DC Heroes Role-Playing Game 40th Anniversary

Green Lantern Dice Revealed! Final Book Unlocked!
about 1 year ago – Mon, Dec 16, 2024 at 10:07:37 AM

DC Heroes fans,

Just over 48 hours to go and so much excitement! In brightest day, in blackest night, the headline today is Green Lantern Dice! Backers overwhelmingly voted for Green Lantern as the fifth set of dice in our earlier poll. We hope you like it! These oversized dice are included in the Legend and Retailer Tiers and will be available as an add-on starting today.

(Sidenote: We know we initially called these dice a "social media stretch goal," but we realized there was some confusion due to how we explained the dice at the start of the campaign. The initial plan was for the 5th set to be a regular stretch goal. BUT we wanted fans to vote on the final set of dice and we needed the fan vote to happen early in the campaign since licensor approvals take at least 2 weeks. So we revealed the 5th set was coming from Day 1 in the tier graphics and reward listings, but it was still seen as a stretch goal. We made it a social media stretch goal to make it clear that there was pretty much no chance of missing out on it if fans wanted it. BUT we don’t want anyone to feel misled, so now it’s just a reveal and won’t be listed with the other stretch goals.)

The other major news is that you unlocked ALL the remaining stretch goals, starting with the final book: the Hardware Handbook for Bundle 1. The 100-page book features expanded rules for creating super-powered gadgets and vehicles.

After that, you unlocked the Bundle 7 and Bundle 8 slipcases back to back!

There you have it… the full DC Heroes Role-Playing Game collection! And it’s just in time for the final 48 hours! We hope to have lots of new fans join for the final stretch… please make them feel welcome.

Without further delay, here is Ray with his memories of his own DC Heroes campaign, which ran about 10 years!
 

Ray Remembers: My DC Heroes Campaign 

While I was working on the game, I ran a DC HEROES campaign that lasted from 1985 until 1994. There are three things that made that campaign special. Perhaps these tip-lets will inspire your approaches to your own campaigns. 

1. 1) The Magic of DC HEROES. The players and I all loved the Giffen/DeMatteis 1987 reboot of Justice League, and shortly after that book appeared, we adopted its irreverent tone in our games. In an early adventure, the heroes were squaring off against Kobra and his fanatical snake cult. In those days, one of the things that made Kobra interesting is that he’d never been captured. He clashed with Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Outsiders, but always managed to escape justice in the end. The final showdown between Kobra himself and my players took place in an airship ten thousand feet above Metropolis. 
   
   The first hero to act in the very first round of that battle targeted Kobra with a gun that fired powerful blasts of compressed air and rolled an astonishing 82 to resolve the attack. (In DCH, remember, as long as you keep rolling doubles on your 2d10 roll, you can roll again and add the new roll to your total.) A confrontation that was months in the making suddenly turned into a Looney Tunes cartoon. Kobra was blasted through ship (leaving the requisite Kobra-shaped hole in the hull) and out into the sky, where he fell—Wile E. Coyote-style—two miles to the ground below. Confused heroes and cult members alike gathered at the window to watch him fall, and when he struck the ground, his minions were so stunned and demoralized that they simply gave up. 
   
   The game system gave us a great gift. That single crazy die roll inspired a long series of entertaining plots and subplots that unfolded over the next four years. Finally capturing Kobra (yes, he survived the fall) turned the heroes into celebrities. A beer company hired them to recreate their feat in a series of popular commercials. A rival beer company convinced the undead Green Lantern Driq to serve as its mascot, bringing our heroes into conflict with the Green Lantern Corps. Later, the heroes discovered that the “Kobra” they so unceremoniously defeated was an imposter, and tried to cover that up to preserve their merchandising empire.  
    

• 2) The Daily Planet. When I began the campaign, I had just acquired one of the first Apple Macintoshes. I used the Mac to produce a front page of the Daily Planet I distributed at the beginning of every game session. I mostly used the newspaper to deliver amusing summaries of previous sessions, but I also planted subtle clues and hints of things to come in various stories. Players loved it; eventually, they wrote much of the material themselves. 
   
