Hell yeah it was over 30 years ago that I first ran Superhero 2044. I had discovered D&D sometime around 1976 or 77 (maybe even a little earlier), and was in the process of building my little fantasy world “Ardor,” my AD&D game world that I use to this very day. I loved comics, and being able to have superhero types running around instead of fantasy arch-types sounded like a no-brainer to my young no-brain.
I think within a year or so of discovering Superhero 2044, Villains & Vigilantes came out, and I’m pretty sure I ran consecutive campaigns at some point: 2044 was set in the future, and V&V was the current real world, with my players playing themselves as heroes (like that book suggested you do). It would be a few years before I had a disastrous session with a blatant 2044 rip-off called Supergame, an RPG I would actually help playtest for the creators not long after my little 2044 campaign. I didn’t start a Champions campaign until the early 80’s, so besides the aforementioned Villains and Vigilantes, 2044 was my comic book RPG.
A rather cheaply put-together product, it was the cover, front and back, that was the main eye-catcher of 2044. The sheer number of gaudy costumes, especially the few that were obviously inspired by classic Marvel characters, just made my young gamer heart soar with the gaming possibilities.
I used the setting as presented in the book. It was an independent democratic island nation, Shanter Island (we mispronounced it “Shatner” on purpose), but with all the trappings (language, customs, race) of the U.S. A world wide nuclear war had previously devastated much of society, creating the need for The Science Police. Sci Pol existed to put the brakes on nuclear power and other technology that could be used for evil – or another World War. The futuristic independent island nation concept, and the Science Police, were two things that I would carry over to my long running Champions campaign setting.
Your main island map of Shanter shows the city, the air and space port, and industrial locations. A large part of that map is made up of the “Outback,” miles and miles of forest and mountain areas. This area is not uninhabited – thanks to the pro-superhero government of Shanter Island, a law has been passed letting hero-types make “land grabs” for caves and hilltops to build secret HQ’s on. Nice! This combined with the 1970’s “futurisms” (moving sidewalks downtown, monorails in the city, aliens walking amongst us, etc.) gave the proceedings a really nice cheesy feel, even back then.
I had three or four players for those first few games, but I only really remember two characters from the game that were played – both of them “Doc” Winslow’s. One was a man in super strong, super invincible power armor, based on a figure from the old Gamma World line. Seeing as the rules didn’t give you much information on what kind of powers you could have, or even what those powers might do, the players were pretty much free to get whatever they wanted outside of points assigned to stats. You could probably read about how the rules worked in more detail in some online review, but suffice it to say that the rules on superpowers were obscure enough that a player could totally take advantage. This power armored guy was just devastating to most of his surroundings, and he would smash his way down the street, crushing bank robbers and costumed villains in droves.
Although a lot of the world’s framework is left up to the GM, some background is provided in the way of descriptions of previous superhero events, and a couple of characters. The Freedom League, a former superhero team, was mostly destroyed in recent years by Dr. Ruby, the premier super villain. The only hero to survive was “Mr. Banta,” but only his brain lives on housed in a cyborg shell. Mr. B runs a major superhero equipment/costume shop. This shop is made up of all the leftover gear from the deceased League members and their personal trophies from defeated enemies, so this is one of the things in the book that makes your imagination go wild. This is pretty much the place the character can buy anything that he wasn’t able to put together with points or choice of super powers. The GM can use this shop as the source of all kinds of plot devices and McGuffins. Although assumed by the general public to be dead, there are a series of somewhat humorous drawings in the margins of the book detailing various ways that Doc Ruby might have survived.
Probably the most interesting (and frustrating) feature of the rules was the strict patrolling procedures that each character had to follow. Sheets were given so the player and GM could plot out the characters movements throughout the city, his hours spent patrolling and what part of the island he did the patrolling in. The GM would then suss-out how many crimes were stopped, and how many criminals apprehended. The GM would also have to “handicap” the characters performance parameters occasionally, so as to be able to figure out how many points to give for the time spent patrolling. That meant at least running an actual encounter and fighting on the game table, rather than working out the statistics of this police department style patrolling system. It even included rules for all the lawsuits that get filed against the hero for damage caused during patrol. These rules only really worked for solo play, and although we used the patrolling rules for awhile, we soon abandoned them in order to get some actual role play and important encounters going on more consistently.
In my earliest days of hanging out at the local game shop, I got the chance to help playtest a new superhero RPG called Supergame around the time I was still running 2044. It was created by friends of the shop owner, and that is the main reason it eventually saw a published form. Because I was there for some of the original playtesting of that system, and because of my own disastrous attempts to run a session of it at the shop, I think I’ll save that tale for another post. Suffice to say that, outside of the system itself, The creators of Supergame had blatantly drawn more than just inspiration from Superhero 2044, and I would go so far as to call many of it’s elements a rip-off. But then again, 2044 had a lot of unique qualities, especially the setting, that inspired me to eventually create a superhero game world of my own, strongly based on that little independent island nation called Shatner. Uh, I mean “Shanter.”
