A to Z 10 Year Update: D is for DC Heroes

This post has been updated since it was originally published on April 4, 2012.

A to Z 2012: Gaming in the 1980s

DC Heroes 

I have been a fan of supers gaming ever since I picked up the Villains & Vigilantes 2nd Edition boxed set in the early 80's.  From that game, several of us tried out Marvel Super Heroes from TSR and Heroes Unlimited from Palladium Books.  One summer I ran across the first edition of DC Heroes in the local game shop.  It seemed like an obvious purchase since many of us were avid readers of several of the DC titles; plus, Green Lantern will always be my favorite super hero of all time.  I figured any game that had Green Lantern included in the universe and available for play should be a must have for me.  Besides, maybe the system would be easy to translate back and forth between this system and the one used in the Marvel game.  We had plans for the ultimate crossovers and battles between the universes but the systems were not compatible at all.  

If we would have put a little more effort into it, I now believe the systems could have been converted between with just a little more patience.  Marvel had ranks and DC had APs and a reasonable approximation between the two systems could have been worked out.  The question is if the power level from one system to the other would have been an easy match.  That would have most likely been the most challenging part of the conversion.

I was a little concerned with the price but then I opened the box and was pretty much blown away.  There were three booklets (a Players Manual, a Game Masters manual, and a Skills & Powers manual if I recall correctly), a GMs screen, and a boatload of character cards that served as miniature character sheets for many of the most popular and some of the more obscure figures in the DC universe. 

One of my favorite sections of the rules was the designer notes appendix.  If I recall correctly, it talked about acquiring the license, several failed attempts at starting the design, and how the designer came upon the AP concept and how the design team reached several crucial decisions. A section similar to this used to be a common thing among wargames and some early role-playing games.  I always enjoy reading about the design process and I feel that modern games should include a similar section.

There were several of us that were pretty excited to get home and play this one.  I have to admit that most of us were a little intimidated by the way the rules were presented.  There were some areas that were super easy to grasp but some of the other areas left us somewhat confused.  It didn't seem to me that you could do a proper gadgeteer under the rules because every invention had charges associated with their use, the powers were somewhat specialized to a DC exclusive outlook with custom names instead of general names, and the fact that we were somewhat confused by the rules at the time.  An older brother helped us tremendously with the rules but we got the idea that DC Heroes was more about playing established super hero characters rather than your own creations so we did not play it much. 

I have heard that there were two other editions of DC Heroes published that cleaned up some of the problems and issues from that first edition.  It seems there is also a legacy product called Blood of Heroes that made further revisions and additions to the rules.  Maybe I could look that up sometime and give the game another spin?

I never did buy any of these products.  I've lost a few auctions for the 2nd edition of DC Heroes over the years.  Someone keeps coming in and outbidding me by a substantial amount.  I hear this is the "definitive version" of the Mayfair editions of the game so I will eventually get it at some point.  I have seen two or three copies of Blood of Heroes at a local used bookstore.  I saw it often enough that I would skip it when I found something else because "it hasn't been bought yet" until it was bought and I haven't been able to find it since.  Lesson learned.  I'll add it to the list.

D is for DC Heroes

***********Just for the sake of clarity - the theme for my A to Z postings is gaming in the 1980's with my friends.*************

DC Heroes 

I have been a fan of supers gaming ever since I picked up the Villains & Vigilantes 2nd Edition boxed set in the early 80's.  From that game, several of us tried out Marvel Super Heroes from TSR and Heroes Unlimited from Palladium Books.  One summer I ran across the first edition of DC Heroes in the local game shop.  It seemed like an obvious purchase since many of us were avid readers of several of the DC titles; plus, Green Lantern will always be my favorite super hero of all time.  I figured any game that had Green Lantern included in the universe and available for play should be a must have for me.  Besides, maybe the system would be easy to translate back and forth between this system and the one used in the Marvel game.  We had plans for the ultimate crossovers and battles between the universes but the systems were not compatible at all.

   

 I was a little concerned with the price but then I opened the box and was pretty much blown away.  There were three booklets (a Players Manual, a Game Masters manual, and a Skills & Powers manual if I recall correctly), a GMs screen, and a boatload of character cards that served as miniature character sheets for many of the most popular and some of the more obscure figures in the DC universe.

There were several of us that were pretty excited to get home and play this one.  I have to admit that most of us were a little intimidated by the way the rules were presented.  There were some areas that were super easy to grasp but some of the other areas left us somewhat confused.  It didn't seem to me that you could do a proper gadgeteer under the rules because every invention had charges associated with their use, the powers were somewhat specialized to a DC exclusive outlook with custom names instead of general names, and the fact that we were somewhat confused by the rules at the time.  An older brother helped us tremendously with the rules but we got the idea that DC Heroes was more about playing established super hero characters rather than your own creations so we did not play it much. 

