A DC Heroes RPG Retrospective!

[Endless Flight]

I never owned this, but reading that document you linked has me really nostalgic for my best friend and neighbor running it.

Ya know that was the other cool thing about 80s RPGs. Boxed sets sometimes had those introductory solo choose-your-own adventures that helped explain the mechanics of the game.

 

[Baulderstone]

Ya know that was the other cool thing about 80s RPGs. Boxed sets sometimes had those introductory solo choose-your-own adventures that helped explain the mechanics of the game.

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn had one of those, along with the maps and counters, which I still have.

 

[TristramEvans]

Anyone know what the legal status of these rules are these days?

Pulsar is long gone, and from what I understand they just licensed the system. I know Mayfair is still around making boardgames, but sold most of their rights to ICE in '97, but then ICE declared bankruptcy in 2000. So do they still reside with Mayfair, were they sold with ICE or what?

 

[Endless Flight]

DC Comics owns the game. Ray Winninger, who did a lot of work on the line, has basically said he is unsure that Mayfair ever actually owned the system itself and that they may have sold Pulsar rights they never had in the first place.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Yeah. IIRC, Pulsar Games went bankrupt I want to say around 2004, and was in the process of being purchased by a small collective of fans from the DC Heroes mailing list. However, during the bankruptcy/sale proceedings it was discovered that Warner Bros./DC Comics owns the MEGS system behind DC Heroes RPG/Blood of Heroes RPG lock, stock, and barrel and that Mayfair Games had no right to license the system to Pulsar Games. Since then, it's been dead. I would be surprised if Warner Bros./DC Comics even realizes that they own a RPG system, and even more surprised if they ever do anything with it again.

 

[Endless Flight]

That's one of those things that baffles me. DC has a perfectly acceptable (and legendary) house system they already own and they sell the rights to the RPG to Green Ronin to do a Mutants & Masterminds conversion? I think the d20 version is OK but it pales in comparison (IMO) to MEGS in every way.

The thing about the copyright is, if you open any of the original RPG products, it clearly states "© DC Comics". I'm not sure what the confusion was about.

 

[TristramEvans]

Thats a shame, means we'll never see the like again. At least its pretty easy to find secondhand still.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

That's one of those things that baffles me. DC has a perfectly acceptable (and legendary) house system they already own and they sell the rights to the RPG to Green Ronin to do a Mutants & Masterminds conversion? I think the d20 version is OK but it pales in comparison (IMO) to MEGS in every way.

The thing about the copyright is, if you open any of the original RPG products, it clearly states "© DC Comics". I'm not sure what the confusion was about.

Like I said, I highly doubt that DC Comics is even aware that they own MEGS/DC Heroes. Even if they are, they probably figured that tabletop RPGs are too small potatoes for them to get personally involved with these days, so why not outsource it to some shmuck willing to throw them money for the license?

I have no idea where the confusion was either. I can only assume that someone in Mayfair assumed that that copyright gave DC Comics the rights to the DC Heroes trademarks and IP, but here's someone willing to give us a little bit of money for a game system we no longer use... eh, why not?

Thats a shame, means we'll never see the like again. At least its pretty easy to find secondhand still.

Yeah, I'm tempted to buy a third copy of that Blood of Heroes: SE from Amazon while I still can...

 

[TristramEvans]

Does a site exist for DCH like ClassicMarvelForever or StarFrontiers.com?

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Sort of. Writeups.org is a database of fictional characters from all genres and mediums statted for DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes. There's also a few technical articles there as well. Other than that, all I'm aware of is the still existing DC Heroes mailing list, but the traffic there has slowed to a trickle over the years.

 

[Endless Flight]

I have always been a big fan of Batman Beyond and I thought I'd share a write-up I did for my blog as well. This is Terry McGinnis as Batman during the three seasons of the cartoon. There is an episode of Justice League Unlimited ("Epilogue") which shows Terry in his early 30s, but I haven't approached that write-up yet. Enjoy!



Batman Beyond
Dex: 07 Str: 04 Body: 05
Int: 07 Will: 07 Mind: 07
Inf: 08 Aura: 08 Spirit: 08
Initiative: 29 Hero Points: 100

