"Does anybody remember..." Topic

a set of rules called The Official Superhero Adventure Game? It was self-published by Brian Phillips in 1981 and there was even a set of 25mm figures available to go with it. It was a set of combat miniatures rules more than an RPG (akin to the microgames "Melee" and "Wizards") and was an absolute blast to play.

I very fortunately held on to my rules (and figures) and ran into them while sorting out the hobby room. Nostalgia took over, but an internet search turns up next to nothing on them. Could I have been the only one lucky enough to buy them way back when?

Thanks,

Jeff

1981? Talk about good-timing/bad-timing. The four-color wave was rising in '81, but dominated by Champions. Superhero 2044 preceded it, but was, to put it politely, incomplete. Villians & Vigilantes was about the same age, but too simple for long term play. Marvel and DC licenses came after, as did GW's Golden Heroes (and people think Champions was complex…).

I do recall at least one other superhero game around that time, and TOSAG may be it. Never owned it.

Wow, I vaguely remember the title from maybe a Dragon magazine, or maybe Different Worlds magazine, ad. Never actually laid eyes on the game though.

I searched my Dragon archive DVDs and found only one reference to this game. The article is "Caped Crusaders and Masked Marvels" by Roger Moore, in issue 69 from January 1983. At the end of the article is a short list of superhero games, and one of those mentioned is The Official Superhero Adventure Game by Brian Phillips. They give it a date of 1982, though. No other information.

They also list another superhero game by Brian, Superheroes and Supervillains, published by Heritage and dated 1981, with figures by David Helber. Here it is on BoardGameGeek, but other than a brief description there's not much info: link

And here are the minis on Stuff of Legends: picture

Does it look like those are the same minis you have?

Jeff,

Brian Phillips is a long time friend of mine here in Dayton, Ohio and his "Offical Superhero Adventure Game" was one of several games he produce. The Heritage version was the one Brian did for former Dayton native Duke Seifreid when Duke went to work for Heritage.

Several years ago, I conviced Brian to try to revive the game with the growing popularity of superheroes. A revised version was put together and the original characters reworked (though most not drastically) and was play tested by myself and son with a large following of players weened on GW.

The results where very good and we developeed a darn good revised version of the game, unfortunatly the cost to publish it in the format we wanted was pretty tough, so the game as pretty much become a local commodity.

The original figures were produced by a company called Castle Creations, which was bought out by Lance and Laser.
Since Brian owed the rights to the characters, they could no longer produce them. We did look at the possibility of re-doing the figures, but again, cost is an issue.

The revised version of the game still retains much of the original mechanics, though wounds have been simplified and the tracking much easier. One person can easly play 5-8 characters. Rules for henchmen and thugs have also been revamped to make them more useful and fun to play. We did include a point system to allow players to build forces for one of games.

Might be willing to put on a game at a convention like Orgins if we thought we could generate interest. To this day I think it is the best representation of superhero combat ever done.

Originally this game was done with Marvel characters (I actually designed the box game prototype) for Heritage. They could not get the rights (or would not pay the price) so it turned into a genaric game and in fact was changed significantly from Brians original design by Heritage.(along with the famous monsters game he did)

The revised game is about 85% complete as far as rules go. Anyone that knows an aspiring comic artist that would be interested in doing art work let me know as thats probably the biggest obsticle to make a half-way decent production value book.

Kim

Cool, thanks for posting that, Kim!

Kim,

I was hoping that somebody here might know Brian. Agree, they the best superhero rules I've ever played, So much fun. I'd love to see the current version of the rules. Please give him my regards!

I actually thought I was moving to Dayton until just a few weeks ago. I'm in the Air Force and thought I was going to Wright Patterson AFB, but got diverted to Nellis AFB (Las Vegas) at the last minute.

Jeff

Its a shame its no longer available, as it has become legendary. If anyone could convince Brian Phillips to sell physical copies on Drive Thru RPG as an old school revival game I'd certainly buy it.

Gorilla

send me an email

kimryoung@yahoo.com

Kim