After many hours of collating, typing and, in some cases, making stuff up, the Golden HeroesSupervisors Book is complete.
Combine this with the Players Book that I attached to this post, and you now have a complete roleplaying game to recreate the kind of four-colour action from your favourite comic books.
Now, I do appreciate that these rules date back to the early eighties, but I still feel that they are a solid set of rules and therefore haven’t really tinkered with them too much. My contribution was to tidy them up, add additional options for some of the existing powers or rewrite them where I felt they were a bit lacking and, in the case of the Heroes & Villains section of the Supervisors Book, add those characters that appeared in various articles and scenarios that were published after the original boxed set came out.
In respect of some of these characters, some were only mentioned as an aside, so I have expanded on what was written to beef them up a little and, where possible, found suitable illustrations for the majority of the characters.
Both the Players and Supervisors Books lack cover art, as I wanted to create new covers for these, but have yet to have the time.
The final book, which is referenced in the rewritten rules, will be the Adventure Book, which will contain all of the previously published Golden Heroes scenarios I have managed to locate, along with a Champions scenario that I have converted to fit in with the GH background. This is about a third complete, so keep an eye out for this in the coming (hopefully) weeks.
Obviously, there is nothing to stop you using these rules as they stand and creating your own adventures and, should you do this, I would appreciate any feedback on what you think of the rules.
So, here we are, 11 days into July and even with the week’s extension that I kindly gave myself (because I’m nice like that), I still managed to fail to complete my Forgotten Heroes entry until last night. So, four days over. A pretty poor showing on my part.
Note to self: Must try harder next year.
Anyway, this is the figure I started with, a DC Heroclix Signalman, complete with weedy arms, which I removed and replaced:
And this is what the end result should look like, the Tornado, in all his pink and red glory;
So, having done the majority of the shading last time, the first thing I needed to do was reattach his painted cape with hot glue, which I was somewhat nervous about, as I wasn’t sure if the hot glue would react with the paint and result in me having to repaint various parts of the figure. I needn’t have worried, as this went extremely well and set in no time, allowing me to complete the details.
I started by painting a capital ‘T’ on his chest in Docrafts Noir (black to those of us who don’t speak French), then when this was dry, painted a smaller ‘T’ in Docrafts Blanc (i.e. white) inside the black, so as to create a black border. This needed several touches up to neaten the borders, but all was good at the end.
Next, the black was used to paint a tiny ‘T’ on his belt buckle, as everyone needs to know that it’s HIS belt. I also used some watered down black to add shading to the cavity in the top of his holster, to suggest shadowing.
I then moved on to his eyes. Now, I’m always nervous about painting eyes, as if you cock it up, you end up with a cross-eyed hero, which no-one will take seriously. Two blobs of white were adding to suggest his eye-sockets in his mask, then I carefully painted one eye, then the other, making sure that they were even. Then I tidied up the edges of his ‘mask-holes’ with some Cherry Red. A few parts of his cape, where the wash from the previous stage hadn’t taken, were over-painted with GW Tentacle Pink (at least I think that’s what it’s called) and a black circle added to the end of his gun barrel, to suggest a hole.
Finally, I mixed some black with burnt ochre to get a dirty wash, then liberally applied this to the base, which had previously been given a cost of dark grey. This was to suggest dirty concrete.
And he was done.
Even with the pink cape, he doesn’t look like someone you want to mess with.
So, done for another year and another unique figure for my collection. I’m pretty pleased with how he came out, even if he did take slightly longer than anticipated to finish.
So, what’s next?
Well, it occurred to me that I’ve not recently turned random crap into something cool and I’d squirrelled away the below;
A couple of months ago, I replaced the windscreen wipers on my wife’s car. As I’d bought Halfords own brand, they have a generic blade for the model of her car, but it comes with multiple fittings so it can be used on different makes. I used the correct fittings, but ended up with two of the above extra fittings. Not being one to throw away interestingly shaped bits of plastic, especially when they can be re-used elsewhere (single use plastic? I think not!), I kept hold of these, as I had a cunning plan…
So, what am I going to use them for, you may ask?
