Blood of Heroes Second Session Report

The recording of my vocals failed to capture me (though it recorded the players just fine) today so I will do a written session report to keep up with the game.

I have some of the audio because the two players, who have never played together before, used today’s second session to expand on their roleplaying and crafting this new superhero relationship in our Neo-Gotham, Capitol City! I will latch it onto this blog post after I get NCH to recognized my fucking software licenses, again, and I can finish the edit. 

After a discussion with Bug on defining how his insect mimicry “displays” we continued the battle which we stopped last session in the middle of. Mettle has knocked Creepazoid unconscious, and Bug continues to tangle with Bak-Trak as this zebra-mutant comes to aid his fallen comrade as a third mutant monster makes its way out of the river-side sewer drain. Mettle grabs 2 tons of metal debris and drops it sight unseen where she thinks the outlet is. Shortly thereafter a heavy thunk is heard as the debris is promptly launched into the air followed by the splashdown in the river. The creature calling itself Leather-Neck shambled up the bank onto the street where Mettle stands over the fallen Creepazoid. Disturbingly, Mettle sees the unconscious Creepazoid start liquifying into a jelly-like substance and soak into the cracked pavement.

Leather-neck is a heavily modified ape, its muscular body grafted in the most make-shift way with electronic components, cybernetic attachments and bristling antennae.

“Leave Bak-Trak alone!” Leather-Neck bellows and discharges an electrified net from its wrist gauntlet, wrapping up Bug. The hero topples over spasming and foaming from the paralyzing jolt. Mettle is staring at two angry enhanced monsters and is reminded of the zoo-animal theft reported in the news last week. An ape and a zebra were reportedly stolen from the Capitol City Zoo. A very odd theft to say the least, but here in front of her are an intelligent ape and zebra with strange and elaborate firepower.

“I can’t take both of them on myself,” Mettle thinks to herself. She gathers up more metal debris from the run-down dockside factory buildings and smashes it all into the zebra wielding those disturbing plasma eye beams. The impact sends Bak-Trak and the debris sailing 150 feet, downriver this time. The hit does what Mettle had hoped and the cyborg ape jumps into the air and out into the river to rescue his friend from the fast-moving Stewert River.

With the object of the fight still in her possession, Mettle scoops up the unconscious Bug and leaves the scene, the mutant’s “turf”, with the GoPro in pocket and Little Billy told to run home. Mettle gently levitates through the evening sky setting down in front of the local Elmview Urgent Care and brings beaten but breathing Bug into the waiting room. After she gets admissions sorted she walks back out onto the sidewalk.

“Time to see what is on the GoPro.” She says and hits play. The scene is of a squad of officers, FBEE agents by the logo on their flak vests, moving down the night street, weapons drawn. They post up along a chain link fence looking over a section of harbor. SUVs, pick up trucks and a panel truck are parked together in an open lot overlooking the river. The lot has the usual shipping equipment, container cars, cranes, fork lifts. The pick up trucks and SUVs are providing the illumination on the scene. Looks like gangsters doing gangster shit.

Then the situation lights up. The doors are pulled back on the panel truck and a 50 caliber machine gun opens up on the SUVs and the gang-bangers around them. There are orders to move in and the video takes to the air as the view shifts to a swirling night sky coming to land on top of the panel truck, crushing the cargo bay and the heavy automatic weapon. A disorientating flip and then a view of the panel truck being kicked into the SUVs and fire and people go everywhere. The GoPro then moves aggressively on a costume tough guy and once a pair of strong green arms strikes out and attaches to the masked man the view is back up in the night sky. The masked man trades blows with his assailant on the way down and splash into the Stewert River. Before the GoPro is swept away into the black current it is plain the green-armed assailant is drowning the masked man. Disturbed by the murder just witnessed, Mettel pockets the GoPro and walks back into the clinic to find out if Bug is patched up and good to go. The PA recommends Bug takes the rest of the week off from any heavy lifting and it would take some time to fully recover from the concussion(?) he had received from electrical shock and trauma. And take some of the Tylenol 3 she sends him out with.

Outside Mettel replays the footage again for Bug’s benefit. Like Mettel, he is disturbed by what seems to be the FBEE super known as Superfrog drowning another EE.

