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.

The Top 7

I stumbled across the top 7 role-playing games meme that was going through the gaming blogosphere recently.  I have read the following posts about their respective top seven games:

 

Gnome Stew

Rather Gamey

Harvester

Tower of Zenopus

The Other Side

 

This type of stuff always interests me because it gives an inside look at what other people in the hobby were doing at the same time.  The summer of 1980 was when it all started for me.  I received the Holmes Basic Set and the three AD&D hardbacks from my uncle David.  I have played a ton of games since then but I am not going to do a separate list for games I played and games I ran.  Both lists would basically be the same but the games would occupy a different spot in both lists. 

 

1. AD&D: My buddies and I actually started off with Holmes and followed the references to the AD&D books I also owned.  We really liked the additional rules and restrictions offered up by AD&D.  It was pretty common for us to use D&D stuff with AD&D; it did not matter because it was all Dungeons & Dragons as far as we were concerned.  No one game got more play time from our group than this one.  I never moved up to 2E but I did game a little with 3E.



 

2. Palladium Role-Playing Game: Out of all of the stuff that has come and gone in my collection this is the one item that I wish I still had more than anything else.  This is the one game that made us all stop playing any form of D&D to play it instead.  It almost seemed like an upgrade to AD&D with the similarities in the rules systems; that made it easy to use stuff between the two systems also.I have the second edition around here somewhere but it just has not grabbed my attention like the original.     

 

 

 

 3. D&D: It all started with the Holmes Basic set but over the years AD&D got much more play out of our group.  We were under the mistaken impression that using AD&D meant we were playing a more "sophisticated" game.  I know, the folly of youth and all that jazz.  If I was starting a new campaign today I would probably just go with Moldvay or Holmes and some of the fan expansion material. 



 4. Talislanta: I stumbled across the second edition of the Talislanta Handbook and Campaign Guide on a random trip to the local game store.  We were instantly intrigued by the out of the ordinary races and campaign setting.  I always liked using one of the Gnomekin character options.  As cool as some of the more recent editions have been, I still feel like the slimmer manuals from that time were better at capturing your imagination.

5. Villains & Vigilantes: This was the first and in many ways still the best supers game I ever played.  V&V seemed to emphasize fun more than anything else.  This was the first game that had us actively building connections and relationships between various character and stories in the campaign. My old V&V folders are somewhere in storage with a ton of character write ups.  I would like to find them someday and post some to my blog. 

6. Marvel Super Heroes: I played quite a bit of the old Marvel Super Heroes game from TSR but I was not a big fan of the basic game.  It was cool because it was Marvel but I always felt like it was a little "too basic" in presentation.  When the Advanced Set was released, I became a big fan of the rules.  In fact, we used them for doing things other than supers.  There was a short GI JOE campaign that added a list of MOS options to the character creation process.  We had stats for a ton of the official characters also.  We also did a Transformers campaign. 

7. Nightlife: I do not remember much about this game other than we played several sessions.  I know it was one of those "monsters in the modern world" games but that is about it.  I believe it was released several years before White Wolf began the World of Darkness.  It remains the only horror type game that I have ever played but I would definitely like to try Call of Cthulhu.

There you have it - the top 7 games I have participated in as a player or game master.  I may be late in posting it but I made it.  

 



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...

[Rant] Charts & Tables - UGH!

I hate charts & tables, I hate charts & tables, I hate charts & tables, I hate charts & tables, I hate charts & tables, and - just for emphasis - I HATE CHARTS & TABLES! Now that I have that off of my chest it is probably time to explain myself.  It's a fact that most every rpg I have played has some sort of chart(s) in the rules somewhere. 

I have no problem with games using LOTS of charts and tables or very few at all.  I have no problem with games referencing charts or tables during combat or character creation.  Some of the games I have played with charts include AD&D, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, Palladium Fantasy, & Talislanta.  I have no problem coming up with the details of charts or tables that I create. 

So, what is my problem with charts and tables?  It is the physical act of typing in the information and creating the chart or table itself.  It always seems so tedious and I always have bad luck with editing.  In other words, it always winds up being atleast twice as difficult as it should be for me.

