“The Blood of Heroes Adventure Book 1” contains a series of six adventure scenarios for the Blood of Heroes superhero and villain role-playing game by Pulsar Games, Inc. In addition to the 63 pages devoted to the scenarios, the soft-cover book has a four-page section on “alternate campaign ideas,” and a sixteen page section devoted to “random character generation.”
Before we proceed further, let’s have a quick history lesson. “Blood of Heroes” is essentially a re-boot of the game system developed in Mayfair’s DC Heroes game, which was discontinued in about 1993. The system is often referred to as “MEGS” (Mayfair’s Exponential Gaming System). “Blood of Heroes: Special Edition” (BoH:SE) is Pulsar’s flagship, which contains the rules and Pulsar’s own setting. It has been referred to as “MEGS on steroids.” Owners of the DC Heroes game who don’t want to invest in the $30 Special Edition can catch up quickly with the “Sidekick Sourcebook” which does not contain the setting but does contain about 90% of the rules additions. It sells for about $20. Got that? Class dismissed.
The critical statistics in all of the scenarios in Adventure Book 1 are, of course, presented in MEGS terminology. A handful of NPC characters from Pulsar’s setting pop up here and there, but most of them play such minor roles that you don’t really need to know anything about their stats. Nor do you need to know anything more about their backgrounds than that which is presented in the scenarios themselves. One middle-rung villain does make a key appearance, and his statistical profile and background are re-presented for the GM. Thus, you can gamemaster any of these adventures without knowing anything about the Blood of Heroes Universe, and any of the scenarios can be incorporated into whatever campaign you are running. If you don’t mind doing character conversion, the scenarios can be used for virtually any supers-style role playing game.
One of the difficulties in reviewing a scenario package is to give you, the potential consumer, enough information to make an informed judgment about the work while not giving away so much that it spoils the product. I’m a novice at this, but I’ll at least try to strike a balance.
Each of the scenarios is authored by a different individual, and each is accompanied by one or more different artists. The scenarios are designed as “one-shots,” meaning that none of them assume that the characters have participated in any of the others. Theoretically, they could all be used in a single campaign, but they are certainly not designed that way.
There’s a little bit of something for everyone here. Depending on your tastes and the tone of the campaign you want to run, some of the scenarios will be useful; some won’t.
The best of the bunch, in my opinion, is a fifteen-page scenario titled, “Rebirth,” by Andrew J. Lucas. In some ways, it is a mini-“Masks of Nyarlathotep.” You get your basic ancient Egyptian wizard and his merry hordes of Set cultists leading the PCs in a crime-riddled chase to strange and distant lands. But it integrates this with a classic comic book theme: the return and rebirth of an all-but-forgotten Golden Age Hero, (think Hawkman here, and you won’t be too far off) and the main thrust of the story is really more about the latter than the former. It has a nice mix of investigation and combat. The combat runs the gamut from mooks and traps to a major league villain. At each step, the PCs have various ways to get from Point A to point B, and they do get penalized if they act too slowly or too impulsively. My only complaint is that the art doesn’t do the story justice.
Another gem is “Tags” by Christopher Tatro. Remember what I said about something for everyone? “Tags” is probably the least adaptable of the scenarios, but it’s a gas. The PCs are minor league villains or low powered street punks on a mission to break into a high-tech Hero HQ and spray – that’s right, s-p-r-a-y the absent Heroes’ meeting room monitor. They are opposed by rival punks, as well as a thoroughly peeved AI defense system. This one smacks of Paranoia. It is polished and well-written. I only wish the “trophy room” had been fleshed out a little better. As a GM, this is something you’d definitely want to embellish.
A flawed gem is Mike Smith’s “Lizinith’s Mischief.” It has one of the creepiest villains I’ve seen in a long time, and Chris Keefe’s art hits the bullseye. This scenario is not technically designed to stand alone. It is designed as a slowly developing mystery that a GM can stretch out between two or three other adventures. The theme here is horror, pure and simple. Imagine if “Monsters, Inc.” was written by Stephen King, and you’ve got the idea. There is one big problem, though. The PCs are supposed to catch the bad guy after discerning his “pattern.” If they can’t spot the pattern, then an NPC will help them spot it. But after reading three times through the scenario, I’ve still got one question: What damned pattern? Is the “pattern” merely that the villain tends to revisit former victims? If so, why does he do that? What’s the motive? To be fair, this is a flaw that an inventive GM can probably fix, but it’s a flaw, nonetheless, in an otherwise chillingly good adventure.
