Digital Hero Still Available

[Lord Liaden]

It's recently come to my attention that some HEROphiles believe that Hero Games's excellent electronic magazine, Digital Hero, is no longer for sale. This is understandable, as DH ceased publication a year ago, and there are no longer direct links to where to buy it on the Online Store main page or the Discussion Forums main page. However, nothing could be further from the truth. All the DH issues are still purchasable and downloadable from this website, although it's not obvious how one goes about doing that.

For the benefit of people who don't know and would be interested, this post will direct you to where you can find and buy DH, and also offer some additional resources to help you decide what to buy and to improve ease of use of your issues.

For anyone who isn't familiar with it, Digital Hero was a PDF periodical published by Hero Games for Fifth Edition HERO System, devoted to all aspects of HERO gaming. There were a total of 47 issues published, each containing 64 pages of diverse, quality material covering various game genres, contributed both by Hero Games staff and by fans. They include characters and creatures (for the official HG worlds and original ones), settings (usually with maps), entire self-contained adventures, gadgets and vehicles, alternate and optional rules and discussion of game mechanics, and essays on gaming for HERO and generally.

The layout of DH is the same style and quality as published Fifth Edition books, and the artwork and maps range from good to excellent. Issues can be bought individually for $5.00 US or a subscription of 10 issues for $30.00. You can purchase and download any issue you want in any order, and can re-download them if you lose your copy for some reason.

To buy Digital Hero, go to the Hero Games website home page or the Online Store page, and click on "Login" in the left-hand menu. Once you've finished logging in, a new drop-down menu will appear on the left side of the page, under "Member CP." Click on "Digital Hero," then follow the instructions. You'll be able to view the Tables of Contents of individual issues by clicking on their listings.

At the time I write this, there are still several samples from articles in some of the later issues of DH available from the "Free Stuff" section of this website, here. If you would like to view article samples from earlier issues, you can go to this archived webpage, call up the Table of Contents for the desired issue, and follow the link to the free sample.

Moreover, although the Digital Hero discussion forum is no longer listed on the main forum page, the threads in that forum are still on the server and can be viewed here. Many of them contain reviews and comments for specific issues of DH.

Finally, I'm Attaching a couple of Document files to this post, which may be helpful to you. One file compiles the Tables of Contents from all issues of DH into one easily searchable reference. The other, contributed by our forum colleague JmOz, lists all the adventures appearing in DH and the issue/page where you can find them, grouped according to game genre.

Any questions or problems you may have, I'll be happy to answer if I can; but of course if they're beyond my knowledge, this is the right forum to ask for help from Hero Games officialdom.

Digital Hero holds many treasures for any HERO gamer, and if you haven't done so yet I hope you'll avail yourselves of them.

[ghost-angel]

DH is still listed in the Online Store, simply select ALL as a Sort Item, if you don't want everything to load - they have listed "release dates" of 2002 - you can simply search for ALL items from 2002 and the Digital Hero subscriptions will be listed to add to your Cart in the store.

[Lord Liaden]

Very helpful observation, ghost-angel, thank you. What you suggest will indeed allow you to buy credits for purchasing Digital Hero. However, you'll still need to Login as above to access the actual issues for purchase and download; and that will also link you to the Online Store where you can buy credits.

[Killer Shrike]

On this subject, I now wonder what happened to all the posts that once were in the Digital HERO subforum? Were they rolled into one of the other subforums or just done away with?

[Lord Liaden]

Actually, all those posts and threads are still there at the time I write this. As I mentioned in my initial post, although there's no longer a link to the DH forum from the main forums page, it's apparently still on the server, and you can call up all the old threads. I put a link to the DH forum in my first post.

I imagine that Dan Simon will delete the whole forum eventually, as he did the Old Forum archives; so if there's something you want to look up or record, I recommend you do so ASAP.

[Killer Shrike]

Moreover, although the Digital Hero discussion forum is no longer listed on the main forum page, the threads in that forum are still on the server and can be viewed here. Many of them contain reviews and comments for specific issues of DH.

Sorry, missed this.

There's some good stuff in that old forum. It's a shame they've been dead linked. Seems like it should be possible to merge them into another forum, like this one for instance.

[Lord Liaden]

UPDATE: In accordance with Hero Games's new pricing policy for selling Fifth Edition material, Digital Hero issues are now half their original price! That means you can buy one credit for any single 64-page issue for only $2.50, or a 10-credit subscription for a mere $15.00.

[lapsedgamer]

Are there any plans to do Golden and Silver Age Champions books? The material I would want from Digital Hero covers things like The Fabulous Five and the older versions of the Sentinels. I wouldn't mind picking up a book that covered that material, but I wouldn't want to buy the same material twice, even at such a bargain for the 5th stuff.

[Lord Liaden]

Darren Watts has been working on Golden Age Champions on and off for years as time permits. He actually has a lot of material written for it and has playtested some of it. According to management comments, that book will be announced and inserted into the printing schedule whenever it's ready. However, a book covering the CU's Silver Age, including the Sentinels and the Fab Five, has been discussed but is nowhere near planned. If Hero Games ever does publish such a book it's certainly years away.

[Meadyaon]

How do I find Digital Hero #35? I have tried looking for it on the online store but I cannot find it.

[Dreamstreamer]

It looks like you buy credits from the Hero Games store, then pick which issue(s) you want to download.

Alternately, you can pick it up off of DriveThru RPG here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/produc..._id=20965&it=1

[Lord Liaden]

DH 35 is still listed as available from the online store. Go to the first post on this thread and follow the instructions for purchasing, starting about half-way through the post at the paragraph beginning, "To buy Digital Hero..."

If you have any more problems, please post a follow-up question.