^{I'm going to
divide this section into a double-review: The first is a review of the DC
Heroes/Mayfair rules system as it is presented in Blood of Heroes. The second is
a review of The Blood of Heroes as a completed RPG work.}

^{IF YOU'RE READING
THIS, you are probably interested in superhero role-playing games. Over the
years there have been many systems created to handle classic four-color comics
role-playing, including the confusing original TSR Marvel Super Heroes, the
long-winded and rules-heavy Hero system, and the new D6-wannabe Brave New World
(which has a fantastic campaign world, I must say). I've played every
superhero RPG that has come to America except the new WOTC Marvel SAGA, Brave
New World, and TWERPS Supers, and I believe that Mayfair's (not the new West
End Games') DC Heroes system is the best RPG system for handling supers.}

^{Unfortunately,
Mayfair's RPG line went belly-up a couple years back. Since then, fans of the
DC-Heroes system that didn't happen to pick up a copy of the rules (or people
like me who had their 2nd edition boxed set pilfed by a roommate in college),
have been waiting for something, anything to happen. And right when we thought
that the rules would become public domain, Pulsar Games bought the DC Heroes
system (not the DC Comic rights, though) and released them with extremely minor
changes in their "The Blood of Heroes Role Playing Game". Well, I wanted
(nay, needed) a copy of the DC System in any form, so I picked up Blood of
Heroes with little hesitation. I assumed that any art, campaign background or
extra rules would be "icing on the cake".}

^{To continue the
metaphor, the "icing" turned out to be a layer of maggots that was
best swept off the cake and stomped on with steel-toe boots.}

^{THE SYSTEM}

^{If I could rate
the Mayfair DC System, comparing it to all other game systems made, I'd
personally give it a 7 out of 10. Compared to all other superheroes systems, it
would definitely be a 10 out of 10.}

^{Here are the great
points (and main points) of this system:}

^{It is an
exponential system. That is, most average humans have "2s" in most
attributes, and every level above that is roughly x2. A 2 in strength means
you can pick up 200 pounds max. A 3 means you can pick up 400, a 4 means about
750, a 5 is 1500, etc. This is a great system for incorporating any type of
superhero. For example, say you were an "average strength" superhero in
another game system and had "2 dice", or a "14" in Strength- what
would Superman be? How many dice would a superhero who could pick up the Earth
and smack his enemies with it have? DC takes care of these tricky problems
right from the start.}
^{Hero Points-
these are the bread and butter of the game rules- You spend them to create
your character, buy powers, skills and bonuses. You gain them at the end
of each adventure and can use them to upgrade your abilities. You also
spend them on die rolls when you want a high effect.}
^{The attributes
follow a pattern- they "flow". There are 9 attributes, divided
into 3 groups of 3- Physical, Mental, and Spiritual. Physical attributes are
used for kickin' supervillain butt, Mental attributes are used to spot clues
and know things, and Spiritual attributes are used for social interaction or
willpower. Each group has a "targeting" attribute (like DEX), a
"damage" attribute (STR), and a "resistance" attribute (BODY)- for
Spiritual, it goes INFLUENCE, AURA, and SPIRIT (another word for maybe EGO).
3x3. That's tidy. Plus, all the powers relate to one of these attributes in
one way or another. All in all, there's a general "tidyness" or
"flow" that you can feel in this system.}
^{Other stuff:
Advantages and Drawbacks are great and not too involved as to take too much
time figuring out (unless you're min/maxing). For example: Mistrust- Law
enforcement and regular people mistake you for a villain-You get an extra 50
points. Popularity- you're popular and attract a crowd (also some minor
game mechanics involving NPC reaction rolls)- minus 20 points for this bonus.
The skill list is simple to manage, simply because there are only 14 skills
(like Detective, Acrobatics, Thief, and Weaponry, all broken into sub-skills).
Finally, there are a ton of powers, and with rewording, tweaking, and using
the "bonuses and limitations for powers" system, you can easily create any
power or effect. For example, do you want to have the power to fire
bolts of soul energy out of your mouth? That's "energy blast",
and it costs 15 hero points (plus extra hero points depending on the strength
of those energy blasts).}
^{When you buy
attributes and powers, you consult a master chart. Each power has a
factor cost between 1 and 10, which refers to how powerful the power is.
For example, "Gliding" has a factor cost of 2. 10 points of
glide costs 32 hero points. Strength is 5, and to buy 10 points of it
costs 80 hero points (that's the equivalent of 512 times a normal human
strength, capable of picking up a DC-9 Airplane). 10 points of
"Shape Change" costs 160 hero points.}
^{The action
resolution system is easy to understand and works around 2 charts. In combat,
for example, you compare your Dex and the enemies' Dex on the chart. A
number will appear in that place (for example, a value of 5 vs 5, 14 vs 14, or
any other pair is always 11. Role two 10-sided dice, add them together, and if
they are higher than that action's difficulty number, you're successful. If
successful, you compare the "Damage value" of the weapon (or strength of
the attacker) against the resistance number. In a hand-to-hand fight,
for example, Strength, or the "weapon value" for melee or missile combat
(in the game this is called the Effect Value, but the labels get a little
confusing so I made up some new ones just to explain the system) is put
against the opponent's resistance attribute, Body. You take the result
points of that table and apply them to the Body of your opponent- if his body
drops to zero, he's unconscious. If it goes down to the character's
"negative Body", that character dies. To summarize: You
consult two tables- One for doing something, the other to see how well you did
it. You roll the dice and add them together, then consult both tables.}
^{This happens
for all actions- the result points from interaction determine how much damage
you do in combat, how much information you receive in investigation, how much
you freak out your enemies in intimidation attempts, and so on. This is
a good thing, because the rules for combat, social interaction, and everything
use the same system. Many other systems have a complicated, intense
system for combat and leave social interaction and the rest to a simple die
roll. In the DC Heroes/Mayfair system, charismatic characters really can
be as powerful as combat monsters.}
^{When you roll
the dice, you may reroll doubles. In this case, you add the numbers
together and roll again. I love "wild die" type systems, and
this rule works well in a Superhero game. If you roll two ones, though,
that's an automatic failure and possible complication.}
^{The values in
the game are simple and generic, and easy to generate. There are no tricky die
codes for different swords, guns, or anything (often called
"gadgets")- a gun or sword have their own "strength"- for
example, a 4 is a "small gun", a 5 is a "really big gun", a 6 is a
"bigger gun than that" (ie shotgun, etc) and so on.}
^{This game is
deceptively generic- much more than you might imagine at first. You can really
run any kind of campaign. Cyberpunk? Just give the players "gadget"
cyberdecks with the Superpower "telepathy" and the limitation "only
works on computers" (this power is actually from Cyborg, one of the DC
Heroes from the rulebook who can access computers with his cybernetic body).
Fantasy? The mages receive "gadget" magic items (fireball wands or
invisibility belts) or occult-skill spells with superpower-like effects on
them like "flight" or "force field", "earth control", etc. This
game system is best for worlds where you plan to have characters of wildly
diverse skill or attribute levels interact- Superman and normal thugs, Gandalf
and hobbits, Elric&Stormbringer and screaming dead people, that sort of
thing. Beyond that, too, this game is great for any sort of genre;
particularly combat or SFX (magic, psionics, superpowers) intensive ones.}

