One, I secured a job with Trion World Network, which was still in ’stealth mode’ when I got the job, meaning I couldn’t talk about… well anything, really. Not the company, not the job, not the game(s)… so I just kept my big mouth shut.

Two, I was going through the time-consuming, tedious and nerve-wracking process of getting my US immigration visa. This would have been a tough enough process at any time, but considering it was connected directly to me taking up the job, I felt in some way I should just keep quiet. Didn’t want to jinx things. I only broke silence when the internal mental pressure began to get so much that even endless games of Civilization IV weren’t enough to keep The Voices in check, and I had to vent somewhere.

Well, now I’ve officially got The Job, and I sure as hell have The Visa. So I can talk. A bit.Trion’s an exciting company to be part of. With three games in active production (Heroes of Telara; the MMORTS project with Petroglyph, and the MMOARPG being made in collaboration with Sci-Fi/SyFy) there’s a hell of a lot to do, and lots of exciting possibilities down the road. I’ll admit it; before I found the job opportunity last year, I didn’t know much about Trion. I’d read the odd press release, but it was only when I started to really do my research, by reading every single scrap of info and interview I could find, that I got excited about what I might be getting into.

When I flew out to Redwood City and met the various team members there, I got more excited. These guys had a vision; a definite idea of what they wanted to do in the MMO ’space’ and how they wanted to move the genre forward. The idea here wasn’t just to make a carbon copy game, or move things forward by inches. This is potentially revolutionary stuff.

Without trying to lapse into pure hyperbole, what I saw and what I heard during my two days of interviews was enough to make me very interested in being part of the company, and very anxious to get started. As you can imagine, kicking my heels for much of the following eight months while my visa processed was pure bloody torture.

Then suddenly everything came together. In late May my visa finally got approved, and days later I was on a plane to Los Angeles, to officially start the job as part of the E3 team. Due to a last minute delay in my visa processing which added another month to the wait, I hadn’t been as involved in the E3 planning as we’d initially hoped. As a result I expected to feel like the ‘odd man out’ at E3, the guy who didn’t know what was going on. (”Don’t worry,” I told my boss, “I am able to fetch and carry coffee.”)

What surprised and delighted me was how quickly I was welcomed by everyone. I felt like an important team member from the moment I arrived, and by the end of the show I felt proud to have been part of such a tight-knit, hard-working team. Without getting too sappy, I couldn’t have had a better welcome to my first ‘official’ work in the US, and for a new company, to boot.

(I’m not sure whether to stand up and salute right now, blow my nose on a tissue, or beg off because I have something in my eye.)

So what’s next?

Well, I leave the UK ‘officially’ on July 9th, with Tom (the cat) and Amanda (the wife) following closely after. We’ve found a nice little apartment in Redwood City, not too far from Trion’s office (by California standards, anyway…). We’ll settle in and start adjusting to our new life. It’s already been a whirlwind of paperwork and decisions; it’s probably not going to die down any time soon. Someday soon though, I look forward to relaxing on my big American sofa, watching my big American TV, with my big (well, medium-sized) American car outside.

And while I am there, my brain shall hatch big American community plans. Believe me: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Bum!”

I’d hoped to have a post primed and ready to rock, but given general secrecy and my rapid departure from the UK, that wasn’t to be.

More details soon, no doubt, but for now you might have a few questions, like:

“Trion World Network?”

“What are you working on?”

“What’s keeping you busy at E3?”

More soon.

Last time out, looking at Ghostbusters, I talked about the wonderful simplicity of the game’s system, and how it could only be betterered by one thing: taking that system and combining it with the greatest science fiction movie trilogy of all time. Well, at least, it was in 1987….

9) Star Wars

Remember how Traveller, well, just didn’t do it for me? Remember how I was essentially seduced by that image of a Luke Skywalker-lookalike on the box? (Damn you, GDW….) Well, it took five years or so, but finally my sci-fi roleplaying prayers were answered in 1987 with the release, on the (gulp) tenth anniversary of the movie, of Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game from West End Games.

