A DC Heroes RPG Retrospective!

Best Selling RPGs - Available Now @ DriveThruRPG.com
Question: are the Action and Result Tables the same across editions?
 
So what was the big issue people had with the Gadget rules in 1st? And, more broadly, how did 2nd improve on 1st?

I can expand on this if you like, but gadgets cost too much in first edition. This was fixed in second. The other thing was that every gadget had two stats called uses and duration. It was ok for things like guns that have ammo and what not, but for something like a fork (old DCH joke), uses and duration don’t make sense. These were eliminated in second edition.
 
I can expand on this if you like, but gadgets cost too much in first edition. This was fixed in second. The other thing was that every gadget had two stats called uses and duration. It was ok for things like guns that have ammo and what not, but for something like a fork (old DCH joke), uses and duration don’t make sense. These were eliminated in second edition.
BRB gotta stat out some vibrators
 
A query that was prompted by the new Marvel RPG thread:

Why haven't we got a reissue or new DC rpg? I know the DC movies have sometime laboured in the shadow of the MCU but the Snyder fans are enthusiastic (to say the least) and of course the Batman films, first Wonder Woman and even Aquaman for christ's sake have been big hits.

Why no rpg? The usual lack of interest by the corporate types in the small fry $ to be made in rpgs? Some other license or copyright issues? Too nerdy for the Snyder fanatics?

I picked up the reissued Watchman DCH book that came out as the same time as the (excellent btw) HBO tv series but that seems to have been a one-off oddly.

Anything in the works I'm not aware of?
 
A query that was prompted by the new Marvel RPG thread:

Why haven't we got a reissue or new DC rpg? I know the DC movies have sometime laboured in the shadow of the MCU but the Snyder fans are enthusiastic (to say the least) and of course the Batman films, first Wonder Woman and even Aquaman for christ's sake have been big hits.

Why no rpg? The usual lack of interest by the corporate types in the small fry $ to be made in rpgs? Some other license or copyright issues? Too nerdy for the Snyder fanatics?

I picked up the reissued Watchman DCH book that came out as the same time as the (excellent btw) HBO tv series but that seems to have been a one-off oddly.

Anything in the works I'm not aware of?


Basically, the rights to the MEG system are a massive mess from what I understand, the last DC game was a variant of Mutants and Masterminds. I suspect it didn't do well enough to make the big mega-corp that Warner is, interested enough to do it again.
 
Only a d20 Batman RPG by Monolith is in the works. It will not be a patch on the glorious Mayfair game, but it might find a few fans.
 
Basically, the rights to the MEG system are a massive mess from what I understand.
It’s always been owned by DC. Whatever deals were made between Mayfair and Pulsar Games back in the 90s were in error. Ray Winninger confirmed it years ago on the DCH Yahoo mailing list.
 
Only a d20 Batman RPG by Monolith is in the works. It will not be a patch on the glorious Mayfair game, but it might find a few fans.

We need to convince David Zaslav that The Flash bombed because there was no rpg associated with it.

With an rpg it would have added an extra $100M to the box office, easy.
 
It’s always been owned by DC. Whatever deals were made between Mayfair and Pulsar Games back in the 90s were in error. Ray Winninger confirmed it years ago on the DCH Yahoo mailing list.
I hadn't heard they were truly clear on it.
 
I doubt Warner Bros. Discovery would be interested. David Zaslav is a notorious penny pincher, and tabletop RPGs just don't bring in money. Rumor on the street is that originally, the upcoming Superman: Legacy film was going to just feature Superman as a reboot of the DC cinematic universe, but David Zaslav ordered James Gunn to throw in as many other DC Comics super-heroes as he can in order to "feature" DC Comics, in hopes of selling DC Comics (or rather, the IP) off. True? Who knows. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
 
I hadn't heard they were truly clear on it.
This is from the Read Me First booklet in second edition. It seems pretty clear to me. I think the confusion might be what Mayfair is licensing. It’s not the characters, it’s the game itself.

190ED191-B183-4427-94ED-88F353B41E2B.jpeg
 
I mentioned earlier in the thread ( a few years ago) I was a fan of the game. Started with 1e the day it hit the shelves and it replaced Marvel as our go to game (though we couldn't drop marvel completely, it's just that good of a game).
IMG-20230725-110847.jpg

DCH 3e. Bland on the eye, 30 years out of print this year. Forgotten by DC but not by the fans (the facebook group is quite active as is the mailing list)

IMG-20230725-110900.jpg

This is what happens when you take a hairdryer to a book...

