Golden Heroes

Golden Heroes by Simon Burley and Peter Haines (Games Workshop, 1984)

Superhero RPGs have been around almost as long as role-playing has. While individual superhero game systems have come and gone over the years (mainly gone), their influence on game design can not be underestimated, even if the longevity of these individual game systems is mayfly-like when compared to mainstays of fantasy and SF RPGing. Champions is probably the exception, having survived on and off (more off than on probably, but hey-ho…) in various incarnations over the years. No doubt this is because it was (almost) the first and, I suppose for many, also the best. Marvel Heroes (TSR) and DC Heroes (Mayfair) both had decent short term success, yet, despite having highly successful licenses supporting them, they faded away surprisingly quickly.

While the fleeting commercial lifespans of these games systems were short, they have all left their mark on RPG game design to some extent. Champions had one of the first point-based character design system, with all the advantages, disadvantages, etc… that can be found in GURPS today and I’m pretty sure it introduced hero points as a legitimate means for players to fudge the dice. Okay, Marvel Heroes was actually rubbish, but I guess it could be argued that the descriptive rather than numerical stats pre-dated the descriptive Amber system (I’m being generous, I know), although I admit that the ethos of these game systems is entirely different. But for me the DC Heroes system is my favorite of the big three super-RPGs. Its game design was by far the most elegant, including a resolution table which even today is a thing of beauty, especially when you consider the system had to reconcile the difference in power between, say, Robin and Superman, which it amazingly manages to do all on one little table and logarithmic stats! But best of all was DC Heroes system for resolving subplots which was fucking excellent and, to my mind, gazzumped Pendragon and the latter ‘storyteller’ style games in providing a meaningful framework for handling personal character-focused dramas.

Of course there were and (probably) are other super-RPGs out there, from fleeting things like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to White Wolfs failed Trinity/Aon thing, to the long-term if unremarkable success of GURPS Supers. What of course all these games have in common is that they are all American, which is understandable as the superhero genre is perhaps quintessentially an American genre along with the Western. Sure there are exceptions: Watchmen, The Boys, Zenith and, the less well known but utterly amazing, New Statesmen are superhero comics that all come to mind, but these subvert and deconstruct the genre, and all but one is actually set in the US. Yet despite this there was one genuine superhero RPG that did sprout out of the UK’s fledgling RPG industry (an industry that died long before its teens – alas).

And that game was Golden Heroes! In fact GH has the dubious distinction of being Games Workshop’s first home-grown RPG. Before that GW had only released UK licensed versions of American products, such as the UK editions of Runequest, Traveler, MERP and Call of Cthulhu, as well as generic RPG aids like floor plans and those mysterious ‘hex sheets.’ I’m guessing that for GW to produce their own RPG in 1984 must have been a fairly big deal for them at the time. Maybe even make or break? And I’m also guessing that the idea of producing a generic superhero RPG must have looked like a fairly smart move too. The fantasy RPG market must have looked fairly crowded at the time (D&D, AD&D, RQ and Tunnels & Trolls, among others) and the SF market couldn’t have looked much better (Traveler, Star Frontiers and Gamma World, etc…), so only having to compete against Champions must have seemed like much better odds. Of course I could be wrong, maybe the decision to elbow in on the proto-super-RPG scene was more organic than how I’m presenting it, but either way it must have seemed like quite a smart move at the time. GW also had the trump card of having their own house RPG mag White Dwarf from which to bang their drum, a luxury that Champions didn’t have…

The physical design of the game books emulated the comic book look

But before you could say “Holy d20, Batman” licensed super-RPGs would be on the scene and the super-RPG market, what must surely have been a fairly niche market within the greater (if only slightly large) niche market of RPG industry as a whole, must have started to look a little too crowded for comfort. It wouldn’t be long for GW to pull the plug on GH, instead developing another game based on another licensed comic book: Judge Dredd, and later their own Warhammer universe. In its year long run GW released a grand total of three supplements for GH: a combat screen and two adventure modules, and a bunch of excellent scenarios and articles in WD.

But enough procrastinating… was it any good? In a word, yes! Very good indeed. The game system was a bit of a modular hodge-podge of different rules and dice like D&D was back then, but among the mess (which was common at that time across almost all RPGs) there were some brilliant ideas, which deserve recognition. Here goes…

• Hits to Kill/Hits to Coma: not sure if GH originated the distinction of having two lots of hit points, but in the context of “It’s clobbering time!” style brawling that almost never ends in a any fatalities, it makes perfect sense.

