Animalball Games: Safford Files

Villains & Vigilantes: By Mike

So it's Saturday afternoon, and you're bored and restless. You decide to head back to 1984 to visit your friendly neighborhood game shop, but now you're faced with a dilemma: You've got twelve dollars just burning a hole in your pocket but you can't choose between the AD&D Fiend Folio, a chintzy Car Wars supplement and a handful of dice, or just blowing your whole wad on Gauntlet (it looks like the Viking controller is even open). What to do? Well, fortunately for you, Animalball's Classic Game Reviews are here to save your bacon. Put down the handful of 30-sideds (trust me, they just roll off the table), and go take a gander at the Villains & Vigilantes boxed set. Sure, twelve bucks may be a little pricey for what amounts to a slim soft-cover, but we'll look inside to be sure.

Written by Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, it was published by Fantasy Games Unlimited and was only 47 pages long. The boxed set version came with a 20 page starting adventure included. It was that V&V boxed set that become my third RPG ever back in 1983 (after D&D and Star Frontiers) I remember exactly why I bought it, too: because it was superheroes. What other reason did a kid need? I learned later about Champions and other superhero games, but V&V was the first I ever saw. There was no way I was going to walk out of Dragon's Lair without that set in my hands.

And it was glorious. Suddenly, it was gaming in the modern era; gaming with supers. I have a special fondness for V&V, which is why I chose it for this first review. In fact, just the mention of V&V among my longtime players conjures up that wistful look of nostalgia and longing whispers of, "Aw yeah... good times."

But now, pen in hand, looking back across of couple of decades, I'm hard pressed to remember what was so special about it, or even if we had any fun playing it. More than that, all those little niggling doubts I had about the game as a 13-year-old GM are all bubbling back to the surface. Back then, I was a wide-eyed gaming idealist. It never even crossed my mind that a game might actually suck, so any doubts I had, I chalked up to my own insecurities and just shouldered on. Criticizing an RPG seemed... almost blasphemous.

Now, of course, I have no such compunctions.

Problem #1: the first rule of character creation was, "Play Yourself." That's right, your superhero was supposed to be YOU. You had to stat yourself and then add on an alter-ego and nifty powers, etc. Cool idea on paper, I suppose, but Kyle (my primary player) was only 10. And 10 year old superheroes just plain suck. Don't believe me? Then let me loan you the first 19 issues of Power Pack. That's right--Power Pack. I own them. I'm not ashamed.

Problem #2: We couldn't play the X-Men. V&V came with a very cool list of possible powers, and they were all very detailed, but there was no flexibility in it. It was easy to roll up some powers on the random character generation tables, and you could mix-and-match some pretty kick-ass superfreaks. But if you had a specific vision--a particular hero to create--well, there wasn't much to do about it. I'd tell a new player that it was a superhero game, and the first response was always, "Wow! That's awesome! Can I be Cloak?" or some other equally obscure hero. (I'm looking at you, Moon Knight.) And my answer was always, "Well, no... not exactly. But if you're willing to switch the powers a little, you can make a wicked Human Torch. Uh... is that close enough?"

So virtually every character required customizing the rules and powers and writing up your own stuff. It's not bad work if you can get it, but to have to do it for EVERY character... Seems a bit much.

Problem #3: The mechanics. Yes, all of them--I don't even know where to start on this one. The authors were obviously trapped in some AD&D/Rube Goldberg paradigm, and too many things were needlessly complicated. If I remember correctly, action resolution was a basic d20 roll, but then there was a big complicated Chart-O'-Modifiers to tell you what adjustment to use when applying a Water attack to an Electrical defense, or when Earth battled Fire, or when Harry met Sally (a +4, actually). It was very reminiscent of that freaky weapons table in AD&D with each weapon's modifiers vs. every type of armor. It was just as easy to ignore, too. And if that wasn't bad enough, there was a secondary Chart-O'-Modifiers in the back of the book (next to character advancement) detailing your bonuses and penalties for attacking characters of higher or lower level than yourself.

Duh... what? That's right: character advancement was based on experience points and levels. Which leads me right to...

Problem #4: Levels? Oh come on! Yeah even as a nicey-nicey 13-year-old gaming idealist, I remember mocking this soundly. There were no skills. No power advancement. No stat advancement. So the levels were all you had. And what did you get for being a 5th level Badger Boy? Nothing except the higher attack bonus against the puny 2nd level villains. There was maybe a bit about gaining new powers every four levels or something, but I don't really remember. We never played a single campaign that long. (Note that I am now a slavering fan of Mutants & Masterminds, which also uses character levels. But it's not the same thing. Honest. Stop judging me.)

Problem #5:

"Dude. You've got to help me out. I'm trying to finish up my review for V&V, and I need an example of an actual session we played, but for the life of me, I can't remember any of them."

"Really? But we loved that game. We played it all the time 'til we bought Champions."

"I thought so too, but do you remember ANY of it?"

[pause]

"Uh... that's weird--I got nothing. But c'mon, man, it was over 20 years ago."

"Yeah, I thought of that too, but so was D&D. I remember every character you had in D&D and almost every mission you went on. I remember a bunch of Champions stuff, and I remember the names of my Melee gladiators. Heck, I even remember that lame half a session of 007 we played where Steve kept trying to use his Okinawan Express card, and the bad guy's name was Eddie Grant."

"Seriously? Eddie Grant? You mean like from Electric Avenue?"

"Yeah, like that. Only I didn't do that on purpose."

"Wow. Weird."

"Uh huh."

[longer pause]

"Hey! Wasn't our first game where I, like, played myself, and there was... um... a school?"

"Yeah! There WAS a school... or something..."

[seemingly interminably long pause, yet in actuality, not quite as long as the last one]

"Good times."

"Yeah, good times."

On the other hand, the art was pretty cool. One of the authors, Jeff Dee, did all the art, and it was pretty good; very distinctive. At some point, I also picked up the V&V Most Wanted Vol 1, and I remember Dee's art being very eye-catching--I especially loved the villain Samhain, who was basically Jason from the Friday the 13th movies. And we all know how much fun HE can be.

If you're interested in checking out V&V for yourself, the thing was officially listed as still in print as late as 2001, and you can pick up the core book for only $8. Wow. Who woulda guessed? Jeff Dee has since created "Living Legends" which is billed as the "sequel" to V&V. It's available for free at the official Legends/V&V website, and its last updates were in 1999. I haven't looked at it.

By the way, the running theme for V&V info on the web seems to be grossly outdated sites. There's a bunch of stuff out there, but I can't find a thing that's been updated more recently than four years ago. Huh. (Although, strangely, WebRPG still has an entire forum dedicated to V&V/Living Legends, and it seems to still get regular traffic.)

Tell you what though--skip the core book. If you want to get your money's worth out of V&V, just buy the villain books. Fantasy Games Unlimited is offering the V&V supplements for six or eight bucks a pop. Buy the Most Wanted (1, 2, or 3) or Opponents Unlimited or DNAgents Sourcebook. All of these are basically books of very detailed characters, with rich histories and descriptions, perfect for cannibalizing for use with some other, more enjoyable, superhero game.

Your twelve dollars will be well-spent.