#mayfair games

[oldschoolfrp]

In 1989 Mayfair released a 2nd edition of their DC Heroes Role-Playing Game (top), and a 2nd ed Batman Sourcebook by Mike Stackpole (middle). The same year they also released a separate Batman Role-Playing Game (bottom) based on the DC Heroes rules, focused on Batman, his allies, and his classic villains.

#Batman #DC Heroes #Batman Role-Playing Game #Batman RPG #DC Comics #Mike Stackpole #Batman Sourcebook #Batman roleplaying game #Superman #Mayfair Games #superheroes #1980s #superhero gaming #superhero

[comfortfoodcontent]

Mayfair Games DC Comics The Apokolips Sourcebook Cover Art by Mike Mignola

#the apokolips sourcebook #new gods #darkseid #mayfair #mayfair games #rpg #rpgs #role playing games #dc #dc comics #mike mignola #mignola #fourth world #jack kirby's fourth world #comics #comic art

[cantsayidont]

Summer (?) 1992. The final game supplement for the Mayfair Games DC HEROES ROLE-PLAYING GAME was a loose-leaf WHO'S WHO supplement, intended to complement DC's loose-leaf WHO'S WHO update. Only three of the four planned volumes were released before Mayfair lost the DC license. The first volume includes this entry for Legionnaire Brainiac 5, also covered in 2995: THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES SOURCEBOOK, which came out months later.

Brainy's game statistics are mostly the same (although this entry gives him 20 more Hero Points), but the special Psychological Instability rules are unique to this version. This wasn't really a problem anymore in the period when this supplement was published, since it really refers to one particular story from 1979 (a guy loses his shit and creates a universe-destroying super-monster ONE TIME and nobody ever lets him live it down …), but it's an interesting mechanic, so I can see why it was included. The reverse side also has a handy checklist of Brainiac 5 appearances, for completists:

The Personality/Role-playing section on the front side makes some dubious assertions. The first paragraph says:

He might be incredibly intelligent, but Brainiac 5 has a great deal of difficulty when it comes to expressing his emotions. When he first joined the Legion, he tried to concentrate on his feelings to fit in with his teammates, none of whom was Coluan. He even fell in love with Laurel Gand and spent a number of peaceful years with her. But inevitably, he became so overwhelmed with leading the team and protecting the universe that he was forced to forgo the luxury of emotion so that he could use his intelligence to its capacity.

While the 2995 sourcebook was written by Legion scripters Tom and Mary Bierbaum, this supplement was not, and I'm not sure what Winninger was talking about in the final sentence. What had happened in the latter third of the 1984–1989 Levitz series was that Brainy had fomented a conspiracy to avenge the death of Superboy by destroying the Time Trapper, one of the Legion's most powerful enemies, a plan that involved sacrificing Brainy's old friend Jaxon Rugarth. The other Legionnaires then put Brainy on trial for violating the Legion code, and although he was exonerated, he was so annoyed by their attitude that he resigned in a fit of pique and went back to Colu. He returned during the Magic Wars and sort of mended fences, although the team subsequently collapsed and he went on to other things during the five-year gap (principally trying to find a cure for the "Validus plague" afflicting Saturn Girl's kids). Some of the specific circumstances were subsequently retconned in ways not reflected in the actual comics, but that was still basically the gist at the time this supplement was published. It was messy, but it was certainly NOT a matter of his forgoing "the luxury of emotion."

The second paragraph says:

As a Brainiac, Dox has an affinity for pure logic. As time goes on, he seems less and less interested in establishing normal relationships with his teammates in the reformed Legion.

This was not at all true. Indeed, one of the charming aspects of the "Five Years Later" period was that Brainy had actually mellowed quite a bit. He was still a little awkward, and there was unresolved baggage between him and Laurel (who in the interim had had a baby with his best friend!), but he was more at peace with himself, and more patient with the people around him, than he'd ever been in past Legion stories. According to the Bierbaums' sourcebook, he was even writing sweet little haiku about his former teammates in his spare time — hardly the action of a cold-blooded logician.