If Marvel Super Heroes had opened my eyes to how a game system could work with you in creating a setting, Star Wars blew out of the back of my skull. Designed by Greg Costikyan, Curtis Smith and Bill Slavicsek, the simple D6 system in Star Wars expanded on the initial principles of Ghostbusters, and was an absolute joy to read. The original rulebook filled my head with the potential excitement of adventures across the galaxy, where the players would fight for the Rebellion against the evil forces of the Empire. Blasters would be fired! Quips would be uttered! Lightsabers would be drawn! Heroes would be made!

So naturally, in the first session of my campaign, the players stole a starship and then - I remember this quite specifically - spot-welded the ship merchant to the inside of his own safe.

Yeah, they weren’t really looking to be heroes.

Despite what you may think, that incident kicked off one of the best campaigns I’ve ever run, although it was a classic example of the lunatics taking over the asylum. The ring leader of this band of lunatics - the McMurphy character, if you will - had asked to play a rogue Imperial agent, a man who was only interested in looking out for himself, and wasn’t anxious to work for the Rebellion or the Empire. Thinking this would make for a kind of Han Solo-like rogue, I said yes; not knowing that what he was actually going to play was the classic Traveller or D&D anti-hero. Chaotic Neutral, in other words; everyone else can go hang, as long as I come out of it with cash.

Now, there’s a place for that kind of character, but not necessarily in a classic Star Wars campaign. The original rulebook suggested you set your game between the end of Star Wars and the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, when the Rebellion has won a major victory by destroying the Death Star, but the stakes are high and there’s plenty of danger. I liked the sound of that, and I particularly liked the high drama inherent in the setting. But, we didn’t really get to that; instead we created some high drama of our own.

That was mostly because a latecomer to the game asked to create a Jedi - a very rare thing at this point in the Star Wars timeline, as you might realise - and I said yes, thinking that perhaps that with him in the group, we’d get some of that good-vs-evil stuff that I was craving. Well if you thought of him as good and the rest of the party as evil….

What happened was what always happens when you drop a Lawful Good Paladin into the middle of a Chaotic Neutral party: lots of arguing, scheming, backstabbing and ultimately, bloodshed.

The thing is, it was immensely entertaining to watch every week, simply because both of the players were very good at sticking within their roles. The rogue agent lied, schemed, double-crossed (the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with his personal code. The lone Jedi proselytised, argued, defended innocents (from the rest of the party) and generally acted in accordance with the Jedi code. I just sat back and occasionally prodded them towards something, and somehow that eventually led to them turning up to the battle of Hoth to help Darth Vader.

Mmm. Well, it was certainly a memorable campaign.

Long rambling personal reminiscences aside, Star Wars was (and really, is) a classic in roleplaying design, and to date is one of the few RPGs which I liked enough to actually buy supplements for. Unfortunately not long after my campaign started, it ended, as I moved away from the area and my roleplaying group. As a result my dreams of a classic Rebels vs Imperials campaign never came to light.

By 1992 I had an entirely new roleplaying group at my disposal - and West End Games released Star Wars in a Second Edition. However, on reading reviews at the time, I found out the Second Edition expanded the rules quite a bit, which frankly I never thought they needed. I understand now that Second Editions are a natural part of any large RPG line’s progression, but at the time, I didn’t see the point in buying into it. Besides, I hated the cover art.

Since then the Star Wars licence has proved perennial in RPGs, although I stopped paying attention long ago. Today Wizards of the Coast publish the official RPG, although the original D6 System Star Wars came from is still knocking around in various forms. For a good overview of Star Wars’ RPG history, I recommend this article on - where else - Star Wars.com.

Today, even after the wildly uneven Prequel Trilogy and the relentless exploitation of Star Wars by the Lucas Empire (Hey, it’s either that or Howard the Duck spin-offs), I still have a hankering to run a Star Wars campaign that evokes the classic era, the original trilogy.