Skills: Acrobatics: 07*, Charisma: 08*, Detective: 07*, Gadgetry: 07*, Martial Artist: 07*, Scientist: 07*, Thief: 07*, Vehicles: 07*, Weaponry: 07*
Advantages: Area Knowledge (Gotham City); Buddy (Max Gibson); Connection: Arkham Asylum (High), Gotham State Prison (High), Gotham City Police Department (High), Gotham State University (High), Justice League (High), Street (High), Superman (High); Headquarters (Bat-Cave); Intensive Training; Iron Nerves; Leadership; Lightning Reflexes; Rich Friend (Bruce Wayne); Sharp Eye
Drawbacks: Secret Identity
Equipment:
• BAT-SUIT [DEX: 11, STR: 08, BODY: 09; Claws: 08, Cling: 08, Cold Immunity: 08, Directional Hearing: 04, Extended Hearing: 04, Flame Immunity: 08, Flight: 06, Gliding: 04, Invisibility: 06, Lightning: 08, Projectile Weapons: 06, Radio Communications: 10, Sealed Systems: 08, Skin Armor: 04, Snare: 08, Super Hearing: 04, Telescopic Vision: 04, Thermal Vision: 08, Ultra Vision: 08; Limitations: Lightning limited to range of Touch, Cling only works on metal surfaces, the Bat-Suit can be deactivated by the Batcomputer; R#2]
• Batmobile [STR: 10, BODY: 12, INT: 06, Cling: 08, Flight: 10, Fog: 08, Heat Vision: 08, Invisibility: 06, Lightning: 08, Projectile Weapons: 08, Radar Sense: 08, Vehicles (Air): 06*, R#2]
• Batarangs (x8) [STR: 07, BODY: 08, EV: 03, Gliding: 02]
• Flash-Bang Grenades [BODY: 01, EV: 06, Flash: 08]
• Bat-Smoke Pellets [BODY: 01, Fog: 12]
• Flexicuffs [STR: 08, BODY: 08]
• Belt Buckle Saw [BODY: 08, EV: 06]
• 6 8-AP ABC Omni-Gadgets
Alter Ego: Terry McGinnis
Motivation: Seeking Justice
Occupation: Assistant to Bruce Wayne
Wealth: 06

 

[Dumarest]

I particularly liked the fact that your "disadvantages" gave you Hero Points during play by having them triggered.

Minor point but no, they didn't; they gave you points up front to spend when creating your hero.

 

[Dumarest]

Batman has a superpower just called "I'm Batman", which means he's basically as badass as any story needs him to be

Also known as "Superman, Green Lantern, and Flash will conveniently forget their vast arrays of powers and tricks as needed by a writer fixated on making Batman look badass."

 

[deleriad]

Minor point but no, they didn't; they gave you points up front to spend when creating your hero.

I guess it's been a while. I seem to have sub-plots and vulnerabilities confused.

 

[Ghost Whistler]

I loved 1e. The box was overflowing with good stuff; books, gm screen, cards, dice, stuff.

Until my 16yo self leant it to some fucker who never returned it.

 

[Caesar Slaad]

DC Heroes supplanted FASERIP in our group as the supers game of choice. We even converted all our characters.

There were a bunch of small reasons, but one of the big ones was the benchmark table. It made it super easy to visualize actions, quantify what moves they could do (my hero can lift an aircraft carrier, etc.) A perfect gaming drug for young geeks of the sort who devoured all the Who's Who and Guides to the Marvel universe. Other reasons... I always thought that the pushing mechanic was a lot of fun. Though GMing was at times a bit like chasing a flailing fire hose.

 

[Caesar Slaad]

I guess it's been a while. I seem to have sub-plots and vulnerabilities confused.

By 2nd edition, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and subplots were all part of the system, and work in different ways. Though some see subplots as a bit ahead of its time, and you’ll find references to it online as rules to steal for later RPGs.

That reminds me -one thing I didn’t like: I didn’t like that points to boost your rolls and advance your character were in the same pool. When I GMed it, I made the characters split their point rewards.

 

[Dumarest]

...one thing I didn’t like: I didn’t like that points to boost your rolls and advance your character were in the same pool.

That's one of my favorite things about it. I liked that you'd have to sometimes sacrifice for that incredibly heroic feat.

 

[Endless Flight]

I really dislike strong advancement in supers games, unless we are talking about Teen Titans-age characters. It's the biggest flaw of Mutants & Masterminds, the way character's ratchet up in power level over a relatively short amount of time.

 

[Baulderstone]

I really dislike strong advancement in supers games, unless we are talking about Teen Titans-age characters. It's the biggest flaw of Mutants & Masterminds, the way character's ratchet up in power level over a relatively short amount of time.

It's the counterpoint to the post I just made in another thread about how RPG advancement feels natural in wuxia games. I've always found it feels weird in superhero games.

 

[Dumarest]

It's the counterpoint to the post I just made in another thread about how RPG advancement feels natural in wuxia games. I've always found it feels weird in superhero games.