I’m not saying yet, but the image below may give you a clue;
Join me next time, when we will be voyaging to a galaxy far, far away, for some high-speed pursuit amongst over-sized trees, avoiding feral teddy-bears…
My wife stated that she wasn’t happy with the state of our garden, so realising that this presented an opportunity to earn valuable Brownie Points, I girded my loins and attacked both front and back gardens with lawnmower, edging tool, etc. After several hours of hard work, the gardens were neat and tidy and I had banked a lot of Brownie Points, which meant I could break out my hobby stuff with no fear of reprisal.
When we last saw the Tornado, he looked like this:
So the first order of the day was to complete the base, so I broke out the Milliput and filled in around the integral base from the original Heroclix figure, then textured it using sandpaper. As I always mix up too much Milliput, I also completed the bases on a couple of other figures as well. This was then left overnight to cure.
Now the figure was ready for painting, so the whole miniature got an undercoat of Docrafts Blanc, a cheap acrylic paint, similar to (I think) Apple Barrel paint in the US. It’s not quite as good as proper miniature paint, but it’s a damn sight cheaper.
Once this was dry, I painted his torso and legs with Docrafts Cherry Red. Prior to painting his head, I was struck by how much he now looked like DC’s Deadman;
I guess it’s the huge collar…
Whilst I was waiting for the paint to dry, I mixed some Docrafts Cherry Red with some GW Mithril Silver, to create a metallic red, as my intention was to use this for his pistol. Due to the era that this character hails from, I thought that his ‘ray-gun’ of whatever it is should be similar to the metallic toy guns from this period.
This was then painted onto the pistol, and gave a nice metallic sheen to the weapon, which contrasted nicely with the bright red of the character’s costume, as being predominantly red, we needed to differentiate the various shades of red.
Now, came the decision regarding the colouring of his cape and gloves (and boots, as I’d decided they needed to be the same colour). This is the original illustation:
Due to the printing process at the time, some comics only had limited palettes, which meant that the Tornado’s cape and gloves are pink. I wavered back and forth regarding this – should I retain the pink colouring to match the illustration or change it to white, to match the ‘T’ on his chest? As I find white to be a colour that I have difficulty successfully shading so that to doesn’t look ‘dirty,’ as I already had the Docrafts Flesh paint out to do the only part of his skin that was exposed (i.e. the lower part of his face), I decided to try this and see what it looked like…
And the results were pretty good, so this was applied to his boots, gloves and the collar of his cape, as shown below:
I’m not certain if the white marks on his left shoulder are reflected light or where I’ve missed a couple of spots, so will need to revisit this.
And a close-up to show the pistol, which looks more ‘metallic’ in real life.
So, progress made. I need to paint his belt and holster, which seems to be black leather in the illustration, but that may change to a dark brown, add the ‘T’ to his chest and, once the cape is painted (currently only undercoated white) reattach this – probably using hot glue, then add the relevant shading.
But I’m pretty happy with how he’s looking so far, so fairly certain that he will get completed by my new self-imposed deadline of Friday.
Now, as everyone else has already finished, I won’t list the links again, but if you want to see what can be achieved when your time-management skills are better than mine, check out my previous post.
Here we are, 3 days before the end of June – the official end to the Forgotten Heroes challenge – and what progress have I made on my entry, the Tornado?
None.
At the beginning of the month, I was aware that I had holiday booked for the third week of June, but did think that it wouldn’t be an issue – I mean, three weeks is plenty of time to complete and paint a miniature, right?
Au contraire, mes amis. I had forgotten that, several days both before and after the scheduled flying dates, it is necessary (apparently) to prepare for the holiday and then deal with all the washing created by said holiday.
