Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : System Choice, or Pick your Poison

O.k. now its time to do an analysis to try and figure out which version of Villains & Vigilantes is the right one for me. As I said in my last entry part of me wants to go with the new shiny of Villains & Vigilantes 3.0 : Mighty Protectors, but part of my heart really wants to return to the simplicity of Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.

Choosing Mighty Protectors would mean supporting a "Living" version of the rules. By "Living I mean that it's still being produced and supported by the authors Jeff Dee & Jack Herman through Monkey House Games. Most of the support at his point is products that were promised through the Kickstarter campaign (4 years ago), and those are being released at what seems like a snails pace. Frankly I'm beginning to doubt if we'll see all of the material that was promised as part of the Kickstarter at this point. All that being said I completely understand why, Monkey house Games is a Small Company; I think technically it really just Jack & Jeff (and maybe Manada Jeff's partner) they rely a lot on freelancers for some of the products. For example the upcoming War Heroes title was, I believe written by Brian K. Adams. The art was most likely done but either Jeff and or Tod Allen Smith, and the layout is being done by Jeff. Now this is supposed to be a 300+ page book so that's a lot of work for so few people, and one has to assume that they have day jobs on top of at all this (Lets face it very few individuals can manage to live off producing rpgs on its own)

Choosing Villains & Vigilantes 2.x means that, for the most part, I'd be choosing a "Dead", Well maybe more like "Undead" version of the rules. Due to the settlement it seems like new material may be very sparse in the future. It seems that Fantasy Games Unlimited (the original publisher of the game) can't sell a version of the rules at this point (MHG still sells both the PDF and "dead tree" versions of V&V 2.1), but they have been putting out some interesting source books and adventures right up until 2018. We haven't seem anything new since then. The FGU website does list a product called Mystic Foes in their "coming soon" section, but no release date is listed. Up until this point Monkey House Games has also been supporting V&V 2.1 by making sure that all their Mighty Protectors releases are "dual-stated" for both systems, but I don't know much longer this will continue. I can't see them "dual-stating" War Heroes it's just too much work to write up all the character in both systems (if this is a N.P.C. Heavy source book). 

Seeing as I have 90-100% of everything produced for both system at this point, it does sort of become a moot point. It's not like whichever system I choose the "RPG Police" will come and take all my materials away if either version becomes truly unsupported by either gaming company. 

I freely admit that math and I are not the best of friends, and this may colour my perceptions. Now many superhero systems rely on a "point buy" character creation system. This is done to maintain what is commonly called "character balance". In other words it's so that all the player's character's are on an even playing field when it come to combat effectiveness. In my opinion this balance is completely illusory, and don't even get me started on the social implications of this need to make sure that the other people's characters don't have some sort of advantage over your character. The fact remains that even using a point buy character creation system it is possible to create characters that vary widely in combat effectiveness. Trust me I could easily create a character that would be ineffective in combat but hyper-effective in investigation or some other non-combat role-playing situations. I would still have a blast playing that character. I believe that this type of non-combat character, or as they're often referred to as "sub-optimal builds",  are just as valid a choice as their combat focused brethren, they just take more creativity to play.  So since point build system aren't a guarantee of balance, except on a purely abstract mathematical basis, why bother?

Mighty Protectors uses a "point buy" system, it isn't a "pure" point buy system as it does allow for a high degree of random generation, but it does try to be a "balanced" system. This means that all Stats & Powers are built from points, even if these are determined randomly. This allow for a great deal of customization-ability at the cost of turning character creation into an accounting like exercise. All you have to do is ask my wife and she'll confirm that I have a prejudice against accounting, not that I can't do it, it's just unpleasant...Blech.... 

Villains & Vigilantes 2.x pretty much uses a random / somewhat narrative method for determining Stats & Power. The powers are mostly pre-designed and act as a guideline on how powerful each power should be. This allows powers to be tinkered with on a gut instinct basis. In fact, the game actively encourages the players and game masters to work together to come up with unique power using the other powers as guidelines. This doesn't mean there is no math in Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.  Hell the math used to figure out a character's carrying capacity is infamous for its formula ((S/10)^3+(E/10)) x (W/2), but that calculation only has to be done once per character (in general), and I can easily do that with a calculator. 

