Sure!
Here is Zee's sheet for Villains & Vigilantes.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
Willow & Tara: Villains & Vigilantes
I want to continue talking about Villains & Vigilantes today.
It seems like years ago that Tim Knight of Hero Press asked me to do V&V write-ups of Willow & Tara. I actually remember it being almost exactly 2 years ago because I was sitting in the DMV getting my licensed renewed. I had my copy of V&V 2.1 on my tablet and jotting down some notes on powers.
The biggest issue with any supers game is magic. It really is the "break all the powers" power. Especially in systems where you can take Magic and then take all the other powers as spells.
Here are the girls in their post Dragon and the Phoenix versions.
It seems like years ago that Tim Knight of Hero Press asked me to do V&V write-ups of Willow & Tara. I actually remember it being almost exactly 2 years ago because I was sitting in the DMV getting my licensed renewed. I had my copy of V&V 2.1 on my tablet and jotting down some notes on powers.
The biggest issue with any supers game is magic. It really is the "break all the powers" power. Especially in systems where you can take Magic and then take all the other powers as spells.
Here are the girls in their post Dragon and the Phoenix versions.
Tempting Fate and Pay What You Want
So Evil Hat has released their two new Fate game and also released a new model of how they would like people to pay for their games.
Fate Core System and Fate Accelerated Edition are now out.
And YOU decide how much you want to pay for them.
Think Fate Core is worth $20 (at 308 pages that is a steal for a core book) then pay 20. You only want to pay 5? Pay 5.
It is an interesting concept really and I am curious on how it will work out.
Tenkar has listed a number of OSR Pay What You Want books including the very popular Teratic Tome and his own Minor Magiks & Miscellaneous Arcana Volume I.
I can't wait to see how all of this plays out really. I think it will be a success. You may say but won't people pay less than what you should be charging? Sure, but I think there will be more people buying. Honestly which one is better? Five people paying $5 for a pdf or 50 people paying a $1 for it? And you will get people that believe in supporting authors and game companies, so they will spend $10.
How about you all?
Would you do "Pay What You Want" for you books (game or novels or otherwise)?
Fate Core System and Fate Accelerated Edition are now out.
And YOU decide how much you want to pay for them.
Think Fate Core is worth $20 (at 308 pages that is a steal for a core book) then pay 20. You only want to pay 5? Pay 5.
It is an interesting concept really and I am curious on how it will work out.
Tenkar has listed a number of OSR Pay What You Want books including the very popular Teratic Tome and his own Minor Magiks & Miscellaneous Arcana Volume I.
I can't wait to see how all of this plays out really. I think it will be a success. You may say but won't people pay less than what you should be charging? Sure, but I think there will be more people buying. Honestly which one is better? Five people paying $5 for a pdf or 50 people paying a $1 for it? And you will get people that believe in supporting authors and game companies, so they will spend $10.
How about you all?
Would you do "Pay What You Want" for you books (game or novels or otherwise)?
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Justice is Blind, Issue 6: Villains & Vigilantes
Today is the Heroes & Villains Blogfest hosted by Jackie and Dani. This is Part 2 of my post for that, Part 1 was posted earlier today.
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/06/heroes-villains-blogfest.html
I want to continue talking about Villains & Vigilantes I thought it would be interesting to bring back my superhero character Justice and introduce her new arch nemesis.
To bring everyone up to speed Justice is a character I created for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG for a game we were going to play that day. Her real name is Astra Ka-el, aka Astra Kent and she is the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman. I based her off the last few pages of the comic Kingdom Come, which deals with the superheroes we know in about 20 or so years. I won't spoil it all for you. Read it, it is fantastic (or watch this fan made trailer). But one of the futures they point to is the possibility of Superman and Wonder Woman having a daughter. You can read the back story I did for her in "Issue 1: Justice is Blind". The last time we saw Justice was Issue 5. In Issue 6 I wanted her to go to London where she could potentially run into the legendary, but retired, Acrobatic Flea. This serves a number of purposes. It gets her to England to meet her new arch-nemesis, it ties in Villains & Vigilantes and it gives a shout out to +Tim Knight (the Flea himself!) who has been wanting me to do more with V&V forever.