Me too...only Batman or Iron Man types really change much and that's just the different equipment they might create with their Hero Points. Aside from that, juveniles improving as they mature works for me, too. Maybe a crazy radiation accident or fluke altering your powers. But mostly super heroes are pretty static. Hero Points are a great way to explain away those comics where a character somehow lifts more than he ought to, or runs faster than he's supposed to be able to, because of the extra-heroic effort being made.

(Even though I HATE HATE HATE Crisis On Infinite Earths!)

 

[Caesar Slaad]

While I concur that many comics don't have much in the way of advancement... many do. I see many instances of:
- Groups train together to learn how to fight (LSH, Young Justice)
- New heroes "feeling out" their powers
- Gadgeteer heroes building the mark X, Y, and Z armor
- Learning special techniques to let them content with their adversaries (X-men learning psychic resistance)

So yeah, given 1) the convention and necessity in RPGs for advancement, and 2) enough of a presence in comics, I'm okay with advancement in supers RPGs.

 

[Dumarest]

While I concur that many comics don't have much in the way of advancement... many do. I see many instances of:
- Groups train together to learn how to fight (LSH, Young Justice)
- New heroes "feeling out" their powers
- Gadgeteer heroes building the mark X, Y, and Z armor
- Learning special techniques to let them content with their adversaries (X-men learning psychic resistance)

So yeah, given 1) the convention and necessity in RPGs for advancement, and 2) enough of a presence in comics, I'm okay with advancement in supers RPGs.

I'd say those are all true but also add that all those characters generally reach a plateau and then barely ever change, if at all, aside from getting new gadgets like I mentioned earlier for Batman and Iron Man types. So for the early months of a game it would be easy to rationalize some changes and improvements, which nicely corresponds to the relatively cheap cost to improve at the lower power levels and the increasingly greater cost later on. Works for me.

 

[The Butcher]

Perhaps a Traveller-like, non-XP-counting system for development would be the ideal choice for most supers.

Want to increase a skill? Allocate time for training (bluebooking?).

Want a new gadget? Build it yourself.

Your magician needs a new spell? Quest for it in another world.

 

[tenbones]

Disagree all you like; the mechanics of the game system itself contradict you. The default score for a human is 2 APs in everything. Maximum human strength is 6 APs, physical damage capacity is 6 APs. The mental and mystical stats top out around 10-12 APs for humans, but the action charts step up by increments of two. There's no mechanical difference between an attribute of 3 and an attribute of 4. The "official" writeups for the Batman family have Attribute APs in the range of 4-6, some as high as 8. That's a whopping two or three incremental steps between the average pedestrian and Nightwing.

That the DC Heroes game has low resolution down at that end of the scale is a well-known complaint about the system. There's a reason Underground chose 1.25 as its log base instead of 2.

 

[Ghost Whistler]

If i knew where that fucker lived, I'd break in and steal my copy back
It's that good.

Nostalgia...

 

[Endless Flight]

Thank you for resurrecting this thread. I am thinking of adding some more thoughts on onto my original love letter.

 

[Baulderstone]

Harsh criticism. I remember when I used to play DC Heroes, not a session went by that someone didn't complain about the lack of mechanical granularity that random pedestrians had in the game.

 

[tenbones]

Harsh criticism. I remember when I used to play DC Heroes, not a session went by that someone didn't complain about the lack of mechanical granularity that random pedestrians had in the game.

Totally not going to argue that. Like Tristram - it's why I use classic FASERIP for my supers-needs.I think it handles things with more fidelity to my various tastes.

 

[Dumarest]

Harsh criticism. I remember when I used to play DC Heroes, not a session went by that someone didn't complain about the lack of mechanical granularity that random pedestrians had in the game.

That's why we should all use Champions so we can decide if Jimmy Olsen has STR of 8 and Lois Lane STR of 9 or the other way around. We also need all those in-between levels of STR and DEX that no one ever bought because of rounding up.

 

[deleriad]

By 2nd edition, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, and subplots were all part of the system, and work in different ways. Though some see subplots as a bit ahead of its time, and you’ll find references to it online as rules to steal for later RPGs.

That reminds me -one thing I didn’t like: I didn’t like that points to boost your rolls and advance your character were in the same pool. When I GMed it, I made the characters split their point rewards.

I never got past 1st edition. Bought it, converted my V&V campaign, and kept with it until the end.

I don't recall there being much character growth. I do remember Gravhawk (it was acceptable in the 80s) wanting to buy off his killing damage disadvantage and I think Captain Nando (really, it was the 80s) upgraded to flying from hovering but mostly the hero points got saved for emergencies.

