DC Comics

[batguy]

Will Hero Games ever acquire the dc comics license?

[assault]

I can't speak for Hero Games, but it seems unlikely to me.

The company is running on the smell of an oily rag, and licensing reduces profits.

[Tjack]

  I enjoy this game a lot, but that’s never gonna happen.  DC is owned by a MAJOR corporation, and the kind of cash that would be involved to buy the rights for an RPG would probably be a half a million at least.  All this goes for Marvel as well.

  Why do you ask though? If you want a game set in the DC universe, just do it. There are a lot of sites and threads that have write-ups for DC’s characters and DC has an official website that will give you all the backround information you could ever use on your PC’s, NPC’s and locations. And any particular questions you have can get answered in places like this.

  As long as you’re not making and selling a game for profit all this come under the “Fair Use” exemption of copyright law.

3 hours ago, batguy said:

Will Hero Games ever acquire the dc comics license?

[vindeishi]

Maybe this is in the wrong subforum, because Ron speaks very directly against the idea of "verse" as such in Champions Now.  A licensed property would be antithetical to the things the game is trying to accomplish.

Edited April 12, 2022 by vindeishi

[Christopher R Taylor]

Licensing can really help with sales, but the chances of Hero ever getting a deal to do so are lower than me in a hot tub with Alexandria Daddario and Kate Upton.  I tried to get Kurt Busiek to consider Hero licensing Astro City for a game but he wanted no part of it (likely has heard some bad stories about licensing deals and purity of the product ideal).  Marvel is putting out their own RPG soon, which DC will likely copy; they do have an old DC Heroes RPG but it never really caught on.

[assault]

DC has had three licensed games. One was based on Mutants and Masterminds.

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

...lower than me in a hot tub with Alexandria Daddario and Kate Upton. 

    Keep the faith, baby.    ...else what’s a heaven for?

[Lord Liaden]

We're still working on getting Steve Long together with Eliza Dushku -- one miracle at a time. 😇

[assault]

Of course if you wanted a lawyer friendly version, a third volume of the Hero System Templates books could be possible. (For Champions, not Champions Now, of course.)

 

The biggest problem is the difference in power level between the biggest DC characters and normal Champions ones. And then there's the power bloat in the published Champions villains - DC characters would need to be similarly bloated to compete with them.

 

That wasn't the case in older editions.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah its a bit of a problem in DC as well, what version do you use of any given character?  What reboot?

[Tjack]

11 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

We're still working on getting Steve Long together with Eliza Dushku -- one miracle at a time. 😇

 Where exactly does that line (for HER to choose) start?  ‘Cause I’ve got a feeling it’s gonna be a bloody long one, and I want to get there early with my camping gear.😈

[batguy]

On 4/11/2022 at 11:59 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Licensing can really help with sales, but the chances of Hero ever getting a deal to do so are lower than me in a hot tub with Alexandria Daddario and Kate Upton.  I tried to get Kurt Busiek to consider Hero licensing Astro City for a game but he wanted no part of it (likely has heard some bad stories about licensing deals and purity of the product ideal).  Marvel is putting out their own RPG soon, which DC will likely copy; they do have an old DC Heroes RPG but it never really caught on.

You make a good point.,i hope DC Does so soon.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I recommend looking into the Templates books, you can build your own version of a DC universe very quickly and easily using characters from there.

[fdw3773]

Given licensing and how DC is owned by Warner Brothers, it is not likely to occur. As others have mentioned, there have been previous DC-licensed RPGs by Mayfair Games, West End Games, and a brief licensing agreement with Green Ronin Publishing that used the Mutants & Masterminds system, so if it was going to occur, it would have happened many, many years ago.

 

There are plenty of fan sources/write-ups in the downloads section here on the website, along with other fan-sites (https://www.sysabend.org/champions/gnborh/index.html) that offer a variety of different versions of the same characters. It's up to you to use as-is or modify to better suit your campaign, just as some comic series writers made their character nearly god-like (Grant Morrison/Batman) or a bit of an inexperienced punching-bag (e.g. Green Lantern/Kyle Rayner).😉

[Scott Ruggels]

Licensing invites corporate oversight. This is not a good idea. So thank goodness it's too expensive for Hero to have a Licensing agreement with DC< especially with the Discovery Merger, D.C. may end up as strictly reprints, anyway.

 

[batguy]

19 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

Licensing invites corporate oversight. This is not a good idea. So thank goodness it's too expensive for Hero to have a Licensing agreement with DC< especially with the Discovery Merger, D.C. may end up as strictly reprints, anyway.