Being realistic and boringly adult about it, I know there’s an element of wanting to recapture those glory days, when I felt like I was running a campaign by the skin of my teeth, barely keeping up with an older, smarter and wilier group of players. That’s unlikely to happen, but I still have my rulebooks - you never know.

It took Lucas 16 years to get back to the movies, after all….

… which is why if you are in the market for a supernatural RPG that won’t have you glancing nervously into dark corners, then don’t wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals!

8 ) Ghostbusters

I’ll forgive you for thinking - like so many other high-minded roleplayers before you - that Ghostbusters is just some stupid movie tie-in game. Because on some levels, it’s exactly that. It’s got the hallmarks - very few rules; lots of pretty cards and handouts to play with; an almost cavalier attitude to the oh-so-serious activity of roleplaying.

When you take a closer look though, not only has Ghostbusters got a design that is being emulated by today’s ’story-driven’ roleplayers, but it’s also got a campaign background that could spawn a million adventures. Not bad for some movie tie-in.

Created by the multi-talented guys who also brought you Call of Cthulhu - who were probably glad for the break - Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game was released by West End Games in 1986. These days, a two-year gap between ‘product’ and ‘tie-in’ would seem suicidal, but we forget what a global phenomenon Ghostbusters was - not to mention how long it would have taken to materialise on ‘home video systems’. Those two years were well spent however, as Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford had created a game that perfectly emulated the original movie, while also expanding its potential.

With four statistics and four skills per character, all of them simply given a number to represent how many six-sided dice you threw to beat a difficulty number, Ghostbusters’ system was so simple… that I just described all of it. Except one thing I suppose; the infamous Ghost Dice, which was just a D6 with the Ghostbusters’ logo (AKA Casper, the Friendly Ghost) replacing the ‘6′. Used whenever a roll was made in the game, if you ‘rolled a Ghost’ that meant Something Bad Happened. Beat your difficulty number and we’re talking minor setback; fail your roll and get a Ghost, and it’s major disaster time.

This mechanic, coupled with the liberal use of Brownie Points to let players fudge things, gives an appropriately freewheeling and cinematic feel to gameplay. The average game of Ghostbusters basically rattles along as fast as you can take it, which, in my view, makes it absolutely brilliant. Want to do something? Pick a number, roll it, bam - done. Next!

Apart from the smart but simple system, Ghostbusters has one other massive trick up its sleeve. Not content with just describing the science-meets-spooks setting of the original film, the designers realised that in the Ghostbusters universe, anything goes. And I mean anything. Aliens? Check. Dimensional travel? Check. Time travel? Check. Science experiments gone awry? Check. Essentially, if it’s been seen in science fiction or comics, it’s fair game to appear in a Ghostbusters adventure.

With that one background tweak, Ghostbusters suddenly becomes a multi-genre game with a system that can handle everything… because it doesn’t try to handle anything. The rules are almost Zen-like in their simplicity; the inherent comedy in the setting is a free pass for the GM and players to do anything they like, because the aim of the game is just to kick back and have fun.

While I didn’t pick up Ghostbusters until a few years after its debut, and didn’t run it until many years later, I’m almost in awe of how good this game is today, and how it’s still so relevant to my style of gaming. So many games since have borrowed or stolen elements - not least the one I’m going to talk about next - that it’s no surprise I still feel it’s a gold standard by which others should be measured.

And what could be better than Ghostbusters? Why, the Ghostbusters system, but with another famous sci-fi movie as background….

7) Call of Cthulhu

It seems to me, at least in recent years, that Call of Cthulhu has finally taken a place alongside Dungeons & Dragons as one of the pillars of roleplaying. While it’s always been a great game - and unlike D&D, has never needed to radically reinvent itself - I think sheer longevity, perhaps coupled with the fact that it matures exceedingly well, has given it a near legendary status. It’s well deserved.

I should be clear from the off that I’m no Cthulhu scholar. I’ve played it fairly infrequently in my 20-odd years of gaming, and generally I’ve enjoyed it, although I never wanted to run a game myself. I’ve always been aware of it though, as right from the start Cthulhu had something about it; a sense of being ‘grown up’ for lack of a better term.

