When we left off last time, four superhero games ruled the industry: Champions, DC Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now we pick up the story in 1987.

Coasting Toward Oblivion: 1987-1996

After a decade of innovation and fighting for control of the superhero niche, it's somewhat surprising that the second decade of superhero RPGs was mainly a tail of downturn and "coasting".

This is even more surprising because the comic industry itself was undergoing notable expansion and upheaval during these years. Staring with the publication of The Dark Knight (1986) and Watchmen (1987) the industry moved into a darker, grittier and (sometimes) more realistic stage of publication. This was assisted by Sandman (1989), which marked the rise of new, more mature comics.

Then, starting in 1991-1992, there was considerable growth in the entire comics industry thanks mainly to a collector driven mania not unlike that which had driven the black & white comic boom (and bust) just a few years earlier. Among other things, this led to the creation of Image Comics.

Remarkably, no major RPG publisher took advantage of any of this. Though a few supplements looked at the darker, grittier take on superheroes, including some Dark Champions books from Hero Games (1993-1994), they were infrequent; most superhero RPGs continued with their very bright 4-color look at superheroes ... which might be part of what led to their eventual declines.

The only notable exception to this was a new small-press superhero RPG called Heroes & Heroines (1993) which licensed a number of indie comic properties including Image's The Maxx, some of Dark Horse's grittier comics, and even the now venerable Ex-Mutants. Unfortunately the designer was new to the field; both the production values of the game and its design were derided, and what could have been a trendy growth instead quickly disappeared.

Meanwhile, the major licensed properties were having problems of their own.

Though blessed with lucrative licenses, DC Heroes and Marvel Super Heroes were both cursed with the flip-side of the same which typically involved high royalties and (for DC Heroes in particular) the occasional problems that arise when approval is required on products. Combined with other factors, these would doubtless be factors in these two games' downturns.

By 1992 TSR was pushing more of their outlying games toward their second edition AD&D system and turning away from their simple chart-based mechanics--which had infiltrated many of their lines for a while. Marvel Super Heroes thus ended production in 1992, though as we'll see TSR would revisit the license a few years later.

Meanwhile Mayfair was starting to have financial problems that would ultimately result in the company's downfall. They ceased the publication of new supplements for DC Heroes in 1994, and DC pulled their license entirely in 1996.

At the same time Palladium faced another problem that comes about from licensing properties: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a fad, and when the fad faded, the game did too. TMNT ended publication in 1990, though their older Heroes Unlimited game enjoys the occasional small-scale revival.

That left Champions as the last line standing of the four major systems that had entered the second decade of superhero RPGs. However, it had faced both highs and lows during that second decade, and was now somewhat the worse for wear.

To start off with, the deal between ICE and Hero Games had never worked as the participants had hoped. The founders of Hero Games had all left for full-time jobs soon after the ICE deal, and the maintenance of the game line thus had been left to freelancers and interns. One of them, Rob Bell stepped up and became ICE's first in-house developer for Hero. He published a fourth edition (1989) of the rules which took the first step in turning Champions into a full-fledged multi-genre Hero System, following in the footsteps of GURPS (1987).

(There had actually been considerable cross-fertilization between the two game systems for their entire lifetime. Champions had inherited ideas about point-based character creation from Steve Jackson's first RPG, The Fantasy Trip. Then in the mid-1980s it had expanded into a multi-genre house system, which Steve Jackson used ideas from for his own GURPS (1987). Now with the fourth edition of the game, the wheel had turned again.)

After this 1989 revival Champions enjoyed a series of regular in-house editors who helped to keep the game alive, but it depended upon freelance contributions and never developed an entirely coherent gameworld as a result. Then in 1995 ICE started putting all of their resources into the CCG market, which resulted in the Hero Games principals finally terminating their agreement with ICE. They quickly signed a new deal with R. Talsorian Games, but as we'll see their fourth edition Hero System got tabled in the process.

Meanwhile there was just one new contender in the superhero genre, the aforementioned GURPS. One of their early genre books, GURPS Supers (1989), was supported by almost a dozen supplements (1989-1991), most notably including GURPS Wild Cards (1989), another license. But then Steve Jackson largely got out of the adventure business, and instead started putting out standalone sourcebooks. GURPS Supers thus faded away almost as quickly as it had appeared.