Realising that I was rapidly running out of time, I got my converted figure out and offered up the cape I had removed, to work out if I needed to trim the cape down before re-attaching it and to see if it was worth painting the figure up before I added the cape back on. During this process, I managed to knock off one his arms.
So, it turns out that the greatest enemy of the Tornado is… me.
After some choice expletives, I dug out my superglue, only to find that I hadn’t sealed it properly and the lid had sealed itself to the tube.
More swearing.
I finally managed to get the lid off, but the tube was, to use the vernacular, fucked. I did mange to get enough glue out to reattach the arm, but by this point I knew that if I continued, I’d just end up doing more damage, so carefully put the figure down and stepped away.
However, as it’s MY challenge, I am officially extending Forgotten Heroes for a further week… because I can. That should give me enough time to finish off this bloody figure.
I may not have been particularly productive this year (so far), but everyone else has put me to shame.
Dave at Wargamesculptor blog has created a fantastic diorama of D.R. & Quinch from 2000AD, as well as a plethora of obscure Star Wars characters.
Sabrina at Uthwulfminis has created Powdered Toast Man from the Ren & Stimpy Show.
James from spoontastic_minis has done a fantastic conversion of Forbush Man from Marvel Comics.
As everyone else seems to be making serious inroads into their Forgotten Heroes entries, with Dave from Wargamesculptors Blog already having completed and painted D.R. and pretty much completed the sculpting on Quinch and Crazy Chrissy, as well as Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging having completed his first entry – Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar, I felt I ought to get cracking on my entry.
Having sourced a suitable pistol for the Tornado – a GW Laspistol that I had knocking about – I realised that it was a little too big for my base figure’s weedy looking arms:
Now, I don’t really know a great deal about the Signalman, who I believe is one of Batman’s foes, but basically, his arms don’t really suggest a character with superhuman strength. As I was intending on removing his cape to allow me to sculpt his belt and boots without it getting in the way, I made the decision to remove his arms as well:
As you can see, I also removed him from his Heroclix base and mounted him on a 2 pence piece, as this gives the figure a bit more heft and is approximately 25mm in diameter, so matches the other supers I have.
My cunning plan was to replace his arms with a couple of spare ones from my Void 1.1 Junkers sprue, that I have previously used for my Distant Stars project. As Tornado has gauntlets, I also used the opportunity to file the arms down a bit, to give the impression of him wearing gloves:
After this was done, I mixed up some Fine Grey Milliput and began adding details to my base figure. The first thing I did was add a belt around the top of his ridged trunks. This was achieved with a thin sausage of Milliput wrapped around his waist, then flattened with a silicon-tipped colour shaper. A small triangular blob was then formed and attached to his right hip, then blended in to form the holster for his pistol. Using the tip of the colour shaper, I carefully poked the top of the holster to create a cavity, suggesting that the holster was empty.
Next, two thin ‘cuffs’ of Milliput were wrapped around his calves, then slowly poked into shape to from the tops of his boots. This sounds easier than it actually was. The first one went fine, but the second lot of Milliput was proving recalcitrant and wouldn’t behave. After struggling for a while, I scraped it off and tried with a different blob, which decided to behave itself. Having got the correct coverage, I used a craft knife to trim the tops of the boots to get the correct shape.
The final job was to attach his new arms. As the donor arms are designed to go fit into sockets on the Junker torso, I did consider digging out ‘sockets’ in the Signalman figure, then decided the better option was to trim down the ‘balls’, the attach them flat. Having had issues with different glues and not always getting the best adhesion, I decided to use Milliput to attach these, as it usually sets rock hard and I could use the excess around the joint to blend it in.
And this is what I ended up with.
Looks a little more heroic than before, yes?
Once the Millput has completely set, I will tidy up any excess, as the beauty of Milliput is that it can be filed down once it’s set.