So I introduced my hero. Here is my villain.
Maggie "Mags" Shaw nee O'Neill aka "The Iron Maiden"
Maggie O'Neill was a plain, if brilliant girl, who lived in one of the poorest areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Maggie hated being poor, she hate being scared all the time (the Troubles were at their height) and she wanted nothing more than to get away. To her that mean London. After a car bomb destroyed the bus she was supposed to get on for school that morning (no one was killed) she had haad enough. At age 14 she ran away from home and made her way to London a couple of months later. The education she had on the road was a hard one, and it hardened her. When she got to London she was "discovered" by a talent scout looking for young, and maybe disposable, girls for modeling. Mags, as she called herself now, quickly turned a would-be tragic situation to one where she was on the cover of every fashion magazine by 16 and a national and tabloid celebrity by 18. She used her keen intellect, charisma and complete lack of moral center to get to the top of the heap. Her looks, while plain as a child, transformed her into "The Face of London". Her name even became so synonymous with magazine covers that people thought it was a play on words.
In her 20s her career took a dip when she tried acting and was terrible. Same with pop songs. She quietly completed degrees in mathematics, engineering and robotics while people suspected she was out partying.
At 24 she stunned the world when she married multinational billionaire Halloran Shaw, depiste being nearly 40 years younger. She took a keen interest in his business and became a full partner and soon rose (by much of the same combination of lack of ethics and keen intelligence) to a position of VP and a seat on the board. Her enemies begrudged her polished public image and despised her ruthless private one. When Shaw died he left everything to her including controlling stock in his company, locking out his own grown children.
Mags would have had it all had it not been for a PR stunt gone tragic.
Shaw International was responsible for making high capacity batteries for cell phones and small electronics. Their factories though were located in India and were the worse sort of sweat shops. Thousands, cramped into small spaces to build batteries with caustic chemicals. Ventilation was poor, and deaths were common, but as they were the only employer for hundreds of kilometers she had all the workers she could want. Protest groups caught news of this and were making a stink. Mags herself went to the factory to hold a press conference. Most of the employees where cleared out (with out pay) so tours could be given.
In the midst of this pr stunt the factory exploded. The death toll was high, but would have been much higher had it not been for Justice, who had been near by and heard the explosion with her super hearing.
One person though she didn't save, because she didn't know, was Mags. Mags watched and Justice saved all these people, while she was pinned under tons of rubble while chemicals and fire burned her skin.
Mags was found, alive, but the damage was too great. For a year she was in the hospital. She lost her legs, an arm, part of her face, some the fingers on her other hand. She eventually recovered, but swore she would have her revenge. The news (thanks to a healthy pay off) made the claim that eco-terrorists caused the explosion, so popular opinion was for the "poor woman" who had "lost everything".
Secretly Mags has built herself a suit of armor that not only keeps her alive, but also enhances all her physical stats. She has been using it to steal what she can't buy or make herself. She has killed and seems likely to do so again. Though no one suspects that the armored thief the tabloids call The Iron Maiden is really Mags Shaw. And no one know that she is building a weapon to kill Justice!
Here they are in their Villains & Vigilantes glory. Justice and her arch nemesis The Iron Maiden!
There might be errors here. It has been years since I played V&V.
See more posts here:
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/06/heroes-villains-blogfest.html
I want to continue talking about Villains & Vigilantes I thought it would be interesting to bring back my superhero character Justice and introduce her new arch nemesis.
To bring everyone up to speed Justice is a character I created for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG for a game we were going to play that day. Her real name is Astra Ka-el, aka Astra Kent and she is the daughter of Superman and Wonder Woman. I based her off the last few pages of the comic Kingdom Come, which deals with the superheroes we know in about 20 or so years. I won't spoil it all for you. Read it, it is fantastic (or watch this fan made trailer). But one of the futures they point to is the possibility of Superman and Wonder Woman having a daughter. You can read the back story I did for her in "Issue 1: Justice is Blind". The last time we saw Justice was Issue 5. In Issue 6 I wanted her to go to London where she could potentially run into the legendary, but retired, Acrobatic Flea. This serves a number of purposes. It gets her to England to meet her new arch-nemesis, it ties in Villains & Vigilantes and it gives a shout out to +Tim Knight (the Flea himself!) who has been wanting me to do more with V&V forever.