Villains & Vigilantes 2.x is an older game and uses a convention of its time, a look up table to determine target numbers for combat. This is a "feature" that particularly bothers my friend  Tim Knight of the Hero Press Blog and he has twisted himself in to pretzel knots trying to avoid, or replace it :). Mighty Protectors  is a newer game and has done away with combat look up table in favor of a much better system involving "to hit" numbers for each attack and a semi-static defense number. I'll admit this is a feature that weighs in Mighty Protectors favor. Another thing that Mighty Protectors does better than its predecessor is the way it handles skills / backgrounds, or rather how it explains their intended use much more clearly.than it was in Villains & Vigilantes 2.0. it's not the granular skill system found in many rpgs, but I think it is very flexible. 

Players wont be hearing "sorry johnny you didn't buy / put points into that particular skill that you absolutely need right now, even though as a (insert occupation here) it would make sense that you would know it, so you can't do it. Now if your a (insert occupation here) and you have a reasonable chance of knowing something about a subject, or how to use a skill, you get to roll on a d20 against the relevant stat save as determined by your game master +3. If you don't have relevant training or knowledge because of your background and it qualifies as "common knowledge" you make a flat roll against your stat save value; otherwise your at a -3. If it requires specialist knowledge, your screwed, unless you have detailed instructions and you roll a 1 (lower is always better in V&V/MP unless its damage)

Then there's matter of "feel". This is a much more intangible quality, and unfortunately nostalgia may heavily color how each game is perceived. If I discount the nostalgia aspect, as I probably should, there isn't much to separate the two games . Villains & Vigilantes 2.x is renowned for the way in which it really emulates the super-heroic genre well, its often been sited among those that have played it, as well as other superhero rpgs, how much it brings the feel of comic book super heroics to the tabletop. I've also heard from V&V players as well as Champions players how MP is a great deal of fun and feels very super-heroic. In some ways the Mighty Protectors rule book goes further than it predecessor in helping generate that standard "4-color" feel. The chapters on the Mighty Protectors Universe feels really good, and it;s a wellspring of inspiration on how to build your own comic book universe; much more so than the pages and pages of legal code included in the V&V 2.x rule books. 

The last thing to consider is system familiarity, I have years upon years of experience creating V&V 2.x characters. In fact I have a binder full of potentially reusable heroes and villains from the old campaigns. So in someways I wouldn't be starting all over from scratch, as far a creating characters goes. But, frankly some of those heroes & villains have worn out their welcome, though overuse (at least in my mind), but that still leaves a lot of them to be exploited. With Mighty Protectors its all gonna have to be built up from the ground floor. That could lead to some really interesting developments and characters ...then there's that old building MP character feels a lot like accounting problem.

There is so much to consider, and  as I said I might, I think I've over complicated it ... again. If any of you have any Insight or feedback that might help please leave a comment. 

Next time I write should have a decision made. (Hopefully)

Thanks for reading

Erik a.k.a. Midnight

Planning a New V&V / Mighty Protectors Campaign : What has Gone Before.

 

For anybody that knows me it comes as no surprise that super-heroic role-playing is my favorite genre to indulge in. It is also the one that causes me the most frustration. To paraphrase Khan Noonian Singh from Star Trek II: 

"It tasks me. It tasks me and I shall have it! I'll chase it 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give it up!."

Superhero role-playing games (rpgs) were the third Genre of role-playing that I was ever exposed to. The first, as it was for many in the hobby, was the fantasy genre through the auspices of Dungeons & Dragons (Holmes edition) and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition). early on I played many standalone adventure and one-shots, but I never really engaged in what could be called a "Campaign" until much later under the dungeon-mastering of my friend Francois "Frank" Verpaelst  in his excellent "Thieves World" games. Fantasy is still my second favorite role-playing genre.

