The year was 1987, and a young me was browsing a local hobby store looking for something new. Having played Champions, and owned TSR's Marvel Superheroes, I was not really looking for a super hero role playing game, but for what ever reason this game jumped off of the shelf and into my hands. I am glad it did.
Golden Heroes is a superhero role playing game published by Games Workshop in 1984 (when they actually made more games than miniatures) and sadly discontinued only a couple years later. Two modules and a referee's screen were also produced in that time, along with a handful of White Dwarf articles. Despite the lack of published support, and a games store employee selling me a game that was no longer in print, I played the hell out of this game in high school and into college. I loved the system! Sure it had its fiddly rules and quirks, but we made it work. No other super hero game would capture my imagination and passion as Golden Heroes did.
Unfortunately, when I left college, the Golden Heroes box with all of the heroes, villains, campaigns and supervisors screen stayed with a friend and I never saw it again. At the time it was an "oh well" moment. After all, I had gotten a ton of fun out of it, and perhaps it continued to provide hours of play for the old crew that I left. I like to think it did. Today, however, I really wish I still had all that stuff. My hero by the name of
Armor (it was original at the time...OK OK, sort of an Iron Man rip off but I swear he was not the same!) and his arch nemesis
Ogre were in that box of gaming goodies. That along with the 20 or 30 other hero's and villains that were rolled up and played, or just generated for the fun of it. *sigh*
So why am I waxing nostalgic (obsessing?) over this? EBAY. I just picked up one of the two modules that were published,
Legacy of Eagles, for a whopping 5 bucks. Wooot! I didn't even own that back in the day! I am now looking to pick up a boxed set someday, and perhaps the second module
Queen Victoria and The Holy Grail.
Also during my Googleing and scouring the internet for Golden Heroes stuff, I found that the original game designer Simon Burley is now producing pretty much the SAME GAME! You can find it here at the
Squadron UK website. Perhaps like the Phoenix, Golden Heroes can rise again, my current gaming group rolling up some hero's and smashing evil! I can dream, can't I?
I know this is an old post but I 2nd your opinion. Golden Heroes rocked. I played it for years. I still have it in the garage somewhere, and the modules.
ReplyDeleteI had this in the mid-80s and quite liked it. I have no idea what happened to it. Forgot about it until recently. Enjoyed your look back. I hope to snag a copy someday.
ReplyDeleteManaged to locate free PDFs of the Players Book and Supervisors Book...piracy at its best, though I would have paid if anyone had it legally for sale. Great game.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Squadron UK is NOTHING like Golden Heroes. At least the version of SUK now available. It's chock full of bad typographical and grammatical errors; additionally, the system was changed a great deal. Not for the better. Very sad.
ReplyDeleteGOLDEN HEROES IS BACK
ReplyDeleteWell almost, the Scenarios have been turned into a surcebook. which includes the unpublished "LANCELOT CAPER"
[URL="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426158885/legacy-superhero-role-playing-in-the-united-kingdo"]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426158885/legacy-superhero-role-playing-in-the-united-kingdo[/URL]
A Superhero sourcebook for the United Kingdom. Based on the scenarios of THE British Superhero game of the mid 80’s.
Back in the day, there was a superhero RPG published in the UK. It was originally an A5 printed booklet, then a box set with two supplements, a couple of boxes of lead figures, some articles and scenarios in a certain gaming magazines. Its name is own by a third party so cannot be mentioned, let’s just say some of the Heroes were Golden
Well that was 30 years ago, and we still have a soft spot for the original game. Which is where Legacy comes in. [Redacted]* was a superhero game set in the UK, what Legacy does is, to take those original scenarios and articles, update and expand on them and create a coherent universe, where the UK is the predominated place for superheroes.
These are the old scenarios used to create a universe for British Heroes.
Crossfire (an Alien Exchange) Legacy of Eagles
Queen Victoria and the Holy Grail
The Lancelot Caper (unpublished)
STRIKEBACK
American Dream
Reunion
Peking Duck
Pilcomayo Project
Contagion, Coincidence & Confusion
The goal for this project is get enough money to pay for proofreading and editing. Nothing too ambitious. Nice and simple.
This is Legacy, a sourcebook for roleplaying superheroes on the streets on the streets of the UK. The book which currently stands at 140 pages will have background material on why some people are superpowered and other aren’t, it will have details of various Villains old and new, there is an origin scenario which is an update of the Pilcomayo Project.
The book will also contain: stuff on Time Travel, parallel dimensions, the source of both magic and superpowers, there is a chapter America, the EAGLES (from Legacy of EAGLES), a vast array of background information , The book also includes a century of Heroes, a year by year almanac of heroes since 1900. And details of the Official British superhero teams since 1899. Including the Queens own Shadow V.
All in all, it is everything you might need to run a superhero adventure in the United Kingdom.
This Sceptered Isle has called. Its time to talc up the spandex and get pledging: