Yesterday at DunDraCon, Hero Games‘ home-base convention in many ways, they announced that they’d be doing a revision of the HERO System for next year, in the form of two core books (one for character building, one for everything else) and a Champions book. That isn’t the end of the news for Champions, though: our sources at the Game Developers Conference in SF this week (as in, the for-real game developers, the computery kind that make money? Yeah, those) say that Champions has been licensed to an online game developer that aims to produce a competitor for City of Heroes. We don’t have much in the way of details yet, which is to say it could all be bollocks. Watch this space.
Hmm. D&D goes 4e. HERO goes 6e.
Any more RPGs having an edition makeover?
A Champions MMORPG is going to have a LOT of problems gaining traction in the market with both a Marvel and a DC game both already under development.
The Marvel game was canceled. And according to this post (http://www.joystiq.com/2008/02/14/champions-online-the-latest-superhero-mmo-from-cryptic/)the Champions game is coming from the same developer as City of Heroes, so they’ll just be competing against themselves.
Amusingly, the site that I linked from doesn’t sound like they even know that there is a Champions pen and paper game and think it’s going to be some sort of original IP. Always peeves me off when new gamers don’t know/care about the roots of gaming…
I’d wager that two of them at most will actually make it to market.
The Marvel MMO is already dead:
http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2008/02/13/marvel-mmo-bites-the-dust/
And it’s been almost two years since anyone heaard anything about the DC MMO, innit? After all, once it became associated with Jim Lee, it just kinda disappeared… and the rate Lee completes works (All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, anyone?) I dunno if we’ll see this until after the next, last, Crisis…
I’m not taking that bet. I hate losing money.
Cryptic Studios is said to be the company that picked up the rights to a Camps MMORG. The Marvel Online project is dead – which may be why Cryptic moved to secure Champions. As they are the folks who created City of Heroes, I think that they may be the ones who could pull this off. I play COH and like it – I would like Champs online more…if they keep to the game concept. Should be interesting
(I apologize to everyone for the way comments are getting lodged in WordPress’ throat lately)
Champions Online website now live…
http://www.champions-online.com/
I think I wanna know what the reasoning was behind letting people know 18 months out that you will have a new edition of the game. Seems like a long way out…but there ya have it.
That depends on how much transparency and community involvement they bring to the creation of the new edition. Since they’re Hero, not WotC, I’m betting that they’ll bring plenty.
Hell yes, managed to get the WoTC hate in this thread too! Woo! 😉
I just hope the HERO guys are getting a good kickback outta this and/or some financial royalties. I’m not a big fan of the system but I used to play Champions way back when in college. At least the video game money coming in would help keep them in business.
The deal is actually that the Champions intellectual property was sold to Cryptic outright, and Cryptic have given them a license, I believe a permanent one, to the IP that used to be theirs, for tabletop purposes. So I imagine a decent sum changed hands for the rights. If I were Hero I would have sought back-end participation, definitely, but who knows.
Misuba has all the specifics right: Cryptic is now the owner of the IP for Champions, and Hero is the licensee. A few other data points: 1.) as I understand, Cryptic was formerly part of or doing development for the Marvel MMO, and some has suggested this move to Champions is a way for them to salvage the developed compenents of that MMO in progress. The DC MMO is, afaik, dead as well. Cryptic’s also no longer the owner of CoX as I understand, it having been purchased and managed for the last year or so by NCSoft. Given that I am not a big fan of the CoX play mechanics (great character models, though), I’m hoping Cryptic will do this one justice.
Chris said: I think I wanna know what the reasoning was behind letting people know 18 months out that you will have a new edition of the game. Seems like a long way out…but there ya have it.
misuba said: That depends on how much transparency and community involvement they bring to the creation of the new edition. Since they’re Hero, not WotC, I’m betting that they’ll bring plenty.
There was a new Hero Games website relaunch that look place during DunDraCon (as if they weren’t busy enough), and at the con seminar, Steve Long mentioned that he had pre-stocked the new 6th Edition forum with numerous threads posing questions about how 6th Ed should approach various rules, in order to get discussions going. So it seems the company is looking for plenty of community input, and giving itself enough time to properly consider any suggestions. Seems like a solid start.
“Hell yes, managed to get the WoTC hate in this thread too!”
Not cool.
I am so looking forward to this game how dose oner get to sign up for Beta testing