• Character creation: random! Nothing new in that you say, but the groovy thing was that you rolled up stats and powers had to be justified by your background rationale. Soooo… let’s say you roll the powers: stretch, weather control and wall crawling, then you have to think of a background to justify them. Pretty tricky, eh? If you can’t then you can’t have them. Realistically this will probably mean dropping a power or two out of the seven or so you generate. The Players Book gave eight examples of radically different character rationales to the same set of random powers to help inspire the – presumably – daunted player at to how this might be done. In fairness there was a suggested mechanic to compensate players for dropping unsuitable or unrationaleable powers, although the compensation didn’t really compare with loss of the power. Of course, just as some players will relish the challenge of this, other players won’t, so it doesn’t suit all. I’m not going to get into the pros and cons of random vs. design methods of character creation, however I will say that I probably favour the former for easy and for fun, although I do understand the arguments against it from the designist camp. Anyway, I think in this case it works well. It certainly encourages the wackier end of the superhero spectrum and makes it almost impossible for players to generate a load of boring X-Men clones. The selection of super powers was far from vast, being only 40 odd, but the rules seemed to cut the players and ref (called ‘Scenario Supervisor’ or just the ‘SS’ for short), plenty of slack in regard to subtly mutating the powers to suit the rationale whenever possible, which even today seems refreshing.

• But the most impressive element of the game mechanics for my money was the dully named Campaign Ratings: an array of fluctuating characteristics and stats, which could go up or down due to actual role-playing! No, not spending experience points, but by the way your character behaves. Of course your character rationale would also have plenty of influence on there starting values too. Now if you think this sounds a little bit like the Passions and Trait system in Pendragon which is widely celebrated in revolutionizing RPGing from the binary shackles of good-evil alignments and such other horse shit then you are right. What’s more GH came out a good 12 months or so before Pendragon did. Now I’m not saying that Greg Stafford ripped it off, but I am saying that GH got there first and deserves to be remembered for it.

• So how did GH’s Campaign Ratings work (sorry in advance if it gets complicated here, but there’s lots to discuss and I mean to get jiggy with the nitty-gritty here, baby): basically there were three master CR: Public Status, Detective Points and Personal Status, all made up from their respective five mini-CR. For example Personal Status was totalled up from: Conscience, Success Rating, Public Response, Expression and Security: four of which were rated from 1 to 5 and one (Security) rated from 1 to 10: giving a total from 5 to 30. For aesthetic reasons it’s a pity that they weren’t all rated in the same range of numbers, say all from 1 to 5, but as I said those were messy times in game design and frankly it doesn’t really matter.

• Okay, for example lets say our hero is of the X-Men variety: a bit of a freak to look at and from a troubled background in some way. Hmmm… let’s say he accidentally fried his mum at the dinning table when he first let loose a energy beam over a dispute over the gravy: a secret which his alter ego doesn’t want the fuzz to find out about. As he has a skeleton in his closet (just in front of those dice) his Conscience is 1 out of 5, he’s a bit of a loner so his Expression is only 2, his freakish appearance means that public opinion is mixed at best giving him a Public Response of 2, obviously he’s a tad pessimistic so his Security is only 3 (out of 10 remember) and his Success Rating is how many of his last five crime-fighting adventures were successful, so lets say he’s just above average, solving 3 out of 5 cases: giving him a measly total of 11 out of 30: meaning his state of mind is uncertain and his private life is unstable. Okay, not only does this give us a numerical value to use as a role-playing guide, but also it allows the player to have some control on his character development. If the player wants to see the character to get better then he better do something to sort his dark secret out and maybe get a spin doctor to help his public relations.

• As you can see there is a degree of interconnectedness between the the various CRs: not only in the relationship between the mini-CRs and their respective master-CR, but also between the Public Status CR (which consists of things like Heroism, Public Relations and Public Identification), which effects the Public Response mini-CR which in turn effects his Personal Status PR…. gaaaah! Confussed? Well, you won’t be if you had the rules in front of you… I’m just making a hash of it! But obviously all this is a tad more complicated and convoluted than Pendragon’s elegant Traits and Passions system, yet what I like about GH’s CR system is that it makes you think about how the different facets of you character make up the whole.

• So do Campaign Ratings mean anything in game terms? Yes. By multiplying the CR (5-30) by three you get a number between 15 and 90, which is a perfect range to roll a d100 against. So Public Status might be rolled against to see if the cops try to arrest you for your vigilante activities or pat you on the back. Detective Points can be rolled against to see if you spot a clue or recognize a criminal. And Personal Status could be used as a luck roll.

• Obviously all this means that a ref must keep his eyes peeled for min/maxers and power-gamers, as the relative freeform nature of character creation could easily be abused by greedy players. Still its refreshing for a game system to hand over so much control over to the players and the ref rather than try to impose arbitrary restrictions on role-playing in the form of stupid rules. Especially so when GH was published: back in 1984!

For the SS

So what else was there?

• Well, Day Utility Phases or DUPs replaced experience points. Basically players had 7 DUPs per game week to spend on improving powers, building gadgets and even improving CR through activities like patrolling. Therefore removing the carrot/stick approach of experience points from the ref. Now this isn’t going to be to every ref’s taste and at the time I remember thinking that maybe it would be better if the ref dished out 5 to 10 DUPs at the end of every adventure, but looking back at it today… I like it! Experience points are usually dished out in an unfair and Byzantine manner by most refs and logically they make almost no sense. Why should solving a crime or saving the world make you better at fighting or flying? No, training makes you good at stuff and training should predominately happen off screen so to speak. Anything which minimizes the amount of ref direction is a good thing I think. GH (along with RQ of course) was fairly unique at the time at treating the players as adults rather than a bunch of retarded children who need constant supervision to stop them thinking for themselves. Again DUPs are highly reminiscent of Pendragon’s Winter Phase system. Anyway, rapid character improvement isn’t really reflective of the superhero genre as a whole, where characters like Superman and Spider-Man remain largely unchanged for decades at a time.

