Champions - the MMORPG!

It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Hero System, especially the Champions super-heroic setting.

Recently, there have been two announcements that promise to shake up the Hero System fandom:

1. Hero Games is coming out with a 6th Edition set of its rules in 2009;
2. Cryptic Studios is coming out with an MMORPG based on the Champions setting in 2009.
   

According to the Hero Games website, the reason they're coming out with the 6th Ed is to take advantage of the marketing opportunites that the MMORPG will provide them. They want to revise the rules to make it easier for fresh blood to jump onboard to the pen-and-paper RPG bandwagon (with the Hero System as the prime candidate for initial gameplay). It's also been mentioned that the Champions and Dark Champions intellectual property has been purchased by Cryptic Studios:

"Cryptic bought the Champions and Dark Champions intellectual property from us — the characters, places, events, and so on — and licensed back to us the right to produce Champions RPG books."

Interestingly, the RULES of the Hero System still belong to Hero Games.

To me this implies that if things go all crappy down the line, Hero Games doesn't own the settings that they created in these genres, but still retain copyright on the ruleset. It also means that Hero Games can technically use all that nice art in their 6th Edition books.

The Cryptic Studios website has a link to the Champions Online MMORPG website and there you'll find the general level of art that I hope to see in the Hero Games books come 2009.