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Wednesday, July 31, 2024

New Salem: Revolution - Module Retrospective on DC Heroes RPG 1e

I admit I was surprised to find that all of my adventures for DC Heroes were for 1E, and the edition of the game I actually still own is 2E; there weren't really a lot of changes, but it does show where my gaming purchase habits fell off after I was heading for college, and that the bulk of the DC Heroes game product was for 1E (42 non-core book items vs. 20). 

I will admit I have a deeply strange relationship with the DC Heroes game: it easily holds the highest Fiddled With Mechanics to Actually Played ratio out of everything on my shelf. There's so much to love and so much that is truly bizarre in the mid-80's design. That being said, I'm here today to judge the module design for the four that I own. 


Again, these are pretty covers, using the artists responsible for the books to carry the tone.
The fact that you have to hunt to find the titles on the Watchmen and Flash modules is a problem. 

Like the MSH modules, most of DC Heroes output assumes you are playing the game to play the characters from the comics, and in a sort of one-off fashion, like you're randomly grabbing this week's comics off the spinner rack. And like the MSH modules, they are steeped in the feel and lore of the comics in question, but while was able to/can see myself taking MSH modules I'm familiar with and converting them to other Marvel heroes (I did do it with Time Trap going from Avengers to my X-Men game, and could easily do Lone Wolves to with a handful of X-Men in the city with a couple tweaks, I wouldn't with Cat's Paw because it's just not very good, but my memory of Murderworld I think moving it from the FF back to the X-Men should have worked, etc.), three of these adventures feel convertible to a different hero set. I've stolen elements from City of Fear a couple of times but the module in toto? Not seeing it.

First, the Ambush Bug module Don't Ask! is designed for YOUR OWN HEROES! but it's also first a foremost an Ambush Bug scenario. Like he messes with Superman from time to time, this is Ambush Bug inserting himself and his characteristic whimsy into your story. If your players are into that, GREAT! If they aren't it's a train wreck, but the module makes this very clear. It is also EXTREMELY meta in the way that Ambush Bug stories are. The rough plot is the heroes are stopping Lex Luthor from gaining ultimate power via exploring a pinhole event in the universe, only for the Bug to interrupt and become omnipotent; the rest of the adventure is the fallout of an "aware that he's living in a comic book wanna-be hero suddenly having ultimate power" farce. Explaining any more would be giving it away.

The plot is, as is true for most adventures, pretty linear - DC Heroes modules are built with numbered encounters and a flowchart telling the GM how to move from one to another. If made today, this might have a Gumshoe model with core clues to lead you from scene to scene with more choices on route, but in 1986 stories designed to match genre were pretty damn linear. To their credit this isn't a AD&D map were the room descriptions are actually scene bits, and the GM has to read to the end to see what happens: we get an immediate Story Synopsis for the GM which is super helpful, and the module itself is just a fun read. Each encounter includes a paragraph of "Troubleshooting" advice for the GM is the encounter doesn't go as planned and a way to get things on track. Finally the book is just a hoot to read. it's so audacious that I am dying to someday run it, but what kids know Ambush Bug these days?

The Justice League International When a Stranger Calls module is a deeply odd duck. it is meant to be played in conjunction with the Booster Gold module All that Glitters, where the player playing Booster keeps being given options to split out on the current scene in Stranger  to have a solo scene during that time in Glitters.  I don't own Glitters, but it apparently has to do with time traveling villains taking over Mayfair Games while Booster is negotiating a deal for a game based on his license. This is very in keeping with the JLI books at the time, with a lot of sitcom style character humor in what would otherwise be a straight up super-adventure rather than the madcap humor of Ambush Bug. I'm just not sure the concept of singling out one PC for solo scenes across the module works. Did anyone ever do this? Please tell me!

Again we have the up front story synopsis and the encounter flowchart for the very linear adventure (you can choose the order you do the set piece fights in, but you can't skip them). The plot itself is... incongruous. It solves the problem of "if you have a chance to be Batman, be Batman" by having him wounded and staying at HQ to coordinate the heroes, giving the GM an informational mouthpiece, and gives Dr. Fate's player a "clue keeper" in the form of a paper fortune teller where the GM can say "look under the star" and the player gets the information from Fate's Occultist and Scholar skills as the story involves Phantom Stranger and some of the League's old magical foes. I admit that's a pretty clever play to feed information directly to the player as needed. Alas the plot also hinges on a twist that the adventure so foreshadows that it's hard to imagine the Players not twigging to it immediately. I have to remember that what is transparent to the GM is opaque to the players, but still.... I imagine you could run this with most arrays of Justice League heroes (including your own heroes if they are the current Justice League) but it's so steeped in League lore that otherwise it wouldn't work, and you'd lose all the tone of the 1980's JLI

Taking out the Trash, the Watchmen module, is so Watchmen specific that translating it would be really hard. It takes place around the 1968 Republican National convention, now in NYC rather than Miami and including two new candidates who are in control of two different corrupt/criminal organizations (as opposed to the current VP and front runner, Richard Nixon, who needs no one's help in being corrupt). There's politics and corruption and skullduggery and mad cults spouting religious apocalyptical nonsense while murdering people... It's VERY 1968. And it's also very Watchmen, where the main villain is Moloch from the original series at the height of his criminal empire.

As with When a Stranger Calls, this one has a subplot for just one of the PCs - the Comedian - but this time it's integrated into the module rather than tying to a separate module. Again, it's a strange decision in something that can't be part of an ongoing campaign to give one player a subplot, assuming someone is evening playing the Comedian. The synopsis, flowcharts, and troubleshooting at all here, but the encounters in this one (and it just dawned on me how indicative of the changes in game play that these are still called encounters rather than scenes) are very short, evocative, and provide a single data point. I think it's an effective enough adventure if you can get the players to buy in - better than Stranger, not as good as Don't Ask. It also might be something that could be frameworked into New Salem, moving the contemporary RNC to New Salem and finding ways to insert the PCs into that concept. I  do want to point out that Taking out the Trash is a GREAT Watchmen sourcebook, signed off on by Moore, illustrated by Gibbons.

Finally, and I know this is getting long, the Flash Adventure City of Fear. This one I've mined conceptually a couple of times, but it's a solo adventure for a super-speed hero who has the power level and questions about capitalism of the post crisis Wally West flash. The whole module is constructed around the 1980's obsession with high finance and genius businessmen whose wealth gives them immunity. There are no super-powered antagonists in the story outside of our master of industry who is so powerfully manipulative he's statted with Hypnosis and Mind Control (which based on how they changed things for Rorschach and Ozymandias between 1E and 2E, would be replaced with skills). 

Again the design of the modules with the encounters and flowchart and troubleshooting are solid. This is a solid mystery for the time period, with lots of NPCs to question and some twists and turns - and the fact that DC Heroes has rules for information gathering via skills and NPCs influencing heroes via skills and powers are used to good effect. The villains master plan is both sensible enough and perfectly fits the Flash - he plans on setting off bombs on all the passages in and out of Manhattan and, as panic causes the stock market to dip, buy on the crash and become a billionaire. I used it once in a V&V game where the PCs had no way to stop it with their power sets, and once in a DC Heroes game where the bridge severing was to Kandor up Manhattan and Superman had to stop the bombs. It's a really well executed bit, but unless you have a super speed hero who also does rough detective work, it's hard to slot in. 

So what did we learn here? the DC Heroes system has some advantages in terms of social interactions and clue gathering having specific rules that the adventures can make use of, unusual for a supers game. The flowcharts, synopsis, and troubleshooting are all great. But all of them are much too linear and specific for general adaptation. 

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