Did Hero System ever go out of print?

[Joe Walsh]

I'm thinking about during the late 4e period, mainly. Reading the Hero Games section of "Designers & Dragons" doesn't make it clear, as it only talks about supplements published during that period. I wasn't paying attention to the RPG market at the time, so I don't know if you could still find Champions Deluxe or the Hero System Rulesbook on the shelf from 1998 to 2001.

 

[Ndreare]

Indeed it did go out of print for a time. That was when Champions new millennium came out using the Fuzion system a sort of hybrid between interlock and Hero System light. The Fuzion system polarized the playing populous quite a bit and many people absolutely hated it or really liked it. (This happens with every single edition change from every game producer I have ever seen. It is in human nature to hate and resist change I guess.)

Then the new team came on board bought the property and started cracking out material like madmen.

 

as for the timeline, if you are lucky one of those people involved will reply.

[Tasha]

Not quite. I believe that Cybergames had a printing of 4e during/after the CNM period. They also did a 2nd edition of Champions New Millenium that had 4e stats in it. We also started to hear that They wanted a new version of the game because it turned out that there were a TON of questions about how 4e worked esp some of the powers. So they hired Steve Long to create a new edition of the game that tightened up the rules and fixed some issues that the community had with the rules. Steve turned in a HUGE manuscript, mostly because he included a TON of examples for every power and the way certain Advantages and Limitations would work with each of the powers. It was then edited down by around 20% of the original page count. Then the Dotcom crash happened and Cybergames basically folded with no money.

A group of investors including Steve Long and a number of others who were never made public (Including Jason IIRC) bought the whole kit and kaboodle. They took the edited and laid out Manuscript and quickly got it printed (giving us 5e). A new edition of the Champions Universe was created and all ties to Fuzion were severed (A real shame IMHO). A new Character Gen program was comissioned and Metacreator was abandoned (thankfully a talented board member created a great 4e>5e filter for Metacreator that allowed folk to move their characters to the new program. The new company chugged along publishing more books in a few years than pretty much all previous editions of the rules combined.

[Joe Walsh]

as for the timeline, if you are lucky one of those people involved will reply.

 

That would be great! It would be really nice to hear from someone who has first-hand knowledge of the situation.

 

 

Not quite. I believe that Cybergames had a printing of 4e during/after the CNM period.

 

Interesting. If so, I wonder whether it was a reprint of Champions Deluxe, or a reprint of the paperback or hardcover original 4e Champions release, or the Rulesbook. I would expect it was Deluxe, but it is so much rarer that I question whether that's the case.

 

 

[Hyper-Man]

According to this website the Deluxe 4e version was published in 1995.

 

http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/49228/champions-super-role-playing-game

[Joe Walsh]

Which makes it the last 4e ruleset published, and the most logical one to choose for any reprints during the moribund period in the late 90s/early 2000s. Yet, it's hard to find, so...

[Tasha]

Interesting. If so, I wonder whether it was a reprint of Champions Deluxe, or a reprint of the paperback or hardcover original 4e Champions release, or the Rulesbook. I would expect it was Deluxe, but it is so much rarer that I question whether that's the case.

 

IIRC Champions Deluxe was just the original 4e Hard Cover with the original Character Gen program included. I don't believe that the book was any different from the original (ex the binding was better, and the cover said deluxe). I seem to remember that the 4e Cybergames volume had a cybergames logo on the cover. Not sure, that was a LONG time ago.

[Joe Walsh]

IIRC Champions Deluxe was just the original 4e Hard Cover with the original Character Gen program included. I don't believe that the book was any different from the original (ex the binding was better, and the cover said deluxe). I seem to remember that the 4e Cybergames volume had a cybergames logo on the cover. Not sure, that was a LONG time ago.

 

It has been a long time!  I remember discovering Champions Deluxe at GenCon, circa 1997 (by which time it was already old news). Funny how I remember picking that up in the booth better than I remember what I had for lunch yesterday.

 

Anyway...you're right, it did include a copy of Heromaker, but Champions Deluxe also incorporated some bug-fixes (no rule changes). It was referred to informally as version 4.2, as I recall. I bought it for the bug-fixes when it came out, but never used it because I couldn't get past the lousy graphic design (something even the inclusion of a nice index could make up for, since just reading page numbers was a labor with that thing).  I eventually sold my copy (which I now regret; they're quite difficult to come by, it seems).

 

Here's a contemporary reference:

 

 

The new book looks like the old BBB with the word "Deluxe" added

and the coloring improved somewhat (a new sparkle on Seeker's sword).    

 It's the same system with some bug fixes.  No rules changes. Some of

the art inside has been changed.  A lot of the tables have been given

stranger looks- an image of torn paper is printed below them.  I hate it

myself, but that's what was done.  Some of the backgrounds for some

bits (Jimmy Dugan on page 255, Putting together a supervillian team on

page 341) make those sections very difficult to read.  

A lot of the new art looks like they were originaly color pictures that

didn't make the transition to B&W very well.  

And what I think it one of the *worst* things is that all the page numbers

have a "shadow" page number printed a half-character width to the right and

down.  This makes the page numbers difficult to read at a glance,

particularly in bad light.    

   The nicest change is the index, which seems pretty complete.  Partially

negated by the difficult-to-read page numbers.  I hope the binding holds

up better than the old one did.