 

Yeah,you are right about that.

[Tjack]

1 hour ago, batguy said:

Yeah,you are right about that.

    I don’t think you ever mentioned what brought on the question in the first place?  Was it just a vague curiosity, did you want to run that kind of game someday or what?

[batguy]

2 hours ago, Tjack said:

    I don’t think you ever mentioned what brought on the question in the first place?  Was it just a vague curiosity, did you want to run that kind of game someday or what?

It was just a vague curiosity.,thank you for asking

[unclevlad]

On 4/17/2022 at 5:51 PM, Scott Ruggels said:

Licensing invites corporate oversight. This is not a good idea. So thank goodness it's too expensive for Hero to have a Licensing agreement with DC< especially with the Discovery Merger, D.C. may end up as strictly reprints, anyway.

 

 

Not sure about reprints per se, but it seems likely they'll tie the comics universe into lockstep with the movies/streaming series.  They won't license;  there's no value *to them* to do so, and it seems unlikely they would want to relinquish ANY creative control any time soon, as they try to build the franchise.  No, not rebuild;  there isn't enough there, IMO.  They have to start from basically ground zero.

 

Cynical thought?  The gaming industry will probably get more of a boost from official Marvel or DC games, long as they're decent, than they'd ever get from Hero for DC.

[batguy]

On 4/18/2022 at 10:40 PM, unclevlad said:

 

Not sure about reprints per se, but it seems likely they'll tie the comics universe into lockstep with the movies/streaming series.  They won't license;  there's no value *to them* to do so, and it seems unlikely they would want to relinquish ANY creative control any time soon, as they try to build the franchise.  No, not rebuild;  there isn't enough there, IMO.  They have to start from basically ground zero.

 

Cynical thought?  The gaming industry will probably get more of a boost from official Marvel or DC games, long as they're decent, than they'd ever get from Hero for DC.

you make a very good point

[batguy]

By the way,i hope DC Comics does a fourth edition of the DC Heroes role-playing game very soon

[Christopher R Taylor]

DC Comics is kind of up in the air right now, I'm not sure they have any new projects going.  Their comics aren't selling, they're hugely in debt, their offices are mostly shut down and the new bosses are looking at serious restructuring.

[unclevlad]

Yeah, given everything going on, Warner's not putting a dime into a venture like DC Heroes.  Rumors of DC's overall vulnerability have been circulating for a few years, which arguably suggests there's more smoke than fire, but the new CEO is a slash and burn cost reductionist.  And games are just not significant revenue streams now.  

 

The RPG industry in general, is also...not in good shape.  I'll grant I don't follow things closely, but...what new stuff is coming out?  And that's *before* the last 2 years.  The 18 months of social distancing had to be massively damaging.  Granted, connecting online might help some, but that's got limitations, and I don't think it's all that close to the same thing.  Article here:

https://www.wired.com/story/tabletop-rpg-workers-say-their-jobs-are-no-fantasy/

 

We hear much the same about comic artists...making ends meet is HARD as a freelancer, and that's the dominant model.  It's great for the employer;  it's a TON cheaper.  (For a full-time, full-benefits, on-site employee...for every dollar the employer pays in salary to the employee, they pay another dollar *or more* elsewhere...group health care share, leave, Social Security employer share, facilities costs, etc. etc.  A freelancer generally avoids ALL of those;  they're self-employed and must find their own insurance...which BTW is MASSIVELY more expensive if they can't get covered by a group plan.)

 

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Comic Book artists are a kind of insane.  The pay isn't great and the work load is insane.  I tried it for a while and its brutal.  A great artist pumps out about a page a day; there are 22-30 pages in a comic book.  And that takes all day to do right.  I mean bad artists do empty backgrounds, dull layouts, cut off parts of the anatomy they aren't good at (like feet), avoid stuff they don't draw well or are hard to do, etc.  To dedicate your life to that, you have to be really fixated on the love of comics, not as a career.

I mean some do really well at it; the Image guys made millions in a bizarre bubble of comic art being considered collectable no matter how atrocious it was.  But its extremely rare.

[unclevlad]

And these days, most are freelance...not employees.  Ergo...no benefits.  No leave, no insurance, no pension.  You get stuck with both sides of the social security taxes.  Knock *at least* 1/3 off your rate per page, I would think.  There's a reason why consultants charge what look like obscene hourly rates, if you translate it to a yearly rate without thinking...because it doesn't work out that way.  At all.

 

And, yeah, the art is horrible SOOO much of the time.