I think within a year or so of discovering Superhero 2044, Villains & Vigilantes came out, and I’m pretty sure I ran consecutive campaigns at some point: 2044 was set in the future, and V&V was the current real world, with my players playing themselves as heroes (like that book suggested you do). It would be a few years before I had a disastrous session with a blatant 2044 rip-off called Supergame, an RPG I would actually help playtest for the creators not long after my little 2044 campaign. I didn’t start a Champions campaign until the early 80’s, so besides the aforementioned Villains and Vigilantes, 2044 was my comic book RPG.
A rather cheaply put-together product, it was the cover, front and back, that was the main eye-catcher of 2044. The sheer number of gaudy costumes, especially the few that were obviously inspired by classic Marvel characters, just made my young gamer heart soar with the gaming possibilities.
I used the setting as presented in the book. It was an independent democratic island nation, Shanter Island (we mispronounced it “Shatner” on purpose), but with all the trappings (language, customs, race) of the U.S. A world wide nuclear war had previously devastated much of society, creating the need for The Science Police. Sci Pol existed to put the brakes on nuclear power and other technology that could be used for evil – or another World War. The futuristic independent island nation concept, and the Science Police, were two things that I would carry over to my long running Champions campaign setting.
Your main island map of Shanter shows the city, the air and space port, and industrial locations. A large part of that map is made up of the “Outback,” miles and miles of forest and mountain areas. This area is not uninhabited – thanks to the pro-superhero government of Shanter Island, a law has been passed letting hero-types make “land grabs” for caves and hilltops to build secret HQ’s on. Nice! This combined with the 1970’s “futurisms” (moving sidewalks downtown, monorails in the city, aliens walking amongst us, etc.) gave the proceedings a really nice cheesy feel, even back then.
I had three or four players for those first few games, but I only really remember two characters from the game that were played – both of them “Doc” Winslow’s. One was a man in super strong, super invincible power armor, based on a figure from the old Gamma World line. Seeing as the rules didn’t give you much information on what kind of powers you could have, or even what those powers might do, the players were pretty much free to get whatever they wanted outside of points assigned to stats. You could probably read about how the rules worked in more detail in some online review, but suffice it to say that the rules on superpowers were obscure enough that a player could totally take advantage. This power armored guy was just devastating to most of his surroundings, and he would smash his way down the street, crushing bank robbers and costumed villains in droves.
Although a lot of the world’s framework is left up to the GM, some background is provided in the way of descriptions of previous superhero events, and a couple of characters. The Freedom League, a former superhero team, was mostly destroyed in recent years by Dr. Ruby, the premier super villain. The only hero to survive was “Mr. Banta,” but only his brain lives on housed in a cyborg shell. Mr. B runs a major superhero equipment/costume shop. This shop is made up of all the leftover gear from the deceased League members and their personal trophies from defeated enemies, so this is one of the things in the book that makes your imagination go wild. This is pretty much the place the character can buy anything that he wasn’t able to put together with points or choice of super powers. The GM can use this shop as the source of all kinds of plot devices and McGuffins. Although assumed by the general public to be dead, there are a series of somewhat humorous drawings in the margins of the book detailing various ways that Doc Ruby might have survived.
Probably the most interesting (and frustrating) feature of the rules was the strict patrolling procedures that each character had to follow. Sheets were given so the player and GM could plot out the characters movements throughout the city, his hours spent patrolling and what part of the island he did the patrolling in. The GM would then suss-out how many crimes were stopped, and how many criminals apprehended. The GM would also have to “handicap” the characters performance parameters occasionally, so as to be able to figure out how many points to give for the time spent patrolling. That meant at least running an actual encounter and fighting on the game table, rather than working out the statistics of this police department style patrolling system. It even included rules for all the lawsuits that get filed against the hero for damage caused during patrol. These rules only really worked for solo play, and although we used the patrolling rules for awhile, we soon abandoned them in order to get some actual role play and important encounters going on more consistently.
In my earliest days of hanging out at the local game shop, I got the chance to help playtest a new superhero RPG called Supergame around the time I was still running 2044. It was created by friends of the shop owner, and that is the main reason it eventually saw a published form. Because I was there for some of the original playtesting of that system, and because of my own disastrous attempts to run a session of it at the shop, I think I’ll save that tale for another post. Suffice to say that, outside of the system itself, The creators of Supergame had blatantly drawn more than just inspiration from Superhero 2044, and I would go so far as to call many of it’s elements a rip-off. But then again, 2044 had a lot of unique qualities, especially the setting, that inspired me to eventually create a superhero game world of my own, strongly based on that little independent island nation called Shatner. Uh, I mean “Shanter.”