We have some additional participants who have joined since my previous post, along with Sabrina of Uthwulfminis – James from Spoontastic_minis has expressed a desire to join in, but I’m not sure what either of these will be doing. And Harry, from War Across the Ages, has brushed off his hobby gear and is intending on completing ‘Cutter’s Goose’ from Tales of the Gold Monkey to accompany his cast from previous Forgotten Heroes challenges.
It’s Forgotten Heroes Month! This annual challenge, now in it’s 8th year, gives you the opportunity to indulge your creative side and produce a figure of a character that either has not had an official or unofficial miniature produced for it or, if it has, you’re doing your own version.
Anyone can take part – all you need to do is let me know you want to in the comments or by other means of contact and I will add you to the roster.
The rules, such as they are, are simple. During the month of June, you must a produce a fully painted figure of a character who has yet to have an official or unofficial figure produced of them or, if they have, you want your own version (which no doubt will be better). Any scale is allowed, so no restrictions there. The only real restriction is that you can’t use a figure that is an unofficial version of the character you want to produce, so repainting a Heroclix Blue Beetle as Goldbug is allowed, but using a Copplestone Castings “American Adventurer” as Indiana Jones is a no-no. I mean, if the figure you’re using is a representation of the character with the name filed off, where’s the actual challenge? Your first post should also include a picture of the character you are attempting to create, so we can see what you’re aiming for.
As Real Life has got in the way for some of our normal participants, only those below have confirmed they will be taking part this year so far.
Dave Stone of Wargamesculptor Blog, who will be creating D.R. & Quinch, along with Crazy Chrissy from 2000AD, which is pretty awesome, as they are depicted by my favourite comic book artist of all time, Alan Davis.
Keith, over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging, who has described Forgotten Heroes as “Only the single greatest painting challenge ever created,” will no doubt be pulling out an obscure comic book character or two, that no-one has ever heard of.
And joining us this year is Sabrina from Uthwulfminis, and she will posting on her Instagram feed – because here at the Buffet, we embrace ALL social media platforms, because we is L££t, whatever that means…
As for myself, I’ve dug deep into the obscure archives of ancient British superheroes and uncovered this character:
This is The Tornado, who appeared in Oh Boy! Comics published by Paget Publications in 1948. Apparently, the Tornado is Steve Storm, the 13th member of the Storm family, which meant that he was the first to escape the Curse of Grosta after 500 years. As a result, “the mighty force of the Storms thundered into the soul of Steve, that this young hero might, at will, transform into the giant superman of justice, whirlwind prince of the storms – Tornado!” He has superhuman strength and speed and, for some reason, the ability to breathe underwater.
So, a fairly cheesy origin, but he does look quite cool, as most of his appearances were illustrated by Mick Anglo. However, more interestingly, he was created by a teenager by the name of Bob Monkhouse…
Yes, THAT Bob Monkhouse, which is also pretty cool.
Anyway, I shall be using the below Heroclix Signalman figure as the basis for my Tornado conversion:
However, as this particular figure is not armed with Tornado’s pistol and has no holster, there will be some conversion work needed. And possibly some other cosmetic sculpting of boots and gloves. Not sure whether I’m going to go with the pink cape, however, but we’ll see.
So, stay tuned for more Forgotten Heroes madness and be sure to check out the other participants. And it’s not too late to throw your hat into the ring, if you want to join the craziness…
Looking back over my previous posts, there have been times where I have started a project with the intention of seeing it through to its completion, only to falter and end up doing something else instead. In other words, sometimes I’m a bit crap.
However, today is not one of those days. The Golden Heroes Players Book is now complete and you can download the PDF of this now!
The majority of the text is as per the original rules, but I have taken the opportunity to tidy it up a bit, as there were a few errors in the published game that obviously were missed at the proofreading stage. I have also added supplementary information gathered from other official and unofficial sources, mainly in regards to additional options for existing powers that were published after the main rules came out.
The spot illustrations used in the rules are, for the most part, from officially published Golden Heroes articles or supplements, but there are a few that I have slipped in which I thought suited the rules and were of obscure comic book characters that only the most well-read comic book aficionado would recognise.