The second was post-apocalyptic role-playing through TSR's Gamma World (1st ed). My time spent playing Gamma World under my friend P. Michael Hodge could most certainly be considered a campaign in the classic sense, we had consistent characters that progressed through as series of interconnected situations and adventure. P.Mikey's Gamma World campaign was definitely a precursor to the genre that would later occupy the Lion's share of our early role-playing "careers". I say this because one of the major background features of his campaign was a secret society he created called "the Church of Mar-Vel". A group of cultist that had based their religion and philosophy on an incomplete archive of Marvel comics, and had begun to breed / engineer mutants with the powers and abilities of the gods from the holy books. I'm sure you can guess where this is leading .

An finally during a summer lull in gaming (most of our gaming revolved around school, both high school and C.E.G.E.P, which in Quebec is a bridge between HS and University) a friend called together a group of us he knew to be comic book / superhero aficionados to try an new rpg that he'd gotten his hands on. It turned out to be the boxed set of Villains & Vigilantes 2.0, and when we saw it I seem to remember we were all pretty excited about it.

We rolled up characters and our friend Carl ran us through the Intro module "Crisis at Crusader Citadel". I think most of were hooked at that point, I know that I was, and I'm pretty sure that P.Michael was too. not long after his Gamma world campaign wrapped up and he plunged head long in to V&V. Technically I started my V&V campaign first, but mine didn't shine as brightly or last as long as the campaigns run by PMikey. 

For over 20 years I've had a plethora of characters in P.Michael's campaigns. In order of appearance: from the Champions of Peace (C.O.P.s): Firebird (who was Erik Menard's super heroic Identity), Will-o-wisp, and The Magi (yes I know I accidentally used the plural in his name instead of the singular Mage), from the Pantheon: Midnight (perhaps the character that is most associated with me, Duh), From U.N.I.T.-M: Psi-Fire, Ghoul (a reworking of my original character form Carl's game), and finally Midnight once again. 

Since the U.N.I.T-M Campaign wrapped, and before that, I started searching for a replacement for V&V. Over time I think I became personally disenchanted with V&V as a rule set / mechanic. as the search progressed I found that I was judging all the replacements by the standard of Villains & Vigilantes 2.0. and after about 10 years I realized that all of the systems I investigated fell short of V&V in my estimation. Under my suggestion / insistence (but maybe I'm remembering it completely wrong) we ventured into the waters of Mutants & Masterminds 1st edition under PMikey, we even nominally play-tested M&M 2nd ed (our names appear in the play-testing credits) P.Michael seem to really like the system, it scratched an itch for him as a GM  that apparently V&V did not. Eventually the Intoxicating "New Game Smell" of M&M wore off for me sometime after M&M 3rd edition was release to the public, and our character of Virago II was release as an officially vetted PDF (made possible by backing the Kickstarter at an absurd level)  by Green Ronin, and the search started again.

Then Jack Herman & Jeff Dee, the original authors of V&V released Villains & Vigilantes 2.1 a cleaned up and reformatted set of V&V 2 rules, and began their battle to regain the their rights to publish their game. In the end they achieved a complicated compromise victory and began the process of getting Villains & Vigilantes 3.0: The Mighty Protectors Kickstarted and eventually out the door. This chain of events reawakened my interest in V&V and I began to reexamine it.

In the end I've come to the conclusion that It wasn't so much the rules / mechanics that I had become disenchanted with all those years ago, but rather I was beginning to rapidly lose faith in my abilities as a game master; my ability to tell an Interesting and compelling story. It took years to hit rock bottom, but I did hit it, and have been slowly rebuilding it ever since. so now I think I'm finally ready to pick up my GMing hat, dust it off, set it squarely on my huge melon and jump back in to the game. 

So, as I have discovered over the years, V&V really is my game, my only remaining question is whether to choose V&V 2.0 or V&V 3.0: Mighty Protectors. I'm concerned that I will of course unnecessarily over-complicate this decision. I want to go with the new shiny of Mighty Protectors, but part of my heart really wants to return to the simplicity of Villains & Vigilantes 2.x.

