The character sheet found at the back of the Special
Edition rulebook has nice fat form fields, so Acrobat converted without a
fuss. I may spend some time tinkering with fonts and font sizes as I have yet
to learn this function on the software.
Blood of Heroes Special Edition was Published in
2000. Many consider it to be the 4th edition of the original DC Heroes
systems from Mayfair Games. It has added content and many tweaks and improvements
but does not stray far from the third edition rules.
Pulsar Games, the publisher of Blood of Heroes, offered to sell the intellectual property pertaining to the game system. It was bought in 2004 by a fan community. The current head moderator of the DCH mailing list and administrator of the writeups.org site is easily reached if you have any further interest in the system.
The project of publishing a new, improved edition of the
game system was stalled by unexpected legal difficulties that arose after the
sale.
The current edition of the rules thus remains Blood of
Heroes Special Edition. It can still be bought
in mint state from mainstream resellers, for instance at Amazon.com ,
so it is not entirely out of print.
The original owners of Pulsar sold the company to its
current owners in late 2003. The new owners stated their intention to
continue the Blood of Heroes line back in 2007 but
DC Comics say they own the rules Mayfair Games came up with as well as the IP.
From Write Ups; "Ray Winninger, author of the DC Heroes RPG Second
Edition and editorial director for Mayfair‘s DC Heroes line, summarized
his understanding of the ownership question as follows:
“Our contract with DC specified that DC Comics holds the copyright
on every product we released. If you check the indices, you‘ll note they all
say ‘Copyright © DC Comics Inc.’
The contracts didn‘t specify anything like ‘Mayfair owns the copyright to the
actual game rules, while DC retains the rights to its IP’ or anything similar,
just ‘all DCH products are copyright DC Comics-period.’ This would suggest that DC actually owns DC HEROES. I know for certain that DC
*believes* they own all rights to the game and everything produced for it and I
suspect they‘re probably right.
“Pulsar licensed DCH from Mayfair but it’s not 100% clear
that Mayfair ever had the necessary rights to grant such a license in the first
place. I believe that Pulsar later made a separate
arrangement with Greg.”
John Colagioia, one of the new owners of Pulsar Games,
commented on their current status in March 2007:
“We‘ve been dealing frequently with the owner‘s legal team to try to get a
handle on who owns what, who licenses/can license what, and how much room there
is to change things. When I have an update of use, I‘ll relate it here, because
it‘ll mean big things are coming on Pulsar‘s side, too.”
Colagioia also stated that “While I‘d like it to be
otherwise, this is about all I can say on any of these (and related) topics,
and would very much appreciate keeping any further questions/speculation
off-list, since such has the potential to damage our position at a sensitive
time. I can‘t stop you, of course (and wouldn‘t if I could), but it‘d be
appreciated.”
And that was back in 2007! So this game, this system actually, will never see a reprint. Copies can be still had cheap and I recommend a copy of the rules for gamers who are fascinated with superhero roleplaying games. Two caveats; the art in BoH's is terrible and tone deaf in its portrayals of female characters (can you find the worst of the bunch). The second, and more relevant is a complaint MEGS does not handle low-powered supers well and that is absolute rubbish. The system is solid from one end of the power scale to the other. I think some people feel small numbers mean less granularity, but the scale goes up to 100 and most powerful heroes have top attributes in the 23-28 point range. Lot of top end for sure, but the lower end is plenty rich with clean-playing crunch.
The DC Heroes game engine was revoluntary work, and Blood of Heroes is a worthy inheritor.
ReplyDeleteThe game system is a study in elegance. Characters have nine attributes in a two matrix system. The first axis is Physical/Mental/Mystical, while the second is Acting/Effect/Resistance. The definitions aren't completely consistent, but great effort was made to adhere to that design philosophy without sacrificing sense. An average human has 2 AP's (Attribute Points) in each Attribute. Each additional AP represents a doubling, so someone with a 7 Strength is 32x as strong as an average human, while someone with a 3 Dexterity is twice as fast. The rapid increase in ability made it possible to fit Batman, Starfire, and Superman into the same game system without shoehorning. At the human end, things are a bit "chunky" in terms of relative ability, but with the game's fast moving, story-oriented system, you'll hardly notice. Advantages and Drawbacks help define the characters in unique ways. The Power and Skill lists are extensive but terse, and cover every reasonable ability I've been able to imagine.
The game's strong points include its fluid Hero Point system that lends drama to those climactic battles with supervillains, a superb super-gadgeteering system (the best I've ever seen), strong adherance to the genre, flexible levels of realism, and extreme versatility. The down points are mainly that it requires a fairly math-savvy GM (or at least a player to help with the math), and character creation is extremely detailed (as intensive as GURPS).
The world background provided is quirky, but entertaining. It's not too my taste... but the beauty is of course that you can easily lift the game system and build your own Superworld. I'm contemplating a Wildcards based campaign. There is still plenty of fan support for the DC universe, not to mention current WEG products to help with background material (not to mention that converting from D6/Legend to BoH is a snap).
I thought the DC Heroes game was lost to us... It was like unexpectedly seeing an old friend to find the game lurking inside the pages of a small-press supers game with a weird cover. I bought it, and since then have been feverishly making characters. I plan to start up a gaming group as soon as I can settle on a premise... I have so many ideas.
If you know the game, buy this. It has all the innovations of DC Heroes 2nd edition plus the BoH Sidekick Sourcebook material. The game is in front, the game world is in back, so don't worry about having to perform surgery to extract the game YOU want to play. And the BoH world has its interesting points; I haven't discarded it yet. If you are unfamiliar to the game... believe me when I say BoH is a true reincarnation of a classic, elegant game. BoH is arguably a contender for the title of Best Overall Superhero RPG.
I've come to agree with your sentiments and am in the process of trying to make a simple, legal copy of the game system so others can enjoy this game!
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