So I introduced my hero. Here is my villain.
Maggie "Mags" Shaw nee O'Neill aka "The Iron Maiden"
Maggie O'Neill was a plain, if brilliant girl, who lived in one of the poorest areas in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Maggie hated being poor, she hate being scared all the time (the Troubles were at their height) and she wanted nothing more than to get away. To her that mean London. After a car bomb destroyed the bus she was supposed to get on for school that morning (no one was killed) she had haad enough. At age 14 she ran away from home and made her way to London a couple of months later. The education she had on the road was a hard one, and it hardened her. When she got to London she was "discovered" by a talent scout looking for young, and maybe disposable, girls for modeling. Mags, as she called herself now, quickly turned a would-be tragic situation to one where she was on the cover of every fashion magazine by 16 and a national and tabloid celebrity by 18. She used her keen intellect, charisma and complete lack of moral center to get to the top of the heap. Her looks, while plain as a child, transformed her into "The Face of London". Her name even became so synonymous with magazine covers that people thought it was a play on words.
In her 20s her career took a dip when she tried acting and was terrible. Same with pop songs. She quietly completed degrees in mathematics, engineering and robotics while people suspected she was out partying.
At 24 she stunned the world when she married multinational billionaire Halloran Shaw, depiste being nearly 40 years younger. She took a keen interest in his business and became a full partner and soon rose (by much of the same combination of lack of ethics and keen intelligence) to a position of VP and a seat on the board. Her enemies begrudged her polished public image and despised her ruthless private one. When Shaw died he left everything to her including controlling stock in his company, locking out his own grown children.
Mags would have had it all had it not been for a PR stunt gone tragic.
Shaw International was responsible for making high capacity batteries for cell phones and small electronics. Their factories though were located in India and were the worse sort of sweat shops. Thousands, cramped into small spaces to build batteries with caustic chemicals. Ventilation was poor, and deaths were common, but as they were the only employer for hundreds of kilometers she had all the workers she could want. Protest groups caught news of this and were making a stink. Mags herself went to the factory to hold a press conference. Most of the employees where cleared out (with out pay) so tours could be given.
In the midst of this pr stunt the factory exploded. The death toll was high, but would have been much higher had it not been for Justice, who had been near by and heard the explosion with her super hearing.
One person though she didn't save, because she didn't know, was Mags. Mags watched and Justice saved all these people, while she was pinned under tons of rubble while chemicals and fire burned her skin.
Mags was found, alive, but the damage was too great. For a year she was in the hospital. She lost her legs, an arm, part of her face, some the fingers on her other hand. She eventually recovered, but swore she would have her revenge. The news (thanks to a healthy pay off) made the claim that eco-terrorists caused the explosion, so popular opinion was for the "poor woman" who had "lost everything".
Secretly Mags has built herself a suit of armor that not only keeps her alive, but also enhances all her physical stats. She has been using it to steal what she can't buy or make herself. She has killed and seems likely to do so again. Though no one suspects that the armored thief the tabloids call The Iron Maiden is really Mags Shaw. And no one know that she is building a weapon to kill Justice!
Here they are in their Villains & Vigilantes glory. Justice and her arch nemesis The Iron Maiden!
There might be errors here. It has been years since I played V&V.
See more posts here:
Heroes & Villains Blogfest: Villains & Vigilanties
Today is the Heroes & Villains Blogfest hosted by Jackie and Dani. This is Part 1 of my post for that, Part 2 is later today.
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/06/heroes-villains-blogfest.html
The idea is to talk about our favorite heroes and villains. But I do that a lot here. So I am going to do that today, but I also want to talk about about one of my favorite superhero role-playing games. It is also the first superhero RPG I ever played. Villains & Vigilantes.