“Its on the news,” says Bug. “Not this per se but just over from where we were the Feds got into a gunfight with a criminal gang west of Adams Street Sewage and the Adams Street Bridge. Right down on the riverside docks there.”

Mettel wants to go see the crime scene. He wants to see if the digital video matches up with where the gunfight was.

“I don’t care if that guy was a criminal, you just can’t go drowning folk cause they have superpowers.” Bug agrees it is worth checking out. The question of what to do with the video may be answered there. North of Stokes Ave. in what used to be called Old Capitol City, the police and emergency services are crawling all over the place. There are multiple vehicles burnt out and smoldering from recently being foamed by the fire department. There are shell casings all over the pavement and the awful smell of burnt meat. Two rows of body bags, maybe eight in number, can be seen being loaded into ambulance. Everyone and anyone who isn’t cop is kept back by the yards of yellow tape.

Unable to get too close, Mettel gets into a conversation with Shamrock Bane, late night reporter for Channel 7 after overhearing an FBI and FBEE officer have an intense argument over lack of intel and the inability to plan an operation in Capitol City without the wrong people finding out about it the same day! Miss Bane gives the low down to the attractive party girl. A white-nationalist militia calling themselves the Civil Guard looked to try and deal dirty with the local Nubians. Drug deal, gun deal, not sure which, but either way the Civil Guard came to kill, not do deals. Looks like the FBEE got wind of this meeting and swooped into the middle of the gun fight. No one is talking, but she believes the numerous blazes were set by someone with a flamethrower on site. Maybe the arsonist which has been terrorizing the city? The FBEE is saying they made some significant arrests as well as some top gang leaders being killed in the exchange. Scene is just too damn chaotic. Hard telling who is working for the city’s good and who is working for their one self-interest.

Mettel knows the Nubians. She does work for them, moving drugs she imagines. She never looks at what she is transporting, currier code and all. This has all the potential of spirling out of control and the city’s underground business trade grinding to a halt due to an all out criminal race war. She asks Bug to come back to her place and think about what they want to do about the gang violence and the video they still have a hold of.

 

MEGS in the Morning

 Session 0.5 was accomplished this Sunday morning which inaugurates my use of Mayfair's MEGS rules as written in Pulsar Game's Blood of Heroes, Special Edition rule book.

Of four interested players, one couldn't make it, another has not commented since showing interest and the other two players showed up and we had a great morning game.

Not only is the original DC Heroes MEGS rules new to me, so are the two new players. The third player who couldn't make it is a friend of mine and he just makes my life more difficult. I will be seeing him again at the table with his fucked-up character.

We traded pleasantries, did what we could to get to know each other relevant to gaming and our interest in supers roleplaying. Next was going over their original characters and doing some full-on session zero work. 

Both were street-level, 450 point built characters. One player was all set with background and origins for Mettle, an enhanced entity born with augmented powers do to her mother being exposed to mutagenetic poisons. Not so easy life has brought her to a career as a drug courier in the crime infested south side of Capitol City. She keeps a low profile and makes her life as invisible as possible. Her powers are of magnetic control. Picking up, manipulating and throwing heavy metal objects around and all the neat shit Magneto would do. 

Bug, the other PC hero, was not completely formed, Bug's player was still struggling with their character concept. Great, this gave us all at the table to bang his character into shape for the upcoming campaign. Insect control, gives anyone an anxious, unnerving feeling when they are near Bug. Adults at least. Kids don't seem to mind him. Bugs literally are attracted to this hero, crawling out of his hair or out of his clothes. He mimics characteristics of an insect to increase his strength and make himself more resistant to physical damage. 

The player who wasn't there will be playing Mr. White, an exiled alien rabbit from the Dimension of Mirrors, the land of Alice and the Looking Glass. Mr. White searches for a way back home and wields magical guns and can turn two-dimensional. That is right, two-dimensional! How the fuck do you play that? Like I said, he is a friend of mine.

How the rules went with the session play coming up in next post. 

My Verdict on running/playing Champions

Don't do it. [One final comment on Champions. If someone set up a city set piece and I get to bring my superhero, join some friends, and throw down against the GMs super villain team for a four hour mega-battle on a Saturday afternoon? I'm all in! As a tactical supers "boardgame" for this kind of cinematic fun, I think it would be a blast.]