In 1996 every major super-hero line was essentially dead. Even Hero Games, now under the R. Talsorian umbrella, was closing down Hero Fourth Edition support, in planning for a new game system called Fuzion.

Perhaps it would help revitalize a genre which had grown moribund ...

Return of the Classics: 1997-2003

Unfortunately the new Champions was not to be the hoped for Holy Grail for the superheroes genre. It was released as Champions: New Millennium (1997). The underlying Fuzion system was a clever combination of the Hero System and R. Talsorian's Interlok system and was yet another attempt to produce a simpler superhero RPG that might attract new comic book readers to games. Unfortunately it left old Hero System gamers feeling utterly abandoned, since old Champions support continued only through (some of the first) PDFs and licensed products.

Then Mike Pondsmith of R. Talsorian Games announced that he was exiting the industry in 1998, also leaving Hero Games high and dry. They would flounder for the next four years through another unsuccessful attempt at going it on their own, then a disastrous alliance with an online company called Cybergames. Champions would all but die until 2002.

Meanwhile the DC Heroes game made an unexpected return as Blood of Heroes (1998), published by Pulsar Games who had acquired the license to the "Mayfair Exponential Game System" just as the company was going down for the last time. The DC superheroes were swapped out for generic new heroes created by Pulsar, but other than some polishing, the new game was just about identical to the previous editions by Mayfair. Pulsar would publish a few supplements over the next years until the d20 crash took them down with it in 2003. Though the company now has new owners, they've done nothing with the game, and indeed haven't updated their web site for years.

It wasn't just old game systems that were returning in the late 1990s, but old licenses too, suggesting a general rebirth of the whole superhero roleplaying genre which had sputtered out over the last few years.

TSR first made use of their Marvel license with the publication of Marvel Super Dice (1997), a new game based on their Dragon Dice. However the company's downfall and purchase by Wizards of the Coast led to that line's quick cancellation.

However, the new Wizards-owned TSR soon followed with a new RPG too, Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (1998), which was based on their innovative SAGA game design, which replaced dice rolling with resource management and centered the games on stories rather than just conflicts. Unfortunately Marvel SAGA would prove another d20 casualty when Wizards of the Coast started closing up their non-D&D lines in 1999 in advance of the release of their new d20 system.

Finally the DC heroes saw new life with the publication of DC Universe (1999) by West End Games, using the "Legend" variant of their classic d6 system. The game was not terribly well received, and West End Games was unfortunately in a vulnerable state at the time, owned as they then were by a French company called Humanoids Publishing which had bailed them out of bankruptcy. By 2001 Humanoids had decided that the roleplaying business wasn't really for them, and production of the line quietly ended.

It's somewhat odd that all of these classic lines and licenses both rose and fell in such a quick period, with Champions: New Millennium running 1997-2000, Blood of Heroes running 1998-2003, Marvel SAGA running 1998-1999, and DC Universe running 1999-2001.

Fortunately, totally new games were rising as well.

Innovative Settings: 1999-2000

The wide disconnect between the comic book industry and the superhero RPG industry is somewhat startling. Clearly the licensed RPGs provided some connections, and there were even some RPG-based comics from Eclipse Comics for Villains and Vigilantes (1986) and Champions (1986-1987), but beyond that the RPG industry stayed remarkably clear of the comic industry's trends. It took until 1999 for the publication of RPGs that mirrored the more evocative and grittier comics that began in the mid-to-late 1980s.

The first of these was White Wolf's Aberrant (1999), part of their pulp-inspired "Trinity" series of games. It was another futuristic game, like Superhero: 2044, which had gotten everything started. However Aberrant enjoyed twenty years of game design advances, and thus was a better system (based on White Wolf's Storyteller games) and likewise featured a much richer background setting. It also featured gritty ideas such as social unrest and power usage eventually leading to "taint" for the user.

The other darker game of the time period was Godlike (2000) by Dennis Detwiller and Greg Stolze, eventually published by Arc Dream Publishing. Godlike used a unique dice pool system where matching numbers were combined into sets, but its main appeal was--as with Aberrant--in its gritty setting, here an alternate version of World War II. Godlike has since inspired a follow-up game Wild Talents (2006).