[Rant] My Experience Using D&D Meetup

*Note: this is just my experience with using the local D&D Meetup service one time. I'm sure some others have had similar experiences but I'm also sure that many others have had a good experience using this same service. Put simply, the experience was pretty lame but it was the person encountered that was the source of my disappointment and not the service itself. ****

I used to play a ton of RPG's.  I started with D&D/AD&D back in 1980.  Over the years, I tried many other games from DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, Champions, Fantasy Hero, Villains & Vigilantes, Super World, Car Wars, GURPS, RIFTS, Talislanta, Palladium Fantasy, and many other numerous titles.  The old faithful lineup of RPG's that I continuously played through the 1980's until I graduated high school in 1991 consisted of AD&D, RIFTS, Talislanta, Villains & Vigilantes, and Palladium Fantasy.

A month after I graduated from high school I left for the Army.  I didn't play a lot while I was in the military but I did keep up with gaming in general, discovered Magic: The Gathering, and did actually play a few sessions of AD&D.  I left the Army in 2000 and returned home.  Most of my old gaming buddies had either left the hobby or moved out of town.  I had virtually no face to face gaming available.  One bright spot is that I did introduce my cousin, Alex, to 3E and we still hook up to play occasionally. We have also been developing a shared campaign world, Toldara, for several years.

I tried to overcome this absence of face to face role-playing by finding other outlets.  After some internet searches, I ran across some PBP games, message board games, PBEM games, and also heard of MEETUP. I don't know the exact time frame but I registered for the local D&D meetup around the time of 4E's release.  IIRC, the Pathfinder Alpha was out but the completely playtested Pathfinder Core Rulebook was not released yet.

I was on the D&D Meetup site for only a short time before I got contacted.  It sounded pretty good to me because the people were in Tulsa; about 25 miles from my location. We agreed to meeet halfway between our locations at Panera Bread.  We ordered some drinks and discussed our RPG experience and what kind of gaming we enjoyed.  It seemed like a really good match so we decided to meet again and try to gather some more people.

The next meeting took place at their house.  I brought my cousin, Alex, with me as a recruit.  At this point, there were 4 of us - Alex, me, and the two players we met.  The guy - I'll call him "Dick" - was interested in being the DM. He had all sorts of ideas for a campaign world, some adventures, and even some house rules.  Dick mentioned that his girlfriend - I'll call her "Jane" - would be playing her first game with us so it might be slow going at first.  No problem there. Dick also mentioned that he was talking to 2 other players about joining the game.  At the end of that meeting, we had decided on the rules system (3.5E with some early Pathfinder stuff), made characters (Alex, Jane, & me), and decided to meet again in 2 weeks for our first game session.

Two weeks pass and we (Alex & I) show up at Dick & Jane's to play.  The other two players - I'll call them "Will" and "Wendy" - had showed up earlier so they could create characters with the house rules available to them during the process.  I remember that Will and Wendy had printed out some really cool character sheets from some website.  It was nice to see everyone was ready to start playing before the start of the game.  We introduced ourselves, had some idle chit chat, and then got ready to play.

The game session lasted for approximately 4 hours.  The length was just about right. It wasn't too short for the drive involved. It also wasn't too long and drawn out either.  The session was fun with no rules lawyering or any of that silliness.  Everyone appeared to have a great time.  We ended the session and then agreed to have another meeting in two weeks again. 

One week passed and I was looking forward to another game session.  I checked my email and received a message from Dick.  He explained that the group "just wasn't working out for him" and decided to tell Will and Wendy they would not be invited back.  I tried exchanging messages with him and getting a good reason but he wouldn't give one.  Eventually, I got pretty irritated because he didn't give a group of strangers a chance to gel and didn't even give the other 4 of us a chance to continue playing with a new DM or one of us taking over as DM.  I promptly unregistered from the D&D MEETUP group and have yet to take another chance on gaming outside my circle of friends.

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edit - some text got erased when posting - d'oh!