If you’ve never encountered it, then as the covers say, Call of Cthulhu is a roleplaying game set in the worlds of HP Lovecraft, an early 20th century novelist who was probably a few hammers short of a toolbox. Created by Sandy Petersen for Chaosium in 1981, and then later revised and expanded upon by Lynn Willis, the game won multiple awards from its inception.

Players take the role of investigators into the occult and the supernatural, with what may start off as ‘conventional’ ghouls and ghosts ultimately giving way to much more powerful and mysterious eldritch horrors - the Great Old Ones, Lovecraft’s ultimate evil from beyond the stars. These ‘gibbering horrors’ have been so influential over the years that Lovecraft probably deserves to be put on a plinth next to Bram Stoker, but when CoC first debuted, the idea of fighting monsters who were so terrifying that mortal man could not even look on them without going mad was still pretty revolutionary.

Especially in RPGs, of course, where every foe was ultimately just a collection of statistics that needed to be defeated somehow, so you could steal its stuff. It didn’t matter how terrifying the creature, there was always a way to beat it, and whether it involved some sort of clever ruse (”A-ha! We need a mirror!”) or just overwhelming firepower (”I cast fireball!”), you were going to be victorious in the end. Right? Heck, even if you died, one quick resurrection spell later and you’d be back in business.

Not so in Cthulhu, and you can imagine the reaction my young mind had to this new set of playing circumstances. ‘Investigation’ in CoC meant, well, actual investigation; talking to NPCs and trying to figure out clues, not sticking a torch into a darkened room. When the bad guys were ultimately revealed in CoC, if you were lucky they were human - but if you were unlucky they were many-tentacled monsters, usually very deadly, and you could only ‘win’ by getting out alive. As players, it didn’t seem to matter how much we stacked the odds in our favour; we were destined to fail - and to go mad as part of the process, rendering your character useless for much beyond a few games.

Yes, my young self didn’t really quite get Cthulhu, and why should I have - after all, the idea of life being a long drawn-out struggle with no guarantee of a happy ending wasn’t exactly my worldview at 12 years old. I remember distinctly arguing with my friends that there was little to no point in playing this stupid game, because ultimately our characters were all going to die, go mad or just fail somehow - where was the fun in that?

Ah, how your definition of ‘fun’ can change, because these days as I’ve mentioned previously, I’d much rather roleplay a long investigation than spend the evening rolling for damage.

Thinking back on it, there was one other element that put me off Cthulhu, and that’s the fact that I’m a bit of a wimp. While I’ve read a few horror books and comics in my time and even seen the odd movie, generally speaking I steer clear of stuff that goes squelch in the night, and I know that one too many Cthulhu games would probably have made an unfavourable impression on my young mind.

Nevertheless, these days with the benefit of hindsight, experience and a slightly braver mindset (Hey, the news is scarier than anything Lovecraft could create) I’ve been enjoying Call of Cthulhu more and more. It’s one of the best roleplaying games I’ve ever played for pure roleplaying, given the huge likelihood of death, failure and/or insanity at the end of a session. With those sorts of odds, what’s written down on your character sheet almost seems to become irrelevant - and the game is all the better for it.

Still, subject matter wise, it’s kind of a bummer, ain’t it? I can solve that with my next pick….

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Dungeons & Dragons
2. Traveller
3. Champions
4. Skyrealms of Jorune
5. Top Secret/S.I.

Feel free to go read that as a primer.

This post was originally going to contain five more games, but it grew so much it became obvious that if I didn’t hack it up into smaller pieces no-one was ever going to read it. So, here’s the first of five parts, with the others turning up in the next week or so. Don’t worry, your favourite is probably included.

6) Marvel Super Heroes or DC Heroes

Yes; I’m cheating a bit here, and giving you a choice. Why? Because both of these games simulate their respective comic book universes so well, and c’mon - everyone’s got a favourite from The Big Two. Deep down.