The current edition is the 2nd edition and you can get the classic version from Fantasy Games Unlimited (the one I played) or the new 2.1 edition from Monkey House Games. They are functionally the same, even with the same text and some art.
V&V was written by Jack Herman and Jeff Dee. Jeff Dee got his start on D&D doing some of the classic module art and book art for the 1st edition game. So the game has some obvious D&D roots.
V&V was unique at the time (and still somewhat) in that in the game you play yourself. You work out with the other players what your strength, endurance, intelligence and the rest are and then you roll randomly on a table of super powers. It's a very interesting and fun concept that we completely ignored. Back in the day we liked playing a "multi-verse" so our V&V characters were our D&D characters in a supers universe. The stats were the mostly the same and both games had levels. Plus it gave us excuses to have strengths of 50 or more (human max is 18). I remember it being a very good time.
As typical of many old school games there are lots of random rolls, charts and a fair amount of math involved. I went back recently to make a character and was thrilled to see that Monkey House Games had an Excel character sheet. The math isn't hard really, but Excel is still faster. Though such things have been around for a long time even with the older edition.
Powers are list by type. So Power Blast is just a blast of some sort of power. It could be Superman's heat vision, Iron Man's repulsors, or even Zatanna's magical blast. What is interesting is teh combat matrix of powers vs. defenses and how they interact. Again, the D&D DNA is here since it reminds me of the Psionic Powers Attacks vs Defenses in 1st Ed AD&D.
There is a V&V campaign world as well. It is loosely defined in the core books, but much greater detail is given in the supplements. It is also one of the few Supers games I can recall where the characters were working for the government at some level. The ill-fated City of Heroes RPG was another.
There are a couple of great sections on Being a Superhero and Gamemastering that work great with any supers RPG.
IF you like old school RPGs and want to get into a supers game that feels like those, then this is a great choice. The price is low and there are plenty of places on the web that support either version of the game with materials, character write-ups and community.
A little later today I'll have a write up of a hero and a villain.
See more posts here:
http://danibertrand.blogspot.com/2013/06/heroes-villains-blogfest.html
The idea is to talk about our favorite heroes and villains. But I do that a lot here. So I am going to do that today, but I also want to talk about about one of my favorite superhero role-playing games. It is also the first superhero RPG I ever played. Villains & Vigilantes.
The current edition is the 2nd edition and you can get the classic version from Fantasy Games Unlimited (the one I played) or the new 2.1 edition from Monkey House Games. They are functionally the same, even with the same text and some art.
V&V was written by Jack Herman and Jeff Dee. Jeff Dee got his start on D&D doing some of the classic module art and book art for the 1st edition game. So the game has some obvious D&D roots.
V&V was unique at the time (and still somewhat) in that in the game you play yourself. You work out with the other players what your strength, endurance, intelligence and the rest are and then you roll randomly on a table of super powers. It's a very interesting and fun concept that we completely ignored. Back in the day we liked playing a "multi-verse" so our V&V characters were our D&D characters in a supers universe. The stats were the mostly the same and both games had levels. Plus it gave us excuses to have strengths of 50 or more (human max is 18). I remember it being a very good time.
As typical of many old school games there are lots of random rolls, charts and a fair amount of math involved. I went back recently to make a character and was thrilled to see that Monkey House Games had an Excel character sheet. The math isn't hard really, but Excel is still faster. Though such things have been around for a long time even with the older edition.
Powers are list by type. So Power Blast is just a blast of some sort of power. It could be Superman's heat vision, Iron Man's repulsors, or even Zatanna's magical blast. What is interesting is teh combat matrix of powers vs. defenses and how they interact. Again, the D&D DNA is here since it reminds me of the Psionic Powers Attacks vs Defenses in 1st Ed AD&D.
There is a V&V campaign world as well. It is loosely defined in the core books, but much greater detail is given in the supplements. It is also one of the few Supers games I can recall where the characters were working for the government at some level. The ill-fated City of Heroes RPG was another.
