Blood of Heroes
By Chris Perrin
Blood of Heroes is a superhero role playing game written by Tony Oliveira and Ray Hedman and published by Pulsar Games, Inc. Blood of Heroes uses the Mayfair Exponential Game System (MEGS), which Mayfair designed specifically for its own DC Heroes superhero role playing game. Blood of Heroes uses that system with only minimal changes, but layers on its own expansive set of pre-generated characters (one hundred come with the book) and its own world to give it its own flavor separate from DC Heroes. Currently, the game is out of print, though at one time Pulsar Games was trying to bring the game back, however legal difficulties with DC comics slowed progress on those efforts.
Despite the fact a reprint does not appear to be coming soon, Blood of Heroes is still an interesting game. Most noteworthy about the game is its licensing of the MEGS system which elegantly handles the vast differences in power between your average person, Batman, and Superman all in the same system. This is the problem of scale and it is inherent to any superhero role playing game.
Blood of Heroes MEGS
Mayfair Games designed MEGS specifically to deal with this type of problem. Their approach was mathematically sound, yet it was abstracted out so that it would be easy for players who didn’t want to bring a calculator to the game table. MEGS represents absolutely everything in the game from how strong or fast a character is to weight to distance to speed and so on using an exponential system. On its own, an exponential system sounds like it would require a lot of math, so the MEGS system uses Advancement Points (AP) to represent differences in various power levels on a scale from -100 to 100 AP.
Each AP represents a certain amount of distance, time, or power and that amount doubles with each level of AP. For instance, 1 AP represents one hundred pounds, five seconds, twelve feet, etc. 2 AP is roughly twice that number (two hundred pounds, ten seconds, etc.) and 3 AP is twice that (four hundred pounds, twenty seconds, and so on.) Thus vastly different power levels are only a few AP apart.
For instance, using MEGS in an actual game, a normal human might have a 1 or 2 in Strength (the ability to lift one or two hundred pounds is not outside normal for a fit person) while Superman might have an 8 in Strength (the ability to left almost thirteen thousand pounds.) Does this mean that a normal human can beat up Superman? Not without a lucky, lucky roll (and some kryptonite) even though in terms of the game their difference between the AP is only 5 or 6 points.
That’s the good of Blood of Heroes. Pulsar Games did their best to preserve the MEGS system even as Mayfair stopped publishing DC Heroes. While there were a few modest changes to MEGS (documented in the beginning of the Blood of Heroes book), for the most part Blood of Heroes is the true heir to the system.
Blood of Heroes Setting
The bigger problem with Blood of Heroes is the setting. Though Pulsar Games was able to license MEGS, it could not secure a licensing deal with DC for the characters and the setting. Pulsar Games did their best to provide a new setting, complete with an exhaustive section on NPC villains. Still, though the book dedicates one hundred and twenty-six pages to fleshing out its world, it’s not a very good setting. The huge NPC villain section contains villains like Anarchy Man. Even worse, the book and its setting have some questionable content and content which is risqué only for the point of being risqué. Such elements that do not mesh well in the superhero genre. For this, Blood of Heroes gets marked down in the spectrum of superhero gaming.
Despite that, the vibrant community which still supports DC Heroes still has a soft spot in their hearts for Blood of Heroes despite the drubbing the setting gets. In fact, a number of people who might never have gotten to play or read DC Heroes were still exposed to the MEGS system via Blood of Heroes and to this day, the MEGS systems scores high marks for its ability to handle scale easily.
Where to Find Blood of Heroes RPG
Sadly, the game is exceedingly difficult to find. Most of the Blood of Heroes content that is still being produced by fans out on the Internet is a hybrid of DC Heroes and Blood of Heroes, but there is still some support for the game out there.
Those fans of Blood of Heroes and DC Heroes out there were undoubtedly excited by the purchase of Pulsar Games in 2003. The new ownership immediately set their mind to a rerelease of Blood of Heroes. However, at that time there were several legal issues which would need to be evaluated before they could do so. At the time of the purchase and continuing to today, it is unclear whether Mayfair had the right to license the MEGS game rules to Pulsar Games or anyone else.
The contract states that DC owns the entire DC Heroes game, of which MEGS would be a part. That would mean that they never owned MEGS, and subsequently, could not have let Pulsar Games use what was, in effect, DC’s property. This is especially problematic since Blood of Heroes is basically DC Heroes with slightly different window dressing. No resolution to this problem has yet to be found.
Still, for those who want to try the MEGS system, which so many gamers have fallen in love with for their superhero gaming, Blood of Heroes is not a bad choice. This is certainly true for those who are not tied into the DC universe per se. Copies of Blood of Heroes can still be found online for purchase and for reasonable prices for hard-to-find titles. This is a good thing since the system alone means that its worth trying, even if the setting and art do not exactly hold up to the standards of role playing games even when it was published.