^{The Bad Points of
the System:}

^{It relies
heavily on two particular charts, as well as a few others. The main charts are
the Action and Result Tables, and without them, you really can't play the
game. Tthey're not complex at all- but they're impossible to memorize
unless you've played the game for about 10 or more sessions. Also, you'll
have to copy at least those two tables for each player unless you want to hold
up the game as they're passed around for each roll. There are other charts,
too, that you'll have to cart around- like the chart that tells you how much
you can lift, how fast you can move, etc. Altogether, though, those charts
take up about 3 pieces of paper, so it's not a big deal- I just happen to be
fond of games where you can easily play without consulting the charts.}
^{While it is
easy to making gadgets and stats for equipment (like assigning this pistol a
damage of "6", that sword a damage of "5"), unlike other
games, these gadgets aren't modifiable by stats or skills. In other
words, if Joe Shmo with a Strength of 2 attacks with a "damage 6"
sword, the damage is 6. If Superman, who has something like a Strength
of 25, attacks with the same sword the damage is still 6, according to the
rules. Of course, the gamemaster can always change that to reflect
logic- but it should be noted that the basic rules don't account for things
like this.}

^{Blood of Heroes}

^{Actually, when I
first heard about this game, I was hoping that "The Blood of Heroes" was
referring to the groovy post-holocaust movie about a wasteland sport (like 5
person football with dog skulls and chains) starring Rutger Hauer- also entitled
"The Blood of Heroes". It wasn't.}

^{So what is the
Blood of Heroes, aside from a re-release of Mayfair's DC Heroes rules?
Well, let's talk a gander through the 350 page book (half of it is BOH campaign
background).}

^{The Rules}

^{Here's what they
did to the rules:}

^{Some of the powers
have been rearranged and streamlined. There are also three new powers-
Time Control, Dimensional Anchor and Kinetic Absorption. That's all.}