 

[SavAce]

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that DC Heroes is a bit chunky at the normal human end of the scale, but on the other hand... human attributes falling into a 1-6 range... isn't that about the same as the Storyteller System where you get 1 to 5 dots, or something like the Silhouette system (Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles) with a -3 to +3 range, or even old school D&D or Traveller attribute modifiers? Even good ol' FASERIP Marvel has... (Let's count... Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent...) 5 attribute columns normal folks fall into.

I also get why a first impression based on the Action & Results tables might incline one to thinking a 3 & a 4 are mechanically identical, but the importance of pushing and Hero Points show the difference there, with the higher attribute needing to spend less to get bumped up a row. In all of the Resistance Attributes, they are also "Health", so each point in them matters too, regardless of the impression one might get from the Action & Result Tables. Each point of Acting Attribute contributes to Initiative, etc.

 

[Dumarest]

Want to increase a skill? Allocate time for training (bluebooking?).

Want a new gadget? Build it yourself.

Your magician needs a new spell? Quest for it in another world.

All of these would be covered by allocating Daily Utility Phases (DUPs) and explaining to your Scenario Supervisor how you are going about achieving your goal in Golden Heroes.
https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/lets...s-the-role-playing-game-of-super-heroes.1130/

 

[Rob Necronomicon]

I loved DC Heroes back in the day... Really simple but very innovative system. I've not seen anything quite like it since.

 

[Ghostwise]

I guess it's been a while. I seem to have sub-plots and vulnerabilities confused.

If you fuse these two DCH concepts, you get something very similar to the Complications in M&M 3rd, but with more granularity.

 

[Ghostwise]

I don't recall there being much character growth. I do remember Gravhawk (it was acceptable in the 80s) wanting to buy off his killing damage disadvantage and I think Captain Nando (really, it was the 80s) upgraded to flying from hovering but mostly the hero points got saved for emergencies.

The effective rate of advancement will depends on the inflow and outflow of Hero Points in the game. Thus, experience may vary widely from group to group or even player to player.

In some cases it is simpler to disconnect Hero Points from "experience points" in DC Heroes. If nothing else, that avoids complicated discussions about how quickly people are expected to spend HPs, and why Bob sucks because he hoards all his points for advancement and lets the rest of the Poughskeepie Avengers carry him.

 

[Ghostwise]

Sort of. Writeups.org is a database of fictional characters from all genres and mediums statted for DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes. There's also a few technical articles there as well.

76 technical articles as of current count, so "a few" might be underselling it.

Other than that, all I'm aware of is the still existing DC Heroes mailing list, but the traffic there has slowed to a trickle over the years.

About 90 messages/month this year, which is indeed under half of the 2016 volume. Of course, speaking as said community's Wise And Benevolent Janitor, this number would considerably increase if the people who love the game bothered to join and participate. :-)

There is also http://dcheroesrpg.wikia.com/wiki/DC_Heroes_RPG_Wiki, mas este site é em português. And Siskoid has a podcast.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

76 technical articles as of current count, so "a few" might be underselling it.

I didn't realize it was that many, nice. For some reason I was thinking about a dozen or so.

About 90 messages/month this year, which is indeed under half of the 2016 volume. Of course, speaking as said community's Wise And Benevolent Janitor, this number would considerably increase if the people who love the game bothered to join and participate. :-)

There is also http://dcheroesrpg.wikia.com/wiki/DC_Heroes_RPG_Wiki, mas este site é em português. And Siskoid has a podcast.

I didn't know about the podcast, thanks.

As for the mailing list... Honestly, it would help to get new blood by moving it off of Yahoo!/Oath/whatever the Heck Verizon is calling it these days. Last time I checked, it is still possible to subscribe to the mailing list without a Yahoo!/Oath account, but that option was well hidden. However, it's been a few years since I last looked so perhaps things have changed. In any case, I realize that moving the DC Heroes mailing list off of Yahoo!/Oath would be a large task and probably not worth it for the people already involved.

 

[Ghostwise]

I didn't realize it was that many, nice. For some reason I was thinking about a dozen or so.

We've been historically reluctant to publish this sort of stuff because we get self-conscious about the fact we can't thoroughly play-test everything anymore. So that likely explains your impression.

In any case, I realize that moving the DC Heroes mailing list off of Yahoo!/Oath would be a large task and probably not worth it for the people already involved.

There's something called groups.io that we have been considering, which would make the operation fairly easy. When/if the guys at Oath reveal themselves to have been Hydra all along, we'll likely make the switch.

But yeah, that's understandable. The DCH community is 23+ years old, so there's always bits of crust like that accumulate under the carpets. Such as still operating on an online groups solution that hasn't been cool since, what, 2006 ? :-)

 

[Endless Flight]

I enjoyed reading Ray Winninger’s thoughts on the mailing list. Always great to get inside info from someone who was “there”.