Let’s start with Marvel Super Heroes though, which is easily my favourite superhero RPG. Marvel holds an eternal place in my heart for a number of reasons, but overall it’s just because I’ve had the most fun with it. I had fun with it when I was 11 or so; fun when I was 17; fun when I was 28… and I’m pretty sure I’ll have fun with it again.

As you can tell, it’s been something of a constant companion, the old reliable game system that I keep coming back to when others have come and gone. I’m sure it’s similar for those who are long-time lovers of Dungeons & Dragons, who know the system back to front and can practically name page references for rule checks. I’m not quite at that level - not any more - but for a while, it was pretty close.

Marvel’s beauty, for me, was always in the simplicity of the Universal Table - the appropriately named table on which you completed just about every action. These days, having one mechanic for everything in an RPG isn’t that big a deal, but back in 1984 it was a bit of a revelation to young Stephen.

Coupled with the absolutely genius idea of giving statistics descriptive ranks (admittedly, attached to numbers), which made it immediately clear that with a Fighting rank of Amazing, Captain America was pretty much capable of kicking anyone’s ass (unless they had Amazing Strength), Marvel was incredibly easy to pick up and play. It helped that the original, yellow-boxed Basic Set had an introductory feel easily as good as anything that ‘red box’ Basic D&D could conjure up.

And besides all that… you got to play Spider-Man. It doesn’t get cooler than that. Or didn’t for me, anyway.

I’m sure I’ll come back to Marvel Super Heroes - it’s really my game, and nothing else comes close to it, even though I see more flaws in it as the years go by. For now though, despite the slightly dodgy legal ramifications, I will happily point you towards Classic Marvel Forever (.com!) who host freely downloadable PDF versions of just about everything ever published for MSH. Try the original Basic Set; I’m pretty sure you’ll be happy with it. Of course, if you’d like physical books, there’s always eBay, and excellent out-of-print sites like NobleKnight.com (who were offering an MSH Basic Set at $35 when I wrote this).

DC Heroes, on the other hand, I can’t recommend as whole-heartedly. Mayfair Games put it together, debuting in 1985 after the original Marvel set hit, and while originally I was enamoured by the cluttered box art (not what you see here, which is Second Edition) and the impressive roster of character cards included, for some reason it never quite clicked with me.

Built around what’s now known as ‘MEGS’, or the Mayfair Exponential Game System, to accomplish the very difficult feat of having Batman and Superman in the same system, DC Heroes had one simple rule; a single point increase in anything is double the previous point in values. Therefore, someone with 10 Strength was twice as strong as someone with 9 Strength, and someone with 11 Strength was four times as strong as the 9 Strength guy, for instance.

Even my young mind was somewhat blown by the maths when I looked at the character card for Superman (50 STR) compared to the one for Wonder Woman (45 STR).

(Bear in mind, when the original DC Heroes debuted, Crisis on Infinite Earths had just finished, and Superman was still powerful enough to push a planet out of orbit. After John Byrne’s reboot of Superman, the DC Heroes Second Edition reduced his stats considerably - but still kept him as the most physically powerful hero in the game.)

While the ‘every point doubles power’ rule did mean that Superman and Batman could be on the same team, when it came to creating your own characters, I found that the lack of granularity didn’t work for me. After all my gaming group had been playing with Marvel Super Heroes for the better part of a year, where having ‘Amazing’ in an attribute was pretty special, and getting up to the ranks of ‘Monstrous’ and ‘Unearthly’ was pretty much unheard of.  The idea that every point doubled power just seemed over the top.

I’ve seen many people praise DC’s simplicity in this regard, and also because the same scale was applied to everything - speed, time, range and so on. It worked pretty much the same way in Marvel though, and the Universal Table felt considerably easier to read from where I was sat. Needless to say, despite some enjoyable enough adventures playing Batman and friends (no, we never did run Superman as a character), DC Heroes never quite caught on with my gaming group, with the exception of my friend Tim, who liked it enough to run a campaign, and ended up giving me his Second Edition of the game. I’ve still got it, but more as a curio than anything else.