I will have to make a decision on this matter very shortly, as I have promised PMikey that I WILL run a Superhero campaign for him to finally play in, and after all the years enjoyment he's brought me as a player over the years (hell a lot of us). I think I owe him that, ... nay, I know I owe him that, and its time I paid up. 

Erik a.k.a Midnight 

Mighty Protectors: A New Start - A New Era

Lately I've been trying to conquer my gaming ADD. I've got it so bad I could be the poster child for the Telethon

Yes ladies and gentlemen, for only $1 a day you too can fund critical research into Gamer ADD. There are so many deserving gaming groups across the world in great need of a stable and committed Game Master. The problem is that so many potentially wonderful and skilled GM's never get to express that Inner genius, because they have the attention span of a fruit fly; Constantly flitting from one genre or game system to another and never settling down long enough to ....

It's been hard, but I'm sick and tired of wasting my time waffling all over the place concerning genre and system. Since I can't seem to stay away from gaming as a pastime, and Lord knows I've tried, I figured If I'm gonna put all this time and effort in to RPG's I should at least have something to show for those efforts.

So I settled on one of my greatest loves V&V/SHRPGs.

Then there was the question of what edition to use, I have literally decades of experience with Villains & Vigilantes 2.0 / 2.1, but its showing its age a bit, and I believe that he new 3rd Edition of V&V a.k.a. Mighty Protectors is a worthy successor. I also want to support Jeff Dee and Jack Herman of Monkey House Games for all the years of unmitigated joy I've had playing the game they designed.

V&V 2.x has a lot of baggage in my mind, especially the old characters that Percy Hodge and I designed all those years ago. So as a result I'm starting from Scratch with all new characters and N.P.C's. 

I thought I would take advantage of this day off due to American Thanksgiving to create the First N.P.Cs. So here is the first: Americana

Erik a.k.a.Midnight

Make Mine V&V !!!

Lately I've had a desperate yearning ... no ... NEED for some Super Hero Roleplaying action. So I decided to do something about it and I picked up my copy of The Mighty Protectors to refresh my memory of the system.

I’ve had V&V 3.0 / Might Protectors since its initial early Kickstarter releases, I’ve wanted to love it … but like my friend Tim Knight of HeroPress. I find the change to a point buy system has definitely dampened my enthusiasm. As a result I immediately started to spin back into my Eternal Quest for a SHRPG that would meet my needs, and inspire me. Then I started reconsidering my old love Villains & Vigilantes 2.X. That's when I ran in to this piece I wrote perhaps 8-10 years ago on another site when I was asked why I love V&V so much.  Funny thing is I find its still truly expresses most of my feelings on the V&V versus other SHRPG’s,

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Villains &Vigilantes was the third RPG I ever played, the first being AD&D 1st edition, then Gamma World 1st Edition, and then Villains & Vigilantes 2nd. This being said it has a HUGE nostalgia factor for me, but despite what some may think this is not a case of rose coloured glasses. I realize that Villains & Vigilantes has it flaws and peculiarities; all of which I have come to terms with over the years.

We played V&V for 10 solid years, and then sporadically after that for another 10 years, and I've run several successful campaigns with my original gaming group as well as another group while I was still in Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) cut off from the rest of my original gaming group here in Montreal. 

For many years I served as P.Michael’s, our primary GM’s, sounding board and occasional GM's Assistant. This was due to my comprehensive internalization of the core rules, at least until P.Michael began to heavily drift the V&V rules in a way that I had a difficult time grasping.

About 15 years ago I became unsatisfied with V&V, that or I was overcome by the initial stages of the gamer’s A.D.D that I'm starting to recover from just now, and I began a 15 year search for a suitable heir for to V&V. In the intervening years I have investigated a wide variety of Superhero RPGs. Hell my shelves groan more under the weight of the books that comprise that genre than any other. All of these systems were subconsciously held up to V&V as the golden standard, and of course all of them failed.

