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Blood of Heroes: Special Edition

What Came Before

My Intro into Superhero Gaming

By far, though, I had two favorites. The first was DC Heroes. The second is the much more current Godlike.

DC Heroes: The AP system

So, not only character stats, but weight, distance, information, cash, volume... all of those things and more.

The brilliance of this system was two-fold.

The first was that a particular value of APs was twice that of the previous value. So, a weight of 10 aps was twice that of 9 aps; a strength of 15 aps was twice as strong as that of 14 aps.

This allowed for something no other game I'd ever seen before could do: it allowed anywhere from high to low powered gaming, and it did so while keeping some level of graininess. The old Marvel game, for instance, allowed the same thing, but with only a few steps defined by Excellent, Remarkable, etc. Champions was much grainier than Marvel, but it broke down trying to reach high levels of power.

DC Heroes fixed all that. When you say the average human has a strength of 2 aps, and Superman has a strength of 25 aps, that means a LOT; superman is 8388608 times stronger than the average human. But, with such small numerical numbers, it makes it EASY to keep track of this!

The other element of genius in this engine was in the interaction of the AP system with itself. Let me explain:

When you want to lift something and throw it, you didn't need to look at your strength and then run a check on the poundage; your character could lift a weight equivalent to his strength.

So, superman could lift anything that weighed 25 aps or less.

How far, then, could he throw a car? A car weighs 6 APs; Superman has 25; so, 25-6=19 APs. You could look quickly on the chart to see how far 19 APs are, but its easily calculable too; 0 aps distance is 10 feet. so you just double 10 feet 19 times, and get the distance superman could throw that car. I can tell you right now, he can throw it into outer space....

This engine allowed you to duplicate very hard-to-replicate powers. For instance, superspeed and stretching. I never saw a game that satisfactorily presented superspeed before DC Heroes. This was the first that did it.

As an example: I remember reading an issue of the Flash, where he was in europe. He had a date with his girlfriend, who was in America, in 12 minutes. So, he runs across the ocean, gets home, throws a cold pizza into the oven set to two minutes, runs into the shower, cleans up, runs out, dries off, runs to the microwave, sees he still has a minute left, reads the newspaper and gets dressed, runs back, gets irritated that he still has to wait 15 seconds, impatiently waits, eats the pizza, runs towards his date with a cool 2 minutes to spare... and runs into a supervillain, and curses because he is now going to miss his date.

Now, a game master could just wave his hand and say "so and so happened," but I always wanted something to resolve such effects mechanically - and sometimes, it actually makes a difference in an adventure.

So, how does the MEGS engine do it?

Simple. The Game master determines how long it will take in time to do something:

"How long will it take to clean my apartment before my date gets here?"

"Hm. 4 hours. And since 1 hour is 10 aps, thats... 12 aps of time."

"Great! I ahve 8 aps superspeed!" The player subtracts his 8 aps of superspeed from the 12 aps of time and gets 4 aps of time to clean his apartment. 0 aps is 4 seconds, so that 4 aps is around 1 minute.

Seeing such things were a delight.

Thats not to say the system was without flaw, but it was crisp, clean, and able to handle very complex circumstances with relative ease.

Resolving Actions

The defender has two defending values, an Opposing Value and a Resistance Value (OV and RV). When it comes to being punched, the defender would likely use his Dex as the OV and his Body as the RV.

The game uses two ten-sided dice for resolving actions, and one ten-sided die for initiative.

The attacker would compare his AV versus his target's OV; if they are the same score or within one point (roughly; it uses a table), then he would need to roll an 11 to hit.

It is possible to do extremeley well; if you rolled higher than an 11 AND if you succeeded, then you would get column shifts, explained in a moment. Also, if you roll doubles, you may roll again, and continue to roll... but if you ever roll double ones, you automatically fail.

If you succeed in hitting him, then you compare your EV versus his RV on a second table; column shifts from a very successful action are then applied, shifting the columns towards more severe results. The number listed is how many Resulting APs (or RAPs) you earned. In combat, this is interpreted as damage. Take enough damage equal to your Body in this case, you go unconscious, and twice that kills you.

Now, there are a lot of other rules involved with this for different circumstances, etc, but this is the gist of it.

Attributes

The physical attributes are Dexterity, Strength, and Body; the mental ones are Intelligence, Will, and Mind; the spiritual ones are Influence, Aura, and Spirit.

Which adds another thing I liked: in most other games, psychic attacks would either knock out or do the same damage as physical. They geneally didnt do a good job of reflecting some telepath frying the synapsis of a hulking but dumb giant.

This game does; a mental attack can knock out, or kill, as easily as a physical one. But they attack the mental stats instead; so now psionic and sorcerous characters have their own crucial stats, and a way to reflect the strengths and weaknesses of each without jimmying the system.