Over the years DC Heroes managed to make it to a Third Edition (although I’ve never seen it) and even spawned a stand-alone Batman Roleplaying Game off the back of the 1989 movie. Eventually the licence disappeared, and West End Games produced the DC Universe Roleplaying Game in 1999, but that seems to have failed, a bit like the various Marvel follow-ups.

Today there are no current licenced roleplaying games for Marvel or DC, although of course the DC Universe Online and Marvel Universe MMOGs prove that there’s still potential interest in ‘living the comic books’. Unlike Marvel Super Heroes and DC Heroes, however, these MMOs will fall short of doing the one thing you all want to do: play your favourite hero.

For that alone, these games are worth playing.

“Erm, underwear as well?”

“No. You can keep those on.”

“But I was told there would be a genital inspection!” I almost shouted.

This is just one of the setbacks I’ve endured while attempting to secure a US immigration visa.

Previously, on Stephen Reid:

July 2008: “So there’s this job in San Francisco; the requirements are basically… my CV. Almost to the letter.” “You want to apply for it?” “Well, it can’t hurt. And it’s San Francisco. Although I am happy where I am…” “You should apply!”

August 2008: “They like me! So why haven’t they emailed back? Eh, I’m busy anyway.”

September 2008: “I just got laid off. Call me back?”

Early October 2008: “You know what? I’m going to let ‘em sweat for a bit. But not too long.”

Mid-October 2008: “We should start the immigration thing. Just as a precaution. I mean that lawyer said it should be easy, so….”

Late October: “They want me to fly out for the interview on Halloween. No, I’m not superstitious….”

November 2008: “Hey, I know you’re freaking out over Barack and everything, but should I take the offer?” “Well I kind of guessed you were going to say yes.” “Well, if McCain had gotten in…”

Late November 2008: “So tomorrow’s our fifth wedding anniversary, and apparently the US Immigration Service think we’ve been pretending to be married for five years.” “You understand if you sign this, you could get called to trial to swear I’m really married. You’re okay with that, right?”

December 2008: “Living in a long term hotel sucks.”

January 2009: “So now… we can actually apply for the visa? What was what we did before? The warm-up?”

February 2009: “But I was told there would be a genital inspection!”

March 2009: “Okay, so we have five years of your tax returns, three years of my tax statements, a police certificate, a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, an offer letter, and a list of everywhere I’ve lived for more than six months since I was sixteen years old. Now we can apply.”

Early April 2009: “Good news; we have a date for your visa interview. It should be easy.”

Mid-April 2009: “So I’ll fly out on May 11th… and Amanda will come a week later.”

Late April 2009: “I can’t even take my phone into the building?” … “There are no clocks in here.” … “So we just paid them $400… and they can still turn me down.” … “I’m sorry, can you say that again?” … “We’re going to have to get a joint… sponsor?” “I guess you’re not going to the US for a while, then.”

May 2009: “So you’re my sponsor now. If you like I’ll send you a picture of my favourite food, and you can tell me what life is like in the US of A.”

On tonight’s episode:

Will the US embassy okay Stephen’s visa?

If they don’t, will lawyers actually appear in person to argue the case? Or will there just be more phone calls?

If the visa is approved, will it turn up in time for Stephen to make it to E3?

Even if Stephen doesn’t make it to E3, will he and Amanda manage to find an apartment in two weeks?

And, perhaps most important of all… can Stephen divest himself of the two-year contract phone he foolishly signed up for last September, not knowing that he was going to leave the damn country less than a year later?

Stay tuned to find out!!

C’mon, someone had to. If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve seen ‘Rogue’ misspelled as ‘Rouge’ on the internet, well, I’d probably be living in the US already where having a lot of nickels actually means something.

