In January 2023 we resurrected two giant offers featuring the 2009 Sixth Edition of the HERO System from Hero Games. The matchless flexibility of the HERO System lets you create any character, super power, spell, equipment, vehicle, or headquarters you can imagine, and the 6E version is the most detailed and comprehensive ever. The revived February 2021 HERO System 6E Bundle had all the universal rulebooks and sourcebooks for every kind of campaign – over 4,300 pages of material. And its superheroic companion from the same time, Champions 6E, had the 6E Champions campaign sourcebook (plus the standalone Champions Complete rulebook), the 6E version of Champions Universe, Powers, Beyond, Book of the Empress, and all three Villains books. In both page count and discount off retail price, these two revivals once again provided some of the best values we’ve ever presented.
For players familiar with Dungeons & Dragons who are starting to explore the wider RPG hobby, HERO is – well, it’s a lot. D&D defines its characters, spells, monsters, and treasures with fixed requirements and specific details. In contrast, HERO gives you a carpentry shop and says, “Build what you want.” Think of D&D as a restaurant menu of prepared dishes, and HERO as a supermarket with every ingredient you’d ever need for every dish from a grilled cheese sandwich to Babette’s Feast – but you cook it yourself. It’s great! It’s exhilarating! So is bungee jumping, another hobby that’s not for everyone.
Like Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft, HERO (especially 6E) is a project. Hero Games gives away a simple Hero in Two Pages introduction, and YouTube has plenty of HERO System tutorials, but if you’re new to the game, you should gird your loins and prepare to engage. If you do, this system can support every campaign you’ll ever run, bar none. And these two revivals had enough material to run multiple campaigns for decades, for an unbeatable bargain price.
1. HERO SYSTEM 6E [from Feb 2021]
Across five editions from 1980 to 2009, Champions and the HERO System maintained remarkable consistency. A character built in the 1981 First Edition, though underpowered by the standards of Fifth Revised Edition (2002), can nonetheless wade into a FRED battle basically unchanged. But Hero Games line developer Steven S. Long, the prolific mainstay of the line, saw opportunities to fix a few minor issues that had bothered him and others. On the Hero forums in 2008 he solicited discussion and feedback in a topic that eventually accumulated several thousand posts. Steve read them all, discussed them a lot, and eventually synthesized a truly gigantic two-volume, 788-page rules set that did, indeed, fix those minor issues.
Sixth is the first version that makes breaking changes to backward compatibility, though these revisions make barely a ripple compared to, say, D&D 3.x > 4E > 5E. Most heroes designed for previous editions still work fine in 6E, though if you care about accurate point totals, a conversion requires significant tuning. [Jargon alert: For those familiar with HERO, Sixth Edition drops the venerable cost breaks for Figured Characteristics, and compensates by upping a character’s starting point totals. Some skill prices have changed, a few powers (especially Adjustments) are reworked and repriced, and Elemental Controls have given way to “Unified Power.” The most significant design revision is a slight nerfing of Killing Attacks: The Stun Multiple is reduced, and non-resistant defenses work against KAs by default. On the other hand, Armor Piercing is now a +1/4 advantage – cheap!]
For a few years after its debut, 6E amplified in the HERO community the previously negligible annoyance of edition wars. Much of this tension arose because 6E requires a technical shift in thinking about character conceptions and point costs. Now players tend to view its changes as logical and sensible, if sometimes over-detailed. (When a HERO fan calls rules “over-detailed,” you may justly raise an eyebrow.) Sixth Edition, like every HERO edition, has its particular adherents – but 6E has earned wider respect as one more evolution of a landmark system that, after more than 40 years, still draws devoted fans.
There were three titles in this revived February 2021 HERO System 6E offer’s Core Collection (retail value $55) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete two-volume 6E rulebook (V1 Character Creation and V2 Combat and Adventuring), as well as the HERO System Basic Rulebook that, at 138 pages, provides a concise introduction.
Those who paid more than this revival’s threshold (average) price also got this offer’s entire Bonus Collection with ten more titles worth an additional $203, including both the Advanced Player’s Guide and Player’s Guide II rules expansions; the 6E Equipment Guide and Skills; the Grimoire, Martial Arts, and the 6E Bestiary; the Sixth Edition versions of Star Hero and Fantasy Hero; and your guide to building a headquarters of any size from a walk-in closest to a kingdom, The Ultimate Base.
2. CHAMPIONS 6E [Feb 2021]
The HERO System sprang from Champions, and The Super Roleplaying Game has always been its flagship. The Sixth Edition Champions line updates decades of published supplements and sourcebooks, and adds new material adapted from the Champions Online MMO. This revived February 2021 Champions 6E offer once again gave more than two thousand pages of 6E material for a price even a struggling freelance photographer or mild-manner reporter can afford.
There were four titles in this revived offer’s Character Collection (retail value $55), including the standalone Champions Complete rulebook; the Champions 6E campaign sourcebook; Powers, an update of the Fifth Edition UNTIL Superpowers Database supplements; and a collection of pregenerated superhero characters, Book of Templates.
This offer’s Campaign Collection added six more titles worth an additional $97.50, including the 6E Champions Universe setting book; the Galaxy-spanning Champions Beyond; and all three Villains compilations – V1 Master Villains, V2 Team Villains, and V3 Solo Villains – as well as The Book of the Empress (about Istvatha V’han, the Empress of a Billion Dimensions), plus The Booklet of the Empress, a collection of characters provided as a bonus to backers of the December 2011 Kickstarter campaign and not sold anywhere else (including DriveThruRPG.)
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to these two HERO 6E revivals’ pandemic-related charity, Direct Relief. Direct Relief sends protective gear and critical care medications to health workers, with emergency deliveries to medical facilities across the US and to regional response agencies across the world.