#comics #who's who #mayfair games #dc heroes #brainiac 5 #querl dox #legion of super heroes #legion of superheroes #laurel gand #the conspiracy storyline showed brainy being ruthless #but hardly unemotional #the actual game statistics are whatever #the dc heroes game designers tried three times to come up with workable gadgetry rules #none of them successful #and modeling a “super-genius” character like brainy in game terms is tough

[mendelpalace]

Front cover (by Geof Darrow) and some interior illustrations from Underground: It's 2021 and the Dream is Dead, the core rulebook for Ray Winninger's satirical gritty superhero role-playing game Underground. It's heavily inspired by cyberpunk fiction, late 80's-early 90's deconstructions of superheroes, and early 90's political unrest.

#Underground #Mayfair Games #Ray Winninger #Geof Darrow #Juan Remirez #Rob McLees #Ed Lee #Glenn Kim #Peter Chung #Corey Barba #Cyberpunk #Art #Illustration #Tabletop Gaming

[vintagerpg]

Climb into the Titan’s ear! This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we’re talking about Swordthrust (1984), a particularly wild scenario from Mayfair’s Role Aids line of D&D supplements. Despite the generic sounding title, this adventure sees players exploring the brain of a hibernating Titan and navigating his dreams made flesh in order to find an artifact of incredible power (sort of). While it is sort of unusually weird for the period, it is also a great example of how a certain amount of “gonzo” is baked right in to the standards of the hobby. We also chat a little bit about Role Aids generally, something that will be helpful for folks reading the Instagram feed next year (spoiler: I’m doing posts on ALL the Role Aids books in 2024; get read for lots of Boris).

#rpg #d&d #dungeons & dragons #tabletop rpg #roleplaying game #ttrpg #podcast #Role Aids #Mayfair Games #Boris Vallejo #Swordthrust

[all-action-all-picture]

1984/1985 ad for the DC Heroes Role Playing Game from Mayfair Games.

#mayfair games #rpg #game #dc #dc heroes #super powers #new teen titans #justice league of america #1985 #1984

[whovian223]

Friday Night Shots - Catch Up Mechanisms

Friday Night Shots - Catch Up Mechanisms

It’s the last Friday before Christmas and all through the malls, too many creatures were stirring, so much so that I would rather carve Shem Phillips’ initials into my hand with a penknife than go shopping. I think that’s how that old Christmas poem goes. I could be a bit off. Anyway, welcome back to the bar! I’m glad you decided to get cozy and warm here, having some libations (maybe not…

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#Action Selection #Auction Games #Cryptozoic #Daily Magic Games #DC Comics Deck-Building Game #Dice Drafting #Food Chain Magnate #Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism and Other Ideas #Formal Ferret Games #GMT Games #Isle of Skye #Mayfair Games #Power Grid #Rio Grande Games #Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria #Splotter Spellen #The Networks #Twilight Struggle #Twilight Struggle: Red Sea #Worker Placement Games

[1-50thofabuck]

An audio cue used while one of the heroes was scanning radio frequencies for news during the King of Crime adventure in 2015.

#rpg #rpgs #super hero rp #dc heroes #king of crime #audio aid #baltimore city #mayfair games

[seaside-writings]

I think horror podcasts should make cassette tapes of their shows.

Just the thought of pretending to put some "random" cassette into a seemingly old cassette player and listening to the horrors unfold is something I crave.

#Analog horror #horror #horror podcast #horror podcasts #audio drama #audio dramas #cassettes #audiotape #cassette tape #cassette tapes #walkman #cassette player #the black tapes #welcome to nightvale #mayfair watchers society #the white vault #rose drive #the sheridan tapes #the left right game #lake clarity #the magnus archives #archive 81 #old gods of appalachia

[malice-kingdom]

An army of Ghosts.

#tbosas #coriolanus snow #sejanus plinth #lucy gray baird #the hunger games #snowbaird #snowjanus #clemensia dovecote #bobbin tbosas #marcus tbosas #lamina tbosas #coral tbosas #jessup tbosas #mayfair lipp #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #snowjanusbaird #thg #there is a lot of character and most of them are unrecognizable so I’m not gonna tag everyone #anyway I’m quite proud of how it turned out #fanart

[katnissandpeetamellark]

#Lucy Gray's always so stressed when Coriolanus and Billy Taupe are in the same room and I cannot blame her #Lucy Gray Baird #Coriolanus Snow #Snowbaird #Billy Taupe #billy taupe clade #Lucy Gray #Coriolanus #Coriolanus x Lucy gray #the ballad of songbirds and snakes #tbosas #the hunger games #thg #hunger games #bosas #lucy gray x coriolanus #lucy gray baird x coriolanus snow #coriolanus snow x lucy gray baird #text post #I could have used when Coriolanus kills Mayfair Lipp I guess too lol