The first (or second) paid expansion for City of Heroes was haphazardly announced this week, which might have been some email software’s fault, or a cunning plan to fail to attempt to get buzz. Either way, er… mission accomplished?

It was interesting timing, regardless, with Champions Online spinning up the rumour mill (”We might end up on PS3! We might have microtransactions! We might have cake, and eat it too!”) and NCNC Paragon Studios trying to reverse their way out of the dead-end they seem to have ended up in after cracking down on Mission Architect farmers a little too hard. (Hey, I’ve got no problem with the policy, but from a community point of view, it was a classic case of taking a dump where you eat. Or gnawing on the hand that feeds you. Choose your metaphor.)

In case you haven’t had dinner with me recently, I’ll tell you for nothing that Going Rogue has been around, in concept at least, for probably a couple of years. I certainly remember hearing about it looong before I was shown the door by NCsoft. A paid expansion was always part of the City of Heroes ‘Five Year Plan’, which started to form after the IP was finally wrestled away from Cryptic. (Apparently it helps to distract people with large piles of cash when attempting such a move.)

I seem to also recall that Going Rogue was an early title, but I’m going to keep quiet on the other potential title just in case it’s being used for something else. The other title certainly fits Going Rogue’s story, which seems to imply a big bust-up between Paragon City and an evil alternate universe. The idea of being able to switch your hero to villain and vice-versa always seemed like a good one to me, not least because it could potentially let you explore double the amount of content in the game. However, I don’t think Paragon are going to stop with just that, not by a long shot. Here’s hoping for more Archetypes, Origins and Powersets as well as new Zones and NPC groups, eh?

They certainly need to up their game, because between Champions Online, DC Universe Online and eventually Marvel Universe Online, superhero MMOs are almost going to be as ubiquitous as fantasy in the next few years. No bad thing for us consumers, but it’s going to be a bloody battle to keep what, so far, has proved to be a relatively niche audience.

I genuinely think the key to a true mass-market superhero MMO (ie, one that reaches considerably more than 200K subscribers) is going to be a combination of console-based gameplay and highly recognisable IP. That’s why right now, until we have more to go on regarding Gazillion’s Marvel project, the smart money’s got to be on DCUO. Having said that, don’t count out the PC-browser market; if Gazillion’s Marvel Super Hero Squad project can get up to Free Realms level of polish, it could become a monster hit.

Considering all this, it’s not surprising to see Cryptic suggesting they’re working on a PS3 version of Champions Online. NCsoft have also invested time and money into exploring PS3 development, although I expect you’ll see a new game announced on PS3 from them before you see anything ‘old’ being ported. And let’s be honest, even though SOE are talking confidently about a PS3 version of DCUO, they’ve acknowledged that there are large hurdles to overcome to actually make it happen - and they’re part of Sony!

Whatever happens, our choice in online superhero gaming is going to expand dramatically in the next few years, which for me, can only be a good thing. It’s going to be very interesting to see how each product differentiates itself going forward, and even more to see who ends up on top.

Anyway, while I know many of you who attended cons we were at (particularly Bristol ‘08) probably already have a sketchbook, not many of you will have it signed by the artists whose work is inside the covers!

Well, now’s your chance to own one of ten sketchbooks that have been defaced by artists like Dave Gibbons, Doug Braithwaite, Mark Buckingham, Andie Tong, Phil Winslade, Bryan Talbot and many more! Oh also there are pictures.

All you have to do is bid on this charity auction, with all proceeds as ever going to EveryChild!

Seriously folks, this thing is lovely, with loads of sketches inside depicting the well-known signature characters from City of Heroes, including Statesman, Back Alley Brawler, Ms Liberty, Sister Psyche, Lord Recluse, Ghost Widow and more. If you don’t believe me, click the image on the right to see some thumbnails of the imagery inside.

Considering the sketchbook was only available at a few UK conventions last year, and there’s only nine of the signed ones in existence, if you’re any kind of fan of City of Heroes you should really go make a bid! It’s for charity, after all.

Stay tuned for more hot auction items including original art from the sketchbook!