As I’m not one to appropriate others’ work and claim it for my own, I have credited everyone’s work, which was simple in regards to the writing, but not so simple in regards to the artwork, as whilst White Dwarf did credit its artists, unless they had initialled or signed the relevant piece of art, it wasn’t always easy to work out who did what.
The current download is JUST the Players Book, so only contains those rules that the players would need to use, but does cover character generation, superpowers and the majority of the combat rules. However, you will need the Supervisors Book in order to actually run a game, which is in the process of being put together as we speak. The Players Books does not yet have a cover, as I am intending on doing a new one for it, but does have a contents page and index. There may be a few typos, and if you spot one, let me know, as sometimes these things slip through the net.
I am open to any feedback or questions, but for now, enjoy!
If you’ve come her expecting to see monsters, I’m afraid you will be disappointed. Whilst I DID (with the best intentions) say I’d be taking part in Keith’s annual Monster May(hem) challenge, here we are, 22 days into May, with absolutely nothing to show.
To be honest, whilst I do have a lot of unpainted figures (as do we all), not a great deal of them are ‘monsters’, so trying to find something suitable to paint proved somewhat problematic. As my eldest has just bought his first house and I’ve been drafted in to provide my minimal DIY skills, quite a lot of my ‘free’ time has been spent stripping walls, sawing wood and chiselling out cavities for new sockets, so whilst I have been doing some manual stuff, no paint brushes have touched my hands in months.
Now, there may be some out there who may be concerned that this may impact on me hosting and taking part in the annual Forgotten Heroes challenge, but rest assured, I WILL still be doing this next month.
For new readers, Forgotten Heroes is a challenge that started way back in 2016 and has, without fail, taken place every June for the last 7 years. It’s a relatively straight-forward challenge and is open to anyone who wishes to take part – all you have to do is state in the comments that you want to be involved and provide details of where you will be showcasing your work and I’ll add you to the blogroll.
The rules, such as they are, are pretty simple – during the month of June, you must produce a figure of a hero (or villain) that either has not yet had an official or unofficial figure made for it yet or, if it has, you are making your own version. This may be as simple as repainting an existing figure, such as a Heroclix Blue Beetle as Goldbug, an pretty obscure Spider-Man villain, to converting an existing figure to a completely different character or, if you talents lie in that area, sculpting a figure from scratch. If the base figure you are using is an unofficial version of the character, such as the myriad versions of Indiana Jones that exist out there, then you can’t use it. The same applies to those 3D printed figures that are obviously Marvel or DC characters, just with the names changed to prevent the big two from sending the boys round to have a word…
Other than that, you can choose whatever scale you want and whatever subject, be it a comic book hero or villain or a costumed character from a TV show or movie. Your first post should provide an image of the character you are seeking to create, with a bit of background on them, and a picture of the base figure you are intending on using, so we all know what you’re aiming for.
Over the last seven years, I’ve produced my versions of Stegron the Dinosaur Man, Rom, M.O.D.O.K. and the Spot from Marvel Comics, Super-Soldier from Amalgam Comics, Bananaman from the Dandy, the ‘Quantum Quartet’ of Mystery Incorporated from Image Comics and the 8th Doctor from Doctor Who.
I will naturally be doing another costumed superhero and as I love those obscure characters that no-one has ever heard of, I have got a character than I can almost guarantee no-one has heard of.
Now, whilst I may not have touched a paintbrush or figure for a while, this doesn’t mean that I haven’t had the opportunity to some hobby stuff.
Those who’ve been following my recent series of posts will know that I’ve been working on republishing the Golden Heroes RPG back from 1984 on a non-professional, non-profit basis – mainly for my own use, but also to allow anyone else who may be interested in trying out these rules.