[wolfiiburr]

AMNESIA THE DARK DESCENT

#amnesia the dark descent #horror #fan art #digital art #game #daniel of mayfair #alexander of brennenburg #amnesia the shadow #comic #frictional games #illustration

[comfortfoodcontent]

1986 Mayfair Games Legion of Super-Heroes Sourcebook DC Comics Role Playing Game Comic Ad

#rpg #role playing game #dc role playing game #legion #legion of super heroes #legion of super-heroes #1986 #80s #1980s #mayfair games #the legion #dc #dc comics #comic ads #print ads

[cantsayidont]

Mid-1993. The companion piece to the Giffen/Bierbaum v4 LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES series was this sourcebook for the Mayfair Games DC HEROES RPG. Written by Tom & Mary Bierbaum and released shortly after Keith Giffen's departure from the series, it's presented in an epistolary style: Each entry consists of excerpts of personal correspondence between the characters, snippets of in-universe news articles or intelligence reports, and other such ephemera, the most charming of which are a series of (bad) haiku that Brainiac 5 secretly wrote about his teammates over the years.

If you're familiar with the mechanics of the DC HEROES game, the statistics given for the characters are somewhat frustrating. They aren't as useless as the earlier Mayfair Legion sourcebooks co-written by Paul Levitz, who clearly didn't understand the game's exponential point value system, but the stats don't accurately reflect what the values are supposed to mean in game terms. (For instance, the comics show that Laurel Gand can fly interstellar distances under her own power, but Laurel's listed Flight power wouldn't even let her achieve escape velocity.) Also, the game struggles to model the powers of some of the sillier Legion characters in playable ways, and the listed statistics do nothing to address that. If someone wants to play a Legionnaire like Bouncing Boy, whose sole power is the ability to inflate himself like a beach ball and carom off of walls, the rules ought to support them!

All this makes the sourcebook of somewhat dubious utility as an actual gaming reference, but it was clear that Mayfair was hoping to also sell the book to comics readers who didn't necessarily care about the game. It doesn't appear to have worked; Mayfair lost the DC license in 1993, and the last part of their final DC HEROES supplement, the four-part loose-leaf WHO'S WHO series, was never published.

#comics #legion of super heroes #legion of superheroes #tom and mary bierbaum #keith giffen #mayfair games #dc heroes #laurel gand #brainiac 5 #the mayfair who's who does finally #have workable bouncing boy mechanics #it only took them three tries

[strawberrywindow]

amnesia protags and their various crimes against humanity

🎵one of these things is not like the other🎵

#amnesia the dark descent #daniel of mayfair #amnesia justine #justine florbelle #amnesia a machine for pigs #oswald mandus #amnesia rebirth #tasi trianon #amnesia the bunker #amnesia the bunker spoilers #henri clément #augustin lambert #frictional games #fanart #strawberryarts

[vintagerpg]

We did a whole episode of the podcast on Swordthrust (1984) last year. That probably tells you something about the adventure’s place in the line. If not, I’ll say it directly: this is probably Role Aids at its weirdest, most experimental and, consequently, at its best.

In short: a titan sleeps atop a high mountain. The party goes in the titan’s ear and explores his brain, looking for a powerful artifact that is calling to them. Inside, there are monsters that have taken up residence, angelic creatures that are manifestations of the titan’s better nature, reptilians that embody his baser impulses, and strange apparitions that are, essentially, his dreams and memories made flesh, making for a very odd variety of environments inside what is supposed to be a complex of ice caves.

All of this is super interesting, especially for the year it was released (compare this to any give Dragonlance module, for instance). It doesn’t go as hard or as bizarre as it could, but that’s OK — it paved the way for plenty of others to get weird (Silent Titans sprints immediately to mind) and leaves plenty of room for the GM to odd it up.

Cover art is another recycled Boris Vallejo, though in this case, the authors incorporated the scene in the adventure — there, this guy is one of the Titan’s dreams who left the brain to live on the mountain and has, essentially, become real. He’s an interesting chap. Interiors are by Robin Wood. She did a lot of Role Aids work and it’s rather variable — I think she was using it as an opportunity to experiment with different styles. These drawings are pretty solid!

#roleplaying game #tabletop rpg #dungeons & dragons #rpg #d&d #ttrpg #Role Aids #Mayfair #Swordthrust