• 3) Switching up PCs. To convey the epic sweep of the DC Universe, I’d often schedule sessions in which the players would assume the roles of the Justice League, the Suicide Squad, or other established characters from the comics. The stories in these sessions were always related to the campaign’s ongoing plotlines—in fact, they usually delivered vital clues that would assist the players in their “own” adventures. Hero Points earned playing comics characters were transferred to the players’ own heroes. This approach was very successful. I wish I’d suggested it in the printed rules. 

Ray Winninger is the co-designer of the DC Heroes RPG and former Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Thanks for backing,

The Cryptozoic Team

Social Media Stretch Goal… and One Book to Go!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 10:28:37 AM

DC Heroes fans,

As we enter the final weekend, we have lots of fun stuff for you! First, the results from the last poll were overwhelming (about 90% of you agreed)… no loose leaf pages for you! The copies of the Who’s Who in the DC Universe (Bundle 7) in this Kickstarter will be bound. Thanks for voting!

Because of all the amazing support, we’re almost out of stretch goals! You unlocked The Law of Darkness for Bundle 6. In this module, the New Gods must foil Darkseid's latest attempt to discover the Anti-Life Equation.

After that, there’s just one book to unlock! On Monday, we hit the 48-hour mark and we’re crossing our fingers that by then we can have ALL the books unlocked and maybe even the last two slipcases. Almost there!

Now’s let check out the Social Media Stretch Goal and Ray's gadget-filled look at the game.

Social Media Stretch Goal!

Do you want to spread the word about the campaign AND help unlock the mysterious 5th set of dice that YOU voted for. We hope so! If we hit the goal over the weekend, we will reveal the dice (included in the Legend Tier and available as an add-on) on Monday!

Here’s your heroic mission:

• Facebook: 100 likes of this post & 50 friends tagged in the comments
• Instagram: 75 likes of this post & 25 friends tagged in the comments
• X (Twitter): 25 reposts of this post

Ray Remembers: Gadgets

DC HEROES was a smash hit from the moment it debuted, but there was one aspect of the game some players struggled with—super gadgets like the Batmobile, the Phantom Zone projector, and Oliver Queen’s trick arrows. Some found DCH’s gadget rules a bit obtuse. Originally, DCH assigned any and all gadgets a number of “Uses” and a “Duration.”  The obvious problem is that while it’s obvious how Uses and Duration might apply to some types of gadgets, it’s not clear how they apply to other types of gadgets. The Batmobile, for example, was originally assigned nine Uses and a Duration of about eight hours, but what exactly does that mean? Reading the rules carefully tells us the Batmobile can run for eight hours on a single tank of fuel, but Batman can only use it nine times before it needs a tune-up. Okay, what counts as a “use?” Driving any distance at all, or driving for the equivalent of eight hours? If the latter, do we really have to keep track of exactly how long the Batmobile is kept running? Because of problems like this, Greg Gorden, the designer of DC HEROES, was never really happy with the gadget rules himself. He  talks about this in his Designer’s Notes to DCH’s first edition.

A year or two into the first edition, Troy Denning took a stab at redesigning DC’s Gadget rules in the HARDWARE HANDBOOK, which happens to be our final book stretch goal. Troy’s system was a lot more comprehensive than Greg’s and got rid of Uses and Duration. The HH assigned the Batmobile 28 “charges.” The new system cleaned up the ambiguities in the original but required a lot of bookkeeping.

I took a third stab at gadgets in the DC HEROES Second Edition. My system took partial inspiration from similar rules in Hero Games’ CHAMPIONS RPG. Further, to eliminate bookkeeping, I introduced a brand new concept known as “Reliability.” A pistol might have a Reliability of 4, meaning the moment you roll a 4 or less while using the pistol, you are now out of bullets. That might happen on your first shot, or your fifth, or your twentieth; there is no need to track exactly how many bullets you’ve fired. Not only is this system easy to use, I’ll argue, but it does a good job of recreating the way gadgets are treated in the comics. Comics writers don’t seem to pay much attention to the number of shots Green Arrow fires. He usually has access to enough arrows to do everything he wants, but once in a while—always when he least expects it—he runs out. In the comics, Sgt. Rock running out of ammunition or the Batmobile malfunctioning aren’t governed by measurable limits. They’re basically just plot complications that happen at seemingly random intervals.