I have heard that there were two other editions of DC Heroes published that cleaned up some of the problems and issues from that first edition.  It seems there is also a legacy product called Blood of Heroes that made further revisions and additions to the rules.  Maybe I could look that up sometime and give the game another spin?

[Old Gaming Notebook] A Supers Campaign

I have played several of the superhero role playing games that have been published over the years; including Marvel Super Heroes, DC Heroes, Villains & Vigilantes, Champions, Heroes Unlimited, Super World, and a few others. I always preferred the ones that used Earth as the setting for the game. I was also a big fan of the Wild Cards series of novels. I came up with an idea for a supers campaign but I never did get around to fleshing it out and running any games using it. There are probably some pretty close parallels between Wild Cards in some areas. It's been a while since I read those novels, so who knows? Anyway, here are some ideas for the campaign setting.

The Setting
The setting for this game would be a parallel planet Earth in "modern times". The timeline and history of this fictional Earth would parallel the history of real Earth in every detail up to approximately the Vietnam era. At that time, the U.S. government (and others) would start experimenting with creating super soldiers to send into combat. This event would be where the big differences between the parallel Earths would begin to take place. Note: If I were to do this today, I would change that part of the back story. I would start the super soldier experimentation with the terrorist attacks on North America. As a result of this experimentation, the rise of super beings would forever change the world. Some of these beings would fight on the side of good while some would fight on the side of evil. Imagine how the existence of super powered beings would effect history.

Three Generations of Supers
Campaigns could be set up in one of three basic points in history.

• The first generation of supers would be the result of the terrorist attacks on North America. Of course, I would probably change that to include the entire world. Maybe there were several countries working on a post-nuclear class of weapons. Among these scientists there was a group of radicals that wanted to prove a point. They set off these new weapons and the results are not completely as predicted. Some of the people caught in areas where these weapons were deployed develop super powers. These supers would be considered Altered or Mutated Humans.
• The second generation of supers would be from governmental experimentation. These would be supers that the government would "control" and be used to combat rogue supers and fight in conflicts. There would also be governments that have early technological designs to fight with or against supers. There would be Altered, Mutants, and some techno heroes in this part of the timeline.
• The third generation of supers would be the modern day of the setting. Supers are around due to the terrorist action, the reaction of the various governments, some of the descendants of the first or second generation supers have carried on the powers, and now there are supers due to weapons manufacturing corporations getting producing their own stuff.

Other Notes
I also thought that the tone and feel of the game could be enhanced by using quotes from appropriate sources to match the tone I wanted to get across. Maybe use a quote from the Bible such as Gen 1:26 " And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion..." at the beginning of the chapter detailing the history of the world.

I still need to figure out a way to bring in the other types of supers - aliens, cybernetic, magic, psionic, etc.

This is, obviously, just the beginnings of an idea. I kind of left the path of the original idea and just went with how I would update it now but it gets the idea across. I think if little details like the quotes and historical parallels were fleshed out it could be a fun campaign. I may turn out to be another project that I just do not have the time for...

Praise for Palladium Fantasy & Thoughts on Palladium Books

I have read several rants on a few message boards that stated the writer would welcome the demise of Palladium Books.  I am not a fan boy nor do I turn a blind eye to any mistakes on the part of Palladium Books but I would like to see them not only recover but make a big comeback.  Their products always felt like the company that made them were a group of fans that got lucky and hit the big time.  I think an RPG industry without Palladium would be worse by their absence.

I started playing Palladium RPGs sometime around the mid to late 80's to the best of my recollection.  My buddy Jamie and I noticed a copy of Palladium Fantasy Role Playing Game that looked really cool so we pooled our money and bought it.  Of course, we rushed back to his mother's house and started checking it out immediately. We literally spent hours flipping through the pages and taking turns passing the book back and forth between us.  There were two teenage role-players really excited that summer day about the contents of that one book.

