[Warning!] Blood of Heroes: Special Edition [Warning!]

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Ladies and gentlemen, the cover to Blood of Heroes: Special Edition -


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That's not so bad, right?
 
I have this game. One good thing about the binding of the book and way they arranged the chapters is that you can rip out the entire setting section and use it for kindling without losing any of the new powers and advantages from the rules section. Which is what I did because the setting is assiduously awful. I do like the "anatomical separation" power as it allows me to play 1966 Captain Marvel:
split2.jpg
 
I mean other than it being a walking lawsuit in the making?

What the heck is this thread? o.O

It's an offshoot of the sexy art thread. See here. Pulsar Games hasn't existed in 15 years, and even then the game itself is an infringement of WarnerMedia's rights. I can take the posts down though, there was just so much bad art to choose from.
 
It's an offshoot of the sexy art thread. See here. Pulsar Games hasn't existed in 15 years, and even then the game itself is an infringement of WarnerMedia's rights. I can take the posts down though, there was just so much bad art to choose from.
I don't mean the posts are, I mean the book cover is. How on earth did they not get sued?

or did they, and that's why that game company is defunct?

And I was just confused. There was like, no context.

I'm also confused about all the "warning! warning!" stuff.
 
Sued for what?
Putting obvious copyrighted characters on a product to be sold? At the very least, that Terminator is in no way altered from its original source material.

The ninja guy looks enough like Snake Eyes to probably be infringing too.
 
I don't mean the posts are, I mean the book cover is. How on earth did they not get sued?

or did they, and that's why that game company is defunct?

And I was just confused. There was like, no context.

I'm also confused about all the "warning! warning!" stuff.


heh the context is in the other thread we were talking about "hack artwork", and I brought up Blood of Heroes as the biggest offender I knew, to which Endless expressed his enthusiastic agreement. Some who hadnt seenthe artwork askedif it was really that bad, I believe the phrase "it will make your eyes bleed" was mentioned. I tried googling some pics, but couldnt find any, but Apparition said he owned a copy and offered to scan some pics, which brings us here...

As for how they didnt get sued for the cover...well, I think they just flew under the radar and lost the license to the system pretty quick once it was discovered Mayfair didnt own it.
 
I don't mean the posts are, I mean the book cover is. How on earth did they not get sued?

or did they, and that's why that game company is defunct?

And I was just confused. There was like, no context.

I'm also confused about all the "warning! warning!" stuff.

As Tristram said, some people in the sexy art thread wanted examples of Blood of Heroes' artwork. I didn't want to overwhelm or threadjack the original thread, so I made a new one. And the artwork is so terrible that it deserves warnings.

The cover is the game's best artwork by far. It is also far from being the only infringing piece. Pages 232 through 345 are all about the Blood of Heroes "universe." Think about an incredibly fanboyish hack of the '90s Marvel and Image comic books, filled with anti-heroes galore who love their guns. One of the NPCs is an anti-hero who has super-regeneration and can heal himself really, really quickly. He has a Japanese background, studied Japanese martial arts, is a loner with a mean temper, and was altered in a secret military experiment. That secret military experiment? It gave him metallic claws. But he's totally not Wolverine you see, because in addition to the loner anti-hero attitude, the mean temper, the super-regeneration and healing, the Japanese martial arts, and the metallic claws, he can also throw acid-tipped darts from his body. See? Totally not Wolverine.
 
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The funny part is that these are supers. It's kinda hard to tell whether the misshapen bodies aren't a result of partial Growth power, or some Withering power, or stuff:smile:!

One of the NPCs is an anti-hero who has super-regeneration and can heal himself really, really quickly. He has a Japanese background, studied Japanese martial arts, is a loner with a mean temper, and was altered in a secret military experiment. That secret military experiment? It gave him metallic claws. But he's totally not Wolverine you see, because in addition to the loner anti-hero attitude, the mean temper, the super-regeneration and healing, the Japanese martial arts, and the metallic claws, he can also throw acid-tipped darts from his body. See? Totally not Wolverine.
They should've made him a master of Indonesian Silat, or Muay Thai. The way it is, they just missed an opportunity to have him cursing his enemies by the wrath of Shiva would have actually helped their case:wink:!
 
Sometimes I think I would derive some perverse pleasure out of running a superhero game where everyone is playing horrible cliché-ridden early '90s Image-type ripoff superheroes. For the laughs, but played utterly straight.
 
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I had this game years ago. I remember the rules telling you to make characters within certain point ranges (or something to that effect), but all the characters in the book were so far out of that range.
 
I had this game years ago. I remember the rules telling you to make characters within certain point ranges (or something to that effect), but all the characters in the book were so far out of that range.
Yep, the recommended number of points you get to build your character were several orders of magnitude fewer than those required to make any of the characters in the setting section. But that's mostly true of DC Heroes as well.
 