Building a character

After that, all things you purchased were bought using a chart called the Factor Table. The better an attribute or power was, the higher up on the factor chart it was. The chart went from 1 to 10, and had rules for going higher. A 10 made a power more costly than a 1; you then bought the number of APs you wished, the more APs the more expensive. The action attributes (Dexterity, Intelligence, and Influence) had a factor cost of 7, the rest a 6; wealth had a factor cost of 2. Skills and powers had a base cost just to get access to them, and then an associated factor cost.

Wealth and XP... the two joys of gaming

They also did experience in a very cool way. You determined what was called the Standard Award for the adventure, which follows a formula. Then, for each of several factors, each hero would earn a Standard Award. Your character could go on a sub plot, at your suggestion and if the GM agrees, that would let you earn an additional Standard Award. Wealth, for instance, could be used as a sub-plot; fail your montly wealth check and you might go broke if you dont resolve it. OR perhaps someone is about to find out your secret Identity....

Thats a brief summary of what the MEGS system did. It was published by Mayfair games, and aside from first edition, it was wonderful gooey joy.

And then they stopped publishing it.

The Reincarnation

Then along came Pulsar Games. Pulsar Games was founded for the sole reason of keeping the MEGS system alive. They bought the rights to the system - but did not procure the rights to the DC Universe.

So, they decided to create their own.

I never read the editions prior to the Special Edition. You can find reviews, but suffice it to say that it sounded awful. They didn't mess with the engine, but their new universe was... less than desirable. And it didn't offer anything new to people who already owned the DC Heroes books.

Somewhere during this mix, however, they published the Sidekicks Sourcebook, which introduced Rule changes, clarifications, new powers, all kinds of things. It was said to be good. So, they incorporated the Sidekicks material into the second edition, labeled Blood of Heroes: Special Edition.

And it was good... sort of.

Blood of Heroes: Special Edition. How to review it?

Mechanics

They did overcomplicate a few things. The Power Loss drawback, for instance, works better than before, but is a tad of a headache. This is the exception though: for the most part, they made some very worthy changes: improved superspeed, tweaked the Occultist skill, added new powers such as Time Control and Probability Control, and fixed my single biggest pet peeve of the system: the inability to make characters who could hang out in, say, space, indefinitely. The changes were more than welcome!!!!

But... EGADS!!!!

Ok, lets just say one of them was of a woman. She wore a shirt. She probably shouldnt have bothered. It was, in a word, perhaps the most tasteless piece of artwork I've seen in a long time. Although a few of you might get a laugh at it.

And the characters... the back of the book discusses a large parcel of their NPCs. First, the game assumes you will start out with characters around the 500 point range (this is a game that uses point builds for making your characters). while there are rules for making more powerful characters, and they are not in the slightest difficult, the assumption is for the 500 pointers.

Flipping to the back of the book, you will find a slim handfull of NPCs that are of that range. Most of them range anywhere from 1000 points to several thousand. Most of them would be unusable as enemies if you started at the basic level. You will probably have to create your own enemies.

Which is ok! Because in addition to the rest of that, their NPCS, for the most part, range from unimaginative to utterly stupid. Anarchy Man?!

Well, thats not entirely true. A few of their characters were, in fact, interesting. A few. But most of them were very derivative at best: The Baron (Doctor Doom), the girl psychic empath who was temporarily turned into a demon psi (Phoenix/Dark Phoenix, anyone?) and on and on.

A couple were good, interesting... but not many.

So, where does that leave us?

Ye Olde Summary

Forgive me if I rambled. I tend to do that. I don't like chapter summaries though... I prefer the global picture.

The game engine in itself is superb. It was superb in DC Heroes, and the Special Edition of Pulsar Games made it even better.

Their artwork leaves much to be desired; the layout is... ok. And their universe, while usable, isnt all that marvelous either. You will probably need to create a large parcel of your own NPCs - which is fine by me, as I usually run my own game worlds and love making NPCs, but not everyone operates that way.

So: Who Should Buy This?

1) Anyone who loves superhero games, and wants an engine that can handle wide varieties of situations and power levels elegantly.

2) Anyone who loves four-color gaming (this engine is not so good for gritty gaming, but not impossible).

3) Anyone who doesnt own DC Heroes.

4) Anyone who does own DC Heroes, but wants rules clarifications, new powers, etc. This did a good job overall!

5) Anyone who isnt afraid of doing work on their own setting.

Who shouldn't buy this?

1) Anyone who hates working on their own campaign world.

2) Anyone who has DC Heroes, and is satisfied with it as-is.

3) Anyone who cant stand questionable to tasteless artwork and unimaginative settings.

The problem is, Pulsar Games was bought out... And we dont know what the new owners are doing with it. We may see a new incarnation, even a rename of the product. Or, we may see nothing. Who knows? You might want to hold onto those dollars of yours, but if you think this is for you, you might want to look for a dusty copy somewhere....

As for this review, don't take just my word for it. Go read the other reviews: you will see that as far as system is concerned, they all say the same. Do you like superhero RPing, but have been disappointed in what you've seen so far? Pick this book up, and ignore the artwork and universe. Build your own, and play the best four color superhero game system ever printed.

Otherwise, wait and hope that the new owners of Pulsar come up with something better.

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