By [ad_1]
Marvel’s heroes clashed with Shi, Witchblade and the indie comics heroes of the 1990s is the comics-based tabletop roleplaying game BattleBooks.
For decades, comic fans have argued over which of their favorite characters could beat one another up. Over the years, battles between the heroes of Marvel and other comics publishers have taken many forms in things like video games, board games, card games and, for a brief period in the ’90s, a series tabletop combat comics called Battlebooks.
In 1998, Billy Tucci, the comics creator behind the ’90s indie comic hit Shi, created Battlebooks, a game that allowed comics fans to engage in heated battled between their favorite characters through specially designed comics.
While using comic books instead of more traditional roleplaying material was a novel choice, it wasn’t an unprecedented one. In 1980, Alfred Leonardi created Ace of Aces, a game where two players assumed the role of an ace combat pilot. Each player had their own book full of different attack and movement options. Players would choose their action for their turn, tell each other, and then consult their books to see what the outcomes would be. In 1983, Alfred Leonardi teamed up with James Rosinus to expand on his Ace of Aces gameplay and create Lost Worlds, a series of combat books that were centered on high fantasy action. Playable characters ranged from human knights and dwarven warriors to skeletons and goblins.
Billy Tucci and Brian David-Marshall were so impressed with Alfred Leonardi’s Ace of Aces that they contacted him and gained permission to create Battlebooks. Different characters were brought into the fray from Marvel and a variety of independent comics publishers. Marvel was well represented with characters such as Iron Man, Wolverine, Dr. Doom and a number of different X-Men. Characters like Witchblade, Darkchylde, Vampirella, and Billy Tucci’s own character Shi were included as well, which brought a great sense of variety to the game.
A standard game of Battlebooks involves two players each choosing the character they want to play as and their corresponding Battlebook and Maneuver Card. Players swap Battlebooks; this is to represent what their chosen characters are seeing during battle. Each player chooses an action from their Maneuver Card and turns to the appropriate Panel within their BattleBook. Doing so, each player then turns to the proper page indicated by the information given from their Battle Matrix and reads the outcome of their action. By performing successful maneuvers players can reduce their opponent’s Body Points to 0 and thus win the game. In a sense, Battlebooks are like a blend of rock, paper, scissors and a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Outcomes are never guaranteed to be successful, and as the game’s difficulty is based largely on the luck of your Maneuver outcome, so there is balanced fairness between characters.
Despite the large number of characters brought into the game, Battlebooks didn’t continue for very long. Unlike card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon or collectible miniatures games like HeroClix, Battlebooks lacked core gameplay that offered a deep sense of strategy or customization.
Battlebooks was a novel idea and a great expansion on the Lost Worlds gamebooks, but they’ve been largely lost to time in the wake of other superhero showdowns like Capcom’s Marvel Vs. Capcom series and NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice, as well as card games like Vs. System and DC Comic’s Deck-Building Game, the simplicity of Battlebooks has become pronounced over the years. This isn’t to say that the Lost Worlds game design should be forgotten. Jill Leonardi, daughter of Alfred Leonardi, has helped design new character matrices for the Queen’s Blade spin-off books published by Hobby Japan and also created Firelight Game Company in 2012 to release brand new material.
While some of the design elements of Battlebooks live on in the other descendants of Lost Worlds, hasn’t been seen since its initial release in the late ’90s, but Battlebooks still stand as some of the strangest comics featuring Marvel characters to ever be published.
About The Author
[ad_2]