There are a couple of great sections on Being a Superhero and Gamemastering that work great with any supers RPG.
IF you like old school RPGs and want to get into a supers game that feels like those, then this is a great choice. The price is low and there are plenty of places on the web that support either version of the game with materials, character write-ups and community.
A little later today I'll have a write up of a hero and a villain.
See more posts here:
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
White Dwarf Wednesday #67
In the editorial Ian Livingstone talks about how Britain is catching up to the US in terms of Fantasy RPGs. While hindsight tells me that this is partially correct (the entire industry was hitting the mid-80s slump) it had always been my perception at the time that the best things were coming out of Britain. Sure it was my perception as a young anglophile, but the games I saw from Britain seemed "grittier" to me and that meant "better" in my 16 year old mind.
Haunters in the Dark brought non-mythos monster to your CoC game. I had bought this issue for this article alone back in the day. Though I had forgotten I had until rereading it this week. I remember wanting to convert the Black Dog to Chill and use some of the other information for D&D. I was always looking to expand undead and the first house rule "notebook" I put together included some of this information.
Interestingly enough I never cared for Will-o-wisps as undead, thinking them more like some sort of evil Fae creature.
Open box covers Pacesetter's StarAce (or Star Ass as we used to call it) and some Dragonloance modules. StarAce didn't get enough credit from me then, I still prefer Chill and TimeMaster for my Paesetter fun. It barely got any credit though from Marcus Rowland, giving it a 5/10. Graham Staplehurst covers DL2, DL3 and DL4 from the Dragonlance Modules giving them 7, 8 and 9/10 respectively. He praises the amount of information in modules and says there is plenty for DMs to do with them. I reread them recently myself, I did find them to be fairly rail-roady, even moreso that I recalled. Oliver Dickinson wraps us up with 6/10 review for Monster Coliseum from Avalon Hill. It gets knocked down I think due to the price.
Critical Mass has an embarrassment of riches, claiming that by 1987 there will only be enough room in the column to list the names of the books and authors and that's it. I am not sure if the out of Sci-Fi/Fantasy books ever reached that, I do know it began to wane though soon after. For my part I had moved over to the darker stuff like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Insights anyone?
RuneRites covers Barbarian magic. Useful for any FRPG with Barbarians in a magical world that distrust magic. Odd thing really. Is this trope from Conan?
A Champions/Golden Heroes adventure is next, "Peking Duck". Phil Master wrote this so I am likely to to like it. But I know so little of Golden Heroes it is hard to judge.
Starbase covers "Wordly Wiles" or Social Customs in Traveller.
Michael Heaton brings us A Murder at Flaxton, an AD&D adventure for low-level characters. Pretty simple and straightforward, but easily dropped into any game.
There is also an article "Parlour Game" about the Arachnid Assassin.
Fiend Factory takes an odd turn this issue. First it is now listed as Bi-monthly. Also it presents an NPC. I say its and NPC, but it could be a type of "monster" or a PC class with some work. The vivimancer or a spiritual helper. I am not happy that FF is going to every other month. On one hand it was my favorite feature, on the other the quality has been suspect for a while.
Tabletop Heroes covers photography of minis.
Treasure Chest has a collection of useful backpacks for AD&D.
We end with ads and the notice board.
In general the quality of the issue is up even if the amount of useful material to me personally was down.
Threshold Mystara Magazine
I am a big fan of Mystara, aka The Known World from the "Basic" versions of D&D.
So I am very pleased to see on the Piazza that there will be a Mystara fan-zine.
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10361 and
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10610&start=0
Details on Threshold are here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9ThpIUzMhtLRF85WFJNNnpqZW8/edit
Don't know if I have anything yet I want to contribute, but I'd love to find something uniquely Mystara.
So I am very pleased to see on the Piazza that there will be a Mystara fan-zine.
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10361 and
http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10610&start=0
Details on Threshold are here:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9ThpIUzMhtLRF85WFJNNnpqZW8/edit
Don't know if I have anything yet I want to contribute, but I'd love to find something uniquely Mystara.
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