IMG-20230725-110914.jpg

...and scan it then clean up and fix the scan to print it and bind it into a hardback book. But there is still a problem. Same book, still bland to look at.

IMG-20230725-110925.jpg

So I took every individual page, added colour border and art and wrote a few of the tables (including the main ones) out by hand. It was an experiment. As you can see new front (and back) cover.

IMG-20230725-110944.jpg

As a prototype/experiment I expected it wouldn't be perfect.

IMG-20230725-110948.jpg

Those grey boxes don't scan well and no amount of cleaning up would fix them.

IMG-20230725-110950.jpg

Purely on the mechanical side of things, I didn't make the gutter quite wide enough. That is a simple fix though.

IMG-20230725-110956.jpg

Some of the colours are far too bright and that's another easy fix. I was kinda limited because the white text prevents using brighter colours and running out of dark different shades of colour that look too similar to other chapters, hence the 'my eyes!' colours.

IMG-20230725-110959.jpg

At this moment in time, it's just a scan for personal use. Ray Winninger on the group commented that 'for personal use it's ok' and I suppose he's more of an authority than most.

IMG-20230725-111001.jpg

Obviously I'm not willing/prepared/able to take on the legal department (of anyone). These days you need to pay X amount just to fight a case, so most would be won by the guy with the bigger wallet. Something like this could never be sold.

IMG-20230725-111002.jpg

..but ( I spoke to the guys who scanned and host the Marvel PDFs for the last however many years) they can get around it (it helps to stay below the radar and not hold a neon sign saying 'get your out of print unofficial PDFs here!') by posting it as fan work and for education, not for sale, not challenging any copyright and so on. So far it has worked for them with disclaimers on the site.

But there is another problem.

IMG-20230725-111015.jpg

My eyes aren't getting any better with age. So, rather than update a scanned book with different art/writing out the grey boxes/tweaking the border/fixing the gutter etc...

IMG-20230725-110930.jpg

The whole thing is getting laid out from scratch. It's a lot of work but there's no time limit on completion. It would be nice to finish it as a '30th anniversary' edition but real life, work, kids, other stuff tend to have a say in that. The split the book to finished hardback colour on every page took two weeks start to finish. In that time I had to work, eat, sleep etc so I guess it took 30-35 hours all in. Six hours of that was spent printing by hand (my laser printer doesn't do borderless printing. The inkjet does but needs flipping by hand).

IMG-20230725-110934.jpg

This is not the final look. Border is changing from this (or being dropped), layout will alter dramatically because (the fix to the problem above) there will be a bigger font. I haven't decided which font yet but it's looking like 11 point Arial or Souvenir or Garamond or another I haven't decided on. Only when the font is decided can the work start (as it affects the layout on every page - you can just select all and change font but it will mess everything up massively).

No plans to change anything but the temptation is strong to update the character writeups and change some of the era specific stuff like costs and so on. 1993 was a long time ago after all and the world has changed a lot. The original book refers to 'he/him' a lot and I suppose it's easy enough to change to 'they/them' to be gender neutral. The problem with changing anything is that it's one persons take on things and not everyone agrees. The best solution would be for someone to get DCs consent and put out a new official updated version. Kickstart it to gauge interest. Update the adventures (some are great, some are shite) and of course the stats need tweaking (in some cases a lot) because DC keeps rebooting everything.

There is also a retro clone in the works. It will be kickstarted and looks similar to the original game but uses D12s. I've been using D12s in my game a fair bit (years) longer and it works. Of course I also ditched the original table and replaced it with a formula/a few columns of info and that works too. I suppose I'm biased saying 'it works' but I've been running the game since 85 or whenever and know what works/what needs fixing from a personal point of view on this game more than any other. Your opinion may vary of course and you can't please all the people all the time.

The gadget rules still make me grimace.
 
with DCH I wish there was a way to combine the presentation of 2e, the art from 1e, and the rules from 3e.
Not only do I agree with you but I figured breaking the book into several (character design, the DC universe, the rules, character handbook) smaller books would be easier to do. I was already psyching myself up to tackle one chapter at a time so as not to get overwhelmed but more and more as I get older I shy away from bullet stoppers, plus from a binding point of view it just makes sense. I also have the resources required to print and bind softcover books too (to about 30-35 sheets of paper - not sure the stapler will go through anything thicker). It's ages since I've done one but I may have a go.

