Vigilante City #2 Villain's Guide
PDF and softcover book. 300 pages. Color cover, black & white interior art. For the purposes of this review, I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and the soft-cover books I picked up either via Kickstarter or from Bloat Games' own store.
This book builds off of the Vigilante City #1 Core Rules. While it says "Villain's Guide" on the cover it is really much more than that.
Victory City
We start out with the titular Vigilante City, "Victory City." We get the layout of the city and its districts. We get a great map of the city (and it is reprinted on the back).
Since this is street-level supers we get a lot of gangs. The gangs do feel like what you might get if you took the gangs from the movie The Warriors and let them populate Gotham City from Batman the Animated Series for a while. Yeah, it is every bit as fun as it sounds. I bet the creative team had a blast working on this.
There is a great section following about building your own city or adding to Victory City. Personally, I would rather add to the existing VC. I mean nearly every superhero story is defined by the city they live in. So for a Vigilante City game, I am going to want to play in Vigilante City.
Anthropomorph Island is our next big section and it is an island of anthropomorphic animals. Not all of them are teenage. It's a neat little addition to the superhero mythos.
There are a couple of sample adventures, which is nice.
Rogues Gallery
At about 75 pages in we finally get the Rogue Gallery. Ok, "finally" is too strong. Everything up to this point has been great. But let's be honest it is the bad guys that are the most fun.
Nearly 90s pages of all sorts of bad guys (and girls and animals) here and they are all fun.
There are a couple of local heroes, some sample characters, and a bunch NPCs.
Bestiary
There is a bestiary that covers normal animals to were-beasts and other threats. Bigfoot is even here! Note: The Dark Places & Demogorgons Cryptid Manual would work great with this.
Community Content
I *think* this material was part of the Kickstarter where backers could submit heroes and villains of their own. This is that section and it is a lot of fun really. I mean really, we are getting an official version of the Acrobatic Flea? Worth the price of the book alone!
This book could have been also called the GM's Guide, with all the material here. It is great stuff. Can you play VC without it? Sure. And you can also have Batman without the Joker and Gotham City but it would not be as much fun.
The Refrigerator for Vigilante City
Time to revisit one of my favorite bad guys for a supers game, Dr. Andreas Gelé, AKA "The Refrigerator."
A while back I introduced you all to Dr. Andreas Gelé, aka The Refrigerator. He is a socially stunted misanthrope with mommy issues and the intellect to act out in the worst ways possible.
This guy came, literally, out of a nightmare. Around 1982 or so (I was 12) I was hit with a double shot of women being frozen alive, the movies were "In Like Flint" and "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die." It really bugged the hell out of me and gave me nightmares for a long time. Still kind of bugs me. Of course, later I learned there is a whole creepy fetish thing related to this. I think my issue is far more elemental. I hate being really cold and think being frozen is quite possibly the worst thing ever.
His name comes from the classic Women in Refrigerators website started by Gail Simone.
The Refrigerator in Victory City
What brings the infamous Dr. Gelé to VC? Well, I see him as sort of a Dr. Phibes-like character now, he freezes and defrosts himself periodically to inflict new horrors on the world. He has moved his operation to VC to once again seek out beautiful women for his collection.
Once again I went old school for this sheet.
I could see him maybe trying to do research at Victory City University's library (he is old school after all) where he sees my Larina working there in her guise as a librarian. Well...not a guise really she got a degree in this. He decides he needs to add her to his perverse collection completely unaware that she is also the superhero known as the Witch.
His big evil plan might be thwarted by my other big bad. Who is that? Well, that will be revealed on Friday!
I can see this game taking the place of Icons or Villains & Vigilantes in my life. It is at the intersection of them both for me.
Excellent review. This book really does have everything a GM needs and more.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I love seeing the return of the Refrigerator. I know 5e supers has been my thing, but I'd love to 5e npc stats for him.
PLEASE! Be my guest!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe I missed this mention (and a very kind one as well) of The Acrobatic Flea! Sorry it's taken so long to acknowledge your generous words.
ReplyDelete