As we flipped through the pages of Palladium Fantasy, there were several things that caught our attention.  First, we noticed the rules were somewhat similar to AD&D so it would make learning this game much easier; unlike AD&D, we played using all of the rules.  Second, there was also an abundance of "official stats" for playing many more races and classes than in AD&D.  Who would not want to try something different from the typical player character options?  Third, the alignment system was a nice touch in my eyes.  There were lists of actions in each alignment description that guided players in the actions of their characters.  Fourth, Palladium had a full blown percentile skill system in contrast to the AD&D secondary skills.  Fifth, Palladium had many small details such as the illustrations of the money.  There wasn't just a listing of the generic gold piece, silver piece, etc. as in AD&D but there were actual names for the coins with illustrations of the respective currency.  Finally, there was the biggest difference between the two games - you only needed one book to play Palladium Fantasy.  It was great to have all of the information required in one rule book.  Granted, supplemental books would add further options and adventures in the palladium world but the fact remained that you only needed one book to play the game.  In contrast, when RIFTS would hit years later we would buy up the latest source books as soon as possible.

 After learning the rules, we played quite a bit of Palladium Fantasy.  We continued to play AD&D but for a time the focus was clearly on Palladium Fantasy.  In fact, our Palladium group was bigger than our AD&D group and shared some of the same players.  One funny fact is that we never bought any of the supplemental material.  I don't know why but we just didn't feel it "necessary" the same way it did for our AD&D game.  This isn't a judgement about either game, just a noted difference in our perspective on the necessity of further material within our group.  That isn't to say that we didn't use any expansion material in our games, though.  We shared ideas and adapted rules between AD&D and Palladium Fantasy and even developed some custom Occupational Character Classes.

We had many successful sessions of Palladium Fantasy over the years.  Eventually, we moved on to play other games. Palladium Fantasy was one of the few besides AD&D and V&V that we would return to play again.  I know many people think D&D when it comes to fantasy adventure gaming but I always think of Palladium Fantasy in the same instant.  I do have the second edition of Palladium Fantasy but I have yet to do any actual play using the rules.  It seems the rules have become a little bloated from first edition but that's just a general impression.  I also noticed that it looks like the complete line of Palladium Fantasy first edition is available on DriveThruRPG.  I may have to buy them and get another Palladium Fantasy campaign up and going.

That's my experience with Palladium Fantasy and why I remember it so fondly.  The other Palladium products I have played include Chaos Earth, Heroes Unlimited, RIFTS, and Robotech; I am interested in picking up Dead Reign to see what they have done with the Zombie genre.  I know that many people have problems with Palladium due to their release schedule snafus and the stories of board room politics that have taken place at their offices.  I understand the release schedule irritation and have no defense for the delays and cancellation of products.  As far as the politics go, all I can say is that there are two sides to every story and I did not witness any of the drama so I have no opinion on that.  The one thing I am sure of is the feeling of creativity that I get when I crack open a Palladium book.  There might be problems with the rules themselves but the story and background seems to be top notch every time.

I admit it - I'm a big time Palladium Fantasy fan even without playing in years.  I also enjoy their other products that I have picked up; mainly Chaos Earth and RIFTS.  While I do enjoy their products and want them to make a comeback, I think there are several things Palladium must do to thrive:

Revision
The Palladium system has been around since the 80's. Having been revised and expanded over the years, it is time to consolidate, clean up, and clarify all the rules.  The rules don't have to be completely overhauled but putting all references on a related topic together would be a good starting point.  A further re-organization to the rules would probably helps also.  I've heard that Kevin Siembieda does not even use the rules as published, so why not a look at the rules he does use?  All of these thoughts tie into the thought of a unified main core rule book.

Megaversal Rule Book
After a thorough revision of the rules, they should be consolidated into a nice hardback rule compendium.  I know some of the fans are very vocal about not wanting hardback because of increased prices but I think this is one expense well worth it.  With the Megaversal rules in one rule book then the core book for each game line could include a small section at the beginning about rule differences for that game.  The core rule book for each game could then focus on that game instead of reprinting the entire rule system in every time.  Yes, it would take two books to play a Palladium game but each core book would just be about that game instead of half the rule book being a reprint.  While you're at it, make the core books hardback also and leave the softbound books for source books.

Release Schedule
I completely understand the excitement about a new product and wanting to share the information with your loyal customers.  In doing so, there is no reason to give a firm release date until the actual release date is a short time away.  There are several books that have been announced at several different times with the release date getting pushed numerous times.  Eventually, the book is taken off the release schedule again.  It seems that this is currently happening with RIFTS Lemuria once again.


Support
Simply put, support ALL of the game lines - not just RIFTS.  I know RIFTS is like their stallion product at the moment but you can not grow a game line without supporting it by releasing new products.  It doesn't have to be a flood of new products but just throw a bone to fans of Chaos Earth, Dead Reign, Heroes Unlimited, Palladium Fantasy and the rest of the game lines several times a year.