolis and join us for some super-heroic fun!

Andy A

Updated Size-changing Rules

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Hello folks,

Big thanks to Sam U. who sent some notes to me regarding the larger sized characters (Base Size Increase 1: T-Rex, 2: Dia Kaiju and 3: Titan), to make them more playable.  This instigated an update of all the size-changing powers in the Monster and Size & Shape power-sets.  Check ’em out, especially if you have a character with one of those power-sets.

He also sent this fun video showing relative sizes of monsters, characters, robots and some ships in anime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XbeVosPszo.

Neat!

LA’s Strategicon and Beyond!

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Hello folks,

It’s been a while since I posted, but that’s what paying work + holidays will do.  I’m back on it now!

In fact, I ran a 2-parter at LA’s Strategicon (Orc-Con) over President’s Day weekend that was a blast!  Some old friends came by – people who played last year – for another run!  Repeat players = FANS!  I’m proud and a bit in awe of how great these people are.

AND THEN, I find out that some of those players started a game at their HOME CLUB at Cal Poly Pomona!  This is it!  This is the first (that I know of) game of The Hero Instant to be run without me being the one to GM it!  History is made!  I couldn’t be more excited!   I understand that one of the Heroes is really just 31 squirrels in a trenchcoat, and another is a speeding ball-shaped man of metal!  I can’t get over how fantastic that is!

So, thank you, Cal Poly Pomona Gamer’s Union!  You all have officially rocked my world!

– Andy A

Con-Volution!

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Hello friends!

I’ll be at Con-Volution this weekend (Oct 2-4, 2015), so come on down.  I’m bringing everything I need to run a game of The Hero Instant, but I don’t know when and where.  Find me and maybe it will happen RIGHT THEN!  I need to playtest the new Electricity power-set!

I’m also on a panel about the art and science of RPG Game-Mastery on Saturday at 10:00 am, followed by a Hands-On Game Design Tutorial at 11:30 am.

Fun!!  If you’re in the SF Bay area, c’mon down!

Andy A