Jonathan Cassie’s “Florid Flora” has more than its share of problems. For example, one of three primary villains is noted in the text as using both her plant control and broadcast empath powers. But in the character writeup – oops – no powers. Likewise, she has the age drawback (53). But her husband doesn’t – nor is there any explanation of their apparent age difference. And if she’s really 53, someone forgot to tell the artist – who has her looking like a Jolly Green Vampirella. But the thing that bugged me the most was the manner in which the husband gets his powers. His wife, “on a whim” sprinkles his food with an experimental fertilizer. - Cough - cough -
There is also a problem with the hero point awards. Let me put it this way. If a gigantic vampiric vegetable mass was devouring your hometown, and Superman showed up to fry the beast, would you dock Big Blue hero points for “killing a sentinent?”
It’s hard to evaluate “Sibling Rivalry” by Joseph C. Wolf without playtesting it. I think of this as the Kree/Predator scenario. It starts off well enough. The PCs get to battle some hi-tech robbers, unravel a mystery and deal with a major subway disaster. Then comes the big duel. But then things sort of fall apart. NPCs begin doing very radical things for no credible reason: a disappointing ending to a first-rate beginning.
My least favorite of the six was “Hijack,” by Mark Fisher. The basic idea here is that a twelve-year old has developed powers that make certain types of electrical devices go haywire, and a group of villains kidnaps him to make use of his powers in a hijack operation. It is written in such a way that it can be played by PCs as either the heroes or the villains. It provides neither, though. It is up to the GM to come up with his own opposing team. One problem is that we are given a very confusing definition of what constitutes “an electrical device.” More importantly, there isn’t that much for your players to do if they are playing the heroes. They are spoon-fed information about the child’s powers as well as the most likely target for the villains. This is pretty straightforward railroading. They show up and battle the bad guys – whoever they might be - The End. Now, in fairness to Fisher, the adventure looks like it would be quite a bit more interesting if the PCs play the villains where they would have many more problems to solve and more opportunities for character interaction. It’s just that … I don’t know about you, but when playing a villain, I don’t mind turning cities into parking lots, killing millions with my death ray, or even destroying the earth. But there is something about kidnapping a twelve-year old that I find … unsettling. Maybe that’s the point – I don’t know.
Now we come to the “random character generator,” a fifteen page section written, as I understand it, by Joshua Marquart. At the outset, I have to say that “random character generator” is somewhat of a misnomer. When I think of character generators, I think of the charts that appeared in the old Marvel Super Hero Adventure Game. In that system, you rolled on a series of charts. First you got your origin, then your powers, then the ratings for the powers, then your skills, wealth, contacts and so on. It was fun, but the results were frequently unusable. Nothing was more crappy than rolling up a guy with Amazing strength, Incredible invisibility, Monstrous gravity control, Poor endurance and Feeble intellect. Pulsar’s character generator, as the text expains, isn’t really intended to create a character for you. It is more of a character concept generator. On the plus side, you don’t wind up with too many idiot savants; on the negative side is the cold hard fact that you still have to do a lot of the work yourself. You have to find a way to pay for all those powers with the hero points, and if you rolled low on the HP chart, you're in trouble.
Basically, this section is intended to work like a set of jumper cables when you’re at a loss for a character idea. First you roll up your hero point quota, then your “primary focus” which might or might not include internal super powers. Then you go through a series of rolls on various charts and subcharts to get a very specific definition of that focus and related powers, skills, advantages or attributes. Repeat for secondary focus. If you’re still stuck, roll your way through the origin charts. If that doesn’t work, you’re probably brain dead. You can roll for random AP values of the various attributes and powers, but you’re still confined by your starting Hero Point assignment, so the more you define, the more you have to work to make the concept fit inside the limits of your allowance.
As an alternative, I suppose you could approximate the old Marvel system by simply skipping the first step, and by then rolling randomly for the value of every attribute and power you picked up along the way, but I'm not sure how well this would work.
One nice side-feature of the generator is that within the various subcategories such as “husk,” “vampire,” or “blooded,” you will actually get some helpful insights into the Blood of Heroes campaign setting.
Finally, we come to the three pages devoted to a discussion of “alternate campaign settings.” Frankly, this should have been at the back of the book instead of the lead-off topic. The first of the three ideas is very exciting. I won’t give it all away, except to say that you need the character generator to pull it off, which is why it should not have been in the lead-off position. I will tempt you with this: if you liked Croyd Crenson in the Wild Cards series, you’d dig this campaign.
The second and third “alternate campaign ideas failed to ring my bell. ‘Nuff said about that.
Overall, this product is, like Pulsar, a frustrating mix of the sublime and the shoddy. It is loaded with potential, but not for the faint of heart. To make some of these adventures run effectively, you’ll have to do a lot of tweaking. Still, I will give it the ultimate compliment that I can give any RPG module: it does inspire, and makes me want to game.
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