^{They added new
"motivations" for characters. Motivations are like superhero
alignments- they explain why a hero does what she does- for example,
"Protect the Good" (Superman), "Seeking Justice" (Batman).
The new motivations are for Anti-heroes: Not villains, but rather self-seeking
heroes ("Mercenary", "Power Lust", etc).}

^{The above can be
called "good" changes. There are "bad" changes, too,
such as the fact that all the powers are lumped together alphabetically.
In the original DC Heroes layout, the powers are grouped into Physical, Mental
and Spiritual categories- this makes it easier to find the powers- if you want
to play a combat oriented character, you of course turn to the Physical powers
section. If you want to play a superhero that can control minds or throw
cars with psionics, you can turn to the Mental powers section. In Blood of
Heroes, all the 150+ powers are put together alphabetically. This is good
when you know what the powers already do (for reference), but this is totally
bewildering for beginning players looking for powers for their hero- even if you
know ahead of time what powers you'd like to have, you'd still have to wade
through many, many power descriptions to find the ones that suit you.}

^{It may seem unfair
to compare BOH to Mayfair's DC Heroes, but the Pulsar Games group essentially
did take the rules and just stick them into a new book (with very, very minor
revision). Since they didn't have the rights to the DC Universe as
background, they created a new set of heroes. This is an unusual
situation- since they didn't create the rules from scratch, they can (and must)
be compared to the original DC Heroes.}

^{The Background,
Book Layout and the Rest}

^{I put this at the end
because if it came at the beginning, you would have thought my opinion biased in
some way. I'll cut to the chase- I love the "DC Heroes" (Now
"Blood of Heroes", although I can't bring myself to say it) rules, but
the rest of the contributions to the project by Pulsar Games are, in a word,
Horrible. Here's Why, in order of noticability:}

^{1) The Art Sucks.
I'm not prone to superlative, but there's no splitting hairs here. The art
is absolutely wretched compared to, well, every other super hero game out there.
I don't mean to personally offend the artists, but I undoubtedly will- with few
exceptions, the art shouldn't have been published. Art is supposed to add
to the layout of a page, but this art is more of the "It's an RPG and thus
must have art- anything will do" variety. The cover is
"corny", and the layout of art in the book is dismal. On page
56, The word "Slam!" takes up half a page. Elsewhere, there is
"BBBOOOM!!" and "BBBBOOOM!!", and another "BBBOOOOOM!!"
taking up 1/2, 3/4, and 1/2 of a page respectively. Let's not forget the
3/4 page "ZAP", and the 3/4 page picture of some sort of explosion
effect- there's more, but I'll stop here. This isn't the kind of art that
gets us in the mood of a superheroes game, it just simply takes up space.}

^{The heroes
themselves, when they appear in the back of the book, also make the reader
cringe. A few of the artists (Josh Lakes and Jeff Himes, for example) have
a talent for drawing, but it gets drowned in the likes of Anarchy Man (the main
hero of the game- he's used like Batman in the old DC Heroes), who looks like a
grinning idiot with buckled knees and a big, pretty knife. Every picture
he appears in, which is unfortunately more than one, he has the same stupid grin
and big knife.}

^{I'm not saying that
they should have hired professionals and spent wads of money on great pictures,
but Superheroes are all about comic books- and comic art is usually... well...
good. Making a superhero game without good art, or at least of medium
quality art, is like making a sugarless children's cereal, or a Japanese manga
character for children without huge eyes. It just misses the point.}

^{2) The Layout is
bland. The reason that the bad art stands out so much is that the layout
is so bland. Some games have poor layouts, but the art is enough to keep
you from noticing. The layout here is bland, bland bland. They
should have used fonts, different shades for the text boxes, some sort of frame
or sidebar, or something to spice up the book. There are some books, like
Star Wars 2ed Revised and Expanded, where if I look at the beautiful layout I
think "I can't do that". There are other games, like Delta
Green, where I think "I can do that, but it would take a while".
With Blood of Heroes, I was thinking "I can do this in a day on MS Word.
Add a friend and it's done in 3 hours."}

^{3) The price?
Well... It's not bad for such a large wad of paper bearing the words "Role
Playing Game", but in light of everything else it seems that they should
have tried releasing it cheaper on the Internet. If I could go back in
time, and someone told me that BOH was selling on the Internet in .pdf format
for 6-7 dollars, I would buy it (for the rules, of course). If I could go
back in time to when I actually bought this game, I would teach myself about www.ebay.com
and I would have used ebay to look for DC Heroes 2nd or 3rd edition.}