In any case, you can use any one of DC HEROES’s three Gadgetry systems—pick your favorite!—with any version of the game.

Ray Winninger is the co-designer of the DC Heroes RPG and former Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Thanks for backing,

The Cryptozoic Team

ONE WEEK to Go! Who’s Who Poll and Remembering Those We’ve Lost
about 1 year ago – Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 10:53:58 AM

DC Heroes fans,

One week to go! As we approach the final stretch, we are getting close to unlocking all the books. Since our last update, at $360k, you unlocked the Who Watches the Watchmen? for Bundle 3! In this 32-page module, Captain Metropolis has been kidnapped and his fellow Crimebusters are on the case.

It’s poll time! The original versions of the Who’s Who in the DC Universe books in the DC Heroes RPG line came in a loose-leaf format. Why? DC’s own Who’s Who series in the comics included loose-leaf pages. The Mayfair books were meant to be a companion to this series, matching it with a corresponding page containing DC Heroes game info. Players could place the DC Heroes pages in the same three-ring binder as the DC pages to form a comprehensive reference to all the most important characters.

For this reprint, we’d like to hear from you: Do you want loose leaf pages or do you want your Who’s Who books bound? Take this POLL and share your opinions in the comments!

Finally, per a backer request, we’d like to provide a closer look at the Premium GM Screen, which measures 36” x 12” when unfolded and is included in the Legend Tier and available as an add-on. Check out the front, featuring Jim Lee art from Hush, and back!

Ray Remembers: In Memoriam 

As we approach the 40th Anniversary of DC HEROES, I want to recognize a few colleagues who made huge contributions to DCH and are, sadly, no longer with us.

Darwin and Peter Bromley co-founded Mayfair Games, the publisher of DCH. It was Darwin who convinced DC Comics to work with Mayfair to produce an RPG. Together, the Bromley brothers amassed a near-complete collection of DC Comics that was invaluable to those of us who worked on the game. Peter passed away in 2016, and Darwin passed in 2019.

Since I started preparing to launch this Kickstarter, my old friend Tom Cook has been in my thoughts. Tom was the senior editor at Mayfair who collaborated with me on the Second Edition expansion and re-design of the core game in 1988. He later wrote the match-play adventure DEADLY FUSION, included with Bundle 6. Tom was an all-around good guy and a cheerful collaborator. I threw plenty of curveballs at him when we were working on the DCH Second Edition and he caught them all.  (Ray: “I want to hire a bunch of DC writers to contribute mini-essays to the 2E Background book. Robert Kanigher can write about the DCU in World War II, Kirby can write about Apokolips, Neil Gaiman can write about magic! See where I’m going?” (Tom: “That’s going to be a nightmare to manage, Ray, but I love it and it has to happen!”) Tom left us much too early in 2023.

Ray Winninger is the co-designer of the DC Heroes RPG and former Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Thanks for backing,

The Cryptozoic Team

Bell Reve Sourcebook and the Story Behind the 3rd Edition
about 1 year ago – Mon, Dec 09, 2024 at 03:23:21 PM

DC Heroes fans,

We hope everyone had a great weekend! We had a good number of new backers join over the past few days… welcome! Please make everyone feel at home.

The big news is you unlocked two more books, leaving just a few to go! Our hope is we can make our way through all the book unlocks before the final days of the campaign, so we can attract last-minute backers with a “complete collection.” 

At $340k, you unlocked the Belle Reve Sourcebook. This 44-page book includes character profiles, the inmates of Belle Reve Prison, their handlers in the Suicide Squad, and some of the Squad's most fearsome foes. 

Next: When we reached $350k, you unlocked a 36-page module: Project Prometheus. King Minos of Crete wants to restore his homeland to its ancient glory, but US Intelligence has noticed he's linked to a number of suspicious characters and sends your heroes to investigate. 