Now, the game was designed to be fairly generic initially, so that it could be used for any superhero setting, but certain published scenarios for the game do add snippets of background for the ‘Golden Heroes Universe’, so whilst working on the Supervisors Book, I’ve collated as much of this information as possible to try and provide an overall coherent backstory/framework for this universe.
However, sometimes the information provided is a little sketchy, so I’ve been using my knowledge of comic books to fill in the gaps. Case in point is American Eagle. The only reference to him is the following from the scenario The American Dream – “belonged to the WWII hero American Eagle. Since his death in Korea, no one has been able to make the sceptre manifest its power.” Other than a later description of what the sceptre is capable of, that it requires a traumatic experience to ‘attune’ to it and the below picture in the hands of its current wielder Miss America/Renegade, that’s all you get:
If American Eagle is a renowned hero of WWII, then we surely should have a bit more information about him, right? And at least an image of him…
So, I got a little creative.
There have been several published heroes with the name American Eagle, including one from Marvel Comics, but the interesting one, as far as I’m concerned, is the one that appeared in America’s Best Comics #2 in September 1942, because he kind of falls into a grey area in regards to ownership. According to the Public Domain Super Heroes website, although he has been used by a number of different publishers without lawsuits from Warner Brothers, who sort of ‘own’ the rights to the character, this kind of means that anyone is free to use the character and it’s original likeness without issue.
As I can’t imagine that Warner Brothers will be coming after me, I’ve used the image below for the Golden Heroes version of American Eagle, along with the revised background below:
“In 1942, Tom Standish was assisting Dr Wolfe’s experiments with a strange device that had been recovered from the wreckage of ‘something’ shot down during the Battle of Los Angeles earlier that year. Whilst conducting a series of tests on the metallic rod, Standish realised that it appeared to have some kind of advanced (for the time) circuitry built into it and went to find Dr Wolfe to advise him of this. However, he discovered that Dr Wolfe was a fifth columnist with Nazi sympathies, who was intending on harnessing whatever properties of the rod to undermine America from within. Tearing the rod from its stand, he fled into the night, chased by Wolfe and his conspirators. The Nazis cornered Standish and opened fire. However, the trauma of the event somehow formed a mental link with the rod, allowing him to harness some of its powers. The resultant energy blast levelled the laboratory, killing everyone. However, Standish later discovered that Wolfe had survived and was continuing in his nefarious plots. Realising that Wolfe would recognise both him and the ‘star sceptre,’ Standish fashioned a patriotic costume and disguised the rod, and thus was born the American Eagle.
After fighting fifth columnists at home, the American Eagle was asked by his country to join the fight abroad, and was seen alongside the Patriot, John Bull, and Howitzer in Europe. As Standish was not formerly a soldier, unlike his allies, he was less effective in the field. However, his ego refused to recognise this, and he jumped at the chance to prove himself when the United States took part in the Korean War. Unfortunately, his overconfidence was his downfall and during the Battle of Osan, the American Eagle, along with 180 other American soldiers, was killed. While his body and eagle sceptre were recovered, no one had been able to make the sceptre manifest its power, until it was claimed by Susan Martin, who now goes by the name of Renegade.”
So, this gives a brief taste of what’s in store when the ‘new’ version of Golden Heroes is finally released.
As always, I will continue to shine a (Golden) light on those four-colour heroes lost, overlooked and forgotten. If you want to join me in this endeavour, Forgotten Heroes 2023 will launch on 1st June.
As my last few posts have detailed, I am currently typing up a revised version of the Golden Heroes superhero RPG rules. This was something I had planned on doing for a while, mainly because I like things complete – probably an OCD thing. However, it also occurred to me that as it’s a good system, it might be worthwhile to present this to a new generation or to those who missed out on the game the first time around.
