Bell Reve Sourcebook and the Story Behind the 3rd Edition
over 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
over 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
Memories: DC Heroes Products That Never Made It
over 1 year ago
– Thu, Dec 05, 2024 at 04:17:47 PM
DC Heroes fans,
We are closing in on unlocking the 3rd edition book… almost there! We know the middle part of Kickstarters can be a bit slow, but we still have new backers joining us everyday and we really appreciate everyone here.
Today, Ray Winninger tells us a little bit about DC Heroes products that never made it across the finish line. Check it out!
The DC Heroes That Never Was
Lots of people are asking about various DC HEROES products that were in the pipeline—perhaps even announced—but never published. Here is what I know.
Who’s Who #4.DC published a third version of the “Who’s Who” reference guide from August of 1990 to February of 1992. This version consisted of 16 issues, each comprised of 24 loose-leaf pages describing an important denizen of the DCU. The Mayfair “Who’s Who” line (Bundle 7) was conceived as a companion to this series. Each of the Mayfair products covered four issues of the DC series and matched each DC entry with a corresponding page containing DC HEROES game info. The idea was that players could place the Mayfair pages in the same three-ring binder as the DC pages to form a comprehensive reference to all of DC’s most important characters.
Unfortunately, Mayfair and DC decided to end the DC HEROES product line just as work on Mayfair’s Who’s Who (covering issues 13-16 of DC’s series) was beginning. I wrote maybe twenty entries for WW4. Nothing made it to editorial or layout.
The Flash Sourcebook.Former Mayfair editor Jack Barker completed a first draft of a 96-page Flash sourcebook covering all the various Flashes, their friends and foes, the Speed Force, and Keystone and Central Cities. This manuscript was completed a year or two before the DCH Line ended, but by that point, sales were already on the decline as the comics market was undergoing a downward swing of its own. Before the Flash SB could move into editorial, Mayfair decided that it could no longer afford to produce DC products dedicated to a single character. The logic is that something like the Flash SB appeals only to Flash fans, while books like THE DC TECHNICAL MANUAL or Who’s Who appeal to all DC Comics fans, broadening their sales potential.
The Sandman Sourcebook. I put several weeks of work into a DC HEROES adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. This would have been in the same format as THE SWAMP THING SOURCEBOOK (Bundle 6)—a 32 page sourcebook accompanied by a 32 page solo adventure. There were a couple of early conversations with Gaiman and Kelly Jones created a cover. This project, too, came right about the time that Mayfair lost interest in products dedicated to a single character. As I was working, the relationship between the Sandman comics and the DCU was becoming murkier, which was another factor that played a role in suspending the project.
The Killing Joke and V For Vendetta.I had fun working with Alan Moore on Watchmen and we spoke about RPG adaptations of his Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke and his series V for Vendetta. Both were extensively outlined but didn’t get much further than that. TKJ was conceived as a Match-Play between Batman and the Joker with some brand new “sanity” rules. V was in the sourcebook/solo adventure format.
Before you ask, as far as I know, nothing from any of these projects still exists. ☹
Ray Winninger is the co-designer of the DC Heroes RPG and former Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons.
Thanks for backing,
The Cryptozoic Team