Now, Ray Winninger takes on your latest questions!

Ray Answers: Two Players & Characters in Modules

I understand there are some that you can do with two players, but I’m curious… Is there any way to swing this so that my wife and I would be able to play through all of the campaigns just the two of us? Or is that extremely unlikely to be possible?

Unfortunately, most of the adventures are designed for teams of heroes to tackle. By my count, there are nine adventures playable Match-Play or with a single player: Wheel of Destruction, Escort to Hell, Lines of Death, Strangers in Paradise, War of the Gods, In Hot Pursuit, Deadly Fusion, the Otherwhere Quest, and The Swamp Thing Sourcebook. The rules boxsets also include everything you need to create your own adventures.

Are there characters in the modules whose stats don't appear in the other books?

Yes. Most high-profile DC heroes and villains appear in the 2E boxed set, but there are lots of characters that appear only in the sourcebooks and a few who appear only in adventures. All the members of the Doom Patrol and the DP's most prominent foes appear only in "Moonshot," for instance. Wonder Woman's supporting cast and full range of villains appear only in "Strangers in Paradise," etc. 
 

Ray Winninger is the co-designer of the DC Heroes RPG and former Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons. 

Ray Remembers: Batman RPG and DC Heroes 3E

A lot of folks, even a few long-time fans, have been asking about THE BATMAN ROLEPLAYING and THE DC HEROES 3RD EDITION RULEBOOK (both part of Bundle 8). The former was only available for a relatively short time and the latter appeared toward the very end of the DCH. 

THE BATMAN ROLEPLAYING GAME was produced to capitalize on the wildly popular BATMAN movie released in 1989. When BATMAN arrived in theaters it was accompanied by a merchandising juggernaut—Batman apparel, toys, games, breakfast cereal, you name it. Mayfair wisely recognized it could sell lots of copies of a standalone Batman product in that environment. Bookstores, toy stores, and department stores were setting up prominent, Batman-themed displays, and Mayfair’s sales staff managed to secure a place for a Batman RPG in many of them. 

To fully capitalize on the opportunity, Mayfair R&D had to move fast. The Batman RPG was assembled at almost the exact same time as the DCH 2nd Edition box set. My design work on the 2nd Edition was complete, so editor Jack Barker sequestered himself away with the 2E manuscripts for a couple weeks to assemble a cut-down version of DCH containing just enough rules to run characters like Batman and his friends. While Jack was toiling away, I wrote a new Batman adventure for the volume. My only memory of that adventure is that I was quite happy with it. I’ll soon find out how accurate those memories are since I’m about to read it for the first time in thirty-five years! 

The 3rd Edition of DC HEROES was produced because Mayfair was running short on stock of the 2E boxed set. Rather than risk an expensive reprint as the line was drawing to a close, we decided to compile most of the material in the boxed set into a single volume. Printing a single book was a lot less costly, and therefore a lot less risky, than reprinting all the components in the box. We also had reason to believe that some bookstores and comic shops that were unwilling to carry the more expensive boxed rules would happily stock the single volume. 

The 3E rulebook was crafted by editor Bryan Nystul. While 2E was a “word one” rewrite, 3E is basically just a reorganization of the 2E material, though it incorporates a couple of powers that appeared in DCH products after the 2nd Edition box was published, and 3E contains a tiny number of net-new tweaks. 

Thanks for backing,

The Cryptozoic Team

3rd Edition Unlocked! Plus Behind the Scenes of DC Heroes with Jack Barker
about 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 06:19:17 PM

DC Heroes fans,

You did it! When we hit $333k, you unlocked the DC Heroes Third Edition Rulebook! It has been added to Bundle 8. This updated and expanded role-playing game contains everything you need to recreate the exploits of your favorite heroes in the Post-Crisis DC Universe condensed in a single volume. 

We have also updated the Kickstarter to show that with Bundle 8 unlocked, the Legend Tier now offers savings of $295 (versus adding on the items individually)

Also, per a fan request, we have a created add-on for a Complete Dice Set (all 5 sets) for $90.