Now, I’m not the first to think this was a worthwhile exercise. However, the chap who launched a Kickstarter back in January 2015 to create a sourcebook based on the Golden Heroes universe for use with Squadron UK (the game which replaced Golden Heroes, as GW still retain the rights to the name and system) as well as the Icons RPG has apparently failed to deliver this as yet. I mean, it’s only been 8 years…
Having looked at the drafts he HAS released on the Updates page of the Kickstarter, I’m not… enamoured with some of his decisions, so feel completely justified in doing my own version. As I’m not intending on or seeking to make any money from this project – I suppose you could call it a vanity project – I don’t feel that I’m stepping on anyone’s toes regarding this, so hopefully no-one will come knocking on my door telling me to stop or throw their toys out the pram.
Anyway, the reason for this post, as hinted at by the title of this post, is to do with the names assigned to both the example characters and those that appeared in the rogue’s gallery and published scenarios.
Whilst we have to bear in mind that the main rules and the articles and scenarios were published in the mid-eighties, and I am intending on preserving the default setting in the same decade, I am one of those people who believes in internal consistency within a game setting. I appreciate that the author’s selected names that they felt were appropriate at the time, but if you have a Native American hero whose backstory does state that he fights for the rights of his people, as well as combatting super-powered crime, would he really take the moniker ‘Redskin?’ I think not.
So, as this is effectively MY version of these rules, I have made some minor adjustments to a few of the character’s names, as I felt they did not reflect the backstory’s presented for the characters. If you’re a highly intelligent super-scientist, who has developed a cybernetic implant containing the skills and abilities of an Olympic gymnast and a prize-winning boxer, would you really name yourself ‘Fistfighter?’ I very much doubt it.
These represent very minor tweaks, not through any form of ‘political correctness’ or censorship (which I object to if it’s unnecessary – the recent spate of ‘updates’ to various authors works, such as P.G. Wodehouse, Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming being a good example of this), but to maintain internal consistency within the setting.
If Marvel Comics can change a villain’s name from ‘Paste-Pot Peter’ to ‘The Trapster’ (for an internally justified reason), then there’s nothing to stop me doing the same.
Now, as we are in the month of May, that does mean that Monster May(hem) has started, hosted by Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern and Temporary Lodging, this does mean that the next few posts will probably be my attempts to complete the necessary monster before the end of the month. This will require a rummage, as I don’t currently have a subject for this challenge, so watch this space…
Those of you who read my last post on the 40-year old superhero RPG, Golden Heroes, especially those of you who reside in countries other than the UK, may be wondering why you’d be interested in a game which purports to be a British superhero RPG. If the game is Anglo-centric, it would be of limited use AND interest to anyone hailing from somewhere other than the UK, surely?
Well, having reviewed every article and scenario that was publicly released for the game AND having run several games using this ruleset, I can confidently state that this is not the case. The main rules (other than referring to the currency used in the game as ‘Golden Pounds’) do not assume that your game is set in the UK. And whilst some of the sample villains have backgrounds that suggest a UK origin, this can be easily tweaked so that the villains hail from other shores.
The same applies to the scenario included with the main rules and most of those published in White Dwarf. The settings are generic enough that they could take place in ANY city in any part of the World, as long as they have the necessary locations (such as a park, street, secret base of a multinational intelligence agency, isolated research facility, etc). As all of these adventures were written and published in the 1980s – the ‘Modern’ day at that time – they also would need a few tweaks to reflect the improvements in technology, if they were to be set in the present.
The two main exceptions are the adventures that were directly published by GW as supplements to the game. The first, Legacy of EAGLES, deals with the reason behind the disappearance of a superhero team of the 1950s/1960s, who haven’t been heard of since 1964. The background suggests that this was the pre-eminent team of this era who operated Worldwide, but were based in Britain and made up of British heroes. However, as the final location of this adventure is the ‘lost’ undersea base of this team, the location of which is never specified, background details can be altered to reflect wherever you wish to place the events of this scenario.