^{4) The heroes are
forgettable. I can only remember Anarchy Man, and that's because of his
stupid grin. I just flipped through the heroes section 2 minutes ago to
check the art, and I looked carefully at the stats of each character, and there
isn't one hero or villain that sticks out in my mind. Oh, there is one
villain, but that's because his picture looks exactly like a Vorlon from Babylon
5- I don't remember anything else about that villain, including his name or
powers. And since the layout doesn't put the picture of the character
immediately next to his name or description, you'll often find yourself
wondering who is who. I can't tell if the Vorlon character is "Daygon"
or "Force", even after reading the powers and character description!}

^{The forgettable
superheroes wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that the section on
heroes and villains takes up 120+ pages! I believe that most people who
buy this game would ignore this entire section and instead build their own
heroes and villains. The groups of heroes, like "The Aquaticans"
and "The Voltz Imperium", are together a more forgettable bunch than
the individual heroes within them.}

^{Finally, something
that carried over from DC Heroes is an attribute description that tells you how
you rate yourself to other characters when you're building your character.
For example, on the sidebar about strength, it tells you what you can do with
7-8 points of strength (bend a steel crowbar), all the way up to 28-30+
(entity-level strength that can obliterate celestial bodies). This table
also compares you to other heroes in the DC Heroes universe- see how smart you
are compared with Lex Luthor, how charismatic you are compared to Batman, etc.
Unfortunately, Blood of Heroes does this as well- with their own round of
characters. You can see how Dexterous you are compared to heroes such as...
well... Mindhammer... Nebulon... uh... Knight... The Colossus... or how about
Athena of the Twelve. Since no one on the planet has ever even heard of
these heroes before opening the book (and most of us forget about them
immediately after reading about them), and all these heroes are printed in the
back of the book anyway, this whole section has a feeling about it of "SO
WHAT?" Are the players really supposed to compare their characters to other
characters that they've never seen, heard of, or read about outside the BOH
game? That's like my telling you the following about your newly created
Star Wars Character:

"You're almost as fast as Boba Fett, you're not quite as strong as
Chewbacca, but you're much smarter than Forloz the Administrator, and you can
outdraw Jurlax Sieve or outpilot Ymnad Var any day!"

"Uh- who?"}

^{5) There is... no
background. OK, so there are heroes and all, but aside from about 3 pages
of descriptions of "other planes" (Dimension of Energy, etc), there is
very little background world material. This might be a problem of many
superhero games, though. I know that DC Heroes had little, but recent
superhero games like Brave New World pride themselves on their extensive and
"realistic" background. Blood of Heroes offers only a bunch of
villains and heroes to plop down in New York, Gotham, Tokyo, the Dimension of
Energy, or wherever. I think it is assumed (I guess rightfully so) that
the GM and players would hammer out the game world for themselves.}

^{6) There's one of
those... Roleplayer Pictures!!!! OK, this is a minor point, but on page 176 is
one of those pictures (and a poor one at that) of a gaming group gathered around
the table. But they're not obese loser game freaks, they are the heroes
themselves, in costume! WOW!! OK, you know the type of picture, you've
probably seen the fantasy equivalent (the best one I've seen, and not too good
at that, is from the AD&D 2nd Ed. Campaign Sourcebook and Catacombs Guide)-
Real Barbarians, Wizards and Rogues gathered around a table, rolling dice and
talking to someone with a GM Screen in front of them. Anyway, in gaming
culture this kind of picture is like Jehova's Witnesses- we hate them and find
them annoying but can't really put our finger on why...}

^{Anyway, the BEST PART
about the above picture is that the dice shown on the table, in front of the
BLOOD OF HEROES GAME SCREEN, are SIX-SIDED DICE!!! The system, of course,
uses only d10s. A stupid, minor point that I couldn't help laugh at- It
was like the crystallization of all the above faults into one picture.}

^{The Final Score}

^{The Blood of Heroes
is great in the fact that it republishes one of the greatest (if not the
greatest) Superhero RPG system (Mayfair's DC Heroes) in a new book. If I
were to rate the system itself, I would give it:}

^{Style: 4}

^{Substance: 5}

^{Unfortunately, Blood
of Heroes lays out the system poorly, plus tries to include art and sample
heroes, neither of which are needed or wanted. I'm giving it a 2 and 1 (it
wasn't completely unintelligible, I'll give them that). I should average
the two, but you have to remember that all Pulsar did was take an existing
system and staple on a load of practically worthless (and poorly laid out) stuff
onto it. The final score will reflect their contribution to the project.}

^{By the way, the DC
Heroes game by Mayfair can be found sometimes on internet auction sites like www.ebay.com.
I'm not plugging ebay or selling anything, I'm telling you the best way to get
the above superheroes system without all the mung.}

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)