Green Ronin Ready for Pre-Orders of DC Adventures Heroes & Villains, Vol. I

For those of you who are role playing gamers as well as comic fans, You've probably checked out Green Ronin's DC Adventures. The system is basically the same as Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition, which is a solid system.

The original book came with X characters in it. On the hero side, there was: Aquaman, Batman (Bruce), Black Canary, Captain Marvel, Flash (Barry), Green Arrow (Ollie), Green Lantern (Hal), Martian Manhunter, Nightwing, Plastic Man, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Zatanna. And the villains were represented by Black Adam, Black Manta, Braniac, Catwoman, Cheetah, Circe, Darkseid, Gorilla Grodd, Joker, Lex Luthor, Prometheus, Sinestro, Solomon Grundy, and Vandal Savage. Additionally, there was a quick start PDF that had stats for Superboy and Knockout. Overall, I thought the stats were good, but not perfect.

Green Ronin has the license to create two books of characters from the DC Universe. The books are named, cleverly enough Heroes & Villains Volume 1 and Volume 2. There have been challenges in getting these out. I think everyone expected them out a little sooner than they have been, but they are now taking pre-orders. They have also put a PDF preview up on their site, showing this book will cover from Abra Kadabra to Kobra & the Kobra Cult. I'm quite pleased to see that they have included multiple version of characters where applicable (including Golden Age versions of these heroes) for instance, all three versions of Batgirl are present in the book, as well as entries for the Blue and Indigo Lantern Corps. There is also a good cross section of villains, and team entries.

The price point is a little high - $49.95 for the print version (from Green Ronin - Amazon is selling it for much less). It's $27.00 for the PDF. Personally, I will pony up the money - I like to support any efforts to create RPGs based on existing comic book universes. There are a lot of characters here that will give players a good look at how to create some interesting abilities, and will also help GMs with letting players interact with the DC Universe.