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First published in 1981 to rave reviews, Champions is the brainchild of George MacDonald, who started writing a superhero roleplaying game during a boring college lecture. Steve Peterson took MacDonald’s idea and translated it into a working set of rules now known to the world as the HERO System.

Champions was one of the first roleplaying games to forgo the traditional dice-rolling system of character generation in favor of a point-based system. The player would spend character points to determine exactly what kind of character they would be, what superpowers they would possess, the precise personal characteristics of their hero and even what disadvantages their do-gooder alter-ego would be forced to overcome. 

The innovative, original and supremely flexible character creation, coupled with the universal appeal of superheroic roleplaying, made Champions a smash success. The game has been continually evaulated and improved since. It was revised and updated by Hero Games in 1982 and again in 1984. 

By 1987, the HERO System had been adapted to several different genres, and MacDonald and Peterson wanted a new edition that unified all the rules and put everything under one cover. Hero Games teamed up with Iron Crown Enterprises for the project and writer Rob Bell joined the team to help write a fourth edition of Champions.

The fourth edition was once again a top seller, and was so well-received that it remained more or less unchanged for almost a decade. During that time dozens of supplements were published, all adding to the rich backstory of the Champions universe.

When work on a fifth edition of the game began in 1997, writer Steven S. Long was recruited to undertake the massive task of revising the HERO System rules. That edition was published in 2002 to strong sales and excellent reviews after Champions and the HERO System were purchased by DOJ, Inc.

Renewed interest in Champions attracted attention from both former players and gamers who had never played HERO System before. There are now almost 30 game supplements available for the fifth edition of Champions, and thousands of players around the world use the game for their superheroic adventures. More than 225,000 copies of the game have been sold since 1981.

In 2009, DOJ will release the sixth edition of the HERO System and Champions, which will include rules on how to recreate Champions Online characters and scenarios. You can find out more at www.herogames.com