If only someone doing such a project was also a fan of old school art from 1e...

jla-blank.png


:heart: *sigh* Clean, crisp, even Batman smiles a lot. Of course it doesn't reflect modern costumes or values (Batman and Superman underpants on the outside??? Shock horror.) so the finished article would have a mix of art from different eras and a note in the front stating why (along with a summary of any other changes).
 
Love that rescan / reboot Jenx.
Bit of trivia: I owned the first boxed set 2nd Edition in the UK. Back in 1990 I phoned Mayfair offices (Ray Winninger answered the phone) and I asked if I could get an advance copy as I was going to run the game for a gaming group. They offered to pay half the shipping and it arrived a few weeks later. I never got to run the game at all, but I had a lot of fun collecting it, statting characters and reading it over the years.

In case this wasn't mentioned earlier, there's a great site that has the most extensive qualitative collection of DC Heroes writeups:


Enjoy.
 
Just finished reading this tour de force thread. A question pops to mind: can you run 1e adventures with 3e/BoH? (the core rules I own).

I know a lot of those aren't particularly good but I still like to work from a prewritten adventure if I can. Even if I wind up rewriting mostly everything.
 
Last edited:
Just finished reading this tour de force thread. A question pops to mind: can you run 1e adventures with 3e/BoH? (the core rules I own).

I know a lot of those aren't particularly good but I still like to work from a prewritten adventure if I can. Even if I wind out rewriting mostly everything.

The attributes are all the same. Combat and actions are pretty much unchanged. There are some new powers in later additions, but the older powers listed for any characters are mostly unchanged (the point costs for powers and skills change a lot from 1st edition, but that shouldn't affect actual play). The main difference between editions is Gadgetry, which pretty much works differently in every edition.
 
Just finished reading this tour de force thread. A question pops to mind: can you run 1e adventures with 3e/BoH? (the core rules I own).

I know a lot of those aren't particularly good but I still like to work from a prewritten adventure if I can. Even if I wind up rewriting mostly everything.
Yeah you can pretty easily. First edition doesn’t have the advantages and drawbacks but that’s a minor thing really.
 
I managed to snag a “fresh” copy of the 1e Batman Sourcebook for a few shillings. This is pre-Crisis and has artwork by Adams, Aparo, Rogers and other DC giants! I bought my first copy when I was like 12 and loved it. Highly recommended even if you don’t play the game but love the 1970s era of the Caped Crusader.

729ED779-24AA-4800-BDF7-B7CCD7713159.jpeg
 
These were the advertisements that Mayfair would slip in the pages of their products. An interesting artifact of the times. The beautiful Garcia-Lopez art makes it pop. This ad was made in 1988 and the original publication date for this book was 1985, so they printed this book during the whole first edition run.

E26B8C28-DE47-4A2E-B472-9E87210873D4.jpeg

A year’s subscription to DC’s most popular comics for $9. Now you know we are back in time!

877AC114-DCCF-4D30-B0F6-85D0FC3BD213.jpeg

Mayfair really went all-out with DCH right out of the gate. A ton of supplements, including sourcebooks and adventures, were provided.

94E1E6B8-2ED9-4C9B-A723-E5D19AAE338A.jpeg

They wanted to mention their other main RPG product, Role Aids, which seemed to sell well. Notice the “we’re the other company” line? A survey at the bottom to fill out and send back.

BDF7A93B-6EE5-4F43-83FB-8E66C652C9F5.jpeg
 
Last edited:
There are actually more sets of Gadgetry rules than there are editions:
  • 1st edition
  • The revised rules in the Superman Sourcebook
  • The Batman Role-Playing game, a precursor to the 2nd edition rules
  • 2nd edition
  • 3rd edition

plus additional notes in various sourcebooks, especially 2e.
 
My favorite thing about gadgets was the “takeaway” discount, meaning you didn’t pay as much for gadgets if the opponent can take them away from you. If your gadget was in all-caps, like Green Lantern’s POWER RING, it couldn’t be snatched away, but if it was in lower-case, like a Batarang, it could be stolen.
 
My favorite thing about gadgets was the “takeaway” discount, meaning you didn’t pay as much for gadgets if the opponent can take them away from you. If your gadget was in all-caps, like Green Lantern’s POWER RING, it couldn’t be snatched away, but if it was in lower-case, like a Batarang, it could be stolen.
Just like in Batman Returns where they make it look like The Batman killed the winter princess!
 
Banner: The best cosmic horror & Cthulhu Mythos @ DriveThruRPG.com
Back
Top