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?