The review I found says the system is actually a good one. The artwork does indeed leave a lot to be desired, though, and the game seems to be unavailable.
I guess I'd stick to BASH or something else, if I ever decide to run superheroes!
 
Sometimes I think I would derive some perverse pleasure out of running a superhero game where everyone is playing horrible cliché-ridden early '90s Image-type ripoff superheroes. For the laughs, buy played utterly straight.

It's about the only way I could play Cold Steel Wardens, a game with all the 90s super hero tropes.
 
The review I found says the system is actually a good one. The artwork does indeed leave a lot to be desired, though, and the game seems to be unavailable.
I guess I'd stick to BASH or something else, if I ever decide to run superheroes!

The best version of DC Heroes is the second edition boxed set with Superman and Batman on the cover. It’s my favorite boxed set of any RPG. I’ve got three of them because I love it so much.
 
The review I found says the system is actually a good one. The artwork does indeed leave a lot to be desired, though, and the game seems to be unavailable.
I guess I'd stick to BASH or something else, if I ever decide to run superheroes!

Blood of Heroes RPG is based on the third edition of the DC Heroes RPG. It's essentially DC Heroes RPG 3E with expanded magic rules (because magic features prominently in the BoH setting), and a couple of additional powers and minor tweaks. The rules themselves are fantastic. It's easily the best super-hero RPG of all time IMO. What seriously drags Blood of Heroes down are the atrocious artwork, the '90s Marvel and Image fanboy homebrew setting, and... well... the fact that the game illegally used the DC Heroes/MEGS system.

I've learned to overlook the artwork and the setting over the years because Blood of Heroes: Special Edition contains the most recent and comprehensive DC Heroes/MEGS system rules. But I can understand how others can't.
 
They should have asked Ray Winninger before they did so. He would have told them to get a lawyer to make sure. The copyright says DC Comics in the boxed sets. There was no exemption for the system, contrary to what even Greg Gorden thought, as far as I know.
 
The best version of DC Heroes is the second edition boxed set with Superman and Batman on the cover. It’s my favorite boxed set of any RPG. I’ve got three of them because I love it so much.

Yeah, after starting a DC Heroes game early this year, I had BoH, and it does have all of the rules and is great for that, but I loved the game I was in so much I picked up 1st, 2nd & 3rd edition of DC Heroes (plus "Night in Gotham", because I was digging some of the "Super Hero Sandbox" stuff in it). Just layout-wise, and for looking nice, I agree that the 2e set rules the roost. 3e is totally fine, but somehow doesn't feel as special. For those unfamiliar with the game, 2nd, 3rd & Blood of Heroes are all compatible with each other and you could have different players using different books and only rarely need to clarify if you were using this rule or that. Given the similarities in content, the different editions (including BoH) are an interesting study in the power of art, layout & presentation to bring a game together.
 
I'm going to be the contrarian and say I wouldn't have a problem with most of this art. It ticks all my boxes - clean lines, dynamic, setting-appropriate. Some of the proportions are wonky, but I've seen worse in actual comic titles that have been in production for half a century. And some of them have that just-joined-art-school sense about them, but I've read a lot of those comics too. Probably the worst contender is that muddy image with the coffee lover dramatically clutching a waiter around the shoulders one-handed. The size disparity could be intentional, but I don't like the heavy pencil on everything.
 
I mean, different strokes for different folks and all, but I just couldnt stand to look at this book. IIRC I turned it into a used bookstore, and picked up the Batman RPG in its stead (which was a stripped down version of the DCH system).
 
I played MEGs and sad to say bought the BOH core the art was a real turn off for myself coming from the DC superhero rpg. It's strange yet BOH came out at a time where for some strange reason too many rpg designers thought that enough of the fanbase wanted to play moody, grim, dark, superheroes. It's not to say that some that play rpgs are not interested. Just that the majority want to play four color happy relatively problem free superheroes.
 
I mean, different strokes for different folks and all, but I just couldnt stand to look at this book. IIRC I turned it into a used bookstore, and picked up the Batman RPG in its stead (which was a stripped down version of the DCH system).
I wouldn't call it stripped down given the only things missing are the rules on Subplots, which you don't really need to run a game, and Acrobatics as a skill (which they probably felt was redundant in the Batman setting where everyone has it as a matter of course so why not just roll in into Dexterity), while it added Advantages and Drawbacks. You could actually call it a step forward as it was an early peek at what came with the 2nd edition of DC Heroes.
 
Wait, this is Blood of Heroes: Special Edition? Wasn't that the one with the "improved" art? We need to see the original edition from 1998. The art was worse by all reports.
 
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