Any other nice touches?

• Frames per Round: GH also admirably was one of the first games to model the rules on the setting, much like Cyberpunk did years later with Humanity, although, sadly, this time it didn’t really work. Initiative in combat was determined in Frames, with different actions taking various number of Frames to complete. A superhero or supervillian had 4 Frames per round, while Goons and Thugs had to make do with only 2 or 3 Frames per round. Frames are obviously game mechanic representations of the panels on a comic page and as you may have guessed combat in GH was basically a phase system. Okay, nothing revolutionary here, but a nice touch all the same.

• However being an ex-Judge Dredd ref I’m not a fan of highly complicated initiative systems. In fairness GH’s isn’t too fussy and it seems to fairly reflect the combat of superhero comics, but personally I prefer my combat more streamlined and less overtly structured. Others may disagree, but they’d be wrong!

So if GH is so great why did it flop and why don’t we see CR in other games?

Well, as I’ve already said, like our ugly hero, generic superhero games have a tougher time winning over the public compared to their good looking licensed equivalents. But basically even here super-RPGs have failed to set the world on fire. Why? Well, obviously some RPGers don’t like comics. Probably less of a problem today than in the past, but there was definitely some snobbery against the genre back in the mid-80s. But also, the success of the deconstructed superhero comics like the Watchmen and Dark Knight effectively made old school golden-aged superheroes look distinctly old hat: a move reflected in RPGs, especially when games like Cyberpunk came out by the late 80s/early 90s.

But I think the other problem is there is less room for role-playing in these highly genre-influenced gaming sub-genres like superhero gaming. There’s a limit to how many times you’re going to find it amusing to say “It’s clobbering time!” or “Cowbunga Shredhead!” Superheroes are stereotypes by definition and while I doubt that there are many cases when role-playing has ever transcended fairly 2D character role playing, in my experience players rarely enjoy having their actions and behaviour imposed upon by genre conventions or the ref or anything else for that matter. Of course there’s no reason why your superheroes have to wear pants over their trousers and fight crime at the weekends, and of course you could make similar arguments for fantasy and SF too, but here at least the reality of the setting is altered: whereas in superhero comics reality is basically just the same as contemporary society: there’s no immersion possible because there’s nothing to immerse into other than the genre cliché.

Anyway, I digress. So where are Campaign Ratings today? Well I’ve mentioned Pendragon, but other than that I’ve no idea. I guess they must have looked like a lot of extra bookkeeping and were sadly abandoned – which is a pity, I think. I remember Pete Tamlyn wrote an excellent article in WD expanding the idea of CRs to other game genres: designing a superstition/piety set of CRs to be used in fantasy or horror games. I think for games like CoC something like Campaign Ratings could really work well. Actually you could probably replace almost all stats with them with little trouble. Of course any culture games would really suit them too. I suppose you could argue that Bushido tried it first in a limited way with its Honour stat, but GH expanded upon the idea massively.

Cover art by Brian Bolland

Another aspect of GH that I like is the tone of the game. While never explicit, the rule books seemed to suggest a certain irony to the superhero genre. Never mocking, but definitely a knowing smile could be detected. The selection of sample villains is excellent: many of which are more memorable than those found in the comics. The sample adventure ‘Crossfire’ is also excellent. Of the two scenario modules released for the game both were outstanding: Legacy of Eagles a short but sweet scenario gives the PCs a chance to inherent a base from superheroes from yesteryear and Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail by the ever witty Marcus L. Rowland has a cryogenically frozen Queen Victoria recruit the heroes to battle Morgan Le Fay to save Britain and return the Holy Grail to the Royal Family! If that doesn’t do it for you then nothing will!

Overall I prefer GH to all the other super-RPGs that I’ve dabbled with and mentioned here. Some, like GURPS Supers and Champions, seem far too complex for my take on the genre, while others like Marvel Heroes were just plain awful! For me, taking the basic mechanics of DC Heroes with its subplot rules and coupling it with GH’s Campaign Ratings would be a fairly sweet compromise. In fact both the subplot system and Campaign Rating mechanics should make it into pretty much any game played today.

EDIT: Here’s my ‘Game Ratings’ for GH:

• Game Mechanics (the aesthetics and functionality of the game system): 4/5
• Playability (as opposed to complexity): 5/5
• Setting (quality of the background information in content and presentation): 3/5
• Completeness (Can you play it straight out of the box or is other material/expansion sets needed): 4/5
• Physical Aesthetics (the physical quality of the components and their aesthetic standards): 4/5
• Editorial standards (the quality of the writing, the clarity of explanation, typos, etc…) : 4/5
• Overall (total marks): 24/30

Don't forget to bow when you meet the Queen, Cyclops-clone!