The second adventure, Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail, however is firmly set in the UK. This scenario assumes the player’s are a team operating out of Britain and are predominantly British. The hook for the adventure relates to the British Royal family and mines deep into the folklore of Britain, and even though the team take a brief trip to New York in the middle of the scenario, the locations for the rest of the adventure are quintessentially British and the finale takes place in a well-known London landmark. It could be revised for an alternative non-British setting, but this would take a lot of work and would take away the heart of the adventure, in my opinion.
Simon Burley, the main author of the rules, has always given the advice that you should use your own town or city as the setting for your superhero adventures, as this familiarity with the setting allows for a more immersive experience. If you live in Chicago, for example, your players are more likely to jump at the chance to fight Doctor Anarchy if he is threatening to blow up the Willis Tower (which was called the Sears Tower when I visited many moons ago) because they know it.
One of the games I ran using these rules was set in Reading, Berkshire, which is where I live. As the players were all locals, I didn’t need to describe the locations in any great detail, as everyone was from Reading and knew where the Butts Centre was, that there were railway arches off Portman Avenue and that the Atomic Weapons Establishment was just south of Reading in Aldermaston, which was where the main villain of that particular scenario was heading in his giant robot to acquire some nuclear weapons.
They did succeed, but the results of their final battle closed the eastbound M$ motorway for several days, as the authorities cleared up the wreckage.
I also ran a campaign set in the world of Marshal Law, which underlines the flexibility of this set of rules.
For those of you not familiar with this character, Marshal Law started off as a parody of superheroic conventions and was written by Pat Mills and illustrated by Kev O’Neill, in 1987. He was an American ex-supersolider, genetically engineered by the government to fight in “The Zone”, an unstable area of South America filled with Communist insurgents. Once this conflict was over, he and all the other super-soldiers created to fight in this war, returned to the USA. However, whilst the procedures used to create these super-soldiers gave them incredible powers, the majority of them returned mentally scarred by the war and formed super-powered gangs in San Futuro, the semi-wrecked remains of San Francisco after ‘The Big One.’ Which is where Marshal Law comes in. He is a government-sanctioned hero-hunter, a super-powered ‘cop’ whose job is to protect the normal folk from the excesses of these super-powered surplus heroes, sometimes with lethal force.
The series was characterised by extreme graphic violence and nudity, which may seem commonplace now, what with series such as The Boys, etc. delving into super-powered folk who appear to be heroes, but are anything but, but was new and edgy back in 1987.
As some of the ‘heroes’ in this world were explicitly over-sexualised, I gave my players carte blanche to create whatever characters they wanted, as long as they ‘fit’ into this World. I ended up with; Blitzkreig, a superstrong, flying Marshal Law wannabe; The Dribbler, who manifested cosmic mucus which he could use in a number of ways; Major Organ, who could increase his size and strength and carried a throwing baton which he dubbed his ‘love truncheon’; his kid sidekick, Private Parts; who had detachable exploding testicles and Gravity Girl, who could fly, manipulate gravity fields and, as she herself stated every time she introduced herself, “my breasts defy gravity.” (NB: The last was played by a woman, so no sexism here).
As you might gather, my players did commit to the setting and although the game may sound less than serious, it did involve these disparate heroes attempting to discover who had been murdering the members of the pre-eminent team of the time, The Justice Squad, before they too were targeted by the same shadowy foe. Not all of them survived.
So, if I can use the Golden Heroes rules to run a game in a dystopian future overrun by less-than-super heroes, without any great additional work on my part, I think that proves that these rules can be used to run a superhero game in whatever setting you want.
I’m currently working my way through all the material I have and will be making the three final ‘books’ available to any who want them. There will be a Players Book, a Supervisors Book and an Adventure Book. The default setting will be the Golden Heroes Universe, and I will expand on the ‘official’ background to explain why the UK seems to have the greatest amount of super-powered folk, rather than the US. The underlining reason makes sense and is based on real-World events, but I’ll say no more at this point.
However, you will be free to disregard this setting and use it for whatever type of superhero game you want to run. Remember, the best sets of rules are the ones that inspire you to make them your own.
Carrion Crow's Buffet 