The Rise of d20: 2000-Present

Meanwhile we hit the event that caused the quick death of all those classic game lines that launched in the late 1990s. Even the innovative new settings didn't do that well. White Wolf's Aberrant came to a close in 2002, while Godlike only survived because it was being put out by a small press who was publishing only occasionally.

The reason for the big upheaval in superhero games was d20. Wizard of the Coast's release of their new open-source gaming system caused changes throughout the roleplaying distribution system. Suddenly it became a lot harder to get non-d20 games into stores. Every superhero system suffered, resulting in the cancellations that we've already seen.

On the other hand a new series of d20-based superhero games appeared, showing how far Wizard's new system could be stretched. There were two almost simultaneous releases.

Silver Age Sentinels (2002) was put out by Guardians of Order using first their own Tri-Stat System, then a few months later using the d20 system. It was a very traditional 4-color superhero gaming system that was well-liked and survived for a few years, but has since disappeared entirely--along with Guardians of Order due to various financial problems.

Mutants & Masterminds (2002), written by Steve Kenson and published by Green Ronin has done much better due to some combination of better design, better marketing, and better support. Most notably Green Ronin decided to give Mutants & Masterminds its own open-source license which they call "M&M Superlink". This has resulted in supplements published by at least a dozen different companies--most of them small PDF publishers--between 2003 and the present, generally adding to the interest in the game (which continues to be supported to this day).

A bit later another notable d20 release appeared, a new d20 version of Aberrant (2004).

Remarkably, despite the influx of d20 and despite the general downturn of superhero RPGs since their height in the 1980s, two non-d20 systems have also managed to get a foothold in recent years.

The first was the long-awaited fifth edition of the Hero System (2002), published by a new Hero Games which had bought out the Hero System from Cybergames in 2001. The new Hero System was truly generic--which it hadn't been to date--but a new version of Champions (2002) was offered as its first genre book. The new Hero Games has since largely maintained a once a month publication schedule, with at least half of those books compatible with Champions, making it the best supported version of the game since at least when ICE was publishing, and perhaps ever.

The second new game was another licensed Marvel game, this one called The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game (2003). It was another resource-management game, like SAGA had been, and was generally considered an interesting and innovative game system. It also included ideas about how to make use of flashbacks and other comic book tropes. Unfortunately Marvel expected it to not only reach the success level of Dungeons & Dragons, but also to do so very quickly. When it failed to do so after just a half-dozen publications, they canceled the line.

A few smaller scale games that have appeared in the last few years include: The Authority (2004), another Tri-Stat game by Guardians of Order that went down with the company; and Living Legends (2005), a new game by Jeff Dee, the designer of that first modern superhero RPG, Villains & Vigilantes. Other small publications such as Truth & Justice (2005), With Great Power ... (2005), and the aforementioned Wild Talents (2006) suggest that we may be in a superhero roleplaying Renaissance.

Generally the superhero industry seems to have undergone three booms. The first began with the publications of Champions in 1981, ran through the early indie games and the licensed publications of the 1980s, and died out in the early 1990s. The second boom began in 1997 as multiple new superhero games went to market, and lasted until the d20 boom killed it.

Now, however, we seem to be in a new golden age. Old hero Champions is back in fighting form, complemented by the d20 superhero game Mutants & Masterminds and multiple small press release, the most notable of which is the Godlike line. Current rumor also says that the DC license is now held by Games Workshop--who failed to get that Marvel license 25 years ago--and that they're planning a new superhero game through their Black Industries imprint. If this sees print soon, it might be like the 1980s all over again.

This column is partially based on my histories of TSR, FGU, Games Workshop, and Hero Games (which haven't seen print yet), my history of Pagan Publishing (which has), and the notes I've been collecting on Mayfair, West End Games, Green Ronin, and others. Discussions of the latter companies may not be quite as accurate as the earlier ones, since my research is incomplete. The RPGnet Gaming Index currently has a listing of over 300 hundred super hero RPGs and was, as usual, another prime resource.