Before the weekend, we have some amazing recollections by the great Jack Barker!

Behind the Scenes of the Second Edition of the DC Heroes Role-Playing Game!

Or Why I Sent Neil Gaiman $75 for a postcard

Disclaimer: this story (and any others like it) are purely based on my recollections. If Ray Winninger and/or Greg Gorden say something happened differently, they are almost certainly correct. They are both waaay smarter than me.

When I joined Mayfair in 1988, the first edition of the DC Heroes RPG was in full-swing, but change was on the horizon. In order to bring the game into line with DC’s “post-Crisis On Infinite Earths” continuity, my predecessor as Product Line Coordinator, Tom Cook, hired Ray Winninger to do an overhaul of the base game, which Mayfair would release as the DCH Second Edition. One of the brilliant ideas that they brought to the table was to reach out to DC’s stable of writers, editors, and other creators to ask them to each provide a brief essay on an area of DC Comics lore that they were associated with (e.g., John Byrne on post-Crisis Superman*). We would sprinkle these essays throughout the second edition books to give them some additional flavor and nerd street cred.

My brain is refusing to spit out the details of how exactly we got in touch with these creators, but we probably asked Bob Greenberger (who was editor-in-chief of DC Comics at the time) to open his rolodex and provide us their contact info. This was all pre-internet, so it was all done by what you young kids call “snail mail.” In any case, we sent out requests to around thirty different creators, explaining the idea, telling them which topic we would love to hear from them about, and offering them the handsome sum of $75 (which in today’s money is about… seventy-five bucks? I dunno).

And yeah, we got two. But they were so momentous, I thought, we just had to use them. Jack Kirby (the JACK KIRBY) sent us an essay about the New Gods and Joe Kubert (the JOE KUBERT) gave us one about Sgt. Rock. Around the time I was arguing with the art department about including just the two, we got a postcard from Neil Gaiman (before he was the NEIL GAIMAN) with about two or three sentences on “Magic in the DC Universe,” which was the topic we’d asked him about. I figured three was the magic number (ba dum tss) to make the essay inclusions worthwhile, so I sent Neil a check for $75 and we included the text of the postcard in the Rules Manual.

No DC Heroes story is complete without the folks at DC in charge of approving things. Joe Kubert’s essay talked about how he believed that Sgt. Rock didn’t survive WWII and that he had a “final story” for Rock in his head. Oh no, said DC licensing, you can’t say that! But this is Joe-freakin’-Kubert, I replied. Besides, these essays are the opinions of the writers; they are not binding in any way. So DC licensing let it slide. Imagine my amazement, thirty-plus years later, when a backup story in DC Universe Legacies #4 showed Sgt. Rock meeting his maker (saving a little girl) on the last day of the war. Holy smokes, I thought, that’s the story he was talking about in his essay for the DCH Second Edition.

One more postscript to this silly story: in 1997, I attended a reading with Neil Gaiman at the public library in Edina, Minnesota. It was free, and attended by maybe twenty-five people. He still wasn’t quite the NEIL GAIMAN yet, but he was going to be soon after. According to Neil, it was his first reading of any material from Stardust, the first issue of which had recently been published by DC. That was cool. During the meet-and-greet afterwards, I introduced myself and mentioned how I used to work for Mayfair, and we had talked a few times during my tenure there. I thanked him for sending the postcard, since it had given me the leverage I needed to get the Kirby and Kubert essays into the book. I also said I hoped he’d gotten the $75 check, to which he replied, “I always wondered what that check was for!” “But you cashed it,” I replied. He signed my copy of Stardust #1, “To Jack, thanks for the check!” We laughed, and I let the next person in line get their copies of Sandman #1 signed.

*John Byrne is one of the creators we never heard back from. Him and about 25 others. C’est la vie.

JACK A. BARKER was a Line Editor for the DC Heroes RPG from 1987-88 and its Product Line Coordinator from 1988-1991. Quick shout-out here to The Chicago Sentinels—We’ve Got Everything Under Control.

Thanks for backing,

The Cryptozoic Team