I found the biggest liability for running this game is something called Fred. My definition for the anagram is full rules equal disaster. It is too stupidly big (over 500 pages) with no option to "use what you want and leave the rest." Because someone at the table is going to get butthurt that rule a,b and c (found on page 5, page 36 and somewhere past page 200) isn't being used.

The next liability arises because players think/want/insist? all the rules of the game are in force all the time. You will never get a chance to make a quick adjudication at the table because someone will say "Wait, I think it explains it on page black hole suck of time. In essence people play Champions because they want to play Champions and this is not the same as playing a supers role playing game. You play Champions you just do that. Combat is a slog. The Speed Chart is a cluster fuck of "wait no its my turn." or "Is it my turn yet."

You will never be able to get on with the action of adventuring and campaigning because you will be looking up rules every time someone wants to do something. Or watch someone else at the table do it. Really impractical when your game should be faster than light supers action.

As a game master I believe making rulings on the fly just to keep the action moving along is an important skill. What I mean is, once I understand the internal logic of the game I can make snap decisions which will never be far off the mark from a "by the book" figure. In a game of Champions this becomes a discussion with people flipping through the book to make sure the situation is totaled up "by the book". It doesn't make sense. And none of the subsystems mesh. Damage has no relation to how you calculate attacks. Speed doesn't track with distance, you can't figure out say if a bomb is going to go off in 4 seconds can you get out of blast radius. Or you can figure out yes you could do it if we are not in combat time, but not if in combat time. Very opaque. There is no base mechanic. You just can't say you need an 8 or less to hit, or a 15 or less to hit on 3d6 (i do like a 3d6 bell curve) because someone at the table will dive into the book to make sure everything is figured correctly. 

New players are generally lost and experienced players generally play a rulebook instead of interesting supers with fucked up situations forcing drastic action from a list of nothing but bad choices. And all these details seem to drive players to expect specific details when in combat. How far away is something, how much can I carry, does it weigh as much as, how long will this power last... Things which in real comic action would have to be guessed at in split second action times. I stand by my earlier statement anything past 3rd edition (2nd edition repackaged) is awful. 

But now I know. I got a good run at the system with my original setting and some decent PC concepts the players came with and I threw my shoulder into it because I wanted to know can a good supers campaign be had with this system. As far as I can tell the answer is no. I have run and played now the classic Marvel supers from TSR, The Hero Instant, Prowlers and Paragons, and Icons. I have read and built characters with Mutants and Masterminds, Supergame, Superworld, Blood of Heroes (MEGS) and Villains and Vigilantes. When you include Champions (which I have the most familiarity with) that is 10 different systems (that I can recall there are probably a couple more) exhaustibly examined and understood and don't care for any of them except DC Heroes/Blood of Heroes, Mayfair Game's MEG system and the Marvel supers game released by TSR. I will most likely  do a blog post for both these systems and why I find them attractive for running supers games, but for now I have to give Champions a big thumbs down. 

Parting shot, Champions has always claimed you can make any superhero you want with their game, and this is true. But it is also true you can do the same with all the other games I listed above! I have translated the same few superheroes of my own in each one of the above listed systems and low and behold I would come up with the same character. Yes, I can build anything I find in Champions with any of these other games - and quicker! Most people who play Champions seem to be married to a piece of character creation software. If you need a computerized spread sheet and custom programmed software to build a character, I don't know. A superhero is an intimate creation and pencil to paper is a strong way to come out with a strong character concept.

Pace. Pace, pace, pace! Like real estate is location a supers game is all about pace. And it should be brisk. And that is why I will not use or play Champions and prefer the old Marvel system and the old DC Heroes MEGs.

Blood of Heroes Form-Fillable Character Sheet

 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.

BOH Character Sheet PDF

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.

“Greg Gorden believes that his contract specified that he retained ownership of the DCH game system once DCH was out of print. When I was at Mayfair I looked for this agreement and couldn’t find it – but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  One potential problem is that it’s unclear that Mayfair could have made such an arrangement with Greg in the first place. Remember, the DC licensing agreement specified that DC would retain full and perpetual copyright over everything we released.

“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.