They failed for a number of reasons, but not because any of them were intrinsically Inferior to V&V, but because none of them approach the genre, and for that matter role-playing, from the same perspective as V&V in my opinion. It was that perspective that shaped my expectations about how a Superhero RPG should work. It also jived very well with my perception of how things worked, and what I like about the source material. The thing is, Villain & Vigilantes doesn't give a rats ass about game balance, and neither do I. (mind you I posted they on the Monkey House Games forums a while back and Jeff Dee took exception to that particular assertion, never the less I stand by it)

I have no patience for players who sit there and moan, bitch and whine that their character isn't as powerful as players X's character, and use that as an excuse to be disruptive during the session, and or using the power discrepancy as an excuse for throwing their hands in the air and pout until either they are bumped up to meet, or exceed, everybody else's power level or everybody else is brought down to their level (funny how nobody ever complains when there more powerful that everybody else Eh). Every other game (with the exception perhaps of the old Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set by TSR) it predicated on placating these immature malcontents via "Game Balance", while in my opinion V&V approached the game with the attitude of "your all supposed to be mature Individuals, and yes fate can be a bitch, deal with it, make the best of a shitty situation". But, here's the trick, that's the kinda thing comic book characters have to deal with all the time.

Maybe I've been spoiled, but I've had the benefit and pleasure of associating with a lot of "mature" role players in my groups. That’s not to say that we haven't had our share of power gamers and munchkins, but overall, the players that have been involved in the supers campaigns I've played in have been fairly mature and level headed, and more interested in having fun, and telling a story, than one-upmanship, or any other form of competition with their fellow players. So, I've never really understood systems that enforce an artificial "Game Balance". I’d rather just tell player X to grow up already. (Truth is I'd love to be that blunt but, I rarely am.)

(My gratitude for such wonderful sessions goes out to P.Michael Hodge, John Moret, Russell Sangster, David Sangster, Peter Roffey, Jeremy Kidd, Mark Taylor, Francois Verpaelst, David Glenn, Gordon Evans, Lucien Soulban, and Luc Millette)

Another aspect of V&V that I find suits me to a tee is the random character creation. No other game, with the exception of Marvel Super Heroes, allowed, neigh encouraged that the hand of fate determine the heroes lot in super heroic life like V&V. In the comic books heroes rarely get to pick and choose their powers, rather the power are thrusts up on them, and they again must learn how to best use them to uphold and further, the common good; Yet, the system was not averse to players approaching the GM and discussing a concept with them and working in conjunction to flesh it out.

A very important reason why V&V appeals to me more than any other Super Hero RPG is because it isn't a point buy system. I can't stand, no I loath, the accounting required in point cost balancing. It's not that I'm adverse to math ( but lord knows I have my difficulties) Heck you should see V&V's formula for deriving carrying capacity. (((str/10)^3)+(end/10))*(weight/2) this I have no problem with, but I have never liked the balance sheet / general ledger methods of character creation, at least not for supers (Champions, Mutants & Masterminds, Etc. I’m looking at you.)

Last but not least is my familiarity with the rules, I can run Villains & Vigilantes in my sleep!! I no longer wish to be challenged by a system. I'm quickly losing the interest in learning complete rules systems. As a player I'm really starting to appreciate the wisdom of my old Pantheon member Mark Taylor when he said "just tell me what to roll". When I run a genre as near and dear to my heart as supers I don't want to argue over rules, and sweat the mechanics I want to concentrate on the story, and the action.

By today’s standard V&V is perhaps showing its age, yet Mutants & Masterminds, the undisputed top-dog in the Superhero RPG field, has had it's author Steve Kenson cite Villains & Vigilantes as one of it's primary sources of inspiration. It is often recognized on RPG.net as a underappreciated classic of the genre. So I join a small a, and somewhat vocal minority that is willing to say "Damn it this is a cool game despite it age and flaws" because I whole heatedly believe the cool / fun factor of the rules far outweighs its flaws.

So Make Mine V&V!! ( and get off my lawn with you newfangled games you young whipper snappers !! :) )

Erik a.k.a Midnight